“Maria, my name is Serge. I’m a hostage negotiator.”
“Hostage negotiator? What are you doing here?”
“Some cops outside got this crazy idea in their heads just because you called 911,” said Serge. “It would be much better for everyone if you opened the door so we could talk face-to-face.”
The phone in the living room began ringing again.
“Shouldn’t we answer that?” asked Rog.
Serge shook his head. “This is the most delicate part of the negotiation.”
A muffled voice from the other side of the door: “Is that Rog out there?”
“Standing right next to me.”
“Hey, baby,” said Rog. “I can explain.”
“Get away from me! I hope you rot!”
Serge tilted his head, and Rog took the cue to return to the living room.
“He just left,” said Serge. “Can you please open the door? . . .”
. . . Outside, Sergeant Duffy turned to a corporal. “Well?”
“They’re not answering the phone. And we lost transmission from the robot.”
“I don’t like the looks of this.” Duffy checked his wristwatch. “We’re going in. Tell the SWAT team they have two minutes . . .”
. . . “Please open the door,” said Serge.
“Do you know what that asshole said to me in Pottery Barn?”
“Tell you what,” said Serge. “You come out, and I’ll take you to Pottery Barn.”
“Promise?”
“Cross my heart.”
“Okay . . .” The bedroom door creaked, and she stepped into the hall just as Coleman emerged from another door with a broken robot under his arm.
Maria looked inside the bathroom. “What in the name of God happened to my guest towels!”
Coleman grinned. “Sorry . . .”
. . . The sergeant gave the signal. “Go! Go! Go!”
Tactical officers in black gear stormed toward the house.
Serge yelled out a window: “Hostage coming out!”
“Stand down!” yelled the sergeant.
Maria stomped out the doorway and across the lawn. A SWAT member darted forward and grabbed her arm to pull her to safety, but she just jerked away. “Don’t touch me!”
There was a commotion in the street as other officers attempted to detain her for debriefing. “You men are all alike!”
An emboldened Rog stuck his head through a crack in the door. “And don’t come back, cunt!”
“What!” Serge screamed, and yanked him back inside. “Rog, a Pottery Barn can test even the strongest man’s limits, which is why you always see them crying in the parking lot. But I cannot abide this level of misogyny . . .”
Out in the street, Sergeant Duffy huddled with his corporal. “What do you think now?”
“That negotiator must be for real. He got the hostage released faster than I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” said the sergeant. “I got nineteen years in for my pension. Can’t afford to mess this up.”
“The only other explanation is they simply bought Windbreakers.”
“Don’t be silly.” Duffy was also privately thinking: He called me “boss.” For some reason I really like this guy.
“Then what’s the plan?” asked the corporal.
“We wait . . .”
. . . Serge sat back down on the couch. “What a day! . . . Rog, where are you going?”
He pointed at the front door. “Leaving. This is far too weird for me.”
“Come back in here and sit down with us,” said Serge. “I insist.”
“But I want to give up now.”
“Are you nuts?”
“No, really, I’d like to turn myself in now.”
“And I need to discuss your manners with women.” Click.
Rog raise his hands. “Why are you pointing that gun at me?”
“To negotiate.”
Aventura
Panel trucks arrived in the parking lot of a worn two-story strip mall in Aventura. The competition between the nail and beauty salons was heating up. More and more pink neon had recently been placed in the windows to advertise new services involving wax, cucumbers and heated stones.
Men in short brown pants opened the backs of the delivery trucks. They loaded boxes on handcarts as two gangs of employees stood on the sidewalk, giving each other the hairy eyeball. The men wheeled their cartons through the doors of the salons, escorting identical shipments of the latest laser equipment to battle the heartbreak of female mustaches. The two staffs exchanged a salvo of cursing in a foreign language, then rushed back inside their establishments to play with the new stuff.
The delivery trucks left. A Honda Civic arrived. A young woman entered a door between the two businesses and went up the stairs.
A receptionist looked up from her desk and smiled. A door in the back of the waiting room opened. It was one of the founding partners, Jacklyn Lopez. “We’ve been expecting you.”
She led the woman down the hall and opened the door to Brook’s office.
“Danny, great to see you,” said the lawyer, standing and giving her a hug.
“I can’t thank you enough for all your work helping my grandmother with her landlord situation.”
“My pleasure,” said Brook. “But you didn’t have to come all the way up here to tell me that.”
Jacklyn had a stern expression. “It’s something else. You’re not going to believe her story.”
“Then you better have a seat,” Brook told Danny. She went back behind the desk and took her own. “Now, what is it?”
Danny sat up straight. “There are some stories going around my community. Actually they’re not stories; they’re true.”
“So tell me a true story,” said Brook.
“There’s a family I want you to help,” said Danny. “But they’re afraid to come in, so I’d like you to help persuade them.”
“Why are they afraid?”
“They’re illegals,” said Danny. “Migrant workers.”
“I see.”
“Last week the picking season ended in Homestead. They packed everything they had into a station wagon and set out for Immokalee to follow the jobs. But they were stopped by police, ostensibly because all their bags of clothes blocked the rearview mirror.”
“Wait,” Brook interrupted. “You said they were illegals who were stopped by the police? They weren’t turned over to INS for deportation?”
Danny shook her head. “The officers just searched the vehicle and seized four thousand dollars, their whole life savings.”
“On what grounds?” asked Brook.
“They claimed the money was proceeds from illicit drug trafficking,” said Danny. “Except they didn’t find any drugs in the car.”
“Then what was their basis for impounding the money?”
“A dog barked at the cash.”
Brook’s expression changed. “There’s got to be more.”
“There isn’t,” said Danny.
“What were they charged with?”
“They weren’t. They just let them go,” said Danny. “The father didn’t even have a valid driver’s license or proof of insurance. That alone should have caused him to be detained. It’s traffic stop one-oh-one.”
“Now I’m totally baffled,” said Brook.
“Don’t you see? The police wanted them to leave,” said Danny. “Word’s getting around on the street about this new scheme to rob illegals under the pretext of fighting the War on Drugs. Everyone knows what’s going on. Just not the people living comfortable lives.”
Brook got out a fresh yellow legal pad and clicked a pen. “Okay, so what does everyone on the street know? Start at the very beginning.”
“Forfeiture laws were implemented to take away the profit motive of drug dealers and prevent them from furthering their smuggling enterprise. Who isn’t for that?”
“It would be a very short list.”