Queen of the Underworld (17 page)

T
HE
Star
newsroom was electric with postdisaster importance. People rushed about, trailing long streamers of copy. The green-visored copy editors, four of them seated at the horseshoe desk this morning, slashed pages with
aplomo,
as Alex would say.

Adjacent to Bisbee, who was simultaneously scribbling and pulling at his hair, Gabe Truro, the crime reporter, had commandeered my desk and typewriter. My telephone receiver in its little rubber saddle rode between his shoulder and ear as bursts of copy shot from his fingers—he used all ten of them, a properly trained touch typist. I was watching his performance with reluctant awe when Bisbee looked up and saw me.

“Oh, Emma, we’re going to move you back to Joelle’s desk for the nonce. Gabe is taking down damage feeds from the reporters out in the field and I need him close by.”

“Oh.” Shunted off to the outskirts, away from the action.

“Thanks again for showing up last night,” he added, as a sop.

“Not much came of it. But I plan to follow up on it.”

“On what?”

“You know. Mrs. Brown. Ginevra. The Queen of the Underworld.”

“What’s to follow up on? Here are a few things for you to get started on.”

“But you said last night it would make a good human-interest sidebar on the tornado.”

“Yes, well, the tornado was last night.” He handed me a half page of copy, raggedly torn off from his typewriter bar. “We’ll need these for the early edition.”

I was stung by being evicted from my desk so someone more proficient could take down the “damage feeds,” and even more by Bisbee’s implicit reproof about missing my opportunity for a sidebar, but my spirits really hit rock bottom when I read through my assignments.

emma: get update from all three hospitals on tornado victims & do yr obits

THEN work on these stys for early edition:
—home tips if storm struck you? power out? perishables? boil well water, etc.—chk w red cross and fp&l & find out frm dademetro when trash crews resume pick-ups & where
—call ma bell late aft: how many outgoing long dist calls today—work up coupla hu int grafs on miamians burning up the wires telling friends and relatives about tornado
—what to do if another comes? 5–6 grafs—get saf-t tips from weather bureau

djb

The way to the goal is through the chore. I had learned that from my earliest striving days. But however many goals I amassed, the revulsion at the chores never seemed to diminish. This list was so demeaning I didn’t dare even take a consolation break in the ladies’ room first.

After decoding “djb’s” annoying directives (Was I expected to read and write this lingo? If so, why hadn’t they coached us in J-school?) and deciding Bisbee’s middle initial stood for “Jerk,” I launched myself into my chore-attack mode.

Last night Bisbee had offered me the “plum” of a story on Ginevra and today he was withdrawing her again as stale news. If I were a
Star
reader, I would pounce on an interview with a former madam and star witness of the sensational trial that had made headlines in Miami for weeks. And for those readers who had forgotten or hadn’t been around at the time, I could provide a juicy recap of the story, using Norbright’s series, before heading into my own in-depth conversations with the Queen of the Underworld. What was her life like now, when she wasn’t trying to put herself to sleep? What was their marriage like? How had he proposed? Hadn’t she been his patient at the time? What were her thoughts and memories from the Palm Island days—and nights? Did she miss the excitement, being with the other girls, getting them ready for the evening, being
their
Edith Vine?

At this point, certain issues discussed in Dean Ligon’s Senior Seminar began rearing their unwelcome heads. The challenge would be finding a way to tell Ginevra’s story, the intimate, inside story beyond the Norbright series, without violating anybody’s right to privacy or incurring libel suits. But first I had to get the story out of her. I couldn’t help feeling cross with Edith Vine for dying. If she’d just hung on, I could have set up a reconciliation with the founder of the Biscayne Academy and her star pupil. My God, what a story! Maybe I would write it anyway, start it in my “Go, Tar Heels!” notebook at the Julia Tuttle, as an exercise: a private mood piece to set the tone of the eventual story. I could begin it tonight, while waiting for Alex to get back from his grandfather’s scolding at the Bath and Tennis Club in Palm Beach.

I slid out Joelle Cutter-Crane’s Miami-Dade phone book from the drawer it shared with her Fire and Ice nail polish, polish remover, cotton squares, and emery boards, and a September horoscope torn from a magazine. “Your success, Virgo, is allied with your capacity to work—and overwork!” had been underscored twice in red. The diarylike snippet sparked my first feeling of kinship with the unfriendly “ribbon” on the
Star
’s “package.” I could see myself in fifteen years, face and nails assiduously maintained, underlining some similar astrological boost. (“See, Gemini, all your efforts are paying off!”)

There were two full pages of Browns, but none of them on Crandon Drive, Key Biscayne. Only an office number for Edwin Brown, MD, at the Dupont Plaza.

My contact Herman Melton had Jackson’s updated victim list ready when I called.

“That’s the trouble with a day job, Emma, you miss all the excitement,” he said sadly. “I was all set to drive back from Hallandale when we heard the news about the twister, but my wife was worried about all those wires being down, and since we’re expecting a baby, I didn’t want to upset her.”

“Herman, listen, I talked to this woman in Emergency last night, she was in for an overdose, you may have seen it in today’s paper.”

“Sure, the former madam married to Dr. Brown. Was that your story, Emma? I didn’t know you were at the hospital last night.”

“I caught a ride to Jackson. Bisbee was already there but he left to check out the more serious casualties up at North Shore and Biscayne. Do you happen to know how I might get in touch with her again? There’s no residential listing for them in the phone book.”

“Ah, sorry, Emma, even if I had one, we’re forbidden to give out a private number. You could try calling the doctor’s office, or there’s always the postal service.”

“It’s just that we were having a pretty interesting conversation I’d like to follow up on. Not for print, just personal.”

“Maybe a note to her on personal stationery would be best, then. I understand he’s not friendly to the
Star,
though why should he be? It was before I came here, but lots of people still remember the Queen of the Underworld trial.”

Of course they do, damnit!

I called Bisbee’s contacts at the other two hospitals. The lists were longer; there was one little boy in critical condition at North Shore, but the parents weren’t talking to the press.

Next I called my “fun homes.” Interestingly enough, the list of the dead was my shortest yet. Maybe there were one or two getting ready to die and then the tornado got them so excited they forgot to.

Then I shut off my emotions, including those of resentment at Bisbee—“home tips” had “women’s department” written all over it—and began tackling, item by item, this trivia list of tornado leftovers.

So grim was my momentum that I actually snarled when I sensed someone standing behind me. Not until after I finished banging out my current “graf”

Opening doors and windows on the north and east sides of a house sometimes will reduce damage if a twister hits. Closed-up houses tend to explode due to extremely low air pressure.

did I deign to look around and acknowledge Lou Norbright’s gleaming presence.

“What ferocious concentration,” he remarked with some amusement.

“Yes, well, the best way to get through chores is just to get through them.” Not my brightest comeback. Also it came out surlier than I had intended. Why could I never strike the right note with this man?

He surveyed the pile of typescript stacked to the right of my typewriter. “These all done?”

“Everything’s done on the list Dave Bisbee gave me, except the one about how many Miamians called friends and family long-distance with their tornado adventures, but I won’t be able to get the figures from the phone company until right before deadline. Now I just need a snappy closing for this one I’m finishing up. What to do if another twister comes.”

“Can I have a look?”

“Sure.” I handed up my two triple-spaced pages with their six bite-size
Star
“grafs.”

Norbright smiled as he read them. Then, leaning forward, he slid a new sheet of copy paper into Joelle’s typewriter. Standing beside my chair, he pecked out a few lines with his index fingers. His hands were square and masculine, with well-kept nails and a shiny gold wedding band.

He rolled out the page and passed it over to me. “How’s this?”

He had written me my closing.

In any event, keep calm. Even if a tornado warning is issued for your area, the chance that a tornado will actually strike your home is slight.

Just remember this. The odds are in your favor.

“Think it has enough snap?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. And it’s upbeat, too.”

“The
Star
tries to be upbeat whenever possible.”

He opened Joelle’s paste pot and brush-stroked my two pages together, then pasted on his contribution. “In the future, Emma, as soon as you finish a story, put it on the spike instead of stockpiling.”

“Oh, I didn’t think any of them were that urgent.”

“It gets them out of the way for when the urgent ones come in. This time I’ll be your copyboy and run these over to Dave.”

“I met a friend of yours last night,” I said. It came out all wrong. Wrong in tone—too coy—and wrong in timing. He had turned to go, but now he swiveled the top half of his body my way and raised an inquiring eyebrow.

“Mrs. Brown,” I said, which also sounded coy. “Ginevra Snow, your Queen of the Underworld; she was at Jackson last night, another overdose, though nobody was paying much attention to her because of the tornado.”

“Yes, I saw the item in today’s
Star.
It was spunky of you, Emma, to report for duty like that. Dave told me. You’re showing the makings of a real newspaper gal.”

Wasn’t he going to ask anything about the woman who’d made his name? “She said you looked like Cornel Wilde.”

Norbright flashed me a new kind of smile best described as razor-edged. “Funny, I always thought of myself as more the Spencer Tracy type. Keep up the good work, Emma.”

After he had glided away on his invisible wheels, I bowed my head and flipped unseeingly through the pages of my spiral-bound notepad. All around me tomorrow’s newspaper went right on being noisily produced by dozens of others, not one of whom, I congratulated myself, had a clue that I was dissolving in my private little puddle of mortification.

When I was able to focus again, the name of Henry Sprat, widower—“just like in ‘Jack Sprat could eat no fat’ “—bounced up from the page in my last night’s scribble and socked me with a wallop of reproach.

I felt Henry Sprat’s disappointment in my gut as he opened this morning’s
Star,
all prepared to read about his momentous evening walk with the beautiful Lola—spelled
L-o-l-a,
“just like in ‘Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets’ “—when flying debris from the twister nicked him in the head and he drove himself bleeding to the hospital where this eager young woman reporter chased after him and wrote down his every utterance. Surely it must be in here somewhere, maybe on the inside, though from the interest she showed he’d sort of counted on front page. There were all these
others
being quoted, with stories not half as interesting as his.

His name hadn’t been on the updated victim list I’d got from Herman Melton. I hadn’t even remembered the old man’s existence when I was taking down the names, too preoccupied with my fury at the chore list ahead and my failure to get a phone number for Ginevra Brown. Jackson Memorial must have released Henry Sprat last night. He would be home now, at 4644 Ingraham Highway—“that’s in Coconut Grove”—looking in vain for his generously narrated adventure.

“Well, Lola, looks like the young lady let us down. Come over here, give your old dad a wet kiss. I don’t mind so much for myself, but I’d told her how beautiful you are and all about your little runway we built for you and everything.”

This remorseful transmigration into another soul was mercifully cut short by Dave Bisbee, accompanied by the hateful photographer Jake Rance with two cameras slung over his chest.

“My, you’ve been assiduous, Emma. How did you get everything done so fast?”

“I haven’t got the long-distance figures from the phone company yet.”

“How’d you like Jake’s photo this morning? Didn’t I tell you you’d look terrific?”

“The raincoat came out well,” I said, not looking at Jake Rance. “I’m sure there’ll be lots of orders for it. What’s the latest on the
damage feeds
from your reporters out in the field?”

Bisbee gave no sign of picking up the sarcasm.

“That one little boy is still in critical at North Shore, but the family’s nixed any photos. So we’ll have to go with damage and destruction in North Miami. Jake got a shot of a woman standing in front of her roofless house holding her parakeet in its cage, that’ll have to do for the human-interest angle. Too bad Joelle’s down in Cuba, she of all people could flesh out the pathos of a rescued parakeet.”

“If you can see any damn bird flesh at all,” said Jake Rance. “I’ll get these in the developer and let you know. There’s still time to go out and find something else.”

“You’d have been better off with a nice big dog,” I said to Bisbee, still ignoring Jake Rance. “A large photogenic dog being reunited with an old man hit in the head by flying debris from the tornado—”

“This is not a creative writing assignment, Emma. Reality has supplied us with a parakeet.”

“I know where there’s a real chocolate Lab and a sweet old widower. They were taking their evening walk when the tornado struck. He took his dog home and drove himself bleeding to Jackson Memorial Hospital. They must have patched him up and sent him home, because he wasn’t on Herman Melton’s list this morning. Here’s his address.” I handed over my notepad to Bisbee.