Contents Under Pressure (3 page)

It didn’t help that the families were usually at odds, with me, the only link, straddling two worlds, yet not quite at home in either. My father was considered a hero, a patriot, a martyr by the Cuban community and his relatives. My mother and most of her family thought him reckless, a man who had foolishly gambled his life and lost. I did not permanently rejoin her until I was twelve. By then we didn’t know each other well, and had little to talk about. We still don’t. When I persisted in studying journalism, she encouraged me to attend Northwestern, away from the Miami influences that she considered unfavorable. The school was wonderful, but the Chicago winters were cold and long. I spent the two most miserable years of my life there.

My clothes were never warm enough, my shoes skidded on the ice, and I hated it I yearned for the musical sound of spoken Spanish, the taste of Little Havana’s food and drink, the warmth of Florida and its vivid colors. Chicago was a gray and lonely place. I escaped and finished my last two years at the University of Miami, home at last.

From the stories I have heard about him, and what little I remember, I think I am very much like my father. If I was not, I would believe that I am the victim of a maternity ward mix-up. My mother and I are that different.

I was incredibly lucky to land a job on one of the best newspapers in the nation. My good fortune was more fluke than anything else. Because I was a Miamian with a Hispanic surname, the paper’s minority recruiters assumed I was bilingual and hence fluent enough to report for the paper’s Spanish language section. Not so. They discovered their mistake when, in my first story, I referred to Miami’s vice-mayor as the
alcalde de vicio,
the mayor of vice.

By chance, a city desk post for a police reporter, a job no one else wanted, was open. The editors doubted a woman could endure the work. They expected dead bodies and shoot-outs to quickly gross me right out of the job. That only steeled my resolve to master the beat and make it my own. I was determined to be successful at it.

The job is exciting and enjoyable most of the time. It is almost always a comfort. The newspaper is something I can count on, a constant in a world full of uncertainty. It publishes every day, rain or shine, in peace or war. The newspaper will outlive all of us and record our history, our beginnings and endings. No matter what happens, the newspaper will come out tomorrow, like the sun. People will wake up in the morning and find it on their lawns. One of the few sure things in life, it is something to hold on to.

I had finished the soup. It was vegetable; not bad, actually. Nutritious, I told myself. Before dropping the can into the recycling bin I read the label. “Stir in one can of water and heat.” I wondered if I should drink a can of water. I had a glass of wine instead and went to bed.

I awoke in the dark at 5:30 A.M., wondering if some chronically ill recipient was lucky enough to be waking up with D. Wayne Hudson’s donated championship heart. Still weary and let down, I needed to work out the kinks, mental and physical. There was no time for an aerobics class at the Spa, so I pulled on shorts and my favorite T-shirt, sent by a friend in the Salvadoran press corps:
¡Soy Periodista! ¡No Dispare!
(I am a Journalist! Don’t Shoot!) I clipped my beeper to my waistband and walked two blocks east. From a half-block away I heard the ocean, and, as always, it made my pulse beat faster. A shrouded moon and two morning stars hung high above the stairs to the boardwalk. The eastern sky had paled to lavender above the rim of the sea. Dark purple clouds stacked above it in deranged shapes, like the shadowy skyline of some wild and alien city that exists only in troubled dreams.

The lights of half a dozen ships at sea still dotted the vast horizon. I broke into a slow jog, heading north on the boardwalk, reveling in the refreshing sea breeze, as the lavender brightened to pink and then to orange neon with charcoal smears. A scrawny gray striped cat sat alone on the sandy beach, eyes fixed on the same heavenly spectacle that took my breath away.

I thought of Billy Boots, fat and glossy, and regretted not having a pocket full of cat nibbles. The black sky to the west faded to navy, and then cobalt blue. Two joggers passed briskly on the beach below, running on hard-packed sand, as the steps of others thudded on the boardwalk behind me.

Images of D. Wayne Hudson, his wife and children, and the eager faces of youngsters at the project, where Ted Ferrell and the gunman had played out their taut drama, intermingled in my mind as yellow replaced the orange neon to the east, and the ships’ lights began to fade from the horizon. Violence and bad news always seem more shocking when they take place in paradise, I thought. One swimmer was already bobbing out beyond the breakers. Pale blue and pink streaks stretched north and south, a giant finger painting framed by soft billowy clouds. The palms made whispery sounds in the breeze, and crickets still chirped in the sea oats and oleander bushes as I passed the still-sleeping beachfront condos and hotels. Sea gulls soared and swooped over the shoreline, and a pelican skimmed hard-edged surf the color of gunmetal. We were all waiting for the same moment. The playful breeze suddenly ceased, as if in a dramatic pause. The radiance behind the clouds burst into a great blaze of fire as the sun emerged. First a dazzling sliver slid into view, then a quarter, then half and then the brilliant ball of flame broke free, sailing into the morning sky. The ocean instantly changed to a sea foam green fringed by silver.

The gulls cried out a greeting. I wanted to, too. Another South Florida day had been born.

I picked up a quart of milk at the Mini-Market on the way home, and carefully scrutinized my stories in the final edition, over cereal and coffee. Ted Ferrell looked good, surrounded by a sea of admirers, young and old. He sounded even better in print on the local page. He might even make Officer of the Month for this, I mused. Lottie’s telephoto lens had caught the suspect in the doorway brandishing his wicked-looking gun before he gave it up, pretty much shooting holes in his mother’s mistaken identity theory. The morning’s radio news had picked up both my stories, leading with D. Wayne’s death, reading them almost verbatim. It was 7:30
A.M
.

I showered, dressed, put on some lipstick, ran a comb through my hair, and headed out. Helen Goldstein, my landlady, was watering her flower beds with a hose.

“You came home late last night.” She smiled playfully, her face hopeful. The Goldsteins had been married for nearly sixty years, and she was always asking when I would bring home a nice man. I always replied that I would have to find one first, and that was not easy because she had apparently snatched up the last one.

“I know, I worked late,” I called, as I hopped in my car. She looked disappointed, and waved me on.

Miami police headquarters squats like a fortress at the edge of Overtown, a mammoth five-story rectangle, its concrete facade covered by red clay colored tiles. Local law mandates that a percentage of the cost of all public buildings be set aside for artwork. As a result, a huge and colorful abstract, handpainted by a French artist on Italian tiles, dominates the gradually escalating walkway to the main entrance. The cops hate it. They favor artwork that is more humanistic and easier to understand, like sculptures of policemen helping little children or of fallen heroes. Squinting at the colors, painfully bright in the glare of the morning sun, I understood their objections.

The accident bureau was an L-shaped office tucked into a corner of the main floor. An officer I didn’t know was manning the unit, seated at a desk in front of a giant street map of the city pricked by red pins marking the sites of fatal accidents, yellow pins indicating injuries, and blue pins denoting hit-and-run investigations. Huge clusters of multicolored pins at certain intersections were enough to make me want to change my usual driving habits and detour for miles if necessary. This office was devoted to the deadliest and most destructive force in South Florida, the motor vehicle. Here, the officers had selected their own artwork. Framed photo enlargements of the city’s most spectacular smashups hung from every wall, impossible to ignore. The motorist impaled on a pipe when he smashed into a plumbing truck was my candidate for the photo most likely to stimulate the use of bus passes.

I identified myself and asked to see a copy of the report on D. Wayne’s accident.

The officer in charge shook his head, eyeing me lazily up and down. “I’m not authorized to release information,” he said, as if I should know better than to ask.

This was ridiculous. “Accident reports are public record,” I explained.

He was unimpressed. A small, self-satisfied smile played around his lips as he shook his head again, slowly this time, for emphasis. “My sergeant is at a staff meeting. I do nothing without his say-so. You’ll have to wait until he’s here.”

“Okay, I’ll be back.” I crossed the lobby to the Public Information Office for my usual check of the log and a computer printout of police reports from the night before. When the new station was built, public information was on the fourth floor near the chief’s office. But allowing reporters access to the fourth floor to obtain their bleak one-paragraph press releases full of mindless police jargon gave them the opportunity to detour to more interesting upper-floor offices such as Robbery, Homicide, and Internal Affairs—where real news, juicy stories and good quotes could be ferreted out The brass caught on fast, lopped off part of the vast lobby and converted it into a PI office. They hoped that reporters grounded in the lobby would remain content with what the department chose to tell them. Some actually are.

On the left side of the PI office was a media room, furnished with two desks, telephones, and stacks of police reports and arrest forms. A huge replica of the Miami police uniform shoulder patch dominates one wall. Blue-bordered, with a palm tree at the center, it is a favorite backdrop for TV reporters who like to shoot their interviews in front of it.

I settled down at a desk and sighed. Police reports were far more fun to read when the officers wrote them by hand. Computer programs do not provide for unusual color, details, or theories, or the personalities of the writers. These reports all read alike, gray and uniform. What a pity.

Several still managed to pique my interest. More Miamians had been left in the dark by people who stole the copper wiring out of streetlight poles. The thieves invaded the maintenance boxes, snipped the wires, did the same at the next light, and pulled the loose wires through the underground tubes between the poles. Then they stripped off the insulation and melted down the copper wires to sell to scrap metal recyclers. You would think thieves so savvy and industrious would be capable of landing real jobs, I reflected as I read. But more than $154,000 worth of wiring had disappeared, and nothing seemed to cut the losses. As a last resort, city administrators had ordered the streetlights left on all day—a shocking waste of city money, I thought. But forcing the thieves to tamper with hot wires seemed to be the only way to stop them.

There were reports of more robberies by police impersonators, which was old news by now. The criminal element among the most recent tidal wave of refugees was thrilled to discover that police supply stores would sell uniforms, walkie-talkies, and handcuffs to any one who walked in off the street.

The most intriguing overnight robbery report was a new assault by the biting bandit. He had struck again, savagely tearing off a victim’s right ear with his teeth as he robbed him. The MO was familiar. In at least twelve attacks in recent weeks, victims had lost wallets, jewelry, and chunks of arms, hands, and shoulders. One lost a ring finger.

I called upstairs to robbery. The detective was still there, with an artist who was preparing a sketch of the bandit. If it looked good, we could have it for the early edition, he promised. The investigator sounded grim. “He’s still out there, and we think he’ll bite again.”

They had a few new clues. A forensic dentist had examined the victim’s wounds, and concluded that the robber had a severe overbite. He would be able to match the bandit’s incisors to tooth marks he left behind, but they would have to catch him first—then pry open his mouth to take a wax impression. Little tasks like that make me glad I’m not a cop.

I forged around and found the Sunday night log. The entry for D. Wayne Hudson’s case looked ordinary. A 317 (an accident with injuries), involving one car. A black, male motorist fled from the police, crashed, and was taken to County Hospital for treatment of his injuries. He had been charged with traffic offenses and fleeing the officers. Curiously, the log didn’t mention any stolen car or “armed and dangerous felony suspect.”

I returned to the accident bureau, still manned by the same officious cop, and asked again for a copy of the report on D. Wayne Hudson. “As I told you before,” he said, “I’m not authorized to release a thing.”

“Can I talk to your sergeant?”

“He’s still unavailable.”

“When will he be back?”

“No way to tell.” The smile lurked on his face. He was enjoying this: Some people love to say no. I stomped heatedly out to my car in the parking lot, fished a public records request form from a folder I keep handy in the backseat, filled in the blanks, and stalked back inside. “This is for you,” I said, presenting it to him with a smile of my own.

He looked puzzled, studied it, and no longer seemed so pleased with himself. Florida has one of the best public records laws in the nation. Bureaucrats who refuse to provide documents that are public record face suspension, removal, or impeachment, and can be charged with a first degree misdemeanor. The language on my form said as much, and definitely captures the attention of recalcitrant recordkeepers.

Police records can be withheld during an open criminal investigation—but in this case, I figured, the only potential suspect was deceased and would therefore never be charged with a crime, if one had occurred.

“I’ll be back in an hour or so to look at the report,” I told him.

He shrugged nonchalantly, but something in his eyes had changed. I saw him reach for the phone as I flounced out the door.

I drove over to Esquina De Tejas for Cuban coffee and a
pastele de guayaba,
a crisp flaky pastry with sinfully sweet guava and cream cheese filling. Another plus about this job is that when I lack enough sleep, I can eat anything without gaining weight. The first swallow of thick black Cuban coffee sent a shudder through me, and suddenly I felt truly awake and full of fire.

Maggie, the comfortably plump and motherly waitress, kept up her usual chitchat, all the advice any one could want, and more. “Such a pretty girl, with that face, that blond hair, those green eyes, but too skinny. You should eat more.”

Luis, the young counterman, shimmied to the internal rhythm of a merengue beat and began the usual questions. “When will Fidel fall?”

“I wish I knew,” I said, shrugging.

“How do you think it will be?” he said eagerly.

“Maybe it will be a bloody coup, like in Romania.”

He liked that one, slicing a forefinger across his throat as he nodded, looking pleased. “I hope they cut off his head.” His eyes then took on a wary expression, I knew what would come next; the question I hated.

“Why is the
News
so anti-Cuban?” His expression was intent, accusatory.

“I’m Cuban and I work there.” Why me? I wondered, irritably. “Maybe the people who say those things are the anti-Cubans.”

“You hear it every day, on the radio, the
News
is soft on Castro. You print only what the Cuban government feeds you. You do not do enough to expose the atrocities…”

“Don’t believe everything you hear on the radio, Luis. You think I would work there if the paper was soft on Fidel? My father…”

“Don’t listen to him, Britt,” Maggie interrupted. “He’s been running around the Everglades in the hot sun too long, training for the invasion. Too many guns were fired too close to his head, and now he is loco.”

I bought another sweet pastry to go, and made my getaway, back to the paper. When I arrived, I stopped in at the photo department.

“You know I’m on a diet,” Lottie wailed when I placed the paper bag in front of her. Her protest finished, she eagerly unwrapped it. “What, you only brought one?’’ She plugged in the kettle she kept on her desk. “Tea?”

“No thanks, I just had two cups of Cuban coffee.”

“Gawd.” She wrinkled her nose, teeth on edge. “I wouldn’t sleep for five days. Only Latinos can drink that stuff. Your stomachs must be stronger than anybody else’s. Well, Britt, you missed it all last night. I finally met Steve, your friend Larry’s buddy, and I think I’m in love. We
have
to date these guys. We’ve been putting them off for weeks.”

She pulled a mug from her desk drawer, poured boiling water over an herbal teabag, and stirred in a spoonful of honey.