Garden of Evil (14 page)

“I took a nap,” she said, “but I'm wired. Fired up. Hear all the bullshit they're sayin' on TV? See the news at noon? That skinny prick from Channel Seven had the balls to call me every man's worst nightmare. What the hell does he know? Some ugly-ass piece of shit from the Chamber of Commerce or someplace said I was scum. That black guy on Channel Ten called me ‘a homicidal hooker.' Where do they get that shit? Hooker?” Her voice rose as she worked herself into a fury. “They don't even know who I am! I'm gonna tell you what it's really like! I want everybody to know.”

“Nobody's heard your side,” I agreed. “Let's tell it.”

“Damn right. Face-to-face, you and me, one on one. No tricks, no games, no cops.”

“That can be arranged,” I said, voice calm, but so giddy I nearly fell off my chair. “I'll have to talk to my editors.”

“Those assholes again.”

“Right. My bosses.”

“There's protection, laws for reporters, right? It's like talking to your lawyer or priest. Nobody, not even the cops, can make you tell anything confidential. Right?”

“Good reporters go to jail before giving up a news source,” I said. “You name the time and place.”

I closed my eyes to block out Gloria, who was waving that I had another call.

“Now, I'm only gonna talk to you. Private, one on one—me to Britt. You can bring one of them little computers with you, a laptop.”

“Sure, I can do that.”

She spoke rapidly, words tumbling over one another. She sounded manic, probably using drugs. I heard a TV in the background.

“All this pressure, this whole thing, is driving me nuts.
You'll get the exclusive. I'm sick of this shit on TV. They don't know squat.”

“I believe you.”

“Got that right,” she muttered. “Talk to your editors, do what you have to do. I'll put it all together. I have to think. Be around, call you later. I might have something else to tell you.”

I recoiled. “Wait,” I said. “What do you…” But she was gone.

 

Ojeda and Simmons played the tape in a conference room.

The call had come from Tommy Karp's digital phone, according to call return. The system, now in place, could not pinpoint its location. The detectives arranged to have his phone disconnected, hoping she would switch to a land line.

“I'll go meet her,” I told them. “I want to do it.”

“I don't like it,” Ojeda said. “But it could be the only way to get the break we need. We could set a trap.”

The chief agreed. Ground rules would not include me interviewing her first. They would swoop down to make the collar the moment she appeared.

“We'll do everything we can to protect you,” Ojeda said, “but you've gotta listen to us, do exactly what we say, and forget any crazy stunts. You can talk to her all you want after she's in jail.”

“Oh, sure, as if she'll speak to me after I lead her into a trap.”

 

I had nearly forgotten the other call Gloria had signaled me about. McDonald was late for a session by the time I called him back. No time to explain. I could fill him in later.

“Two more days,” he said cheerfully, “and I'll be ringing your doorbell.” I heard the smile in his voice.

Suddenly I wanted to blurt, Come back! Now, before it's too late, before I'm sucked into something way over
my head. I swallowed the words, and the moment passed. Was it because there was no time to explain, or because I knew he would object?

“Hey,” I murmured, instead, “be cool on the road, sweetheart. No picking up hitchhikers or pretty women in distress.”

 

The two detectives and their lieutenant met with my editors and Mark Seybold. I had already briefed Fred. Nobody smiled. Eyes troubled, they spoke as though I wasn't there.

“My concern is obviously the safety of the reporter,” Fred began.

“Normally we wouldn't ask a civilian to take this kind of risk,” the lieutenant said, “but we've got nothing else. Saying that our only hope is that next time the killer will make a mistake is acknowledging that there will
be
a next time, another victim. Nobody wants that.”

Harvey Holland, the publisher, shook his head. “It's one thing to send reporters and photographers into war zones, but it's another to dangle a reporter as bait.”

This, I kept thinking, is the story of a lifetime.

“It would help us immensely,” the lieutenant said earnestly. “This investigation has already cost taxpayers more than a million dollars, including rental cars for detectives, overtime, and sophisticated lab tests. More than seven hundred people have been interviewed statewide, thousands of leads followed. And this is the best we've got.”

“Speaking of money,” Gretchen said, frowning, “what if this should lead to an arrest? What about the reward? Could a reporter claim it?”

“If a staff member became eligible, it would have to go to charity,” Holland said dismissively.

“Of course.” I shrugged. I never gave the reward a thought.

“I don't feel right, encouraging a reporter to do this so we can have the story,” Murphy, the managing editor, said.
“Nor do I feel right saying she can't do it. It's more an individual moral choice, a weighing of the pros and cons.”

“We can't allow reporters to become swept up in their own stories, to lose their detachment,” Fred argued.

“The goal we should all have,” Ojeda said, “is to take this murderer off the street before she kills again.”

“We're not the police, that's not our job,” Murphy said.

“But you always say,” I told him, “that journalism is personal—that a single reporter, a single edition, a single story can make a crucial difference.”

“If you're going to quote me, Britt, quote me accurately. I believe I said the toughest, wisest, and best journalism,” he said gruffly, then turned to the lawyer. “You've been quiet up to now, Mark. Give us your opinion.”

All eyes on him, Mark Seybold took a deep breath, as I held mine. He removed his gold-rimmed spectacles and began slowly to polish the lenses with his handkerchief.

“I would say the newsroom has almost no standing here to take a position one way or the other. It's not a question of journalistic ethics. This should be between the police and the reporter, to consider the pros and cons and make an informed judgment. You've got a great story with or without this, Britt. If you want to help the police bring in a dangerous killer, do it as a person, not as a reporter. That said”—he paused, eyes troubled—“I tend to envision worst-case scenarios. This scares me. The police always say nothing will go wrong—but as we know, it almost always does. Not as general consul for this newspaper, but as your friend, I would point out that you're not trained to do this. As your friend I would try my damnedest to talk you out of it.”

The cops fidgeted in their seats, eager to interrupt, argue and rebut.

“Hear me out,” he said, stopping them. “You, Britt, have got to ask these detectives all the tough questions.”

In the end it was my choice.

N
OW WE WAITED FOR THE KILLER'S CALL.
SWAT, the police chopper, and the undercover detectives were poised and ready to roll. I was to deal for as much time as possible and refuse any location impossible to surround or surveil. The police did not want me out of their sight for a moment.

The hours crept by.

Ojeda and Simmons stared in dismay at the contents of my refrigerator, or lack thereof, then tried to sleep on folding cots in my living room. The phone rang once, and I thought my heart or bladder would burst as we scrambled. Despite the hurt in her voice, I asked my mother not to call again until I finished my current project, adding that I loved her and would explain later. I took a call from McDonald in my bedroom, door closed. I told him I was tired when he asked what was wrong. No lie there, though I did neglect to mention the detectives in the next room. Primed for the trip home, he talked about new grant possibilities, new colleagues in Washington, and urged me to get some rest.

Caffeine, adrenaline, and the delivered pizza took their toll. Padding barefoot into my dark kitchen for a glass of
warm milk at 4
A.M.
, I found a shadowy presence at my kitchen table. Ojeda couldn't sleep either.

“What do you think motivates her?” I murmured, as we shared the last of the milk. “Why kill total strangers? What turned her into a monster?”

“I don't know, and I don't care,” he said. “I don't need to know what makes her kill or if it can be cured. All I want to know about her is information that helps me identify her and apprehend her. I want to arrest her, and convict her. That's my job. It's not up to me to figure out what makes her tick. I really don't give a shit.”

I wanted, needed, to know it all, as though the answer would place everything into perspective and I would be able at last to figure out why people do the things they do to each other. I went back to bed and left him alone in the dark, both of us awaiting the call that did not come.

Had she changed her mind? Was this all a game to her? Had she left town?

 

The detectives trailed me to the office next morning and Simmons fetched our breakfast from the cafeteria. It was Ryan's day off so they ate at his desk. Then they waited, feet up, perusing out-of-town newspapers.

I worked on other stories but found it hard to focus. I kept checking the time. Where was she?

At 10:30
A.M.
, Gretchen, cool and crisp in black and white linen, sauntered over to my desk. “I guess you're not as plugged in as you thought.” She shrugged smugly and handed me a slip of paper. “The police desk just called. The Beach had another one.”

“Another homicide?” The detectives were on their feet.

“You think it's her?” I asked.

“That's what they say,” she said breezily. “That's the address.”

The detectives cursed and Ojeda snatched the address from my hand. South Beach, a dozen blocks south of the
last murder scene, not far from where Gianni Versace took his final morning stroll.

“We asked them to notify us of any development at once,” Ojeda muttered, slamming a fist into his palm.

“Guess they forgot.” Gretchen shook her shiny blonde mane and strutted smartly back to the city desk.

 

He was Carlos Triana, a model.

He had failed to appear for a catalog shoot when the early morning light was just right on the Boardwalk. The furious photographer notified Triana's agency. Someone was sent to the model's subleased condo. No answer at the door. Triana's Mazda was missing from his parking space. Then the young agency assistant recognized Karp's Jaguar in visitor parking. The sedan had been on TV; everybody was looking for it. He called his boss, who called police.

Neighbors had complained in the past about loud parties in the second-floor condo apartment. This time the sounds of doors slammed in the wee hours had actually been gunshots.

His live-in fiancée, a psychology major at the University of Miami, was away, visiting her family in New York.

Tall, athletic, and handsome, Triana worked hard, played hard, and had it all. He was twenty-seven.

I joined the rest of the press amid the crowd gathered outside the yellow crime scene tape. Ojeda ducked beneath the tape to talk to Beach detectives while Simmons hung out close to me, in case the call came.

The South Beach crowd differed from the gawkers at most murder scenes. Kids on summer vacation mingled with curious senior citizens wearing little umbrella hats and plastic nose protectors against the brutal sun. Promoters and entrepreneurs complained bitterly to reporters and each other about what a blow this was to business. Triana's agent, Melinda Mowrey, worked the press, helpfully distributing her cards and copies of her late client's model
ing composite. Impressive. Clad in tennis whites and brandishing a tennis racket, he flashed a blinding Pepsodent smile. The man had been a hunk.

He was a regular on the Beach nightlife scene that had blossomed after the modeling agencies moved in, attracting beautiful women and the players who orbit around them.

Fiercely competitive clubs, bars, and discos all crowded into a small district battled soaring rents, parking nightmares, and each other for survival. Independent promoters hired to make places happen dreamed up innovative specialty-night party themes, papered the city with posters, and packed as many as two thousand hot bodies a night into certain clubs. Like head hunters, the promoters were paid a percentage of the night's take for delivering high body counts.

The Kiss-Me Killer had just single-handedly changed the meaning of the term.

Karp's death had sent shudders through the beautiful creatures of the night. Now this. Murder is a turnoff, sudden death a bummer.

Triana was definitely a hot body. He had entertained his killer in his hot tub. That's where he was found. As a parting gesture, she had turned up the temperature. Way up. His groin wound had severed an artery and he bled out, the contents of the tub cooking into a very nasty soup.

“Be glad we ain't working that scene,” Ojeda told Simmons back at the paper. “Be very glad.”

 

Why hadn't she called me as with Karp? The detectives feared she was gone. I feared she was talking to someone else, another reporter about to break the story.

“She's killing the clubs,” promoter Ziggy Solomon complained on the TV news at six.

This body count meant no business, no crowds, no big bucks. The promoters, business owners, and managers were demanding that the city, the Chamber of Commerce,
the Tourist Development Commission, and the cops take immediate action to make the city safe once more for rampant decadence.

Most commissioners had fled the steamy city for the summer, but the mayor called an emergency session of his advisory committee for the following morning.

Beach clubs were subdued that night, the streets deserted. The desk assigned Howie Janowitz to do a piece on it. Normally I would have wanted that too, would have wanted to do it all, but I was exhausted. So were the detectives. On the way home, I cruised Ocean Drive, the detectives trailing in their unmarked. The neon-filled night was hot, but there was no breeze off the sea and no action. Business was dead, the outdoor cafes empty, chairs stacked.

A small Beach weekly hit newsstands next morning with the headline:
HARD-PARTYING ANGEL OF DEATH, KILLS SOBE CLUBS
.

 

Tex bombarded the photo department with yellow roses, accompanied by cards threatening to leave Miami forever if Lottie continued to ignore him, which she did. Kendall McDonald was already on the road home—and nothing.

I had been right not to tell him, I thought. We replayed her last call over and over, trying to figure out why she changed her mind. She had sounded so certain. Dr. Schlatter advised not to give up hope.

I did a brief phone interview with Triana's hysterical fiancée, Stephanie, about to fly home to a terrible truth and a very messy apartment.

“Oh my God. Oh my God,” she repeated. “It can't be true, he can't be dead.” He had lived a swinger's lifestyle before her, but that had all changed, she said. They were settling down. He would not invite another woman into their home. They had talked at seven the night he died. He had been elated because of a second call-back audition for a national margarine commercial. He was sure he
would land it. He had wished she were there so they could celebrate.

He must have decided to celebrate without her.

 

Ojeda was in the men's room and Simmons dozing in a desk chair when my phone rang again.

“¿Como está?” she said, in a bad accent. “Sorry I haven't touched base lately.”

“Where've you been?”

I pressed the button, gesturing frantically at Simmons, whose eyes were nearly closed. He snapped awake, donning the earphones to the extension they had set up.

“I thought you forgot about me,” I said. The hair prickled on the back of my neck.

“Would I do that, girlfriend? You been on my mind all the time.” She sounded serene, relaxed. “Just took a day off to wind down, get a little rest. Nothin' like a good soak in a hot tub. Feelin' much better now, I tell ya.”

Ojeda was back, scrambling for his earphones.

“I was surprised to hear about you and that model, Carlos. You didn't call. I was the last to know.”

“Awww, did I make ya jealous, girlfriend? Thought you were sharp. Guess I shoulda called. Hate to see you git scooped by other reporters. Us working girls need all the help we can git.”

“Weren't you scared? That guy was in great shape, had a black belt in karate.”

“Scared?” She repeated it as if it were a new word. “Fear,” she said, “is like water. You need it. And it's good for you, as long as you have the right amount.”

“What about our interview?”

“I'm callin' you, ain't I? Somethin' you're gonna have to understand 'bout me, Britt, if we're gonna get along. When I give my word, I live up to it, unlike some people.” She chuckled. “Unless I change my mind, a-course…

“My main concern,” she said, her tone becoming more businesslike, “is that a nonbiased individual, like yourself,
hears my story and tells it right, as purely as I can refine it from opinion to a true and solid perspective. A-course, over a period of time, I expect we can talk about the significance of everythin' I tell you. Perhaps somethin' can come of it, somethin' significant.”

Her little speech sounded oddly rehearsed.

I stole a look at Ojeda, who was nodding in mock agreement, lifting his thick eyebrows.

“That's exactly what I'm hoping for,” I said, thinking of McDonald on the road, pushing for home. “When do we start?”

“You sound like a lady in a hurry,” she said lightly. “How 'bout this afternoon?”

My body quaked, as though doused by icewater. This was what I wanted, what I was living for. Wasn't it?

“Sure,” I said. “Sounds great.”

Ojeda gestured, a slow-down-let's-take-our-time signal.

“Let's see.” She pondered, as though consulting a timepiece. “It's eleven thirty now. Hm. Know where Michelangelo's Garden is?”

Ojeda's hand wobbled in an I'm-not-sure signal.

“I think so,” I answered slowly. “Where they make the good pizza?” Michelangelo's Garden was a combination service station and pizzeria on South Dixie Highway.

“Yeah, yeah, that's the one.”

“I've never been there, but I think I've passed it. Hear it's pretty good.”

“Not bad,” she said.

“You get around, don't you? Thought you spent most of your time on the Beach.”

“I cover the waterfront,” she said. “I get bored easy. Never stay too long in one place, that's my motto.”

The tense cops in their earphones had caught the attention of the city desk. People had stopped work to watch. Somebody must have called Lottie. She appeared in the hall between the newsroom and photo, near the wire room, watching, poised like a deer, ready to bolt for her gear
and her car. She would hang with the cops and shoot the arrest as it went down.

“So,” I said. “We meet for pizza?”

“I tell ya”—she sighed—“I'm not much for Eyetalian. Right now I could go for eggs over easy, with bacon and grits on the side. But tell you what.” She sounded almost eager. “I got to get my act together here. Let's make it Michelangelo's this afternoon, four o'clock sharp.”

Ojeda nodded, big smile, thumbs up.

“Okay, you've got it.”

“Look casual,” she said. “Wear jeans. Don't look like a reporter. Don't wanna 'tract no attention.”

“I'll just carry a notebook in my purse and leave the laptop in the car?”

“You got it. You'll be driving your T-Bird, right?”

“Yep. How will I know you?”

“Well, I sure as hell ain't gonna carry a sign. You just pull up in that T-Bird, I'll find you. It's white, right?”

“Luminescent Pearl is the official color,” I said.

“Okay, park as close to the front door as you kin get, but park legal for God's sake, then come on in. I'll be waitin' at a table near the front. You git there first, you grab one. Shouldn't be too crowded then. And Britt. I smell cop, and somebody's gonna wind up hurtin'—bad.”

“If you see a police car anywhere, just chill,” I said solemnly. “Because if you do, he's not with me, he's on routine patrol.”

“Don't tell anybody, I mean
anybody
, where you're goin'.”

“Okay. My editors know we plan to meet, but I'll tell them when it's over, when I get back.”

“Good. See ya in a bit. Remember, I'm trustin' you.”

“You can count on me, like a rock.”

As she hung up, Ojeda bowed his head, hands in a prayerful position, then hurtled jubilantly out of his chair and high-fived Simmons. “Okay! Okay! Right on, Britt!”