Suitable for Framing (18 page)

I still couldn't comprehend. “What were you doing here, Trish?”

“You know I'm working on a story about Reach Out's mishandling of the Rosado suicide.”

I nodded, gazing at the wounded man. Two IVs dripped fluids into his body, an oxygen mask covered his face, and a medic was pressing sterile gauze over a bloody wound in his abdomen.

“I was doing a sidebar on her death's impact on the family,” Trish continued. “There's been bad blood, a bitter feud, between them, so I was interviewing them separately. I arranged to meet Ernesto here today when he brought flowers to his mother's grave. Miguel suddenly showed up. They began shouting at each other and they both pulled guns. I couldn't believe it … I tried to stop them. I got it on tape.”

She held up a miniature recorder.

“The police are taking it, but they promised to copy it for us.”

Miguel was being readied for the rescue van, apparently too close to death to wait for an ambulance.

“I can't believe he's still alive,” she said, her voice a husky whisper. “He was hit at least four times. I tried to stop them.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “What does the desk want us to do?”

“I'm writing a first-person account. I think I've got everything. Then I have to go down to police headquarters to give a statement.” She gazed into my eyes. “What a story,” she said solemnly. “What a tragedy.”

Villanueva had arrived and was already shooting, using a Nikon with a 300-millimeter lens. Trish stepped over the bloodied roses and stood near the body. He worked quickly, closer than usual, firing off at least a dozen frames before the cops asked Trish to step away. They were more relaxed than if the killing had been a whodunit. The cops had both shooters—one, maybe both, dead—and an eyewitness. As the medics lifted Miguel into the rescue van, Trish motioned to the photographer, then reached out to steady the IV bottle. He caught it. So did a TV news crew that had just arrived.

Back at the office, I sort of hung around on the edge of the chaos. No one needed my help on the story. Trish had it all.

The tape ran everywhere, over and over and over, on radio and TV news shows, coupled with the police 911 tape of Trish's call for help.

Transcribed and published in black and white, the shooting tape didn't read like much, but listening to the gunfire and the screams was electrifying.

Trish had inadvertently pushed the record button in the excitement seconds before the shooting. Incomprehensible shouts and curses from the two men. Muffled sounds as though someone was running or had dropped the recorder. Then
pop-pop-pop
, the unmistakable rattle of gunfire. A shrill scream that had to be Trish.

“No! No!” from Trish.

“You killed me!” an anguished cry from one of the men.

More gunfire. Seven more shots. Groans, moaning.

“Oh, my God!” from Trish. “Somebody call the police!”

Gasps, fumbling sounds, then nothing, as Trish apparently turned off the recorder as she ran for help. She had a cell phone in her car.

“Nine-one-one operator.”

“This is Trish Tierney. I'm a reporter for the
Miami Daily News
. I need help. Police and an ambulance, right away.” Slightly out of breath, she spoke coolly and distinctly, the way parents and school officials teach bright children to do should they ever have to make an emergency call. I have always suspected that staying cool tends to encourage the cops to take it lightly. I have always been in favor of screaming your brains out. That way they know you mean business.

“What is your emergency?”

“A shooting. Two then were just shot, a number of times. I think they're both dead.”

“What is your location?”

“Our Lady of Victory Cemetery. Pretty much in the center, near a grave. You'll see the cars.”

“Do you have the street address?”

“It's about Forty-seventh Street and Seventeenth Avenue. But it's inside the graveyard.”

“Is the person with the gun still there?”

“No. Yes! They both had guns. They're both shot. I almost got shot myself. Would you please get somebody out here?” A hint of impatience.

“We have units on the way. Where are the weapons?”

“Where are the … on the ground where they dropped them.”

“Are the victims conscious?”

“I think I hear a siren now; tell them to pull straight into the cemetery and I'll watch for them. Thank you.”

As chaotic and terrifying as the first tape was, the second was controlled, a call from a woman with inner strength and common sense who didn't panic in a crisis.

Even the rival paper ran a headline:
GUTSY REPORTER CAPTURES MURDER ON TAPE
.

The networks and CNN picked up the story and played the tapes. The implication was that the failure of Reach Out to save Magdaly Rosado had now very nearly succeeded in killing all three members of the family—as well as the courageous reporter who had tried to rescue them.

Miguel, rushed into surgery, hung on, in intensive care at press time.

The story was big. Bigger than I realized.

My phone rang at six-thirty next morning. It was Lottie.

“Britt, guess where Trish is?”

Oh, Lord, I thought. What now?

“Frankly, Lottie, I don't give a damn.”

“Britt! The poor thang nearly got killed.”

I sighed. “Okay. Where is she? Sharing an egg McMuffin with Elvis at McDonald's? Swapping secrets with Deep Throat? Reuniting the Beatles? Or has she found Amelia Earhart?”

“Britt, you're jealous!”

“I am not!”

“Ain't you the one who was always saying there's enough stories for everybody?”

“I changed my mind.”

“I figured. Put your TV on. Trish is gonna be on the
Today
show.”

“What?”

“They flew her up to New York last night.”

“You're kidding! For what?”

“The cemetery shooting. It's only the biggest damn story in the country.”

“Because the damn public gets off on listening to somebody die? Doesn't the whole thing strike you as weird, Lottie?”

“Weird?”

“How she just happened to be there with her handy-dandy tape recorder when those two guys blew each other away?”

“No,” she yelped. “She was doing an interview. She had her recorder. Nothing unusual about that. Remember how we just happened to be there when Jennifer Carey and her little tyke got hit? She's got a gift for being where the action is. A natural-born reporter. Shit happens. Everybody's gotta be someplace.”

I sighed. “I don't know what I mean. It's just—”

“You been into your medicine cabinet this morning?” she demanded. “Whatever you took, take the antidote. Get a grip. You're just pissed 'cause it's not you.”

“Goddammit, Lottie!”

“Watch
Today
. I'm gonna tape it. Talk to you later.”

Still in the jogging clothes I had planned to wear to the boardwalk, I sat on the floor in front of the TV. I decided to work off some steam and use the time efficiently by doing sit-ups. I had done thirty-five and felt red in the face by the time she was introduced.

“A unique tragedy took place in South Florida yesterday, and a brave reporter from the
Miami Daily News
was there. We have with us this morning Trish Tierney. Good morning, Trish.”

Trish said good morning, looking confident and beautiful in TV makeup and a bright blue jacket I had never seen her wear before.

“You had to be terrified when bullets started flying in that Miami cemetery yesterday.”

“Oh, I was never afraid—until later, when I had time to think about it.” She nodded, smiling bravely. “When it was happening, all I could think about was trying to stop them from hurting each other any more than they already had.” Her expression softened. “They'd both been through a great deal of anguish after the suicide of their wife and mother.

“When the husband pulled his gun—and then I saw that the son had one too—I was focused on trying to keep them from firing. Once a bullet leaves the muzzle of a gun, it's too late. Nobody can call it back.”

Great line, Trish, I thought. I sat there on the floor mesmerized, sit-ups forgotten, Bitsy on my lap, my coffee cooling in a cup on the end table next to the sofa.

The audio tape and the 911 call were played, of course, as well as scene footage shot by a news team from the network's Miami affiliate. In a sound bite, the homicide detective said that the tragedy could have been prevented.

Trish briefly shared a split screen with a psychiatrist, a specialist in grief counseling, and the founder of a national suicide hot line. The Miami Reach Out counselor had declined comment.

A few politicians eagerly got into the act, huffing and puffing, proposing county or state training and the testing and licensing of all employees and volunteers at suicide and drug hot lines, to “ensure the prevention of future tragedies.”

As if the state doesn't have enough to do, I thought, when it can't even keep track of all the dependent, abused, and abandoned children in its charge.

The report was pretty well rounded. They even tossed in the easy availability of handguns as a contributing factor. True, I thought, they might simply have beaten the snot out of each other if neither had had access to a firearm.

In the few seconds that remained, the anchor asked Trish about the current state of crime in Miami, “a city where the vice mayor has been arrested on corruption charges.” I half expected her to stumble on that question out of left field but she did well, relating the status of the Linwood case and glibly quoting the latest FBI and Miami crime statistics. You had to hand it to her. She was good.

“That was Trish Tierney, top crime reporter for the
Miami Daily News
. Thank you, Trish, for being with us. I guess for you it's back to the hot streets of Miami.”

Top crime reporter? Shit I stared at the commercial that followed. The woman was not a crime reporter. I covered the damn police beat. The mistake was natural, I realized. She had covered a death by suicide, the vice mayor's arrest, then a shootout. If she was not the paper's top crime reporter, she was doing a pretty damn good imitation.

For the first time I began to worry about my job. If I didn't dig in and start producing, she
would
be the crime reporter if she wanted the job. And I had no doubt that that was what she wanted.

Janowitz gloated. “How does it feel to be upstaged on national TV?”

Even my mother called. “Do you know that reporter who was on the
Today
show, dear? She was wonderful.”

“I know her.”

“Do you think she met Katie Couric?”

“I'm sure she did.”

“Did she buy that jacket in Miami? Is it a Criscione?”

“I'll be sure to ask her.” I sat with my palm over my right eye to quell the twitching in the lid.

“Would you like to come to the cocktail party for the opening of the new show at the Planetarium Friday?”

“I feel like I've just been to the Planetarium.”

“What does that mean?”

“I'm under a lot of stress on the job right now, Mom. Don't count on me for anything, but I will try.”

I dialed Chicago. Marty answered.

“Am I a jealous bitch?”

“I didn't know you cared.”

“Seriously, Marty. You've known me since we were kids in college. Is it me? Am I all unstrung just because she's better than I am?”

“I've never known you to be anything but generous and supportive to other reporters, though you may have changed a lot since we last spent time together.”

“Thanks much, Marty. This is serious.”

“Yeah.” I could picture him massaging the back of his neck the way he always did when thinking. “Your instincts are always on the mark. I'd say follow your gut.”

“Thanks. I needed that—and a couple of
Atta girls
.”

He chuckled. Back in Chicago he had always been lavish with his
Atta girls
when I needed a boost.

“People like her burn out fast, Britt. You built your beat out of nothing. You want to keep that job, fight for it. Nobody is tougher than you out there in the trenches.”

“Nobody knows the streets of this city better than I do,” I agreed.

“Atta girl.”

I felt a little better, despite a slightly sore throat and a runny nose. This was no time to get sick. I stopped at Epicure on the way home. Their chicken soup will cure anything. Had I mentioned it to Mrs. Goldstein she would have whipped up a batch, but I was in no mood for company.

Epicure Market is one of the seven wonders of Miami Beach. Visiting rock stars send out for the whopping shrimp and juicy steaks. A gourmet menu hot line operates twenty-four hours a day, tempting callers with loving descriptions of delicacies such as piña colada chicken, black bean and papaya salad, and shrimp tempura.

Chocolate mousse cakes, miniature eclairs, and cranberry scones are baked on the premises. In the produce department there are Fuji apples, Yukon gold potatoes from Alaska, and mushrooms gigantic enough to be mutant strains.

I wish I could afford to shop there. With my luck, by the time I can, my metabolism will have slowed down so much I won't be able to enjoy it

But when I'm ailing, I do indulge in Epicure's soup.

As I pushed my little shopping cart past the bakery counter something caught my eye. A mouthwatering loaf of crispy golden crusted bread, sliced open to display its delectable center. The small sign read
Filled with Parmesan cheese, green peppers, and onion
. I stared numbly, nose running, feeling feverish. Where had I seen that before?

I began to laugh. Dinner with Trish. Her cherished old family recipe.

The aproned woman behind the counter regarded me sternly as I blew my nose, still snickering into my tissue. “You have to take a number,” she instructed.

“Never mind,” I said lightly, wheeling my cart off to the deli section. I spotted them right away. Perfectly poached Bosc pears, buttery and elegant on pink paper doilies, not far from the wonderful chickens and little roasted potatoes.

I shook my head, grinning all the way into the parking lot. How many other lies had Trish told? I wondered.

I thought about it as I sipped my soup, washed it down with a cup of brandy-laced hot tea, and went to bed early.

Feeling much better in the morning, I began to make calls.

Miguel Rosado's condition had been upgraded from critical to fair. That was the good news. The bad was that he was charged with first-degree murder. He might even recover enough to serve life in prison—or take a seat in the electric chair, though the latter was unlikely in a case where his victim was a relative who was shooting back at the time.

I asked Patton, the homicide detective on the case, how Miguel was doing. “Fine,” he said, “except now he has a new place to go to the bathroom from.”

I winced, deciding not to ask specifics of the surgery. “Think I could talk to him?”

“Have to ask his lawyer. They're probably not thrilled that one of your reporters taped him wasting his stepson.”

“Every story has two sides,” I said.

A uniformed security guard guarded the prison ward. Smiling, I nodded and breezed on by. My photo ID was dangling from my belt. I was wearing my beeper and carried my portable police scanner. The problem would be the cop stationed outside the door. But he was halfway down the hall, hobnobbing with the nurses.

Miguel's ankle was shackled to his hospital bed. He did not appear capable of running even if it hadn't been. His skin was an unearthly shade of gray in contrast to the bleached white of his skimpy hospital gown and rumpled sheets. Tubes ran everywhere: draining fluids out, pumping fluids in, attaching him to hissing, whirring machines. His lips looked dry and parched. I held the water glass as he sucked weakly through a plastic straw.