Contents Under Pressure (12 page)

Billy Boots and I were still huddled under the comforter when the alarm woke us at 6:55
A.M
. I rolled over, reached for the telephone, and called homicide.

McDonald answered. He sounded wide awake and alert.

“Did you find Placido Quintana?” I yawned.

“You sound all sleepy and cuddly,” he said.

“Did you find him?” I mumbled, conscious of how groggy I sounded.

“He’s right here, want to talk to him?”

“Yes!” I sat up quickly, disturbing Billy Boots who mewed in annoyance, as I scrambled for my bedside notepad and pen.

There was fumbling as the telephone changed hands. I heard McDonald say, “Somebody wants to talk to you.”

“Hullo.”

“Mr. Quintana?”

“Who’s this?”

“Britt Montero, from the
Miami Daily News.”

There was an awkward silence. Damn that McDonald, I wished he had filled me in first on how Quintana was captured and the conditions of his victims. Was the one from the Velvet Swing still alive? Had there been any more?

I didn’t want to spook the shooter by asking him, as it might make him reluctant to talk to me.

“Mr. Quintana?”

“Yeah, what do you want?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You went out last night?”

“Yeah.”

“To some bars downtown.”

“Yeah.”

Shoot, I should have had coffee before I called, I thought numbly, rubbing my eyes.

“You ran into some trouble?”

“Yeah.”

“How did it happen?”

He sighed. “It’s a long story.”

“I have time,” I tried to seem awake and cheerful.

He sounded confused and hung over. “I don’t know. Those guys … you know how nobody’s polite anymore? They show disrespect.”

“I know what you mean.”

“And I had a few drinks.”

“What were you drinking?”

“Cuba libres.”

“How many?”

“I dunno.”

“Any drugs?”

“I don’t smoke crack.”

“Marijuana?”

“A little.”

I decided to try learning more about him, and then work my way up to the shootings.

“Do you have a job?”

“Yeah.” His voice was low and mumbling now.

“What kind of work do you do?”

“Auto mechanic.”

“Where?”

“Vinnie’s Garage.”

“You married?”

“Yeah.”

“Does your wife know where you are? Have you called her?”

“No,” he sounded glum. “I’m not sure where she is, we’re sort of separate right now.” I could hear him take a long drag on a cigarette.

“Do you have children?”

“Two. They’re with her mother.”

“Why do you like that song you were playing on the juke box so much?”

A long pause. “I dunno.”

“Have you ever shot a policeman?”

“No!” He seemed shocked at the suggestion.

“Did you know Max who tends bar at the Reno?”

“Yeah, nice guy.”

“What about the other man, at the Velvet Swing?”

“I seen him around, but I don’t know him to talk to.” There was a pause. “I think they want me to go now.”

“Is there anything else you want to tell me?” I said miserably.

“Wha’s your name again?”

“Britt Montero, from the
Daily News.”

“Nice talking to you, miss.”

“Okay,” McDonald was back on the phone. “How was that? Don’t say I never did you any favors.”

“I need one more. What’s the scuttlebutt on D. Wayne Hudson?”

There was a pause. “I know nothing. We were off that night. Besides, you’ve got your big story. Exclusive interview with my man Quintana.”

“It was awful,” I moaned.

“I heard,” he said chortling.

“You were listening in?” I said, indignant.

“Sure, he’s my prisoner.”

“How did you catch him? Why did he do it? Are the victims alive? What set him off?” I was beginning to wake up.

“Two of our guys stopped at Gordon’s all-night drugstore, on Seventeenth Street, for coffee. You know the place, has little jukeboxes along the counter and in each booth?”

“Yeah.”

“They’re eating raisin danish, shooting the breeze, and guess what starts playing?”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. There he is, short, squat, in his yellow guayabera, hippity hopping in time to the music, dropping quarters in the jukebox. It was G4. I got that piece of information just for you,” he said, his voice dropping to a deep pitch. “Saw you check that out at both places last night.”

“You should be a detective.” I found it easier to talk to McDonald on the telephone without the distraction of his magnetic eyes. “Did he give them any trouble?”

“Nah, they didn’t try to pull the plug on his theme song. The gun was in his waistband, but he gave it up nice and easy. He was sobering up. I think he was glad to see them.”

“Does he have a past for violence?”

“Nada
. A few misdemeanors, drunk and disorderly, that’s it. Thomas, the guy from the Velvet Swing, is in intensive care, but he’ll probably make it.”

“Where’d Quintana get the gun?”

“Bought it four years ago for home protection. Flood just took him down to booking, charged with two counts of attempted murder and carrying a concealed firearm.”

“What happened? Why did he do it?”

“At this moment, the silly son of a bitch doesn’t even know himself.”

“It’s all so stupid.”

McDonald stayed silent for a moment. “It’s not unusual,” he finally said. “It’s common. That’s how it is. Most violence grows out of anger and frustration. If you’ve been taking a lot of shit all day, every day, and you can’t dump on your boss or your wife, especially if you can’t find her, and you can’t dump on the government or the police, it’s easy to dump on some guy in a bar. It doesn’t take much.”

What he said sounded right, and so sad.

McDonald’s tone suddenly changed. “Now I have a question.” He spoke softly, urgently, his lips close to the mouthpiece. “What are you wearing?”

I laughed, threw a pillow over the phone, and plodded into the kitchen to make coffee.

I went by the cop shop midmorning, hoping to find the D. Wayne Hudson tape, or a transcript, waiting. Instead, the public information officer left me waiting, sitting in the media room while he went off to investigate the status of my request. He was gone for a long, long time. The frigid air conditioning made my head ache. It had never been this tough before to get the cops to cough up a reel of tape from communications. I was sure they hoped I would grow tired of waiting, or become involved in some other story and go away. But it only made me mad, and more determined.

All my life I have had the feeling that something big is about to happen, perhaps tomorrow, or tonight, and that I must be ready. That is why I keep a comfortable set of clothes, dark trousers, a blouse, and a lightweight bomber jacket hanging on the back of my closet door, for the nights when I have to fight my way out of a sound sleep to rush out into the dark to cover a crime or disaster. Nothing is worse than groping sleepy-eyed through a cluttered closet for something to wear to a multiple murder at 4
A.M
. Often I lie awake in the dark, waiting for the sound of the pager or the phone, feeling somehow that tonight is the night. The paper’s lawyer, Mark Seybold, carefully chose his battles, but I tried to hang tough and fight them all. I might be wrong, but it is a matter of principle for a woman in this business. One small sign of weakness or lack of resolve and you are lost.

Officials who succeed in withholding information always celebrate by withholding something else. They continue to further block the free flow of facts until they are operating the way they like best, in secrecy. At least that had been my experience. Letting them know that you never surrender, give up, or go away is the only way to be sure you are not shut out when the big story breaks.

Danny Menendez was the sergeant in charge of the PIO, a reasonable and competent man who used to be a robbery detective. He had been very good at his work. I covered the story when he was shot and nearly killed in a robbery stakeout that went awry. His wife, Sarita, wears the bullet doctors dug out of his body on a gold chain around her neck.

“It’s been three days since I made this request,” I complained, plopping into the chair facing his desk in a small cubbyhole office. “It’s starting to look like a cover-up.”

Menendez did not swallow the bait. Ignoring my accusing eyes, he checked his watch and gazed through paperwork on his desk, trying to look busy.

“Is the chief in?” I shoved back my chair and rose to my feet, as though ready to march into the man’s office, which was next to impossible since the department installed its new security precautions. I would need a key card to even reach the fourth-floor office by elevator, plus a SWAT team to get by the chief’s protective executive staff.

I liked this chief, who’d been in office for two years now. He seemed honest and fair but was far less accessible than the former chief, a born leader who’d risen through the ranks and was regularly seen out on the street, in uniform. Tough and feisty, he had been a cop to the core, and his men had loved him. He had died in uniform, in fact, red in the face as usual and railing at the mayor at a city commission meeting, demanding a bigger budget, more cars, more equipment, and more money for his troops. Heart attack.

The current chief was more colorless administrator than flamboyant die-hard street cop. He had neatly trimmed gray hair, wore well-cut gray business suits and steel-rimmed spectacles, and was into modern policing and scientific detection. He was what the department needed but was highly unpopular with the rank and file who bitterly resisted change and would never forgive him for being an outsider, recruited from New England after a nationwide search for a new top cop. With no old ties, friendships, loyalties—or skeletons—he instituted many changes, which, of course, made the troops resent him even more.

“I should speak to him before we get the lawyers involved.” I flounced toward the door, as though about to hop on the elevator and actually get it to go somewhere.

Menendez stood up, his eyes stone cold. “You shouldn’t get so pushy, Britt, it will only defeat your purposes here in the future. The chief is in conference, but I’ll see that he gets your message.”

“Okay, but I need the tape or transcripts today, otherwise the lawyers will probably put the department on notice by 5
P.M
. and ask for an emergency hearing. Nothing personal,” I said, smiling, “I’m just doing my job.”

I thought about his implied threat while driving back to the
News
and considered stopping by the legal department to fill in Mark Seybold. Instead, I decided to wait and see if the cops called my bluff.

Gretchen Piatt wrinkled her pert nose in apparent disgust as she read my story on the screen in front of her. In her classic suit, worn with effortless elegance, she looked as though she had stepped off a fashion-house runway. I always felt shabby and rumpled sitting next to her, which meant I began our encounters at a disadvantage. “Barroom shootings?” she asked, her voice sliding up the scale to a pitch that would repel attack dogs. “You were out covering barroom shootings? Nobody even died.” She stared at me as though gravely disappointed, her face an exaggerated question mark.

“Admittedly this is not front-page news,” I said carefully, “but it has its place, Gretchen. When people are being shot for such trivial reasons, when a barkeep in downtown Miami must resort to wearing a bulletproof vest on the job—and is still shot; when half a dozen people have been gunned down at the same location in the past several months—that, I think, is worth reporting. It says something about our quality of life. The newspaper should be a mirror that reflects the community and what happens in it and, like it or not, this is our city.”

I looked earnestly into her china blue eyes and saw nothing hopeful.

“Barroom shootings?” she repeated, shaking her head. “Sit,” she commanded, motioning toward another chair. I had seen Francie Alexander use the same tone and gesture with Bitsy. Bitsy, however, was better trained.

“I’d rather stand.”

“Britt, Britt,” she sighed, twisting a strand of shiny hair around a well-manicured finger. “You need some direction, stories to take you onward and upward, out of this rut you seem to be in. I am thinking of your best interests. All of these policemen
friends
of yours are not going to enhance your career.”

“Friends?”

“You know what I mean…” She lowered her head as though amused, then came up with a knowing smirk. “Because you’re young and unmarried…”

“Britt,” somebody shouted, “Sgt. Menendez on the telephone!”

I stared in open anger at Gretchen, then turned and stalked back to my desk.

The sergeant’s voice was cool and distant. “We have a transcript of that tape you requested.”

“Great,” I said. “I’ll be right over.”

Fred Douglas walked by my desk just then. “Hey Britt, I love your ‘I Shot the Sheriff’ story. Just saw it in the system.”

“Do me a favor,” I pleaded, snatching up my purse and a notebook. “Say that in front of Gretchen, will you?”

He understood instantly and nodded. “She giving you problems? Sure thing. Where you off to?”

“Cop shop,” I said, heading for the elevator. As news editor, Fred outranked Gretchen and carried major clout. What she had said about direction worried me, as though she planned to take me on as a project. No way, I thought.

Lottie stood at the elevator, looking flushed and impatient, jabbing the button again and again. “I’ll be go-to-helled! What is wrong with this dadblasted thing?”

“What’s your hurry, something happening?”

“Gretchen is what’s happening,” she muttered. “I’m trying to escape before she captures me.”

“Me too,” I said.

“You won’t believe what she…” we said in unison.

“You first,” I said.

“The assignment she gave me!” She pretended to shove a finger down her throat.

“That bad?”

“She wants me to make individual color portraits, and then group pictures, of Miami’s ten best-dressed society women for a special section to kick off the fall season. She said it will be a good change of pace for me. I’m working with Eduardo.”