Miami, It's Murder

by Edna Buchanan

Janowitz was still gathering information about Hector Ugalde, who had been denied bond. The man had prior arrests on attempted rape charges in Union City, New Jersey, where he had lived for a time. In fact, he was still wanted there for jumping bond.

  His court-ordered psychiatric evaluation by a New Jersey shrink had disclosed that when Ugalde was a toddler, back in Havana, his mother, who made a living before the revolution performing in live sex shows, refused to cut his hair and often dressed him in little girl’s clothes as punishment. The mother was promiscuous, the doctor had written in his report, and behaved in a seductive fashion toward her son, whose job as a small boy was to powder her naked body after she had bathed.

  I am naturally dubious about psychiatrists. The doctor had to have received all that information from Ugalde himself and had no way of checking it out. But it all made sense in a sick sort of way.

  That afternoon I dialed Fielding’s Miami law office, asked to speak to his secretary, and lied through my teeth.

  “I’m calling about Mr. Fielding’s dental appointment.”

  “Dental appointment?” he said.

  “Yes, the usual routine cleaning and checkup.”

  “But he just saw Dr. Wiseman ten days ago, last time he was in Miami. I don’t understand. He’s campaigning throughout the state, you know.”

  “Hummm,” I said. “There must be some mistake in our records.”

  There was only one Dr. Wiseman in the book.

  “So you’re the one responsible for the candidate’s beautiful smile,” I gushed, after announcing that I was researching a story on Fielding, which was true. “Or did he inherit it?”

  “Let’s say his dentist gave him a little help in that department,” Dr. Wiseman said.

  Two years ago, he told me, the candidate had had his teeth capped.

  Back to square one, back out on the beat, haunted by something not yet over.

  I stashed the Mary Beth Rafferty clips in my desk instead of returning them to the library, intending to pore over them one more time, line by line. But Miami and my beat were hectic. Stories were becoming stranger, as they always do in our sizzling summer, the meanest of seasons.

  Walking catfish were migrating across suburban roads near the water. Jellyfish that ordinarily invade South Florida in late winter were showing up by the hundred, schools of shimmery blue bubbles riding the surf. Something indefinable and troubling was in the air, as though all was not right with Mother Nature.

  A hard-rock radio station promoted a treasure hunt, hiding a thousand-dollar cash jackpot in a telephone booth and tantalizing listeners with clues. The mass hunt reached its height when motorists careened into a three-car pileup near the wrong booth. A mini-riot followed a traffic jam at the right one as fistfights broke out. The most seriously injured was an innocent bystander who merely wanted to use the telephone.

  The Rio Theater, a downtown movie house catering to economically deprived teenagers, made news because of its rats. Unfortunately they surfaced during a horror film. Suspense mounted as the movie unfolded. As the audience held its breath, a teenage girl relaxed her grip on her half-eaten sausage hero. As tension heightened to a horrifying climax on the big screen, a huge rat boldly grabbed the sandwich. She hung on, screeching, “It’s got me! It’s got me!” They engaged in a tug-of-war as five hundred screaming kids stampeded out of the dark theater into the light.

  Most of the injuries were minor, but there were many.

  Next morning I picked up a couple of salt bagels loaded with cream cheese, went to the office, and took them back to photo, where Lottie plugged in the kettle.

  “You are a bad influence on me, Britt,” she complained, biting into her bagel, then sighing in contentment. “Umm,” she said. “You remembered to get the cream cheese with chives.”

  Since Hector Ugalde had dominated our conversation lately, I had never really filled her in on my cruise with Curt Norske. I shared with her his fanciful version of Miami history and his invitation to a moonlight cruise.

  “You’re gonna go, right?”

  “I don’t know,” I said doubtfully, spooning instant coffee into a mug, then filling it with steamy water.

  She rolled her eyes. “That’s one I wouldn’t miss. A cruise to nowhere with Captain Curt?”

  I shrugged. “McDonald says he looks like an icecream salesman.”

  “What would you expect him to say? He done you dirt, he’s playing kissy face with another cop, but it still spoils his day to see you happy with anybody else. Imagine, cruising the bay alone, under a full moon.”

  “I don’t know,” I said dispiritedly. “McDonald was super, just wonderful, there when I needed him. And the full moon, that’s when my beat is usually the busiest.”

  “Britt”—she squinted into my eyes with a searching look—“are you crazy? What good is a man who only shows up when you’re more dead than alive? We need to get you a blood test and see if any is getting to your brain.”

  A bleating sound came over the intercom from the city desk: Gretchen’s voice. She was attempting to transmit a photo to the Broward bureau and needed help. Lottie sighed and stood up. “I swear that woman wouldn’t know enough to pour piss out of a boot with a hole in the toe and directions on the heel! Be back in a minute.” She picked up what was left of her bagel and stalked off.

  I sat eating and sipping coffee, then casually reached over and pulled two catalogs from a pocket of the outsize camera bag Lottie carries instead of a purse. Victoria’s Secret of London. I idly thumbed through the slick colorful pages of lacy lingerie and slinky fashions modeled by beautiful long-legged women.

  One posed provocatively, lips apart, one hand languidly pushing back her lush mane of sun-streaked hair, the other resting on her hip. The red stretch-lace teddy she wore was whispery soft, with ribbon and faux pearl trim, according to the copy.

  I stared at it for a long moment and knew what was wrong, what I’d been denying, even in my dreams. Queasy, I wiped the cream cheese with chives from my mouth and stood up.

  Lottie reappeared. “I feel fat enough to kill,” she gloated. “But that was s-o-o-o good.” She saw my face. “What’s the matter, Britt? You sick?”

  “I’ll be back later,” I whispered, and fled to my desk. I dug through the notes and printouts in the bottom drawer of my desk until I found them: Steiner, Creech, Farrington. I read them all, a hollow place in my heart, then dug through other stories, wondering. Could it be?

  What had Detective Diaz said? “There are no coincidences in homicide cases.”

  Half-formed fears took shape in my mind as I hurried back to Lottie. She was in the darkroom. I stepped into the circular door, grasped the side grips, and revolved onto the dark side.

  Working at the far end of a row of enlargers, she was illuminated by the eerie orange glow of the safe-light. Music came from her tape player, plugged in in a corner: “Mean Mistreatin’ Momma,” sung by funky blues guitarist Elmore James.

  “Lottie, I think something terrible has happened.”

  “I know, I know.” She turned to the bank of sinks across the center of the room. “I ate the rest of your bagel. Didn’t know when you were coming back and didn’t want it to go to waste.”

  “I’m serious.” The pungent acid smell of the fixer in one of the three big trays over the sinks churned my stomach. Water ran constantly in the darkroom and the dryer was humming. I stepped closer to where she was working.

  “You thinking about Ugalde? He spooking you?”

  “Worse,” I said. The Downtown Rapist was scary, but he was a stranger, not someone I knew and trusted. “Do you think it’s possible for someone who spent a lifetime on the right side of the law to suddenly become a killer?”

  “You talking about Gretchen?”

  “Lottie, I’m serious!”

  “I am too!” She stamped her foot for emphasis. I moved closer as images emerged on the rosin-coated papers in the tray, slices of Miami rising ma
gically through the developer. Old men playing dominoes in the park, young Cubans at an Alfa 66 training camp in the Everglades, squatters camping in Bayfront Park. She used tongs to transfer prints from the developer to the fixer. “Shit,” she cried, stepping back and examining her turned-up shirt sleeve. “I splashed developer on my good shirt; that Dektol’ll never come out.”

  “It’s Dan,” I said. “A crazy coincidence.”

  She turned toward me in the semidarkness.

  “You know how he eats, drinks, and sleeps old cases?”

  “Like an old pit bull, never turns ’em loose.” She nodded, returning her attention to the prints in the tray.

  “Remember Farrington, the old homicide suspect who poured concrete over his wife years ago and now somebody has poured concrete over him?”

  “Right, a genuine example of poetic justice.” She slid a print from the fixer into the wash.

  “Exactly. Looking through your Victoria’s Secret catalog reminded me of Creech, the guy in that sexual asphyxia death. His death was supposedly accidental. Sex-related. He was another old suspect—in the murder of his teenage niece. Sex-related.

  “Dieter Steiner, Dan’s old homicide suspect. Should have been electrocuted but beat it on a technicality and went home—and got electrocuted. Accidentally.”

  Lottie stopped what she was doing. “Hell-all-Friday,” she murmured. “Lotta poetic justice going around. Any others?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You think somebody’s offing bad guys like an avenging angel?” Her voice dropped. “Dan?”

  “The man’s a teddy bear,” I said. “I introduced him to my mom. He’s kind to kids and old ladies.” The room seemed cold and dank and I shivered, wishing I had a sweater. “I saw him pull over once on the expressway while he was working, to rescue a box turtle that was crossing in traffic.”

  “These people dying ain’t innocent kids or helpless animals or old ladies, Britt. He knows they’re cold-blooded killers.”

  “He’s spent a lifetime upholding the law,” I whispered.

  “Look what it got him.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “We know about the thin line that separates good guys from bad. Maybe he’s crossed.” Her face glowed in the orange light.

  “Dan would never … though he has changed since he left the department.” I was thinking aloud. “His health is failing, his family gone, yet recently he sounds intense, like somebody with a purpose.”

  “He’s dying, nothing left to live for except justice, which has failed him. Maybe he’s a man on a mission.”

  We listened to water run and the dryer hum for a few moments. Elmore James began to sing “I Got a Right to Love My Baby.”

  “Who better to make a murder look accidental than somebody who has investigated them for thirty years?” she said.

  “It’s so crazy.” I fought guilt pangs brought on by my own disloyal thoughts.

  “Think anybody else is on to him?”

  “I doubt it. We don’t even know it’s true. It can’t be. What the hell should I do?”

  “Same thing you always do when you have a hunch or a suspicion. Investigate. Why don’t you ask him? You always said he never lied to you.”

  “Sure.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “But I never asked if he’d committed a crime. The man’s heart has attacked him and he’s been through hell. He trusts me. What do I do if he tells me things I don’t want to hear?”

  Lottie shook her head, as though surprised by the question. “What you always do, Britt. You write the story.”

  “Write about Dan?”

  “If it’s true, somebody will. Better you than some stranger who doesn’t know him. At least you care.”

  “We’re probably wrong, you know.”

  “If we are, you’ll find out. I’ve always thought your hunches were pretty good.” She placed a wet print on the dryer belt. Rollers carried it slowly into the heating element and hot air was forced over it. The finished print emerged on the other side seconds later, clean and dry.

  Lottie and I often debate who has the more difficult job. Now I know, I thought as I left. Photography is simpler. There are no questions. Pictures don’t lie.

  Chapter 19

  I walked out of the newsroom without saying where I was going. I wasn’t sure myself. What I wanted to do was simply aim the T-Bird west, straight across the Everglades, to the Gulf of Mexico. Why did Florida’s gentler coast suddenly beckon? My last trip there was with Kendall McDonald, when we escaped the escalating tensions of our jobs to flee west together for an idyllic week of white sand beaches and warm waters. That was before our relationship and the city had exploded.

  I parked at a secret place where I often go to think or recharge my batteries when truth, crime, and the city overwhelm. Mine was the only car parked at this small Beach playground facing the bay and a western vista of silver water, shimmering skyline, and endless cobalt sky.

  I gathered my thoughts. This would be the first time I undertook an investigative piece hoping to be wrong, hoping there was no story.

  That would be best. Then Dan would never suspect the friend he trusted was investigating him like he was some money-laundering banker, corrupt public official—or cop gone bad.

  I would approach Dan last. Never tip the target until all your ducks are in a row. Build your case, then confront the subject to ask for his side. Journalism 101.

  With any luck, I would find nothing and it wouldn’t go that far.

  A battered green Buick pulled up and parked nearby. The driver was alone and glanced in my direction. He nodded. My Aunt Odalys’s “spirits” had warned that I was too trusting. What a laugh, I thought. My response to the stranger was make sure my doors were locked and then turn the key in the ignition.

  The truth is that I am too suspicious, excellent for a reporter, a lousy quality in a friend. Oddly, though the danger was past, I was still wearing my beads and the resguardo. Habit or security blanket? I wondered.

  I drove back to the paper and began building a file. Luckily Tubbs was in the slot and too busy to demand a full explanation when I murmured in passing that I had a lead on something I wanted to dig into.

  My first stop was the medical examiner’s office. The chief was out but Dr. Duffy was in.

  I sat in front of his cluttered desk. “I’m curious about the Farrington case,” I told him.

  He shook his head, removed his glasses, and polished the lenses, his expression expectant though slightly wary.

  “So is everybody else,” he said, indicating the messages stacked on his desk. “It’s captured a lot of attention. But you know, Britt, I must refer you to the homicide detective in any open case.”

  “I’ve already talked to Diaz about the investigation,” I said casually. “What people want to know is how the heck you freed that body. Had to be a huge job.”

  “True,” he said. “Murder seems to run in cycles. Ever notice how sometimes we keep finding them in shallow graves? Another time it may be car trunks, or the Bay, or dumped out in the ’Glades. Hope this one doesn’t start a trend.”

  “I guess it was impossible to find anything in there. Too bad. What if it really was a suicide and the man had a gun and a suicide note? It’ll never be found.”

  He stood up. “Let me show you something, Britt.” I followed, and we walked down the hall to a locked room in the investigative section.

  Duffy deactivated the security buzzer that signals when the door is opened, stepped inside, and removed a cardboard carton from a shelf. He carried it out and placed it on the shiny counter. It contained encrusted empty pop bottles; what looked like a half-eaten sandwich; a Coke can; cigarette, cookie, and chewing gum wrappers; two empty matchbooks; nails; a cigar butt; bits of wood; a broken hammer—all wearing remnants of concrete and mixed with little pieces of rock.

  “What is this stuff?”

  “Workers at building sites dispose of trash by tossing
it into the forms before a pour.” He shrugged. “None of it will ever be seen again. At least not in most cases.” He sighed. “I ruined a perfectly good bone chisel. We had to drill holes to weaken the concrete so it would break away gently when tapped with the little stainless steel hammers used in surgery.”

  I studied the junk in the carton. “Think any of it might belong to the killer?”

  “Doubtful, but Diaz plans to take it out to the site and see how much of this stuff the crew can account for.”

  With the box was a clear self-locking plastic bag sealed with red evidence tape: Farrington’s personal effects. “Were the contents of his pockets intact?”

  “Mostly. His legs were slightly bent, so his pockets opened a bit at the top. There was some cement, but it was mostly just wet.”

  “Wet?”

  “The water in the concrete is what makes it flow. We have the pieces that were surrounding his head,” Duffy commented. “In fact I’ll be using them in a presentation at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting, in Chicago next spring. It’s an excellent teaching case,” he said. “The back is even discolored, blood from the bullet wound.”

  “Was it a thirty-two?” I guessed.

  “No, a thirty-eight.” He seemed a bit uneasy. “You’ll clear everything you use with the homicide detective first?”

  “Of course,” I assured him. “Look what it did to his watch.”

  The gold Rolex still gleamed on the inside where it had been next to Farrington’s skin. The outside was cement coated. “Is it still running?” I asked.

  “Nope,” he said.

  It was hard to recognize some of the other items in the clear plastic bag. “That’s his beeper,” Duffy said. “Was still clipped to his belt, along with the key ring.”

  There was a cigarette lighter, a slim leather billfold, a money clip, folded cash still intact, and a pill bottle. “What medication was he on?”

  “Tagamet,” Duffy said. “For a stomach condition.”

  “Was he otherwise in good health?”

  “Seemed to be excellent.”