“I’ll see what I can do.”
The rest of the staff was in full hurricane frenzy, churning out the usual stories: how to prepare your home, your boat, your garden, your windows and your pets for the big one. Same old stuff. Bring in lawn furniture and remove the coconuts from your trees to keep them from becoming cannonballs in one-hundred-mile-an-hour winds. Drain the pool, fill the tub, stock up on batteries, canned goods, matches, and candles. The same drill every year. Stock up, board up, lock up, and run for it.
I called the medical examiner’s office to ask about Armando Gutierrez. Dr. Sandra Lowe had already done the post.
“Was he in otherwise good health?” The answer to that routine question is often surprising. In this case it wasn’t.
“A bit malnourished, an old arm fracture.”
I thought about the lunch he never ate. Armando Gutierrez died hungry. Alone in a strange country where somebody wanted to kill him—and did.
The ironies were not lost on Dr. Lowe. “Sad, isn’t it,” she commented, “that he risked so much to come here, only to have this happen.
“His skin looked like he was a real rafter,” she added. “Leathery, with peeling sunburn.”
Some so-called balseros are Castro plants, dropped a few miles offshore or refugees from elsewhere, their rafts set adrift from a smuggler’s ship within sight of land. A major clue is when they claim to have been at sea for a week but arrive in good condition, well coiffed and neatly dressed, with no signs of sunburn or exposure.
“What about the bullet wounds?”
“Now, Britt, you know you have to ask the homicide detectives about a case under investigation.”
“This one is different,” I said. “I was there and saw the body and the head wounds. I’ve just come from talking to the detectives.”
“Don’t you get me in trouble, Britt.”
“Of course not.”
“What exactly did you want to know?”
What did I want to know? “He was shot twice?”
“Correct, but they probably wouldn’t want you to put the exact number of shots in the newspaper. Only the killer knows that.”
That’s right, I thought, so it wouldn’t tip him off to anything if we published it. But I didn’t argue the point.
“Right,” I said. “Was he beaten or anything first? He had bruises behind the ear.”
“The bullets caused a fracture of the middle cranial fossa, the mid-pan of the base of the skull. When there is a wound to the posterior it will look black-and-blue behind the ears. The bullets went through the cerebellum and midbrain and lodged in the front of his skull.”
“Did he live long after he was shot?”
“Not at all. The wounds were immediately fatal, by the rime he hit the floor. He fell in a face-down position, his nose was flattened.”
“So maybe he never saw it coming?”
“Correct.”
“How long?”
“He hadn’t been dead long at all when you found him. Less than an hour, from the statement of the man who saw him accept the food delivery an hour earlier. As you know, Britt, witnesses who last saw the decedent alive are usually more accurate in helping to establish an approximate time of death than body temperature. He was lying only a few feet from the air conditioner. The cooler air stays down around the floor. There was no lividity. The cause is multiple gunshot wounds of the head, homicide. That’s about all I can tell you.”
I took a stab. “Wonder what kind of silencer was used?”
“You better talk to the detectives about that, Britt.”
Aha, I thought. A silencer. I wondered about Bravo’s leather satchel. I’d seen a few of the goodies he pulled out of that grab bag. A handgun, a box of shotgun shells. He probably lugged around an entire assortment of lethal playthings, including a silencer or two.
“Anything else?” I said. “Anything interesting in his pockets?”
“Talk to the lead investigator about that.” She was getting hincty, probably concerned that she’d already said too much.
“Has next of kin been notified?”
“Apparently he had some relatives here in Miami; they were in the process of notifying his mother in Santiago de Cuba.”
“Did anybody know his occupation, what he did for a living?”
“I understand that he was a minor government employee. That’s all I know.”
Both detectives were out and did not return my calls. I turned in a brief story about the murder, then got captured by the city desk to do a hurricane story. A no-brainer on shelters and county-wide evacuation routes. I hammered it out after talking to the Red Cross and the county’s Emergency Management Office.
Something nagged at my subconscious. A troubling something I had overlooked and could not quite remember. I ordered all the clips about Bravo from the library and took out the huge file I had compiled on Reyes when working on his profile. As I reread them, Andrea Vitale called. She was crying.
“What is it, have you heard something?”
“No.” She gasped and caught control of herself. “It’s just the hurricane. If it comes I’ll be working emergency shifts at the hospital. And Butch, he’ll be alone out there, alone in the storm.”
I gazed out the big picture windows into bland blue sky and innocent fluffy clouds as she wept softly.
“Andrea, listen to me,” I said sternly. “In the first place, the storm probably isn’t coming. It’s only a possibility at this point Its almost fifteen hundred miles away, and it’s a big ocean out there. Don’t we go through this every year? Has the big one ever shown up? Not in decades. Weather patterns have changed. Remember the big panic back in 1979? They said the storm was on a direct course for Miami. It passed five miles offshore and never touched us. It was a sneeze. All we got was three days of rain. The only casualties were people who fell off ladders trying to put up storm shutters and got electrocuted trying to take down TV antennas. All for no reason. Don’t panic”
She blew her nose. “You’re right, Britt. I guess everything just hit me at once, the meeting and all. It made me afraid that he’s really gone. Some of those boys have been missing for years and years. Butch isn’t like them, he’s smart he’s a survivor, he’s a tough street fighter. It’s just that we’re—we’re the two musketeers. We get through everything together.”
“Andrea,” I said softly. “Butch is smart and if he’s okay, he’ll get through this wherever he is. When he comes home, think of all the adventures he’ll have to tell you.”
“What if he never comes home?” she whispered.
“It’s too early to panic or start to think like that,” I lied. “You may be right. He may not be related to the other cases.”
“It’s too early to panic Too early to panic,” she repeated like a mantra.
What else could I say?
Action was heating up around the city desk, plans for a special Hurricane Preparedness Section. I escaped and went home.
Swirling rivers of humanity eddied and surged through the Richard E. Gerstein Justice Building. Outside, a crew struggled to install metal storm shutters over the tall lobby windows. Inside: cops and robbers, lawyers and victims, judges and defendants, good guys and bad guys, all interchangeable. The hallways were alive with desperation and tension where the depraved and deprived, overworked prosecutors, exhausted public defenders, career criminals, dazed civilians, shell-shocked survivors, and victims about to be revictimized all rubbed shoulders with rich lawyers, sleazy bagmen and bondsmen, paid informants, and protected witnesses. Shakespeare would have loved this stage.
Hal waited nervously outside the courtroom, handsome and serious in a dark blue suit and subdued tie. My heart skipped a beat. I knew how he felt. The law does not protect us. Neither does the justice system.
“That’s the axman?” Lottie whispered as he saw me and smiled. She whistled long and low. “You can hose him down and bring him to my tent anytime.”
>
“Lottie!”
“Okay, forget the hosing, just bring him.”
He kissed my cheek and I introduced them.
At an inquest, less formal than a trial, the judge determines the manner of death and whether criminal charges should be filed. We sat in the spectator section as the police detective explained the circumstances. An assistant medical examiner testified as to the dead man’s wounds. Hal looked pale as they were described.
He was not the only one affected. In the third row, a gray-haired woman with a frizzy perm caught her breath and pressed a flowered handkerchief over her eyes. Uh-oh, I thought. A relative, probably the dead man’s mother. I hoped there would be no hysterical outbursts, floods of tears, or demands for retribution.
Florida allows homeowners to use reasonable force in defense of life and property. Reasonable is the operative word. My sole concern was that more than a single blow had been struck, indicating intent to harm. If one can actually form intent when confused, in the dark, roused from a sound sleep. I wasn’t sure how sympathetic the prosecutor was in this case.
Hal was not required to testify, but chose to do so. The prosecutor asked him to tell the court what happened.
“I was asleep,” he said, “alone in the house. I woke up, thought I was dreaming, heard something in the next room. I grabbed the phone but there was no dial tone.”
“Who did you intend to call?”
“The police. I had had three burglaries in the past six months, all when I wasn’t home. Now I thought they were back, in the house.”
“What did you do then?”
“I had taken the ax from my camping gear and put it under my bed for protection after the last one. I reached down to find it. It was still there. Then I went to the bedroom door. I couldn’t see anything. Then I heard a noise, like a drawer opening in the dining room and I yelled, ‘Who’s there!’
“The guy said something I couldn’t make out and ran right at me. He knocked me back up against the wall and we grappled in the dark. I pulled away and swung the ax.”
“How many blows did you strike?”
“Three, maybe four. Then I heard a door slam, and I ran out to try to stop whoever it was. He jumped in a car. I was yelling at him to stop. The car started to move and I swung the ax at the window. The glass broke and the guy took off.
“I went back inside and turned on the lights. I saw Mr. … Mr. Mumper on the floor. I found that they had taken the phone off the hook in the kitchen. I got a dial tone and called nine-one-one for the police and an ambulance.”
“Was Mr. Mumper still alive?”
“He wasn’t moving, or saying anything.”
“Did you try to give him assistance? First aid?”
Hal shook his head, face white. “I was shaking, in shock. I just sat there and waited for the police. It seemed like forever but they said later that they got there in four minutes.”
They played the 911 tape. Hal’s voice, breathing hard.
“There’s a burglar in my living room! I think he’s dead.”
The woman with the gray hair had buried her face in her hands during Hal’s testimony.
The prosecutor entered Mumper’s rap sheet into the record and the date of his recent early release from prison.
The judge asked if Hal had any record of violence.
“Nothing, your honor,” the prosecutor answered. “Violent or otherwise.”
“Is that all you have?” The judge looked around the courtroom. “Is there anybody else present who would like to speak in this matter?”
The woman in the third row raised her hand, then got to her feet, trembling.
I braced for the worst.
“I am the mother, sir. Ricky Mumper was my son.” My heart sank. “I just want everybody to know I’m sorry. I did everything I could. He wasn’t the man I tried to raise him to be. He’s in God’s hands now. I don’t hate anybody.”
She sat down again, heavily.
I almost wished she had ranted and raved and threatened to sue instead of exposing her broken heart and breaking ours.
Hal pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. I took his hand.
“The finding of this court is that the death of Ricky Mumper was justifiable homicide during commission of a crime and that there is no cause for criminal charges in this matter.”
Outside the courtroom, Mrs. Mumper hugged Hal. “I’m sorry,” she said, weeping. “You did what you had to do.”
Did he? I wondered. He could have run out the door or climbed out a window. He could have barricaded himself in his bedroom while Ricky stole everything he owned. I knew Hal was asking himself the same questions. When is it right to draw the line and take a stand?
“I’ve got to call my folks,” Hal said, clearing his throat and turning away so I wouldn’t see his lip quiver. He groped in his pockets for a quarter.
As I opened my purse for change, a high-pitched scream echoed from a courtroom down the hall, turning all heads in the crowded corridor. Some miscreant just slapped with a stiff sentence, I thought. In this building, screams are not unusual. Gunfire is. The sound of two shots in rapid succession was unmistakable. Pandemonium erupted. People were fleeing courtroom 4-2 in a panic. Lawyers, witnesses, and clerks stumbled and shoved each other out of the way. The crowded corridor turned into a mindless stampede as the panic became contagious. Somebody fell on the escalator, knocking others down like tenpins. Handcuffed defendants seized the opportunity to run. Cops drew their guns. People dove for cover, scrambling in all directions.
“She shot him!” screamed a ponytailed court reporter who had run from the courtroom. “She shot him!”
My first thought was that a judge had been hit. I grabbed her hands as she kept screaming. “Who?” I asked her. “Who was shot?”
“Stosh Gorski, the lawyer. He’s shod” She jerked away and ran for the escalator. Her words resounded up and down the hall.
The Polish Prince. Lottie and I exchanged looks. “Oh, my God,” she said.
We ran toward the courtroom.
“Wait, wait! Somebody in there has a gun!” Hal shouted. “Don’t go in there!” He reached for me, too late.
As we burst into the courtroom, I saw Lottie’s face, intent, focused.
Oh, no. Poor Lottie, I thought.
The scene inside was chaos. The judge cowered behind the bench. Half a dozen cops and bailiffs were scuffling with a woman they had wrestled to the floor. She still clutched the gun but it was twisted from her Angers as she shrieked and struggled.
On the floor in a puddle of blood in front of the bench, the Polish Prince whimpered and thrashed like a wounded animal. “She shot me!” he howled. The front of his expensive trousers was bloodstained. Clutching his upper thigh, he rocked in pain.
He looked up, eyes wild. “Lottie!” he cried pitifully.
She ran toward him—and began shooting his picture from all angles.
The bullet wound did not appear life-threatening. The shooter, disarmed and handcuffed, was his client, LaFontana Pierre, the lucky-bath burn victim.
While paramedics worked on the Polish Prince, cutting his exquisitely tailored trousers to expose the wound, she waded about how “he promised me…”
The judge appeared on all fours, crawling out from behind the bench. “How the hell did she get that pistol in here past the metal detectors?” he demanded.
Nobody was killed but it was still a big story, exposing the fact that the high-tech, expensive, and sophisticated security system at the Justice Budding could not deter anyone truly intent on smuggling in a weapon.
“These are great,” the photo editor said later, examining Lottie’s pictures.
“Yeah, ain’t they,” she said.
Thank God for small favors, I thought. She’s really over him.
Ryan winced as he scrutinized a print of Stosh as the medics worked on him. “Was he circumcised before the shooting?”
Lottie didn’t say a word. She just rolled her eyes.
19
Hal understood that the shooting story, with a sidebar on Justice Building security, forced postponement of our evening. He kissed me good-bye and left to help his parents, who had panicked about the storm and were bringing their boat up the Miami River to safe harbor.
“They want to do it before boat traffic jams up waiting for bridge openings, and land traffic gets crazy because of people trying to evacuate,” he said, shrugging.
Some Miamians’ idea of storm preparation is to throw their most valuable possessions in their cars and speed north, inland, or across state. Problem is, you can’t outrun Mother Nature. No place to hide. Hurricanes are so erratic and unpredictable that not even the scientists who track them from their inception can precisely predict exactly when and where they will make landfall.
This one, still for to the south, in the Caribbean, was not even a threat to South Florida at the moment. But as José Marri wrote, “Man needs to suffer. When he does not have real griefs, he creates them.”
I had not read Martf since I was a schoolgirl, yet his words came back to me now. Perhaps I am more Cuban than I thought. More likely it was because of my thoughts of my father and the feet that the storm might be headed for Cuba.
I worked the shooting story, learning that Stosh had apparently caused LaFontana Pierre grief, both personally and professionally. She seemed to believe they were engaged at one point, but had caught him with another woman. He had stopped returning her calls, but she knew where to find him. She had shown up packing a pistol as he represented another of her cousins, held on robbery charges. When she whipped out the gun, the defendant had leaped eagerly to his feet in the belief that she had come to break him out of there. Much to his disappointment, she gunned down his lawyer instead.
When I returned home, to the delicious luxury of my efficient new air conditioner, Mr. Goldstein and Seth were lugging out the hurricane shutters, numbered aluminum panels for each window and door. The young boy was already an inch or two taller than his granddad, and his back was certainly a lot straighter.
Act of Betrayal Page 23
