Contents Under Pressure (11 page)

“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.

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.

Other police quietly surrounded the place, guns drawn.

“He’s drunk, armed, and dangerous, and just shot somebody, and you were about to visit for a little midnight tête-à-tête?” Flood shook his head sadly. “They never used to send women out on the police beat.”

I batted my eyelashes at him, then stared at the darkened house.

“Should we call out SWAT?” a young patrolman asked eagerly.

“Not so fast. We don’t even know if our guy is in there,” McDonald said. “Let’s see.”

He stepped carefully up the path to the front door, patrolmen standing by, alert for any movement from inside. A car suddenly squealed to a stop behind us, and the darkened front yard was instantly bathed in blinding light, illuminating McDonald, caught halfway up the path. He was a perfectly silhouetted target for any gunman lurking inside.

Piling out of the car, Minicam rolling, TV lights blazing, was a Channel 7 news crew. They had no idea what was happening but were determined not to miss it in the event it should be newsworthy. Angry cries came from the cops, curses from Flood. “Cut those lights! You crazy bastards!”

The yard plunged back into darkness so suddenly that it made me blink and see shadows that weren’t there. McDonald was on the front porch now, staring reproachfully over his shoulder. He stood prudently to one side of the door frame, rapped hard on a wooden panel, then did it again. Nothing happened. Some cops in uniform moved swiftly up onto the porch beside him, guns in hand. McDonald pounded the door once more, and a light bloomed inside. After a moment the door inched open. The Channel 7 lights blazed again, focused on a dazed man who stood there in his underwear blinded by the brilliance. From somewhere inside came a woman’s querulous voice and a baby’s wail. Soon the woman appeared, wearing a shapeless pale green cotton nightgown, hair in curlers. McDonald spoke briefly to the couple, the exchange ended cordially, and he came striding back to his car.

He wrenched open the door, slid behind the wheel, then looked up at Flood and me. “Wrong Placido Quintana. This one’s been home all night with his family. Let’s go, Dan.”

The TV crew pressed in. “Who are you looking for, Detective?” the reporter asked, shoving a microphone in front of Flood.

“Gitoutdahere, you scum,” he snarled, squinting into their lights. “You cudda got somebody killed.”

As the TV news car zoomed off, police radios bleated reports of another shooting. “What is this?” Flood said irritably, climbing into the unmarked.

The scene was just eight blocks away at a bar called the Velvet Swing. It looked like the start of a long night. I was already overtired, and had to go to work early in the morning, but I was game. It would be nice to start the day with a story in the bank.

McDonald radioed that they were on the way. “Well, Brenda, you gonna meet us there?” He looked up at me.

“Sure thing,” I said, as if it were an invitation to Buckingham Palace. Some single women do meet men at bars, I thought, hurrying to my car, but not like this. Nearly 1
A.M
., and I was racing around downtown Miami, making eye contact with a sexy detective at sleazy bars with blood on the floor. I should know better.

My scanner said the shooter was GOA, gone on arrival of the first police unit. Medics and uniforms were already inside. The door to the Velvet Swing hung open. From out on the sidewalk we all heard it at the same time: “I Shot the Sheriff,” blaring loudly, from the jukebox inside.

A young officer with a notebook in his hand hurried out to meet us. His expression said he had important information to report. Before he could speak, McDonald said, “Short, squat, yellow guayabera?”

The cop looked up from his notebook startled, mouth open. “Yeah, how’d you know?”

“Put out a BOLO for Placido Quintana, then check every jukebox in the city. No telling how many quarters he has left.”

The layout was similar, except for the picture over the bar, a laughing dark-haired woman in a velvet swing. This victim was a customer who’d lacked the foresight to don a bulletproof vest before objecting to the gunman’s obsessive taste in music. He had done a lot of bleeding and was unconscious as medics bundled him into a MAST suit (military anti-shock trousers) that forced blood up toward the heart, elevating blood pressure that had dropped dangerously low. A tired, middle-aged barmaid wearing a low-cut black blouse and purple lipstick crinkled her face in concentration, pretending to speak no English. When a young officer offered to translate, she scrunched up her face even further, pretending to speak no Spanish either.

I had had no chance to ask Sgt. McDonald about D. Wayne Hudson, and was beginning to think about how much I would hate myself in the morning. Though I wanted to follow the manhunt, I knew too well what would happen. Stay out all night, and without fail the following day would erupt with news that required a minimum twelve hours on the job.

I had to catch some sleep. “Can I call you guys first thing in the morning, before you go home, to find out what happened?”

“Crapping out on us, huh?” Flood said. He was politely giving the tired barmaid a seat in the back of a patrol car until she could decide what language she did speak.

“No way,” I said, “but I have this editor who wants me to be in early.”

“Call me anytime. Better yet, come by for coffee,” McDonald said, radiating that personal one-on-one smile, amid the chaos and confusion of organizing a manhunt.

I entertained salacious thoughts about him on the way home. The police scanner stayed busy, and the FM station I punched into the car radio began to play “I Shot the Sheriff.” I had not heard that song in years, and now, all of a sudden … Wondering if the spin was a request, I waited for the disc jockey to dedicate it to Placido Quintana and laughed myself halfway across the empty causeway.