Suitable for Framing (15 page)

Something had happened during the night. The subtle shift from rainy season to winter had begun. The hot moist south-southwest Caribbean winds that soak up even more moisture from the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Everglades had surrendered to northern currents, which had started to push south. Tornadoes spun up and down the coast sinkholes opened in the far north lanes of the Interstate, and the dawn was cool and less humid.

I called Watson's south district number at 5:30
A.M
. She wasn't in yet and there was no news in the search for the twins. I pulled on shorts, my Miami Heat T-shirt and running shoes, clipped my beeper to my waistband, and trotted two blocks to the boardwalk. Jogging the 3.2-mile round-trip was easier than two days earlier, when I had returned with my hair drenched. I ran at a steady pace, as the sea evolved from green to blue to silver under low-flying, fast-moving clouds. I warmed up fast, but other locals wore sweats and one elderly early bird even toddled along swathed in a winter coat. The temperature drop had little effect on the few tourists out that early. Peeled down to their swimsuits, they were hitting the beach as though it were the Fourth of July at Coney Island. They were paying winter rates for a bronze glow and would get it, by God, even if it was really windburn.

The hush before dawn was glorious as I thudded into the homestretch, ocean on one side, oceanfront hotels and their gleaming turquoise pools on the other. Something dark rode in the sky high over a ship on the horizon miles off the coast, perhaps a blimp tethered to the ship below.

I slowed down and another jogger, lean, in his fifties, drew abreast.

“What is that out there?” We both stared.

Occasionally blimps or weather balloons escape the weather stations in the Keys.

“I don't know.” He resumed his pace. “Didn't even notice it.”

No one else seemed to either. Sometimes it seems like that is how I spend my life, I thought, looking for something strange on the horizon. Look hard enough, and it is always there.

I went home and took Bitsy around the block. She felt the weather change too, prancing exuberantly. Then I showered and sliced a tiny banana into my cereal. Thanks to Mrs. Goldstein's green thumb, a cluster of banana trees thrives along the east side of our building, producing hands of fruit so heavy that the trees must be propped up for support. Sweeter and more delicious then any supermarket variety, they have a single drawback. They all ripen at once. What do you do with fifty or sixty ripe bananas? She shares the bounty.

I scanned the paper while eating breakfast. Trish had made front page again with her follow on the Linwood story. She had had a good run with it Coverage would now pass into the hands of the reporter assigned to the courts. I had to admit she had done a hell of a job. My twins story was on local and I winced. Whoever was in the slot had cropped the picture badly, trimming it just beneath their chins as if to eliminate numbers there. It looked like a police mug shot of tiny incorrigibles, as though the accompanying headline should read
ESCAPED INFANTS ON RAMPAGE
. I wondered where they had spent the chilly night.

I took a short cropped jacket to wear over my shirt and slacks and made Rakestraw's office my first stop. I was waiting, dander up, when he arrived, unshaven, harried, and preoccupied.

“Calm down, calm down,” he said. “Everything is fine. Moving along on schedule.”

“Howie tried to call me, Rakestraw. They wouldn't let me get back to him. I don't even know if he's okay.”

“He's fine. Saw him yesterday. There was a hearing, and the judge ordered his evaluation. Once he gets the report he'll place him right into the Crossing. No problem.”

“You should have told me. I would have come to the hearing. I don't want him to feel like I abandoned him. I wanted to tell him that I got his stuff—”

“It was unofficial, in the judge's chambers. If it makes you feel any better, Britt, I'll have them let him give you a call later today. I've got more pressing problems at the moment. Looks like FMJ shot a Brazilian tourist in the ankle last night and took his rental car.”

“Where?”

“Right here in Overtown.”

“What was a tourist doing there?” Overtown's desolate and often explosive inner-city streets are not included in the usual tourist itinerary.

“Claims he was lost. Maybe he was trying to score some dope. Who knows.”

“The heat from city hall and the Chamber of Commerce will give you all the overtime you need.”

“Yeah, but OT won't do us much good unless we can put our hands on that little street slug. This case, however, is different from all the others. FMJ turned eighteen yesterday.”

“Hell of a way to celebrate.”

He opened a fat folder and handed over black-and-white photos of FMJ, front and side views, from a freshly printed stack. “For you,” he said, “hot off the press. This is his first felony as an adult. Put it in the paper, Britt. Run it big.”

“Great! Wish we'd done this weeks ago. How come you didn't answer your beeper last night?”

“Oh, Christ, did you try to get me? I shut it off when I put in the new battery and forgot to turn the damn thing back on.”

“I need your home number,” I said. “The office wouldn't call you, 'cause the chief is in a snit at the media.”

Reluctantly, he recited the number. “But I'd appreciate it if you'd use the beeper if you need to get in touch. My home phone is a last resort, in a real emergency. Okay? Things are tough at home. We've been having some problems, because of the hours and all. The wife wouldn't appreciate any strange women calling right now.”

I promised. Cops' wives endure more than their ration of grief. I always explain who I am and why I'm calling. Sometimes that's not enough.

I checked my own beeper to be sure it was working, in case Watson had news about the twins, and called the office for messages. There were none.

Rakestraw walked out with me on his way to PIO with FMJ's pictures. “Met your friend. She's sure something else,” he said admiringly.

“Who?”

“That other reporter. One that did the story on Linwood. Sure pissed off the chief. Reminds me of you. Said she's a good friend of yours.”

“Well, we didn't grow up together or anything. She's from Oklahoma. Smart as hell.”

“Real friendly. Ran into her in the elevator. Told her how you caught the Fly for us a coupla years ago.”

I smiled fondly at the recollection. A slightly built armed robber who wore big prescription eyeglasses had terrorized small businesses. One victim swore the holdup man looked “like a fly,” with his skinny neck, high-pitched voice, small chin, and those oversize thick lenses. Sure enough, when the police artist finished his sketch, the suspect did resemble a fly. The cops stood around squinting at it, expressing serious doubts as to its accuracy. My editors were equally dubious, but the victims insisted that was him.

We called him the Fly when we ran it. The paper hit the street and phones rang off the hook. Everybody who knew the man knew exactly who we were talking about. Quickly nabbed, he did, indeed, look like a fly. The headline was:
SWAT TEAM CORNERS FLY
. The department had actually even thanked me for my help on that one.

I laughed. “What'd she say?”

He rubbed his whiskers and thought for a moment. “Said she'd like to compete with you on the same story to see who did better. I'd like to see that myself.”

I laughed uneasily, wondering if he had quoted her accurately. “Well, you won't. We're on the same team. We're out to beat the competition, not each other.”

I continued my rounds, rolling into the office about 2
P.M
., an hour before the street deadline. I had FMJ's mug shot and a story on his new victim and felt pretty good.

Bobby Tubbs was in the slot.

“We need to run this guy's picture as big as we can,” I urged.

“Not our job, Britt,” he cautioned. “We're not cops.”

“I know,” I said, exasperated. “But this kid is a one-man crime wave. A time bomb. He drove the hit-and-run car that killed that little boy, and he's the one who's been kneecapping drivers, including several tourists, one of them this morning.”

He curiously scrutinized the picture I had handed him.

“I know it's only a mug shot, but will you try to give it the best play you can?”

“We've got some great art for the street,” he said enthusiastically.

“What?” I picked up a red grease pencil and flipped FMJ's photo over to print his name, Gilberto Sanchez, clearly on the back.

“The babies. The missing twins' reunion with their mother and grandmother. Great stuff.”

I did a double take.

“The twins? They found them? They're safe?”

“Yep, both okay.”

“Who's doing the story?”

“Trish.” His round blue eyes were serene.

“What? That's my story!” I spun around and saw Trish, briskly working at her terminal. “The cops were supposed to call me when they found them.”

Tubbs stared up, bland and innocent. “Guess she got a call.” He shrugged. “You weren't here. You were busy, out on something else anyway.”

I stormed back to Trish's desk, slowing only long enough to check that I had no messages from Watson.

She greeted me with a smile. She wore ice blue, nearly as pale as her gray eyes. “Hi, Britt, I was looking for you. Did you get the age of the babies' grandmother?”

“Forty-two,” I snapped, in spite of myself.

She tapped the numbers onto the screen.

“Trish! That was my story. I was on top of it. Watson was supposed to call me. Why wasn't I called?”

She looked from the screen to me, mouth open in an expression of wonderment “Britt, I didn't know you had dibs on it. You weren't here.” She jerked her fingertips from the keyboard as though it was hot

“Did the desk assign you?” I thought venomously about Tubbs, unable to conceal the hostility in my voice.

“No. I just picked up the city desk phone and it was Annalee Watson. She wanted to let us know the children had been found alive and well. I told Tubbs and he said to run with it.”

“She was supposed to call me, then beep me if I wasn't here.”

“Maybe she lost your number and just dialed the main.” Her voice was meek as she pushed her chair back, as though distancing herself from the story on her screen. “I never would have worked it if I thought you—”

“You saw my story this morning. You had to know I was following it,” I said bitterly.

“I didn't even know when you'd be in.”

“You should have asked!” About to stalk away, I couldn't resist, “Where were they? Who had them?”

“Oh, Britt, it's the neatest story.” She hesitated, realizing those were the wrong words to use in my current state of agitation. “There are tons of kids in that neighborhood, mostly latchkey, a lot of migrant kids raising themselves—and each other.”

Apparently Janice had handed the babies to two little girls, nine and ten years old, to hold. When she went off and didn't come back, the kids eventually took them home to play house. Both households were disorganized, to say the least, and so full of kids of all ages, siblings, cousins, and friends, that no adults paid much attention. The children who cared for the little ones cared for them all. Amazingly, no one had noticed an extra baby or two.

A cop canvassing that morning had asked a child near the store if she had seen the missing babies. She led him to one and pointed out the place where the other had been taken. They were well fed and wearing clean diapers, all due to the care and kindness of children old beyond their years.

A touching, happy ending. Except for me.

“Britt,” Trish said firmly, “you want the story, you take it.”

“Obviously that's impossible, twenty-five minutes from deadline, after you've done all the reporting,” I said, voice tight. “I want you to know that I resent it.”

I stomped off and wrote the FMJ story quickly, pounding the keyboard like it had offended me.

Howie called as I finished.

“Hi, guy, how you doing?” I hit the send button. “Good to hear your voice.”

“I gotta get outa here, Britt.”

“Rakestraw says things are moving along, your stuff is safe in my apartment, Miss Mayberry sends her love. She's baking brownies for when you get to the Crossing.”

“There's a couple of dudes here who run with FMJ.” He spoke so softly I had to strain to hear. “They know me.”

“But they don't know you're gonna testify—”

“Oh, right. They got me all by myself instead of wid everybody else. Whatcha think that tells 'em?”

“You should be out of there and in the Crossing in the next day or two.”

“I don't know, man,” he fretted. “The dudes know me. It's like a telegraph system. FMJ's gotta know by now.”

“What are their names?” I scrawled
Cat Eye
and
Little Willie
in my notebook. “I'll get hold of Rakestraw. Don't worry, he wants you safe and in one piece.”

“Yeah, till I do what he want. What happens then?”

“You finish your education and live the good life.”

“Happy ever after?”

“Sure.”

“Hate being locked up. Wish I had my books.” He sounded miserable. “You should see the books they got here. Nothing.
Moby Dick, The Three Mouseketeers
.”

“Try one, you might like it.”

“What's the matter, Britt? You bummed?”

“The job. A bad day.”

“Somebody got a beef?” He sounded indignant. “Don' let 'em push you around, Britt.”

“No way. How's the food?”

“Regular. I really want outa here.”

“I hear you. But hang in there. Promise me, Howie, that if you have any problems you'll talk them over with me before you do anything. I'll be here for you, I promise.”