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Chapter 1 :: Chapter 2 :: Chapter 3 :: Chapter 4 :: Chapter 5 :: Chapter 6 :: Chapter 7
This story is only one vision of what could have happened in the lives of the characters that we had the good fortune to get to know and cherish over the five years that the show was in production. It tries to stay true to the characters and ambience created by Anthony Yerkovich and developed by Michael Mann, and attempts to fill in some of the gaps in Sonny's and Caitlin's relationship between the time she left to go out on tour and the time she returns to Miami for her last concert.
Many thanks to Yerkovitch and Mann and to the fabulous actors and actresses who made the show what it was - Don Johnson, Phillip Michael Thomas, Edward James Olmos, Saundra Santiago, Olivia Brown, Michael Talbott and Johns Diehl.
Thank you all for giving us the incredible experience that was and is Miami Vice!
eaj
Please pass along any comments or requests directly to the author, Elizabeth Johnston at: eajohnston@shaw.ca
All Miami Vice pictures in this story are borrowed from the www.miami-vice.org website
My very special thanks go to Rick Leon, a fabulous composer and musician. Rick kindly provided 2 pieces of Vice-style music in the tradition of Jan Hammer for this story entitled 'Scarab' and 'Caitlin'. If you want to hear more of Rick's music you can visit his website at rickleon.com
This evening Detective James Sonny Crockett was not using his police permit to park in the no-parking zone. Tonight the Miami-Dade Police Department was the thing furthest from his mind. There was a time when his job as an undercover vice cop with the Organised Crime Bureau of the police force had been the most important thing in his life. It had cost him his first marriage. Caroline had been right so many years before - he lived for the excitement and was hooked on the action. But that was before he had seen so many of his ideals washed away like sandcastles on the beach, and that was before he had met Caitlin Davies. Despite years of tragedies and disappointments, he was still dedicated to the job he loved, but now there was something more important in his life - someone more important.
It was ironic. This job that brought him face to face with the worst slime in Miami’s criminal underground was the reason he had met the woman of his dreams - sweet and fiery, gentle but firm, the only woman he had ever met who matched him in the passion of his convictions. She was the love of his life, the fire in his heart. Their spirits flew on the wind to together.
On the way here he had been thinking about when he first met Caitie. He laughed about it now, but at the time he could have killed his lieutenant, Martin Castillo. Sonny had just spent a month of nights working an illegal arms sting with a bunch of guys who thought garlic was mouthwash. He had put in the time, the long weary stakeouts, the socialising with scum, the never-ending reports and paperwork, and then, just before he was ready to close the case, Marty had pulled him off it and handed it over to the ATF. The lieutenant gave him his new assignment - personal bodyguard to an has-been rock star named Caitlin Davies until she testified before the Grand Jury the following week. Hell it wasn’t even Metro-Dade’s case. And why was he so lucky to be chosen for this overblown case of petty larceny? - because they wanted someone who looked the part. He remembered muttering that he should have got a hair cut.
"Don’t let her out of your sight," Castillo had said. Hell! He didn’t even want her to be in sight.
To say he was pissed, was putting it mildly. The last thing on earth he wanted was to baby-sit some self-important prima donna on the downslide of a floundering singing career. He was sure that all she was after was the publicity - to get her face plastered on the front pages, hoping it would resurrect her failing celebrity status and sell a million records.
Boy, had he been he wrong!
But he only found that out after days of bickering and exchanging sarcastic comments with her. He would never forget the night he had learned the truth and his life had changed so dramatically. Little ‘Miss Publicity-Seeking Celebrity’ said she was tired of being cooped up and had decided they should go out for a candlelight dinner. Sonny figured burgers in a well-lit parking lot or takeout pizza would have been just fine, but she had insisted on his escorting her to the most expensive seafood restaurant in Miami, and she wanted to go there by boat.
Going out for dinner was stupid he knew, totally against procedure - he was supposed to keep her safe and going out to a fancy restaurant was not exactly low profile. But what the hell, he had thought. This was just a simple payola case and having a full-time bodyguard appointed to look after her was, as far as he was concerned, a waste of scarce departmental resources and a supreme waste of his time. So, against his better judgement, he took her, first in the Testerossa, or Testosteronee as she so mockingly called it, to the marina, and then by speedboat to the restaurant on the other side of the bay.
He knew it would be cold and wet bouncing over the water in the Scarab, the speedboat the department provided him to maintain his undercover role as Sonny Burnett. He gunned it all the way there, hoping to make the ride as unpleasant as possible - after all this was her idea. He saw her shivering and chuckled to himself, knowing that he had a blanket stashed in the cuddy, but he wasn’t going to tell her about it. Let her ask him to slow down or complain first. But she didn’t - she took it all, and when they arrived at the restaurant, she had just looked at him with a mousy little grin and thanked him for the ride. Damn she was annoying!
What a mistake that evening had been! Like their history to that point, the dinner conversation was a disaster with sarcastic cutting comments flowing freely back and forth. After dinner the conversation took a turn for the worse, if that were possible. He still resented the assignment and he kept jibing her that she was only interested in the publicity. She countered his punches all evening and finally hit him with a blow that stung like a poison dart and sent his pride over the edge.
He knew it had been more his fault than hers. He had been belligerent to her ever since they had met. All she knew about him at that point was that he was terribly rude and that he held a huge grudge against her for some reason. To her he was a hot shot cop - a self-centred playboy with a stylish haircut who wore designer clothes, drove a fancy imported sports car and owned an outrageously expensive speedboat. No wonder she had figured that this was all a game to him.
"I bet that’s a speciality of yours - taking girls out in that thing and getting them wet. Is everything of yours that fast?"
She was sparring a little, looking for his weak spots before going in for the kill. That jab didn’t draw him in but she sensed she was getting close to the mark. With a wicked smile and mocking eyes daring him to strike back, she threw what turned out to be a knock-down punch.
"What I'd like to know is, when do you have time to play cops and robbers, Crockett?"
The most important thing in Sonny’s life was his job. He worked for peanuts, risking his life to try and clean up the streets of Miami, and SHE accused HIM of playing! He had glared at her, figuring she was just like all those other babied rock stars with nothing better to do than to complain about how lonely life was on the road. Hell, she didn’t know what lonely was! He climbed back up off the mat and staring straight at her, answered her blow, determined to hurt her as much as she had hurt him.
"First of all, I don’t play."
The tone of his voice expressed all the anger and frustrations that had been building over the past few days. He leaned further across the table, intensifying the stare.
"These clothes are confiscated and the department loans them to me to keep up my front. I don't even own the damn shoes I'm wearing. Let's get it straight! I'm just a working stiff making four seventy-five a week."
He was on a roll and he wasn’t about to stop.
"Every time I hear one of you rock stars complaining about your lonely life on the road, I want to throw up."
"Oh, and I suppose you know all about it?’ she had jabbed back at him.
He could see the hurt start to cross her face, but he was venting now and, as far as he was concerned, this round was just starting. "Naw, I don't know nothing. I'm just a dumb cop!"
"And I'm a chick singer? Look. I didn't make up the image. It comes from magazines. I'm not even interested!" she tried to defend herself with one last block.
He sensed he had her on he ropes, and decided to go for the knock-out punch, the bitter pill that was crux of his nausea with this assignment.
"Oh, really! And what are you going to do, hide your face behind a raincoat when you testify in court next week?"
He was surprised to see how hurt she was. The look in her eyes told him that maybe he had gone too far and that his accusations might have been unfair - perhaps he had the wrong impression about her. After all he had never given her the chance to tell her side of the story.
Defeated at last, she rose from the table murmuring, "I think I need some air." But he knew, from the look on her face, that the real reason was to keep him from having the satisfaction of seeing tears in her eyes. He had won the round, but as he watched her go, something inside told him that he could very well have lost the match.
He had felt like hell inside that night - he still felt like hell when he thought about it now. She hadn’t deserved his wrath. After all, it wasn’t her fault that he got the assignment. He followed her outside meaning to apologise, but before he could get to her, he was stopped by the waiter who handed him a bill for the meal - $60 for oysters! - unbelievable!
It was then that he spied the first of the hired assassins, coming ‘round the corner of the restaurant across the patio, gun drawn and ready to shoot. He dashed over to Caitlin and pushed her down out of the way. Drawing his own gun, he managed to tag that guy, but there were two more in a speed boat, firing at her from offshore. He practically threw her into the Scarab, and they sped off, hoping to outrun the bad guys.
click here to hear Rick Leon's song 'Scarab'
But the other boat was just as fast, and the bullets fired into Scarab finally brought it to a standstill. The hired killers pulled up alongside and one of them leered scornfully at her as he tried to board the boat. Sonny was a seasoned detective, and even he found that the crazed look in the man’s eyes unnerved him. He could only imagine what must have been going through Caitlin’s head. Sonny managed to get off the first shot and the smirking leer on the creep’s face slipped back into the darkness, followed by the slow retreat of his arms and hands over the gunwale like a slow-mo scene in a B-grade horror flick. The third hoodlum wanted no more part in this and took off in retreat.
He turned around and saw her crouched behind the driver’s support, whimpering. "Damn, you all right?" he asked. He could see that she was scared, but she was all right. His first priority now was to get them out of there.
He tried the engines and nothing, not a sound but the clicking of the keys as they turned in the ignition. "Oh God!" He tried again and nothing. "Ah beautiful!" Would nothing go his way tonight?
He headed to the stern to check on the engines, confirming once again on the way that Caitlin wasn’t hurt. When he leaned over the transom to take a look, he saw that the engines were toast. He remembered thinking "Oh God! They shot the hell outta this."
He knew there was nothing they could do but hope the other guy didn’t come back, and wait for help to arrive the next morning. The evening had not exactly turned out the way he had expected it to.
Turning back into the boat he saw her standing there, shivering in her black skimpy outfit. He knew it was from a combination of the fear that she was trying so hard to hide, and the chilly evening air on the waterway. She looked so helpless, like a frightened child, and his heart went out to her. This whole mess had all been his stupid fault. He hadn’t taken this assignment seriously, and he almost got them both killed. He retrieved the blanket from the cuddy and wrapped it around her shoulders, admitting to himself that he may have been wrong about things.
"What did you do to get on the good side of these people?’ he asked. "I thought this was just your garden variety payola case."
For the first time he started looking at her from a different point of view. It would be morning before anyone would find them, and with nothing else to do, he decided that maybe he should finally listen to her side of the story. When he did, he found out that it wasn’t such a routine case after all and that publicity had absolutely no meaning for her. Her life really was in danger and she knew it, but she was determined to go ahead with her testimony anyway. Her only interest was to make sure that Tommy Lowe went to jail - Tommy Lowe, the scumbag who had destroyed her friends in the rock group that had made her famous. They had trusted him and he had robbed them blind, taken everything. When their world crashed around them and they found out what Tommy had done, the drummer had OD’d on reds and the guitar player had joined a cult, but Will, the bass player, had sued. She couldn’t prove it, but she knew that Tommy had some goons hang Will from the shower head in the hotel room just before the court date. She had vowed to make the bastard pay, and so she volunteered to help the Racketeering Strike Force catch Lowe in a pay-off. The trial was set for the next week, and come hell or high water, she was going to follow through on it. No matter the threat to herself, she was determined to see that mealy-mouthed bastard pay.
God he remembered how badly he felt after he heard that story. He had reached out to comfort her, but she pushed away from him. He could still see the fire and conviction in her eyes when, with fists clenched in fierce determination, she had vowed that it was all for payback, not publicity. He knew then, without a doubt, he had done the one thing a cop should never do - he had let his preconceptions get in the way and he had totally missed the mark. Finally, the fight was over, and he knew in the end that it was Caitlin who had won the match.
"I’m sorry. I was wrong," he whispered in a voice that echoed the regret he felt, but even he knew the plea was inadequate.
With everything out in the open, the relief combined with the grief she had kept bottled up inside finally overcame her. She grasped him around the neck and clung tightly to him. She had nothing to left to lose anymore, and the tears flowed freely. "Maybe I was wrong too," she admitted.
His heart went out to her and he found his arms reaching out to encircle and comfort her. It was the least he could do after everything that had gone on between them.
As he drove the last stretch of road leading to the airport, he remembered how badly he had felt for treating her the way he had. His eyes rolled back in his head as he lost himself to thoughts of regret, just as he had done that night, and he almost missed a red light. The light caught him unawares, just like that first kiss. Waiting there for the light to turn green, he found himself living that moment again. It had come at him right out of the blue, totally unexpected. He couldn't remember exactly when he felt the first tender touch of her lips on his, but he remembered how, with every movement, her hands pulled him closer to her body, and her lips pressed more firmly into his.
Without meaning to, he had found himself responding. His arms in turn pulled her to him, and he answered her lead with feelings he didn't know existed within him.
He had been caught off-guard and he wasn't ready for it. He was used to being the hunter, not the prey. Feeling uneasy and out of control, he pushed her back and stared at her in an attempt to regroup. As he gazed into her sensuous blue eyes, it hit him, like a hurricane, that he loved this woman with an intensity he had never felt before. He couldn’t help himself - his arms reached out and grasped her in a tight embrace, pulling her close into his body, and his lips met hers in a kiss that released all the passion that had been building up inside him. He felt himself losing control - his lips moving at will to her ears, down the sensuous curve of her neck, the delicate hint of her perfume filling his senses, driving his desire to even greater heights. She grasped him in return, her arms encircling him, pulling him down to her, returning his kisses with an intensity he had not expected. Her hands played over his body tearing at his shirt, her lips and tongue following close behind.
He smiled, remembering how much her reaction had had surprised him. He hadn't been prepared for the intensity of his own advances, let alone the passion of her response. But something, somewhere deep within him, wanted this moment to be more than an unrestrained wild rutting, and somehow, he had managed to pull back from her once again.
"Take it easy darlin’."
He had whispered the words tenderly, gazing into her eager and willing eyes, knowing it was as much to rein in his passion as hers. They had spent too much time in fierce combat together not to experience the full pleasure of this mating. He picked her up gently in his arms and slowly laid down with her on the transom of the boat, anticipating the ecstasy of what was to follow. And for the first time, they made love. They had made love many times since then, but never again with that same sense of urgency and intensity of that first time. It made him ache for the touch of her soft silky body just thinking about it.
He knew then that all the nasty comments he had thrown at her in those first few days had in part been his way of trying to bury the feelings for her that had been growing inside of him. But that evening was the first time these feelings had risen to the surface and had, so completely by surprise, taken control of him. And now they were unleashed forever.
He was still lost in the daydream when he was rudely awakened from his reverie by the blast of an impatient horn in the car behind him. The light had turned green. With the memories of that night still flooding his senses, he floored the pedal, unleashing the harnessed power of the horses rumbling restlessly under the hood of the Ferrari. God he couldn't wait to hold her in his arms again and feel her soft sweet body next to his.
The rush of air from the open window swirling around his head brought him back to the reality of now. He eyed the needle on the speedometer and saw just how fast he was going.
"Take it easy, Sonny," he told himself. "You won't get there any faster if a cop pulls you over, and besides, it won't make the plane arrive any sooner."
There was still a ways to go before he would reach the airport. His mind kept drifting, thinking about their life since then.
By the time Marty and the Coast Guard had picked them up the next morning, they were on an irreversible course of falling madly in love. The fairytale continued for another few days while they were together twenty-hours a day in the opulent mansion that had been provided as a safe house. During that time, they talked about their lives and what would happen when it was all over. Her career was on the rise, but Sonny didn’t figure it would get out of hand, and she liked her privacy, so that shouldn’t interfere with his undercover role. And heck, even their schedules worked out. He often had to work all night on assignments and when the creative juices were flowing, so did she. Their lives were so different, but like Caitie had said, whatever happened it would be what they made happen.
The fairytale romance ended in a fairytale wedding - and then the reality of life had set in.
In that first little while together she had had to come to grips with the realities of his job. They had promised to share everything, but the painful truth was that when he was undercover, she could not exist in his life. The other reality was the dangerous nature of the work he did. He knew that one of the reasons that Caroline, his first wife, had left him was because she couldn’t live with the fear of never knowing whether he would be coming home. So he had tried to hide the danger from Caitlin and it created a strain between them. But Caitie was a different person. She too hated the fear that one day a police officer in a blue uniform might knock on the door to tell her he was dead, but she needed to be, wanted to be, part of every aspect of his life. They had vowed to share everything, good or bad, and she held him to that promise. She understood him like no other woman had before, not even Caroline. Maybe that was because she shared his driving passion to do what was right no matter what. He smiled as he remembered telling Rico, his partner, "She’s the one man - that’s it". Even he didn’t realise at the time just how right he was.
He had had to learn to live with her career too. Like Caitlin liked to say, ‘it’s different worlds.’ When they had married, her career had been near rock bottom and she was trying to make a comeback. She loved singing, she loved performing, but she only wanted to do it part-time now. Neither of them had expected her career to explode the way it had. Part of the reason it did was because of the publicity generated from stories about her ‘drug-dealer’ husband Sonny Burnett. Instead of destroying her career, it had added an air of mystery and intrigue, and the record label publicists had made the most of it, despite her efforts to keep it out of the public eye.
The publicity was bad news for Sonny. As an undercover cop, one of his key needs was anonymity.
Her rising fame also meant a lot more touring. She was hardly ever in town, and when she was, he was usually working - the schedule of an undercover cop depends on the needs of the case, not the wants of an individual. The night she had left on this last tour they had vowed to make their marriage work, or die trying. Sonny had no intentions of dying, and he had every intention of making this marriage work.
It had been over 3 weeks now since she had left. They had spoken on the phone almost every day and while it helped, it only made the waiting seem longer. He was supposed to have met her in New York a few days ago, but at the last minute he had to cancel. He had been so disappointed, but the Santangelo case he was working had taken a twist and he couldn’t get away. But now, it was all working out for the best. Cait had called to say that her next two concerts had been cancelled unexpectedly and she was coming home for a few days. Because the bust had gone down when he was supposed to be in New York, they had wrapped the case up earlier than expected, and he found himself in between assignments. In fact, he and Rico had finished all the paperwork on it this afternoon. He knew that Marty was feeling badly about his missing New York, though Marty would never admit to anything like that, but even so, he was a bit surprised when the lieutenant had told him to take the next few days off. And so here he was, on his way to the airport to pick up Caitlin - three nights and two days of heaven. It was a dream come true.