Miami Midnight

by Davis, Maggie;

  “But David didn’t tell them where I was. He tried to warn me.”

  Castaneda shrugged. “They were going to snatch either you or Pilar because Jimmy was still stalling them. On our orders.”

  “Is David all right?” she asked anxiously.

  “He’s a big strong guy, he’ll live. Legally? It’s too bad he got caught for doing a good deed.”

  She was still confused. “But they’re not going to arrest James?”

  He sighed, patiently. “Miss Collier, the citizens of the United States owe Jimmy a big debt for his part in apprehending the Ochoa drug ring. He’s a hero. We asked him to cooperate because every federal agency in Miami wanted the Ochoas’ base in the everglades. We’d been tracking it for five long years. We knew our tiger would do anything to help, even if it meant driving himself to the wall. Which,” he added, “he was practically doing already.”

  “Yes, I know, but he really doesn’t work for the FBI?”

  Castaneda’s smile was back. “Good old Jimmy. He never told you, did he?”

  “Told me what? Look, I’ve—I was kidnapped last night and dragged out into the swamps by—by animals and mauled.” She couldn’t hold back an involuntary shudder. “Believe me, before all this started I’d been leading a quiet life!”

  “You’ve been a very brave person,” he said, clamping the cigar between his teeth. “I was just getting to that.”

  “Getting to what?”

  “Actually, we’re going to express our appreciation for your part in this by making a few things smoother for you. All you have to do is make a simple deposition about being kidnapped, no testimony in court. We’ll keep it to a minimum.

  “Make a what?”

  “You don’t think it ends here, do you?” He looked untypically grim. “These drug-dealing bastards hire high-priced defense lawyers and they fight conviction with all the money in the world. The international cocaine cartel supports them. It takes months, sometimes years to put this slime away. I think I can speak for everybody connected with drug enforcement in south Florida when I say what you did is greatly appreciated, Miss Collier. You’re a brave lady.”

  He paced the room again, stopping once more at the window. It was still raining hard. Water poured down the glass of the night-dark window, turning the neon lights of downtown Miami into glittering, multicolored gems.

  “It wasn’t a deliberate decision on our part to use you to attract the Ochoas, and Jimmy has a right to be mad as hell about that. But when the Ochoa brothers snatched you, you were able to lead us right into federal kidnapping charges against them. And we know we can make those stick. Even if,” he said, grinning, “the trial will probably have to wait for Tomás Ochoa’s physical therapy. They tell me that that fork broke off at the handle when you—ah, speared him.” When she looked shocked, he said quickly, “Hey, cheer up, I hear the story’s spreading all over the international drug world. You may have invented the American answer to la violencia.”

  Gaby felt sick. The memory of that moment in the shed was still much too vivid. “You don’t know what he was doing to me,” she whispered.

  “It didn’t happen, that’s what’s important. What’s probably more important is I kept Jimmy from killing the pig. But only just barely.”

  Castaneda paused and looked down at the glowing end of the cigar. “Look, he’s downstairs. He told me he’s going to be out of town again and he wanted to get this straightened out before he goes. He asked me if I thought you were up to it, physically, emotionally, after what you’d been through, and I said I’d see.”

  Before Gaby could speak he added, “Also, your fiancé Mr. Brickell has been waiting very patiently, although I can’t say very happily, in the visitors’ lounge here on this floor. Would you like to see him first?”

  “Dodd? I don’t know.”

  “Jimmy’s got his mother and sister with him” Castaneda hesitated. “If this is what I think it is, maybe I’d better stay with you until it’s over.”

  Gaby shook her head. “If you mean James,” she said quietly, “that won’t be necessary. I can see him alone.”

  Castaneda picked up the telephone from the bedside stand. He dialed only one number and hardly waited for the other end to answer before he said curtly, “Send them up.”

  Gaby had just enough time to slip on a hospital robe over her cotton gown, a task made painfully difficult by her swollen hands, and run a comb through her hair before she heard footsteps coming down the hospital corridor. Then the door opened and Estancia Santo Marin and her daughter Pilar came in, followed by a tall figure in a dark summer-weight silk suit, the shoulders lightly spattered with raindrops.

  Gaby hardly noticed the women, her eyes were so filled with the wonderful sight of James Santo Marin, his dark unruly hair slightly wet, the expression on his rigid face set, formal, unfathomable.

  There was an awkward silence. Finally he said as though they were strangers, “Miss Collier, I’d like to present my mother, Estancia Santo Marin, and my sister, Pilar.”

  The women turned their dark eyes on her. They were both dressed in black. James’s suit was black. They looked, Gaby thought uneasily, like they were going to a funeral. The air was suddenly thick with tension.

  “Yes, I know,” she said. “We’ve met before.” She was wondering what would come next. Why were his mother and sister there, at that hour, at the hospital? After all the events of this particularly hectic day?

  As if in answer, James took his sister’s arm and shoved her forward almost roughly. “Tell her,” he said harshly.

  The hard grip just above her elbow forced the woman to one knee, her full linen skirt brushing the floor. Her mother stepped forward, protesting, “Jaime, por Dios—”

  He shook her off. “Tell her,” he snarled.

  Pilar Santo Marin’s mane of beautiful black hair fell forward, hiding her face, but Gaby heard her sob, “I put the bilongo at your house.”

  For a long moment the words didn’t register. Gaby was more upset by the sight of the weeping woman kneeling before her, her obviously distraught mother, and James’s towering rage. “Oh,” she murmured absently, “I mean, that’s all right.”

  When she looked up she felt the full impact of James’s black, furious eyes burning into her. “Tell her the rest of it!” he ordered.

  The girl’s shoulders were shaking. “We didn’t mean to kill the dog,” she wept. “It was an accident. He tried to bite Luis.”

  “My dog?” Gaby stared at her. “You mean Jupiter?”

  James’s face contorted with disgust. “She has the damned chauffeur hypnotized too. He’ll do anything for her. God, there’s no end to it!” He let go of his sister’s arm and she sank to both knees, crying loudly. The mother bent over her, wringing her hands. “The maids—ignorant people—teach them this garbage when they’re in the damned cradle, when they’re children. How do you,” he asked bitterly, “fight against something like that?”

  Gaby felt numb. The emotional drain of the past twenty-four hours and now this was too much. She looked blankly from one face to another. What did they expect her to do?’

  “She’s obsessed with hate,” James said. “She was in love with an Anglo and he dumped her, broke the engagement. What a big deal.” He roughly nudged the weeping woman with his knee. “Now she hates Anglos. All Anglos. From the time she heard me ordering flowers for you her little brain has been busy with this crap, hating you too. She’s been following you in the car, making the damned idiot chauffeur help her, chewing on her hate, casting spells, doing all this. She thinks she’s some kind of goddamned Santería priestess!” He stepped forward, towering over her. “I should have strangled her the first damned time I found her doing this stuff!”

  “Ah, Jaime, don’t!” Señora Santo Marin threw herself in front of him. But it was Gaby she looked to, pleadingly. “Miss Collier, please forgive my daughter. We have caused you so much trouble. My son is so humiliated for this. Can you understand? We are all destruido—
destroyed!”

  Gaby was afraid the beautiful woman would throw herself to her elegant knees too. “Oh, no,” she said hurriedly, “I mean, of course I understand...”

  “I’m going to send her to a psychiatrist,” James shouted over his sister’s hysterical wails. “I’ll commit her myself if I have to.”

  Gaby winced. All this emotion was horrendous. The young woman had done something stupid and vicious. Gaby supposed she could believe they were all totally destroyed. They were certainly acting like it.

  “Is this necessary?” she tried to say over the clamor. “I mean, perhaps he, whoever he was, said something to make her hate people who were—”

  James, his voice cutting like a knife, broke in. “Don’t tell me you forgive her.”

  “Well, why not?” Nothing all that bad had happened, after all, she thought. At least nothing she hadn’t survived! It was actually a relief to find the Santería at her house was due to some vengeful girl who’d been jilted and not something else. “Look, I can understand how she would feel. About me, I mean.”

  James’s sister looked up, her wet, swollen face sullen. “I don’t need you to forgive me.”

  The door to the hospital room opened. One of the state patrol troopers stood there, looking for the source of the noise. And so did Dodd Brickell.

  One look at James Santo Marin and Dodd pushed his way into the room. “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded.

  For a moment, both men tensed, projecting their dislike. “James, please,” Señora Santo Marin said quickly.

  James shot Gaby a quick glance from under black brows before he turned away. But she had seen his gypsy eyes full of pain. And something like hatred.

  He inclined his dark head stiffly. “Please excuse us.” Gaby had never seen all that fluid, masculine beauty so completely rigid. “We were just leaving.”

  Señora Santo Marin hesitated as her son and daughter turned to the door. “Thank you,” she whispered. Her eyes held Gaby’s for a long moment, soft and warm, with a flash of something curious, questioning. Then she, too, was gone.

  Dodd took Gaby in his arms as soon as the door shut behind them. “I can’t stand those damned people. But at least that crowd spoke English. Want to tell me what that was all about?”

  When she didn’t answer, he gently patted her back. “Mouse, darling, just remember I’m here. Everything’s going to be all right. It’s all over.”

  She took a deep breath. What she had seen on James’s face left no hope. It was the end of the world. She was numb, not able to feel anything. She could only partly understand the humiliation, the insult to latino honor, the fierce, wounded pride. She supposed as a family they could never forget it.

  And she was sure of his opinion of her.

  “Yes,” she said, her words muffled. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  De carne se puede

  Hacer una flor: se puede,

  Con poder del carino,

  Hacer un cielo, y un nino.

  From flesh

  A flower can be made;

  From the power of love

  A heaven, and a child.

  JOSÉ MARTÍ

  Chapter 21

  Mid-September was the worst, everyone agreed: hot and miserable, the peak of hurricane season. Even the South Americans had gone home. But the open back terrace of Sunday’s on the Bay on the causeway to Key Biscayne was jammed with a fashionable lunchtime crowd in spite of a sky full of brownish-purple clouds and punishing humidity.

  “We could always go inside, in the air-conditioning,” Gaby said as she reached Crissette.

  The other woman stood up at the table to give her a hug. “It wouldn’t be Miami if we didn’t sit outside in the heat. Jeez, Gabrielle,” she murmured, holding Gaby at arm’s length, “you look fantastic. Black cotton voile pants? Gold chains and a Valentino jacket?”

  Gaby smiled. “I’m glad you think it’s a Valentino, because it’s really a Jordan Marsh markdown. The buyer called me and told me to come in and take a look at it.” She hesitated, sliding into her chair. “You know, I’m getting perks now. Not freebies, that’s unethical, but discounts, little extras. Stores call me when they have a sale. It helps, because I’m still not making all that much money.”

  Crissette was wearing an ultrademure navy blue linen shirtwaist dress with white accessories. When Gaby raised her eyebrows the photographer looked a little sheepish.

  “My Trinidad clothes. David’s gotta stay in the islands at least six months before he can apply legally to get back into the States, even after we get married.”

  Gaby hadn’t heard the good news. “Oh, Crissette, I’m so happy for you!” She took Crissette’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Are we celebrating? Are you going to invite me to the wedding?”

  Crissette managed to look gloomy. “Yeah, I guess so. You can come down and help me with some of my culture shock. I’m still having a major problem with my middle-class attitudes.”

  Gaby’s mouth quirked. They looked as if they’d changed roles, she thought, with Crissette in her somber clothes, her mane of glossy black hair tied back severely.

  “The Caribbean is really cosmopolitan,” she tried to assure Crissette, “full of exciting people from all over the world. You’re going to love it.”

  Crissette looked even gloomier. “I guess so.” She opened her navy kid purse and pulled out several photographs. “Gabrielle,” she said, leaning across the table and lowering her voice, “I got some pictures of David’s family in Trinidad. His mother wrote me this nice long letter welcoming me to the family. You know what? David’s daddy is a British magistrate. I mean, take a look at this!”

  She handed Gaby a snapshot of a very dignified black man in the white curling wig and black robes of a British judge.

  “Good heavens.” Gaby couldn’t laugh; she’d hurt Crissette’s feelings. “He’s certainly imposing.”

  “Yeah, you can say that again.” Crissette gazed across the restaurant terrace, her pretty, angular face pensive. “Here all this time I thought David was some bum hanging out on garbage trucks. What I didn’t know was that he wanted me to think that, since he’s into the struggles of the common man and changing social and political structures, and all that stuff he got into when he was getting his degree at the London School of Economics. And before,” she added, sighing, “he decided to be a radical poet.”

  She looked at Gaby uncertainly. “I’m scared, Gabrielle. I’m going to be spending almost a year in an upscale black society in Trinidad that’s way outta my experience. David’s even got an uncle who was made ‘Sir’ somebody. You know, knighted by the queen!”

  Gaby couldn’t hold it in any longer. Crissette looked perplexed for a moment, then joined her in the laughter. “All right, I deserve it. Go ahead and say it.”

  “You love David,” Gaby reminded her.

  “Love him? Oh, lordy, Gabrielle, what am I complaining about? David’s going to write books,” she rushed on, her expression now one of radiant softness, “and I’m going to do the photographs, and if we don’t move back to Miami we’ll have a whole bunch of little kids in white wigs that talk like a steel band! You should see pictures of the rest of David’s family. His mother’s a pediatrician, his two sisters are accountants ... Honey, that’s when I went out and bought all my J.C. Penney dress-for-success coordinates!”

  They gave their order for drinks. This was their last lunch together before Crissette left for Trinidad to join David.

  “Well, hell, I don’t have any choice,” the photographer said, “since David was deported as an illegal alien. I can’t marry him in Miami, the new law won’t let me. So I go to Trinidad. And David starts all over, applying for immigration.”

  “Crissette, I feel so sorry about David.” His deportation had bothered Gaby. “If I hadn’t dragged him into all of this...”

  “Put it out of your mind, Gabrielle,” Crissette said quickly. “David knew what kind of a risk he was getting into when
he came out to Vizcaya that night to warn you, but you know David. He wouldn’t have done anything else. That’s the way he is. Besides, it was kind of a relief when the cops arrested him. It ended the suspense. For me, anyway.

  Gaby shook her head. “I owe David more than I can ever say. That was the bravest thing in the world for him to do, to lay his freedom on the line like that.”

  “He wasn’t the only brave one. You didn’t do so bad yourself.” Crissette studied her intently. “You know, Gabrielle, that Colombian would have killed you. You didn’t put him all the way out of commission when you stabbed him, and your hands were still tied. Did you ever think of that? I mean, that when he got his act back together he was probably going to do something really terrible to you?”

  “It’s strange, but all I remember is that I just didn’t seem to care. I hated what he was doing to me so much, my reactions were totally primitive. Like some other woman, not me.” She drew a shuddering breath. The memories came back at times much too vividly. “I’m not really very brave,” she murmured. “All my life people have been telling me what a coward I am.”

  “You? A coward?” The other woman stared at her. “You have a weird image of yourself, Gabrielle. Some women would have had a nervous breakdown. But you put it all behind you, got your act all together on the job. Hey, is it true Jack Carty’s going to hire you an assistant because you’ve upgraded the fashion desk so much?”

  “Only part time,” Gaby said modestly. “I have to share her. Two days a week she works for the society page.”

  When she’d left the newspaper that morning Tina Ramirez, the new fashion-society intern, had been sitting at Jack’s desk looking eager but baffled as the features editor outlined some of her duties in his usual negative, nearly inaudible monotone. Tina was smart and determined. Jack had been hunched into his shoulders like a turtle, but giving the pretty brunette furtive, even appreciative glances. Gaby couldn’t help thinking the situation looked promising.