Act of Betrayal

by Edna Buchanan

  “He didn’t have any cash on him, left his wallet back at the office, in his briefcase.”

  “I rest my case.”

  “Maybe I shoulda frisked him,” she conceded. “But he’s making it all up to me. I’m seeing him tonight, and next week we’re taking one of those day cruises to Freeport on the Gettaway. It sails at dawn, fab food, a casino, entertainment, dancing, swimming, sunning, with dinner and a nightclub show on the way back No phones, no faxes, no beepers. I’m really looking forward to it.”

  What could I say? She sounded happy.

  I returned Hal’s call next, not expecting him to answer, but he caught it on the second ring.

  An inquest had been set into the death of Ricky Mumper, the burglar Hal killed in his apartment.

  “Will you be in court? Since you covered the story, I hoped you would be.”

  “I’m not the courthouse reporter,” I said, “but I’ll try. Are you hanging in there?”

  “Sure,” he said jauntily. “No problem, but you sound down. What’s wrong?”

  Did I sound that mopey? “Family stuff; you know, my mother.” It sounded so trivial as it came out of my mouth. Hell, he was grappling with life-and-death issues, facing a court appearance that could brand him a killer.

  “Want to have a drink later?”

  “No, I’m working “I suddenly felt weepy. Work is my shield, my refuge from life’s battles. Was I so bummed that a kind word from a stranger could disarm me and draw tears? She has finally done it, I thought. Her years of hard work have paid off. My mother has finally succeeded in turning me into a psych case.

  “You can’t work all the time. Maybe you need somebody to talk to.”

  He sounded sweet, but I was in no mood … I remembered the curling hairs on his chest and the lean belly … and his blood-stained living room. Did I want to date an ax killer? What would my mother think? Wait, I thought, who the hell cares what my mother thinks? Or my editors? Gretchen is one of my editors. Do I need her approval? I think not.

  “Where do you want to meet?”

  We decided on the 1800 Club, in an hour.

  I blew my nose, visited the ladies’ room, and dug out the cosmetics stashed in my locker. I mascaraed my lashes, daubed on some blusher, applied red lipstick in a shade called Torrid, and brushed my hair.

  He was waiting near the door, seated at the bar in the dark, watching for me. “I was afraid you wouldn’t show,” he said, taking my arm and steering me with a comforting masculine presence to a table in the back. “That you’d get tied up on some story.”

  Handsomer, taller, and better groomed than I remembered, he was fully awake this time, fully dressed. And he hadn’t just hacked up a stranger.

  “Now,” he said, closing his hand over mine across a small table in a dark room, as Sting sang “Fields of Gold” in the background, “tell me all about it.” His smile was engaging, his eyes earnest. “Does your mom want to move in with you? Has she imposed a curfew? Or are you grounded?

  “Hey, you’re smiling. Can’t be all that bad. Want me to write her a note on your behalf about what a good, beautiful, and talented daughter she has?”

  “Let’s not talk about my mother,” I said wanly. “Tell me all about you.”

  He worked at an easy-listening radio station that played middle-of-the-road music. He told me about the new producer who spilled a thirty-two-ounce Slurpee into the control room console his first day on the job, the staggering cost of repairs, and the dreaded dead air. Small talk with him was effortless.

  The place was nearly empty. We slow danced, and I fit easily into his arms. It was soothing, being held against his strong, warm body, moving effortlessly to “Because the Night” by 10,000 Maniacs. No awkward silences, or maybe I was too numb to notice.

  Real life has a way of nipping at your heels. Nothing comfortable lasts. “I have to go home and walk my dog,” I finally confessed, regretfully breaking the spell.

  “Alone? At this hour?”

  “Do it all the time.” I waited for the words I knew would come.

  “I’ll walk him with you. I’m a pro. When I was eleven, I was in the business. Brushed, washed, and walked half a dozen pooches for our neighbors. Never met a dog I didn’t like, except one. A black Chow named Mao.” He shook his head and winced. “Mao the Chow. Whenever I turned my back he’d try to tear a piece outta my rump. God, did I hate that dog.”

  The image evoked thoughts of another schoolboy entrepreneur, young Charles Randolph with his boat-cleaning business.

  I forced the phantom from my mind, at least for tonight. “How did you know my dog is a black Chow?” I joked.

  Hal watched protectively as I got into my car, then followed me home to the Beach in his blue Nissan Maxima.

  My landlords and neighbors had all retired. The security light must have burned out, and our two rows of garden apartments were enveloped in an inky sea of darkness. We spoke in whispers. Hal waited as I tossed my things inside and brought Bitsy out on her leash. The courtyard was as black as the bottom of a well. I grasped the leash with one hand and held on to Hal with the other as we made our way to the lighted street. Suddenly something lunged at us from the shadows behind the banana trees.

  “What the…?” Hal blurted. I gasped, heart pounding. Bitsy wagged her tail furiously.

  “Hi, Britt! What were you working on so late?”

  “Seth! You scared me. What are you doing up?”

  “I was reading in my room, heard your car.” He gave Hal a curious once-over. Seth looked even younger than twelve in the dark. “What are you doing?”

  “Walking Bitsy,” I said, putting my finger to my lips to shush him.

  “Good, I’ll go with you.” He fell into step beside us.

  Hal and I exchanged glances. Wide awake, full of youthful exuberance, eager for company and newspaper talk, Seth would be impossible to shake.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” I whispered urgently. “I don’t want your grandparents waking up and finding your bed empty.” I didn’t mention the missing boys, but thought about them.

  Seth was introducing himself to Hal and recognized his name. “Hey, you’re the guy who whacked the burglar, right? Did you ax him what he was doing there? Heh, heh, heh.”

  “That’s enough,” I whispered furiously. “You get back inside.”

  Reluctantly, he went, and we strolled hushed South Beach streets under a silver sliver of a moon.

  “Never took you for the toy poodle type,” Hal said quietly.

  “It was an accident. She’s really a police dog.” I explained how I inherited Bitsy from a close friend, a policewoman killed by a sniper during the riots.

  “You are right out there on the front line,” he said. “Maybe that’s why I feel so comfortable with you after what happened. You’re out there, you understand what the combat zone is like.”

  There was something in his voice. I looked at him hard in the soft glow from a streetlight.

  “How are you doing, really, Hal?”

  “Not the happiest of times.” He tried to sound casual, watching a passing car. “You know it was different when that burglar was a frightening stranger in the dark, intruding on my space. Your only thought is survival. That and good old-fashioned outrage. Immediately after, you have this rush, relief that you got through it and nailed the bad guy. Then you find out he was a twenty-seven-year-old man with a name and a life and a family.”

  I squeezed his hand as we walked on in silence. “He put himself at risk,” I said finally. “He made the choice. He took the chance. You were asleep in your own bed. Alone.” I smiled. “You protected yourself and who knows how many future victims from pain and grief, or worse.”

  “I don’t know whether that’s true or not, Britt, but thanks.”

  Back at my front door, I fished the key from my pocket in the dark. He seemed reluctant to leave.

  “Want to come in?” I whispered.

  “
You sure it’s all right?”

  I drew him inside, scanning the shadows for Seth, who I suspected was watching, and softly closed the door behind us.

  He followed as I flicked on the lights and went into the kitchen. He stood in the doorway, eyes troubled, as I fed the dog and Billy Boots, who glared at the stranger from beneath a chair until I filled his dish.

  “You see what people do to each other every day. How do you live with it?”

  Pouring us each a glass of wine, I hesitated and studied his earnest face. “I don’t know,” I murmured, realizing that, at the moment, it was true. We took our drinks back into the living room and settled on the couch.

  “When the cops emptied the guy’s pockets,” Hal said, “he had a grocery list and a card in his wallet, a reminder that he had a dental appointment. I know it sounds crazy, but I keep wondering if anybody called to cancel, like maybe I should do something…” He shook his head, as though bewildered by his own thoughts.

  “His record reflected a long history of rip-offs. That’s what he did all his life. That’s what he was gonna keep doing the rest of his life. What if, instead of you, it had been a young woman who encountered him in her apartment in the middle of the night? What would have happened to her?”

  He traced the line of my jaw with a gentle touch, tilted my chin, and kissed my lips. My arms encircled his neck, drawing his face down to mine to prolong the moment, as though I was a Sahara wanderer quenching a desert thirst.

  Wanting more, I settled for resting against his shoulder, his arm around me as we talked.

  “My parents are embarrassed,” he said sadly. “Because my name was in the paper, after it happened. I didn’t expect that.” He sipped his wine. “I didn’t expect a lot of things. Since the … incident, the guys at work call me Killer or the Executioner. They think it’s funny. People I hardly know slap me on the back and congratulate me—when this is not something to be congratulated about. It’s a tragedy.” He turned to look at me. “A girl I dated, nothing serious, is so turned off by it that she won’t even talk to me. Another woman, at the station, is so turned on by it she wants to come home with me and have sex right where it happened. That’s what she said.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “Christ. I didn’t want it to happen, Britt. I hit a rabbit once with my car, picked it up, and rushed it to the vet. I’m not some natural-born killer. How am I gonna live with this?”

  He looked away, but not before I saw that his eyes were shiny with tears. This man was more wounded than I was.

  “You did the best you could,” I whispered, reaching for him. “If you weren’t a good person you wouldn’t feel this way. You did what you had to do. As for parents, we shouldn’t ever let them hurt us.”

  I found his lips to comfort him, or was it me? He responded and our anguish became passion. Our bodies burned to comfort each other. His kisses heated whatever reservations I had into a molten need; our growing excitement swept us from the couch to the carpeted floor. My hair cascaded across his face as I was enveloped in his arms, sinking, his wordless murmuring in my ear. What began slowly became a fervent tugging, unbuttoning, unhooking, unsnapping, and unzipping as our bodies struggled to entwine. I expected a sizzle as our bare flesh met. I wasn’t disappointed.

  “No, no,” I said abruptly, raising up on one elbow. Hal hesitated.

  “Not you,” I mumbled, pulling him to me feverishly. “Go away,” I told Bitsy, who was slobbering a wet kiss on my left eye.

  Hal laughed in relief and resumed his tender touching of my most secret places. This is right, I thought. The passion and the wine anesthetized the pain I felt for the missing boys’ parents and for Alex, and the Haitian crash victims, Jos£ Caliente, and all of us dead too soon at any age.

  Life’s journey is so short, so solitary. We arrive alone and leave the same way. Sometimes, in a rare moment, we achieve a oneness with a fellow traveler. This was one of them. “Bedroom,” I murmured. He nodded, breathing hard.

  Like survivors of a whirlwind, we luxuriated in the soft comfort of my bed and each other. His tight shiny skin and the touch and smell of his hard body took my breath away.

  He was skillful with his mouth and hands. We took all the time we needed and reveled in the warmth afterward. Sex after death is good.

  “Do you want me to go?” he whispered, cradling me in his arms.

  “Try it and I’ll confiscate your car keys,” I said, and kissed him soundly.

  “Good.” He sighed and settled into my bed as though he belonged there. At that moment, he did.

  Too exhausted to sleep, we talked about the man he killed, about life, death, our parents—not typical pillow talk, but right for us.

  “If only they hadn’t released him early. If only he had been rehabilitated or learned a damn trade…”

  “Forget the if onlys,” I murmured. “There is no justice, just us. His crimes were escalating. You saved somebody else.”

  I told him about my mother’s rejection of me and about my father and his diary.

  “I want to know,” I said dreamily, Hal’s heartbeat in my ear, “am I the kind of daughter he wanted me to be? Do I think like him? Walk like him? Talk like him?”

  “If he was alive, he would probably kill me,” Hal said, thoughtfully. “But you’re right. Whatever he wrote belongs to you. You should find it, like the adopted children who track down their biological parents. It’s a clue to what made you the wonderful creature you are.” He kissed my left eye, where Bitsy had been licking earlier.

  We slept like the dead, in each other’s arms. He started awake once, disoriented, sitting upright in bed, fists clenched. The digital clock glowed 3:30 A.M. “It’s all right. You’re here with me,” I said sleepily and reached for him.

  “Jesus,” he whispered, sinking back into my arms. “I’ve been doing that at the same time every night since it happened.” Grazing his biceps with my teeth, I nibbled upward toward his throat. “As long as we’re both awake…” I breathed. He grinned as I straddled his body and we were lost again in each other.

  14

  I stared glumly into my pantry as Hal showered. The kitchen glowed with sunlight, birds chirped in the ylang-ylang tree outside, and all seemed right with the world—or would have if I had something besides stale bread for breakfast.

  Hal loomed in the doorway, one of my blush-colored bath towels around his waist just below the tan line, running a comb through his damp hair.

  “How does breakfast at the News Cafe sound?” In addition to his other talents, the man was a mind reader.

  “Great. If only you had the right clothes with you, we could jog the boardwalk first.” I ached to run beneath Miami’s big sky, in front of the open sea and sand.

  “I thought we already achieved our target heart rate.” His voice was husky. He pulled me close, nuzzling my hair. “Best night’s sleep I’ve had in a long time,” he murmured in my ear.

  We had been there for each other, paths crossing at a perfect moment in time. Synchronicity, coincidence, a gift from a benevolent God?

  He drank coffee and read the paper while I showered.

  “One problem,” I said, as I finished dressing and brushed my hair. “Seth is an early riser.”

  “The jealous type, huh?” Hal grinned. “Should I climb out your bathroom window and crawl to the car though the hedges?”

  “That may not be a bad idea. He may even have his camera,” I worried, squinting through the blinds.

  I took Bitsy out to reconnoiter and then we made a run for it.

  We chose an outside table at the News Cafe on Ocean Drive, across from the sandy beach and sparkling surf, surrounded by drop-dead gorgeous models, tourists in shorts, habitues with their dogs, yuppie motorcyclists, wealthy retirees perusing their Wall Street Journals, and beautiful people trying to hit on one another. Sleepy-eyed Europeans inhaled coffee with their cigarette smoke. The on-camera Hollywood types looked buff, well manicured and polished
, while the off-camera specimens, artsy and creative, hunched at tables, hair in their eyes. The waiters and waitresses, mostly starving performers, wore shorts and T-shirts. Seagulls and in-line skaters flashed by, and a local character wearing a birthday-cake hat with real candles appeared to be selling something to passersby. Mere hours ago I was an unloved orphan. Now I laughed a lot while devouring a huge breakfast of yogurt and granola with Florida pecans, fresh strawberries, pineapple, watermelon, and honeydew. Hal drank fresh-squeezed orange juice and attacked his scrambled eggs and bagels ravenously.

  As we lingered over cafe au lait, the sun climbing higher, super-heating the salty air, my beeper chirped. The number was that of the city desk. “Its my day off,” I said, and shook my head.

  “Don’t you think you should see what it is?” Hal said.

  “I know I’ll regret it,” I predicted, and went reluctantly to an outside pay phone.

  As usual, I wound up on hold. As I stood and waited, a booming voice rent the air behind me.

  “… and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood…”

  The lean ragged street preacher from that night with Lottie at South Pointe was railing at the diners and passersby. “And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth…”

  “Britt?”

  “Yes, what is it, Gretchen? I’m off today.”

  “… even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs…”

  “Who on earth is that?”

  “I’m on South Beach,” I said, impatiently, blinding sun in my eyes, perspiration beading on my brow.

  “…when she is shaken of a mighty wind…”

  “Apparently Jorge Bravo and his crew conducted a commando raid on the Cuban coast yesterday, and the FBI is looking for him. We’re short-handed. Could you come in and handle it?”

  “That crazy SOB.” I remembered the bulky outline under the tarp in Bravo’s living room and felt a stab of remorse. I should have tried to stop him. But he was so crippled, how could he…?

  “And the heaven departed…”