Miami Midnight (26 page)

Without bothering to pick up a robe he strode into the hall, then up the ladder onto the deck, footsteps pounding.

Gaby was sleeping. She never heard James Santo Marin shout furiously into the night, “All right, Castaneda, you son of a bitch. Where are you?”

Chapter 17

Dodd’s voice on the telephone was savage. “Dammit, I was sitting here waiting for you last night! You don’t think I’d accept a message at the last minute from some idiot who wouldn’t identify herself saying that you had to work and couldn’t keep our date, did you? I didn’t believe a word of it. I thought our date was still on.”

Gaby put her hand over the earpiece of the telephone. The newsroom was quiet and Dodd’s voice carried. Through the pounding black fog of her hangover she said tonelessly, “Dodd, something did come up.”

“Of course the damned police wouldn’t do anything,” he went on angrily. “All I got was that MPD regulations require a wait of twenty-four hours before filing a report on a missing person. Hell, I couldn’t let it rest there, I was worried sick. Mouse, are you listening? I got the damned mayor of Miami out of bed last night!”

Gaby didn’t answer. There was undoubtedly a moral lesson in all this, she thought. She’d been persuaded to go to a strange party at the
iyalocha
’s temple, she could hardly remember who’d brought her home, and now she had a splitting headache. Worse, the clothes she’d come home in were so strange, like something out of a carnival sideshow, that she had bundled them up and stuck them in the kitchen garbage. She had no idea where her good green dress was.

She would never again, she vowed, listening to Dodd’s furious flow of words, stand in judgment on her mother, or any other person with alcohol problems. She had some idea, now, of how awful it would be to face lost days—nights—that you couldn’t remember, dogged by the terrible guilt and fear of something you might have done without knowing it.

She looked down at the morning’s accumulation of messages on her blotter. She was due at a newsroom staff meeting on the coverage of the Vizcaya masked ball in ten minutes. She didn’t know how she was going to survive that, either.

Dodd’s voice stopped. Gaby realized she hadn’t been listening. “It was ... ah, sudden,” she said, hoping that was the right answer. “I knew you’d understand.”

“Is that all you’re going to say? You’re not even going to tell me where you were?”

She rested her head in one hand. She wished she knew so she could tell him. She might have been anywhere last night. “Dodd, I can’t talk right now. I’ve only been at my desk a few minutes, and they want me in a meeting.”

Dodd had told her that a Miami police car patrolling Palm and Bougainvillea islands had reported to police headquarters that she’d returned home in the early hours of the morning. When he received the report, Dodd had called her at once, both angry and concerned. He’d sat up all night in his Brickell Tower condominium, he’d told her, not daring to move from the telephone. He was even more furious when Gaby told him not to come over. That she would talk to him later in the morning.

There was no way she could have faced Dodd at four A.M., straight from an experience with a
Santería
priestess in a marina somewhere. And after what had seemed like a dream of meeting James Santo Marin that turned out, when she found the undeniable evidence of their lovemaking, to have been not a dream, but
real
. All she had wanted to do was crawl into bed for a week.

Unfortunately, at seven o’clock Harrison Tigertail had arrived with his roofing crew. She’d only had a bare two hours sleep, and was certain her life was turning into the proverbial nightmare. Her head was killing her and nothing made much sense. “Am I in the middle of a drug war or something?” she’d screamed at the Seminole contractor. “You’re here to keep an eye on me, aren’t you?”

He had stalked off without speaking to her, to work with his roofing crew.

“Well, Mouse, what
were
you doing,” Dodd demanded, “staying out all night? Where the hell, in Miami, would someone like you
go
?”

Gaby stared down at her pile of unopened mail. Dodd would never connect Gabrielle Collier, the woman he’d known for most of his life, with a drunken wanton in a wild transparent dress in the company of a voodoo priestess and other strange characters. And who had ended up again, in spite of being engaged, in another man’s arms!

“Dodd,” she said, “is Mar-Belle Development Company a part of Brickell Corporation?” When there was only startled silence on the other end of the line, she went on, “Mar-Belle is listed in the building license file as currently renovating four houses on Palm Island, and that you and your father are the Mar-Belle corporation officers.”

She could have stopped there, but some guilty hangover demon drove her on. “I think I know what you were trying to do, especially the way my parents have always mismanaged their property and finances. That is, if you were involved with a company like Mar-Belle that’s buying up old houses on the island to make showplace estates, it would probably be sensible to try to get my mother’s power of attorney. So you could handle the sale of our place yourself and see that it was done right.”

Gaby had an almost cruel sense of detachment as she listened to absolute silence on Dodd’s end. “I know you weren’t going to cheat us or anything like that,” she said. She didn’t know that, but she owed him the benefit of the doubt. “I still don’t see why you didn’t tell me.”

It had occurred to her that Dodd might just hang up. With something like relief she heard him clear his throat. “Mouse, darling, for God’s sake,” he said hoarsely, “let me explain.”

“Was it because you knew Jeannette couldn’t handle it, and you thought I couldn’t, either?”

“Dammit, I haven’t done anything yet!” he roared. “Will you please listen? If I’d had the power of attorney, yes, I would have worked a sale of your property to our company. But a fair and equitable sale. I wasn’t going to—”

“You don’t have to yell,” she said, putting one hand over her eyes. “But if we’re going to get married there has to be a certain amount of trust between us. This sort of thing doesn’t help.”

“I wouldn’t cheat you or your mother,” he said feelingly, “please don’t accuse me of that. Look, Mouse, you’re not going to live in that old place after our wedding, and once Jeannette is through with her very expensive rehabilitation program at Mount Sinai, she’s going to be looking for a condominium in Bal Harbour or maybe even Lauderdale. Think of your mother, honey. She’s
got
to sell!”

“Are old houses on Palm Island bringing a lot of money?” Gaby’s tone was innocent. “I’ve been away in Europe for five years, so I’m not up on these things.”

He groaned. “Mouse, waterfront property in downtown Miami is highly speculative. What do you want me to say?”

She knew what she wanted him to say. “I hear it’s a good investment if you buy up houses in blocks. Very, very profitable. The building licenses at the courthouse show Mar-Belle has bought up most of our street.”

He waited for a long moment. “Dammit, Mouse, we can’t discuss this over the telephone, there are too many variables, and it sounds like hell! Look, have dinner with me tonight. I’ll do what I should have done in the beginning. I’ll bring the Mar-Belle plans for the Palm Island development and show you what’s being done.”

Gaby lowered her head, the receiver still clasped to her cheek. What had she just done? she asked herself dully. There couldn’t have been a worse time or place to bring all this up, but she had. She’d wanted, for some not very charitable reason, to back Dodd into a corner. Did it all boil down to the fact that Dodd had been high-handed, even as he’d thought he was looking after her and her mother?

“I can’t meet you, I’m working late,” she told him. “Half the newspaper is assigned to Vizcaya tomorrow night, and we’ve got a meeting right now to go over who’s going to cover what.” She remembered to ask, “How’s your mother?”

“Fine, fine.” His voice was tight. “When am I going to see you? We can’t leave this dangling. We have to talk about it. Our plans are still on, aren’t they? You haven’t had any ... ah...” He hesitated, but had to make sure. “...second thoughts, have you?”

“Nothing’s changed, Dodd.” Gaby couldn’t help a rush of regret for the mean-spirited way she’d brought up the business of the Palm Island property. “Look, I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow night there will be thousands of people milling around at Vizcaya,” he reminded her. “And the Bankers’ Club is hosting the Festival Committee reception at seven-thirty. Darling, I can’t do it. I’ll be tied up for most of the evening.”

“Afterward.” Tomorrow night was in the distant future. First she had to get through this terrible day. “I have to file my story by nine-thirty, but we’ll talk then.”

“Mouse, I love you.”

“I’ll see you at Vizcaya,” she said, and hung up.

Crissette stopped by her desk a few minutes later.

“Everybody’s been looking for you, Gabrielle. Why didn’t you call in late?” She peered at her. “You feel all right?”

“I did call in late.” Gaby avoided the other woman’s eyes. “I just got here.”

“Hey, something’s happened.” Crissette hadn’t missed the flush, the hectic look of exhaustion. “Want to talk about it?”

Gaby shook her head. “David moved into the garage apartment last night.” She pressed her fingertips to her temples, wondering if the uproar inside her head would go away in time for the newsroom staff meeting. “I just found out before I left this morning. That’s part of the reason I’m late. I had to go see if he needed anything.”

“Yeah, I brought his things over in my car.”

Gaby lifted her head painfully. “You helped David move?”

“Well, he doesn’t own much.” Crissette looked defensive. “Only a couple of boxes of clothes, his stereo, and some books. He needed a car, and I said yes.”

“Oh, Crissette, I hope—” Gaby had been about to blurt out something about taking love when you could get it, but she’d caught herself just in time. “I hope things work out,” she said neutrally.

During the
Times-Journal
staff meeting the giant masked ball at Vizcaya generated the usual banter about summer festival week assignments. In all the stories on festival week there had, fortunately, been only a few sour notes. The Dolphins lost the preseason exhibition game at the Orange Bowl and the sports editor, who had predicted a fourteen-point win against the Dallas Cowboys, took considerable ribbing. Wednesday night’s Goombay street festival had been devastated halfway through by a violent thunderstorm. The reporter assigned to it had struggled with a write-up that, unfortunately, was criticized by the Miami black community as too downbeat. Staff enthusiasm was running low for the final gala on the grounds of the Deering museum.

“This idea of the press in costumes is unworkable,” Jack Carty said bluntly. “Reporters and photographers in fancy dress have to come back here before deadline and file their stuff. The city room is going to look like the last act of
Don Giovanni
.”

“It keeps out gate-crashers,” the managing editor said. He didn’t even look up. “At last year’s costume ball, people were coming in the gates passing themselves off as reporters, security guards, waiters, even telephone linemen. The rule this year is that the press and television not only have to show ID’s, they have to dress appropriately. This is a museum. With a crowd this size there has to be some way to ensure stuff doesn’t walk off the place wholesale.”

“How big is the crowd, anyway?” the head of photographic asked.

“At last count, somewhere over three thousand.” Someone whistled softly. “Also, we’ve been notified the governor’s bringing his staff and half the legislature from Tallahassee. Upscaling Miami’s image is the idea.”

He handed Jack the assignments schedule. “Let’s see if we can slide those celebrity interviews with the stars to the airport. Do them at Vizcaya only as a last resort. Don Johnson lives here on Star Island in Miami. Why can’t we get to him now?”

“He’s out of town until Saturday night.” Jack pushed the revised schedule down the conference table to the reporters. “Placido Domingo’s just canceled. But I’ll see what we can do with Julio Iglesias and Linda Ronstadt.”

The managing editor leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “We cover the event tomorrow night with four teams working until deadline. That means everybody but Frank has to be back here by nine-thirty.”

The inside sections of the
Times-Journal
Sunday edition were made up by Thursday except for the front and second pages, which were held open for late-breaking news. But this week the front page and the second photo pages were being held, too, for the Vizcaya coverage. Which put all of them, except the reporter covering the stage show, whose story would go in Monday’s edition, on tight deadlines.

The managing editor went on. “Frank covers the show, Elizabeth and Pete do features, color, and also any unexpected hard news, like the fireworks blowing up ahead of time.” He looked down the table. “The fashion desk covers what every one of the three thousand is wearing.” He actually smiled. “You can handle that, Gabrielle?”

“Sure.” Gaby could hardly speak. The photographic chief and Jack Carty were smiling at her too. For the first time in a
Times-Journal
staff meeting, Gaby realized through her hangover, someone had actually said something friendly, even encouraging, to her.