Contents Under Pressure
Page 6
“I think I missed that one.” Mercifully, she stopped as the waitress delivered our salads. They looked good, but I was rapidly losing my appetite. Now I remembered why I had not gone out to dinner with my mother for several weeks. Why did I always think it would be different?
“Look Mom, someday, when the time comes, I’ll meet the right guy. And my job means a lot to me, a lot more than selling clothes would.”
She rested her fork on her plate and looked wounded. “Now you’re putting down how I earn an honest living. It raised you and put you through school.” She fumbled for a handkerchief in her neat little purse with the designer’s name on it, and appeared on the verge of tears.
I got scholarships and worked my way through school, but I didn’t want to mention that and spoil a good meal. I tried to remember how our conversation had taken this turn, to figure out how this always seemed to happen to us, despite my best intentions.
“You don’t just wait for a man to come along,” she said. “You don’t wait for your ship to come in. You have to swim out to meet it. But you don’t make any effort. Instead, you’re too busy with other things, like this story. What you are doing,” she accused, jabbing her cigarette in her best Bette Davis imitation, “is pushing your luck and making strangers hate you. You have no idea how dangerous some people can be. You persist in taking risks, taking chances, with no regard for me.”
I never should have told her about my friends on the bomb squad, and that bad night when we nearly got blown up. My first inkling of trouble was when I saw the experts summoned to dismantle the device running for their lives. What would have been my last thought, had the thing actually exploded, was how furious my editor would be when I failed to come back with the story.
“How are you ever going to meet a decent man like this?” she demanded. “Why must you throw your life away? Yours is just beginning. Mine is ending.
“What do you mean?” I felt a stab of fear. “Is anything wrong? Is there something I should know?”
She shook her head and looked noble. “At my age anything can happen.”
“Mom, you’re only fifty-two.”
She bit her lip and glanced around us, lowering her voice. “Britt, I’ve told you before that age is a personal matter. I would appreciate it if you respected that.”
I whispered back. “I don’t think anyone overheard us. Nobody’s about to print it in the Enquirer.”
“Don’t be sarcastic. I didn’t bring you up that way.”
I wanted to say that she didn’t bring me up at all, that my grandmother was the one there for me when it counted. Instead, I said, “It’s just that selling designer dresses is not going to help change the world.”
“Neither are you, my dear. Neither are you.” She sipped her drink, then lit another cigarette. When I didn’t answer, she perked up, her eyes softening into hopeful expectation. “Would you please just consider that job at Jordan’s? I could put in a good word for you.”
“Mom, you know how I feel about my job.” My stomach was beginning to churn. “The world is full of poverty, ignorance, crime, and corruption. I do what I do because I think I can help change things.”
“You know who you remind me of?” she said bitterly. She leaned back in the booth, inhaled deeply on her cigarette, and glared at me across the table.
I knew, and I was proud of it.
Four
I had hoped to spend my day off at the beach, basking, restoring my tan and my spirit, swimming with my back to the shoreline, the city and its troubles. Instead, I went to a funeral.
Since the service would not be until eleven o’clock, I stopped by Youth Hall first, to gather some background about the man. I knew D. Wayne Hudson had volunteered here to work with the facility’s young offenders.
Dade County’s juvenile justice system had been designed decades ago for kids who stole hubcaps and skipped school. Now it housed delinquents whose crimes would have landed them in the penitentiary if they were adults. A jail disguised as dormitories, it was attached to courts, holding cells, and visiting rooms. The place was as gloomy and sterile as ever, echoing the same wails and yells as the downtown lockup for adults.
Linda Shapiro, the director of Youth Hall, understaffed and overwhelmed as usual, agreed to see me for a few minutes. Her spartan office was cluttered with paperwork. On the desk was a paperweight that said: “Sometimes the best man for a job is a woman.”
Linda wore a rumpled black linen suit and little makeup except for a pale lip gloss and a touch of blusher high on the cheekbones of her broad face. Her hairstyle and eyeglasses were severe and no-nonsense, like the woman herself. She was very much the tightlipped bureaucrat, and we had clashed at times over the release of information. I believed that if a kid was old enough to rape and rob, he was old enough to have his name published in the newspaper. The law, and therefore Linda Shapiro, said that he was a child who must be protected. She looked more serious than usual when I mentioned D. Wayne Hudson.
For the first time in the five years I had known her as she battled crisis after crisis in the system, she looked close to tears.
“You don’t know what he did for the kids, Britt. He was our best artillery.”
“How so? As a positive role model?”
Linda clasped her hands on the desktop in front of her, her mouth drawn up in a sad pucker, eyes brooding.
“Better than that. You know that most of our mothers come here faithfully, grandmothers, too. But rarely did we have fathers visit their sons, until D. Wayne Hudson. When they heard he would be here, fathers showed up en masse.”
“You mean they weren’t really coming to see their kids, they just showed up to meet the football star?” I asked.
“You’ve got it. He knew it, we knew it, but it brought them out, Britt.” Her voice grew intense. “Some of these boys had never even seen their fathers before. You don’t know what it meant to them. D. Wayne didn’t simply stand around posing for pictures or signing autographs. He had a way of getting these men involved. They played father-son ball games, had barbecues, watched tapes of championship games.” She waved one hand hopelessly, then rubbed her temple. “He was the best thing that ever happened here.”
That was as talkative as I had ever caught Linda Shapiro, and I was busy scribbling notes. “So you actually saw a positive effect on the kids?”
“Disciplinary action, escapes, fights, they were all down by more than half after he started visiting once a week. And he personally followed up on some boys after their release. He went to court to speak up for others. He took boys to the library every Friday afternoon. Did he make a difference? I would say that the man made a major contribution.” Linda removed her glasses and flicked something off an eyelash with a pudgy finger.
I made a sympathetic sound, then asked, “What’s been the reaction here to his death?”
“He was irreplaceable. The staff is totally disheartened, the kids are devastated and angry. We’re taking a busload, those who have been on good behavior, to the funeral to pay their final respects.” She slowly polished her lenses with a tissue. “It’s unprecedented, but the staff thought it was important for them to say goodbye, to provide them with a sense of closure. And the promise of going helped keep them under control. Look here.” She removed a thick, battered file from a desk drawer. “Clarence Overholt, in and out of here since age seven.” Her mouth had become rigid, her words clipped. “Hard-core case. Prime candidate for maximum security at Raiford. All he lacked was the age. It wouldn’t have surprised me to see him on Death Row some day. Would you like to know where he is now?”
I nodded. “Tell me.”
“Attending the University of Miami on a full scholarship. That is what a few years of D. Wayne Hudson’s influence accomplished. He even took the boy on a mountain climbing expedition, one on one, to North Carolina.”
She dropped the battered file onto the desk in front of her, papers spilling out every which way, and leaned forw
ard on her elbows, eyes bright. “What happened? Why did we lose him, Britt? You’re in a position to find out. He never let anybody down. The man was world class all the way.”
“I don’t know, Linda. One mistake, maybe.” I shrugged, feeling uncomfortable, wishing I had an answer. “The best of people do stupid things sometimes. I’ll try to find out more. Let me know if you hear anything.”
She picked up the file containing the success story of Clarence Overholt and briskly replaced it in her desk, staring bleakly at me as I left, as though somehow I had let her down.
The church was jammed, the mourners a mix of blacks, whites, hulking football types, weeping relatives, saddened fans, and a battalion of shiny-faced young people in their Sunday best. There were simple working folk who took pride in D. Wayne Hudson’s accomplishments, community leaders who served with him on charitable and civic projects, and, in the back, two pews of ragtag kids from Youth Hall, along with Linda Shapiro and several social workers and corrections officers.
The dead man’s mother was inconsolable. Short and heavyset, she had spent most of her life as a day worker, cleaning other people’s homes. D. Wayne had been her only son, and the pain of losing him was too much to bear. She sagged into the arms of relatives several times before the service even began.
D. Wayne’s father, a tall, gray-haired retired sanitation worker, seemed in a trance, unable to comfort his wife. He rarely lifted his eyes from the coffin, and when he did, he looked bewildered.
Alma remained ramrod straight, reaching out to those in pain around her. Her twin sons, aged six, were solemn and well behaved. I choked back a few tears myself when one boy cried out, “Daddy!”
Former linebacker Bernie Howlett began the eulogy, talking about a championship season he and D. Wayne had shared. Sure enough, a TV cameraman in a garish Hawaiian shirt and blue jeans climbed up onto one of the wooden pews and turned on his lights. I was delighted when some beefy football players I didn’t recognize hustled the TV crew out a side door.
We sang and prayed, and amens and sobs filled the church. I strongly related to the second verse of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” the one that asks: “Is there trouble anywhere?” That is a question I get paid for asking every day.
The rest of the overflowing crowd, who had listened to the service over outside speakers, parted for the husky pallbearers and the casket. The funeral cortege, an endless procession of slow-moving cars, detoured en route to the cemetery in order to pass the Orange Bowl, where D. Wayne had made a few great plays in his prime and later coached underprivileged kids. As the motorcade snaked through a bleak and aging neighborhood, old black men on the street doffed their caps, and I saw one sad-faced shabby woman place both hands over her heart.
During the burial, friends formed a protective barrier around the widow. It surprised me when Alma approached me afterwards, took my hand, and said she wanted to talk to me back at the house.
The Hudsons lived in artsy Coconut Grove, on a residential street shaded by ancient ficus trees. The house was attractive but not ostentatious, the long driveway flanked by lush and well-kept flower beds, impatiens, and zinnias. Their bright blooms seemed inappropriate, given the somber tone of the day. Like many Florida homes, there was a screened-in pool and patio with a barbecue and hanging plants.
The inside of the house was high-ceilinged with skylights, the floors shiny white Cuban tile, and the airy rooms were filled with light and people speaking in hushed tones. D. Wayne’s father sat at the dining room table like a blind man, seeing nothing around him. His wife had retired to a bedroom.
Alma sat, her hat removed, hair in a neat chignon. The top button of her high-necked dress was undone, and the chubby baby sat on her lap. I sat next to her, declining her offers of food and drink, saying I had to get back to the paper soon. I had learned earlier that D. Wayne had been returning from a community action meeting the night he died. Circuit Court Judge William Randolph and several city commissioners had attended, along with Major Francisco Alvarez, a high-ranking cop who had represented the police department in a discussion on how to combat juvenile crime.
Alma handed her bright-eyed baby off to a cooing grandmotherly woman and leaned forward. I expected her to divulge something and was ready, notebook open in my lap, pen in hand. What she wanted, however, was to ask what I knew, if I had learned anything more.
“Britt, I know my husband,” she said quietly, her eyes soft liquid pools. “He obeyed the law, even when he didn’t respect it. I can’t believe we lost him because policemen chased the wrong car. He was not a stupid man. He would never, ever run from them. He had no reason to do so. Why?”
“I thought you might have some idea.”
Alma shook her head. “I haven’t slept, trying to understand what happened. He had attended a dinner meeting. He drank nothing but coffee,” she said, as though anticipating the question. “He did stop for a drink with three other committee members, to discuss matters that came up at the meeting. I am told that he consumed one scotch and water. One. My husband was not a drinker or a wild carouser out to party. He was a responsible man who cared for his family and his community. Have you spoken to the police officers who chased him?”
“I left messages, but they never returned them. That’s not unusual. One of them is Ted Ferrell, the man who was a hero in the projects the other day. I know him to be a good cop.”
“They’re all white?” Her dark eyes held mine, intent.
“The ones listed on the accident report as witnesses, yes. White and Hispanic.” I was beginning to feel uncomfortable, hoping she would not put a racial spin on what had happened.
“They mistook my husband’s car for one driven by a criminal and chased him?’’
“Apparently, that’s what happened.”
Alma shook her head in confusion. “Britt, I don’t understand any of this. I don’t believe that he wasn’t wearing a seat belt … My husband was extraordinarily safety-conscious. He always buckled up and made sure the children were strapped in. He even insisted on a car with air bags.”
I nodded. “But a number of people have been killed because they relied on air bags to protect them and didn’t fasten their seat belts. It’s important to use both.” It sounded inane when I said it.
“Britt.” She reached for my hand. “All this is so uncharacteristic of him. All I know for sure is that he’s gone. What do I tell our children?” The classic cheekbones seemed to crumble, her composure cracking for the first time. A bevy of murmuring women closed in, as if on cue, surrounding her with hugs and hankies.
Alma shook them off to see me to the door. “I’m glad you’re the one who wrote the stories,” she said softly. “You’re smart and thorough. We’ve always admired your work. I hope you keep reporting and get to the bottom of it. If you learn anything more, I’d like to know. It would give me great peace of mind.”
“I’ll find out what happened,” I said boldly, startled by my own words, knowing that so many things people do are never explained, and that this could well be one of them. During the drive back to the office, I thought about Alma. She’d be all right, eventually; she was strong, and the needs and energies of her children would help her to survive this. But the boys, already scampering playfully through the hallway as I left, were too young to grasp the finality of death. They would know their father only in memory. His daughter would not remember him at all. They would miss the guidance he had so freely given to other children. I felt unutterably sad for them all, and I wondered how I could find out what had really happened to D. Wayne.
After writing the funeral story, I called police headquarters and asked to hear the radio transmissions of the chase and the earlier BOLO for the car the police had been seeking. The transmissions are continuously recorded, and the tapes are changed every twenty-four hours, stored for ninety days, and then reused. The voice on the line told me it would take a day or so to pull that particular tape; not an unusual delay.
Dispatched to back up a male officer in a major barroom brawl, she hadn’t hesitated to wade right into the melee—and a mean drunk hadn’t hesitated to break her nose. You could hardly see where it was fractured. I liked it better now; it gave her character.
It was already 10 P.M., so I stayed dressed, napping atop the flowered comforter on my bed for a few hours. My portable police scanner usually sat silent in a battery-charger on my nightstand while I slept. But tonight I left it on, the volume a low murmur. Police calls broadcasting on the edge of my consciousness kept me from falling into a deep slumber, and I had become fine-tuned to the point where only a three, an emergency, signal would penetrate and instantly jolt me awake. Piercing beeps from my alarm clock roused me at Francie’s “lunchtime”—3 A.M. I lay there for a few minutes in the dark, listening. The scanner crackled with a constant stream of routine dispatches. The night seemed calm and quiet, which meant Francie would have time to break for lunch.
I carried my gun outside with me, its cool weight reassuring in the shadows. I slid it into the glove box of the T-Bird, and left the compartment unlocked in case I needed it in a hurry. It was a blue steel Smith and Wesson revolver, a .38 with a personalized sight and grips that fit my small hands.