Queen of the Underworld (22 page)

“The curmudgeon and his water bill,” recalled Bisbee. “But you nailed him with that last sentence. Though you weren’t happy about the way the copy editors chopped up your paragraphs. How many stars for that story?”

“Two, I think.”

“Only two?”

“Yes, because, let’s face it, it was a scrap flung at a cub reporter. But there’s another aspect of it that I’d give myself five for.”

“And what aspect is that?” Bisbee was looking amused.

“Norbright was standing behind me, eavesdropping. I could tell he’d been impressed, because afterwards he complimented me, only I can’t remember what he said. I never can seem to remember my compliments.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Bisbee. “Given your punishing standards for yourself.”

“Well, but I award myself five stars for earning his respect on that one occasion.”

“He’s impressed with you altogether.”

“What makes you think so?”

“He told me so a few minutes ago, when I was in there with him and Feeney.”

“Why don’t
you
stop punishing me now and tell me what your news is.”

“You don’t want to hear your compliment from Lucifer first?”

“I’m dying to. I’m just trying to exacerbate my chronic ailment.”

“Lucifer said, and I quote verbatim, ‘Emma has a great facility with words and applies herself ferociously. If she keeps it up, we’ll make a real newspaper gal out of her.’ ”

“Thank you.
Now
will you tell me your news?” Something about Norbright’s compliment was less than pleasing, but I would figure it out later.

“They’re sending me to open a new bureau in Pompano Beach. Ever hear of it?”

“Sure.” I would look it up later.

“There’s only a weekly up there now, but the place is growing. The
Star
bought the weekly and the building and I’m going to be bureau chief.”

“Oh, Bisbee. Congratulations.”

“You think it’s good news, then?”

“Don’t you?”

“As I said, commensurately so. Kicked upstairs to the boondocks. My reward for being a good soldier. Like getting promoted to sergeant when you’re not officer material.”

“But couldn’t a bureau chief be considered an officer?”

“Not in this case, the timing’s wrong. I’ve been in Miami too long for this move to be a compliment.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The normal drill is they start you off in the main office and see where you fit. If you’re officer material, you stay here and move up. Or you go to the Washington bureau and come back, like Lucifer did. If there are gaps in your training, you get sent to one of the smaller state bureaus after a few months and learn your trade there. Some grow and make it back to the main Mecca, and some don’t.”

“What happens to the ones who don’t?”

“They rot in the bureaus till they retire or get the sack. If you want to know the truth, Emma, when Feeney and Norbright called me into their sanctum this morning, I was positive I was getting the sack.”

“Having your balloon string cut after being deputy city editor.”

“You got it. I’m going to have the key lime pie one last time. Will you join me?”

“No, thanks.”

“Another Coke, then?”

“Yes, please. How soon will you be leaving for Pompano Beach?”

“I’m driving up this afternoon. I’m booked into a motel until I find out what my wife wants to do.”

“What do you mean?”

“She likes Miami. She’s fixed up the house exactly the way she wants it. She might choose to stay on. In that case, I’d get myself an apartment on the beach in Pompano and come home for weekends. Might spiff up our marriage, having some time apart. Not that we hate each other, but things aren’t what they once were. And who knows? Having all that time to myself at night might force me to make a start on my Great American Novel.”

“Do you . . . have an idea for it yet?”

Bisbee’s “last piece” of key lime pie arrived along with more steaming black coffee and my Coke.

“I’ve had the entire novel written in my head for the last fifteen years. With most of the periods and commas in place.”

“But how—?” I was not only nonplussed but envious. “I can’t
imagine
carrying around a completed novel in your head without writing it down!”

Nodding in agreement, Bisbee attacked his pie.

“I mean, it would be like being notified you’d won a prize and refusing to go pick it up, or something,” I went on.

“That’s a pretty good analogy. But what if you weren’t sure you’d like the prize once you saw it?”

“But if you have it all pictured in your head, you ought to
know
whether you’d like it. You really do have the whole thing completed in your head?”

“It’s not long, only about forty thousand words. It all takes place in a single summer evening. From the point of view of a nine-year-old boy whose mother dies while he’s outside catching fireflies in a jar.”

“Did—are parts of it autobiographical?”

“Everything from the fireflies to the dance music on the radio next door. It’s very lyrical. In fact, it’s perfect. The only trouble is, James Agee got his written down first. And it was his father, not his mother, who died.”

“Well, if I were you”—I decided to ignore this latest attempt to pull the rug out from under himself—“I would check into that Pompano motel and start writing mine down this very afternoon.”

“And if I were you, I might do that very thing,” replied Bisbee, smiling broadly.

“Does it have a title?”

“It’s called
August,
” he said quietly, rounding up the last vestiges of pie with the underside of his fork. Having chewed and swallowed the final morsels, he pushed the plate aside. “Now, tell me, Emma, how this ‘ideal you’ would have ‘done more’ with your meeting with Ginevra Brown.”

“Well, I mean, there’s so much more to be done, isn’t there? Ever since we were at Walgreens last time and you told me about Lucifer’s ‘Queen of the Underworld’ series, I haven’t been able to get her out of my imagination. Doesn’t that make her still a good story? You yourself said at the hospital that I might get a human-interest sidebar to the tornado out of it, don’t you remember? You said, ‘There are still folks who’ll remember her.’ You even said you were throwing me a plum.”

Bisbee sipped his coffee. “Let’s see if I can account for what kind of plum I had in mind. Okay, you’re hard on yourself, so I’m going to be hard on you, too. Here’s the ‘plum,’ the ideal sidebar, the most you could have done with it: a five-inch, one-column sidebar whose main gist would have been that the notorious young madam who six years ago queened it over the local headlines, and was now married to a doctor, was in Jackson Memorial Hospital for her third overdose in as many years. The tornado upstaged her, but that wouldn’t need to be put into words. The fact that it was a sidebar would be enough for readers to see the irony. Readers who remembered, that is.
Sic transit notitia
and so on.”

“But that’s more or less what was in the paper,” I said. “Only I didn’t write it, I just called it in, and that Vince on the desk slapped something together. He expected more, too. The thing that gets me is there
was
so much more. It was a real interview, I kept waking her up, like you said to. We talked about Norbright—she said he looked like Cornel Wilde—and about that Biscayne Academy. I told her my aunt Tess had gone there, too, and she and Tess share the same hairdresser. And we talked about Miss Edith, the woman who had groomed her, not knowing what she was grooming her for, and she even recited some poetry with her eyes closed. ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci.’ ”

“Keats.”

“Yes, and then Dr. Brown showed up and there wasn’t time to shape it into anything.”

“Look, Emma, let’s say you’d had another hour to shape it into something. Based on what you’ve told me, how much of that something could the
Star
have printed? Think about it. Could there be an angle you’ve overlooked here?”

“You mean about lawsuits and all?”

“For a start.”

“I considered that. The challenge would be finding a way to tell the intimate story beyond the Norbright series, without violating anybody’s rights. If I were a
Star
reader—I mean one who remembered the series—I would
adore
a follow-up. What’s her life like now, when she’s not taking the overdoses? Does she miss the Palm Island years, all the excitement of being with the other girls, the men arriving in their evening clothes, or sometimes docking their own yachts behind the mansion? And that whole transformation story of how a girl from Waycross trained with the debutantes at Edith Vine’s academy and outshone them all.”

“How do you know she outshone them all?”

“Tess told me. Miss Edith confided to Tess that Ginevra had more grace and beauty than all those clumsy debutantes put together. Miss Edith was crushed by all the publicity of the trial and the series. Tess said it killed her. It’s a shame, because I really would have liked to interview Miss Edith as well.”

“Make it up, then.”

“You mean, like fiction?”

“You should see your face. As if I’d suggested you rob a bank. Why not? Pursue your fascination while it’s hot. Just don’t expect to have it run in the
Star.
”

“At the hospital Ginevra told me she wished she’d had a chance to tell her side of the story to Miss Edith. How I would have loved to eavesdrop on that conversation!”

“Eavesdrop to your heart’s content. Satisfy your curiosity. It won’t be a waste of your time. The simple act of getting it down on paper will develop your writing skills.”

Look who’s preaching getting it down on paper, I thought.

Bisbee, who of course had read my face, looked guilty, then had the grace to laugh. “I’m going to miss our talks, Emma. Both of us enjoy going into things.”

“I’m going to miss them, too,” I said, really meaning it.

13.

A
S
I
LIMPED HOMEWARD
on the pavement that was rapidly eroding my only pair of heels, I resolved to take my first plunge into the Julia Tuttle’s pool, even though the sky had clouded over again. But was I up to offering Lídia the chance to scrutinize my figure in the faded St. Clothilde’s racing suit? I decided I was. Going down on the elevator I could wear Paul’s black silk dressing gown, then I could slip it off at the edge of the pool. But what about footwear? I had no sandals; my Bass Weejun loafers would have to suffice. I was not going to let Alex’s rabidly groomed mother keep me from the pool.

Bisbee’s lunchtime revelation about his entire novel languishing up there in his head was scary. I must never let such a thing happen to me. And his abrupt departure had left me a bit disoriented. After lunch, I had ridden with an elderly photographer to do the profile of the weather lady amid all her meteorology gear and afterwards cranked out eight inches of copy with a lead that made Rod Reynolds smile.

When it rains, Martha Seawell looks out the window and says stoically, “Hmmm . . . low-pressure area.”

Late in the afternoon some news had come clacking over the wire from our Washington bureau that made me dash for my notepad. There was a proposal that Congress levy a special tax on Cuban sugar exports and set this money aside in a fund to reimburse owners who didn’t get fair value for their sugar plantations. But while copying down the story, I realized that the fund would be for American landowners only. Shit. How I would have loved being the bearer of good tidings, hot from the
Star
’s teletype machine, to the usurped Ocampos.

Alex was behind the front desk, frowning over a book. The smile that transformed his earnest, square-chinned countenance when he looked up and saw it was me was like a scented bath of approval just waiting for me to step into. I do not need to do one single thing more today to earn points, I told myself.

“Pool’s closed?” I asked, seeing the sign at the entrance.

“Until seven. My mother has been very busy. Come back at seven and you will find tapas out by the pool, also illegal drink until we get our license, and a Cuban band that Lídia hired off the street. Also, it seems she has invited every Cuban she met today.”

“What’s the book?” As I tapped the spotty old tome I realized my nails needed redoing. Especially with Lídia on the scene.

“A Galician cookbook belonging to Marisa Ocampo’s grandmother. I’m making a list of tapas. Lídia wants to have a rotating selection each evening; they’re like canapés.” He passed across the pink telephone-message pad on which he had been writing. “Here is tonight’s menu.”

“ ‘Huevos rellenos,’ ”
I read aloud in my best accent. “
‘Almendras fritas, ensalada de pimiento y pepino, jamón serrano con quesos . . .’
It all sounds lovely, but unfortunately my Spanish isn’t good enough to connect me with any pictures of food.”

“I shall translate,” said Alex indulgently, proceeding to roll out the Spanish in his haughty Castilian, followed by the descriptions in English: “Deviled eggs, spiced fried almonds, roasted red peppers and chopped cucumbers in garlic and oil, cured Serrano ham with cheeses, and peasant bread. On Monday they will deliver the gas
estufa
on wheels and then there will be hot tapas cooked out by the pool—shrimp fritters and spiced meatballs and so on.”

“But who is making all these tapas?”

“Lídia and the Ocampos and any of the guests Lídia can enslave. Enrique opened the cans, young Luisa peeled the eggs and helped Marisa roast the peppers in the kitchen range, and Lídia oversaw the chopping and told her stories about dodging bullets and making sandwiches for the Loyalists during the Spanish War. If you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself in her assembly line.”

“Oh, I don’t mind a little chopping for a good cause.”

“What kind of day did you have, Emma?”

“Nothing spectacular. I did a story on a lady meteorologist and went to lunch with a colleague who’s being sent to Pompano.”

“I’m glad to hear you had lunch. You mustn’t skip meals.”

“I’ll miss old Bisbee. But it’s a promotion, even if he does have to leave Miami. Pompano is growing so fast that the
Star’
s opening a bureau there and he’ll be the chief.”