Margin of Error

by Edna Buchanan

  “Nobody stops for red lights anymore,” I complained tersely, “not since they were knocked out by the storm.” Some were dark for months. Legally, such intersections are to be treated as four-way stops. To Miamians, they present a ¿Quien es mas macho? challenge. The lights have been repaired, but not their driving habits.

  “Zippy Cash,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Zippy Cash. Looks like a pawnbroker at Twenty-seven thirty-four Northwest Fifty-fourth Street.”

  “What chutzpah, an ex-cop owns that place!”

  Clyde Zipper had a history of being too quick on the draw and had been forced to turn in his badge and gun after an off-duty barroom shooting. But he was best remembered for something else. An obnoxious prisoner, a career criminal who always filed complaints against arresting officers, deserved or not, charged that after a robbery arrest he had been viciously kicked and beaten in an interrogation room. He described his assailant as a huge white rabbit. Zipper had worn a rabbit costume that same day to an annual Easter egg hunt for underprivileged children at the PBA park. The evidence was purely circumstantial, and internal affairs never could prove a case.

  I groaned as traffic slowed. Every motorist caught on the crowded Boulevard had switched to the secondary road.

  “Funny,” my passenger said. “I never thought about reporters having to deal with everyday annoyances like traffic. They just always seemed to be there, like cops.” He shrugged. “But you’ve got no siren, no flashing lights.”

  “What street are we at?” I had my eyes on the suicidal pedestrians darting between cars. I didn’t mind the dirty rags and spray bottles. It’s the bricks and concrete blocks that I object to. He called out the street signs, ticking off the numbers, navigating as we worked our way north.

  Miami police had already cordoned off several blocks to divert traffic. Cops unloaded equipment from the trunks of patrol cars. K-9 officers had arrived, dogs barking and straining at their leashes. The street was blocked by flashing lights: accident investigators, traffic control, fire rescue, ambulances, and a hook and ladder. Parked behind an unmarked, I left a press card on the dash, shoved my handbag under the seat, and slipped the beaded chain with my press ID around my neck.

  Lance Westfell adjusted his shades, donned a baseball cap with a Marlins logo, and yanked the brim down over his eyes.

  The scene was a mess. Firefighters hosed down a wrecked car and a damaged bus. The barred front windows of Zippy Cash were shattered, the sidewalk awash in broken glass.

  Danny Menendez from PIO was already there. “Hey, Britt.” I knew nobody had died when he waved. He looked too cheerful.

  “What the heck happened?”

  “You know this is Zipper’s shop?”

  “I thought so. Is he involved?” I was vaguely aware of Westfell, standing quietly several feet away.

  “He got hit, but it’s not serious. Here’s all I know so far, subject to change as we talk to more people.” Menendez turned his back to the sun and read from his own notes as I scribbled. “Three armed kids pull a robbery, want guns. Well, they get ‘em. Zipper sees what’s going down, crouches behind the counter for cover, and starts to pull his thirty-eight. Unfortunately, he’s put on a few pounds, and when he crouches, his gut twists his holster. His gun is only half out, and he shoots himself in the thigh. After he opens fire on himself”—Menendez raised an eyebrow at me—“all hell breaks loose. The clerk draws his side arm, a Walther PPK three-eighty automatic, and a customer pulls his nine millimeter. Everybody, including the robbers, starts shooting. Security cameras in the store catch it all on tape. Should be a hoot.

  “The robbers apparently don’t realize or don’t care that the doors lock automatically. Customers are buzzed in and out and the button is behind the counter.

  “Bullets are flying, looks like about twenty-five, thirty rounds fired. Display cases shattered, everybody is panicky, screaming, trying to get out. The perps and the customer can’t find the buzzer. Zipper is in pain from his wound and trying to reload, and the clerk can’t get to the button from where he is at.

  “By this time, everybody wants out. Bad. They smash the front windows trying to escape but can’t squeeze between the security bars. The customer loses an earlobe and is bleeding all over the place. Flying glass hits the clerk and one of the robbers. Woman driving by with her kids in the car loses her windshield to a stray bullet. She pulls over and they’re all screaming. Zipper finally crawls through the blood and the broken glass, hits the buzzer, and the robbers split out the door. They pile into the getaway car, burn rubber, and slam into a Metro bus in the intersection.” He squinted at his notes. “The number four route, bound for South Allapattah.”

  “Wow. Anybody hurt on the bus?”

  “Not seriously, but the driver is totally pissed. He leaves the bus to go call in the accident to his supervisor. Swears he only had six, seven passengers aboard, tops. Comes back and there’s twenty-three people on his bus, all clutching their backs and their necks, claiming injuries.”

  “You’re kidding. Passersby jumped on the bus?”

  “Musta seen their chance and took it. Swears he never saw most of ‘em before. The robbers bail after the crash, take off running. Their car comes back registered to an elderly woman in Aventura. Must be stolen.”

  “Think it could be FMJ?” FMJ, short for Full Metal Jacket, his street name, is a notorious teenage killer and carjacker, a fugitive since a crime rampage more than a year ago. He always shot his victims in the leg his trademark, but everybody thought he had left town.

  Menendez shrugged and thought about it. “Nobody got shot in the leg except Zipper, and he popped himself.”

  “How bad is Zipper hurt?”

  “His holster was good solid leather, absorbed a lot of the impact. Slowed it down, flattened it out. The bullet ran out of a lotta gas before it could do too much damage. And he was using one-fifty-four-grain lead hollow points, not the copper jackets that do those jagged numbers. He was lucky.”

  Menendez’s name was being shouted out from half a dozen different directions, his pager chirping.

  “Thanks, Danny.” I lowered my voice. “Sorry I was such a bitch yesterday. Just a bad mood.”

  “I figured.” He grinned. “No sweat. I have to deal with that every month at home.”

  “What?”

  “PMS.”

  “Damn, you son of a—” Too late, he had disappeared into a crowd of cops, medics, and bus company officials.

  “Bus passengers” lay supine on backboards or grimaced and held their necks. I needed witnesses, descriptions of the robbers and eyeball accounts from anybody who saw a crowd scrambling aboard a dented bus with no driver.

  More people were clamoring for medical attention, claiming that they also had been passengers.

  “Didn’t I just see you come out of that delicatessen down the street?” I asked an “injured” man.

  He nodded solemnly. “I went there to call my family, to tell them I had been in this terrible accident.”

  A well-dressed young black woman told me she missed the gunfire but witnessed the aftermath. “See that woman?” she whispered, pointing out a patient flat on a backboard. “She’s faking it; she was never on the bus. She was sitting on that bench across the street when it happened. I saw her.”

  I crouched beside the “victim,” who clutched her purse to her bosom, eyes closed.

  “Ma’am?”

  Eyelids fluttered open.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Not good,” she murmured pitifully.

  “Were you on that bus? Witnesses say you were across the street when this happened.”

  “No speaka English,” she replied.

  Gotcha, I thought. “No te preocupes. Yo hablo español.”

  “Sprechen sie Deutsch?”

  The irate bus driver argued loudly with the matriarch of an increasingly large Spanish-speaking family who claimed that
they, too, had been on the bus. The blades of a police chopper, assisting in the manhunt for the robbers, beat the air overhead. The growing mob of spectators, school kids, and commuters pressed forward, eyes bright, eager to see the carnage at Zippy Cash. Cops tried to force them back.

  Zipper’s wife arrived, distraught and trembling despite police assurances that her husband’s wounds were not life-threatening. Her strawberry-blonde hair was pulled back, exposing an inch of dark roots, and fastened with a white scrunchie.

  “Is he really all right?” she pleaded.

  “I didn’t see him,” I told her, “but they say he was talking mad as hell, when they put him in the ambulance.”

  “Sounds like him.” Marianne Zipper nodded, her smile tearful. She wore a T-shirt over black tights and athletic shoes, as though she had been working out. “I always warned him that something like this was gonna happen sooner or later. You sure he’s all right?”

  I sensed a mood change in the crowd, the noise level, the focus, and felt uneasy. This was the victim’s wife, for God’s sake. Why was a gaggle of teenagers tittering and staring?

  “Why can’t he get a normal job like other people?” Marianne Zipper whined, wiping away the tears that coursed down her cheeks. “First the police work, now…” Her voice trailed off. “Is that…?”

  I followed her gaze. In pursuit of the story, I had forgotten Lance. He stood three feet from my elbow, hands in his pockets, listening. “Yeah,” I said. “They’re making a movie.”

  “Hi,” she trilled, the long note almost musical. Her dazzling smile was not meant for me. “I want you to know how much I loved Lightning Force.” She brushed by me to gaze up at Lance. “The way you blew away those Russians and rescued that female spy and the little girl. You were great.”

  Westfell smiled modest thanks.

  “Would you autograph something for me?” Teeth flashed, eyes twinkled, lashes batted.

  “Absolutely,” he said. “Sorry about your husband.”

  “Oh, he’ll be okay.” She waved away his concern with an absent gesture. “I’ve been through this before.”

  She remembered me and turned. “Can we borrow your pen?”

  I handed it over.

  “Good, a felt tip. Right here,” she said. Standing on tiptoe, she showed him where to sign her T-shirt, right over her left breast. “Make it To Marianne, one word, two ns and an e.”

  Once she broke the ice, everybody plunged in. Moments earlier, cops had been holding spectators back from the crime scene. Now they looked bewildered as the mob surged away, surrounding us.

  TV news crews covering the crime suddenly caught on, swung into 180-degree turns, and stampeded toward the star. Wayman Andrews from WTOP reached him first and jabbed a microphone at his mouth, as a cameraman focused on his face.

  “Can we do a brief interview, Mr. Westfell? How did you happen to be out here today?”

  Westfell began to look uncomfortable but stayed polite. “I would be glad to, but this isn’t the time or the place. It would be inappropriate. The publicist on the film will be happy to arrange it. I’m sorry.”

  He turned and our eyes caught. People spilled across the street, pouring in our direction. The bloodied victims, the escaped robbers, the bus scam, and another rush hour from hell—all forgotten. Even the woman who claimed to speak no English sprang up from her backboard, scrambling toward us, shouting, “Mr. Westfell, Mr. Westfell!”

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  “Right.”

  We began to stroll to my T-Bird and wound up running for our lives, the mob hot on our heels. Like the robbers, we escaped.

  I floored it. “Weird,” I gasped, as we turned the corner. “Reminds me of the riots, except they’re not trying to kill us.”

  “Maybe they are,” the star said in a guttural growl. “Did you see my last film?”

  Laughter dissolved the tension, my first clue that Westfell had a sense of humor.

  “It didn’t exactly do well,” he confessed. “Bombed, in fact. That’s why this one is so important.”

  “Your fans … Does this happen to you all the time?”

  The question seemed to surprise him. “There is no safe place on the planet … My house has been broken into. A stranger showed up in my hotel room. Been stalked by crazies and paparazzi, and maybe some nice people, I guess, but how do you sort ‘em out? Can’t finish a meal, see a show, or take a stroll. People follow you into the bathroom. A woman followed me into the men’s room at Spago last week. She was carrying a camera. There’s one mental case, a real scary broad—” He exhaled and shook his head quickly. “Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be anonymous, to be able to go anywhere. You won’t believe this, but Lexie, my ex-wife—”

  “The supermodel?”

  “Right, and now film actress.” He looked pained and paused. “Botswana. We were in Botswana once. A thousand light-years from civilization. Walking through a dusty marketplace. Then all of a sudden it was just like what happened back there. I really wanted to do this today. I even entertained thoughts about wearing a disguise, a wig, or—”

  “Groucho glasses,” I suggested. “The ones with the nose and mustache.”

  “Or a chicken suit” he said.

  “It must go with the turf. Entertainers want recognition.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “but people sifting through your garbage?”

  “Where and when do you feel comfortable?”

  He considered the question, gazing at passing traffic. “Not often, maybe with other people in the business, but then you never know when one of them is writing a book. And my problem is, I’m not into the Hollywood scene.”

  “Bummer.” I checked the rearview as I stopped for a light. “Exactly what is this new movie about?”

  He paused. “We want it to be a killer thriller. A wild, bloodcurdling, heart-pounding, steamy, suspenseful, roller-coaster ride of a story.”

  I cut my eyes at him. “Sounds like press release puffery. What’s the real story? I’m not writing about it,” I assured him. “I won’t give anything away.”

  He shrugged. “Shooting, chasing. You name it, we blow it up. Cars, powerboats, buildings, planes.”

  “Exactly what the youth of America needs—a role model.” I was only half joking. “I’ve written so many stories about people who got hurt by some impressionable jerk who got the idea from something he saw in a movie.”

  “Such as?” he said. “People like to use movies as a scapegoat for crimes that would have been committed anyway.”

  “Really? What about the kids, all younger than twelve, who burned down the biggest lumberyard in town?”

  “Kids play with matches all the time. Think about it. I did it myself, and you probably did too.”

  “These kids popped a container filled with gasoline and nails in a microwave. The explosion ignited a fire that injured two firemen. Think they thought that up by themselves? Steven Seagal did it in Under Siege. Or the teenager who murdered two people ‘just to feel the sensation of killing somebody’ after seeing Menace II Society?”

  “Hey,” he argued, “the premise for Margin of Error is reality-based; the co-star is a winner. Meredith Page does not do dreck. She’s had two Academy Award nominations. She’ll be here next week, and I’m looking forward to working with her.”

  “Sorry.” I meant it. Why was I picking a fight with him?

  “That’s okay,” Westfell said. “My skin is thicker than that. Has to be in this business. You have to shoot me three times before I take offense.

  “Besides, your newspaper is just as guilty. Publishing crime news gives people ideas. Like the one you wrote the other day about the rash of Lexus thefts. You wrote that the new models include an extra key in the owner’s manual, usually kept in the glove box. Most owners don’t even know it’s there. But the thieves do, so they break into new cars, find the key, and take off.”

  “But now t
he Lexus owners who read it are aware and can remove the key.” I was impressed that he had read my story.

  “But you also told more thieves where to find it.”

  “Car thieves probably don’t read the News.”

  “Probably don’t go to movies either.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. He had me, but he didn’t stop to crow about it.

  “Now, Margin of Error revolves around a nuclear plant in Cuba and international sabotage designed to create a Chernobyl-like disaster that would make South Florida and the Caribbean uninhabitable for the next thousand years.”

  “Our politicians and developers have already done that.”

  His smile made me understand why fans thought him sexy.

  “Is the movie company going to Cuba?”

  “Nope, we’re building the nuclear reactor set out in the Everglades. It’ll pass for Cuba.”

  “How did they get permits to do that on environmentally sensitive land?” I risked seeming confrontational again, but this sounded like a good investigative piece to me.

  “It’s nothing permanent; the producers promised that we won’t disturb the balance of nature. We’ll put everything back the way it was when we wrap. We’re environmentally sensitive.” His tone had become defensive again.

  An excellent outrage piece, I thought, but who would print it? Everybody—state, federal, and county officials, even the environmentalists and my editors—was playing footsie with the filmmakers.

  “In the script, the Russians built the power plant, but since they pulled out of Cuba, maintenance and security are lax, which attracts the terrorists. Their plan could be the most devastating act of terrorism to ever hit the United States, and the terrorists never even have to set foot on U.S. soil. What’s scary is that there really is such a plant.”

  “You stop ‘em and kill ‘em all at the end?”

  “Every last SOB.”

  “Too bad real life isn’t that simple.” I swung the T-Bird into my space under the News building.

  Westfell sat next to me at my computer terminal as I wrote the story. I made one last check before hitting the SEND key; the robbers remained at large. Local hospitals were on alert since one or more might have been hit, a good possibility with all that gunfire. If so, a car would roar up to an emergency room; the occupants would throw out the wounded and take off. The usual scenario. So far, it hadn’t happened.