Contents Under Pressure Page 21

  “Sure.” He looked at me sharply as though surprised that I had missed the obvious. “The unit number tells you that. They were supposed to be assisting on a prostitution detail, the john squad up at Seventy-ninth and the Boulevard.”

  “So D. Wayne Hudson may have thought he was being chased by robbers?” Lottie said.

  “Well,” Ted shrugged, “he pulled right over when the blue and whites joined in. I pulled up at the same time as Estrada and Machado. They were racing to see who could get to him first. The guy rolled down his window when they came up on him. And Estrada drug him right out that window.”

  “So there was no accident?” I asked, my vocal cords knotting.

  “No,” he said, and shook his head.

  There was a sound behind us. Betsy stood in the doorway, wearing a black jumper over a white maternity top. She had something glittery with silver wings and a white sheet over her arm. Her eyes were big, her stomach huge. Her mouth formed an O, but nothing came out.

  She walked into another room, apparently to hang up the costumes, then returned and sat down next to her husband. He reached for her hand, and she patted his.

  “It’s been hard to live with,” he said softly, his face haggard. “I have kids, a family of my own. When I see mine, I think of his.”

  “What happened after Estrada got him out of the car?”

  Betsy looked as though she wanted to interrupt, but said nothing. He took a deep breath, then swallowed. “The Blackburns were pissed because the blue and whites passed them and got to him first. Everybody just piled on, swinging at him. The Blackburns, Estrada, Machado. Me.”

  “You all hit him?” My voice was a croak.

  Ted nodded, his eyes flooded. “We weren’t cops anymore, Britt. We were a mob. It was like a scene out of one of those cartoons where all you see is flailing elbows and knees and feet.”

  A tear skidded down his cheek. Betsy wept silently with him.

  “I hit him once.”

  “With your hand?”

  “Fist, but there were sticks and flashlights and feet flying.”

  He looked sick, and placed both palms over his eyes, elbows on his knees. “I realized he was cuffed, and I stopped, but nobody else did. I tried to reach in and grab him away from them, but they went crazy. A couple of blows hit my arm and I just backed off.”

  Betsy looked at us, eyes defeated. “Do you want some coffee?”

  “Sure, I’d love some,” I said gratefully, looking at Lottie, who said she would, too.

  We sat around the kitchen table. The room was warm and cheerful, but Ted looked worse under the bright light. He wanted to keep talking, as though it relieved his burden.

  “I swear, Britt, I had no idea he was hurt so bad. He didn’t look critical when the medics took him.”

  “How did his car get damaged?”

  “The Blackburns banged it up with their sticks and all. Machado kicked out the lights. They shoved it into the ditch. Figured no one would believe the driver’s story, even if he remembered what happened.

  “They had his wallet out. That’s when one of the Blackburns yelled, ‘Oh shit, you know who this nigger is?’ That’s when they said we had to get our story straight and stick to it. Stick to the story.” He repeated it like a mantra. “Stick to the story.”

  “What about Carpenter?”

  “He came up after it happened, but he helped push the car in the ditch, then called the tow truck to haul it out They figured it would be all right, until you started asking questions.”

  “Did D. Wayne ever fight back?”

  “He never got the chance. Somebody had the cuffs on him right after he was yanked out of the car. Wasn’t much he could do.”

  I felt sick. Ted looked as if he did, too. The muscles in his jaw worked involuntarily.

  “I’ve always tried to do the right thing, Britt. You’ve been there. You’ve seen my file.”

  I nodded.

  “I still don’t know how I got caught up in it. Those guys have a rep, but I never would have believed that I could be a part of anything like this. I’m still trying to figure it out. Still don’t know what happened,” he muttered, shaking his head as though bewildered. “It was the excitement, the adrenaline of the moment, like a whirlwind, that’s the way things happen on midnights. Everything’s different. It’s like nobody’s in charge. As if the rules change when the afternoon shift leaves.”

  Betsy stood behind his chair, small neat hands gently massaging his shoulders, as if to absorb the pain.

  “What started the chase?”

  “The BOLO,” he said flatly. “Described the car and him to a T. Fleeing felon.”

  “There was no BOLO. I got a transcript of the tape from communications. It wasn’t on there.”

  “Sure,” he said tiredly. “It was there. Heard it myself, then one of the Blackburns responded, said they had the subject in sight”

  I shook my head.

  “I swear, Britt. I heard it myself.”

  I shook Ted’s hand and hugged Betsy as we left. So did Lottie. “Thanks,” I told them.

  “I know you have to do what you have to do,” he said, resigned. “But you won’t use my name?”

  “Right.”

  Lottie and I turned to each other once the door closed behind us. The night air was warm and soft. “Well, we did it,” I said.

  “So how come you’re not all lit up like you usually are when you nail down a story?”

  “Do you feel excited and happy?”

  “Don’t have the heart,” she admitted, “though I’d be delighted to see those others get busted. What I want to know,” she said peevishly, as she hobbled to the car, “is why the hell we didn’t come out here first?”

  We were mostly silent on the drive back to the office.

  “He sure talked,” she commented. “Looks like his conscience is killin’ him.”

  “Yeah,” I said, thinking aloud, “he seemed so truthful about everything else, wonder why he lied about that one thing? There wasn’t any BOLO, but he kept insisting.”

  “Sure sounded like the truth to me. Makes you wonder about cops, don’t it? Looks like we got us the scum of the earth runnin’ around here wearing badges and playing with guns. Don’t it make real guys like Larry and Steve look good?”

  “The cops do look bad,” I said ruefully. “But don’t tar them all with the same brush. There are good cops out there.”

  She stared at me suspiciously. “Sure, and until tonight, you’d have ranked Ted Ferrell high on that list, right?” She settled back into her seat. “Now spill it I’ve been waitin’ all evening.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re just lookin’ too damn smug these days. Like the cat with her face in the canary cage. Who is this new man? Tell me all about the big romance.”

  “Well, I have been seeing somebody, but it’s no big deal.” I thought of Kendall McDonald, naked in my bed, and felt hot all over. “I don’t even know if I’ll see him again.”

  Lottie sharply scrutinized my profile as I turned off Fifteenth Street toward the News building.

  “You will,” she intoned. “Who is he? Where’d you meet him? Is he good? What does he do?”

  I tried not to look guilty.

  “Oh shit,” she said. “It ain’t a cop? Tell me it ain’t a cop.” She leaned closer as I wheeled the Chrysler into her reserved spot under the building. I cut my eyes at her, still trying to look prim. “Damn, it is!” she cried. “Are you crazy?”

  Sixteen

  I typed up my notes that night, slept poorly, and went in early the next morning, to meet with Fred Douglas. He called in half a dozen other editors and Mark Seybold. Lottie joined us in the high-ceilinged conference room. We both refused to divulge even to them the identity of the officer who had talked to us. All we would verify was that official police reports had placed him at the scene, and that he had acknowledged participating
in the attack on D. Wayne Hudson.

  “He’s admitting to a serious crime,” Mark Seybold said. He was wearing his train tie, tacked down by a tiny locomotive. Leaning back in his leather chair, he peered at me speculatively over the top of his wire-rim glasses. “Why would he tell you this?”

  The solemn faces around the conference table awaited my answer. “I think it’s because he’s basically a decent man who got caught up in something he bitterly regrets.”

  “His conscience is eatin’ him up,” added Lottie, slouched in her chair, arms folded across her chest. “You should’ve seen him. He looks whupped.”

  “You promised him confidentiality, without consulting first with any of us?” The managing editor formed a pyramid with the fingers of both hands and eyed me, looking faintly troubled, his usual expression when regarding me or Lottie. He came from the old school of journalism, the days before newsrooms began to look like “hen houses,” as I once heard him complain to a male colleague. When he broke into the business, women were relegated to flossy features and gardening columns. Few covered hard news, much less the police beat. Behind him I could see the drawbridge on the Venetian Causeway slowly rising to accommodate a huge white yacht northbound in Biscayne Bay.

  “It was the only way to ensure that he would talk to us. The others are stonewalling, sticking to their story,’’ I said. I hated justifying myself to these men. Where were they when we were out there in the dark, in strange neighborhoods, dealing with slamming doors, curses, and attacking pit bulls? How long since any of them had been reporters on the street? Most didn’t know what it felt like. Most editors are recruited from the ranks of government reporters; most never get their hands dirty. Yet here they sat, in air-conditioned comfort, demanding explanations. By the curve of Lottie’s mouth and the guarded expression in her eyes across the table, I could see that she shared my discomfort. She didn’t look like she had slept well, either. Would they be this skeptical and question us this closely, I wondered, if we were men?

  Common sense fought my feelings of hostility and persecution. Weariness was affecting my thinking; looking at their side, I could see what concerned them. This was a sensitive story. They had to be absolutely sure. They were the guardians of the newspaper’s deep pockets. If I made a serious mistake in print, the paper would be the primary target in a lawsuit, not me. I tried to keep my foot from wagging impatiently under the polished oak table and told myself that this interrogation could be worse; Gretchen had late duty today, and hadn’t come in yet. Thank heaven for small favors.

  “I say we go with it, for tomorrow,” Fred Douglas said finally, his hearty voice booming through air that felt thick with doubt and indecision. The faces around the table nodded. Chairs scraped. No one objected.

  They wanted the copy early, they said, so it could be read by them and Mark, who would vet it before going home. Though it would be finished in plenty of time, the story would be withheld from the early edition, so the TV competition would not be tipped off before the eleven o’clock nightly news.

  It felt good to be out of the meeting and back in the huge, bustling newsroom, working at my terminal. Sometimes I think this job is what I was born to do. I like fighting deadlines. I have always been competitive, and it is exhilarating to race the clock, perhaps because I know full well that all victories are temporary, and that in the end, the only winner is time.

  When the story was pretty much put together, I called Alma Hudson to tell her what it would say. I didn’t want her to read it first in the newspaper—and I wanted to include a quote from her. She listened so quietly that when I had finished, I wasn’t sure she was still there.

  “I knew that my husband had done nothing wrong,” she finally said, her voice catching, “and I pray for justice in his case. Thank God the truth is finally beginning to emerge. Bless you, Britt.”

  I used her first two comments. I also called to confide in Francie, swearing her to secrecy until the paper hit the street. Then, heart pounding, I called Kendall McDonald.

  “Clark Kent? Lois Lane here.”

  “Isn’t he the reporter who takes his clothes off in phone booths?”

  “I know a few reporters who do that.”

  He laughed. “I was just thinking about you, Britt.” He sounded pleased to hear from me.

  “We must be psychic—or psycho.”

  “Probably both,” he said. “How’s business?”

  “I wrapped up the Hudson story.”

  “That explains all the rumors, huddles, and paranoia among the uniforms on the road last night. When’s it gonna break?”

  “Tomorrow’s newspaper. All but the early edition tonight.”

  “Front page?”

  “Depends on what else is happening in the world. The editors decide that. Want to know what it’s going to say?”

  “Nope. I think I’d just rather read about it like everybody else. How much hell do you think it’ll raise?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “We’ll see what happens once the story is out.”

  “Well, one good thing may come out of all this.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Maybe now you can focus more on your social life.”

  “Meaning you?” I couldn’t help but smile, and wondered if he could hear it in my voice.

  “Seeing more of you wouldn’t be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

  “Well,” I said, “how nice. I thought I’d been seduced and abandoned.”

  “Not you, lady, not you.”

  We said goodbye, and I hung up, still smiling. Behind me, Ryan had overheard my last comment and was ablaze with curiosity. “Who was that on the phone, Britt? Who was it?”

  “You damn reporters,” I said, my face hot with embarrassment. “Is nothing sacred?”

  My story shared the front page with part one of Ryan’s rafting adventure, the usual international politics, and a weather story. A tropical depression had formed in the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Senegal in western Africa, 3,424 miles southeast of Miami; ominous news during the Atlantic hurricane season. That would-be storm never appeared, but my story created a whirlwind.

  The furor made it a tough time to be a cop in Miami. Events began to move with lightning speed. The Hudson cops, as they came to be known, were relieved of duty, with pay, the same day. The state attorney’s office and the police department launched investigations. D. Wayne Hudson’s car, now evidence, was seized from a body shop, where it had been about to be repaired. Within twenty-four hours, the medical examiner had classified Hudson’s death as a homicide. The police chief was under seige from the press, and was attacked by community groups who accused him of allowing his troops to run wild.

  A black church group conducted a mock funeral procession for D. Wayne Hudson, marching slowly and solemnly down Flagler Street to the courthouse at dusk, carrying a black-draped coffin and placards bearing a one-word demand: JUSTICE. Hundreds of strangers, both black and white, joined them in the hazy purple twilight, until the silent marchers were more than a thousand strong. On the steps of the courthouse they held a candlelight vigil.

  My story had evidently been fair and well balanced, because my mail was equally divided between venomous hate letters and notes of praise.

  Though I had not used Ted Ferrell’s name, I did write his account of what had happened. The other officers did not have to be brilliant to figure out which one of them had broken their silence. I wondered if they were causing him any problems. I felt a sense of relief that their fears and paranoia would no longer be focused on me. They had more important things to worry about now. Staying out of jail was one of them.

  I did fight apprehension as I raced out to cover a violent death in Miami police jurisdiction the day after the story appeared. How would I cover my beat if no cop in Miami ever spoke to me again?

  The scene was an Overtown street corner. I knew what the smell was the moment I stepped out of the car. Once encounte
red, you never forget the odor of burned human flesh. The inevitable had happened. The victim was sprawled at the foot of a streetlight pole. The plastic covers on the handles of his wire cutters had melted. Smoke still rose from his hands.

  I wondered if his obituary would describe him as an amateur electrician. He looked to be in his late teens, early twenties. Witnesses, possibly accomplices, young men his own age who seemed to know him, eagerly described what they had seen.

  A short, plump, big-eyed fellow in a baseball cap and ratty shorts was talking to a homicide detective, who nodded when he saw me. Neither he nor the cops conducting crowd control seemed to have any problem with me listening.

  “A big, bright flash of fire,” the pudgy youth was saying, waving his arms descriptively. His moist eyes kept returning in disbelief to the newly dead man in the street. “Bobby was hunkered down, right here,” he demonstrated, squatting beside the pole, “working on the power box, then it flashed and he did a back somersault.” The youth got to his feet and stared at the body. “He somersaulted, man. He got blowed about seven, eight feet away. Sparks flying everywhere and his whole body shaking. Smoke coming outta his hands, man, and his shoes and socks was shooting black smoke. Man,” he shook his head, “Bobby got hisself fried.”

  “Bar-be-cued!” hooted one of the group from the sidewalk.

  A power company emergency car had arrived, a yellow flasher spinning on its dash. The driver wore a hard hat and a cool, clinical look. “Bound to happen sooner or later,” he said laconically. “The current jumped from the line to him. The electrical field is so great you don’t even have to make direct contact.” While stealing copper wire from a streetlight, Bobby had been zapped out of this world by “7,720 volts, pretty standard high voltage,” the company spokesman said.

  What impressed me most, aside from Bobby’s unfortunate experience, was the attitude of the cops. I had feared that they would all hate me like poison and clam up, but the rank and file exhibited no rancor and treated me no differently than before.