Miami Midnight (2 page)

Gaby felt an embarrassed rush of blood to her face. She knew it was stupid, but returning to Miami after five years working in Europe was like visiting another planet where the inhabitants spoke a baffling, unknown language.
Wired. Snowed. Flying.
Gaby wasn’t so out of touch that she hadn’t heard about the drug traffic in Miami, but she was still shocked. Surely, she told herself, not right out in public. Especially not a model taking part in something like a society fashion show.

From behind her camera Crissette murmured, “Here come the marines to the rescue.”

The three men had rapidly crossed the garden. The tallest, in a magnificent white linen Italian suit, strode unhesitatingly into the pond, grabbed the model under the arms, and hauled her to her feet.

Gaby frowned. “How can you tell that the model was ... uh,
wired
?”

The exquisitely dressed audience broke into a ripple of applause as the tall man wrapped the tablecloth, handed to him by the Neiman-Marcus director, around the dripping model. The redhead smiled fuzzily at him as he blotted the front of her black-and-red outfit with indifferent thoroughness.

“The look,” Crissette said, focusing her Nikon on the man in the white suit. “Like crazy eyes. A friend of mine says crazy eyes are a sure sign. Nonstop talking, like wanting to do and say crazy things. Nobody flies higher than somebody on coke. Sheesh, what a tiger,” the photographer murmured appreciatively as she watched the tall man hoist the model onto dry ground. “He can pull me out of a lily pond any day.”

Abruptly, she lowered her camera to stare at the two squat, copper-colored men wearing beige-and-pink suits and mirror sunglasses. “Two Colombians,” she muttered under her breath. “What are those cats doing here?”

“What tiger?” Gaby asked. There was still so much screaming she could hardly hear. She gazed back down at the pond as Crissette refocused her camera on the man in white. “Oh,” Gaby said, staring. “Who is he, some movie actor? Is that why you keep taking his picture?”

She was thinking she hadn’t seen such blatantly macho male beauty since she’d left Italy. Crissette’s “tiger” was more powerfully built than his Spanish forebears, yet was still fiercely black-browed, fluidly graceful. The mobile curve of his mouth was flattened, at the moment, rather irritably.

Crissette laughed. “Eat your heart out, honey. What you’re looking at is one of south Florida’s great natural wonders. That’s the famous Prince of Coral Gables, James Santo Marin.”

Gaby watched the tall man gingerly brush the soaked front of his expensive suit. Tiger? she thought.
Tomcat
was more like it. In Italy, men as good-looking as that one were bound to be monumentally spoiled. It was almost a tradition. And all of them wanted only one thing from American women, Gaby thought glumly. That, too, was traditional.

The man’s heavy gold wristwatch caught glints of the hot sun. Gaby would bet that under that expensive-looking white silk shirt was a big, flashy gold medallion on a flashy gold chain.

“Coke goes with the scenery in Miami,” Crissette was saying. “You see a chick like that flying down a runway, not even looking where she’s putting her feet, and you know something just went up her nose.” She pointed with her chin. “You see those two Colombian cats in the mirror shades? You don’t think they’re out here just to see the fashion show, do you? They’re probably somebody’s cocaine suppliers.”

Gaby watched the model allow herself to be led away by the fashion director. The Miami in which Gaby had grown up, a slightly seedy resort city in a long decline from its heyday in the forties and fifties, bore almost no resemblance to this baffling present-day megalopolis. But then, as the whole world knew, something had happened. In just a few years the city had become what
Newsweek
magazine called “the new Casablanca,” equated with Paris, London, and Rome. But for a native-born Miamian like Gaby, it was like being a stranger in a strange land.

Miami still had its crushing poverty, and refugees from South America and the Caribbean, including an influx of Haitians, mixed with the city’s own indigenous poor in seething downtown slums. But Miami was also a boomtown for the new Latin American banking industry, an exploding real estate market, and a port for cruise ships that brought a rush of European and American tourists. If Miami’s new glamour had begun with a television show,
Miami Vice
, the myth had quickly become a reality. And, as anyone could see, Miami was doing its best to live up to all of it.

The members and guests of the Coral Gables Hispanic Cultural Society were drifting back to their tables. The dripping redheaded model had disappeared. The handsome man in the white suit was directing the removal of the runway over the lily pond.

“He’s not really a prince,” Gaby said doubtfully.

“The way the chicks act you’d think he was,” Crissette drawled. “Voted Miami’s ‘most eligible bachelor,’ filthy rich, drives a Lamborghini—Look,” she said suddenly, “here comes the Queen Mother, Señora Estancia Santo Marin. And the pale chick in the black dress is the younger sister.” She took a series of grab shots of the women. “Gabrielle, you were born and raised in Miami. Haven’t you ever heard of the Santo Marins?”

Gaby supposed she had. But there were so many exiles in Miami, it was impossible to keep track of them, even the wealthy, socially important ones. Yet the name Santo Marin did ring a bell.

At that moment the man below looked up. His narrowed black gaze passed over the crowd and the press table, then stopped and backed up with a flicker of interest.

“Hey,” Crissette said excitedly, “you should see this cat close up, through the viewfinder. He’s unbelievable! And Gabrielle, you should see him watching you.”

But Gaby had turned away. The
Miami Herald
’s fashion editor, she saw with a sinking feeling, was interviewing the director from Neiman-Marcus. It was probably something she should have thought to do.

“Suppose he comes up here?” Crissette asked. “You want me to try to introduce you?”

Gaby wasn’t interested in James Santo Marin; the macho peacocks she’d known in Italy had been enough for one person’s lifetime. “For goodness’ sake, Crissette, will you stop taking his picture?” She tore her notes and the beginnings of her story off her yellow pad and stuffed them into her purse. “Look, since the fashion show is stalled, why don’t I go look for the chairwoman of this event and do an interview?”

Crissette flapped a thin, graceful black hand at her. “Wait, don’t run off! These Latin dudes go mad for the Grace Kelly look. Gabrielle, he looks definitely interested!”

Gaby knew her “Grace Kelly look” was, at the moment, a sweat-shiny face surrounded by long blond hair that had been exposed for too long to the furnacelike breeze sweeping across Biscayne Bay. “Please, Crissette, I’m working! Now,” she said, looking around, “how do I find the chairwoman of this event?”

“He heads up the family import business,” the other woman persisted, “races a whole stable of power cruisers, wears great clothes—”

“I’ve got enough problems,” Gaby interrupted her, “trying to learn this newspaper job without gorgeous hunks with”—she looked for the coppery men in sunglasses and pastel suits—”sinister friends.”

“Hey, he likes it when you stand up,” Crissette said, unperturbed. “You’ve got a sexy figure, Gabrielle. You just don’t show it off in those clothes.”

The man by the lily pond was standing perfectly still. Without looking in his direction Gaby could feel the impact of his darkly glittering look. She gathered up her purse and stuck her notebook under her elbow, feeling irritated. “Just tell me where you think I can find the chairwoman.”

“Try the main house. I think half this crowd’s gone up to the ladies’ room. Who are you supposed to be looking for?”

Gaby tried not to look in the direction of the lily pond as Crissette began taking the man’s picture again. “Alicia Fernandez y Altamurez,” she said, consulting a scrap of paper. “At least that’s what it says on the press release.”

The main house was nestled in a setting of sculpted lawns and palm trees, a multimillion dollar example of the new-old art deco style that was being publicized as Miami’s own historic look. Smooth white concrete walls and plate glass shone through the tropical greenery, surrounded by an untouched jungle of native palmetto. A decade ago, when Gaby was still in high school, all that had been down this way south of Miami were mangrove swamps and a few mullet fishermen.

A path led through royal and queen palms and flowering oleanders, ending at an asphalt parking lot. Two women in dark-colored silk dresses, wearing almost identical Givenchy toques with fancy nose veils, strolled around a turn of the white shell driveway. A uniformed chauffeur, who had been sitting in a black stretch Mercedes limousine reading a newspaper, immediately discarded the paper, jumped out, and opened the door for them.

Gaby stared at the slender, beautifully dressed women with as much curiosity as they stared back at her. Their large dark eyes, enormous in their heavily made-up, expressionless faces, looked over her rumpled linen jacket, khaki skirt, and low-heeled sandals with the avid, baffled intensity wealthy Latin women reserved for what they regarded as Anglos’ astonishingly ugly clothes.

Gaby was aware Coral Gables was now full of wealthy Latins, some of them multimillionaires, but she hadn’t forgotten the poverty-stricken Cuban exiles of her childhood. Then, one of Havana’s leading neurosurgeons had a job mowing the lawns at the Miami Beach Country Club. A university professor drove a Hialeah taxicab. And the convent-bred society women, once queens of sugar plantations and palatial town houses in Havana, worked as cleaning women or dressmakers. Times had certainly changed. Looking at the elegant women Gaby knew their diamonds were real by the shooting sparks of fire in the bright sunlight. So, apparently, was the heavy string of matched pearls the younger woman was wearing.

She gave them a tentative smile. “I’m looking for Mrs. Fernandez y Altamurez. Could you tell me if this is the way to the main house?”

One woman said something to the other in Spanish, then with a shrug stepped into the huge black limousine. The second woman followed her. The chauffeur slid into the front seat and started the engine.

Gaby realized she’d used the wrong language. “
Donde está el enfrente de la casa
?”

She was fluent in Italian, but her high school Spanish was not great. It was apparently understandable, though, for a hand, decorated with heavy gold rings set with rubies and emeralds, came out of the limousine’s back window and pointed.
That way
.

Before she could acknowledge the help—if it was help—the Mercedes slowly drove forward and disappeared under the trees.

Alicia Fernandez y Altamurez, the chairwoman of the Hispanic Cultural Society’s fashion show, was waiting in a long line of women outside one of the downstairs bathrooms. Gaby interviewed her on the spot as the queue inched forward to the accompaniment of toilets flushing. The hallway where they stood was enclosed on one side by a white stucco art deco cloister. The sun-drenched cactus garden featured a stainless steel abstract sculpture that had recently been photographed for
Architectural Digest
.

Alicia Fernandez was a member of Miami’s longtime pre-Castro Cuban community. The Fernandez family were sixth-generation Floridians. Mrs. Fernandez y Altamurez spoke English with a southern accent, had graduated from Smith College cum laude, and thought she knew Gaby.

“Which Collier are you, dear?” she asked interestedly. “The Miami Shores Colliers or the William Colliers of old Pine View Avenue? A Collier girl went to Ransom Country Day School with my daughter Susan. Was that you?”

“Palm Island,” Gaby murmured. She didn’t miss the quick, perceptive flicker in Mrs. Fernandez’s eyes. Most of Old Miami remembered the extravagant, high-living Palm Island Colliers very well. “I did go to Ransom Country Day School, but only as far as the fifth grade.” If Alicia Fernandez really knew her family, she also knew that would have been about the time Paul Collier had lost most of his money.

To cut short any further conversation about her family, Gaby pushed on with her interview questions. Alicia Fernandez graciously agreed that the crowd was big, that everyone seemed to love the clothes from Neiman-Marcus, and that the Coral Gables Hispanic Cultural Society had made a lot of money. She did not comment on the model’s falling into the lily pond, and Gaby didn’t bring it up.

“Darling, you
are
Paul Collier’s daughter, Gabrielle, aren’t you?” the other woman asked. “I remember your grandfather’s beautiful house. They used to have such magnificent parties there. I read about them all the time in the papers.” There was something in Mrs. Fernandez’s voice that said she wanted to be reassured that things were better for the Palm Island Colliers than she’d heard. “Haven’t you been traveling in Europe?”

Gaby didn’t look up from her legal pad.
My father is dead, and Mother is a drunk
, some perverse inner voice answered,
as nearly all of Old Miami well knows. The money is gone and the house is falling down. That’s why I’m back.

Aloud Gaby only said, “I was working in Florence, doing art research for a professor who was writing a book. It was a job I got my junior year at college.”

“Ah, Italy.” Mrs. Fernandez smiled her disarming smile. “I went to Venice and Rome on my honeymoon.” She gave Gaby an impulsive pat on her arm. “You’re such a pretty girl, Gabrielle. Did you leave a few heartbroken Italians behind?”