Suitable for Framing Read online

  I was familiar with this one too: the Singer.

  Was my name scrawled on a bathroom wall somewhere? Other reporters receive fan letters, notes of gratitude, commendation, and praise. I get mail from the jail.

  I sighed. The editors of this reader-friendly newspaper instruct reporters to answer all correspondence.

  Taking a cue from John Glenn, I typed a brief response to Dr. Merrill.

  Thank you for your letter on the Inspector Deity. Since I only cover the police beat, I have forwarded your letter to the news desk. Their correspondents cover the entire planet and beyond. You will hear from them soon.

  Yours truly,

  Britt Montero.

  I wondered what the news desk would do to get back at me and swept the other letters into the trash. I will not become pen pal to people in cages and padded cells, I told myself. They are there for a reason and have more time to write letters. Management could not have had them in mind when they issued the reader-friendly edict.

  Rakestraw should be in by now, I thought so I drove to the station and dropped by AIU, the Accident Investigation Unit. He looked agitated, not surprising for someone whose office is decorated with grisly color art of crash victims. He had news, major headway in the Carey case.

  “Got a line on the thieves,” he said grimly. “Don’t know the backseat passenger for sure, but we’ve got a positive ID on the driver and a street name on his front-seat buddy. Same guys who did the carjacks and kneecaps the day before.”

  “Great,” I said, pen poised. “Who are they?”

  “Can’t tell you. They’re all puppies.”

  “Puppies! No way. Puppies are cute. You mean the killers are juveniles?”

  “You’ve got it. Junior scumbags. The driver won’t be eighteen until October fourteenth, so we can’t release names.” He rifled clumsily through his desk for something, didn’t find it, and slammed a drawer irritably.

  “Does the driver have a past? Was he the shooter the day before?”

  “Is the pope Catholic? Do bears shit in the woods? Will you keep asking questions?”

  “What kind of record? How long? How bad?”

  “You know I’m not allowed—”

  “Well, if you won’t tell me his name, at least you can let me see his past.”

  “All I can say is that it’s extensive, okay?”

  “How’d you find out who he was?”

  “Got his name from ’nother kid, the one brought in on that trailer fire that burned up his little sister.”

  “His past include violence?”

  Rakestraw nodded.

  “Has he done any time?”

  “Our boy’s a dropout. Last time he hurt somebody the judge punished him by ordering him to go back to high school.”

  “How nice for his teacher and the kids who want to learn. Sounds like he’s overdue for his name in the paper, just to warn his neighbors that he’s living next door.”

  “Can’t do it, Britt. Much as I’d like to.”

  “You know I would never say how I got it.”

  “It’s against the law.” His words were clipped, his mouth a tight line. “We have to protect these misunderstood children.”

  “Swell,” I said sharply. “You’d rather wait until he maims and kills a few more women and little kids.”

  Rakestraw’s jaw tightened and his eyes flashed. Hell, I thought, I’ve pushed too far. He stood up, glaring. “Look, Britt, you know I can’t give you the information in this file, but I can’t prevent you from printing it—or anything else you find out on your own.”

  “Right,” I said sullenly, wondering how in hell I could do that.

  He stretched his lean body and arms, then sighed as though stifling a yawn. “I’m going for a cup of coffee.”

  Dismissed, I angrily snapped my notebook closed and was about to tuck away my pen when he added, “I’d ask you to join me, but I’m sure you’ll find other things to do here while you’re waiting for me to come back.”

  He checked his watch. “I should be gone at least ten minutes.” He stepped to the door of his small office, eyes lingering, along with mine, on the open file atop his desk blotter. “The captain is prowling around the building somewhere like a homicidal maniac, so be cool.” He strolled out and closed the door, leaving me alone.

  This is illegal, I thought, feeling giddy as I spun the folder around to scan the contents. The adrenaline gave me a rush. No wonder some people find crime fun.

  Gilberto Sanchez, street name Peanut, 2475 Northwest 27th Avenue, parents Ileana and Mario. Habitual offender, a busy boy. His juvenile record began at age seven, its roots apparently planted even earlier. Shoplifting, chronic truancy, fighting in school, burglary by age nine, armed robbery with a knife by eleven. He didn’t miss much. Everything from lewd and lascivious conduct at twelve to grand theft auto at thirteen. Loitering and prowling, aggravated assault, destroying public property, arson, and carrying a concealed weapon. Not much left but murder, and this creature wasn’t even eighteen yet. But he would be soon. Had his mother given birth just a few weeks earlier, he would be facing these charges as an adult. Even then, of course, he would be treated as a first offender, his juvenile crimes not even considered. No wonder these kids share a common contempt for the system.

  When Rakestraw returned, a half-full coffee cup in his hand and doughnut dust on his whiskers, I was primly leafing through a Fraternal Order of Police magazine.

  “Feel better?” I smiled.

  “You still here?” He took his seat, put the cup down, and slipped the file folder into a drawer.

  “I need the street name of the passenger.”

  “J-Boy.”

  I gave him a questioning look.

  “Because he likes to smoke joints.”

  “That sure narrows it down.”

  “Probably only ten thousand or so running around out there,” he agreed amiably.

  “Anything at all on the backseat passenger?”

  “Black kid.”

  “American, Latino, or from the islands?”

  “Don’t know. These gangs of kid car thieves are pretty well integrated.”

  “Nice to see the younger generation overcoming prejudice.”

  “Yeah. Now if they’d just quit robbing, raping, and shooting—”

  “Think they stole the Trans Am ’cause they liked it or for some other reason?”

  “Coulda been to cannibalize for parts, maybe on order from some adult who repairs them, or to export, or to use in some other crime.” He shrugged. “A lot of adult criminals are using juveniles. If they’re arrested, it’s no big deal. The kids aren’t afraid of the system. We’ve had twelve- and thirteen-year-olds delivering expensive late-model cars to these guys for as little as a hundred and fifty bucks apiece. It’s tough for auto theft to nail them because we don’t have any undercover cops who can pose as juveniles in a reverse sting. We’re getting hit hard, averaging a hundred and ten stolen cars a day.

  “One other thing,” he added. “Arturo neglected to mention something until after you left the other night.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When they stole his Trans Am?”

  “Yeah?”

  “He had a loaded nine-millimeter Glock in the glove compartment.”

  Swell, I thought. As if Peanut and J-Boy weren’t menace enough out there in high-speed 3,000-pound machines, now they had another gun, a rapid-fire model with a clip that holds fifteen rounds.

  I left Rakestraw, locked my purse in the trunk, and went off to Northwest 27th Avenue to find the home of Peanut Sanchez. I disliked leaving my new T-Bird unprotected on his turf, in front of the dingy apartment house. I would feel more comfortable and less defensive after the first dreaded dent or ding.

  The dusty hallway walls were decorated with mindless graffiti and scribbled vulgarities, marking off turf like stray cats do. Cooking smells mingled with mildew and th
e acrid scent of urine. It was nearly 10:30 A.M. on a weekday, but TVs and radios blared in both Spanish and English from behind closed doors.

  A pregnant teenager answered my knock. Dark hair fell in curly ringlets around her oval madonna face, marred only by a smattering of teenage pimples. She wore gold hoops in her ears and a maternity smock over black short shorts. Wads of crumpled tissue separated her naked toes. A blood-red sheen glistened on eight toenails; two remained untouched by the tiny brush in her right hand. The small red bottle was in the left. Formaldehyde and alcohol, the odor of wet nail polish, permeated the air.

  Her pudgy fingers were encrusted with rings. Some gold, some silver, some plain, others ornate and decorated with stones or tiny chains that linked them together.

  “¿Cómo está usted?” I began.

  “I speak English.” She eyed me and my notebook suspiciously.

  “Hi, is Peanut home?” I asked, wondering what I would say if he was. It would not be the first time I had chatted with somebody wanted by the police. Criminals are so eager to convince journalists of how unjustly accused and terribly misunderstood they are that it rarely occurs to them to do bodily harm to reporters. They are usually on their best behavior. However, the memory of bloodstained pavement was still too fresh for me to take Peanut’s explanation seriously, if indeed he had one.

  “Ma!” the young mother-to-be yelled, her voice startlingly shrill.

  From behind her, a woman emerged from what had to be a bedroom. Skinny beneath the housecoat, she had thin-edged features under big pale-blue curlers in bangs of blond frizz that showed an inch and a half of dark roots. The toenails protruding from her cotton scuffs had been painted the same shade of blood red.

  “She’s looking for Peanut.”

  The woman regarded me from behind sleepy eyes, plucked a coffee mug from the drainboard next to the sink, plodded to the coffeepot on the four-burner stove, and poured herself a cup without heating it first.

  She slumped into a kitchen chair, downed the coffee like it was whiskey, then fished what looked like the last cigarette out of a crumpled pack of menthols, lit it, inhaled, and blew out a cloud of smoke.

  “The police have already been here. They were here when I got home from work.” Her voice was husky from sleep; the slight accent sounded Cuban.

  “I think she’s from the state,” the girl offered, as though I wasn’t there. “Probation or HRS.”

  “No,” I said, offering my card, “I’m a reporter, Britt Montero from the Miami News.” I looked around, disappointed. “He’s not here?”

  The mother shook her head, trying without success to pat into submission the blond frizz that stuck out on one side. The other was mashed flat as though she had slept on it.

  “I don’t know why everybody’s bothering me about him now,” she said, annoyed. “I told ’em. I warned ’em. Nothing I can do for him anymore. I done all I could for him.”

  “Who?” I asked. “Who’d you tell?”

  “Everybody—the cops, the school, social workers, the juvenile court. I told ’em all. I called the police on ’im myself, a coupla times. They never did anything!” she said accusingly.

  The hand holding the cigarette toyed with her coffee cup. “I raised these two alone. My daughter here, never any trouble; but him—”

  The teenager couldn’t help but look pleased, bent head hiding a smug smile, though from the looks of things she was no potential Mother Teresa herself. She was now seated, her unfinished foot propped on a kitchen chair, bending with some effort as she concentrated on painting the last pale nail.

  “Boys are nothing but trouble,” her mother said bitterly. “Boys and men. He’s messed up in the head. Won’t take his medication. Did good in computers in school for a while, but then … I moved here to get ’im away from the neighborhood where he always got in trouble. So what’s the first thing he did? Got in trouble again.”

  “What about his dad?”

  “What about ’im?”

  “Does he help, did he try to straighten out your son?”

  She glared, eyes narrowing. “First time I see his ass in this neighborhood, I call the police. Look, I work on my feet, long hours, cocktail waitress at the Velvet Swing. I did the best I knew how, went everywhere I could for help. You wanna know how many times I sat in juvenile court after working all night? He was warned it was his last chance three times by the same judge. I begged ’em not to let him come home. But no, it’s out of my hands now. They say he’s in big trouble this time. Well, what took ’em so long to get excited? I coulda told ’em. Hell, I did tell ’em. Bastards never did a thing.”

  “Does he know the police are looking for him?”

  She and the girl exchanged glances. “He saw the TV news Tuesday night and took off with some of his friends,” the mother said.

  “Did you see the car he was driving?”

  Another exchange. “Hah.” She snorted. “There’s always a car. I don’t know what this one was, but I heard rubber burning.” Her voice sounded hollow.

  “Have you heard from him since?”

  “He was here,” she said, “while I was at work. He came by for some clothes.”

  “He said I could have his stereo.” The girl’s face was eager. “He took his laptop.”

  “His computer?”

  She nodded brightly.

  “It is serious this time,” I told the mother.

  “It was serious every time,” she said. “Just because nobody dies doesn’t mean it’s not serious. But it took this to get their attention. Don’t know what he’ll do now. But he ain’t out joining the Boy Scouts.” She stared at me accusingly. “I didn’t see no newspaper reporters interested before. Where were you when I was trying to get help?”

  “It can’t be easy,” I acknowledged, “raising children alone.”

  “Tell me about it.” Cigarette smoke wreathed her sallow face.

  I took notes, shocked to learn she was only thirty-six, four years older than I am. She looked ten years older, and brittle.

  “If you hear from Peanut, ask him to call me,” I said. “I’d really like to talk to him about what happened.”

  “He don’t want to be called that anymore,” the girl sang out in a warning tone.

  Her mother and I both turned to stare.

  “He tol’ me last night,” she chanted, looking coy from under long eyelashes. “Nobody’s supposed to call him that anymore. He got a new name.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She concentrated, the effort curling one corner of her mouth and narrowing her eyes. “F,” she said slowly, “M, J.”

  I glanced at the mother, puzzled. “Somebody’s initials?”

  She shook her head, face resigned.

  “Must stand for something.”

  “Yeah,” the girl said, smiling. “Like my name is Rings.” She waggled her weighted fingers.

  “Mirta,” her mother mouthed. “Mirta.”

  “Rings!” the girl said peevishly. “He tol’ me what it meant.” The teenager screwed up her face. “Then I forgot but that’s what he wants to be called from now on, FMJ.”

  “Was he with J-Boy?”

  She glanced at her mother, saw no warning, and nodded.

  “Where does J-Boy live?”

  She shrugged. “Somewheres over on Forty-seventh Street.”

  “What’s his real name?” I held my breath. It would be neat to ID the front-seat passenger before the cops did. I love that.

  “Don’t know, but I know his girlfriend. They call her Gangsta Bitch.”

  Delightful, I thought, sighing. The woman had her eyes closed and a fresh cigarette between her teeth. Lottie should be here, I thought to glimpse the joys of motherhood. I felt blessed at being spared.

  “Who else was he with?”

  “Dinky, Little Willie, Cat Eye.” She ticked them off on her fingers.

  “Is he the black guy?”

  �
��Cat Eye? No. You must mean Cornflake. He’s a black dude.”

  “Where does he hang out?” I asked, thinking of the backseat passenger.

  She shrugged. “Maybe at the Edgewater.

  “Cat Eye has green eyes,” she trilled, seeing me to the door. “They call Little Willie that ’cause his daddy is Big Willie.”

  “And Cornflake, he likes cereal?”

  “You got it.” I was catching on. I stepped into the hall.

  About to close the door, she hesitated. “I remember,” she said, face alight. “FMJ, I remember what it stands for: Full Metal Jacket.”

  I swung by the Edgewater, the vertical mall that rises just north of downtown. The towering monolith draws kids like a magnet to its game rooms, eleven movie theaters, and food courts. Because it is near the paper, Lottie and I used to see movies there, but the audience has become younger and rowdy, with kids shouting out rude advice to the actors and cheering the villains.

  The floors of the video game room are carpeted to absorb the explosions of intergalactic warfare and the ceilings mirrored to monitor the pumped-up participants. The intense body language of kids playing the sophisticated games, mostly violence-oriented and involving guns, suggests that to them it is more than a game. They are rock-and-roll without the music, most wearing au courant garments that baffle me. Are they pants that are too short or shorts that are too long? A number of youngsters seemed to know Cornflake, but all agreed they hadn’t seen him for a few days.

  “Why you looking for him when you can have a real man like me?” Flashing a gold-toothed grin and swaggering, he couldn’t have been more than sixteen.

  They fielded my questions with typical teenage macho and curiosity. “You his probation officer?” somebody demanded, as a metallic voice from the machine he was playing instructed, Destroy all buildings to move to next level

  “Nope,” I said, “just a reporter.”

  “What channel?”

  “Yeah, I seen her before,” bragged a boy wearing a purple rubber baby pacifier on a cord around his neck, another hard-to-fathom new fad. “On TV.”

  “Eyewitness News,” cackled his sidekick in baggy hip-hop shorts. “Eye in the Sky.”