Queen of the Underworld (15 page)

I was disappointed, as we entered Biscayne Boulevard, to see everything lit up and business going on as usual. Alex told me he had been playing bridge over on the Beach and had just started back across the MacArthur Causeway when he saw the sky explode above the area of our hotel and then had watched the thing snake its way north as transformers went out in flashes of blue light.

“It was all over in a minute. So fast, and so much lost.” He sighed morosely. “A fitting parallel to my dissolute evening.”

“You’ve been dissolute this evening?”

“I’m in the hole another three hundred.”

We were turning west, onto Northwest Eleventh Street. Must remember directions for when I got my car and could drive myself to assignments.

“But I thought you were playing
bridge.
”

“The people I hang out with would make up a pot if they were playing pin the tail on the donkey.”

“Why do you hang out with them, then?”

“I find them charming, I feel at home in their houses. And they like me.”

His easy use of the charm phrase devalued his compliment to me from the night before and made me want to be mean. “I guess they do like you, seeing as how you leave behind such generous amounts in their pot.”

“I have been known to win on occasion.” He sounded hurt.

“How much have you lost in all?”

“Twenty-two hundred.” The
t
’s exploded like gunshots.

“Good Lord. Do you pay cash or write a check, or what?”

“They’ve been very obliging about taking my IOUs, they know my grandfather is good for it. It’s not like over on the Beach. Everything’s done with chips at that establishment. You pay cash for your chips and when you’re out of cash you go home. No IOUs for your friend Mr. Nightingale. It’s an all-round business arrangement.”

“It sounds to me you’d be safer to stick with Paul and Bev’s all-round business arrangement.”

Your friend.
From now on, it would be “Paul and Bev” out of my mouth every time Nightingale’s came up in conversation with Alex de Costa.

As we approached Jackson Memorial, we found ourselves joining a traffic jam consisting mostly of ambulances and police cars. Alex pulled up as near to Emergency as he could get. “Shall I wait for you, Emma?”

Both ambulance bays were full. On either side of us, vehicles were unloading the injured who could walk. A state trooper escorted a dazed woman with a cut cheek and two barefoot little boys in pajamas up the ramp to the entrance.

“No need, thanks. I don’t know how long I’ll be.” My fingers were already fretting at the notepad inside my purse. I could hardly wait to plunge into the urgency.

“Shall I come back in an hour?”

“I’m not sure where I’ll be.”

“I’ll find you. Promise me, Emma, you won’t be foolish and try to walk back to the hotel.” Assuming the role of my protector.

“Okay.” I was already out of the car and chasing up the ramp after an old man with an amateurishly bandaged head.

“Sir? Excuse me. What happened?”

“I seen the thing coming right up the edge of the bay! Streetlights went out, branches and debris flying all around, next thing I know blood’s spurting out of my skull. Drove myself here.” He seemed elated to be part of the scene, and could hardly contain himself when I started scribbling in the notepad. “You from the press?”

“The
Miami Star.
” I hoped he would not ask to see my press card as I didn’t have one yet.

“Name’s Henry Sprat,
S-p-r-a-t,
just like in ‘Jack Sprat could eat no fat.’ Forty-six Forty-four Ingraham Highway, that’s in Coconut Grove. Widower. My dog’s name is Lola. Beautiful chocolate Lab. Left her home in case they want to keep me overnight. I built a little runway for her so she can go in and out when she has to do her business. She ought to be in the story, too, on account of we were having our evening walk when we seen it coming.”

“Spelled
L-o-l-a
?”

(You see, Mr. Charles P. Rose, some geezers can be downright cooperative with the press.)

“Right you are. Just like in ‘Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.’ ”

Emergency area a disordered hubbub. Tempers rising. The wounded shouting and snatching at nurses rushing past. Stop. Look around and register what is actually going on in front of you before you begin forming sentences in your head. “Bad journalists arrive at the scene with their lead already written,” Dean Ligon had drilled into us in News Gathering Lab.

First thing to register was the confusion and the noise. Screaming children, too many people all demanding attention at once. An overly tanned athletic woman in shorts and sneakers with cuts on her legs and arms snatched at the sleeve of a passing nurse. “Don’t you
understand
? A glass
door
fell on me.”

“Hon, please be patient. I said I’d get you in as soon as I can.”

“I need to be in there with the
injured,
” the woman announced to the general public as the nurse escaped through the swinging doors to the emergency room. I was debating whether to interview her—she looked angrier than she looked hurt—or to brazen my way through the swinging doors behind the nurse in pursuit of more dramatic stories when I spotted Dave Bisbee in his crooked red bow tie leaning over someone on a gurney at the other end of the hallway. I hurried over to report for duty, a tad downcast, I must admit. I had anticipated having the field all to myself.

“Emma,” said Bisbee, “what are
you
doing here?” The woman on the gurney, hooked up to an IV, seemed to be dozing through all the commotion.

“Isn’t it my beat now?”

“Well, yes, in the daytime, when I’m covering for Rod at the desk, but— How did you get here?”

“I caught a ride. I’ve already interviewed two of the wounded.” (Counting my yet-to-be-written-down quote: “ ‘I need to be in there with the injured,’ shouted an angry woman in shorts, grabbing at the arm of a harried nurse.”)

“Well, aren’t you a trouper.” Did I detect a note of resentment? “Anything serious?” Was Bisbee afraid I’d scoop him?

“Just cuts, so far, but—”

“That’s just it!” He seemed relieved. “The ER here at Jackson is virtually a sewing room at the moment, people waiting in line to have their cuts stitched up, but nothing major— Listen, step over here, Emma, we need to talk.”

Bisbee moved me around the corner from the dozing woman with the IV. “The worst casualties are up at North Shore Hospital where the twister
really
hit. I’m headed up there to meet the photographers.”

“Is your contact—Herman Melton—is he around here somewhere?”

“PR people work nine to five, Emma. And Melton lives up in the boondocks of Hallandale. I was on my way out of here a second ago when I happened to glance down at this gurney and thought I recognized the face. I checked the plastic bracelet and sure enough, it’s her. Remember, I told you, that trial Norbright covered, the madam who turned key witness—”

“
That’s
the Queen of the Underworld?”

“Yep. Another suicide attempt, her third, too bad it got upstaged by the twister. Her husband brought her in, the shrink. Soon as they got her stabilized, he went up to North Shore, where they’ve put out a call for more doctors. They’re parking her out here in the hall till they can find a bed. If you’re willing to hang around for a while, you might come up with a nice little human-interest sidebar to the tornado. There are still folks who’ll remember her. Phone it in to Vince on the night desk—you haven’t met him yet—say I said so.”

“What’s my deadline?”

Jiggling with impatience to be off, Bisbee checked his watch.

“Half hour at the most. Call in to Vince now so he can be working with the old clips. Tell him to check ‘Ginevra Snow’ and all the cross-ref files. The other suicides—I mean
attempts
—would be under ‘Ginevra Brown’ or ‘Dr. Brown,’ I think it’s Edwin. Hey, you may have bopped in here just in time for me to throw you a plum, Emma.”

“But what if she hasn’t waked up?”

“Come on, Emma, you’re a reporter. Give her a little nudge.”

A plum or a sop? I wondered as he darted off. Hadn’t he told me in Walgreens that the Queen of the Underworld wasn’t news anymore? He just didn’t want me trailing along with him and divvying up the gorier casualties at North Shore.

Nevertheless, she was my quarry now, this figure who had aroused my imagination from the start, and, after poking my head round the corner to see that she was still in place, I located a pay phone, dialed the
Star
’s number, which I had memorized months ago for just this kind of occasion, and asked to be put through to Vince on the night desk. There was a hold because, as the switchboard operator told me, everybody covering the tornado wanted to be put through to Vince, and then there was a longer wait, after which she asked if it was urgent—if not, Vince said to call back later. I revved myself up into umbrage mode and said I was acting on deputy city editor Dave Bisbee’s orders, he’d given me thirty minutes to get a story, and he needed Vince to pull some files this minute.

Vince came on, sounding surly and beset. But when I snapped out the names and background data with telegraphic economy, he changed his tune and I heard him repeating my orders word for word. He said the story of the ex-madam’s third attempt sounded interesting, a nice contrast to all the smashed storefronts that were coming in.

“The serious casualties are up at North Shore,” I said. “Bisbee’s on his way there now to meet the photographers. You ought to be getting something juicier any second now. But save some space for me. And please. Don’t put me on hold when I call back in thirty minutes.”

Tough and terse. Nice going, Emma. Back to my quarry.

Who was being propped up, none too gently, into a sitting position on the gurney by the same nurse I’d seen escaping the demanding woman in shorts. I approached quietly until I was in hearing range.

“Come on now, Ginevra, hon, can’t have you dozing off like that. Not after we pumped that bellyful of chloral hydrate out of you.”

The figure, propped up like a life-size floppy doll, was doing its best to slide back into the recumbent state.

“Ginevra, that’s a no-no! You want us to have to go back in there with the hose, maybe a bigger one, make sure we got it all?”

“Go away, you sadistic bitch. I remember you from last time. You tried to choke me to death.”

Though slurred and barely audible, the contemptuous diction of the contralto voice thrilled me to the bone.

“Well, I remember you, too, hon. Same time last year. Only
this
year there’s been a major disaster and nobody’s got time to sit with you and keep you from falling asleep.”

“I do,” I said, stepping forward. “I’ll stay with her until Dr. Brown can get back. You’ve got more than you can handle with this crowd.”

The nurse’s face was a study in conflict. “You know Dr. Brown?”

“I do,” I lied. “I’ll be happy to stay here and talk to Mrs. Brown to keep her from falling asleep.”

“H
OW ARE
you feeling?” I asked Ginevra Brown as soon as we were alone.

Though her face was grayish from her recent ordeal, and the hauteur of the slanty, wide-spaced eyes was undermined by puffiness and discoloration, the allure that had been so apparent in the newsprint pictures still emanated from this woman who had just failed for the third time to snuff out her life. My phone call to Vince, and having been put on hold, and then the exchange with the nurse, had eaten a chunk out of my thirty minutes, but at least the patient had been forcibly awakened and was now, I could see from the movements of the smoke blue eyes, making her initial evaluation of me.

“How do you know my husband?”

“Only by reputation.”

“His or mine?”

Quick important choice: she was woozy but her sharpness shone through. I opted for truth and surprised myself with a spurt of eloquence. “You’ve made both of you unforgettable.”

“Ha.” She closed her eyes and slid down on the gurney.

“Please stay awake,” I said.

No response.

For politeness’s sake, I allowed her a few moments of peace. Then the hustle of the emergency room going full volume all around us recalled me to my purpose. This wasn’t charm school, I was a newspaper reporter.

I stepped forward and touched the shoulder of the Queen of the Underworld. Her hospital gown had slipped down on one side, revealing a widely arched clavicle and a spattering of freckles, which for some reason I found moving.

“Please. Try and stay awake.”

The eyelids fluttered open. “What is it to you?”

I removed my hand and risked another flat-out truth. “I’m a reporter on the
Miami Star.
I’ve promised to call in a story about you and it’s almost deadline.”

“Promised whom?”

The refined grammar was undoubtedly the result of Edith Vine’s coaching after Ginevra’s Mafia protector had enrolled her at the Biscayne Academy.

“The city editor.”

“I got on with that dark, shiny one who wrote up my trial. He looked like Cornel Wilde.”

“Lou Norbright.”

“Norbright. Yes. What he’s up to now?”

“He’s still at the
Star.
”

“Haven’t seen his name in an age.”

“He’s risen in power, he’s right below the chief.” On an impulse I added, “You helped him rise.”

“I daresay I did.” Now she sounded like a B actress reading lines from a dated script. “Who did you say you were?”

“Emma Gant. I’m a reporter at the
Star.
”

“Emma Gant.” Her lips parted on the
E,
kissed the
m’
s, then delivered my patronym with a flash of teeth and tongue. I could see her using this sensuous technique with great effect on men. “And what do you wish to report about me?”

“Why did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Take the, you know, overdose.”

She plucked at the IV line. “Why not?” She closed her eyes.

“Please, try to stay awake, Mrs. Brown.”

“Mrs. Brown doesn’t wish to stay awake,” she murmured.

“How about Ginevra, then?”

The eyes opened. “What do you know about her?”