Contents Under Pressure

by Edna Buchanan

  “Call the Czech embassy,” somebody had directed, after hearing me mention Cuba. In the absence of diplomatic relations with Cuba, cases involving Americans were handled through the Czechs.

  I handed the phone off to Fred Douglas, and sat at my desk laughing in sheer delight and relief. I caught sight of Gretchen shaking her head in exasperation, as if to ask what that pesky Ryan would do next, and managed to totally dislike her again.

  Lottie and I went to meet him at the airport before dawn. She was sunburned and peeling, mad as hell at Eric, and disappointed that we had not seen Larry Zink and Steve, who had been put on hold during the crisis. “What kind of sunblock do you use?” she demanded as we waited.

  “I don’t use any,” I said truthfully. “I never burn, just tan.”

  “I do hate you,” she grumbled. “Blond hair and green eyes, and you never burn.”

  “Hey, I always wished I had red hair and fair skin, like yours, but I take after my dad.”

  Ryan came home on a 6 A.M. flight, wearing a camouflage shirt and pants, sunbronzed, aglow, his eyes filled with the excitement of the adventure he had to write. He pressed his lips to the tarmac like all the Cuban refugees.

  We hugged him off his feet.

  I envied his brief sojourn, or several brief sojourns, in Cuba. I yearn to travel there someday, to trace the roots and the steps of my father, to walk up San Juan Hill, and stroll the beaches of Veradero. But, for now, I go there only in dreams, and they will have to suffice until the man who ordered him killed is no longer in power.

  It felt so good to have Ryan home. You never realize how much you cherish your friends until you are afraid they are gone.

  Thirteen

  The message from Officer Francie Alexander was left in the daylight. Unusual for her. I dialed the number, and imagined her answering in the darkness of her blacked-out apartment in the middle of a brilliant South Florida day.

  She sounded as though I had roused her from a sound sleep. “It’s me, Francie. I’m sorry. I should have waited until tonight. I’ll call you later.”

  “No, Britt, this is important,” she mumbled. “I left the phone on, hoping you would call.” I could hear her work herself into a sitting position, trying to sort out her sleep-skewed thoughts. “Listen, last night, I heard somebody run you on the radio.”

  “What?”

  “Right after roll call, I heard somebody ask what kind of car you drove. I didn’t say anything and couldn’t see who asked the question, but it sounded like one of the weightlifters. The room was full of people, but it was low-key, a one-on-one question as we were moving out. I didn’t hear the answer, but later, around 2:30 A.M., somebody raised the dispatcher and ran you. To see if your license was current, if you had any wants, warrants, outstanding tickets. It was as though somebody had you pulled over on a traffic stop.”

  “I was home asleep at 2:30.”

  “I figured. What’s going on Britt? Whoever did that has your age, your license number, your home address.”

  “Goddammit, what’s going on?” I remembered the threatening phone call, and my hand holding the receiver trembled. I felt indignant and, I had to admit it, a little scared.

  “Maybe one of the guys has a crush on you?”

  “You don’t think that’s it, do you?”

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “It’s about D. Wayne Hudson, isn’t it,” she said, more statement than question. “There has been some grumbling, more than usual, about the paper and you. The guys were just beefing and mouthing off. I defended you a few times, saying you were just doing your job, but they’re really pissed off.”

  “Hey, Francie, act like you don’t even know me with those guys. They’re your backup. Don’t catch any crap because of me. I’ll fight my own battles. I know you’re my friend, you don’t have to prove it. I’m really glad you told me about this. Give me a call if you hear anything else.”

  “Sure.”

  “Go back to sleep, Francie.”

  “Britt?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Be careful.”

  “You know it. Give Bitsy a hug. See you soon. Pleasant dreams.”

  The best recourse for me now was to work like hell on the story, put it in the newspaper, and get it over with. Nothing is older than yesterday’s news. No matter what the result, things would get back to normal. People forget fast.

  My mother had also left a message. Her voice was excited when I returned the call. “I’ve got a surprise for you, dear. Can you meet me on your way home?”

  “I wasn’t going home. I’m working tonight.”

  “Well can you spare a few minutes?”

  “Sure,” I said, hesitantly.

  “We’re working late, too. Inventory. Then I’m meeting one of the girls from my building for dinner. But I have just got to see you first!”

  “Okay.” The surprise part worried me. “I was going to stop by La Esquina for a bite. Want me to bring you anything from there?” I didn’t know why I bothered to ask.

  She hesitated before saying no, as if bewildered by the offer.

  We agreed to meet later at the bar in a restaurant in her neighborhood, up on Biscayne Boulevard. I drove to La Esquina first. The meat empanadas were hearty and the advice free, as usual. “Regardless of anything,” Maggie said, “family and your children, they are the most important. You are so young, you should get married. The streets are so hard, it is not easy to find a nice man. Aren’t you afraid to write stories about violence? That should be left to the men. It would be nice if you wrote pretty things, society things.” Her eyes brightened with an idea. “Interview Julio Iglesias!”

  “Why,” Luis, the counterman, demanded, “does your newspaper call Fidel ‘president’? Why not tell the truth and call him the tyrant or the dictator who covers the island in blood?”

  “President,” I said patiently, “is his title. We only report the news. It’s not up to us to give our opinions of him. All the world knows he is a dictator.”

  Luis glared. “How will he fall?”

  “Perhaps,” I said, “he will kill himself, when he knows the end is near.”

  Luis didn’t like that one. “Fidel is too much of a coward to commit suicide!” he cried. “You work for an anti-Cuban institution, a tool of the communists!”

  I escaped into the night, clutching my cardboard takeout container of Cuban coffee. I would need it, I thought. This would be a long evening.

  Driving north on the Boulevard, I passed the rundown motels that once drew free-spending tourists and businessmen but were now frequented by hookers and transients, stopped at the out-of-town newsstand on Seventy-ninth Street, bought a New York Times, and continued north, through the residential neighborhoods of Miami Shores and the condos of North Miami.

  My mother’s convertible was in the parking lot. She was smoking and sipping a Manhattan at the bar, wearing a classic navy blue blazer with a matching skirt.

  Her smile faded when she took in my attire. I had forgotten what I was wearing.

  “Isn’t that the same white dress you had on last time I saw you?” she said, incredulous. “With those awful pockets!”

  I smiled gaily and perched on the stool next to her. “I washed it between wearings, Mom. I’ve been busy this week, and it’s easy.”

  “People will think it’s the only thing you own.”

  “I’m sure they’re all alarmed,” I said, and ordered a Perrier.

  “Well, anyway, that’s not why we’re here. This,” she said proudly, “is for you.” She presented me with a shiny, lacquered shopping bag. Something inside was wrapped in layers of tissue paper. Oh, no, I hoped fervently, as I unwrapped it, it couldn’t be the handbag, it was far too small; it couldn’t be. It was.

  “I just couldn’t resist. It was far too fabulous a buy. Now Britt, I know you said you didn’t want it, but you’ll love it. Look, it’s just absolutely precious,
” she trilled.

  “It is beautiful,” I said sadly. That was the truth. “But I don’t think I can use it.” I opened it, then closed it again with a smart snap. “It’s way too small. No place for my beeper, or a notebook. Look, it’s even too short for my comb.”

  “Carry a smaller comb, Britt. Or get one of those little folding combs.”

  “It’s far too expensive to just sit on a shelf in my closet,” I said, shaking my head and folding it back into the tissue paper.

  “Just try it for a few days, Britt. That’s all I ask. You’d be amazed at how the right accessories spruce up your wardrobe.”

  “If I used it, Mom, I’d have to carry the rest of my stuff around with me in a shopping bag. How stylish would that look?”

  “It can’t be returned,” she hissed. “It was on sale. I’m trying to help. You will never meet a suitable man running around like that…”

  I almost told her about Kendall McDonald, but held back. Just as well, I thought, as she went on. “Miami is full of doctors, lawyers, and businessmen, but you don’t meet them covering the stories you do, and you never have time to socialize.”

  She wouldn’t consider McDonald suitable, I thought. Of course she had married a man who was either a terrorist or a guerrilla fighter, depending on which side you talked to. Why did everybody seem to think that the solution to all life’s problems was a man? I had always found that they just seemed to complicate your life.

  “Take tonight as an example,” she said. “What is it that you’re working on?”

  “It could be an important story, Mom.”

  She sighed, savagely extinguishing her cigarette in the ashtray. “It’s the one you told me about, isn’t it, the one that’s antagonizing everyone?”

  I nodded. “Mom, think back. When I was a baby, was I ever in state custody, at any time, for any reason?”

  “Of course not,” she said, annoyed. “What kind of a mother do you think I was? Why on earth would you ask such a thing?”

  “I dunno.”

  “You do come up with the strangest ideas.”

  Fourteen

  So far it was unanimous. Nobody wanted me working on the D. Wayne Hudson story: not Kendall McDonald, Gretchen Piatt, the police department or my mother. Maybe somebody else, too. When I left the restaurant and walked into the parking lot, the two right-side tires on my T-Bird were flat.

  I tried not to be paranoid. Maybe it was something I had run over; maybe it was the restaurant valet, offended that I had parked the car myself; maybe it was random vandalism. Maybe not.

  My mother had driven off in a snit while I paid the bartender. She had snatched up the tiny purse and departed after I declined to go out with her best friend’s visiting nephew.

  Since I had only one spare tire, I needed help. Service station lights beckoned from the other side of Biscayne Boulevard, about three blocks south. It seemed quicker to walk there than call, and perhaps I could work off the empanadas that now resided like rocks behind my navel.

  This stretch of the boulevard was not pedestrian-friendly, with no sidewalk and no crosswalk. Cars whizzed by, catching me in the glare of their lights. Lucky I was wearing my white dress; less chance of being hit, I thought, as I darted across four lanes.

  The station was spacious, bright, and clean but only open for self-service gasoline. The lone attendant, a cashier, was crouched behind bulletproof glass.

  “Exact change only. No mechanic on duty after 6 P.M.,” the sign said. I asked anyway, but there was no one to help me. I used the outside pay phone to check the office for messages.

  Kendall McDonald had called right after I left. I didn’t recognize the number, so it had to be his home. I fished for another quarter. He answered on the first ring.

  “You called?”

  “Yeah,” he greeted me. “A complaint. My newspaper didn’t arrive today. I checked the roof, the hedges, nothing.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “My bicycle broke down.”

  A semi rumbled by about ten feet away, and I couldn’t hear his response. “Where the heck are you?”

  “By the side of the road on north Biscayne Boulevard. It’s a long story.”

  A carload of boisterous teenage boys hooted and howled as they rolled by.

  “Give me the short version.”

  “Came out of a restaurant and found two flat tires. Hiked to a gas station, but nobody’s on duty after six. So here I am.”

  “What’s that location again?”

  I told him.

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said, hoping like hell he would.

  “I know. Stay right there. See you in a few minutes.”

  Stay here, I thought, how could I go elsewhere? I sat down on a wooden bench in front of the useless service station, watching for McDonald and smoothing the skirt of my much-maligned dress. Hell, this had been my favorite, packed well, no-iron, washed like a handkerchief.

  In less than ten minutes, the Cherokee swung off the roadway in a cloud of dust and pulled right up in front of me. He wore white cotton twill pants and an open-necked shirt, and looked like the best thing I had ever seen.

  He asked for my keys when we got back to the restaurant parking lot, walked to the rear of my car, and then just stood there, without opening the trunk. I got out of the jeep and joined him.

  “When did you wash your car last?”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m embarrassed. I know it needs it, but that’s the least of my worries at the moment.”

  “Look,” he said, his expression odd.

  I followed his eyes. At a certain angle, in the dim light, it was easy to make out. In the thin coat of dust on the trunk lid of my T-Bird, somebody had scrawled: BRITT, WE WERE HERE.

  “Could that have been there before tonight?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure,” I said. “I haven’t been in the trunk for a couple of days. But considering the circumstances, I tend to doubt it.”

  “Me too.”

  I suddenly felt uneasy, as if we were being watched.

  He worked silently and efficiently, putting the spare on one wheel and removing the other flat. He tossed both tires into the back of the Cherokee and drove us to a garage in North Miami. The owner removed a three-inch rivet from each tire and patched the holes, warning that I should replace both. We returned to the restaurant where McDonald put one on the car and the other in the trunk to replace the spare.

  Too late to go back to work now.

  “I’d like to buy you a drink,” I gestured toward the restaurant, “but somehow I suspect it’s not a swell idea to leave my car parked out here.”

  “Good thinking.” He wiped his hands on a rag, scanning the traffic and the buildings around us.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  “I’ve got to wash my hands and clean up somewhere.”

  “I have soap, hot water, and cold wine at my place.”

  He hesitated, his gaze intense. I could feel my hormones slamdancing. “I’ll follow you,” he said.

  I could swear I felt it physically when I wrenched my eyes from his. I kept the Cherokee in my rearview mirror sights all the way home, alternately asking myself, “Are you crazy?” and answering, “Go for it, Britt.”

  My landlady, Mrs. Goldstein, was out front. I introduced them, trying hard to look innocent.

  “Sorry,” he said, to explain his appearance, which still seemed swell to me. “I just changed some tires and need to wash up.”

  She nodded, her expression coy. When I glanced back from the front door of my apartment, she was smiling and giving me the thumbs-up sign.

  “Nice lady,” he said, as I used my key.

  “First rate,” I agreed. “She keeps an eye on my apartment when I’m out of town, and lets me putter around in her garden whenever I get the urge. You would love her husband; he was a prosecutor in New York until he retired. A man
after your own heart.”

  “I prefer a woman after my own heart.” He stood just inside the door, watching me.

  “Sit down, I’ll get you a drink.”

  “Forget it,” he said.

  My heart sank. I thought he was leaving, then saw the glint in his eyes.

  “That’s a beautiful dress.”

  I grinned like a fool and almost laughed. “You really like this old thing?”

  “It makes you look like an angel.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Good.”

  He moved toward me, then stopped. “I better wash my hands.”

  They were grimy from tossing my tires around. So were his white trousers. I didn’t care.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” I said, and hugged him, pressing my cheek against his shirt.

  “Ummmmm,” he crooned, arms folding around me. I felt the wall hard behind my back as he pressed forward, his mouth on mine.

  “I warned you,” he whispered huskily. “Now look at that.” A dark smudge on my right sleeve.

  I whispered in his ear. “Then I guess we’ll have to wash it, and your pants, too.”

  “You’ve got a washing machine in here?” he murmured, between kisses.

  “Outside the back door. Just big enough for my dress and your pants to get all sudsy and swirl around together.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I guess that means we have to take them off.”

  “I guess it does.”

  Our bodies moved together again as he kissed me. We were making the framed print behind me hang crooked; in another moment it might fly off the wall altogether.

  “Did I ever show you the rest of my apartment?”

  “No,” he sounded breathless.

  “Like to see it?” My lips felt swollen, my bra too tight.

  This was not exactly a guided tour. We walked together like some clumsy, four-legged creature. I backed up and steered in the right direction, his mouth on mine all the while. We landed on my flowered comforter, me fumbling with his trousers, he fumbling with the buttons on my dress.