Suitable for Framing (14 page)

“We met near the commission chambers and she said to stake out his office,” Lottie said, hurriedly continuing our conversation. “She is so cool. The minute the meeting broke she glued herself to that man like stink on shit. Invites herself into his office and the cavalry arrives.

“Shoulda seen the looks on their faces when she answers the door and I pop up and start shooting.” She grinned. “I love it.”

“So the cops didn't act like they expected her?”

“Hell, no. The lead detective raised the chief on the radio, demanding to know who was responsible for the leak. Apparently the case was hush-hush; only the chief, the state attorney, and four investigators knew about it.”

“How'd she get all that inside stuff?”

Lottie shrugged. “You should know, Britt. You do it all the time. Ask her. She's your friend.” She headed back to the darkroom.

I smiled, but my heart wasn't in it.

Yeah, I thought. At least somebody was on top of the story. Otherwise I would have been out all night, knocking on doors, scrambling with the rest of them, trying to piece the facts together and explain myself to irate editors. Instead, I could go home, thanks to Trish. I should have been relieved, but I wasn't. Where were my sources? How the hell had I missed it? I couldn't wait to find out.

Trish's story led the morning paper.

Police released few details. Frustrated reporters from other organizations were reduced to quoting liberally from the
News
. What a coup for us. For Trish.

I watched the press conference just because I happened to be at headquarters, the usual stop on my beat that time of day. Trish covered it; it was her story.

I stood in the back while she sat in the front row, standing out from the crowd, stunning in a white double-breasted blazer, dark slacks, and big sunglasses. The police chief glared down at her and ranted about the leak to “a certain newspaper,” his ire only enhancing her reputation, of course, in the eyes of her colleagues.

I had met Danny Menendez, the PIO sergeant, on the way in, and he told me that the brass was convinced that a cop was responsible for tipping off Trish and that an internal affairs investigation had been opened to identify the culprit.

Across the nests of TV crews' coiled cords and tangled wires my searching eyes spotted Kendall McDonald amid a cluster of other brass. He wore the department's dark blue uniform, burnished leather gleaming, metal twinkling in the strobes. As a detective lieutenant he usually wore plainclothes, which meant he must be representing the department today at some official meeting or luncheon. Tall, lean, long-legged, cleft chin.
Guapísimo
. I sighed and looked away. When I glanced back, his eyes were on me. The sizzle was still there. He smiled. I returned it, then self-consciously shifted my attention back to the speaker.

Luckily I would not have to report what the chief had just said.

Later, on my rounds, when cops asked me how the
News
nailed the Linwood story, I could truthfully say I didn't know.

Blowing the story left me jittery and extra careful out on the beat. I asked for a pass to visit the office of the public integrity squad but was turned away. The desk sergeant had been instructed to say that nobody up there was talking to the press. So I went to the pay phone in the lobby and dialed the number direct.

Tully Snow had always been a straight arrow with me in the past, and we had a good working relationship.

“He's on his way back from court,” the secretary said. Hoping he hadn't detoured along the way, I loitered near the elevators where I could watch each entrance. Less than five minutes later, Tully entered the lobby, stopping to stub out a cigarette in a sand-filled receptacle. He carried files under his arm and was wearing a tie, a sure sign that he'd been testifying.

He seemed to regret seeing me. Especially when I asked about the Linwood case.

“God, Britt,” he said quietly, looking around to be sure we were not overheard, “the whole damn thing was so hush-hush and supersecret, only a few of us knew what the hell was going down. Everybody involved was sworn to secrecy and had their lips buttoned.”

“Somebody didn't,” I said, my skepticism obvious.

“Sure as hell wasn't me.”

“You could at least have warned me that something was in the wind. I looked so stupid to my editors.”

He punched the elevator button. “Well, you guys got the story anyway.”

“Sure,” I said bitterly, “but it was on my beat.”

“You hear about the missing kids?” he asked in a conciliatory tone, as though trying to make it up to me.

“No, what kids?”

He paused and lowered his voice, eyes scanning the lobby. At the moment it was apparently a major offense to be seen just talking to a reporter.

“Heard it go out on c-channel a little while ago. Deep south. Two babies, twins, missing.”

“Think it's a custody snatch?”

“Hell, Britt. I don't know, it's a county case, but it didn't sound it. Sounded like the mother couldn't remember where she left them.”

“What?”

To his relief, the elevator doors slid open and he stepped inside.

“Thanks, Tully. Talk at you later.”

This is a glorious business. Miss one story, there is always another. Every day is an adventure.

I got to a phone and called Metro-Dade. Sure enough, I heard the BOLO broadcast countywide as I drove south: Be on the lookout for five-month-old twin girls. A retarded teenager in rural South Dade had strolled to the corner store for some Marlboros and a can of soda pop the prior afternoon, taking her twins with her. She had moseyed on home almost twenty hours later, at about 10
A.M
., alone. She wandered in a kitchen door and was foraging in the refrigerator when her mother asked where the twins were. Her response was a vacant stare. She seemed to have forgotten that she had taken them with her.

It had rained on and off during the night and there was cause for alarm. Cops were checking dumpsters, canals, and garbage cans. How do you retrace the footsteps of somebody who hasn't the faintest idea of where she's been and with whom? Dogs had been brought in, and Police Explorers were searching the woods.

The small wood-frame house was sparsely furnished but remarkably neat. A county policewoman I had never met had the call. Her nameplate said
WATSON
. Her first name was Annalee, she said. Solidly built, she looked even broader in the county's unflattering brown uniform, padded at the waist and hip with hardware, leather, handcuffs, radio, ammo, mace, keys, and all the other little accessories that make cops creak and jingle when they walk. I am always amazed when cops, burdened by that extra load, manage to win foot chases and tackle unencumbered suspects. Annalee Watson's dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She wore a sharpshooter's badge and a patient expression.

“You think they're alive?” I asked.

“Don't know. I've encountered Janice before and she seems to be a good enough mother. I don't think she would deliberately hurt them, but she has a short attention span and if she walked off and left them in danger, you know, anything can happen out there.”

She glanced toward the scruffy neighborhood of migrant and low-income housing and the dusty strip of all-night bars and tacky stores along Homestead Avenue where it cuts through strawberry, pole bean, and tomato fields. Roughneck kids congregate in the convenience store parking lots.

Worry flickered in the cop's honest brown eyes.

“If her mother was home when Janice went out to the store, why did she take the babies along? Wouldn't it be easier to leave them at home? Babies don't travel light.”

“Janice is eighteen now. Since she was twelve she's had a habit of going to the store and disappearing for a day or two. Apparently that's how she got pregnant in the first place. So the mother makes her take the babies with her. She thought it made her more likely to come home. Up to now, it's worked.”

“Can I talk to her?”

“Be my guest.” She shrugged. “Better do it now, because if we don't come up with something soon we're going to take her in for a statement just in case. Can you believe it? She remembers what they were wearing but not where she left them. Sad,” she said, “some people try and never can have a baby. And she has two of them. That's not for publication,” she added.

“Right.”

While cops and neighbors searched, Janice sat, knees apart, on a threadbare sofa watching
Oprah
on TV.

Two pink plastic barrettes held back her dishwater-blonde hair except for stringy bangs over a sloping, wedgelike forehead. The indistinct features of her pink, pudgy face were clean and makeup-free, although her short ragged fingernails had been painted orange. She looked potbellied in baggy slacks. Her worn shoes didn't match, but the socks did.

Her small blue eyes were placid, unlike those of a mother whose helpless babies were hungry and lost.

A stranger in her living room did not seem to interest her, and she kept her eyes on the flickering screen as I introduced myself.

“Remember when you went to the store yesterday, Janice?”

That got her attention. “I didn't lose the money,” she said, turning to face me.

“That's good.” I smiled.

“Do you remember where you saw the twins last?” Her eyes roved back to the television screen. I thought I'd start at the beginning. “You bought cigarettes and a can of soda, right?” Her eyes wandered my way again. “Did you leave the babies with anybody after you left the store?”

“I didn't lose the money.”

The babies' future, if any, seemed bleak to me.

“Were they crying when you left them?”

She regarded me seriously for a moment. “If they're not wet you burp them.”

“Makes sense to me.”

It seemed she had taken a ride with somebody whose name she could not quite recall, in a car she could not quite describe.

We went round and round for a while until Officer Watson appeared in the doorway and motioned for me to join her. “Anything?” she said.

“She didn't lose the money.”

“I could have told you that.” She sighed. “We've got people canvassing. No luck so far. I'm gonna take her to the station for a statement. Come on, Janice,” she said to the woman on the sofa. “Let's go for another ride.”

“Should we bring a bottle for the babies?” She frowned and surveyed the room as though trying to remember something. “Where did I put the bottle?”

“Where did you put the babies?” Watson said. “That is the question. Bring a sweater, Janice, it's cold at the station.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“I don't think so.” Her voice was sympathetic. “We just need to find the twins. You have to try to remember.”

I gave Watson my card, home number scrawled on the back, and extracted her promise to call me the minute any new information surfaced. The babies' grandmother, a heavyset middle-aged woman with a heart condition and thick glasses, gave me a good snapshot of Cindy and Mindy, two little Kewpie dolls. Then she left to knock on doors and help in the search. Too bad they don't have Lojack systems for babies, I thought.

Back at the office I spotted Trish alone at her desk, giving me the opportunity to ask what I had wondered about all day.

“Great work on Linwood,” I said. “Helluva job.”

Smiling, she looked up from her screen. “Thanks. That means a lot coming from you, Britt.”

“How did you hear about it? I didn't have a clue.”

“A good source.” She pushed her hair out of her eyes and stretched her back, catlike.

“Who?”

She leaned forward. “Can you keep a secret, Britt?”

“Sure.” I nodded.

“Well, so can I.” She stared up into my expectant eyes, expression righteous, a note of finality in her voice.

“But you know I would never repeat—”

“Why, Britt, I was sworn to secrecy. You would never reveal a source, would you?”

“You're right,” I said lamely.

She was. Her word was good and she was keeping it No way to fault someone for that but I felt frustrated and annoyed.

Being accosted by Janowitz on the way back to my desk didn't improve my frame of mind. “How does it feel to be scooped by the new kid on the block?” He grinned.

“Don't mind a bit,” I lied jauntily. “Especially when it's a friend.”

Howie had left a phone message, with no return number. My frustration mounted when I called Youth Hall and they gave me a runaround. Finally I got through to Linda Shapiro, the director.

“You know that because of confidentiality we are not even authorized to confirm that a particular individual is here,” she said, in her infuriating bureaucratese.

“But this is different, goddammit,” I snapped, tired of being jerked around. “I'm the one who brought him in. He just got there, and I want to make sure he's okay. I'm only returning his call.”

She paused. “If, as you say, someone did call the <>News from this facility, that is something we will have to investigate internally.” Her tone was officious. “You may not be aware of the fact that telephone privileges are earned here and are not extended to anyone for at least seventy-two hours after their arrival. Even then, calls are strictly limited to next of kin. Parents only. Sorry, Britt, I cannot confirm that we even have such a person here.”

There was no persuading her. Seething, I slammed down the phone. Wait until she wants something, I thought viciously. I dialed Rakestraw and was told he was gone for the day. “Will you buzz him at home and ask him to give me a call?” Normally that's no problem.

“You know we can't do that,” said the officer who answered.

“Come on,” I coaxed. “You know it's done all the time.”

“Sorry.” The chief was furious at the
News
, so suddenly everybody was operating strictly by the book. I found Rakestraw's beeper number in my Rolodex and called it, punching in my own.

I sat there fuming, but he didn't call back. Poor Howie, I thought. He must feel abandoned.

“What's wrong, Britt?” Trish stopped at my desk.

“Oh, just one of those days,” I muttered. “This job is enough to make you want to put on a postal uniform and pick up an automatic weapon.”

“You okay? Anything I can do?”

“No, but thanks.”

I called Watson at the county's south substation. The hunt for the twins was still on. She promised again to call me at once with any developments. Here I was feeling sorry for myself, and those poor helpless babies were lost out there. I wrote the story for the final and told the desk I would keep tabs on it until the local section locked up at 1
A.M
. Where were they? I wondered. When would they be found? Would they be found? The mysteries I hate most are those that are never solved. They haunt you forever.