Contents Under Pressure (4 page)

I was not enthusiastic. I had met Larry while working on a story. One of his clients had heavily insured and then murdered his bride, hardly the sort of first encounter that leads to romantic fantasies. Besides, his favorite topic of conversation was tax-deferred variable annuities. My personal life is a battlefield littered with the corpses of once-promising relationships, casualties of my job. I had come close to marriage once, with Josh, the college sweetheart who had followed me home from Chicago. But he disliked Miami, and sharing me with the police beat. Somehow the job, with its deadlines and long, unpredictable hours, always interferes with romance. The two seem unable to peacefully coexist. So right now, I give work priority.

“You know how tough it is for us both to be off at the same time,” I told her, “and, anyway, I don’t think I’m interested.”

“Well you sure put a rise in his Levis.”

She daintily polished off the pastry and licked the flakes from her fingers.

“It’s bad policy to date men you deal with on the job,” I said righteously, my usual response.

“Get real, it’s not like Larry’s a source or somebody you work next to every day of the world. That was a one-shot story. Simple. He sold the life insurance policy; you covered the murder.”

Lottie shrugged it off as though it was the most natural equation in the world. Two plus two, life insurance equals murder. Her tea smelled like orange peel. As she sipped it, I could read the lettering on the side of her mug: “Make a Cop Come. Dial 911.”

“Hell-all-Friday, you’d think that rascal would have waited more than two weeks after the policy was signed a’fore he killed his wife. His IQ must be the same as his shoe size. What is really amazin’ is that he nearly got away with it,” she continued, brushing crumbs off her blouse. “All Larry did was confirm that spanking-new insurance policy. Your story and the arrest saved a bundle of his company’s money. He
owes
you a few big nights on the town. Besides, you’re always working. If you don’t date anybody you meet on the job, you’ll die an old maid. That’s what it will say on your tombstone, ‘Single But Successful.’ I bet you were here ‘til one o’clock this mornin’. Nice stories, by the way.”

“Nice pictures.” We grinned at each other.

Whatever else we share or don’t, we are both news junkies, hooked on adrenaline. Lottie is divorced, and has been for years, no children. At age thirty-nine, she is eight years older, almost four inches taller, and twenty pounds heavier than I am. Fearless and dedicated, with a Texas twang in her molasses-smooth voice, she has covered Colombian earthquakes, fire fights in El Salvador, and, wearing a scarf across her face against the stench, photographed the endless corpses in Jonestown. Lottie captures the heart-stopping moment, the football at the fingertips, life and death in America’s most violent city. Nobody does it better.

Lottie is funny and full of life, more outgoing than I am. I always wished that I was taller, like her statuesque five-eight, that my hair was thicker, my hips thinner, and that I had a more ready laugh, like hers.

“Let’s make a definite date with these guys,” she was urging.

“What does his buddy do?”

“Something in sales and marketing. They actually seem normal.” She raised an eyebrow significantly and leaned back, her hand-tooled leather cowboy boots up on the desk, red hair unruly, her smile smug. “I feel like a whole woman again. I got my IUD put back.” Her drawl became more pronounced when she was relaxed.

“Normal guys … I wouldn’t know what to talk to them about,” I said. “Pete Zalewski is the only man who has been calling me lately.”

Lottie frowned. “I thought he was in jail.”

“He is.”

“Gawd, that looney tunes. Why do you waste your time talking to him?”

I had no answer. Feeling wistful, I signed and glanced restlessly at the clock. Lottie picked up on my anxiety.

“Bummer about D. Wayne. I photographed him once at the Orange Bowl; nobody else could scramble the way he could. He completed thirty-one out of thirty-nine passes that day. What the hell happened to him?”

“I don’t know. I’m going back over there now to see the accident report. Some guy at the station really jerked me around this morning, until I laid a public records request on him.”

“Good for you. Go get ‘em, Britt. I’ve got something you can take along. I made extra prints of Officer Ted in action yesterday.” She handed me a manila envelope. “Give Ted my best when you give him these, or maybe I’ll do it myself. Is he married?” she asked slyly. Lottie is a survivor, full of hope. Ready to settle down and have children, she is impatient. If the right man doesn’t come along soon, she might just start without him.

I told her Ted was a family man.

“Heeelll,” she said, the only person I know who regularly wrings two syllables out of that word. “Well, his wife and the kiddies will love the pictures, and he will, too. Hee, hee, it doesn’t hurt to have a friend over at the Miami Police Department.”

It sure didn’t. Lottie is savvy about cultivating sources. Unlike most photographers, she is as interested in the story as the picture. She always wants to know everything. If you don’t know the story, you don’t know what the picture is. She is always optimistic and resourceful, a woman who, if cast ashore alone on a desert island, would build a house with a guest room. I promised to think about us seeing Larry and Steve, and checked my desk on the way out.

The usual melange of messages waited, from sports fans wanting to talk about D. Wayne and from unhappy inmates at the Dade County Jail, including two from Pete Zalewski. He was eager, no doubt, to unload on me more of his tearful talk about Patsy, the lost love of his life.

Many people I meet are fascinating in the way that something ugly or evil fascinates. I often talk to criminals even when not working on specific stories about their crimes. We each satisfy a need in the other: theirs is to be listened to, mine is curiosity. How did they get that way? What overpowering force drew them to disaster and will continue to do so, no matter what? Were they born with it, or was it something that overtook them along the way?

Our talks are often disturbing, but I learn a great deal from them. Yet it is never enough. I guess my hope is to one day ask the right question and hear the answer that somehow makes sense out of all the terrible things people do to each other—and themselves.

In the meantime, patient listening occasionally paid off with a good news tip from behind bars. However, Pete Zalewski’s poor-pitiful-me refrain was growing a bit thin. If Patsy was the light and great love of his life, he should have refrained from choking her. Now he was growing increasingly apprehensive about his upcoming murder trial, with good reason; I doubted a jury would buy his defense—that he only killed Patsy because she wanted to be put out of the misery of her life, on the streets since age fifteen. Pete wanted assurance that his day in court would turn out fine. He would not get that from me. I never lie to anybody behind bars, or to any source, for that matter. I am straight with them, and expect them to be straight with me.

At police headquarters, I spotted Ted in the parking lot and overtook him. It looked almost as though he tried to avoid me.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said, squinting into the sun. “In fact, the mayor called me at home this morning, to congratulate me. I thought it was a put-on at first,” Ted said gruffly, “some of the guys horsing around. But it was really him. I never talked to the man before.”

“Neat. I guess he does read the newspaper, despite the big deal he makes out of canceling his subscription every time he doesn’t like a story.”

“Well, I liked your story, Britt. My family was proud, although my wife is on me now about wearing my vest.” Ted’s words were friendly, but he seemed strangely guarded and uneasy, in a hurry to get away. I gave him Lottie’s pictures, and he drove off without even opening the envelope.

Instant celebrity, no matter how brief, often affects people in odd ways. Other cops may have been teasing him about the publicity, I decided.

The same officer was at the accident bureau. He greeted me like an old friend. “Nothing personal, you know,” he said cordially, handing over a copy of the accident report. “I just didn’t want to cross my new sergeant. He never told me what I could and couldn’t release.” Sure, I thought, but I just nodded and took the report. I moved away from his desk and began to read.

The report on D. Wayne’s accident was written by a veteran patrolman named Lou Carpenter. It had been a one-car accident, witnessed by at least five officers in pursuit of the vehicle. The chase began on Biscayne Boulevard at 1:08
A.M
., after the BOLO went out, and ended after the car veered off into the city’s fashion district, blocks of warehouses and manufacturers’ outlets, deserted at that hour. He may have been trying to reach an expressway entrance ramp, but missed the turn, struck a concrete abutment, and skidded into a drainage ditch that bordered the highway. The officer had checked off the box that indicated the driver was not wearing a seat belt.

The report said that Hudson’s car had been hauled out of the ditch by a Double Eagle truck, one of the towing firms with a city contract. It could still be there, I mused; Alma must be exhausted, with more important things on her mind today than reclaiming her dead husband’s car.

I continued reading the stilted police jargon, which said that the driver, bleeding from a head injury, semiconscious and combative, had to be restrained by the officers and fire department medics. Then I did a double take: One of the pursuers, listed as a witness, was Badge Number 262, Officer Ted Ferrell—yesterday’s hero.

Why didn’t he mention it then, or just now in the parking lot? I wondered. That could explain his uneasiness, his rush to leave before I started asking questions about D. Wayne Hudson.

I studied the names of the other witnesses listed: Officers Manuel Machado, José Estrada, and the Blackburn twins, Roscoe and Roland. I was surprised at the latter two. The twins had a reputation for high-spirited exuberance. If there was a chase, they led the pack; in a manhunt, they ran the bad guy to earth; in a brawl, they won; and if there was an outrageous practical joke, they were usually responsible. I knew them by sight, and had heard they were being kept apart after some of their prior escapades. Yet there they were, out riding midnights together, involved in the same call.

I did not know Estrada or Machado well, except as bulky, overly muscled weightlifter types who spent a great deal of time working out.

The report concluded that the driver of the car had not been involved in a felony after all. No wonder they had been reluctant to release the report—the cops had chased the wrong car. But why had D. Wayne run?

I left messages for all the officers listed to call me, then headed for Number One Bob Hope Road. The site is not what it sounds like. It is not show biz; it is the morgue.

The medical examiner’s brick and concrete complex is conveniently adjacent to the county hospital.

Actually, the morgue is more modern and comfortable than the hospital. A stranger might mistake it for a hotel. There is ample parking and well-manicured landscaping. Wall-to-wall mauve couches fill a huge lobby, carpeted in muted forest green. The futuristic building incorporates the latest in technology, including a system borrowed from the airport’s method of dealing with jet fuel odors. Molecules that create odors are constantly broken down and filtered out by air handlers, making the atmosphere smell, for the most part, springtime fresh. With its pastels, warm lighting, and cozy family rooms, this is a place you might have liked to visit had you not known its purpose.

Dr. Vernon Duffy was temporarily in charge while the chief medical examiner accepted honors at an out-of-town conference. I was first introduced to Duffy out in an Everglades hammock full of rare ferns, air plants, and orchids. We shook hands over the skeletal remains of a slain drug courier discovered by bird watchers a few hours earlier. It was one of my first murder scenes, and I will never forget it.

Duffy began his career as a sheriff’s deputy in rural New Hampshire. His father had been a funeral director, and Duffy always had a preoccupation with death. He decided to go to medical school, where he realized that the only doctors who ever know what really happened, albeit too late, are pathologists. So for the past twenty years he had elected to be the last, rather than the first, responder to the scenes of unexplained deaths.

He caught the eye of Dade County’s chief medical examiner in a hotel bar during a convention nine years ago. The chief liked Duffy immediately because he told great stories, despite coming from small-town New Hampshire, where not much ever happened. In fact, Duffy’s only cases of consequence were carbon monoxide deaths caused by sex in the snow. Impassioned young couples parked in freezing lovers’ lanes always left the heaters running.

Duffy wanted to work where the action was, so he quickly accepted the offer to come to Miami, a long way from snow-driven New Hampshire.

I hoped to find him in his office, but the acting chief was busy in the ground-floor morgue, which resembles a gleaming stainless steel kitchen so shiny and immaculate that you could eat off the floor—except that you wouldn’t want to.

A visit to this place, in fact, is enough to convert one to vegetarianism. It does that to me, sometimes for weeks, until I am overcome by yearnings for roast pork or a palomilla steak.

Dr. Duffy, slightly built and stooped in his surgical greens, was working on a case. Occasionally he turned to scribble with a felt-tip pen on a wall board behind him. The object of his attention was an older man with wispy gray hair. Age seventy-three, I saw, peering at his chart. The doctor acknowledged me with a nod as he continued, intent on his work. I stood behind his elbow and watched. The dead man’s pale arms were blackened by soot, and the left one bore a strange pattern of scrapes. His front teeth were broken, and he had big raccoon eyes, darkened by skull fractures. His head lolled at an odd angle.

“What happened?” I asked.