Act of Betrayal (7 page)

“Sounds good to me. I can put in for comp time.”

I wondered later why I sounded so breezy when I really longed for the man. This time will be different, I promised myself. We'd work at keeping our jobs from becoming a conflict between us. He had never asked if I was seeing anyone else as he had suggested. Did he assume I was? Was he? Was that why he asked me to keep the dates open? Was there more than miles between us? Luckily, I had no time to box shadows.

Next on my list of messages to return was a woman whose only interest in the Charles Randolph case was that her son and his best friend were also missing. Long gone, presumed dead. A Drug Enforcement agent had unofficially informed her that the two were shot and deep-sixed during a drug-smuggling deal off Key West. That was twelve years ago but, despite her sons history of drug arrests, she could not accept it.

“Isn't there a chance,” she asked, “that he's alive and has been working undercover for the government all these years?”

She didn't like my answer, though I couched it as gently as possible.

“I called about the Randolph boy,” the next woman said. She sounded congested, as though she had a cold. “I'm sorry to bother you but I can't help it. I saw his picture this morning and…” She snorted and blew her nose. “I'm sorry, I've been crying.”

“Do you know him?” I rolled my chair to my terminal to take notes.

“No,” she whispered. “But it was such a shock when I opened the paper. He looks so much like my son.”

“Oh.” Disappointed, my eyes roved down the list to the next message.

“David has been missing for four years.”

Something cold rippled down my spine.

“What happened?”

“His dad and I are divorced. He was spending the weekend with his father when they quarreled and he stormed out. It was over something stupid. You know how kids are. He had no money on him and he apparently tried to hitchhike back to my house in Surfside. We never saw him again.”

David Clower was twelve, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and slender.

After we talked, I reopened my
MISSING
file and stared at the entry for Butch Beltrán. Fair-haired, blue-eyed, and slender, missing since March.

What the hell was going on here?

I woke up next morning still thinking about the missing boys. The early news reported that the third hurricane of the season, which had been barreling down on Bermuda, had veered away and was dying at sea. Weather watchers were already scrutinizing a new low-pressure wave that had spiraled into the Atlantic off Senegal, on the west coast of Africa. But that was thousands of miles away in the earth's atmospheric cauldron where the recipe—heated sea temperature, barometric pressure, wind direction, and other variables—must mix just so to spawn a storm. As many as a hundred and twenty-five tropical waves occur during a busy season. About ten become tropical depressions. Of the six that spin into tropical storms, about four escalate into hurricanes.

My mother called before breakfast. “What have you been doing, darling? Why are you too busy to return my calls?” Without waiting for an answer, she began bubbling over about the new winter fashions. What I yearn for this time of year is a bikini and a beach. Her spirited spiel about skinny belts, saucy patent mules, and forties-styled suits, which would be featured in the fashion shows she was coordinating, failed to interest me.

My own shop talk, when she did pause for breath, inspired the same nonreaction—until I mentioned the Alex Aguirre bombing.

“I saw it on TV,” she said. “Those awful people, so brutal…”

“Did you see my story?” I sounded too eager, but if my own mother didn't read my stories, who would?

“You know how I feel about crime and violence,” she said, skirting my question.

“I cover the police beat, Mom.” I sounded like a child seeking approval, but couldn't help myself.

“When will you be promoted to something more positive?”

“That's not how it works. I love my beat,” I explained, for what must have been the ten thousandth time. “That's where the best stories are, people stories. It's a gold mine for a reporter. You can expose the bad guys, change things, make a difference.”

“Nothing changes, Britt. You can't save the world. I thought after what almost happened to you, when that other reporter was killed and you were wrongly blamed, you would consider yourself and those who care about you. Common sense says you can't keep courting disaster,” she cautioned, for what had to be the twenty thousandth time to me, and to my father before me. Some things do not change.

She heard my sigh and abruptly switched subjects. “You'll be glad to know that the grunge look is out,” she chirped cheerfully.

“What a pity,” I said. “Grunge was me.”

“Some of the new pieces are such fun!” she burbled, ignoring my sarcasm. “Flowerpot purses are going to be very big, they're clever and kitschy. So is faux fur and thigh-high vinyl boots.”

I imagined whipping my notebook out of a flowerpot purse after making a grand entrance at police headquarters in faux fur and thigh-high boots. It would get their attention. I bit back a smart remark, suddenly overwhelmed by images of Cassie Randolph and the other mother, the stranger who had wept on the phone about her missing son, and the memory of how in my darkest hour my mother had been ready to mortgage all she owned and more, to save me.

“I love you, Mom.”

She paused for a millisecond, then rushed on, as though she hadn't heard. “The new hemlimes are more realistic, right at the knee, but I have serious reservations about the white ankle socks with platform sandals.”

“You're absolutely right,” I said. “So do I.” We promised to meet for lunch later in the week. There have been times with my mother when the thought of DNA testing crossed my mind, certain that I was somehow switched at birth—but I am so much like my father. Our simpatico is ephemeral, more a spiritual bond than direct knowledge. Whenever I am in danger or despair, he is with me.
Estamos juntos.
We are together. My real memories of him are few. I remember peering out from between bars, my playpen placed under a grapefruit tree in a sunlit yard, as he bent close to me, dappled light and shadow filtered through leaves dancing on his face and arms as he lifted me high and higher, up and away from my prison. I remember the warmth of his words,
“mi angelito rubia
,” and my mother laughing in a way I have never heard since. And there is a clear recollection of riding in a car snuggled comfortably between them in a world before child safety seats.

My mother insists that I was too young, that I couldn't possibly remember any such thing, but I do.

What little she says about him so conflicts with the stories told by my Aunt Odalys and other relatives that it is impossible to know now, nearly three decades later, who and what the man really was. But I sense that we are the same. Maybe it is simply that I long to be part of his committed and passionate world rather than that of haute couture and flowerpot purses.

No promising leads in the Alex Aguirre bombing, according to homicide. Nobody had called to claim responsibility, the motive remained unknown. I called Yates from the bomb squad to double check.

Bombers' signatures are as distinctive as fingerprints. The way they twist their wires, the components they choose, the tool markings they leave, the military or commercial explosives they use. “Haven't found it yet,” Yates said. “We're still sifting through the debris, using finer screens now.”

I had another story, a choice tidbit picked up during my phone checks. My first stop was the Miami Beach police station three blocks west of the ocean, on Washington Avenue. Until it was built, South Florida cop shops were formidable fortresslike structures.
Miami Vice
and the Art Deco renaissance changed that. Both influenced this gleaming white building with sweeping curves, glass brick, and a high inside balcony. The past was even respected, unusual in a city with a short history and officials with shorter memories. The new police headquarters stands behind the old City Hall built the year after the devastating 1926 hurricane. Unlike the sleek modern building that has replaced it seven blocks away, the original is a wedding cake, a show of faith erected in a time of disaster. A two-story base supports a nine-story tier topped by an arched confection garnished with balusters and urns and a red tile roof. It now houses courtrooms, offices, and a restaurant. The new Deco police station is connected by a plaza, a favorite location for fashion shoots and an exercise in psychedelia.

Glamorous long-legged models and famous foreign photographers mingle with rumpled detectives, handcuffed prisoners, battered victims, and sleazy bondsmen under a technicolor sky that smells of sea and salt. The giddy ambience creates an impression that nothing here is actually real, but all make-believe instead, created for the glossy pages of some slick magazine.

The chief scowled and ducked back into his office when he saw me, probably tipped off by the mayor, who was also evading my phone calls.

They had been too quick with the key to the city. Again. Forgetting the outrage last time, after another honored visitor was identified as a former Nazi.

Their latest honoree, a brawny German visitor, had wrestled an armed robber to the pavement, snatched away his gun and pummeled him until police arrived. After the negative worldwide headlines generated by the robbery murders of several foreign tourists, this was the answer to a publicists prayer and cause for as much media hype as could be wrung out of it.

Police had awarded the hero a plaque, the mayor had presented the key to the city, and he had been showered with accolades during a standing ovation at a full meeting of the city commission. Publicity pictures were flashed around the world, revealing that the hero was wanted in Berlin for child molesting.

In this world of scam artists and swindlers all drawn like magnets to this city, the safest course is to honor only the dead—after thorough background checks. Miami city fathers now follow that route, burned too often after renaming streets in honor of celebrities, civic leaders, and philanthropists quickly exposed as drug lords, tax evaders, or scam artists. They should take the same precaution with proclamations, another kiss of death. Shortly after city officials celebrated Yahweh Ben Yahweh Day in Miami, the self-proclaimed God, son of God, was indicted in connection with fourteen murders and a firebombing.

I cornered the chief for a comment, then dropped by the missing persons bureau. A young officer named Causey was in charge. Missing persons was once the exclusive province of women officers, but now the women are more likely to be out on patrol, in uniform, fighting crime in the streets while many male officers hold down desk jobs.

I asked to see the open missing-persons files, wondering how far back to check. Some of the cases that filled two file drawers were older than Causey, in his twenties and much more enthusiastic about his off-duty security work for movie crews on location than in tracking lost people.

“Most of 'em are not lost,” he said cheerfully, leaning back in his chair, hands locked behind his head. They know where they are, but we don't”

He laughed at his own joke, as I arbitrarily decided to go back five years.

Seated at an empty desk, suspecting that this was a silly waste of time, I flipped through file after file. Two possibilities: Samuel Lifter, thirteen, and Derek Malone, eleven.

The Lifter boy: reported missing three years ago. The report on the Malone youngster was a year older. Both were tall for their ages, fair-haired and blue-eyed.

Lifter had threatened to run away because he hated to take his medication. He was epileptic. The day he disappeared he had been swimming with friends, over at Crandon Park Beach on Key Biscayne. When it came time to go home, they couldn't find him. The Malone boy had had an altercation with a teacher at Nautilus Junior High and hadn't returned home from school that day. There were no notations in the files that the cases had ever been resolved.

I dialed the Lifter number, wondering if the family still lived there.

A woman answered.

I introduced myself. “I'm calling about your son, Samuel.”

Her voice became cold. “Is this a joke?”

“No,” I assured her. “I wanted to find out if you've heard from him, if he's come home.”

She gasped. Samuel Lifter had been found, drowned in the surf, the day after he was reported missing. The official theory was that he had skipped his medication, suffered a seizure and drowned unseen during the beach outing. A strolling honeymoon couple had stumbled upon his body in the water the next morning. Samuel Lifter had been resting in the family plot at Shalom Memorial Gardens these past three years while still listed in the Miami Beach Police Department's active missing-persons file.

Apologizing profusely, I shot a look to kill at Officer Causey, oblivious at his desk, telling someone on the phone about how he had been this close to Sharon Stone during shooting for the big new action flick on location in South Beach.

I dialed the Malone home with more trepidation.

A teenager answered. “Hi,” I said, “I'm calling from the Miami Beach Police Department. We're updating our files and I wondered about the status of Derek Malone. He was reported missing four years ago.”

“Derek?”

“Yes, is he still missing?”

“Christ, no.” The boy laughed. “I think I remember that. My brother got sent to the vice principal's office by his teacher, got scared, and took off. Hopped a bus to my grandmother's in Hallandale that night. She brought him home the next day. That was four freaking years ago. I love it! The cops are still looking for him! Duh.”

“Thank you,” I said sweetly, “and my regards to Derek.”

I flipped both files onto Causey's desk, convinced that the only way he would spot a missing person was if one wandered across a movie set.

“You owe me,” I said, picking up my things. “I just cleared two cases for you.”

“Thanks, Britt.” He put his palm over the mouthpiece and beamed boyishly. “Wanna stay and do a few more?”

I drove eight miles north to Surfside, a tiny eight-block-long oceanfront municipality that stretches from Eighty-eighth Street north to Ninety-sixth and from the Atlantic Ocean west to Biscayne Bay.

Huge equipment blocked Surfside's main drag, narrowing traffic to one lane. Signs warned that a twenty-mile-an-hour speed limit was strictly enforced. No problem. I crawled along at eight miles an hour, the top speed possible in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

The desk sergeant at the twenty-one-man department adjacent to the Town Hall did not recall the Clower case, but the lone detective in the building obligingly dug it out for me. Had it been a murder the county would be handling it, the file would be unavailable, and the cops tight-lipped, but missing persons are a routine nuisance.

I scanned David Clower's file. His mother had reported him missing on Monday, after calling her ex-husband to find out why he had not returned the boy. Assuming father and son were bonding, sharing quality time, she had been reluctant to interrupt sooner. David had been gone since about seven o'clock Saturday night when he slammed angrily out of his father's place in South Miami. I wondered aloud if there were independent witnesses to the boy's departure. Did the father have a record? Was he a drinker? Was there was a history of violence between father and son?

“Gawd, Britt,” the detective said. “You're a suspicious woman.” He knew nothing about the case. The file was sparse and had been referred to Metro-Dade because the boy had apparently disappeared in county jurisdiction. No way to know if he had ever made it back to the Beach or to Surfside.

There was a picture. His mother was right. David Clower was a dead ringer for Charles Randolph. They could have been brothers.

No other cases fit the profile. Most people who get lost in Surfside are ancient wanderers, confused senior citizens unable to find their way home because their memories have short-circuited, convincing them it is 1954 again and they are back in Brooklyn, or they are elderly desperadoes who march off in protest, angry at their current caretakers or living arrangements. Spunky, elusive, and evasive, they are eventually rounded up and trundled home, like it or not.