Contents Under Pressure

by Edna Buchanan

  “Somebody you know?” McDonald asked.

  “No,” I felt startled. “But I was just thinking that it could be awkward if someone from work saw us together. You know, there could be a conflict because of our jobs.”

  “Don’t think that hasn’t occurred to me. I don’t think I’d be a happy camper if some of the brass caught us with our heads together.”

  “Maybe we should blow out the candle,” I said, laughing as I glanced around the softly lit room.

  “Don’t,” he said. “I like you in candlelight. And I can take the heat if you can.”

  The snapper was fresh, moist, and sweet with the crunch of slivered almonds, and doused with the tangy juice of key limes. I began to feel much better after the third glass of Chardonnay.

  “How do you know baby fish don’t scream when they’re caught?”

  “My dad used to take me fishing, and I never heard one. Although it was probably too cold to scream in Lake Superior.”

  “So you’re a Yankee?”

  “I was. Marquette, Michigan, until my folks moved down here during my first year in high school. My mom couldn’t take the weather anymore. Frostbite didn’t help her arthritis.”

  “So they retired?”

  “No, he taught science, she taught history. She still does. He retired two years ago and became a naturalist; takes people on nature walks and bird-watching expeditions in the ‘Glades.”

  “That’s great. It must be fun.”

  “He loves it. My sister teaches phys ed in Bonita Springs; my older brother is a computer analyst for Florida Power and Light; and my kid brother is a lifeguard out at Crandon Park, living out all his fantasies. His sole ambition is to meet ‘babes.’”

  “It must be nice to have a big family. I’m an only child. So was my mother, and she doesn’t get along real well with my dad’s family. In fact she and my aunt Lourdes haven’t spoken since I was fifteen. That was when my mother refused to give me a quince, you know, the big traditional formal fifteenth birthday party for Cuban girls. You wear a big Gone With the Wind type dress and have two thousand pictures taken.

  “My mother insisted that I would have a traditional sweet-sixteen party the next year. My father’s family was furious, of course, and wouldn’t come.”

  “Which one did you want?”

  “Actually, I was shy and didn’t want either one. All I wanted was my driver’s license. I felt guilty, though, because I wanted to please them all. At the quince, your first dance is with your father. My uncle Julio would have taken his place, but my mother wouldn’t hear of it because of the scandal. You see, Uncle Julio had been arrested, for building bombs.”

  “How did they catch him?”

  “Apparently, he didn’t do it very well and blew off his left hand.”

  “Jesus, Britt. Well, at least they’re family.”

  “Yeah, like the Mansons.” Leaning forward, over my crème brulée, dead serious and, to my surprise, slightly slurring my words, I said, “So, you’ve been a homicide detective for six years now, and a cop for eleven?”

  McDonald nodded, his sensual mouth gently curved, as though secretly amused.

  “Tell me the best, most memorable last words that you’ve heard,” I said. “The ones you can’t forget that were brave, poetic, or inspiring.” Was I thinking of Ryan? Or my father? Or maybe Uncle Julio. I had been trying to remember the last thing Ryan had said at the dock. I believed it was something about his beer supply.

  McDonald laughed, a nice sound. “Another reason to wonder what our country is coming to.” He raised his coffee cup. “Another sign of the sad state of education in America, or at least in Miami. We’re not turning out a lot of Nathan Hales, or even W. C. Fieldses these days.” He shook his head. “Let’s see, from victims of homicides, construction accidents, traffic wrecks, and natural disasters, the most common last words I have heard or have had repeated to me by witnesses are: ‘Oh, shit.’”

  “Nothing more profound than that?” I laughed.

  He thought for a moment. “I don’t seem to recall any that were brave, poetic, or inspiring—only stupid. ‘Go ahead, I dare you,’ is a popular phrase. You hear that one a lot in homicides, Russian roulette, and in a few traffic fatalities.” He put down his cup and signaled for the check. “There was the hit on Vito Cuccinella,” he said thoughtfully, slipping a credit card out of his billfold. “The Mafioso gunned down back in eighty-six. He was ambushed outside a restaurant, shot nine times with a high-powered weapon. People heard the shots and came running. He was lying in the street, mortally wounded, full of bullet holes, and with his last breath, he gasped, ‘Don’t call the police. I’ll handle it myself.’”

  I laughed. “That case was never solved, was it?”

  “Nope. OC hits rarely are. It still bugs Dan. He was the lead on it. He hates open cases with his name on them. We heard that it was professional, a hit man out of Boston.”

  “You know what I hate? These over-educated pseudo-intellectual criminologists interviewed on TV every time there’s a mass murderer or a serial killer at large. The interviewer always asks for a profile of the perp, and the expert always ponders for a long moment and then comes up with this stunning revelation: ‘He’s a loner.’ They always say that. All sorts of degrees, years and years of study and analyzing criminal behavior, and that’s the best they can do?”

  McDonald smiled. “Of course they’re loners, they’ve killed everybody they knew.”

  The valet brought the car. The Cherokee looked shinier and newer, the night darker, and the lights brighter.

  “Where are we going?”

  He shrugged. “Let’s just cruise and schmooze.” He headed north on LeJeune, east on the Dolphin Expressway, then across the MacArthur Causeway to Miami Beach.

  “Do you know that more accidents happen on this causeway than on any of the others?” I said, suddenly too talkative, the wine and the night making me giddy. “I used to think there was something about the surface that made tires skid and drivers lose control and slide all over the place.” We were approaching the entrance to Palm Island. “That,” I said, as we whipped by, “is crash corner, the most dangerous intersection in the city of Miami Beach.” I looked back, trying to fathom what sinister forces lurked there.

  “They’ve resurfaced the roadway several times since I’ve been on the beat, but the accident rate stays just as high. Now I think it’s the distractions, the city skylines, the big cruise ships passing so close in the narrow channel and the little go-fast boats speeding by, trailing those monster wakes. It’s so beautiful that drivers can’t help but take their eyes off the road for an instant and land upside-down in the drink or up against a palm tree. Or an Australian pine.”

  I knew I should shut up, but couldn’t seem to. Being alone in the car with McDonald at night was making me babble.

  “That’s why I hate cars with power windows. They short out when you hit the water and you’re trapped. I’ve covered a couple of those. One was a young insurance salesman. Do you know that hitting one of those old trees is like hitting a stone wall?” I babbled on.

  “Do tell.” He looked at me quizzically. “You’re full of cheerful small talk. You’re right about the windows, though. We handled that guy. He had just sold a policy to a couple in that condo complex on the island and was trying to drive back to the mainland during a thunderstorm. Nobody saw his car slide off that little bridge. His power windows shorted out. Even when the car settled on the bottom and the pressure equalized, he had no way out. He had a gun in the glove compartment, and he emptied it through the windshield. It made neat little bullet holes, but the glass wouldn’t shatter, and he couldn’t break it out. Funny you should remember him.”

  “I remember all the people I write about,” I said ruefully.

  “Bummer,” he said.

  “I bet you do too,” I told him. “And so does Flood, the way he’s always talking about unsolved cases. That’s what we do. You
guys clean up the mess, and I tag right along with my little notebook.”

  “But we love it,” he said. “I never dreamed I’d stay with it this long. I’m hooked.”

  “So am I, but I never wanted to be anything but a journalist. What did you plan on before police work?’’

  “Law, but I ran out of bucks a year into law school. Figured I’d wear a badge for a year or so and go back. But somehow I took to being a cop and got a little disenchanted with the legal profession.”

  “How so?”

  “Ohh, I just didn’t want to spend the rest of my life talking out of the side of my mouth. You know what it’s like in this town. The judges are the best that money can buy, and the lawyers all resemble Pinocchio.”

  I laughed at the image.

  “I’ll probably go back and finish some day, then practice after I’ve got my twenty in with the department. But I’ve found that I like the action more as a police officer. Every day you feel a second closer to solving a problem. A lot of what lawyers do is mental masturbation; it’s not something real. Instead of resolving problems, they make them more complex.”

  “True. I agree with that bumper sticker: Help Save America, Shoot a Lawyer.”

  “You’re not so bad,” he said. His eyes left the road and gave me an appreciative sidelong glance. “Do you realize that a lot of people on the police department think you’re ten feet tall and green, with a tail?”

  “What?” I said, embarrassed.

  “Sure. You scare them. You and your stories. They have a totally false image of who you are and what you’re like. The only thing green about you is your eyes.”

  I felt flushed. Thank God it was dark. “But they must know that I’m always fair.”

  “Hell no. You know that cops are paranoid. They all think you’re out to get them.”

  He slid the Cherokee into a parking space on Ocean Drive at Tenth Street. “Let’s walk,” he said. “You could use some air.”

  “I know, I’ve been talking too much,” I apologized. “I drank so much wine. I haven’t been this relaxed in a long time.” The music from a live band at the Tropics wafted across the street as we strolled out onto the open sand. When I stumbled over the remains of somebody’s castle, he took my arm. His hand felt smooth and warm.

  The water was as black as an editor’s heart, and I thought of Ryan. I wanted to yell at it to give him back.

  McDonald caught me staring at the ocean. “I know what you’re thinking about, your missing buddy.”

  I slipped off my shoes and carried them as we strolled north along the waterline, the wind whipping at my hair and skirt and the surf lapping at my stockinged feet. A walk alone on the beach or with any other date at 1 A.M. could be tantamount to suicide these days, but I felt safe with McDonald. The wind was warm, but carried the smell of fall. We stopped at the Twelfth Street lifeguard stand, then climbed up and sat inside, sheltered and close together, watching the ocean tumble toward us as the tide came in. I trembled slightly, not due to the temperature, but I did not resist when he put his jacket and then his arm around me.

  His natural male heat and magnetism drew me to him like the tide, but also made me nervous. I hadn’t been with a man I was really attracted to in a long time. And when I got nervous, I tended to talk. “What you just said about police perception of the press might explain why Danny Menendez is acting so weird these days.”

  There in the cozy confines of the covered lifeguard stand, I told him about the D. Wayne Hudson story and how, before leaving the office, I had called PIO to request the personnel files on the Blackburn brothers, Estrada, Machado, and Lou Carpenter. The on duty PIO man had referred me to Sgt. Menendez. Still apparently in a snit, curt and unlike his usual self, he had grudgingly agreed to provide them to me in the morning. “His attitude was unsettling, because I know Danny. We always had a good professional relationship,” I concluded.

  McDonald was silent for a long moment, then shook his head. “Look at this from his standpoint, Britt. He’s a man caught in the middle. His job, no matter what the title, is not to inform the press but to polish the department’s image. If he pushes to get you the information you want, he catches heat from the people he’s pushing, many of whom outrank him. If he doesn’t, he catches heat from you and the newspaper. He’s in a no-win situation. And, speaking about being caught in the middle…” He took his arm from around me and half-turned to face me, his tone serious.

  “Now I know why you asked about those guys the other night. We need to get something straight between us. Our jobs could create a problem. If we keep seeing each other socially, that’s exactly what it has to be, strictly social. No shoptalk, no questions, no gossip. You can’t use me as your pipeline into the department.”

  I felt flushed in the darkness. “Tonight was your idea.”

  “Don’t get hinky, now.”

  “If cops are really so paranoid, maybe they sent you to find out how much I know about this case.” I knew that was absurd the moment it came out of my mouth, but I couldn’t stop myself.

  “Oh sure, I’m spending my only night off this week trying to pick your brain for the department.” He was beginning to sound angry. “Yeah, maybe I’m wired for sound, too.”

  I suddenly realized that I was blowing this whole night and that was not what I wanted to do. “Maybe you are,” I laughed, “so I guess I’ll just have to find out. Spread ‘em, Sergeant.”

  I saw the surprise in his face as I started to frisk him. I even shocked myself; had it not been dark, I never could have done it. But I patted him down, gingerly in places, but all the way down. Hell, I’d watched cops do it a hundred times, and had been frisked a few times myself when visiting prisoners or entering high-security courtrooms. I did a pretty good job.

  “Watch it, I’m ticklish,” he yelped. We were both laughing uncontrollably. By the time I found out he wasn’t wired, he was. So was I.

  “Don’t stop now.” He closed his arms around me. “Just when I’m beginning to like it. Well, you find anything? Any devices or dangerous weapons?”

  “Just your gun.”

  “Then I think you missed one.”

  “One what?”

  “Dangerous weapon.”

  “No comment.” The amount of heat our bodies generated in such close quarters left me breathless. I backed off and pulled my shoes on, needing to regroup a bit. “It’s getting late.”

  “Yeah, and it sure is warm in here,” he said, as the chill night wind blasted through our open-sided little shelter.

  We drove the short distance to my apartment in relative silence, the air between us charged. He walked me to the door. Once inside, he kissed me, long and slow. I felt myself starting to melt, but something held me back. Why is this wrong? I asked myself.

  He reminded me.

  “You know that story you’re so intent on doing?”

  “Hummm?” I murmured into his chest.

  “You should drop it.” He released me and stepped back.

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “No comment,” he said, and let himself out, but his eyes were smiling.

  Twelve

  The morning started out fast and furious. A thirty-ton crane being used to remove a forty-five-ton metal sign over the Palmetto Expressway toppled over, and the sign crashed onto the roadway. Thousands of overheated motorists and steaming cars were trapped in a six-hour traffic jam that spawned three heart attacks and numerous fistfights. The official temperature was 92, but out on the sun-blasted pavement it had to be 110. I parked on a side street that flanked the Palmetto and climbed the embankment to the x-way to interview the unhappy workers, hassled highway patrolmen, and melting motorists. Lottie was up in a rented chopper shooting aerials of the mess, when more bad news broke out ten miles away at the toll booth to the Rickenbacker Causeway.

  Midday temperatures had triggered a battle in which a pregnant woman and an eight-year-old boy were injured, an
d three other motorists shot. When the car in which the woman and child were riding overheated and stalled, enraged drivers behind them attacked. When one waved a knife, the woman’s brother-in-law pulled a gun from the glove compartment and shot him. Half a dozen other motorists drew their weapons. A police officer on patrol nearby had already radioed that a fight seemed to have broken out at the toll plaza, but by the time he could cross six lanes, motorists had already taken cover behind their cars and were trading shots. “They wanted to kill us because our car broke down,” the pregnant woman sobbed when I got there.

  It was a bad day to be a motorist in Miami. I called in the stories for the street edition, learned that there was no news on Ryan, and then went to headquarters to look at the cops’ personnel files. Unfortunately, Menendez was on his toes. Though the files were public record, the cops’ home addresses and phone numbers were not, and he had meticulously gone through and whited them out. It only made my job slightly more difficult; nothing is ever simple.

  Recalling McDonald’s description of Menendez as a man caught in the middle, I tried to give the PIO sergeant a friendly smile, but he remained aloof, avoiding eye contact. I sat at an unoccupied desk in the media room and leafed through the files. Each contained the essence of a policeman’s career; all the excitement, boredom, danger, and routine reduced to impersonal sheets of paper.