New Hope for the Dead

by Charles Willeford

  “It was nice talking to you, Dad. Give Helen my best regards.”

  “I’ll tell Helen you called … I’m awful sorry—” Frank started to cough, and then he gasped for a moment before catching his breath. “Excuse me. I’m—I’m really sorry about Patsy and that colored ballplayer.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Dad.”

  “Right. Me neither. Well, you give the girls my love, hear?”

  “I will, Dad. And have a bon voyage.”

  “Thanks. I’ve got to get down to the store. There’s a lot to do before I leave.”

  “Sure. And if you send postcards, mail ’em here to the station. I’m moving, but I don’t have my new address yet.”

  “I can call you from the boat. There’ll be a phone in the stateroom, so I can call the store every day. So we’ll be in touch, son.”

  “Sure, Dad. I’ve got to get to work myself.”

  Hoke hung up the phone, wondering how Helen had managed to talk the old man into a round-the-world cruise. It was probably the phone in the stateroom that did it, he concluded. The fact that Frank could call every day and pass on some unneeded advice to his manager had been the clincher. Nevertheless, even though Frank wouldn’t be able to take the girls, Hoke was happy for the old man. Christ, Frank had all the money in the world from his real-estate deals. It was about time he spent some of it.

  Hoke rechecked the paperwork on the Captain Morrow case, wrote a short covering memo to Major Brownley, and then took the file case into Brownley’s empty office and left it on the chief’s desk.

  Hoke took the next case from his unread stack of files and opened it. There had been an argument in a bowling alley, and a man named Rodney DeMaris, an ex-Green Beret captain, had gone out to his car, returned to the bowling alley with a .357 magnum, and shot a bowler named Mark Demarest five times in the chest. The five holes in Demarest’s chest, fired at close range, could be covered by a playing card. Hoke looked at the Polaroid shot of Demarest’s chest, taken at the P.M. by the pathologist, and marveled at the tight pattern. DeMaris had then driven away and disappeared. Hoke wondered why Brownley had selected this old case, dating back five years, and then he found a Xeroxed page from a detective’s notebook stating that a man who looked something like DeMaris had been seen in town two weeks ago, driving a green 1982 Plymouth. The officer had tried to stop the driver, but the suspect had evaded him on 1-95. That wasn’t much of a lead; the detective didn’t even get the license number of the Plymouth. The detective wasn’t positive that the man had been DeMaris, but the fact that the suspect refused to stop had reinforced the possible identification. Hoke decided not to waste any time on that one. What was he supposed to do—drive around town looking for a green Plymouth? Hoke put the file to one side, and reached for the next one.

  The phone rang. It was Ellita Sanchez, and she was crying.

  “I’m so glad you answered, Sergeant Moseley,” she sobbed. “I’ve been trying to call your hotel …” Ellita was crying so hard Hoke had difficulty understanding her. She was also talking over band music—some kind of frantic salsa. He could hear horns honking and street noises in the background.

  “Where’re you calling from? I can hardly hear you.”

  “Just a second—don’t hang up!”

  “I’m not going to hang up. Try and calm down a little.”

  As Hoke listened, trying to pick Ellita’s voice out of the background noises, Lieutenant Slater came into his office. His white, pockmarked face loomed above the desk like a dead planet. He wore a blue shirt with a white collar and white barrel cuffs, and the vest and black raw-silk trousers of his five hundred-dollar suit.

  “What’re those girls doing down in Number Three?”

  “Just a minute, Slater, I’m talking to my partner.”

  “I’m at the little cafeteria outside the La Compañía Supermarket at Ninth Avenue and Eighth Street,” Ellita was saying. “Can you come right away?” She had stopped crying and her voice was calm.

  “I guess so. What’s the matter?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here. It’s an emergency, of my own, and I don’t know what to do. Do you have any money?”

  “A little. How much do you need?”

  “A dollar. I’ve had three coffees, and I want to give the cafeteria lady a quarter for using her phone.”

  “I’ve got that much. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Please hurry.”

  “I’ll be right there. Everything will be all right.”

  Hoke put the phone down. Slater was still glaring down at him.

  “Those girls are my daughters, Lieutenant. Why? What’s the matter?”

  “You should’ve checked them in with me, that’s what’s the matter.”

  “You weren’t at your desk when we came in.”

  “I was at my desk when you sneaked that file into Major Brownley’s office.”

  “I didn’t sneak it in, I took it in.”

  “Everything’s supposed to go through me. Otherwise, I won’t know what’s going on around here.”

  “Take a look at it if you like. It’s the Morrow file.”

  “I’m not allowed in Brownley’s office when he’s not there, and neither are you.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Slater. I’m on a special assignment with Henderson and Sanchez. You know that, because Brownley filled you in when he assigned Gonzalez to work with you. What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to follow the chain of command, Sergeant. You’re no better than anyone else around here.”

  Hoke nodded, realizing suddenly why Slater was so angry. He had not been asked by Brownley to attend the meeting about the cold cases, nor had Brownley, in all probability, consulted him about their selection.

  “Okay, Lieutenant,” Hoke said. “I’m supposed to send Brownley a weekly progress report. I’ll see that you get a Xerox of it next week. Okay?”

  “See that you do. And don’t go into the major’s office again when he’s not there.”

  Hoke got up and smiled. “Come on, Slater. I’ll introduce you to my girls.”

  Hoke took him to the interrogation room, introduced the girls, and then handed his daughters two dollars apiece. “Lieutenant Slater’ll show you where the cafeteria is downstairs, and vouch for you so you can eat there. I’ve got to leave the station for a while, so you girls can have lunch down there. Try the special. On Saturday it’s usually macaroni and cheese. Isn’t that right, Lieutenant?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t eat in the cafeteria. I’ve got an ulcer.”

  “Anyway, girls, go with the lieutenant. I appreciate you taking the girls down, Slater.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll just go and get my jacket first.”

  “When’ll you be back, Daddy?” Sue Ellen asked.

  “As soon as I can. It’s a little emergency. Nothing for you to worry about.”

  Eighth Street was only one-way at Ninth Avenue, so Hoke drove west on Seventh Street, turned south on Ninth Avenue, and took the first empty parking space he could find. He put his police placard on the dashboard and walked to the corner. Ellita was on the sidewalk, outside the pass-through counter of the tiny supermarket cafeteria. Music blared from a radio on a shelf behind the counter. Ellita was wearing tight Jordache jeans with a U-necked white muscle shirt. Her bare golden arms were devoid of the bracelets and gold watch she habitually wore. Her gold circle earrings dangled from her ears, however. It was a common Miami joke that doctors could always tell Cuban baby girls when they were delivered at the hospital: They were born with their ears already pierced. Hoke had never seen Ellita in tight jeans before, but she looked good in them, he thought. The full skirts she wore on duty had disguised her voluptuous figure. Ellita smiled when she saw Hoke, and he noticed that she wasn’t wearing lipstick.

  “We can’t talk here,” she said. “Where’s your car?”

  “Around the corner—”

  Ellita took his arm and started toward the corner. She
stopped abruptly. “Just a second. Let me borrow that dollar.”

  Hoke gave her a dollar bill. Ellita passed it through the window to the old lady behind the counter, said something in rapid Spanish, and rejoined Hoke by the supermarket entrance. They walked to the car.

  “Where’s your purse?” Hoke said. “Did you leave it back there on the counter?”

  Ellita shook her head, bit her lower lip, and began to cry.

  Hoke unlocked the door and Ellita got into the front seat. Hoke got behind the wheel and took the placard off the dashboard.

  “There should be some Kleenex in the glove compartment,” he said. He slid the placard under the front seat.

  “I’ll be all right.” Ellita wiped her eyes with the backs of her fingers. “I called you, Sergeant, because … because I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You can call me Hoke, Ellita. After all, we’re partners, and this isn’t an on-duty situation—or is it?”

  “You know how much I respect you, Sergeant—”

  “Even so, I’m only ten years older than you. I’m not your father, for God’s sake.”

  Ellita started to cry again. Hoke opened the glove compartment and found a purse-sized package of Kleenex.

  “Here.”

  Ellita wiped her eyes with a tissue. Her familiar perfume and moschate odor was overwhelming within the confines of the car, especially with the windows rolled up. Hoke started the engine and switched on the air conditioning. As Ellita raised her arms to blow her nose, Hoke noticed the damp tufts of jet-black hair beneath her arms. Ellita didn’t shave her armpits; that was something else he hadn’t known about his partner. It had been a long time since Hoke had spent any time in the front seat of a car with a weeping woman. He found Ellita’s underarm hair a little exciting, and remembered again that he hadn’t been laid in more than four months. After Ellita’s problem was straightened out, there might still be time to drive over to Coral Gables and give Loretta Hickey her money, and maybe set up something …

  “All right,” Ellita said calmly. She sat back and looked straight ahead, staring at a red Camaro parked in front of them. The bumper had a strip on the right side reading, DIE YOU BASTARD. On the other side of the bumper was the logo for the Cuban Camaro Club. “My father threw me out of the house, Hoke.”

  Hoke grinned. “How could he do that? You pay the rent on the whole house, you told me.”

  “You don’t understand. In a Cuban family, he’s the father, and it’s always his house, his rules.”

  “What did you do? Did you have an argument, or what?”

  “This is embarrassing. But if I can’t tell you, I guess I can’t tell anyone. The trouble is, I told my mother, and I should’ve known better. She told my father and he threw me out of the house. I don’t have my purse, my pistol, my checkbook, my car keys—nothing! All of a sudden, there I was, outside of the house on the porch. He locked the door, and I couldn’t get back in. I waited awhile, then I knocked on the door because I could hear my mother crying inside. I said, ‘I’m your daughter, and I’ve got to get my things.’ He said, ‘I have no daughter.’ Then he wouldn’t say another word. He gets like that sometimes. He’s very stubborn and unreasonable. Last year, when he flew up to Newark to visit my aunt—his sister—he got into trouble with the airline because he wouldn’t fasten his seat belt.”

  “Why not?”

  “He thought if he fastened the belt, people would think he was afraid. He finally fastened it when the stewardess told him the captain used his, too. But for a while there, they were radioing for clearance to taxi back to the terminal.”

  Hoke smiled, shook his head, and took out his cigarettes.

  “But he’s my father, Hoke. He’s made up his mind, you see, and now he won’t change it. Maybe, eventually, when he gets used to the idea, he might change it, but right now he’s angry and bitter. He thinks I’ve betrayed and disgraced him, which I guess I have, but right now I need my checkbook, weapon, badge, and car.”

  “He knows, doesn’t he, that a cop’s supposed to have his—her weapon with her at all times?”

  “Of course he knows that, but at the moment he isn’t thinking rationally. Later on, after my mother works on him, he’ll calm down a little, but it’ll never be the same between us again.” She shook her head. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to cry again.”

  “What did you do to him? You don’t have to tell me, of course.”

  “I’m pregnant, Hoke. Seven weeks. I’ve known for a week now, and this morning I told my mother. I told her not to say anything to him, but I should’ve known better. She tells him everything.”

  Hoke nodded and lit a Kool. “That explains why you started crying when I was talking to Captain Morrow in his room. You didn’t know his wife was pregnant when he killed her—”

  “Of course I knew!” Ellita widened her eyes. “I read the file. I’m not that unprofessional, Hoke. I was crying out of frustration because of the damned battery on the tape recorder …”

  Hoke saw that he had touched a nerve. He decided to try to make Ellita feel better about having told her mother.

  “You couldn’t hide a pregnancy from your father, Ellita. He’d’ve found out sooner or later, unless you got an abortion. But you’ve still got plenty of time for that.”

  “I can’t get an abortion, Hoke. A baby’s got a living soul.”

  “Soul or no soul, a lot of women do. What’s the father got to say about it?”

  “The father doesn’t know about the baby. He doesn’t even know my last name. I don’t know his last name either, but I can find out easily enough. His first name’s Bruce. That’s all I know right now.”

  Hoke smoked his Kool and sat back. He didn’t have to ask any more questions. She was going to tell him about it now anyway, whether he wanted to hear it or not.

  “I didn’t date Bruce, Hoke. It was just one of those things that happens. All I ever do, it seems, is work, go home, sleep, and then pull my shift again. I should’ve moved out and got my own apartment years ago. But Cuban girls don’t do things like that, because we can’t give our parents a valid reason. How come, your parents want to know, you want to rent an apartment and be lonely, and go to all that expense, when you can live comfortably at home? It makes no sense to them for an unmarried girl to leave home. With a son it’s a little different, but even then they don’t like it. But it didn’t make any sense to me either, economically. I’m very comfortable at home. I pay the rent on the house, but my parents pay for everything else—utilities and food. I’ve got my own bedroom, my own TV set and stereo. My mother works part-time in Hialeah, at the Golden Thread garment factory. My father’s with Triple-A Security. He’s not just a security guard, either. He’s in personnel and hires all the Latin guards because he’s more or less bilingual.”

  “He has a little English, you mean.”

  “Enough. Much more than my mother. We speak Spanish at home. What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that I somehow got into a rut, a comfortable rut. But for the last two years, ever since my thirtieth birthday, I felt that life was passing me by. It was ridiculous to be a thirty-year-old virgin, and yet I never met anyone I liked, or who liked me well enough to—well, to pressure me. And it didn’t help that I had to be home by ten-thirty when I did go out.”

  “You’re kidding. Ten-thirty?”

  “You don’t know Cuban fathers. It’s his house and his rules, I’m telling you.”

  “But you pay the rent—”

  “That doesn’t matter. What else would I do with my money—living at home? With three incomes, even though my mother just does piecework, there’s plenty of money for whatever we need. My mother cooks and cleans the house, and I don’t do much of anything. I studied hard at Miami-Dade. Except for the one F I got in philosophy, I had straight As.”

  “I know. I checked your records. And so, one night, you went out, and—”

  “That’s right. On a Friday night, which is the big night in Coconut Grove, not Saturda
y—”

  “I know, Ellita. If you don’t get something lined up on Friday night, you don’t have anyone for the weekend.”

  “I went to the Taurus, and it was jammed. I met Bruce in the bar. He bought me a drink, and then I bought him one. He was nice-looking. Blue eyes. He wore a suit and tie. A detail man for a pharmaceutical firm, he said. We went to his apartment instead of getting a third drink. This wasn’t any Silhouette romance, Hoke. We went straight at it, Bruce because that’s what he does on Friday nights, and me because I wanted to have the experience. It was a little exciting, I guess, but not what I expected.”

  “And because you were drunk you didn’t take any precautions.”

  “I wasn’t drunk, Hoke. I wasn’t even high. Bruce had a vasectomy, he told me. I didn’t believe him at first, and then he showed me the two little scars on his balls.”

  “On his scrotum, you mean.”

  “On his scrotum, right.” She managed a little laugh. “We did it twice. Then I took a shower in his apartment, got dressed, and I was still home before ten-thirty. Bruce was very nice, a lot younger than me, about twenty-five, I’d say.”

  “But a liar.”

  “I guess so. Now. But he did have those two little scars. Maybe he had the operation and it didn’t take.”

  “More likely, he didn’t want to wear a raincoat. I can find out for you. Remember where he lives?”

  She nodded. “I know where he lives, but I don’t want to see him again. I don’t want him to know I’m pregnant. I’ll just go ahead and have my baby and take care of it. But right now I’m scared. I’ve never been away from home overnight before by myself, can you believe that? And I don’t have my gun, my badge, my checkbook, or my car. I’ll need my clothes, too.”

  Hoke sat for a moment, thinking. Then he put the car in gear.

  “All right, let’s go, Ellita. I’ll get your stuff for you.”

  12

  Ellita didn’t want her parents or neighbors to see her, so Hoke parked a block away from the Sanchez residence and walked the rest of the way to the house. It was much bigger than Hoke had expected, a three-bedroom concrete-block-and-stucco house with a flat, white gravel roof and an attached garage. The front lawn was freshly mown, and there were beds of blue delphiniums on both sides of the front porch. Ellita’s brown Honda Civic was parked in the driveway. Old man Sanchez probably kept his own car in the garage. His house; his rules.