Miami Midnight

by Davis, Maggie;

  “I forgot to tell you.” She couldn’t bring herself to mention the “expense” allotment for the fashion writer. The new coral linen suit, its unstructured jacket worn over a flowered shirt, was pure summertime Miami, tropical, blindingly bright. The lipstick she’d bought to go with the suit had led to all sorts of things: blusher, foundation, dark brown eyeshadow. When Crissette Washington had seen her for the first time in the city room, the photographer had staggered back in exaggerated shock.

  “You know,” Gaby said, “I think I’m on a roll. Is that what they call it, a roll?” Dodd’s eyes were fascinated. When he didn’t answer she rushed on. “I think I did something right at this crazy General Bachman interview.”

  Jack Carty had actually laughed when she described it to him on the telephone afterward. She still couldn’t believe it. ‘“Write it up just the way you told it to me,” the features editor had said. “It’s good.”

  Dodd was watching her intently. “I’m glad you could get something out of those idiots. Don’t give them an inch, they don’t deserve it.” He paused, then went on in a different tone, “I saw your mother this morning.”

  Her smile faded. “Yes, I did too, before I went to work.” Gaby took the menu the waiter handed her and bent over it. Visiting Jeannette was becoming more and more difficult. Some of her mother’s famous beauty had revived with her hospital stay. Jeannette was not yet fifty; there still could be many good years ahead. What was worrisome was that her mother merely sat and stared as though preoccupied with other, more pressing thoughts. Not unhappy, but not happy either.

  Dodd was gazing absently out the restaurant’s windows to the breathtaking sweep of Miami’s bayfront, the islands of Miami Beach and Key Biscayne beyond. “The hospital can’t hold her much longer without beginning some sort of treatment.”

  “My mother’s changed.” Gaby found it hard to describe in what way. “Did they tell you they’d tested her for stroke?”

  Dodd scowled. “Damn that criminal nonsense the other night. Subjecting both of you to a dead dog and that mess. I don’t know what in the hell your parents were thinking of to let those Cubans use the garage apartment.”

  “But we don’t know that the Escuderos had anything to do with it,” Gaby protested.

  “Well, who else? Who would want to lay some damned voodoo spell on you or your mother? Twenty years ago Miami didn’t even know about these things,” he said, disgusted. “But then we hadn’t become an outpost of Latin America, either!”

  Gaby remembered the bumper sticker she’d seen that morning. She couldn’t believe Angel and his mother were practicing Santería. The Escuderos were so hard-working, so cheerfully determined to make it in a new country. Angel made good grades in high school, Elena was struggling to improve her English. Ugly superstitious practices didn’t fit them at all.

  But then what did fit anything, she wondered, here in sun-drenched, dream-worldly Miami?

  Gaby looked down blindly at her menu. She should tell Dodd that she was being followed, that strange, inexplicable things seemed to be happening to her, but she didn’t know how to begin. It all sounded so crazy. Instead, she tried to defend the Escuderos again.

  “My father volunteered the old chauffeur’s apartment. A church group was looking for living space for the Marielito refugees, and no one was using it. The Escuderos had had such a bad time, Dodd. Elena and Angel were practically thrown into a little motorboat in Mariel harbor by Castro’s people during the exodus. They were scared to death they were going to drown before they got to Miami. And then halfway there the man who owned the boat tried to hold them up for more money. Poor Elena, she was a widow with a young boy to look after. She wanted to go to America because some of her relatives had been in the Bay of Pigs invasion and she thought the Castro government held it against her. I just can’t believe they’d do anything to hurt any of us.” Gaby sighed. “They’ve been through such a lot themselves.”

  Dodd said nothing, wouldn’t even look at her. They weren’t going to agree on it, Gaby could see. She stared down at her menu again.

  “While I was at the hospital,” he said, “I talked to your mother about what she’d said the other night at dinner, about our getting married. I told her that I loved you and wanted to marry you.”

  Gaby looked up at him quickly.

  “Unfortunately, I don’t think she understood much of what I was trying to tell her.”

  “Oh, Dodd.” Gaby’s thoughts were in confusion. Why had he picked now, of all times, to tell her this? “Don’t you think you should have asked me first?”

  He sighed with considerable frustration. “Gaby, I don’t seem to be getting through to you lately. You don’t listen to anything I’ve got to say. I’ve been sick with worry this past week thinking about you alone in that house when I have a perfectly good guest room at my condo. Look,” he said, when she opened her mouth in protest, “it’s not like we’re—well, damn, Mouse, you’re not a vulnerable seventeen-year-old this time!”

  This time? Was she seeing doubt, confusion ... guilt, in Dodd Brickell’s eyes?

  The big man sitting across the table in his conservative dark blue linen suit and white shirt with surah silk tie was handsome, wealthy, and successful, Gaby told herself. Even though she’d known him all her life, she had to admit Dodd Brickell was the most attractive, solid, desirable man any woman could find. Why was she suddenly so uneasy?

  He moved his silverware around, abstracted. “What happened was a long time ago, Gaby, and you were just a kid. That night of the dance, what you were feeling for me was something considerably more than I was feeling for you.” He jerked his head up, “No, God, I don’t mean it that way! But do you know what happens when a man realizes he’s lost control and taken advantage of a very young virg—” He caught himself. “I hoped like hell you’d forget the whole thing. I never intended to touch you, Gaby. I’d had a few drinks. Afterward I couldn’t bear to face myself. I wanted to forget it and I hoped, prayed, you’d do the same. You were only seventeen—”

  “Eighteen,” she murmured.

  “All right, eighteen. But I was playing my second year of pro ball with the Dolphins. I’d been around. And I was engaged at the time.” His voice faltered. “You couldn’t have known about the engagement. We hadn’t told anybody.”

  Gaby stared out the window. Forget about the whole thing? Is that what he’d thought? “No, I didn’t know about the engagement,” she said softly. “That’s true.”

  He groaned. “Oh, Mouse, I take responsibility for everything. Look, does it make any sense to you when I say I was a pro star, I had it made, I was set to marry the reigning campus beauty queen...?” He bent his blond head, not able to look at her. “You come down hard at twenty-five when you find out you’re not king of the world, God’s gift to pro ball,” he said bitterly. “When a little thing like a busted bone in your knee brings an end to the glory in a hell of a hurry. That’s when I came back home.”

  “Dodd...” Gaby began uncertainly.

  “Wait.” The waiter showed Dodd the label of the bottle of Reisling he’d ordered. Dodd impatiently waved him to fill their wineglasses. When the waiter had gone, he said in a calmer voice, “You were in Italy by then, and my football career was behind me. I took my bar exam, joined the family firm, and opted for what the Brickells had been doing since they sold their first piece of Dade County swamp to a Yankee—making money. But when things changed, so did my marriage. It wasn’t the big-time, exciting lifestyle of pro-football Trish had expected, and she told me so.”

  Gaby wasn’t going to ask him when things had changed so much that he realized he wanted her. But her heart was pounding. She’d spent years hoping that something like this would happen. That Dodd would finally come to know that she was there, waiting for him.

  Now he was saying that he wanted to marry her. He’d even gone to the hospital to tell her mother. She told herself she needed Dodd Brickell terribly. She wasn’t brave, assertive, independent like Crisse
tte. She had to have someone to talk to, to confide in, if only to convince her she wasn’t going crazy. But where to begin?

  “Dodd,” she said, “when you were at the U of Miami, did you know James Santo Marin?”

  He waited until the waiter had served their lunches. “Didn’t you ask me this before?”

  “I just finished a story about—about the Santo Marin family,” she faltered. Tell him, a voice deep inside screamed at her. “I—I was just curious.”

  He looked puzzled. “Curious?”

  “Yes, I was doing a sidebar for a story.” Help me, she appealed to him silently. You’re my friend, you say you love me, help me tell you this. “I’ve been calling around, talking to people. I need to know more about ... things.”

  “Santo Marin?” He took a sip of wine and lifted the glass to the light. “Gaby, do we have to talk about this right now?” When she nodded, miserably, he growled. “Good God. Okay. Ah ... rich, upper-class. Longtime connections in Florida.”

  “You know them?”

  “The Santo Marins?” He smiled a little sourly. “Well, they aren’t exactly your typical shirtless exiles. The upper-class Spaniards who migrated to the New World kept their grip on their power, their bloodlines, their money, in Cuba just like everywhere else in Latin America. According to Castro, that was the point of the revolution, wasn’t it? To kick out the corrupt upper classes and the Mafia? You,” he said abruptly, “don’t want to know them.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Santo Marin’s business may look legitimate from the outside, but the big cars, the boat, the lifestyle are a dead giveaway. He’s one latino stud who’s too rich and too visible not to have his hands into something. Gaby, are you going to let me say what I’m trying to say?”

  He reached across the table to take her hand. “Mouse, darling,” he said huskily, “I want to take care of you. I want to give you the world if I can. I messed up my life once and I hurt you terribly. Please let me make it right.”

  She gazed at the man across the table who clutched her hand so tightly. She was startled as a sudden need to love broke through her apprehension. Dodd was safety, comfort, love, and always had been. And oh, how much she needed those things at that moment! She wanted to give him all of that, too, in return. Wasn’t this what she’d always dreamed of?

  Impulsively, she leaned across the table and managed, in spite of their food and wineglasses, to place a kiss on Dodd’s lips. For a second she thought he was going to jump up and take her in his arms and passionately return the kiss right there in the middle of the restaurant. He didn’t, but his blue eyes were glittering as she sat back in her chair.

  “You know what I want to do, don’t you?” he muttered.

  “You won’t do it,” she teased. “You’re too Old Miami and proper for that.” She added quickly as he started to get to his feet, “And so am I.”

  He sat back down, grinning. “Gaby, I want to announce our engagement right away. But your mother—”

  “—can’t do it right now, I know.” Things had suddenly taken a new turn, Gaby realized with a slight rush of alarm. An impulsive kiss was now a commitment. Did she really want to do this? It meant so much to Dodd, to all the Brickells, to have formal engagement announcements, the whole social program of showers and parties and, inevitably, a very large wedding. Why was everything suddenly so real, so imminent?

  “I suppose I can announce it myself,” she said uncertainly. “I can give the announcement to the bridal desk at the paper in Mother’s name. You know, ‘Mrs. Paul Aston Collier announces the engagement of her daughter Victoria Gabrielle, et cetera, et cetera.’”

  His hand almost crushed hers with happiness. “Then let us give the engagement party. It’s the least the Brickells can do since your mother is hospitalized. God, Mouse,” he said fervently, “one of the first things I want to see you have is a little money. Once we get these damned affairs wound up, get your mother’s power of attorney and sell that mausoleum on Palm Island...” His voice trailed off as he stared at her, “Do you have any idea how incredibly beautiful you are in that suit? I’m glad you spent the money—

  In the next instant he knew what he had given away. “Ah, darling, I hope you’re not angry. My father was only trying to help.”

  Gaby let him see that it was really a sore spot. “Dodd, no more money through the newspaper, even for clothes. You’ll have to promise me you and your father will stay out of my job.” The words suddenly rang a bell. Gaby shot a glance at her wristwatch. “Oh, Dodd, I have another appointment. I’ve got to run!”

  “But you haven’t finished your lunch.” He stood up and threw his napkin down on the table. And about the newspaper job, that’s another thing—”

  “Later,” she said hurriedly, “later. I’ve got to go!”

  She was halfway across the restaurant before she remembered that now that she was engaged to Dodd she should have kissed him good-bye.

  Twenty minutes later, David Fothergill stepped out of a doorway on Eighth Street in Miami’s Little Havana. The big Trinidadian’s first words were, “Miss Collier, I don’t think we want to be doing this.”

  Chapter 9

  In August’s ninety-five-degree heat Little Havana looked like some flat, dusty suburb of its namesake. Eighth Street, Calle Ocho in Spanish, was lined with insurance offices, furniture stores, cut-rate dress shops, a few expensive Spanish-style restaurants, and a lot of open-sided cafeterías—coffee stands, not what the word meant in English—that sold Cuban sandwiches and thick, hot black espresso coffee in thimble-size paper cups. Little Havana’s one tiny urban park was filled with elderly exiles, all men, playing endless games of dominos on concrete tables. Eighth Street was quiet, sunbaked, shabby; not at all what one would expect, considering its publicity.

  David Fothergill, too, looked quite seedy, Gaby thought. He had the air of someone who did not have a permanent place to sleep. Which was probably the case. David had moved out of Crissette’s apartment several days before.

  David also looked unhappy. “Miss Gabrielle, I don’t think you should be doing this. I know you want to get someone to explain to you what the Santería at your house meant, maybe even find out who might be doing it. But I think this is dangerous.”

  She held her hand up to shade her eyes against the street’s hot glare. “David, I just want to ask some questions. Surely somebody ought to know something. Voodoo—Santería—is never done against Anglos. That’s what the police said.”

  “I don’t know about that.” His eyes were troubled. “This is very hard for white people who are used to the Christian God to understand. African gods are capricious, they have no ethical systems. What the Santería gods do is mysterious, sometimes you would say even cruel.”

  Gaby stared at him. David’s lilting calypso accent was still evident, but his tone of voice, his choice of words, especially phrases like “ethical systems,” were not what she expected. Suddenly she knew David Fothergill was much better educated than he wanted the world to know.

  He saw her expression and smiled, a trifle ironically. “Sorry, Miss Gabrielle, I think I’m in too much of a hurry to convince you not to do this. Forget the sociological observations. My point is that you may find that what the followers of Santería accept and believe in deeply might ... ah, alarm you very much.”

  “Good Lord, I already am alarmed! Killing Jupiter and putting that Santería mess at the back door was meant for me, not the Escuderos, I’m sure of it.” They were standing in burningly hot sunshine, but Gaby couldn’t suppress a slight shiver. “You said to get in touch with you if anything else happened, didn’t you?”

  He frowned. “Something else?”

  “Someone’s still following me, the same black limousine. Only it doesn’t park in the street across from the newspaper anymore. It starts after me when I take the causeway to go home. Whoever it is, they know I’m aware they’re following me. When I turn into Palm Island they just keep on going. They never follow me all the
way to my house.”

  “Is it the same car? You’re sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” Another shiver raced through her. “Who could miss a stretch Cadillac with tinted windows? It’s careful to stay some distance behind me. I never get a chance to see the license plates. The other thing,” she said, even more hesitantly, “is still there, in the house.” She felt foolish blurting all this out in broad daylight. She hoped David believed her. “Night before last I heard that thumping or beating like drums again and it woke me up. It was all I could do to keep from running outside.”

  He regarded her thoughtfully. Then he took her hand in his own huge one and steered her rapidly along the sidewalk. “Miss Gabrielle, I don’t think visiting a santera will find out much for you. You are an outsider, remember. You don’t believe in these things.”

  “But David, you said you’d find one!”

  “Oh, I have found someone. It is not all that difficult to find a priestess in Miami. But I am think-een,” he said slowly, “if you don’t know what this is all about, maybe the priestess won’t either. Strange business like this just don’t happen to lovely young ladies, who”—he looked pointedly at Gaby’s expensive suit, her newly styled hair—”who live on Palm Island, have rich, important boyfriends, and work for a big newspaper.”

  Gaby hurried along, trying to keep up with his long strides. “But somebody came to my house, killed my dog, and frightened my mother so that now she’s in the hospital. I don’t know why that happened, but I want to find out. The police don’t seem to be any help.” Gaby remembered something else. “David, the priestess, she ... this won’t involve killing anything, will it? If somebody’s going to sacrifice a live animal, I don’t think I can take it!”