“Hey, Britt, we gonna have a hurricane party?” Seth was obviously thrilled by the idea.
According to the latest advisories, the huge storm had nicked the southern tip of the Dominican Republic’s Barahoma Peninsula. There were reports of flash Hooding in hillside barrios, crops and fishing boats had been destroyed, and airports were closed. Hurricanes are rated on a scale of one to five, with five the most fierce. This was a three, with winds of 111 to 130 miles an hour, but reports were that the storm was picking up speed over open water south of Jamaica and had veered to the northwest, toward Cuba.
“Hate to tell you this,” I said, “but last I heard, the storm may hit Cuba. That should slow it down and then, most likely, it will die in the Gulf.”
Seth looked crushed at the prospect.
“You can’t be too careful, Britt,” Mr. Goldstein said, a screwdriver in his hand. “There’s nothing like being prepared.” He mopped his forehead with an oversized handkerchief, his expression concerned. “I’ve been wondering if we should send Seth back home early.”
“No way!” his grandson cried. “I’ve never seen a hurricane! I want to write a first-person account for the Gazette. I’ll be the first staffer on my school paper to do an eyewitness account of a killer storm!”
They were still debating as I took Bitsy out for a walk.
By morning the storm had escalated to a four, with winds of between 131 and 155 miles an hour, and slammed into the Isle of Pines, off Cuba’s southwest coast, site of the prison my father had once escaped. The hurricane had hit the mainland’s narrow neck at La Habana Province and was roaring north toward Havana leaving widespread destruction in its wake.
Reports out of the country were sketchy with communications down, but the damage was apparently severe, with casualties high. Havana, where most houses and buildings are old and in poor condition, was sure to be hard hit. The mountains of eastern Cuba, where there is much more land to cross, will destroy a hurricane but this storm had struck at the narrow neck to the west.
A note on my word processor directed me to see Fred, the city editor, in his office. “Sit down,” he said, looking grave.
Uh-oh, I thought. Something had caught up to me. The U.S. 1 caper with Bravo?
I smiled, mind racing, and tried to look innocent.
“Britt,” he said reluctantly. “This is a sensitive matter.” He arose, stepped outside, spoke quietly to his secretary then returned, closing the door behind him, another bad sign. “Normally we wouldn’t ask you something like this,” he said, settling in his chair, “but we’ve had a complaint…”
My stomach churned.
“About me?” I said, quick on the defensive.
“No.” He looked startled, as though wondering why I would think such a thing. “The, eh, spouse of one of our staffers has made allegations, stating that they have experienced marital difficulties,” he paused—clearly uncomfortable—” because of a situation here in the newsroom.”
“A love triangle?” I said.
He nodded. “It’s said that you might know something about it.”
“Me? How?” Possibilities bashed through my mind. Had Lottie told someone?
“Evidently the aggrieved spouse suspected there was a late-night assignation here in the building last Wednesday and was outside, somewhere, watching. Claims she saw them leave together but that shortly before they emerged, you and Lottie Dane arrived, then left. The two individuals deny the allegations and claim both were here in the newsroom working late on individual projects. I might add that the couple involved is seeking counseling in an effort to repair the marriage, but the spouse appears to want some sort of disciplinary action on our part. These are valued employees, this could factor into their futures. Careers are involved here.” He looked up at me expectantly.
I stared back, hating to be caught up in this. He misread my expression.
“What adults do should be their own business,” he conceded. “Normally that’s the way it is, but you know the old man. He has always adhered to high moral standards and insists that we do the same. After all, we are in the daily business of scrutinizing and reporting the behavior and the ethics of others and, I might add, this aggrieved party has called him a number of times demanding action.”
“You’ve talked to the two people?”
He nodded.
“These are valued employees, and you don’t believe them?”
“We want to cover all bases. Did you observe anything out of the ordinary Wednesday night?”
“People could lose their jobs?” I leaned back in my chair, crossed my legs, and smiled wickedly at the thought.
“Now, Britt,” he warned, “I know you and one of the individuals involved may have experienced some difficulties in the past, but I expect you to be absolutely candid with me.”
I sighed. “Okay. I was here that night, with Lottie. I came in to check out an arrest, and she had film to bring in.”
“Did you see anyone?”
“Yes,” I said casually.
“And?”
“I didn’t see anything that looked unusual to me.”
The “individuals involved” were fools to do it in the newsroom, but it’s not that unusual, I reasoned. I know two cops who claim to have done it on the fifty-yard line at the empty Orange Bowl after dark. Lottie has confided about a steamy encounter in a hot air balloon, and though any sexcapades of mine probably pale by comparison, I thought that it was really gross for him to spy on employees’ sex lives for the executive editor. Had their positions—professional positions—been reversed, if a male editor had indulged in sex with a female reporter, would there be prurient corporate interest? I thought not. I’d have to warn Lottie.
As though reading my mind, Fred said, “Ah, here she is now.”
I glanced up and saw Lottie approaching, apparently summoned from the photo department.
“Thanks, Britt,” he said, motioning her in as I left.
I tried to give her a subtle high sign as we exchanged looks in passing. It would not be cool if our stories didn’t match.
Ron was nowhere in sight, but Gretchen was at the city desk and watched me return to my terminal. She had to be aware. First me, then Lottie called in for questioning. This is like the Kremlin, I thought. She looked sick. I could have given her a reassuring smile, but, hell, I’m not that nice.
Glancing back at Fred’s glass-enclosed office, all I could see was Lottie’s profile, lips slightly parted, eyes wide in an expression of studied innocence.
She emerged a short time later and walked past my desk. “Coffee?” she asked brightly.
“Sure,” I said. We did not speak again until the elevator doors closed behind us. I punched three for the cafeteria.
“You see anything?” she said, leaning casually against the back wall, arms folded.
“Nothing unusual,” I answered.
“Me neither.”
“Good,” I said with relief. “I hoped you’d say that.”
“I saw that old fish eye you gave me as you left Fred’s office. Don’t it suck that they’re investigating private lives?”
“You see Gretchen’s face?” I said, as we stepped off. “She’s worried.”
“Good.” Lottie grinned fiendishly and grabbed a tray. I poured a cup of coffee while she ran boding water over a tea bag.
“Wish I’d finished putting Bahama shutters on my house,” she said, as we settled at a corner table. “They’re so expensive that I’ve just been adding a couple a year. Still have four windows to go. Sure hope that storm don’t head our way. If it don’t, that’s what I’ll spend my slot-machine money on, afore the next one stirs up out there. It’s only a matter of time before we get hit.”
“Hey, we always manage to dodge the bullet,” I said confidently. “It’s over the west end of Cuba right now.”
“Nice if it just blew Mr. Castro the hell outta there.” She sipped her tea. “Ain’t the
delicate balance a nature amazing? A little butterfly flaps his wings somewhere in Australia and that teeny tiny waft of air snowballs, somersaults, and spins around until three weeks later we got us a hurricane boiling up the Caribbean.”
I blinked at the image.
“I don’t think that’s exactly how the meteorologists would describe it. Although, to tell you the truth, that makes more sense to me than some of the jargon in their forecasts.”
I tried to call the detectives in the Armando Gutierrez case, but when somebody finally did answer I was told they were out. Farmer from the FBI was out of his office, too. What the hell was going on here? A little storm hundreds of miles away and everybody disappears.
My Aunt Odalys did not sound great but insisted she was okay. “Britt, mi hijita. Listen to my words,” she muttered weakly. “The spirits are with you always. But remember, one can never escape la mala hora.”
The bad hour of ones life.
“Okay,” I chirped cheerfully. “Just wanted to be sure you’re all right and that if the hurricane does come this way you have somebody to help you.”
“Si,” she whispered. “Beware la mala hora.”
On that sunny note, I called my mother.
“Britt! Do you still have that little London Fog trench coat I got you at a discount? It will be perfect if the storm comes. Will you be coming to my place?”
I smiled. The last real hurricane to slam South Florida came when I was a toddler. I remembered us huddled together in her small apartment, wind howling around us. The power was out for a week.
“I’ll be working, Mom. If the storm comes, I’ll be covering it. I need to ask you something.”
“Yes,” she said guardedly.
“Winslow, from back in Dad’s days, remember him? He was CIA. Do you recall him ever saying where he was from, or where he planned to retire to?” I asked, pencil poised over a blank page in my notebook. “You wouldn’t happen to know his exact age, would you?”
She hung up.
I stood, fuming, and reached for my car keys as Ryan, working the weather story on the phone at the desk behind me, yelled to the city desk, “Hey, we may get id It battered the hell outta Cuba, now it’s standing still in the Straits, hasn’t moved in three hours, but it could head northeast for the Keys.”
The National Hurricane Center in West Dade, a big gray brick shoebox built like Fort Knox, with ten-inch-thick walls, rooftop satellites, wind gauges, and rooms crammed with radar and tracking equipment, was on red alert.
Oh swell, I thought, and stalked out of the newsroom. I knew what my reception would be, but didn’t care. Fueled by anger, I stormed out to my car. Enough was enough-How dare she hang up on me? I have endured a lifetime of her fashion crap, her embarrassing attempts at matchmaking for me, her moods, lousy temper, cigarette smoke, secrecy, and evasiveness. But never once did I hang up on her.
I rapped once and she threw open the door, a garment bag over her shoulder. A suitcase beside her on the floor.
Her mouth opened in surprise. For a moment she said nothing. “I thought you were the doorman.”
“Where are you going?”
“Emma, from the office, invited me to stay with her. She lives on high ground, in the Grove. So I’m evacuating early.”
“This building is perfectly safe, Mom. It’s only a hurricane watch.” Was she running out on me or the coming storm? “Weren’t you even going to let me know where you were?”
“I planned to call you.”
She was lying. I closed the door behind me and stood with my back to it. “Mom, I can’t believe you hung up on me.”
She watched me warily.
“You’ve got to help me. Don’t you realize that the more evasive you are, the more I want to know about my father?”
“I told you everything,” she said, indignantly, “the last time we talked.”
The doorbell rang. The doorman. “I have to go now,” she said briskly. “I’ll call you later, dear.”
“No,” I said, opening the door. I smiled at the middle-aged man in uniform. “Sorry. She doesn’t need you now. I’ll help her downstairs with her things.” I closed the door before either of them could object.
“Because you refuse to help me and keep playing games,” I told her, my rage mounting, “I wound up nearly deafened, within an inch of being arrested or killed, running around with Jorge Bravo, trailing after Juan Carlos Reyes, finding a dead body, and being humiliated in front of cops I have to deal with every day, and even fading into the arms of a man I scarcely know—all because of you!”
Her expression softened. “There’s a new man in your life?”
“That is not what this is about.” My voice shook. “If you ever want to see me again, you’d better start answering some questions!”
“Ask!” Her eyes glittered with anger.
“What the hell was your relationship with Reyes?”
“How dare you pry into my personal life!”
“And what’s the story on the earrings?”
She jerked her chin up stubbornly. “They were a gift-”
“I gathered that. From whom?”
“I don’t know.” Her eyes searched the room, as if for a means of escape. “Reyes gave them to me, saying they were from your father. Supposedly Tony slipped them to him in Cuba, asking him to deliver them to me if he didn’t get out. I never believed it for a moment.”
“Why?”
She raised her neatly penciled eyebrows. “For one thing, they’re for pierced ears. Tony knew my ears aren’t pierced—and that they were not the sort of thing I would ever wear.” Her classic nose wrinkled delicately.
Typical, I thought. I loved them.
“I just assumed that Reyes felt sorry for an abandoned widow with a child and was being kind, or trying to ingratiate himself for some other reason, such as seduction. You know how men move in on women who seem vulnerable. And why would Tony Montero send a gift to a woman he had left?”
“Perhaps because he intended to come back,” I said quietly.
“That’s the sort of naive remark that turns my stomach! Why do you keep making me miserable by dredging up the unhappy past?” she lashed out furiously. “I’m out of here.” She swung the garment bag back over her shoulder.
“Did you have an affair with Reyes?”
She glared at me. “We had dinner a few times. Danced. I was young, lonely. No.”
“Did my father work for the CIA?”
She looked startled, then shrugged. “Not that I know of, but of course I was the last to ever know anything.”
“Winslow was an agent. When was the last rime you saw him?”
“Thirty years or so ago,” she snapped. “I really have to leave now.” She took a step toward the door that I still blocked.
“Did you ever see or hear from him again after my fathers death?”
She thought for a moment, then erupted as though agitated by whatever she remembered. “No, I don’t think so, but I don’t care! I don’t give a shit about any of this. Your father was a bastard and it’s a pity you take after him. I’m out of here! You can stay if you like! Just lock the door when you leave.”
She pushed by me, red in the face. I didn’t try to stop her. I didn’t help with her luggage either. She picked up the suitcase and left, dragging the garment bag behind her.
She didn’t even say good-bye.
When I was sure she was gone, I turned the deadbolt, checked her address book, and rummaged through her neatly kept desk. Then I checked her bedroom closets. Nothing from the past. The gold earrings were in a junk jewelry box on her dresser. I scooped them up and slipped them into my pocket. They were mine. My eighteenth-birthday gift. I wanted to call Hal or Kendall McDonald, or somebody, for a kind word. Instead I drove back to the paper.
The newsroom was hectic for this time of the day. Stalled over the straits and fueled by the warm water, the storm had built and was now a categ
ory five and on the move, according to the latest advisory. Barreling north, with winds exceeding 155 miles an hour, it was skirting the coast and bypassing the Keys, which were being hit by outer edge gales, rain bands, and tornadoes. The big news was that the storm was traveling at nearly twenty miles an hour, twice the normal speed of a storm that size, and was accelerating.
The hurricane watch had been hurriedly upgraded to a hurricane warning, meaning that a storm is expected within the next twenty-four hours.
“If you have to, go secure your homes and your families, then get back in here as quick as you can,” Fred told the staff in a hasty newsroom meeting. “I’ll be calling in everybody who’s off. This thing could reach here a lot sooner than anybody expected.”
I had no messages from Farmer or the detectives. I called the FBI office. Farmer was in.
“Hey,” I said, “find out anything?”
He sounded harried and in a hurry. “Good news and bad news,” he said. “The good news is, I found Winslow.”
My heart beat faster. He had to talk to me.
“The bad news is, he’s dead.”
“What happened?”
“Retired early, apparently an alcohol problem he couldn’t control. Five years ago he was coming out of a bar in Alexandria, Virginia, and was shot to death. Apparently a robbery. Never solved. His daughter still lives up there.”
“What’s her name?”
There were noises and voices in the background. He seemed distracted. “You need that?”
I said I did. “What’s going on there?”
“A storm’s on the way,” he said irritably. “We’re trying to secure this place and move all the files to upper floors.”
“The daughter’s name?”
“Okay, don’t tell her where you got it. Meredith Jessup, at, uh … Sorry, I tossed it. She’s listed under her husband’s name. Simon. A Worthington Avenue address.”
I tried the detectives again, without any luck.
“You still here?” Fred said, pacing by my desk and looking impatiently at his watch.
Act of Betrayal Page 24
