Contents Under Pressure Read online

  Ryan looked slightly happier. “Look at it this way,” I told him. “No phone, no pager, you’ll get a great suntan out there on the water. No noise, just the birds, the fish, the sea, and the sky. It’ll be like a vacation, a day on a sailboat.”

  “I don’t sail. I get motion sickness on buses. I get nauseous standing on a dock looking at the waves.” Ryan already looked a bit green, but the promise of fame was beginning to look attractive. “What if the Coast Guard tries to rescue me before you take the pictures?”

  “Don’t go,” Lottie said quickly. “Just tell them you’re out there waiting for somebody.”

  “Sure, in the middle of the Gulfstream. Britt,” he turned to me, his brown eyes imploring. “You love this kind of stuff, you’re even half Cuban. If you volunteered…”

  “No thanks. It’s not my beat. I’m working on something, and besides, I like boats with bathrooms.”

  “Don’t forget sunscreen, shark repellent, and Dramamine,” Lottie said, tallying them on her fingers. “And don’t worry, I’ve got nautical maps and the tide tables. We won’t lose track of you.”

  Ryan began to clear his desk, which was as neat as mine was messy. “I’m going home,” he said. “I think I’m coming down with something.” He sniffed several times, blew his nose, and left the newsroom like a man walking the last mile.

  “It’ll be a great adventure, something to tell your grandchildren about,” I called after him.

  “Poor thang,” Lottie cooed.

  I sat at my computer terminal and scrolled the edited versions of my stories. As I had feared, Gretchen had gutted them, changed the leads, and hacked them by half. The editors had already conducted the last news meeting before the final edition, and Gretchen would soon go home. I slipped into an empty chair up at the city desk, called up my stories and rapidly restored them to their original versions. There were only so many times one could get away with that. I prayed fervently for Gretchen’s future success, a golden opportunity in a distant city, like Peking. Soon.

  Bobby Tubbs took over the night slot, and I made my pitch. I hated to do this, but Tubbs grew enthusiastic when I hinted that the competition was also at work on the story about the kids jabbed by the hypodermic needle. By the time I left, my stories were on the budget and bound for the morning edition unless big breaking news bumped them out.

  What a way to earn a living, I thought, fighting the world to get the news, and then sparring with coworkers to get it into the paper.

  Lottie’s wine-colored Chrysler was parked outside the 1800 Club, so I stopped and went inside. The place was dark and crowded as usual, but I spotted her red hair right away in a backroom booth. Ryan hadn’t gone home sick after all. “You have to watch out for seabirds,” she was saying as I joined them, “they’ll try to peck your eyes out.”

  He responded by draining his wineglass.

  I frowned at Lottie. No point in adding to his anxieties. “How many of those has he had?” I asked when he went to the men’s room. “Has he eaten anything?”

  Ryan was no swimmer and no drinker, either. At newsroom parties he usually got sick, then fell asleep. I ordered a hot roast beef sandwich for him, a dinner salad for me.

  “The Bermuda Triangle has got him as worried as hell with the hide off,” she said.

  “The way to calm his fears is not to tell him about birds that will peck out his eyes.”

  Lottie looked miffed until I agreed to join her, Larry, and Steve one night later in the week. Then she perked right up. Ryan came back and claimed he wasn’t hungry. “You need some blotting paper, pal,” I told him. He began to nibble at his food as I changed the subject from his upcoming ordeal.

  “Can you believe how the department of health and rehabilitative services mixed up those babies?” I asked.

  Howie Janowitz and another reporter were working on a story about an unknown number of infants taken into custody by the state at birth and apparently inadvertently switched by foster parents and social workers during the months that followed.

  “They never would have known it,” Lottie said, her fork in my salad, “if they hadn’t tried to return that white baby to a black couple.”

  “Our tax dollars at work,” Ryan sighed.

  The black couple, now capable of caring for their child and eager to take him home, protested that they were being given the wrong baby, but state officials insisted the infant belonged to them. Two other mothers then complained that babies returned to them were not the same ones taken by the state. Only after they repeated their stories to a reporter did state officials begin to acknowledge the possibility of a mix-up. None of the infants’ footprints matched those taken at birth, but it was also discovered that footprinting is not a priority to delivery room nurses. Most prints are too smeared to match to anything. Now other mothers were suspiciously scrutinizing the babies returned to them by child welfare. The scandal was burgeoning, and there was talk of mass DNA testing—at major expense to the taxpayers—in an attempt to sort out the whole mess.

  “A baby is a baby is a baby,” Lottie said dreamily. “Hell-all-Friday, those people should just be grateful and love the little ‘un they’ve got.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if it was your little ‘un,” I told her. “Imagine raising the wrong child.”

  I left Lottie and Ryan just before 11 P.M. and drove to police headquarters. At the public information office, I made another request for the tape, thinking I might have better luck with a different shift. The man on duty promised to look into it. The Blackburns, Estrada, and Machado were all off, I was told, but in the lobby I spotted Lou Carpenter, arriving for duty. Weathered and slightly paunchy, he was a soft-spoken veteran cop, never a standout but never a total screw-up either, just a man putting in his time.

  “You didn’t return my call,” I accused him, trying to look wounded.

  “Uh,” he said, surprised to see me. “Sorry, uh, I was off. Got to get to roll call.”

  “I have some questions about D. Wayne Hudson’s accident,” I said, falling into step beside him.

  “See my supervisor.” He kept walking. So did I.

  “You wrote the accident report. You were there. I’d rather talk to you.”

  He stopped, inflated his cheeks, and blew out a puff of air in exasperation. “What do you need to know?” he said brusquely.

  “What exactly did the car hit?”

  “It’s on the report. He did a head-on into the bridge support, then skidded into the drainage ditch beside the road.”

  “How fast was he going?”

  “It was a high-speed chase, but he slowed down on the curve and was trying to brake when he lost control—probably doing about forty-five.”

  “How’d he get hurt?” I continued.

  “Bouncing around in there, hitting his head,” Carpenter said irritably, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, his eyes darting around the lobby.

  “How did you know he wasn’t wearing a seat belt?”

  “Usually you ask the driver, if he’s conscious, but he was gone from the scene when I got there. The witnesses told me.”

  “Witnesses?”

  “Right. The officers who were first at the scene.”

  “Uh huh. Did you figure out his speed by measuring the skid marks?”

  “Nah, it was dark…” He shook his head and extended one hand in an entreating gesture. “It didn’t look like a fatality. At that point I didn’t think his injuries were serious. It didn’t seem like a big deal.”

  “So where did the estimate of his speed on impact come from?”

  Carpenter glared straight into my eyes, his voice slowing down and taking on a hard edge. “From the visual observations of the officers in pursuit.”

  I nodded and scribbled in my notebook, then without looking up, casually asked, “How fast does a car have to be going on impact for the air bag to deploy?” Carpenter froze for an instant, a cornered look in his eyes.
/>   “Depends on the make and how sensitive the sensors are. On the average—about thirteen miles an hour.”

  “Did the air bag in Hudson’s car inflate?”

  “I dunno, did he have one?” He tried to sound breezy, but didn’t quite pull it off.

  “That’s what I understand.” I watched his eyes. He began to waver. I felt a sudden stab of pity for this lump of a man past his prime, smelling optimistically of aftershave, his leather belt bulky and weighted down, his uniform shirt too tight, knowing that his life would never become much better and could get a helluva lot worse.

  His voice became wary and resigned. “The car was still in the drainage ditch when I got there. I didn’t climb down to take a look. It was dark, it started to rain, and I didn’t have to,” he shrugged apologetically. “They gave me everything I needed for my report.”

  “Who, the officers who had been chasing him?”

  “Yeah,” he said, my tone putting him back on the defensive.

  “Did you examine the car after the tow truck took it out of the ditch?”

  “Nah, that wasn’t necessary.”

  “Then you would expect that the air bag did deploy?”

  He shrugged again. “You tell me. I guess you know, you seem to know everything. I got to go to work, lady.”

  He picked up his gear to rush to roll call. Was he concerned about his sloppy accident investigation, or covering up something else? Heading out to the parking lot, I glanced back into the lobby. He hadn’t hurried off to roll call after all. He was at a pay phone, punching in numbers.

  Six

  My conversation with Lou Carpenter kept replaying in my mind as I drove. Did he kiss off the accident investigation because he was lazy and inept, or deliberately dishonest? The expression in his eyes when I mentioned the air bag was more sick than surprised. He had seemed so desperate to end the conversation and get away.

  The night felt charged with a peculiar electricity, making me too restless and energized to go home. It had to be the weather. The early signs of fall are unmistakable to a Miami native: The temperature had not exceeded ninety for two consecutive days, and an almost indiscernible breeze faintly stirred the steamy air. Meteorologists were monitoring a tropical depression a thousand miles east of Venezuela. Here in Miami, the mold and pollen counts had soared to new highs, with ragweed at its peak and melaleuca trees pollinating early. I had been listening to poor Ryan, who was prone to allergies, sniffle and sneeze all week.

  The tides, the changes, and the atmospheric pressure make a lot of people itchy. The police scanner pulsated with steady action. A shooting at the Reno Bar caught my attention; a man down, people running from the scene. Homicide and patrol were en route. Gunfire erupted with regularity at the Reno, only a half-dozen blocks west of where I was now. They’d had four or five shootings in the past six months alone. Should I go home, feed the cat, and go to bed, or should I go see who was shot at the Reno? No contest.

  Rescue and a police unit were already there. So was homicide. I recognized the hot-looking detective standing at the door talking to a wizened barfly, and was glad I’d come. I slipped my khaki blazer over my cream-color T-shirt. The oversized jacket and matching trousers had several pockets, a prerequisite for my work clothes. Lots of pockets meant not having to carry a purse in neighborhoods where it would be an invitation to trouble.

  Homicide Sergeant Kendall McDonald acknowledged me with a lifted eyebrow and half smile. Good, I thought, hoping to pump him later about the Hudson case. Unafraid of the press, never hostile, wary, or combative like so many cops, his attitude toward me had always generated sparks that left me flustered. He was lean and long-legged with a strong jaw, a cleft chin, and metallic blue-gray eyes. I felt a sizzle whenever they met mine, and wondered if he had the same effect on every woman. He was smart, sexy, and dynamic, and probably should be avoided at all costs.

  McDonald was busy and did not try to stop me, so I stepped gingerly past him. Inside, the jukebox was blasting out “I Shot the Sheriff.” The Reno was one big room with a square mahogany bar that had rounded corners and a hardwood dance floor to one side. The place was dark, dreary, and uninviting—yet always crowded with hell-raising customers, until the gunfire started.

  This shooting was a variation on the usual theme. The victim was usually a customer; the shooter most often another customer, punctuating a drunken argument with bullets. Sometimes, however, a robber would gun down a customer. And on occasion, it was the owner doing the shooting, with his target a robber or a rowdy patron.

  This time it was the owner, Max Pickard, who lay in front of the bar in a puddle of blood, a white apron still tied around his ample midsection, the toes of his black shoes pointing straight up. He was still alive. Medics were cutting away his shirt and exclaiming about what they found under it. I assumed it was the bullet wound and looked away. I had talked to Max after each of the other shootings. It was a shock to recognize the face on the barroom floor as his. I walked back toward the door.

  “Where the hell is Max’s gun?” Sgt. McDonald was saying.

  The little man he was talking to shrugged. “Somebody picked it up.”

  The shadowy interior of the Reno looked like a Twilight Zone set with all the characters suddenly disappeared, sucked into another dimension or vaporized by some cosmic ray. Sweating drinks sat on the bar, smoking cigarettes in the ashtrays, a half-eaten sandwich on a paper plate on a small table. A game of pool had been interrupted, solid and stripes still scattered across the table in a lousy break. The cuesticks lay on the floor where they had been dropped. The song on the jukebox ended, then the same one began again.

  “Somebody unplug the fucking jukebox,” McDonald’s balding partner, Dan Flood, said, then stomped over and yanked the cord himself.

  Flood was a grizzled veteran detective who had seen everything during his thirty years on the job. He projected a bored, obnoxious attitude, which I was convinced was a put-on. He had to love his work, because most cops could retire after twenty years, and he was still there. I had glimpsed a few cracks in Rood’s hard-line facade, especially when he reminisced about old, unsolved cases. They haunted him. Beneath that gruff exterior, he cared. Though he would surely deny it, I suspected him of being a good man, dedicated to the job.

  The medics worked on Max, who seemed conscious but increasingly pale, with a grayish pallor. “Is he gonna be okay?” I asked Flood.

  Flood glared, going into his act. “Who invited you here? Whaddaya want?”

  “What happened? How is he?” I continued, determined not to be put off.

  “Whaddaya think happened? This is the Reno Bar, you’ve been here before. Dust off your last story, change the names, and save yourself some trouble.”

  “The owner never got shot before,” I pointed out. “Where’s his gun?”

  They lifted Max onto a stretcher and wheeled him out. I felt better when he looked my way and waggled some fingers at me. He looked as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t because of the oxygen mask over his face.

  “He’ll be okay,” Flood said. “He was wearing a vest. It stopped the one that wudda nailed him. The other one looks like a through and through to his left side, just below the vest.”

  “A bulletproof vest? Since when does Max wear a bulletproof vest?”

  “Since about two shootings ago. Makes sense.”

  In an only-in-Miami way, it did. Max had seen, or been involved in, so many shootings it was probably routine by now for him to don a bulletproof vest when going to work. Now it looked like what Max really needed was full body armor, maybe riot gear, to tend bar at the Reno, I thought. Perhaps the entire bar should be enclosed in bulletproof glass, and he could shove drinks and collect tabs through little windows, like the ones in self-service gas stations.

  McDonald joined us. “Brenda Starr,” he said with a smile, standing close to me. “You come here all the time? I always wondered where you hung out.”
/>   “I just got here,” I said stupidly, as he turned to Flood.

  “Max says the shooter is a regular customer, one Placido Quintana. A dispute over the jukebox. Quintana kept playing ‘I Shot the Sheriff,’ over and over. Everybody started to complain, Max threatened to unplug it, and the guy drew on him. Max pulled his own gun but never got any shots off. Evidently one of the witnesses picked it up and took it with him,” he winked in my direction, “for safe keeping.” Though talking to Flood, he kept his eyes fixed on me until I felt flushed and distracted.

  McDonald broadcast a description of Placido Quintana, short, squat, and wearing a bright yellow guayabera, as I checked the jukebox. Motive for the crime was selection C-7. I wrote that down, then strolled to the pay phone outside and scanned the directory in the yellowish glow from the anticrime lights. It would be a long shot, but the Reno was an English-speaking neighborhood bar. If Quintana was a regular, it probably meant he spoke English and lived nearby. The Quintanas took up four columns, with a Placido on Fourth Avenue near Twelfth Street, about six blocks away. I scribbled the address in my notebook and turned toward my car.

  “Going somewhere?” McDonald was strolling after me.

  “There’s a Placido Quintana in the phone book. The address is just a few blocks away.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Then let’s go over there.”

  He and Flood left uniforms to secure the bar. I got into my car and followed them, heart pounding. It was always this way on a breaking story, the action, the anticipation, the high of chasing it down. This I knew must come from my father, who carried out clandestine missions against Fidel Castro’s communist government, who had even engineered a prison break to free political dissidents from the infamous Isla de Pinos.

  I parked on Fourth Avenue, got out quietly, and joined McDonald and Flood at their unmarked car, parked in front. The small wooden frame house was set back from the street; the yard was mostly weeds and gravel, the lights were out.