Contents Under Pressure Read online

  I did, and was not crazy about what I saw. He looked uncomfortable, his thin face pinched and serious.

  “Britt, I’ve been asked to discuss this with you because Gretchen felt you weren’t receptive to her the last time this issue came up.”

  What is he talking about? I wondered. What has Gretchen done to me this time? Whatever, my best defense was a good offense. “I’m always receptive to my editors,” I tied indignantly, trying to look properly righteous.

  Fred toyed with a slim gold pen on his immaculate desktop. “You know that this paper always strives for sensitivity when it comes to minorities?”

  “Of course,” I said, on the alert. “And nobody is more sensitive than I am on the police beat.”

  “True, but you have occasional lapses. Like this latest.” He leaned forward, opened his desk drawer, and removed a tearsheet of one of my stories.

  The story was sensitively written, if I did say so myself. It was an interview with the family of a grocer gunned down by robbers a year earlier. The murder was still unsolved. The man’s son had called, asking me if there was any way to revive the case that still haunted the survivors, and perhaps generate some new interest by police. He wanted to know if offering a reward might help. I went to visit the family and wrote about the major void left in the lives of the widow, three sons, and their wives. The victim’s first grandchild had been born since his death, a birth he had eagerly anticipated. The closing of his corner store, where he had extended goodwill and credit, had made a major difference to the entire neighborhood. Senior citizens, single mothers, and others on fixed incomes now had to ride two buses to buy and lug home their groceries.

  Bewildered, I scanned the story Fred had dropped in front of me. His expression was stern. “What’s wrong with this?” I asked. “You’re saying it’s not sensitive?”

  “Catch the second reference to the widow,” Fred said, as though I had missed something obvious.

  “Sally,” I said.

  “A reader called, accusing us of referring to her by her first name because she’s a black woman. Our style is to use only last names on second reference.”

  “Except that in this case everybody else quoted in the story has the same last name. All the sons, all the daughters-in-law. Using her first name was the easiest, most common sense way to avoid confusion and make it clear who was speaking. It had nothing to do with race. Oh, for Pete’s sake!” I sprang to my feet, too agitated to sit, pacing back and forth in the short space in front of Fred’s desk.

  “The cops had forgotten this guy’s murder. It devastated his family and changed the quality of life in the whole damn neighborhood, and when I try to rekindle some interest in solving it, I’m accused of being insensitive, and racist? Who the hell complained? Not them?” I jabbed an index finger at the tearsheet, at Lottie’s solemn group picture of the Anderson family. “They were thrilled and grateful that somebody still cared and remembered the case.”

  “It wasn’t them, per se,” Fred said, swallowing a nervous sip of black coffee from a Styrofoam cup, his adam’s apple bobbing. “Sit down, sit down.” My body language and argumentative reaction obviously made him uneasy. But I stayed stubbornly on my feet. Probably a mistake; our professional relationship had always been good. But what the hell, I thought, this is ludicrous; I don’t deserve being jerked around like this. I towered over him, seething. Wedged behind his desk, he was looking more and more like a trapped rat. “It’s just that another reader, a black person, called, got the ear of the ME, and complained that it was demeaning.”

  “Fred, are you saying to me that you don’t think that I am personally sensitive to everyone?” Roiling toward a full boil, I leaned across his desk, breathing fire. “I was not assigned to do this. It was an enterprise story. I thought it was a good idea, and I generated it. Nobody in this newsroom could be more sensitive to a family whose father was killed. Perhaps you have forgotten that my father…”

  “Okay, okay.” Hands raised in surrender, he leaned back in his chair, rolling it toward the farthest wall. “I only delivered the message. It’s one of these things we have to deal with. These are difficult times, Britt. Just watch yourself in the future.”

  Has the world gone wacky, I wondered as I stomped out of his office, or was it me?

  Luckily, my personal life was on a high, making it easier to endure the temporary vagaries of the job. In November, I took a week’s vacation I had to use or lose by the end of the year, and I asked McDonald if he wanted to spend it together. We had seen each other several times a week since our first night together, and I was torn between the pleasure of being with him and dreading the day that my bosses, or his, found out about us. The attraction between us was powerful. I was thinking in terms I hadn’t for a long time—and the intimacy was disconcerting. Why do the things we yearn for always scare us the most? I wondered. Maybe, I thought, some time together, away from our work, might give us some insight as to where we were headed. He agreed enthusiastically and took the time off.

  McDonald and I drove across the Everglades to Florida’s west coast. We set out early on a clean and sparkling day that was awash in sunlight, the pale, innocent clouds of morning etched against a dazzling Technicolor sky.

  We drove west on the Tamiami Trail, giddy with the unfamiliar sense of freedom. Bad things might be happening in Miami, probably were at that very moment—but, hey, gun battles, casualties, and crime scenes were none of our concern today. No beepers, no bad guys. We were gone, out on the trail, the Cherokee rolling west through the ancient River of Grass, Everglades National Park.

  I had not driven across state for more than a year. Together, we hooted to see that the signs erected by the Micousukee Indians to pitch their airboat rides were now in Spanish. It had come to that; even the Micousukees had had to habla español. More signs beat the drums for their alligator wrestling, which I had no desire to see. I always rooted for the alligator—and he never won.

  The warm earthy smell of the Everglades surrounded us, and the big broad sky stretched out above for as far as the eye could see. It was heaven, until a giant, ravenous, dive-bombing Everglades mosquito, sometimes referred to as Florida’s state bird, zoomed into the jeep, seeking blood. He looked honest-to-God big enough to shoot. We did some fancy gyrations at fifty-five miles an hour, swinging and swatting, and finally forced the critter back out a window.

  A big black turkey vulture was tearing apart something dead at the side of the road. A red Porsche zoomed by, flying low, headed east toward Miami. McDonald and I exchanged glances.

  “He’s probably got a body in the trunk,” I said.

  “Or at least a dozen kilos of coke.”

  “Did you get the tag number?”

  “Nope,” he said.

  “And why not?”

  “Because, we’re on vacation,” we chorused.

  “It’s so good to be away from the rat race,” he sighed comfortably. “Especially when the rats almost always win. Out here, you realize that a hundred years from now none of it will matter. We’ll all be well-kept secrets, but this place will still be here.” His eyes, behind dark shades, lingered on my face, then swept back to the road.

  “Don’t be too sure,” I said. “If the developers have their way, a hundred years from now this will all be one gigantic paved parking lot, surrounded by condos and shopping centers.”

  Ospreys wheeled lazily overhead as every variation of green flashed by, pinelands, sawgrass, hammocks and tree islands, willows, pond apples, and mangroves. Graceful egrets feeding in a slough. A timeless tableau, all set against a low flat sky of brilliant blue and fast-moving clouds that seemed to sail right overhead. And McDonald beside me. I realized I had never felt so happy and content, and vowed to fix the moment in my memory because I know that nothing lasts forever and the best is always gone too soon.

  Our destination was a waterfront room on Sanibel Island. The first time I visited there I was a child, and the only
way to reach those pristine shores was by ferry boat. Now the island had a bridge, a three-dollar toll, and traffic jams.

  We finally arrived and carried our bags inside. I felt almost shy—here we were, alone together, away from all our familiar surroundings. The room was beautiful—with double French doors opening onto a small terrace as the sun sank into the Gulf of Mexico, its dying rays leaving golden pools and rivulets on the darkening surface of the water.

  “It’s perfect, McDonald.” I walked over and sat on the edge of the bed, where he had stretched out.

  “One question,” he said, pulling me down beside him. “How come you always call me McDonald?”

  I rolled over. “It’s your name, silly.”

  “Why not Ken, like everybody else?”

  I hesitated. “It just doesn’t feel right.”

  “Remind you of somebody?”

  “Yeah, in a way.” I deliberately sounded evasive.

  “Who was he?” Curious now, he leaned over on one elbow, those eyes, as silvery as fish scales in the sun, locked on mine.

  “Who was this guy?” he said again.

  “I was just a kid.”

  “How involved did it get?”

  “I was eight years old.”

  He registered surprise, eyes urging me on.

  “He was actually involved with my best friend. He was married to Barbie.” He didn’t get it, at first. “I was very lonesome. Only child, shy, moved a lot. Buried my nose in books. Didn’t have any friends, but I had Barbie, and she had Ken. I wrote stories, little plays, and they acted out all sorts of fantasy romances.”

  “Was he anatomically correct?”

  “No, but you are, very correct,” I whispered, breathing in his ear.

  “Toy with me, Britt.” My lips brushed his, then gently swept across his chest. “You remember any of your fantasies? I’ll play.” I unfastened his trousers and he removed them.

  “Let me check this out.” I touched him lightly and then my fingers roved to a small scar high on his right inner thigh. “How’d you get this?” Round and slightly raised, it was about the size of a cigarette burn.

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice. Gawd, you sharp-eyed reporters…” He shook his head and pulled the sheet up to cover it “That’s where I got shot.”

  I was surprised. “I knew you shot somebody once, but I didn’t know you’d ever been wounded.” I peeled the sheet back down, leaned forward as if to scrutinize the small circle, then ran my tongue over it. He was beginning to be aroused. “What happened? Was it some major bad guy?”

  “You have to know now?” he said.

  I nodded, sitting up, one hand resting lightly on his muscular thigh. “A bad guy?”

  “Not exactly.” He looked sheepish. “No big deal. Actually, it was a woman.”

  “A woman! Did this happen on or off duty?”

  “Very funny.” He was no longer aroused, but my inquiring mind was more intent on the story behind the scar at this point. He propped an overstuffed pillow behind his head, pulled me into his arms, and held me while he told it. “Once upon a time, Danny and I went to arrest a guy, a twenty-two-year-old fugitive on an auto theft warrant. This was a favor for Palm Beach. They wanted to question him as a possible witness in a homicide. We did it instead of warrants, in case the guy opted to talk about the case. No problem. We found he was staying over in Wynwood with a new lady friend. She was older than him, about thirty-five, and divorced. We were pretty thorough; we checked him out. Nonviolent, just a petty car thief, never known to be armed. Our decision was not to go in with guns on account of the kids. We knew she had small children.

  “The woman opens the door, we flash the tin. She says what do you want? We say we have a warrant for her friend Buster. ‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘Buster’s not here.’ We say we know he’s here. Dan heads in the back to check out the bedroom, and I’m looking around. All of a sudden, she screams, ‘Get out! Get out!’ and she’s pointing a rifle at me from across the room. It looked like a cannon. I was caught totally by surprise. She’s hysterical, protecting her young lover. A little kid is hanging onto her leg, and she’s still yelling ‘Get out! Get out!’

  “She’s got me covered, so I say okay, okay and start backing out the door. I was getting the hell out of her way, going outside to draw my weapon and go back in, because my partner’s still in there. Just as I’m almost out the door, she goes pop! with the gun. It took about ten seconds before I realized she’d hit me. It stung, I reached down, touched myself, and my hand came up bloody.

  “Meanwhile, Danny had caught the guy hiding in a bedroom closet and cuffed him. He heard the pop, came out, and saw that the weapon was a gun that just fires one shot at a time. I don’t know why they even make a gun like that. You have to break it down manually, take out the spent cartridge, and insert a new one. He just reached over and yanked it out of her hands.

  “I was lucky, one inch to the right and it would have rung my bell.” From the look in his eyes, the thought obviously pained him. It made me wince, as well. “I made a tie tack out of the projectile, a .22. I was embarrassed; it was not exactly my finest hour.”

  “Did she deliberately aim for your…”

  “I don’t think she knew where the gun was aiming.”

  “You could have been killed,” I said indignantly. “She could have hit you in the head, or the heart.”

  “Sure.” He nodded, as though it was not the first time that thought had occurred to him.

  “Was she attractive?”

  He looked startled. “Don’t know. Nobody’s attractive when they’re hysterical.”

  “What happened to her?”

  He rolled those blue eyes, now smoky in the waning light, as the room slipped slowly into darkness. “She plea-bargained. The prosecutor asked me to agree to a two-year plea. I said, ‘Hell, no, she tried to kill me.’ I wanted to go for the max, which would have been twenty years.

  “Next I heard, it was all over. She had taken the plea and never notified me. She sent me a Christmas card from prison with a note, apologizing. Far as I know, she was released and lived happily ever after.”

  My body felt chilled to the bone. I tickled his ribs and kissed his lower lip lightly, straddling him. “How could any woman pull a gun on you, McDonald? You’re so cute, so adorable. Such big blue eyes…”

  He tangled his hand in the back of my hair and drew my mouth back down to his. “My charms didn’t stop her for a heartbeat,” he said, voice husky. “In fact, she tried to blow ‘em away.”

  “I’m glad she didn’t.”

  “Me too.” He cupped my bottom in his hands. “Want to skip going out to dinner and order room service?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  That week, we swam in the warm Gulf waters at dawn and explored the shell-strewn beach, collecting yellow cockles, shiny lettered olives, swirling scotch bonnets, and angel wings. After breakfasts of fruit and croissants we walked the white sand beach and lazed in the sun. We lunched on coquina chowder and Florida lobster and explored the rest of the island in the afternoons. Our nights were passionate, but as close an emotional connection as we forged, there seemed to be an unspoken awareness that back in Miami there were strong crosscurrents that could sweep us apart. I began to hope, almost wistfully, that what we had would be strong enough to resist them.

  On the way back across state we made a pit stop at the Oasis Ranger Station, and I bought a rubber alligator for Darryl.

  I was surprised and heartened when McDonald charmed my mother at Thanksgiving. Perhaps our week together was a turning point, I thought. He insisted on taking us both out to dinner. She was delightful, and seemed enthralled, particularly when he flattered and flirted and spoke about his law school plans, as vague and tenuous as they might be. And though her gaze rested sharply on my ensemble, she mercifully made no comment. Instead she told us wonderful stories about what Miami was like when she was growing up.

 
Howie Janowitz had filled in on my beat while I was gone. Nothing had changed. He covered the story of the all-white police special investigations unit (SPU) that swooped down on the wrong house. They mistook the home of the Rev. Luther Dingle, a black preacher, for the drug den they were seeking. Only in Miami, I thought, reading the story.

  The angry preacher had demanded to know why police bashed in his door, and there was a scuffle. Evidently he was bumped on the head during the melee. It seemed abundantly clear that he was making the most of the wrong-house raid. The police had dropped the ball, so he ran with it.

  The Rev. Dingle hired a savvy, publicity-seeking attorney and called numerous press conferences that were well attended by the media. He wore an elaborate head bandage, which he apparently removed in private but could slap back on, like a turban, for the benefit of news photographers. I could not help but suspect that only months earlier, the News never would have danced to this man’s tune, dispatching reporters and photographers each time he put on his bandage and summoned the press. I said as much in a memo to Fred, who privately agreed. The paper, however, could not afford to ignore the man, since no one else in the media did, and the competition was so fierce.

  Besides, ignoring him might appear racist and offend someone. The Rev. Dingle milked it for all it was worth.

  The unfortunate error had occurred when the house numbers were somehow transposed on the face of the search warrant; a typo. When they pulled up, the cops had asked their spaced-out informant if it was the right place. He said it was, nodded off, and went back to sleep. Typos happen. The officers were in more trouble for not backing off when the Rev. Dingle told them they had the wrong house. But that is what everybody says when served with a search warrant.

  The officers were relieved of duty with pay. If the trend kept up, there would be more officers under investigation than out on the street. Cops are only human. Mistakes happen. But why to us in Miami, and in such rapid succession? What was going on here?

  I helped Onnie and Darryl move in early December. The decision was precipitated by word that bond might be substantially reduced for Darryl’s dad and uncles because of a delay in their trial date and severe jail overcrowding. Onnie and I had a long talk first. Nothing frustrates me more than women who leave a bad situation and then go back. They lose credibility with the cops, the courts, and those trying to help them, to say nothing of the damage to their own self-esteem. Neither would it be fair to Darryl or his brother. I didn’t know Darryl’s father, but from what I had seen of him on paper—his police record—he was no prize. Yet he had to have something for a smart woman like Onnie to hang in there with him all this time. Would that something prove irresistible?