Free Act of Betrayal by Edna Buchanan Page B

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