Miami Midnight (9 page)

“Yes, but, Gabrielle,” the other woman went on quickly, “people don’t realize what something like that means to a girl from Pilar’s background, to be dumped by a man. Even in these days.”

Gaby crossed out what she had written. A broken engagement, even with a Palm Beach socialite, probably didn’t go into the sidebar Jack Carty wanted. “Mrs. Fernandez, actually what I need is something about James Santo Marin. We’re using a photograph of him from the fashion show, when he pulled the model out of the pond. For instance, what do people in Miami’s Latin community think of him, his leadership now, his ... uh, position socially?” Gaby was having difficulty even talking about James Santo Marin. She was strangely breathless again. “I heard they—why do they call him the Prince of Coral Gables?”

“Oh,
Jimmy
,” Alicia’s voice altered, “Don’t call him the prince thing, Gabrielle, he hates it. As for leadership in the Latin community...” She hesitated again. “Of course Jimmy’s been fantastically successful, but then he’s something of a genius with all those businesses and the bank. But I couldn’t say that he’s a community leader actually, so much as, well, the community is ... that is, many people are sort of—
protective
. No, I’m sure I don’t mean ‘protective’ exactly. Gabrielle. It’s so hard to talk about the Latin community in Miami when there are so many different parts of it. And really, I can’t speak for any of them!”

“Well, how
does
the community,” Gaby asked, anxious about getting any information for the sidebar, “feel about James Santo Marin?”

There was another silence. “Well, he’s—popular. I guess James Santo Marin is very popular. You could call it that.”

Sort of popular but sort of protected. Gaby was following something that eluded her. As did, actually, the whole subject of James Santo Marin. It was crazy. “You said his leadership—”

“Gabrielle,” Alicia interrupted, “you’re not going to print any of this, are you? Estancia Santo Marin would strangle me! Besides, I’m not saying the right things. Oh, darling, you picked the wrong person to call. Look, honey, contact the Santo Marins. If they want to talk to you, they’ll tell you everything you have to know!”

The click on the other end said the conversation was over.

Gaby sat looking at the microfilm machine without really seeing it. Protective? Popular? The words didn’t make any sense. Not when applied to what she already knew about James Santo Marin. Not the personality that went with that tense, arrogant scowl, that electric machismo in an Armani suit, handmade shoes, silk tie, and custom-made shirt.

Gaby suddenly thought it sounded like her father. Another spoiled, sexy, beautiful man. But for Paul Collier there had never been enough money, not in the whole world, not the way he spent it. Maybe, Gaby thought, there hadn’t been enough for James Santo Marin, either.

Somehow he had gotten very, very rich.

She lifted the telephone directory from its rack and found only two listings under that name. One was in Hialeah, the other on Eighth Street in the heart of Miami’s Little Havana. Nothing in Coral Gables. She felt a rush of relief. Undoubtedly the Santo Marins had an unlisted telephone number.

She closed the telephone book and put it aside. She could use what she had in the sidebar Jack Carty wanted, and hope that it was enough. At least an unlisted telephone number gave her an excuse not to go further. She wrote the few lines for the sidebar and left the copy on Jack’s desk.

She glanced at the telephone, realizing with some surprise that she needed to see Dodd. She knew if she called him he would come downtown and take her home. She was suddenly depressed and needed to talk to somebody
normal
. She was deathly tired of the Santo Marins, the sidebar, newspapering. She wanted not to have to think about any of it for a long time. Like until tomorrow. She could leave a message in photographic for Crissette about her ride.

She had just lifted the receiver when the door to the microfilm room swung open. A tall, slim, pretty black woman in a tailored denim shirt, matching skirt, and gold bangle earrings stood there with both hands on her hips, surveying her unhappily.

“Gabrielle,” Crissette said, “I’ve got a problem.”

Chapter 6

“I’m kicking that turkey out!” Crissette exploded. “He thinks he’s going to come home with me tonight. But I told him, you lose another job, man, you are out in the street!”

He
, Gaby knew, was David Fothergill, the photographer’s live-in boyfriend. From what Crissette had told her the relationship was a stormy one, mostly because David was chronically unemployed.

Crissette tucked Gaby’s hand under her arm as they went down in the elevator to the lobby. “I’m glad I’m giving you a lift home, honey. I need somebody around when I go out to my car. Mister Wonderful said he was going to meet me outside after work, but I already know the message. He’s out of a job again.”

“Crissette,” Gaby said, trying to pull her hand away, “you and David go on if you want to talk. You don’t have to take me home.” There was still time, she thought, to call Dodd and have him pick her up. She was hungry and the idea of dinner in some quiet, elegant place that only Dodd could afford was appealing.

But Crissette hung onto her determinedly. “That cat works for a couple of months, and then he finds out that if anybody’s going to get laid off it’s the ones the company’s paying off the books, under the table. You know, who haven’t got working papers. Especially if they think immigration is going to come around the construction site and stage a raid.”

The elevator doors slid back and they stepped out into the lobby. Gaby had seen David Fothergill only once, a towering, soft-spoken islander with a brilliant smile.

“You mean, he hasn’t got working papers?” she asked. She was being steered to the outer door by Crissette’s grip on her elbow. “You mean your—that David is here
illegally
?”

The other woman snorted. “Honey, ain’t everybody? Gabrielle, this is
Miami
.”

Gaby hung back. If Crissette’s boyfriend was an illegal alien he could be arrested, she supposed, at any moment. “Crissette, I think you better leave me out of this. I’ll—I’ll just take a cab home.”

Crissette wasn’t listening. “My family is just raising pure hell with me about him, and they’re right. That good-for-nothing dude is taking me for free food and free rent! If David could swing it, he’d marry me so he could get his green card. That’s all those calypso cats are looking for, anyway.”

The humid summer night was soggy. In the newspaper’s parking area a tangible veil of water drops hung suspended in the air like fog. As Crissette pulled Gaby along, looking for her car, Gaby couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“He wants his
green card
?”

“Yeah, honey. If he marries a U.S. citizen he gets to be a legal resident. He can work steady without having to run.” The slender black woman steered her toward the front line of cars facing the street. “My mother keeps telling me, ‘Crissette, you went to college, got a degree, a good job on a big newspaper, just to end up with
him
? Some bum from the islands like you can find anyplace in downtown Miami at night, sleeping in doorways?’”

She stopped, hands on hips, looking around. “My mother’s been teaching history in the Dade County school system for twenty years, Gabrielle. I got one brother who’s a CPA, another one who’s a social worker in Fort Lauderdale. You know what they say to me? ‘Girl, what happened to that nice intern at Miami Beach-Mount Sinai who was so crazy about you last year? Now that cat had a future!’”

Crissette gave an abrupt scream. “I see you there!” She darted forward. “Get out of here, David!”

The muscular young man in a muddy white T-shirt, muddier jeans, and work boots, and wearing a bright blue hard hat, came out of the shadows by Crissette’s Fiero GT. Gaby was sure David Fothergill had heard every word.

“‘Lo, dah-leen,” he greeted Crissette in his soft, lilting Trinidad accent. He gave a formal duck of his head to Gaby.

“Dump it, man,” Crissette snarled. She pushed Gaby toward the passenger side of the Fiero. “You’re gonna tell me they didn’t even have time to pay you off, right?”

He sighed. “Honey lamb, I told you. The immigration people come up to the site with buses, they was ready to catch us and haul us away. Me, the others who got no papers, we just run like hell.”

He laughed, showing white teeth, but Crissette pushed past him angrily. He followed her. “I ran back streets, back alley all the way to Miami Springs, with no time to stop to clean up, get the mud off me.” He paused and looked down mournfully at his jeans and tight-fitting shirt. “And no money, love,” he murmured. “I’m sorry.”

Crissette opened the door to the car. “You’re not coming home with me,” she said in a fierce whisper. She was full of fury, her dark eyes flashing. “I told you that on the phone.”

He gave her a pleading look. “Dah-leen, don’t talk like that. Just let me explain.”

Tactfully, Gaby turned away. She walked around the front of the Fiero, realizing that David was in love with Crissette. Unless he was a consummate actor, it was written all over him. And, Gaby had to admit, there was something in Crissette’s strident anger that sounded as though she knew it, too, and was fighting it.

Gaby leaned against the hood of the car, feeling exhausted. Most people’s lives were a tangled mess. She hadn’t done too well herself. She wondered what Dodd was doing.

The August night was oppressive after the newspaper offices’ chill air-conditioning, but the city around them was sparkling. To the south, lighted glass towers rose against a black sky. Music drifted from an all-night coffee shop in the next block, a Ruben Blades rock-blues-jazz-Latin tune, “Buscando America.” The street was deserted except for a long black car that had just pulled up to the curb and stopped, headlights on, its motor running.

Thinking of the coffee shop made Gaby even hungrier. She started to walk slowly down the sidewalk, trying not to listen to the couple arguing loudly behind her. Reading about James Santo Marin had depressed her. So why couldn’t she just forget it? Why worry about someone who’d found a particularly loathsome way to get rich?

The black limousine idling across the street was a custom-built stretch Cadillac, probably driven by a chauffeur. Since the windows were tinted Gaby couldn’t really tell. Perhaps it was waiting to pick up someone from the
Times-Journal
, she thought. But not Gardner Hedison. The publisher had gone home hours ago. Yet it was possible somebody had a late date. A
rich
late date.

A rich late date? She mentally ran through all the newsroom personnel, including the food editor and even the rewrite desk, and rejected them all. When she came to dour Jack Carty, the idea that the features editor might have a wealthy lover in a Cadillac was so ludicrous she almost smiled.

Then she frowned. Actually, she mused, a long black limousine had been in the same place the night before. It had left abruptly when she’d gotten into her car to go home. She also remembered that she’d had to wait when she was pulling out of the parking lot to let it pass. Feeling a little chill of apprehension shiver down her spine, she turned back toward the lighted parking area, quickening her step.

There was no reason, she told herself, to think someone inside the car was watching her. But now that she thought about it, the black Cadillac, or one that looked exactly like it,
had
pulled into that same space, just past the corner of Fiftieth and Biscayne Boulevard, the night before at approximately the same time, nine-thirty. And two nights before that it had been sitting there when she came out of the
Times-Journal
building. Why hadn’t she paid attention to it before this?

Gaby broke into a little trot. She wasn’t frightened, she told herself, she just wanted to hurry. But wasn’t it true that you could literally feel someone’s eyes on you when you were being watched?

She was not going to run, she thought. She could see David and Crissette from there. She was not going to do anything crazy. But her thoughts were churning. If she had witnessed some sort of deal that afternoon at the fashion show and the Colombians thought she was a newspaper reporter—a
real
newspaper reporter—what would they do? And how about James Santo Marin, rich, powerful, inscrutable. Was that his limousine? Would he sit there at night, waiting for her to get off work, not making himself known?

Gaby cut around Crissette’s Fiero at a run. The photographer and the Trinidadian stopped their arguing as she skidded to a halt. “Let’s get out of here,” she gasped. “That car is following me.” When they only stared at her she almost yelled, “It was here last night too!”

Crissette and David turned toward the street. As they did, the limousine’s motor revved up and the car slid away from the curb. Without undue speed it continued down Fiftieth Street, around the corner onto Biscayne Boulevard, and disappeared.

“There’s somebody in that Cadillac following me.” Gaby was beginning to feel like a lunatic. “It’s been here three nights this week and I didn’t even notice it. Let’s go before they come back!” She took Crissette’s arm and tried to pull her to the door of the Fiero. “Please, please,” she begged her. “Let’s get out of here!”

The other woman looked amazed. “What’s with you anyway? Are you seeing drug dealers again?”