Contents Under Pressure (18 page)

I felt a sense of accomplishment driving back to the office. Nothing conclusive; from what I’d read, almost any one of the cops involved could have attacked D. Wayne Hudson. But at least I’d done a good day’s work. Using public records sometimes gave one a sense of invincibility. People could slam doors, refuse calls, stonewall, and run, but in today’s world of computers, one thing they couldn’t do was hide.

The stack of phone messages on my desk contained none from Kendall McDonald, leaving me vaguely disappointed. Several times that day I’d thought about laughing with him, and his goodnight kiss. Was I crazy to be thinking this way about a cop?

Lottie was back, and had left me a note. The
Vagabond
had abandoned the search, leaving it to the Coast Guard. Ryan’s parents had arrived in town. She was with them, and invited me to join them for dinner, not an event I looked forward to. I began to organize my notes, typing them on sheets of yellow paper torn from a lined legal pad instead of tapping them into the computer terminal. Call me old-fashioned, but I still love typewriters, empty sheets of paper waiting to be filled with words, and the privacy of one, lone, hard copy of a file. Worse than having somebody look over your shoulder while you work is to have them do it electronically. Anyone at the
News,
if clever, could access whatever anyone else entered into the VDTs, which are linked to a central computer. Editors snoop on reporters; reporters snoop on editors and each other. That is their business, it is what they do. With the right equipment, they can even do it from outside the building.

I opened a file for each of the cops. The best time to catch them at home would be in the hours before they left for work. I hoped to hit them all the same night; I didn’t want to give them the chance to match notes on my questions and rehearse their stories. Taking people by surprise, I’d found, usually resulted in the most truthful answers, or enough devious confusion to make the lies obvious. At least that was my experience.

Needing to map out an itinerary, I went up to the city desk to get a fix on the cops’ neighborhoods from the big blue city directory. Getting lost is easy in Dade County. I’ve lived here all my life, and I do it all the time. Streets to nowhere end in canals, waterways, farm fields, or swamps. The secret is in knowing the through streets and the grid pattern, which divided into northeast, northwest, southeast, and southwest. Flagler Street is the north-south dividing line, and Miami Avenue divides east from west.

Unfortunately, all the municipalities didn’t follow the system. Miami Beach has no NE, NW, SE, or SW designations, and wealthy Coral Gables reflects old Spain, with Ponce de Leon Boulevard, Alhambra, Segovia, and Aragon, names found only on short squat curbstones, unlit and impossible to read after dusk. That upscale bedroom community favors the attitude that if you do not know the exact location of your destination, then you are not welcome in their city.

No wonder bewildered tourists keep stopping to ask directions from strangers who draw guns and rob them.

The big Bresser’s City Directory lists the intersecting streets and landmarks around any address. My phone rang as I was running my finger down Machado’s block, checking for a through street. I sighed impatiently, tempted to let it ring until the caller was switched to voice mail. I felt an undercurrent of urgency, like a bloodhound on the scent. But the call might be important, so I marked the page with a scrap of paper, plodded dutifully to my desk, and unenthusiastically answered. It took a moment for what the caller said to sink in, then I shrieked as though I had won the lottery.

“Ryan! Is it really you? Where the hell are you?”

“Mexico City. At the airport, Britt.”

“Mexico City?” I was laughing, although tears stung my eyes.

“Look Britt, I don’t have much time. They want to put me on a flight to Toronto.”

“Toronto?” I repeated, dimly aware that a crowd had begun to form around my desk. “It’s Ryan!” I cried, nodding at them, and cupping my right hand over my ear to block out their applause and cheers. Gretchen lingered on the fringe, and I saw a look of relief in her eyes. I couldn’t even feel angry at her at that moment.

“Yeah, I don’t have a passport or any papers with me,” Ryan was saying, “so they won’t let me stay here. And I can’t prove I’m an American citizen…”

“How did you get to Mexico City?”

“From Cuba, on Mexicana Airways.”

“Cuba!”

“Yeah,” he said sheepishly. “Where was Lottie? She didn’t call at midnight, so I thought my radio was malfunctioning. I’d had a couple of beers, and when I stood up to get better reception, it slipped out of my hand. Sank like a rock.”

“Oh Ryan, they were singing and playing the guitar…”

“I got swept south, past the reefs, by the current. I saw sharks. Big ones, Britt. I gave them all my food to keep ‘em happy. I threw out messages, in Coors bottles.”

“I knew that was you! I told Lottie she should have checked them!”

“I ran out of sunscreen, and the batteries in my portable TV got wet. A Cuban fishing boat finally picked me up. They saw the Soviet inner tubes and thought I was trying to escape from the island, so they turned me over to a patrol boat. They took me to Mariel. I finally convinced them I was a gringo, but the military thought I was CIA, or a drug smuggler. They questioned me for twelve hours and finally let me go, but the tide wouldn’t quit pushing me back along the coastline. I kept getting picked up again by other boats and taken back to the same military guys. They finally gave up pushing me off the coast and put me on a plane for Mexico City. Put Lottie on.”

“She’s out to dinner, with your folks.”

“Mom and Dad? What are they doing there?”

“Getting ready to plan a funeral, Ryan. We’ve all been so scared. We thought you were lost at sea. The Coast Guard is still searching for you. Geez, you would have loved your obit. They’ve had three people working on it.”

“Ha, ha, ha. It had better be good. Hey, Britt. Can somebody go by my apartment and get my passport and a credit card?”

“Ryan, wait! Don’t get on the plane to Toronto.” Word of mouth had already reached the executive offices, and gray suits were joining the crowd. One had snatched up the phone on Ryan’s desk and already had lawyer Mark Seybold on hold.

“Call the Czech embassy,” somebody had directed, after hearing me mention Cuba. In the absence of diplomatic relations with Cuba, cases involving Americans were handled through the Czechs.

I handed the phone off to Fred Douglas, and sat at my desk laughing in sheer delight and relief. I caught sight of Gretchen shaking her head in exasperation, as if to ask what that pesky Ryan would do next, and managed to totally dislike her again.

Lottie and I went to meet him at the airport before dawn. She was sunburned and peeling, mad as hell at Eric, and disappointed that we had not seen Larry Zink and Steve, who had been put on hold during the crisis. “What kind of sunblock do you use?” she demanded as we waited.

“I don’t use any,” I said truthfully. “I never burn, just tan.”

“I do hate you,” she grumbled. “Blond hair and green eyes, and you never burn.”

“Hey, I always wished I had red hair and fair skin, like yours, but I take after my dad.”

Ryan came home on a 6
A.M
. flight, wearing a camouflage shirt and pants, sunbronzed, aglow, his eyes filled with the excitement of the adventure he had to write. He pressed his lips to the tarmac like all the Cuban refugees.

We hugged him off his feet.

I envied his brief sojourn, or several brief sojourns, in Cuba. I yearn to travel there someday, to trace the roots and the steps of my father, to walk up San Juan Hill, and stroll the beaches of Veradero. But, for now, I go there only in dreams, and they will have to suffice until the man who ordered him killed is no longer in power.

It felt so good to have Ryan home. You never realize how much you cherish your friends until you are afraid they are gone.

The message from Officer Francie Alexander was left in the daylight. Unusual for her. I dialed the number, and imagined her answering in the darkness of her blacked-out apartment in the middle of a brilliant South Florida day.

She sounded as though I had roused her from a sound sleep. “It’s me, Francie. I’m sorry. I should have waited until tonight. I’ll call you later.”

“No, Britt, this is important,” she mumbled. “I left the phone on, hoping you would call.” I could hear her work herself into a sitting position, trying to sort out her sleep-skewed thoughts. “Listen, last night, I heard somebody run you on the radio.”

“What?”

“Right after roll call, I heard somebody ask what kind of car you drove. I didn’t say anything and couldn’t see who asked the question, but it sounded like one of the weightlifters. The room was full of people, but it was low-key, a one-on-one question as we were moving out. I didn’t hear the answer, but later, around 2:30
A.M
., somebody raised the dispatcher and ran you. To see if your license was current, if you had any wants, warrants, outstanding tickets. It was as though somebody had you pulled over on a traffic stop.”

“I was home asleep at 2:30.”

“I figured. What’s going on Britt? Whoever did that has your age, your license number, your home address.”

“Goddammit, what’s going on?” I remembered the threatening phone call, and my hand holding the receiver trembled. I felt indignant and, I had to admit it, a little scared.

“Maybe one of the guys has a crush on you?”

“You don’t think that’s it, do you?”

“Do you?”

“No.”

“It’s about D. Wayne Hudson, isn’t it,” she said, more statement than question. “There has been some grumbling, more than usual, about the paper and you. The guys were just beefing and mouthing off. I defended you a few times, saying you were just doing your job, but they’re really pissed off.”

“Hey, Francie, act like you don’t even know me with those guys. They’re your backup. Don’t catch any crap because of me. I’ll fight my own battles. I know you’re my friend, you don’t have to prove it. I’m really glad you told me about this. Give me a call if you hear anything else.”

“Sure.”

“Go back to sleep, Francie.”

“Britt?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

“You know it. Give Bitsy a hug. See you soon. Pleasant dreams.”

The best recourse for me now was to work like hell on the story, put it in the newspaper, and get it over with. Nothing is older than yesterday’s news. No matter what the result, things would get back to normal. People forget fast.

My mother had also left a message. Her voice was excited when I returned the call. “I’ve got a surprise for you, dear. Can you meet me on your way home?”

“I wasn’t going home. I’m working tonight.”

“Well can you spare a few minutes?”

“Sure,” I said, hesitantly.

“We’re working late, too. Inventory. Then I’m meeting one of the girls from my building for dinner. But I have just got to see you first!”

“Okay.” The surprise part worried me. “I was going to stop by La Esquina for a bite. Want me to bring you anything from there?” I didn’t know why I bothered to ask.

She hesitated before saying no, as if bewildered by the offer.

We agreed to meet later at the bar in a restaurant in her neighborhood, up on Biscayne Boulevard. I drove to La Esquina first. The meat empanadas were hearty and the advice free, as usual. “Regardless of anything,” Maggie said, “family and your children, they are the most important. You are so young, you should get married. The streets are so hard, it is not easy to find a nice man. Aren’t you afraid to write stories about violence? That should be left to the men. It would be nice if you wrote pretty things, society things.” Her eyes brightened with an idea. “Interview Julio Iglesias!”

“Why,” Luis, the counterman, demanded, “does your newspaper call Fidel ‘president’? Why not tell the truth and call him the tyrant or the dictator who covers the island in blood?”

“President,” I said patiently, “is his title. We only report the news. It’s not up to us to give our opinions of him. All the world knows he is a dictator.”

Luis glared. “How will he fall?”

“Perhaps,” I said, “he will kill himself, when he knows the end is near.”

Luis didn’t like that one. “Fidel is too much of a coward to commit suicide!” he cried. “You work for an anti-Cuban institution, a tool of the communists!”

I escaped into the night, clutching my cardboard takeout container of Cuban coffee. I would need it, I thought. This would be a long evening.

Driving north on the Boulevard, I passed the rundown motels that once drew free-spending tourists and businessmen but were now frequented by hookers and transients, stopped at the out-of-town newsstand on Seventy-ninth Street, bought a
New York Times,
and continued north, through the residential neighborhoods of Miami Shores and the condos of North Miami.

My mother’s convertible was in the parking lot. She was smoking and sipping a Manhattan at the bar, wearing a classic navy blue blazer with a matching skirt.

Her smile faded when she took in my attire. I had forgotten what I was wearing.

“Isn’t that the same white dress you had on last time I saw you?” she said, incredulous. “With those awful pockets!”

I smiled gaily and perched on the stool next to her. “I washed it between wearings, Mom. I’ve been busy this week, and it’s easy.”

“People will think it’s the only thing you own.”

“I’m sure they’re all alarmed,” I said, and ordered a Perrier.

“Well, anyway, that’s not why we’re here. This,” she said proudly, “is for you.” She presented me with a shiny, lacquered shopping bag. Something inside was wrapped in layers of tissue paper. Oh, no, I hoped fervently, as I unwrapped it, it couldn’t be the handbag, it was far too small; it couldn’t be. It was.

“I just couldn’t resist. It was far too fabulous a buy. Now Britt, I know you said you didn’t want it, but you’ll love it. Look, it’s just absolutely precious,” she trilled.

“It is beautiful,” I said sadly. That was the truth. “But I don’t think I can use it.” I opened it, then closed it again with a smart snap. “It’s way too small. No place for my beeper, or a notebook. Look, it’s even too short for my comb.”

“Carry a smaller comb, Britt. Or get one of those little folding combs.”

“It’s far too expensive to just sit on a shelf in my closet,” I said, shaking my head and folding it back into the tissue paper.

“Just try it for a few days, Britt. That’s all I ask. You’d be amazed at how the right accessories spruce up your wardrobe.”

“If I used it, Mom, I’d have to carry the rest of my stuff around with me in a shopping bag. How stylish would that look?”

“It can’t be returned,” she hissed. “It was on sale. I’m trying to help. You will never meet a suitable man running around like that…”

I almost told her about Kendall McDonald, but held back. Just as well, I thought, as she went on. “Miami is full of doctors, lawyers, and businessmen, but you don’t meet them covering the stories you do, and you never have time to socialize.”

She wouldn’t consider McDonald suitable, I thought. Of course she had married a man who was either a terrorist or a guerrilla fighter, depending on which side you talked to. Why did everybody seem to think that the solution to all life’s problems was a man? I had always found that they just seemed to complicate your life.

“Take tonight as an example,” she said. “What is it that you’re working on?”

“It could be an important story, Mom.”

She sighed, savagely extinguishing her cigarette in the ashtray. “It’s the one you told me about, isn’t it, the one that’s antagonizing everyone?”

I nodded. “Mom, think back. When I was a baby, was I ever in state custody, at any time, for any reason?”

“Of course not,” she said, annoyed. “What kind of a mother do you think I was? Why on earth would you ask such a thing?”

“I dunno.”

“You do come up with the strangest ideas.”