Suitable for Framing (5 page)

“You talked to the husband, right?”

I nodded, thinking of Jason Carey.

“How'd you ever get him to open up like that? How they met, the last thing she had said to him that day, all the details about their lives together. It made it so real, the readers must feel like they know them.” She bravely sipped her coffee, barely wincing. I imagined how the cafeteria's muddy brew would taste to a tea drinker who had never tried it.

“Did he know his son was dead when you talked to him?”

“Yeah, the detective had told him.”

“Whew!” She leaned forward, intense. “Did you see the little boy's body? How did he look?”

“Bad.” I stared into my cup. “I knew he was dead. Killed instantly. We were there before the police. In fact we were there when it happened.”

“How in hell did you manage that?”

“Coincidence, bad luck, timing.” I shrugged and thought about all the stories where nothing more than poor timing cost a life. Minor mistakes, like losing your way or a wrong turn become major when a young man with a gun is waiting on the next corner. Oversights as trivial as leaving your car window down, or setting your door ajar as you carry in packages, or walking to a window after mistaking the noises outside for firecrackers—all can prove fatal.

Some risk takers survive life on the edge and achieve ripe old age. Others lead cautious lives but make a single small mistake and die. Some make no mistake at all. What did Jennifer Carey do wrong?

“The detail,” Trish was saying. “How do you ever get all that detail? Like your story about the librarian who had his landlady's head in his freezer with the chicken potpies. You mentioned the icicles hanging from her nose!”

“I talked to the policewoman who opened the freezer for some ice for her Coke.”

“What a surprise.” Her expression was mock gruesome.

“Sure was,” I said nostalgically. “She was killed not long after, but I often wonder if anybody asked how her day had gone when she went home that night. What did she say? What could she say? How can any of them ever explain to normal people what it's like being a cop in Miami?”

“Or a reporter,” Trish said, eyes bright.

I told her about the Swiss tourists who witnessed fifteen crashes and a bank robbery during a ten-day Miami vacation.
Miami Vice
fans, they were never alarmed. The city was exactly what they had expected. “I like it,” the wife told me, pleased that her husband captured the bank robber on film as he was being captured by police.

I went back to the Cuban coffee machine for a refill. Trish passed, remaining seated, hungry eyes slowly surveying the cafeteria. “What do I have to do to get on the reporting staff at this newspaper?”

“Speaking Spanish would help.” My hire was a mistake. They simply assumed, because of my last name, that I wrote and spoke fluent Spanish. When the mistake became obvious, I was assigned the police beat which no one else coveted. A lucky break for me.

“I'm taking lessons.”

“Good. Don't forget to emphasize that to them, and don't give up. Editors love persistence.”

Her eyes never left my face.

“Which ones have you met?” I asked.

“Fred Douglas. And I met a Murphy and an Anson.”

“They've all got clout but Fred is the best. Watch out for a guy named Fellows, a real womanizer. He'd make a move on you for sure.”

She took a small clothbound notebook from her purse and uncapped her pen.

“Abel Fellows,” I said, lowering my voice. “Never be alone with him. But keep calling the others or dropping by, since you're in the building anyway. Editors love enterprise. Send them notes and memos but keep it tight; they love brevity, too. Timing is important. I'll put in a good word for you and let you know if I hear of anything.”

“You'd really do that for me?” She looked perked up—probably flying on caffeine. “I don't know how to thank you, Britt.”

I went back to the newsroom with Ryan's coffee, feeling good about our talk. Women don't reach out to one another enough, especially in this business. Those who make it become one of the boys, turning their backs on their sisters. Like Gretchen. We have seen the enemy and she is us.

When Fred Douglas stopped by my desk before the afternoon news meeting, I seized the moment.

“Hear you interviewed Trish Tierney. Gonna hire her?”

“The gal from Oklahoma? Isn't she working in the library now?”

“Sure, but that's not where she wants to be.”

“Didn't know you knew her.”

“Not real well, but she's super eager and smart as hell. Probably be a good hire.”

“She's young, without much experience.” He looked doubtful.

“How will she get any if nobody gives her a chance? She's already won statewide prizes.”

“In Oklahoma,” he pointed out.

“You always say we need more women in the newsroom.” I stood up and looked him right in the eye.

“You may be right,” he said, his tone noncommittal, before escaping to his meeting.

Victims, cops, car-alarm salesmen, and my mother had left a long printout of messages in response to my carjacking and auto-theft stories. They all wanted me to call them.

One couple had driven in separate cars to Dadeland Mall to see their interior decorator. They met again later, wandering aimlessly through a sea of parked cars. Both of theirs, similar sports jobs, had vanished. Did the same thieves steal both? If so, were they aware that out of thousands of cars they had selected two, parked an acre apart, belonging to the same couple? Do browsing auto thieves make up most of the people milling about in mall parking lots?

A small boy aboard a sightseeing boat in Biscayne Bay pointed out an automobile just like the family car on the deck of a passing Liberian freighter bound for Haiti. “Look, Daddy, there's our car!” he cried. His parents laughed. When they returned to port at Bayside hours later, their car was missing from the parking garage.

“Have I got a story for you!” a Hialeah detective promised. I love it when a man says that to me. I love it when anybody says that to me. “We've got a guy and his wife had their car stolen from a shopping center parking lot last week.”

“Yeah? Old news, isn't it?”

“Wait, wait.” He paused for effect “They file a police report and rent a car. Three days later they come home in the rental. What do they find in their driveway? Their missing car.”

“The thief returned it?”

“Right, and leaves a handwritten note on the windshield. Listen to this.” I heard the sound of paper rustling. “It says,
I'm sorry, but if you knew the circumstances under which I was forced to take your car, you would know that it was a real emergency. Please accept my apology and these theater tickets
. Attached are two tickets to the Grove Playhouse. For Friday night.”

“You're kidding! A remorseful thief. Cool. I wonder what the emergency was. Maybe it was—”

“Wait.”

“Uh-oh. The tickets were stolen? They got busted at the box office?”

“Nope. They use the tickets, enjoy the show, but get home and find their house cleaned out. Empty, wall to wall. The thieves must have backed up a truck. Hey, they knew they had plenty of time, at least three hours.”

What a scam. I love Miami, but sometimes I suspect Rod Serling is the mayor.

The victims agreed to a picture. Lottie was the only photographer in house at the moment, so I walked the assignment back to photo. She was hunched over a light table. The illumination from within made her red hair glow, as she squinted through a loupe at long strips of color negatives.

Photo was shorthanded, and she grumbled as usual. “I don't even have time to wind my watch or scratch my ass.”

“It's no big deal,” I said. “Maybe they could just stand next to their car, in front of the house.”

“No, no, no! That'd be as stiff as a pair of leather britches on the fridge!” She snatched the card from my hand and read my brief description of the story. “I'll shoot 'em in a room where their furniture used to be. With a wide-angle lens, maybe an eighteen; that'll make the room look big and empty, and they'll look small and pitiful. Maybe they could hold up their ticket stubs. Poor babies. Were they insured?”

That's one of the things I love about Lottie. She may bitch and moan, but she is all pro at heart and gets right into the spirit of a story.

I told her about Trish and her efforts to transfer to the newsroom.

“Maybe they're doing her a favor,” she said glumly, scowling up at an overhead vent. “She probably ought to quit the library and bail outa here while she still can. I swear this place will kill us all. Something poisonous is spewing outa the air-circulation system at this very moment.”

“Lottie, this building is only ten years old.”

“I don't care if they built it last Saturday. I tell you if I had to work in here every day, my life expectancy would be something short of six months. We're lucky we spend a lot of time out in the field.”

“Sure, on the streets of Miami where it's much safer.”

“You heard about the PCBs, right?”

“I heard the pressmen were complaining.” I trailed her back to the photo-pool equipment room, wondering where FMJ was holed up, while she searched impatiently for a 500-millimeter long lens for a Dolphins game assignment at Joe Robbie Stadium that night. “Anything to it?”

She turned, hands on her hips, hair in her eyes. “Only that polychlorinated biphenyls were discovered in one of the ink tanks in ‘concentrations higher than the acceptable level.' They're claiming it's not dangerous, but I asked Miriam, the medical writer, to look it up.” She leaned forward, eyes narrowing. “That stuff apparently causes everything from cancer to two-headed babies and nerve disorders.”

She saw my skepticism.

“You know how Ryan's always whining that he feels sick.” Her tone was growing argumentative.

“He's a hypochondriac. Always has been.”

“Maybe not,” she said, finding the lens she wanted. “Maybe he's just more sensitive to his environment than most of us. You know, like the canaries they send down in the mine shafts.”

I sighed. “PCBs or not, Trish would gladly change places with anybody out in the newsroom.”

“You want some young smart-ass female nipping at your heels, lusting after your job?”

“For God's sake, Lottie! That's the attitude that makes it so tough for women to get anywhere. We have to help each other.”

“Try suggesting that to Gretchen.”

“Right,” I said. “But Gretchen's an aberration. You'll like Trish. She'll fit right in. Let's go to La Esquina de Tejas some night next week and bring her along. It'll cheer her up. She needs to meet people. I'll see if Ryan can join us.”

She grudgingly agreed.

My phone was ringing when I got back to my desk.

“I got your message.”

“Who is this?”

There was a pause. “Cornflake.”

Startled, I slid into my chair and snatched up a pen. “I'm glad you called.”

“The information was inseminated that you wished to discuss some matter with me.” He was trying his best to sound mature and businesslike.

“You mean disseminated?”

“Whatever. What is the nature of your requisition?”

I couldn't help but smile. “Let's get together and talk,” I said, “just you and me.”

“We are conversing at the present time.” His voice sounded wary and faintly familiar. “How may I assist you?”

“Let's meet. How about the Japanese Garden, on Watson Island?”

He hesitated.

I had forgotten. This kid was only fifteen or sixteen. “Do you have a car?”

“No, but I can acquire the necessary transportation.”

“Never mind,” I said quickly, “I'll come to where you are.”

“Edgewater complex, level two. Park in section pink or orange, proceed straight south, and board the elevator to level two. Stop at the merry-go-round first, then proceed to the food court. Purchase a Coke and sit at a table for two.”

“I'll wear a white carnation.” I couldn't resist.

“Say what?”

“Never mind. How will I know you?”

“I know you.”

“Why do I have to go to the carousel first?”

“So I can ascertain that you are alone.”

I sighed. “Okay, how about twenty minutes?”

“Fifteen.”

I got there in ten.

The pastel painted horses rose and fell in rhythm with the music. A few mothers stood on the revolving platform next to their squealing tots. I had not been instructed on how long I was to watch the carousel ponies, so I waited until the happy music slowed and began grinding to a stop. Then I strolled past book, luggage, and smoke shops to the food court, nearly empty at this time of day. I ordered a soft drink. Did it really have to be a Coke? I wondered. The cooking smells made my mouth water. Would the entire rendezvous abort if I ordered a hot dog? I have little patience with people determined to transform life into
Mission Impossible
. Everything is already too complicated.

Boys will be boys, I thought, sipping my soda and wondering if this one would show at all.

He stepped up and turned the chair facing me around, straddling it. “What's up?” he said, mimicking the moves of some suave movie hero.

He was the shy, skinny kid among the raucous group from the video parlor.

“So we meet again,” I said. “I thought it might be you.”

He lifted an eyebrow and looked nonchalant, trying hard to be very grown-up. I flipped open my notebook.

“I wrote the story about Jennifer Carey and her little boy.”

The confidence faded from his shiny dark face.

“She and her children were hit by the red Trans Am.”

“I know who she is.” His voice was somber. “How is the lady?”

“If she lives, she'll probably never be the same. The police know that FMJ—Peanut—was driving. I understand he's a friend of yours.”

“I might know the dude, I wouldn't call him a friend. I might know the dude,” he repeated regretfully.

“Seen him today?”

“No way. I don't run with that crew.”

“Oh? You and FMJ have a falling out?”

“Look that motherfu—that dude's crazy. I got no business with him, nothing to do with him.”

We watched each other in edgy silence for a moment.

“You said somebody was hanging some shit on me for something I didn't do?”

“You understand the felony murder rule?”

“I'm familiar with that aspect of the law.” He licked his lips, looking beyond me into the mall. “But you could refresh my memory about it.”

“Under Florida law, when somebody dies during a felony, like auto theft for instance, then all the people who were involved in that crime are guilty of murder. Even if they didn't mean to kill anybody. An old lady has a fatal heart attack during a robbery, she's been murdered. Somebody gets run over by a stolen car, it's murder. Everybody involved shares equal responsibility.”

He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Even if it's an accident?” His voice was low, without bravado.

“There are no accidents if a crime was in progress.”

“Sheesh.” He sat motionless, digesting what I had said.

“Everybody in the Trans Am could be charged with felony murder, even if they were just along for the ride.”

His eyes looked hollow. “The big one,” he muttered softly.

“The cops say J-Boy was the front-seat passenger.”

He looked startled. “They know that?”

I nodded. Suddenly he scrambled to his feet. I thought he was leaving.

Instead he fished in his pocket. “You want another Coke? I'll buy.” Though rail thin, he looked clean and neat. Somebody's son. Why is nothing ever simple? He took my empty paper cup, dropped it in a trash can, and returned with two ice-filled soft drinks, plastic straws protruding from the top. This time he sat rigid in his chair, like a child in the principal's office, a child in trouble.

He spoke softly now, voice worried. “Peanut—FMJ—he bad news, he crazy, man; the dude is dangerous. I got nothing to do with him. Never should've.”

“Why did he take the name FMJ?”

His twisted smile was ironic. “Full metal jacket, the bullet he like to use. Hits hard, punch a hole right through a car. Don't mushroom out.”

I stirred my icy drink with the straw. “Why does he shoot people in the leg?”

“He say he likes it. Nobody he shoots can chase him on one leg. He want everybody to remember his name. Bullet in the leg, it take a long time to heal, makes them remember him, and they don't die.” His eyes inched up toward mine with a cynical expression. “He didn't want no murder rap.”

“I'd like to talk to him. Would you give him my number?”

“I tol' you, I ain't gonna be seeing him. Count on that. And you don't want to find him either. He's cold. He likes to put a hurt on people.”

“There was another passenger, in the backseat.”

His stare was steady.

“The police say there were three people in the car.”

“Shouldn't have happened, man. Shouldn't never have happened. You don't have to hurt nobody to take a car. Nobody has to get hurt. He don't care, he'll do anything.”

“Was it you in the backseat?”

His eyes darted around the mall. “Somebody say it was? I never said that.”

Afraid he would bolt, I backed off. “Think FMJ is worried about Jennifer Carey, sorry about her little boy?”

“Naw, shit! He think he cool. That's why he FMJ now. Thinks he really bad. I told you, he's cold. He's cold.” He rubbed his hands together vigorously as though they, too, were cold. “Ain't no need to take cars away from people,” he muttered. “You wait till they park it and gone. No muss, no fuss. No need to hurt nobody. But FMJ, he don't care. He got nothing to lose now.”

“How do you know it's so easy to steal somebody's car?”

“Experience.” He puffed up a bit. “I can take me any car in no time—sixty seconds, less.”

“Congratulations,” I said, unimpressed by his braggadocio. “What do they do with all these cars?”

“Must have somebody somewhere who wants 'em for something,” he said vaguely, his expression suddenly that of a person late for an appointment. “Got to get going now.”

“Isn't your mom worried that you know FMJ?”

He snorted a derisive laugh, stood as if to go, and I got up with him.

“So how do I reach you?”

“For what?”

“I'd like to talk some more about what happened.”

“Let me think about it. I still gotcher card, I'll establish communication,” he said, hands jammed into his pockets as we rode the elevator.

We had reached the pink parking level. “One more thing,” I said, as he turned to go.