As they say, Miami is the capital of the Latin world, and local newscasts were picked up throughout Central and South America. Just below the isthmus of Panama, a satellite dish rose from the rooftop of a jungle chalet high up the side of a mountain. Inside, a group of men sat around a dining table. On the wall was a bank of video screens from a dozen security cameras. A larger screen showed a reporter interviewing hopeful people in Florida.
“It rolled over again,” said one of the men at the table, sipping a glass of French wine. He looked out the window at a nearby plateau that had been cleared for a private airstrip. “When should we go?”
The man at the head of the table raised a fork with a thick chunk of prime steak from Argentina. “Wait until it rolls one more time.”
Armed guards marched past the windows outside. The men resumed dining without discussion . . .
. . . Back in Miami, billboard workers climbed down from ladders and drove up the street to their next sign. This time it was a neighborhood so bleak that even the convenience stores had cleared out.
One of those abandoned buildings sat boarded up, overgrown with weeds and loitering. The gas pumps were now just concrete oval bases. An old man with a brown paper bag sat on a citrus crate. He removed his socks, turned them inside out, and put them back on.
Surrounding the shuttered store were vacant lots of broken liquor bottles, condoms, vials and RC Cola cans. A Miami police car was parked in the middle of one such lot, pointed at the street. The car remained motionless for hours. No need to even patrol. Along this stretch of Biscayne Boulevard, crime had delivery service.
The reason for the particular placement of the police car was across the street: a feckless rectangular building of beige bricks, where the only window facing the street was a long horizontal slit filled with neon signs for beer brands.
The Sawgrass Lounge, established 1949.
Back then, it was a happening place. Sterling martini shakers, coat and ties, marble-top horseshoe bar. Today, it was still happening, just in another direction.
More people were outside the lounge than in. Mingling, exchanging esoteric handshakes, whispering in ears. It was like a casting call for Starsky & Hutch street villains, the kind that end up being chased by the cops and always get caught after running down a dead-end alley and tackled trying to climb a chain-link fence. The gang outside the Sawgrass was not in mint condition. More bandages than the general population. Half had just slept something off, and the rest were trying to come down. Some milled out front, and others conspired in an alley: “We have to do something about that chain-link fence.” But they all had one thing in common: keeping an eye on the police car across the street.
Several miles away, a black Suburban with tinted windows cruised south on Biscayne. A man in the backseat wore headphones and adjusted dials on an expensive-looking piece of electronics with a green oscilloscope. “Raise your arms up. I need to run this under your shirt.”
“What is it?” asked Reevis.
“Lapel mike. But we need to clamp it backward so it can’t be seen.” The sound man snapped it in place. “This tiny transmitter goes in your pants pocket, but make sure the wires aren’t hanging out.”
Reevis grew more skeptical by the minute. “I’ve been with you guys three hours now, and you still won’t tell me about the story I’m supposed to be working on. You just kept filming me walking through the middle of the newsroom at the cable station. Must have been at least twenty times. Necktie on, tie off, jacket over the shoulder, sometimes running, sometimes yelling ahead to someone who wasn’t there to ‘hold the elevator,’ which also wasn’t there. It’s a one-floor building.”
“Trust us,” Nigel said from the front seat. “Capturing reality is an art.”
“Will you just tell me what I’m supposed to be investigating?”
“In due time,” said Nigel. “I’ve found it’s best to wait until the last moment to let my performers in on the key elements. That way we catch a fresh reaction from you just as you’re thrown into peril.”
“Peril?”
“Nothing to worry about.” The sound man twisted a knob. “We’ve done this a million times. Taken every precaution to eliminate the peril. That gives us a safety margin to provoke peril.”
Reevis sighed and stared at the ceiling.
Nigel grabbed the dashboard and leaned closer to the windshield. “Slow down. We’re coming up on it now.” Then he turned to Reevis. “Here’s the story. Cold case. Woman went missing four years ago without a trace, body never found. We couldn’t have asked for a better crime to kick off the series.”
“Why’s that?” asked Reevis.
“Police came up with three equal murder suspects,” said Nigel. “That’s essential for a classic whodunit. In this case it’s the husband, a short-order cook who was seeing her on the side, and the semi-employed landscaper found driving her car after she went missing. All extremely suspicious and guilty-acting.”
Reevis got out his notebook. “How were they acting guilty?”
“They haven’t yet,” said Nigel. “But they will when we surprise them with our camera. Their eyes always give them away.”
“That’s out of context,” said Reevis. “You can make anyone look guilty that way.”
“I told you we know what we’re doing.”
“No,” said Reevis. “I mean it’s not ethical.”
“Glad you brought that up,” said Nigel. “Ethics are our top priority! That’s why we save the footage and only air the ‘guilty eyes’ shots of the people we decide are guilty.”
Reevis took a deep breath. “Back up and tell me more about the missing woman’s car.”
Nigel flipped open a briefcase on his lap and held up a document. “Police located it at three a.m. with a Dominican behind the wheel after it was pulled over for a broken taillight. Real suspicious type. Kept changing his story. First he said he was partying with the woman and that she had lent it to him. Then after they discovered a trunk full of blood, he changed his story and said he found it abandoned outside this sketchy bar with the keys still in the ignition.”
Reevis continued scribbling in his pad. “Did the police ever charge him?”
“He was the prime suspect for the first week,” said Nigel. “Then suddenly the cops ruled him out and started looking at the boyfriend. Don’t you find that suspicious? I think we should pump up the angle of police corruption.”
“Slow down,” said Reevis. “I haven’t even started looking into this. Let me go through all the official files.”
Nigel shook his head. “No good for TV.” He handed Reevis a sheet of paper.
“What’s this?”
“The script of how you’re going to break the case wide open!”
The reporter handed it back. “My editor said I didn’t have to change how I worked—that I could investigate cases the way they taught me in journalism school.”
“And that’s exactly what we were hoping you’d say!” Nigel exclaimed. “We want you to bring integrity and respect to the show. We promise to let you investigate as you see fit.”
“Doesn’t sound like it.”
“This is a different medium.” Nigel snipped the end off a large Honduran cigar. “Sometimes we have to start filming with the conclusion and do the investigating later.”
“Why?”
“Lighting.” Nigel puffed the cigar.
“You can’t be serious.”
“All we’re asking is that you work with us,” said Nigel. “The only hard piece of evidence is the car, so we’ll start there and pick up the trail. Go into the lounge and see if you can find anyone who remembers anything. The car, the Dominican, the woman. This is a real regulars’ place, same people on the same stools for years. Someone in there has answers.”