Garden of Evil (2 page)

The detective's cell phone rang again, at the precise moment that a bottle, hurled from the crowd, exploded against the pavement.

The crowd surged forward. Cops held the line as the sounds of screams and breaking glass galvanized the dealer still lying in the street. Despite an IV in one arm and a splint on the other, he suddenly bucked, kicked, and fought. A medic tumbled back, striking his head on the pavement. Others struggled to subdue the patient.

Above the growing din came an eerie wail. Another joined it: two wails, unearthly yet human sounds, working their way ever closer through the crowd. Ojeda's eyes took on the haunted look of a hunted man.

“You know what that is,” he said flatly.

I had a pretty good idea.

“Our backseat passenger accidentally blows away his big brother, then runs,” the detective said. “Where?”

“Home to Mama,” I said. “To tell his version of the bad news.”

“And what happens next?”

“Mama and the rest of the family rush to the scene to see if it's true.”

Our eyes caught. The detective trotted back to the Buick. “Take it, take it, take it! Go, go, go! Geditouta here!” He kicked at a back tire.

The tow truck operator moved faster than I have ever seen him, glancing over his shoulder as the wails drew closer.

“Don't tape those blankets anywhere we could find
prints,” Ojeda barked. “Okay, roll it, roll it, roll it! Before we have a major cha-cha here.”

The truck's motorized flatbed slid back at a 30-degree angle. The ramp dropped, the cable grew taut, the motor groaned, and up, up, and away, just as the crowd parted for a heavyset middle-aged woman and a younger heavyset clone leading a pack of family members loping toward us, their wails a mournful tremolo as they ran.

Time to return to the office. I retreated to my T-Bird and drove into the soft and moist early evening as pink clouds drifted in a sapphire sky and the neon of South Beach glowed rosy across the bay. My neck felt stiff and my right eye twitched uncontrollably. This was the third story I had worked on in a long and troubled day, but the first exclusively my own.

Dead Dominican stowaways, three of them, had been discovered shortly before dawn, their voyage of hope ended in a dark and airless cargo hold deep in the bowels of a freighter off Government Cut. At noon, two customs agents routinely boarded a rickety vessel docked on the Miami River. As they did, more than one hundred and fifty panic-stricken illegal Haitian immigrants burst out and fled in all directions. Some leaped over the side into the water, others pounded through a dockside restaurant, snatching food from the plates of startled diners as they ran, scattering to the four winds. Overwhelmed, caught by surprise, police and customs captured only a few. The city and the river swallowed the rest.

So many people on the run, risking their lives to reach Miami. What would readers think, I wondered, as they perused their papers over their morning coffee? Would they think at all? Or would they be too busy getting the kids off to school, gearing up for torturous commutes or morning sales conferences?

The desk had overreacted as usual and overstaffed both stories, with
News
reporters bumping into each other at the scenes. It's not that I mind sharing bylines, I just like
to work alone. Steeling myself against the arctic blast, I stepped into the
News
building's deserted air-conditioned lobby. The effect was as if I had plunged my overheated and sweaty body into a Deepfreeze. This cannot be healthy, I thought, as the elevator rose sluggishly to the fifth floor. My mind raced with all I still had to do. Check the Dominicans' cause of death. More Haitians captured? Did any drown? Any smuggling arrests? And I wanted more information on Wanda, the driver, his brother, and the dealer. The city directory might help me track witnesses who had seen the Buick's wild ride or suffered property damage from it.

“Britt, you weren't out in that heat all afternoon, were you?” Ryan Battle asked softly, his brown eyes registering shock and concern.

Ryan has the face and gentle soul of a poet, too kind and compassionate to be a reporter, which he is. He works general assignment and features at the desk behind mine.

“Yes, I was.” I swept aside the mail and messages on my desk.

“How come?” He looked and sounded so innocent.

“What do you mean, how come?” I snapped impatiently. “Covering the news, doing my job. How was your day?”

“Way too hot to be out there, Britt,” he said seriously. “I've been working on stories I could cover by phone.” His snowy white shirt looked immaculate, his grooming perfect. “They released the new tourism statistics today, and the state candidates filed their financial reports.”

“Silly me.” I slapped a palm to my forehead. “Now why didn't I think of that? I could have asked everybody to fax me press releases. But, oh, that's right, I forgot, I'm a journalist.”

No answer. I resisted the impulse to turn and face the wounded expression in those soft spaniel eyes. In my mind's eye I saw the scar on his forehead left by a brick hurled through the windshield when we covered the riot.

Bobby Tubbs, the assistant city editor in the slot, was impatiently waving me in his direction.

“Where the hell have you been all this time?” His chubby cheeks puckered with annoyance. “Howie's already gone, and we need new leads on the Haitian and Dominican stories for the state.”

“I was at that other scene. I called you,” I said.

“An accident?” He looked exasperated.

“Yes…involving a headless driver who careened a mile through the city with three live passengers, if you count the guy dangling out the back window.”

Tubbs frowned. “We're really right for space. We've got Ryan's tourism piece, and Miriam's out on a breaking story, a nursing home being evacuated because the air-conditioning died.”

“People lived in Miami before air-conditioning,” I groused. “Didn't anybody ever hear of fans?”

Tubbs scrutinized my sweat-stained visage, wary, as though—maddened by the heat—I might be dangerous. “That was when everybody who could afford it left for the summer, before they paved all the green space and made it hotter.”

He pulled up the local page layout, studied his computer screen, and shook his head. God forbid that breaking news should interfere with the layout for his plans.

“Maybe we can fit something in, but keep it tight, tight, tight. There's no space.”

I stalked back to my desk, head aching, feeling weary and unappreciated. I finished everything else, then called Ojeda at headquarters.

Between us we put it together. The love story of Wanda and Bucky began when they met in rehab. Their relationship, short though it was, had obviously outlived any rehabilitative effects of the program. When Wanda borrowed her mother's new car to drive to a “doctor's appointment,” she had neglected to mention Bucky, his brother—or the shotgun. Wanda's mother, a nice lady, Ojeda
reported sadly, was raising Wanda's two toddlers. That was why she worked midnights. And her limited auto insurance covered only immediate family members with valid licenses. Bucky did not qualify on either count; his license had been revoked after his last arrest. The younger heavyset woman who had arrived at the scene with Bucky's mother was not the dead man's sister, as I had presumed. She was his wife, mother of his five children, and Wanda's bitter rival.

“Shoulda seen 'em go at each other,” Ojeda said. “It was bad.”

Frankie, Bucky's brother, had been spotted downtown, on line at the Greyhound bus station. He ran again but cops tackled him on Northwest Second Avenue, though not before he darted through four lanes of traffic, causing a three-car crash.

I trotted up to the city desk to report the new information. “Okay.” Bobby barely glanced up from his editing screen. “I found a hole for it. But make it brief. Two grafs tops. No more than seven lines.”

As I stomped off in a snit, he called after me.

“Britt, there's a bulletin, a wire story outa Shelby County, upstate. I'm sending it to your mailbox. You might be interested.” I ignored him.

Trimmed to bare bones, my story still came in at three times his specified length. It's harder to write short than long, especially with so much information. As he edited it, I peered over Bobby's shoulder, arguing as he eliminated every human, ironic, or remotely interesting detail.

 

I called my friend Lottie Dane, who was back in photo after shooting the nursing home evacuation. “Thanks a lot,” I said. “You and Miriam managed to push my story off local and into the brieflys.”

“Sorry, Britt, but you shoulda seen all the poor old folks, poor thangs. Hell-all-Friday, they are
us
someday. I jist saw what we have to look forward to. It ain't purty.”

I always count on Lottie, the best friend I have, to cheer me up. Despite all she has covered, wars and famine, earthquakes and volcanoes—even Jonestown—she is indefatigably positive, always up. Tonight she did not sound like her usual high-spirited self.

“What's wrong, Lottie? What is it?”

She sighed. “Jist somethin' I married.”

Long divorced, she never discusses her ex. “Look,” I said, “I'm too tired and disgusted to go right home. Let's go for a drink when you get off.” Something tall and cold with a twist of lime shimmered miragelike in my mind. “We can talk.”

“Okay,” she said, “but I've still gotta soup the film for that Sunday special section.”

“I'll go through my mail and messages till you're ready. Hurry up,” I said.

I sorted the mail. Why are people with the least legible handwriting the most prone to scribble lengthy letters?

To be perfectly honest with you
, a piece of jail mail began, confirming my theory that this phrase almost always precedes a lie,
I was always threatening to kill Charlene—but I never, ever, really seriously meant it.

I knew the case. Charlene had dialed nine-one-one, screaming that her ex-husband had a gun and was breaking into the house. Shots, screams, and the line went dead. Police arrived and found her rolled up in a rug he was trying to fold into the trunk of his Toyota—more proof that restraining orders are only paper and don't stop bullets.

Despite his guilty plea, he now claimed in a spidery hand that he'd been framed. I tossed it aside. A mauve envelope, good vellum stock, was addressed in an attractive and legible feminine hand.

Please! You have to help me, the letter began. Somebody is trying to kill me. I have nowhere to turn. The police won't listen. No one will. There have been several attempts. I fear they'll succeed next time.

I'm frightened and alone. I don't want them to get away with my murder.

She signed it
Althea A. Moran.

Her name had never appeared in the newspaper, according to our library data base. I reread the note. Another paranoid reader? A lonely senior craving attention? The address was Coral Gables, an upscale bedroom community. I reached for the phone, then hesitated. It was after midnight, when calls are usually bad news or emergencies. One's upcoming murder should qualify, I thought, and punched in the number.

I hoped the bleat of a busy signal meant she was alive and well.

The next letter was also brief and to the point.

I have a friend who is writing, or rewriting, the Bible. You can help him do it. He also needs a wife. You are it. Send me your home address as soon as possible.

Lottie called to say she was on her way out to the newsroom. “Listen to this,” I said, and read it.

“Wouldn't hurt to meet the fella,” she drawled.

“For Pete's sake, Lottie, he's rewriting the Bible!”

“I know men with hobbies a whole lot worse.”

I tidied my desk, snatched up my purse, then noticed a nagging signal flashing in the corner of my computer screen, a message, the wire story Tubbs had sent. I hit the key and scrolled through it.

I read it twice, questions flooding my mind. Was he wearing a vest? Where was he hit, and why was her identity unknown if he had arrested her? Cop killers are rarely female. When they are, they rarely get away.
Who are you?
I wondered.
Where are you? What's your story?

W
E FOUND A SMALL TABLE IN THE DARK AND
crowded back room at the 1800 Club and ordered drinks.

“Got a picture?” Lottie's bright red hair was long, wild, and unruly. She wore blue jeans, hand-tooled leather cowboy boots, and an L. L. Bean cotton shirt.

“Picture?” I asked.

“Damn straight, of that Bible-writing bridegroom, the one you're 'sposed to marry. He a stud muffin?”

“No picture, but I seriously doubt he's a stud muffin and don't plan to find out.” I complained at length about Tubbs's hacking my story, then asked about Lottie's ex.

Her freckled face drew into a frown. “Guess I jist let it git me down.” She jabbed at the ice in her newly arrived drink with a stirrer. “The man never changes. Every coupla years he decides that, doggone, I was the true love of his life! Keeps insistin' we were meant to be together.”

“Nice,” I said. “Considering how most men feel about ex-wives, that should be an ego boost. Why are you bummed?”

She inhaled the first sip of her frozen margarita, closed her eyes, licked her lips, and sighed. “Cuz sometimes I'm afraid he's right, and if he is, jist shoot me now. With a man like him, you haul ass and don't look back.”

“Maybe he's changed. Some people do, you know.”

She shook her head vigorously. “He's the back end of bad luck. Can't settle down. Always off on some new crusade, some new adventure. Feels like fun at first, but it gits old fast. Ain't no future in reliving the past. We git together, it always ends the same way, like the battle of the Alamo, with jist as many casualties. He's wild; a-course that's his most excitin' feature. Known each other all our lives but, like Peter Pan, he never grew up. Wasn't easy, gettin' over that man,” she said, eyes sad. “I'll be go-to-helled if I'm gonna do it agin. Speaking of men, when will yours be back in town?”

“Next week.” I smiled. Miami Homicide Captain Kendall McDonald was attending a ten-week management seminar in Washington, D.C. Our on-and-off romance was on and red hot at the moment.

“We talk every night; he writes every day, swears he misses me
mucho.
We're
muy simpatico
,” I said wistfully, “when we're not together. But this time, Lottie, I think it's really serious.” Sipping my Dubonnet over ice, I recalled the wire story. “Hear about the sheriff up in Shelby County? Shot dead with his own gun, supposedly by a woman. She got away.”

“Lover's quarrel?” Lottie was always quick to link sudden death to sex. Most often she was right.

“Didn't sound like it. Wire story said he'd apparently arrested her. She's young, teens or twenties. He's a grandfather.”

“Musta got careless,” Lottie said.

“Yeah. Never let anybody take your gun, that's the first thing they teach rookie cops. Wonder what the heck happened?”

“Got a notorious speed trap up there,” she said. “Nailing tourists comin' off the interstate is a major source-a local revenue.”

“Maybe she got stopped, had drugs in the car, or was
drinking. What on earth could have made her go for his gun, then use it? She must be sorry now,” I said.

“Maybe not.” Lottie shrugged. “Maybe she's evil, somebody born bad.”

“No way,” I said. “Nobody is born bad. All babies start out innocent. Other people shape them, outside influences turn them into something dangerous and violent.”

“I've seen it,” she insisted, shaking her head. “Some are born that way. They do bad things because it's what they do. They like it. No other reason.”

No point arguing, I thought, realizing I was hungry. “She headed south, according to the story.” I squinted at the menu in the dim light. “Could be on her way here right now. Just what we need, another cop killer.”

“Shelby County's a long way off,” Lottie said. “And you know how cops are when one of 'em gits shot. Doubt she makes it this far. More'n likely she's wearing metal bracelets by now.”

 

It was late when I drove home, fortified by a sandwich and a salad. The temperature was stuck at 90, the humidity smothering when I got out of the car. The surf pounded the sandy shoreline just a few blocks away, but no hint of a sea breeze stirred. I took out my key, walked through the quiet courtyard, and paused to gaze up at the Big Dipper hanging in place, its bowl pointed toward Polaris, the North Star.

Somewhere out there, beneath that star-spangled black velvet stretch of sky, a woman was on the run, hunted-not in handcuffs. Somehow I knew it.
Where are you?
I wondered.
Are you scared and alone? What are you thinking out there?
My skin tingled with an odd sensation; perhaps it was the drinks, the heat, or both, but I felt connected, as though sensing her presence. I could almost hear her breathing.

A sudden movement, a rustling in the dark, startled me. A figure watched from the shadows of the palms bordering
the building. “Who is it?” I demanded, instinctively taking a step back.

“Didn't mean to frighten you, Britt.”

I breathed again in relief. My landlady, Mrs. Goldstein, age eighty-one.

“What's wrong?” I asked, voice hushed. “What on earth are you doing out here at this hour? Where's Mr. Goldstein?”

“Sleeping. But I couldn't.” She lowered her voice. “It's the water restrictions. The banana trees, you know how they need water. They're burning up.”

The stream from the hose she had dropped trickled into the scorched grass. The woman had sneaked out like a thief in the night to douse her little banana grove. “I'm conserving water in every other way,” she said, “but you said yourself, they're better than supermarket bananas.”

They are. My only reservation was that they exploded into perfect ripeness simultaneously, like bomb blasts at foreign embassies, resulting in an overwhelming fallout of banana bread, cake, shakes, splits, and puddings along with bananas frozen, fried, and chocolate-coated.

“Here.” I groped for the hose in the wet grass and picked it up. “I'll finish. Listen,” I whispered, “if you water at dawn, just before daylight, who will know? And if the water police swoop down, I promise to bail you out.”

I hugged her, sent her inside, soaked the trees, then hung the hose on the side of the building. Inside my apartment, the light winked on my answering machine.

“Call me when you get in, babe. No matter how late. Miss you.”

McDonald answered on the first ring.

I began to fill him in on the heat and Miami's news stories of the day, but he interrupted with an important question. What was I wearing? Being a basically truthful person, I had to tell him I had cranked up the air conditioner to its coldest setting and stripped down to nothing in front of it. We talked for a long time.

 

I forced myself to walk Bitsy early next morning before the fiery sun rose too high and the pavement grew too hot for her little paws.

A tiny white mop of a poodle, she is delighted to go anywhere, at any time, no matter what the weather. Her original owner, my friend Francie, used to smuggle Bitsy onto the midnight shift, to ride shotgun in the passenger seat of a Miami patrol car.

Billy Boots, the cat, normally trailed us at a discreet distance, but today he watched from the shade of the frangipani tree outside my door.

I glared at the pitiless blue sky, willing it to rain. My senses felt numb, my body sluggish, as though the unrelenting heat had shriveled the circuitry in my brain like Mrs. Goldstein's banana trees.

Bitsy, at the end of her lead, lunged fiercely at lizards, as I fantasized about McDonald and what our life might be like if we merged. Would Bitsy get along with Hooker, McDonald's old hound dog? The temperamental Billy Boots might pose more of a problem. I envisioned us all in a house shaded by trees and pink hibiscus, maybe even a pool, and my T-Bird parked next to his Jeep Cherokee. Was I hallucinating, still dazed from phone sex the night before, or had I begun to believe for the first time that it really could happen? The old obstacles remained. I could not give up my job anymore than he could his, but perhaps we were finally ready to resolve the conflicts, or at least hammer out a way to coexist with them.

I studied the morning paper over Cuban coffee and an intoxicatingly perfumy mango sliced into cold, crisp cereal. The Dominican and Haitian stories, with their group bylines and more staff credits at the bottom, got solid front-page play. My story was buried back inside the local section with no byline. Brieflys don't warrant them. Still frustrated, I had to admit the headline was an eye-catcher:

HEADLESS DRIVER CRASHES AFTER WILD MILE RIDE

By far the best work in the paper were the page-one photos accompanying the story of the nursing home evacuation. They focused in tight on the eyes of bewildered and frail seniors, heat-exhausted and frightened, being spirited into an uncertain night by strangers whisking them away from all that was familiar. The credit line read
Lottie Dane/News Staff.
Damn, she is good, I thought.

The story on the slain sheriff ran unchanged on the state page. No late-breaking developments.

I showered, dressed in cool blue cotton, and sipped my second coffee while making telephone rounds of Miami, the Beach, the county, and Hialeah police. The last had a 10
A.M.
press conference scheduled.

“What's it about?” I asked Camacho, the public information officer.

“Just get over here.” His voice dropped to a confidential pitch. “You're gonna like this one.”

“Gimme a hint,” I said, “to tell my editors.”

“The chief told me not to get into it, just tell everybody to be here.”

I hate guessing games. “Okay,” I said, “is the chief quitting? Is it about demotions? Oh, it must be about that big internal affairs investigation.”

“What big internal affairs investigation?” He sounded alarmed. “You hear something?”

“Never mind. They told me not to get into it.”

“Britt! Goddamn!”

“Is it about a homicide? Did it happen during the night?”

“Nope.”

“An arrest?”

“You're getting warm.”

“In an old case?”

“Nah.”

“So it's something new?”

“You're on target.”

Bigger than a breadbox? Smaller than a semi truck?
This game was getting old fast. But maybe it was something major, I thought, interest piqued. “The detectives at the press conference. Will they be from homicide?”

“Nope.”

“Robbery?”

“Nope.”

“Sexual battery?”

“Could be.”

He feigned annoyance, pretending to be far too busy a man for this, but I knew he loved it. “They arrested the Silver-Toothed rapist?”

“Nope.”

“The Alysian Lakes Rapist? The Pillowcase Rapist? The I-Ninety-five Rapist?”

“Nope, nope, nope,” he shot back, rapid-fire.

“Another rapist?” I suddenly felt queasy to the core at how many predators roam free.

“Not exactly. But you'll like this one, Britt.”

I didn't. Lottie also attended, crouched near the podium for a good shot. After the usual half-hour delay for TV crews to untangle their wires and set up their lights, the sexual battery commander announced an arrest.

The “subject,” he said, in the usual stilted policespeak, was accused of impersonating both a medical doctor and his own patient. Lottie stopped shooting as the details unfolded, wrinkled her nose at me, and slowly crossed her eyes.

The suspect had been calling hospitals and nursing registries, identifying himself as a physician and hiring private-duty nurses for his “patient.” The “doctor” told the nurses he had prescribed sexual gratification as an important part of his patient's therapy.

The “patient” asked his nurses to fondle him “for therapeutic purposes,” per doctor's orders. A new nurse had reported his repeated requests for rectal exams to her supervisor, who found no record of the doctor. A police investigation confirmed that “doctor” and “patient” were
one and the same. They sought publicity to bring other victims forward.

The pale and pudgy suspect smirked through the photo op, peering at the press through thick glasses as he was marched in handcuffs to a police van en route to the county jail.

“Don't he make you glad you're single?” Lottie muttered in the lobby.

He did, and I met yet another reason at Miami police headquarters: recently reelected City Commissioner Sonny Saladrigas. It was a quiet news day. The entire county seemed drugged into inertia by the heat—except for Saladrigas.

He paced back and forth across the lobby, glad-handing cops and passersby and ranting at his political enemies. They included the newspaper, reporters, and anybody else who dared question his dubious campaign tactics, his padding the city payroll with relatives and cronies, and his purchase of luxurious furniture for his city hall office while Miami was going broke.

“I have a story for you!” he announced, eyes probing my breasts. Sonny was slightly overweight, with a receding hairline. He wore too much gold and diamond jewelry and, despite his expensive wardrobe, always managed to look like an unmade bed.

“Write this, write this down,” he commanded, standing too close as he launched into a tirade accusing his city hall adversaries of stealing his office furniture and forcing him into the lavish new expenditures for which he was being criticized.

Same old stuff. He had a list of suspects and was insisting on a major investigation, police reports, surveillances, and searches. A waste of taxpayer money, but he would get them, though the cops knew it was all balderdash. The chief serves at the will of the city commission and Sonny was a commissioner. He had even been vice mayor.

“Why do I never see you at city hall?” he breathed in my face.

“Because I cover the police beat.” Truth was, it would make sense if I set up shop at city hall. The crime rate there was probably higher than anyplace else in the city. Miami's politicians regularly stole more than desperadoes with guns.