Miami Midnight (32 page)

She looked at Gaby uncertainly. “I’m scared, Gabrielle. I’m going to be spending almost a year in an upscale black society in Trinidad that’s way outta my experience. David’s even got an uncle who was made ‘Sir’ somebody. You know, knighted by the queen!”

Gaby couldn’t hold it in any longer. Crissette looked perplexed for a moment, then joined her in the laughter. “All right, I deserve it. Go ahead and say it.”

“You love David,” Gaby reminded her.

“Love him? Oh, lordy, Gabrielle, what am I complaining about? David’s going to write books,” she rushed on, her expression now one of radiant softness, “and I’m going to do the photographs, and if we don’t move back to Miami we’ll have a whole bunch of little kids in white wigs that talk like a steel band! You should see pictures of the rest of David’s family. His mother’s a pediatrician, his two sisters are accountants ... Honey, that’s when I went out and bought all my J.C. Penney dress-for-success coordinates!”

They gave their order for drinks. This was their last lunch together before Crissette left for Trinidad to join David.

“Well, hell, I don’t have any choice,” the photographer said, “since David was deported as an illegal alien. I can’t marry him in Miami, the new law won’t let me. So I go to Trinidad. And David starts all over, applying for immigration.”

“Crissette, I feel so sorry about David.” His deportation had bothered Gaby. “If I hadn’t dragged him into all of this...”

“Put it out of your mind, Gabrielle,” Crissette said quickly. “David knew what kind of a risk he was getting into when he came out to Vizcaya that night to warn you, but you know David. He wouldn’t have done anything else. That’s the way he is. Besides, it was kind of a relief when the cops arrested him. It ended the suspense. For me, anyway.

Gaby shook her head. “I owe David more than I can ever say. That was the bravest thing in the world for him to do, to lay his freedom on the line like that.”

“He wasn’t the only brave one. You didn’t do so bad yourself.” Crissette studied her intently. “You know, Gabrielle, that Colombian would have killed you. You didn’t put him all the way out of commission when you stabbed him, and your hands were still tied. Did you ever think of that? I mean, that when he got his act back together he was probably going to do something really terrible to you?”

“It’s strange, but all I remember is that I just didn’t seem to care. I hated what he was doing to me so much, my reactions were totally primitive. Like some other woman, not me.” She drew a shuddering breath. The memories came back at times much too vividly. “I’m not really very brave,” she murmured. “All my life people have been telling me what a coward I am.”

“You? A coward?” The other woman stared at her. “You have a weird image of yourself, Gabrielle. Some women would have had a nervous breakdown. But you put it all behind you, got your act all together on the job. Hey, is it true Jack Carty’s going to hire you an assistant because you’ve upgraded the fashion desk so much?”

“Only part time,” Gaby said modestly. “I have to share her. Two days a week she works for the society page.”

When she’d left the newspaper that morning Tina Ramirez, the new fashion-society intern, had been sitting at Jack’s desk looking eager but baffled as the features editor outlined some of her duties in his usual negative, nearly inaudible monotone. Tina was smart and determined. Jack had been hunched into his shoulders like a turtle, but giving the pretty brunette furtive, even appreciative glances. Gaby couldn’t help thinking the situation looked promising.

“I’m going to miss Miami,” Crissette said, sighing. Below them on Sunday’s pier sailing yachts and streamlined power boats were unloading fabulously dressed, gloriously tanned passengers. “A lot of people don’t dig all this glitz-by-the-sea, the
latinos
, the sunburn, the tourist hype, the crazy lifestyles, but I’m a native, honey, this is my territory.” She took a large gulp of her tequila sunrise. “Frankly, I think this is the best place on earth. I hate to leave, even for a couple of years.”

They watched a sleek Cigarette power cruiser tie up to the dock, driven by an especially good-looking, bare-chested young man in French jeans. The racy boat, the handsome young man made the same thoughts cross their minds.

“I can’t believe,” Crissette said, watching the figure below jump out of the Cigarette’s cockpit to secure a line to the dock, “that it was that Santo Marin guy’s sister all the time. That she put all that voodoo stuff at your house that night and scared us half to death. Did you ever find out if the chick was a real nut case? I mean, did they ever have her committed?”

“Oh, she’s still around.” Gaby found the right neutral tone. “They don’t commit people for practicing S
antería
, I suppose.”

Actually, Gaby knew Pilar Santo Marin was more than just “around” Miami these days. Last week’s
Times-Journal
society pages had reported that the young Coral Gables socialite had returned from an art seminar in Paris and was looking forward to beginning her new position as events coordinator for the Luis Gutman Art Galleries in Bal Harbour. It didn’t exactly sound, Gaby had thought wryly, as though James Santo Marin’s sister was keeping up her voodoo. But one never could tell.

The society pages had also run a photograph of James in a magnificent Armani tuxedo escorting his sister and the exquisite daughter of the French consul to a chamber music concert. The caption said Miami’s unofficial “Prince of Coral Gables” had just won the annual Catalina-San Diego powerboat run in his advanced design yacht, the
Altavida
.

Gaby remembered the yacht. She’d seen a part of it—James’s stateroom, draped in red silk S
antería
streamers dedicated to Chango—that few knew about. At least in that way.

“Hey,” Crissette said softly, “don’t look like that, honey. Nothing’s that bad.”

Gaby couldn’t smile, and was surprised at the depths of her pain. “The strange thing is that right up until the time James—I mean, her family—caught up with her, no one really knew who was doing the S
antería
. The priestess, Ibi Gobuo, kept saying something about a crazy girl, sort of an amateur witch, but she didn’t know, either.” Gaby paused as the waiter served their salads. “The
Santería
people didn’t take her seriously. But there
was
something there, Crissette, even though I can’t really describe it. David felt it. I had these truly awful nightmares. There was even a sort of odor. It used to be in the house at night, late, when it was quiet. It always reminded me of green islands in the sea, flowers and smoke. Even food cooking.” Her tight smile returned. “The only one who ever thought it smelled bad was Dodd.”

Crissette was still watching her thoughtfully. “You haven’t set a wedding date yet, have you? Are you happy, Gabrielle? I mean, are things going to work out for you?”

A chilly gust of storm wind swept across the terrace, the threatening clouds suddenly much darker. Sunday’s waiters and busboys began turning chairs against the tables, anticipating a retreat inside.

Gaby couldn’t answer questions about her happiness. That subject, too, was painful. “Well, everything’s worked out, hasn’t it?” she murmured. “Nothing really bad happened to any of us, after all. David got beaten up by the Colombians, but then when you saw him like that you realized how much he meant to you, remember?”

Crissette put down her fork. “Girl, are you kidding? You were hassled by some fruitcake chick with a hate thing against non-
latinos
who followed you in a big black limousine and did
Santería
against you—”

“But that put my mother in the hospital.” Gaby had thought it all out, determinedly. “Jeannette probably wouldn’t have gone for treatment of her alcoholism if not for that incident. I think having all those things happen to me lit a fire under me for the first time in my life. I just tore into my job and look how its turning out.”

“Honey, are you trying to make a case for all these disasters?”

“And if I hadn’t been kidnapped,” Gaby continued, “David wouldn’t have been caught by the police and deported. And you probably wouldn’t be going to Trinidad to get married.”

Crissette stared at her. “Gabrielle, what about your poor dog that got killed? What about practically being raped by a Colombian drug dealer and having to shish-kebab his private parts? Were those fun things, too?”

“Well, of course Jack Carty thinks it’s the biggest joke of the year,” she admitted, “that I tried to turn Tomás Ochoa into a soprano, but I really wouldn’t have cared if I had.” She paused, sadly remembering the family’s faithful guardian. “As for poor old Jupiter, Dodd was right. He was getting so old we probably would have had to put him to sleep sometime this fall. I’m glad I didn’t have to face that.”

“I see you got everything figured out,” Crissette said with some irony. “I guess that’s one way of dealing with it. But Gabrielle, are you going to marry old Dodson Brickell”—she dragged the words out—”the Third, or are you going to get things settled with the guy you’re really in love with?”

Gaby didn’t look up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Crissette made a derisive noise. “Listen, girl, when are you going to go after what you want? And stop standing around just waiting for things to happen?”

“Good heavens, I don’t do that!” She faltered, unable to meet her friend’s eyes. “Besides, it won’t work. I—I hardly know him. We’re worlds apart.”

Gaby looked down at her half-eaten salad. She’d had weeks to think about a relationship based on physical desire—and she was sure it was no more than that between James Santo Marin and herself. She’d told herself over and over again they had nothing in common: a too-beautiful, fiery-tempered playboy virtually worshipped as a god by a large part of the population in Little Havana, with all the entanglements of his Latin background; and she, Gabrielle Collier, a not-very-assertive, financially strapped remnant of a once-prominent Old Miami family who’d had to steel herself to meet the challenge of even a minor newspaper job. If anything, she thought, sighing, James had too much pride. And she didn’t have nearly enough.

She just wished she could get over the strange, terrible ache of missing him, because it was ridiculous. All the times they’d been together, they’d hardly had what anyone would call a conversation. They’d made love. They’d argued.

They had nothing going for them, she told herself for the hundredth time. They were totally incompatible. She just had to stop going over it in her mind, and forget it.

“Did you ever
want
to get to know him, Gabrielle?” Crissette asked. “Or did you sort of subconsciously think it was better just knowing him as, you know, a
latino
, something different, a real big turn-on, an experience, but not really a permanent part of your life?”

Gaby hadn’t been listening. Now she only blinked. “Crissette, you
know
?”

“What? That he’s the guy who tried to throw David down a flight of stairs on
Calle Ocho
because he thought David was getting you into some kind of weird trouble? And that half the women from here to Jacksonville would die just to ride in his Lamborghini? Like
rich? Gorgeous?
Lemme see, looks like Lorenzo Lamas and Rob Lowe rolled up into one sexy hunk?”

“Stop.” Gaby put her hands over her ears. “It really isn’t funny.”

“I didn’t say it was. Not when his little sister wanted to get you killed. That’s not cool. But you can’t blame him for that.”

“I don’t blame him.” Her voice was low, desolate. “You don’t understand, Crissette. He blames
me
.”

The diners were gone from the windy terrace and the busboys were stripping the tables of their linen. The oncoming storm rattled the ratlines of the sailing vessels docked below them on Sunday’s pier. Most of their owners were at the bar, settling down for an afternoon’s drinking.

“And you’re going to accept that?” Crissette was annoyed with her and showed it. “I mean, this guy’s been humiliated, his whole ethnic background’s just screwed him up, not to mention his kid sister. And this dude is
American
. He was born here! Also, he thinks he put you at risk with the drug dealers, doesn’t he?”

Gaby was gazing far away at the storm clouds between Sunday’s and the mirrored, glittering skyline of Miami. “It really doesn’t make sense, does it?” she murmured. “I suppose so much happened so quickly I just couldn’t get it all straightened out.” She hadn’t thought of the
iyalocha
for weeks, but for some odd reason now she was remembering Ibi Gobuo’s plots about the lightning god, Chango, and the goddess of love, Oshun. “But you’re right, Crissette,” she said. “I do sort of wait and let things happen. That’s not a very good way to live.”

“That’s one way of putting it.” Crissette shook her head. “Gabrielle, I know a lot of what happened to you was classified, the feds were into it and covering their tracks so as not to blow a lot of their drug operation covers, but I picked up some things around the newsroom. It’s a great place for gossip. This Santo Marin guy came out into the swamps to get you, didn’t he, in a sort of commando raid? Look,” she said urgently, “I know you’re basically a sort of retiring, non-ego-driven person, but doesn’t that suggest something to you? Just a little teeny bit?”

Gaby had been avoiding those particular conclusions. James seemed to be quite satisfied with what he was doing now, she told herself. Racing his boat in California. Taking the French consul’s daughter to a concert in Miami.