Contents Under Pressure Read online

  I favor revolvers, as they are more reliable. Automatics sometimes jam, and when fired, they spit out hot shells. That didn’t faze me until a mishap at the range where I practiced. A young couple who looked like newlyweds were using a small automatic. As he was teaching his bride to shoot, an ejected shell flew down the front of her sundress. She reacted with a squeal, inadvertently squeezing the trigger of the gun still in her hand. Her husband dropped like a rock, hit in the groin.

  The newspaper fiercely editorializes against handgun ownership, and I am loyal to the people who pay my salary, but the highly paid executives who write editorials don’t keep the hours or go to the places that I do. Like a hurricane tracking chart, a gun is something you hope you will never have to use. But if you live in Miami, you can be damn well sure that you will need them both someday. It is a fact of life.

  The drive to the Pelican Harbor boat launching ramp took about twenty minutes. I looked forward to seeing Francie. She always looked like a fresh-scrubbed teenager, a teenager who wore on her hip a Glock 17, a semiautomatic pistol loaded with eighteen .9mm full metal jacket hollow point rounds. She carried another loaded magazine in her heavy leather belt, along with a buck knife snapped into a patent leather case. Another accessory was her PR-24, the modern version of the old-fashioned nightstick. It has a crossbar handle called a Yawara grip, the Japanese word for striking implement, and a twenty-four-inch extension to use when needed.

  Most professional women carry a little bag of essentials. Mine includes my press ID, a police whistle, my book of important unlisted telephone numbers, notebooks, pens, a candy bar, and a small, unassuming tear gas grenade. Francie’s contained a gas mask, a helmet, a Plexiglas shield to deflect rocks and bottles, and a bundle of plastic flexicuffs to use when making mass arrests.

  Francie was a paradox, a Miamian who rarely saw the sun.

  I would have thought it was swell to work midnights and snooze on the beach by day, but Francie found that, for her, the only way to adjust to midnights was to completely reset her body clock and keep it that way. She ate supper in the morning after work, and breakfast at night before reporting for duty. Because most night shift cops joined their families and the rest of the world in normal daytime activities on their days off, they constantly reversed their sleep-wake cycles and spent much of their lives in a state similar to jet lag. Not Francie. She stayed on the midnight shift, working or not. She grocery shopped at 3 A.M. at a twenty-four-hour market, then visited the all-night laundromat. Blackout drapes shut out the subtropical sun while she slept, and she emerged fresh and alert, ready to face each new day, in the dark. No doubt this limited her social life—but who was I to criticize?

  We became instant friends after she got in trouble and I interviewed her. Cops were prohibited from using choke holds because that method of subduing a suspect had resulted in several unintentional deaths. But how else could a 105-pound cop stop a violent, drug-crazed felon? Some very mean people inhabit our world. They are almost always large, and become nasty at the most inconvenient times.

  Survival is the name of the game. Francie diligently pumped thirty-five-pound barbells, building the strength to apply the pressure just right. Her bicep cut off the artery on the right side of the neck, her forearm squeezed the artery on the left, and the trachea remained unscathed, tucked safely inside the crease of her elbow.

  Francie knew how to dive onto a running suspect, crawl up his back, and apply the choke hold to stop the flow of blood to his brain. At times, fleeing suspects smirked at her efforts, then blacked out, often while still running. The lone drawback was that they fell so fast that the momentum carried them forward, often injuring her knees as she broke their fall.

  But all in all, her technique made sense. The trouble came when a violent suspect, once dropped, never woke up. His family, who had called the police themselves because he was brutalizing them, yelled, “Foul, illegal choke hold,” and hired a publicity-hungry lawyer. Francie was in trouble big-time, until the chief medical examiner ascertained the real cause of death—cocaine psychosis—which also accounted for his raging-bull imitation before Francie took him down. I interviewed her in midcrisis, when her career was on the line. We had stayed in touch ever since.

  Tonight she was riding with her favorite and only partner, and I looked forward to seeing him again, too. Some cops share their homes, lives, and patrol cars with huge slathering monsters, highly trained K-9s who track fugitives, sniff out drugs and explosives, protect their handlers, and attack bad guys.

  Francie’s secret partner, Bitsy, was a toy poodle. Francie had acclimated herself to midnights, but Bitsy refused to accept the long nights home alone. Her howling, whining, and wailing riled the neighbors. More for the dog than to appease them, Francie smuggled Bitsy onto her beat. Only a few friends and fellow cops knew her secret. Who wouldn’t break a few rules for a best friend?

  How did she do it? Francie would attend roll call, pick up her assigned cruiser, then stop at her own car where Bitsy was patiently waiting. She’d open the door to her sporty Datsun, and her partner would scamper out and into the patrol car, eager for the adventure ahead. Most police dogs loved their work. Though she was undercover, on no official roster, Bitsy enjoyed her life as much as any canine officer. She rode patrol in the passenger seat and crouched on the floorboard as Francie handled calls. No one would ever know she was there.

  The night people Francie arrested wouldn’t tell. They were embarrassed enough at being busted by somebody who looked like a cheerleader, much less sharing the ride to the slammer with a white toy poodle wearing a red silk ribbon in her top knot. Some of them probably thought it was all a bad dream.

  Francie was waiting, standing next to her patrol car. She looked pale, as usual. She smiled, as Bitsy bounced around my ankles, wagging her tail furiously.

  “Hey officer, you two catch any crooks tonight?”

  “We were holding back until the press showed up to cover it.”

  Francie had picked up sandwiches, and I brought a thermos of Cuban coffee and plantain chips. “What’s this, Britt?”

  I was unwrapping a napkin full of herbs to liven up the fast food. “Yerba buena, it tastes like peppermint, and there’s parsley and basil, from the herb garden in my kitchen window box. They’re good for you.”

  Francie gingerly held up a green sprig for closer scrutiny. “Sure this isn’t some controlled substance? Or poison oak?”

  “Trust me, I’m a farmer at heart. My dad ran a sugar plantation in Cuba.”

  “Somehow I just can’t see you behind a plow.”

  We dined at a rough wooden picnic table near the boat launching ramp at Pelican Harbor, under a brilliant three-quarter moon that seemed to sail across a star-swept sky. The boat ramp occupies a spit of land that juts out into the Bay from the northern most causeway linking Miami and Miami Beach. This vantage point, only a mile from the steamy nighttime streets populated by prostitutes, drug addicts, and hustlers, commands the view that made the cities famous. The wraparound skyline looked crystalline and pure, Miami Beach glittering to the east, Miami to the west. The night was still, with a soft breeze and lights glistening off the water.

  Life at that moment felt good and serene in the warm night. Overwhelmed by a sense of well-being, I thought of D. Wayne Hudson’s family and realized how lucky I was.

  “Most people who ‘do’ lunch would have difficulty with this concept,” Francie laughed, placing her walkie on the table. Bitsy sat on the wooden bench next to her, immaculate paws up on the table, using her nose to carefully separate the meat from the bread on her sandwich.

  “You don’t miss the daytime world?”

  “What’s to miss, Britt? Miami never sleeps. There are late-night movies, all-night restaurants and department stores with midnight sales, and no traffic jams. Just wait and see, some time in the future, as the world becomes more and more crowded, we’ll all have to live on proscribed shifts. Our circadian rhythms will be
orchestrated by science or biology. It’s the only way to avoid global gridlock.”

  Her expression was serious; she had obviously given the matter a lot of thought.

  “Busy out there tonight?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “My only calls so far have been malfunctioning burglar alarms, prowlers in the old city cemetery again, some drag-racing teenagers, and a woman in labor whom I sent off with fire rescue. What about you?”

  I told her about my stories, and mentioned that I had requested the taped transmissions of the D. Wayne Hudson chase. Francie grew unusually quiet. “Were you working the night it happened?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “Were you there?”

  “No, but I heard some of it go down on the air.”

  “You didn’t go by?” I asked.

  “Nah, I wouldn’t unless I was dispatched to assist. I tend to stay away from those guys.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged and looked out over the water, her fine brown hair ruffled by the breeze. Francie was quiet, somewhat shy, and a loner. I could see why she might avoid the raucous, joke-playing Blackburns and the brawny Latinos. It could not be easy for a woman in a department as macho as Miami, and she wasn’t the type to huddle with the other women to complain or gossip. She just liked doing her job.

  “Steroids.”

  “What?”

  “The body builders, Estrada and Machado. They’re on steroids. Makes ‘em act crazy and aggressive. I rode with one of them one night and said never again. It’s too easy to get in trouble around those guys.”

  “Why would they be taking steroids?”

  “They like to bulk up, to look good. They get carried away in the gym with that macho weight-lifting stuff. Lots of guys, mostly the Latinos, are on them. We must have thirty or forty of them on steroids in the department.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  Francie looked at me as if I wasn’t very smart. “They go from in shape to Conan in three or four months. It’s obvious. They look good, but once they pump up on that stuff they turn into walking time bombs. They take nothing from nobody. Anything sets them off, and they start smacking people around.”

  “Whoa. Aren’t steroids illegal?”

  “Right, possession without a prescription is against the law. But they bring home fistfuls of gold medals from the Police Olympics and they fit the image, they look good, so nobody seems very concerned.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “The Blackburns don’t need steroids,” she said. “They were born crazy. I backed them up on a tenants’ dispute one night. Guy on the fourth floor gave them some lip, so one, Roscoe, Roland, I don’t know which, starts tuning him up in the kitchen and the other one goes in the bedroom and uses his pen to punch holes in the guy’s waterbed. Damage to the apartment and the ones below it was more than $10,000.”

  “Did you report it?”

  “Are you crazy? I didn’t need to; the guy reported them. IA investigated and called the complaint unfounded.” Francie looked down at her knuckles, then back up at me. “I need to survive this life, this job, this shift.”

  “Sounds like the wild bunch on midnights.” I shook my head.

  “People behave differently on this shift,” she said slowly. “Not just because it’s dark. It’s an entirely different world, a different mentality. You don’t know it, Britt. You’ve been out here, sure, but not all night, on patrol. You should see what it’s like. The real night doesn’t start at dusk, or even later when we come on duty. A lot of people are still moving around the city until midnight. It really changes when the last late workers have gone, and people leave the restaurants and the clubs. Then we’re all alone out here. It’s just us and them.” She slipped the last of her sandwich to Bitsy. “A lot of times, I’m more afraid of us.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. I wanted to push for more on D. Wayne but sensed that Francie had to be eased into it.

  “Most people with lives and families want to work days. Only a few want midnights, some of them for all the wrong reasons. Then, too, the brass dumps a lot of screw-ups on this shift, sometimes as punishment, more often, just to get them out of their sight.” She leaned forward, her blue eyes earnest.

  “After a while on midnights, a lot of patrolmen develop the attitude that anybody out on the street is a bad guy. Policemen tend to wolfpack. A lot of times you see them traveling together or radioing each other so they can do things in two, threes, or fours. Everyone wants to be cuter than the others.”

  “Why on earth do you work it?” I asked.

  Francie thought for a moment. “I stay away from the pack and do the job. The nights are cooler. Money is a big motivation. We all spend a long time in court, but if you work midnights you go to court on overtime. The money adds up, and I’m saving to buy a townhouse.”

  “Wow, a townhouse, that’s great.” I could empathize with her desire to own a place. We’d told each other our life stories, and they were similar in many ways. Francie’s father took off for parts unknown before she was born. Her mother died when she was eight, and she spent much of her adolescence in foster homes. “You know,” I said, “we grew up okay for little girls without daddies.”

  We smiled and clinked our coffee cups in a toast.

  “You really think so?” she said. “What would they say if they could see us now? Lunching at a deserted boat ramp at 4 A.M. in Crime City, USA?”

  “Survivors,” I said. “We’re survivors.”

  Bitsy was running in circles, nose to the ground. She found a suitable place to squat, did her business, and scampered off to explore one of the ramps. After we cleared the table, Francie used a napkin to pick up after Bitsy and deposited it all in the trash receptacle. “Don’t want to leave any little time bombs for boaters to step in in the morning.”

  “Such a good citizen.” I laughed.

  “Hey, there’s a five-hundred-dollar fine for littering.”

  “You’re lucky you have a small dog.”

  She whistled and Bitsy came at a gallop, red ribbon flying.

  We got into our cars, my T-Bird facing south, her cruiser north, our windows open. As we said good night, I finally asked, “Any idea why D. Wayne Hudson ran?”

  “If Machado, Estrada, and the Blackburn twins were after me, I’d run too,” she said. “If you really want to see the midnight shift, Britt, why don’t you sign up to ride with me some night as an observer? You’ll see. It’s like another planet.”

  The idea appealed to me. “That would be fun. Maybe I’ll do it.”

  Francie spoke into her radio mike, checking back into service. She pulled out onto the empty causeway, waved, and headed west, back into the city. Pondering the midnight shift, and cops pumped up on steroids, I drove home to catch a few hours’ sleep.

  Five

  The late-night coffee, and the knowledge that I could sleep only a few hours, kept me restless and awake, so I was irritable when my day got off to a bum start, stonewalled by the cops. They said they were shorthanded on the bridge—the department’s communications center—and had no one to pull the radio transmission tape of D. Wayne Hudson’s pursuit and arrest for me.

  I had little time to argue, as the day brought problems more serious than mine to a lot of people, many of them kids. Playful small boys found a dirty, discarded hypodermic needle near their school and used it to chase, jab, and terrorize fellow fourth graders. Seven pricked children now faced AIDS testing.

  By the time I arrived, most of the little victims had dried their tears and were back at play. It was their parents who were tearful, scared, and upset.

  Then I interviewed a homicide detective about a baby girl found drowned in a freak accident that morning. Her family’s tropical fish aquarium had sprung a leak during the night, dripping water into the plastic-lined crib where she slept.

  Before noon, patrolmen had rescued three grimy and underfed little boys
from a rat-infested crack house their parents were operating in government-subsidized housing. From there, I drove to another elementary school, where second graders had seen their teacher robbed at gunpoint in the classroom.

  I learned from a detective there that a popular day-care-center operator had just been arrested for molesting half a dozen youngsters over a period of months. He had warned his young victims that if they told anyone, their parents would die. Growing up isn’t easy any more, if it ever was, I thought.

  Victim profiles run in cycles. Today it was little kids, tomorrow might be open season on senior citizens, cabbies, convenience-store clerks, or even cops. Whenever a police officer was shot, another police shooting seemed to follow within forty-eight hours, as did selections from the usual assortment of other misfortunes, freak accidents, crashes, and random assaults. During the most recent streak of bad luck, two good cops had died in sky- and scuba-diving accidents, and a third was crushed in a train wreck. All were off-duty, and presumably safer than when patrolling Miami’s mean streets.

  Not only was it a bad day to be a kid in Miami, it was a tough one to be a reporter, thanks to the assistant city editor on duty, Gretchen Platt.

  Women striving in this, or any, male-dominated profession should be supportive of one another. But in Gretchen’s case, I had seen the enemy and she was us. Ambitious and eager to be one of the boys, she was tougher on women than the men were.

  A vocal supporter of the Chamber of Commerce types who ran the city and strongly influenced our editorial board, she complained bitterly about “too much negative news” in the paper, and regarded my beat with contempt. She believed that the less the public knew about danger and crime, the better, especially in a resort city dependent on tourist income. This was the ignore-the-monster-and-it-will-go-away theory. I believed that when ignored it flourished into something bigger and more dangerous, but that informed people could protect themselves. However, Gretchen wanted Chamber of Commerce-approved puff pieces and stories on cultural topics and education. Her talent was for gutting stories of their best quotes, along with anything else that might be funny, meaningful, or dramatic.