New Hope for the Dead

by Charles Willeford

  Hoke opened the gate in the white picket fence and glanced curiously at the shrine to Santa Barbara in the yard. The shrine was fashioned of oolite boulders and mortar; in the recess there was a blue vase of daisies and ferns at the feet of the not quite life-sized plaster statue of Santa Barbara.

  The front door opened before Hoke could ring the bell. Mrs. Sanchez waited in the doorway. If she had been crying, as Ellita claimed, she didn’t look like it. She was a handsome woman, about two inches shorter than Ellita, and her black hair was streaked with gray. Her features were delicate, and she had brown luminous eyes.

  “I’m Sergeant Moseley, Mrs. Sanchez. I’ve come to pick up some of Ellita’s things.”

  “Come in, Sergeant.” Mrs. Sanchez stepped back. “Ellita’s told us a lot about you.”

  Hoke entered the living room. There was a bright yellow velvet couch against the wall; a matching easy chair was in one corner, and there was an abundance of black wooden furniture, carved with pear and leaf patterns, in both the living room and dining room. The wall-to-wall carpeting was pale blue. Dominating the living room, however, was a life-size plaster statue of St. Lazarus in front of the fireplace. A fireplace in Miami was rarely if ever used, so the Sanchezes had probably decided that St. Lazarus was a better decorating solution than a pot of tropical plants. On the carpeting surrounding the statue, and beneath the saint’s outstretched, imploring hand, there were dozens of coins, most of them quarters. It took eight quarters to park and four more quarters to ride the Metrorail, so St. Lazarus would be a good candidate as the patron saint of Metrorail, Hoke thought.

  “Is Mr. Sanchez at home? I’d like to talk with him.”

  Mrs. Sanchez pursed her lips and shook her head. “He’s in his room. This is not a good time, Sergeant. This is a very bad time.”

  “I understand. But tell him I’d like to talk to him later. Ellita’s my partner, you know, and we think a lot of her in the department. And in the division. You should be very proud of your daughter, Mrs. Sanchez. I’ve got two daughters of my own, and I’d be happy if they turned out as well as Ellita.”

  “Thank you.” She touched his arm. “I’ll show you Ellita’s room.”

  Ellita’s room was the master bedroom at the back of the house, and on the right of the corridor. She had her own bathroom, too. Her parents, being so old, probably wanted their own separate, if smaller, bedrooms, and wouldn’t mind sharing a bathroom. There were three sets of curtains on the bedroom windows. In addition to the layered curtains, there were heavy crimson draperies. The unmade double bed was layered with pink sheets, a blanket, a comforter, and a rose bedspread spaced with embroidered dark red roses. There were four pillows on the bed, and a reading lamp was clamped to an ornately carved black walnut headboard. The color TV was on a wheeled cart, so Ellita could watch it from the bed, or from the red velvet upholstered La-Z-Boy. There was an oil painting of the Virgin in a gilt frame above the vanity table, with a lighted votive candle on a shelf below the painting. There was a framed color poster of Julio Iglesias on the opposite wall. The stereo, in a blond wooden cabinet, was directly beneath Julio’s poster.

  Mrs. Sanchez slid back the louvered doors to the walk-in closet. “Her clothes are here.”

  “I’ll need her purse, too. It’s important that she has her ID, badge, and weapon. And her checkbook.”

  Mrs. Sanchez brought Ellita’s purse from the dresser. The .38 and ID with the badge were in the purse, and so were Ellita’s keys, checkbook, and wallet. There was a corner desk, and Hoke looked through the drawers. Ellita had a NOW checking account, as well as a regular checking account, so he added this checkbook to the purse. He also found two white passbooks; they were two $10,000 Certificates of Deposit. She would need them, too. He picked up Ellita’s gold wristwatch from the bedside table, and dropped it into his jacket pocket.

  “Does she have a suitcase?” Hoke asked. “Maybe you can help me pick out some clothes?”

  “There’s a box in the garage.” Mrs. Sanchez hurried out of the room.

  Hoke took two cream-colored silk blouses from the closet, the kind with long sleeves, and tossed them on the bed. He removed a black skirt and a red skirt from the closet, and added them to the blouses. That’s all Ellita would need for a couple of days. In midsummer, she wouldn’t need any jackets or sweaters. He went through her dresser, however, and picked out a purple silk nightgown, two pairs of black silk panties, and two brassieres. He took a peek at the size, 38-C. He added a jar of Eucerin, a toothbrush, and a tube of Colgate to the pile, but he did not include the atomizer of Shalimar or Ellita’s bottle of musk. She was wearing enough perfume already, he thought, to last her for a week. Stockings, she would need stockings. There was a pair of pantyhose drying in the bathroom. He tossed the pantyhose on the pile, and then couldn’t think of anything else.

  Mrs. Sanchez returned with a cardboard box that had once held a dozen boxes of Tide.

  “Ellita has a train case,” she said. While Hoke packed the clothing into the cardboard box, Mrs. Sanchez got the train case, a red-and-blue plaid one, down from the closet shelf and packed it with cosmetics and vials from the vanity table, including the Shalimar and the musk and a plastic tree that held a dozen pairs of earrings.

  “I guess this’ll do for a few days,” Hoke said, “but if you would pack the rest of Ellita’s stuff, she can come by for it one day when Mr. Sanchez isn’t home.”

  Mrs. Sanchez started to cry. She ran into Ellita’s bathroom and closed the door.

  Hoke decided not to wait for her to come out. He put the box under his left arm and carried the train case in his right hand as he walked down the corridor to the living room.

  Mr. Sanchez, a short, stocky man with black hair and a gray mustache, wearing green poplin wash pants and a white long-sleeved guayabera, was standing in front of St. Lazarus. His short arms were folded across his chest, and he stared at Hoke without expression.

  “Mr. Sanchez? I’m Sergeant Moseley, your daughter’s partner.”

  “I have no daughter.” Keeping his arms crossed, Mr. Sanchez turned his back on Hoke and faced the statue.

  “In that case, we have nothing to talk about.”

  Hoke left the house, put the box and the train case down beside the Honda Civic, dug the keys out of the purse, and unlocked the car. He put the box, purse, and case on the back seat, then shoved the front seat back as far as it would go before maneuvering himself into the driver’s seat.

  He drove down the block and parked behind his Pontiac. Ellita was standing on the curb. Hoke handed her the keys and her wristwatch after he got out of the car.

  “What do you want to do now?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I should find a motel or something, and then look around for an apartment.”

  “Don’t you have a girl friend or a cousin or someone who can put you up for a few days?”

  “I’ve got some girl friends, but they live at home too. Because of the situation, their parents wouldn’t want them to get involved. The same for relatives—even more—because of my father, you see.”

  “Your father’s a fucking asshole.”

  “Please, don’t say that, Sergeant Moseley. You just don’t understand him, that’s all.”

  “I don’t want to understand him. He wouldn’t even talk to me, for Christ’s sake. What’s more natural than a woman getting pregnant? That’s what women do”

  “My mother’ll have the priest talk to him. That might help some. But I doubt it.”

  “Jesus!” Hoke said, laughing. “I forgot all about the girls. They’re still down at the station, and I was going to suggest that we have lunch and discuss what you should do!”

  Hoke told Ellita about his daughters, about how they had arrived in the middle of the night.

  “Why not stay at the Eldorado with us over the weekend?” he said finally. “By Monday you can phone your mother and see how your father feels about things. Maybe by Monday he’ll want you back, once he
realizes that he’ll be stuck for the house rent.”

  “No, he won’t. He knows I’ll continue to pay the rent.”

  “Even after he threw you out?”

  Ellita nodded. “My mother lives there, too, you know.”

  “How much do you pay?”

  “Five-fifty a month.”

  “You can rent a damned nice one-bedroom apartment for that much—already furnished.”

  She shook her head. “Does the Eldorado have any empty rooms?”

  “Plenty. You know where it is. Drive on over, and I’ll meet you in the lobby after I pick up the girls. But don’t sign in—I’ll negotiate a deal for you.”

  Hoke got into his car and let Ellita drive away first before he switched on the engine and the air conditioner.

  He didn’t understand women at all, he decided. He had considered Ellita Sanchez a mature, responsible woman, and he had discovered in her a young, frightened child, in some things no more grown-up emotionally than his own teenage daughters. But she was his partner, so he would have to look after her until she decided what she wanted to do.

  And Hoke had other things on his mind. He wanted to see Loretta Hickey sometime this afternoon. There were only a couple of loose ends to tie up on Jerry Hickey’s OD, and then he was almost certain he could get something on with Loretta. He could tell when a woman was coming on to him, and it wouldn’t take much effort on his part to get Loretta bedded.

  Hoke drove back downtown to the station. He drove cautiously, as a man had to do to survive in Miami traffic, but when the way was obviously clear, he drove through red lights and only paused at stop signs to shift.

  13

  Slater and the two girls were at the lieutenant’s desk. The executive officer was showing them slides of homicide victims on a viewer he had set up. Some of the slides were in color and others were in black and white, but the photos were graphically clear on the lighted, eight-by-ten-inch glass screen.

  “I’ve been showing the girls some pictures, Hoke,” Slater said. “Explaining some cases. You worked on the Merkle shotgun case, didn’t you? The one we called the ‘Laura’ case because her face was unrecognizable?”

  “That was Quevedo’s case,” Hoke said, “but I did some legwork for him. I think we all did. They caught the perp when he tried to sell the gold chain. It was a driveway killing, girls. This guy followed Mrs. Merkle home from the supermarket because she was wearing a heavy gold chain around her neck. He shot her for the chain and about forty bucks worth of groceries. Any woman who wears a gold chain is asking for it in Miami. And if she wears it every day, she can count on somebody snatching it eventually. But this guy was a crazy. He didn’t have to kill her. You girls don’t wear neck chains, do you?”

  Sue Ellen and Aileen, still staring wide-eyed at the gory face on the screen, shook their heads.

  “Don’t do it, girls,” Slater said. “They usually work in pairs, driving around town till they spot someone. Then one guy jumps out, snatches the purse and chain, gets back in the car, and they drive off. They’re hard to catch because the woman usually gets hysterical and can’t remember, half the time, whether the perps were black or white. Our problem with Mrs. Merkle was that even though we knew who she was, we couldn’t prove it for a while. There were no fingerprints of hers on file either, so we couldn’t get an ID. She was unrecognizable, as you can plainly see, and we were trying to identify her from an oil painting—a portrait—instead of a photo. But the people who knew her said the painting didn’t look like her, and they wouldn’t give us a positive ID. That’s why we called it the ‘Laura’ case, from the old movie with Clifton Webb. It was a pretty good movie, too. If it comes back on late TV some night, you girls oughta see it.”

  Hoke laughed. “We kidded Que vedo about falling in love with the oil painting. Eventually he got so pissed we had to stop. What made it so funny was that Que vedo had never heard of the movie, so he didn’t even know what we were kidding him about. Besides, no one could’ve loved that face in the painting.”

  Slater laughed. “I remember now. I’d forgotten about that part of it.”

  “I appreciate you looking after the girls, Lieutenant. But I’ll take ’em off your hands now.”

  “Your partner okay, Hoke? No trouble?”

  “No, no, she’s fine. She just wanted me to take a look at a guy she thought she recognized at the supermarket. But he was gone before I got there. Thank the lieutenant, girls.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant Slater,” Sue Ellen said. “Especially for the dessert.”

  “Thank you,” Aileen said.

  They went back to Hoke’s office as Slater began to put his slides away.

  “We got the special,” Sue Ellen said. “Macaroni and cheese, but didn’t have enough money left over for dessert. So Lieutenant Slater bought us apple pie.”

  “That was nice of him, but don’t ever let him get you anything else. Slater’s not into altruism, so—”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” Hoke sat down behind his desk and looked at Sue Ellen. “I’ll just say that Slater likes to have everybody under some kind of obligation to him … but don’t worry about it. Did you finish the letters to your mother?”

  “I couldn’t think of anything to write,” Sue Ellen said.

  “Me neither,” said Aileen.

  “Bring the paper and pens with you. You might be able to think of something later. We’ve got to get back to the Eldorado now, and then you can meet my partner. She’s going to be staying at the hotel with us for a few days.”

  “You’ve got a lady detective partner?” Aileen said.

  “That’s right, and she’s a good one, too.”

  “Think I could be a detective? When I grow up?”

  “No. The best career for a girl is marriage. Even my partner, who’s a very good detective, probably wishes she was married now. But don’t mention that to her.”

  Hoke unlocked his desk drawer, retrieved the envelope of money for Mrs. Hickey, and then drove the girls back to the Eldorado Hotel.

  Ellita Sanchez was waiting for them in the lobby, and Hoke introduced her to Eddie Cohen as his partner. There was an empty room two doors down from Hoke’s suite, and Hoke told Eddie to give Ellita the professional rate—or 10 percent off the ten-dollar daily room charge.

  “I don’t think Mr. Bennett’ll go for that,” Eddie said.

  “If he doesn’t,” Hoke said, “tell him to talk to me.”

  After Ellita registered, they went upstairs. Hoke carried Ellita’s cardboard box, and Sue Ellen carried the train case. The small room was hot and musty, but the window air conditioner worked after Hoke switched it on and kicked it a couple of times. Hoke registered the expression on Ellita’s usually impassive face; he detected depression beneath her attempt to smile. The scarred linoleum floor had sections missing, and the furnishings, a metal cot with a thin mattress and patched sheets, a straight ladder-backed chair, and a dented three-drawer metal dresser—all painted dead-white—completed the inventory. The cracked gray walls had been painted with a cheap water-based paint, and the walls were powdery to the touch. The faucets in the bathtub and sink dripped. The washbasin, with most of the enamel missing, was rusty. There was no toilet paper in the bathroom, and there was only one face towel.

  “I’ll go down and get you some more towels and toilet paper,” Hoke said, “but until this room cools off, you’d better come down to our suite.”

  Hoke left them in his suite to get acquainted, took the elevator downstairs again, and returned with two bath towels, two rolls of toilet paper, and a dozen small bars of soap. He dropped these off in Ellita’s room and returned to his suite. Ellita was showing the girls her .38 pistol—although she had taken the precaution of removing the rounds before letting them handle it.

  “Look,” Hoke said, “I’ve got to go out this afternoon. There’s not much to do around the hotel, so why don’t you take the girls over to the Fifth Street Gym, Ellita, and watch the boxers work o
ut? Tony Otero, the Puerto Rican lightweight, is preparing for a fight later this month, and he’s a pretty good boy. You can walk over there and kill the rest of the afternoon. Then this evening, when I come back, I’ll take you all out to dinner.”

  “I thought you said we’re not supposed to go out alone,” Aileen said.

  Hoke pointed to Ellita, who was sitting in the Victorian chair and reloading her pistol. “You won’t be alone. Ellita’s with you, and she’s armed. You’ll be safe with her, and besides, nobody’ll bother you in the daytime. I was going to suggest going to the beach, but I know Ellita hasn’t got her suit with her. It’ll rain later this afternoon anyway.”

  “The sun’s out now,” Sue Ellen said. “How can you tell?”

  “Because in July it always rains in the afternoon.”

  “Don’t worry about us, Hoke,” Ellita said. “We’ll find something to do. If you have somewhere to go, go ahead.”

  “I’m out of cigarettes,” Sue Ellen said, “and the machine in the lobby takes six quarters for a pack. Can I have some change for cigarettes?”

  “No.” Hoke took two Kools out of his pack and handed them to her. “Better make these two last. If you can’t support your habit on the allowance I gave you, you’ll just have to stop smoking till I can find you a job somewhere.”

  Sue Ellen poked out her lower lip. “I don’t like the menthol kind.”

  Hoke snatched the two Kools back from her and returned them to his pack.

  “When will you be back?” Ellita asked.

  “I don’t know exactly, but I’ll be back before dark. I’ve got to go to Coral Gables, and then, if Bill’s back from the Metrozoo, I want to talk to him about something.”