The journalist was a woman named Rachel Torres.
She had spent fifteen years at Miami’s most respected longform publication — the kind of outlet that won awards and had standards and whose stories people actually believed. She was not the gossip account Stella had used the first time. She was the real thing.
Victor Romano made the call on Wednesday morning.
Rachel Torres called me on Wednesday afternoon.
“I’d like to hear your story,” she said. “All of it, from your perspective.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s why I agreed to this.”
We met at the Coconut Grove house — my choice of location, which Rachel accepted without pushback. She arrived with a recorder and a notebook and the specific quality of someone who had been doing this long enough to understand that the best interviews were con
