New Hope for the Dead

by Charles Willeford

  “And he lost three times. You know, things have changed a good deal since Bryan hyped real estate in Coral Gables. I want—I need—to know what kind of transactions Mrs. Hickey made in the last few days. Any information you give me will be confidential, just between the two of us, and I won’t contact my friend in the DEA no matter what I discover.”

  “What’s this homicide investigation of yours got to do with the Drug Enforcement Agency?”

  “Absolutely nothing. But there’s a DEA agent I know, a guy I used to ride patrol with a few years back, who would also like to know what’s in Mrs. Hickey’s account. That is, he would if he knew what I know about Mrs. Hickey. But he doesn’t know what I know, and I’m promising you I won’t tell him. Any information you give me will be strictly between us, and no matter what comes up later, your name’ll never be mentioned.” Hoke pushed the deposit slip back toward the banker.

  Llhosa-Garcia got up, went to the desk in front of his, and said something quietly to the young woman sitting there. She nodded and left her desk. Llhosa-Garcia sat at her desk, and Hoke came up behind him to look over his shoulder. The banker rubbed his fingers on the lapels of his suit coat for a moment and then started to key some numbers into the desktop computer terminal. Hoke had his notebook out, but green numbers appeared and disappeared on the screen so quickly there was no time to make any notes. Llhosa-Garcia logged out, the screen went blank, and they returned to the banker’s desk.

  “I’m not giving you anything in writing. Understand?”

  Hoke nodded. “Of course not. It isn’t necessary.”

  “She’s got four hundred and eighty-two dollars in her checking account.”

  “That much I know is true.”

  “She owes the bank eighteen thousand dollars, and she hasn’t paid the last two installments on her loan. But that doesn’t mean anything to us, because she’s been late before.” He shrugged. “That’s the flower business, Sergeant. It’s feast or famine. But over the years, Mrs. Hickey’s been a good customer, and her credit’s good with us. She also rented a safe-deposit box last Wednesday, a Class C box at thirty dollars a year. There are also a few outstanding checks, but the names don’t matter. If you want to look into her safe-deposit box, come back with your court order. We don’t know, or care, what people put in their boxes, except in the case of the lady last year who put a bluefish in her box because she didn’t like us. We had a hell of a time finding where the smell was coming from.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate your cooperation, Mr. Llhosa-Garcia,” Hoke said.

  “Don’t patronize me, you slimy sonofabitch,” the banker said hoarsely, lowering his voice. “I didn’t tell you a fucking thing.”

  “Maybe not. But I’ve got a hunch that Mrs. Hickey will pay her overdue installments in a few days. And maybe the entire loan.”

  “I don’t give a shit whether she pays it off or not. My salary doesn’t go up or down on a little business loan like hers.”

  “You speak English very well, Mr. Llhosa-Garcia.”

  “That’s because I was born in Evanston, Illinois—not Cuba, where you think. My surname helped me get this job, but it also makes me vulnerable to pricks like you, and you took advantage of me. If you told your DEA friend you suspected a Latin banker of laundering, he’d be down here interrupting our work, even though we have nothing to hide. But if you’d gone to Bruce Waterman with this crap instead of coming to me, he’d’ve called the Coral Gables chief of police.”

  “We’ve got a Latin quota in the Miami Police Department, too.”

  Hoke stood up and extended his hand. Llhosa-Garcia got to his feet to remove his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair. He ignored Hoke’s hand and sat down again, without looking up, to remove some papers from his in-tray. Hoke picked up the deposit slip, put it back in his wallet, and walked out of the bank.

  Two doors down from the bank, Hoke went into a shoe store. There was only one customer, a heavyset Latin woman who was trying on a pair of gold-satin pumps. The clerk who was helping her had a dozen shoe boxes scattered around him on the floor. The other clerk was sorting sales slips behind the cash register.

  “I’d like to use your phone,” Hoke said, showing the clerk his badge.

  “Right there. On the counter.”

  Hoke looked up the number in his notebook and then dialed the Bouquetique. Loretta Hickey answered.

  “This is Hoke, Loretta. I want to take you to lunch.”

  “Oh? Just like that? After the way you acted?”

  “Yeah. I had a lot on my mind. The thing is, I want to talk to you, and I can’t talk to you privately in your shop, not with customers coming in. Besides, you have to eat lunch anyway, and so do I.”

  “I don’t know that I want to see you again.”

  “Yes, you do. But whether you want to see me again or not is irrelevant. I want to see you. Have you got your car?”

  “How do you think I got to work?”

  “You have your car, then.”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you know where Captain Billy’s Raw Bar is, in Coconut Grove?”

  “Off Bayshore Drive?”

  “That’s it, about two blocks north of City Hall, on the bay. Meet me there at one o’clock. I’ll get there a little earlier and find us a table on the outside patio.”

  “What’s this all about, Hoke?”

  “You, me, Jerry, a cold beer, and lunch.” Hoke hung up the phone.

  “Thanks,” Hoke said to the clerk.

  The clerk, who had been listening to the call, said, “That didn’t sound like police business to me.”

  “No shit. When was the last time you cleaned your rest room? It’s filthy in there.”

  “What makes you say that? We got a woman comes in every Friday night.”

  “In that case, I’ll send an inspector over next Thursday to take a look at it.”

  Hoke left the shop as the clerk headed for the back of the store.

  21

  Hoke parked in the Coconut Grove marina lot near the boat launch ramp and walked the block back to Captain Billy’s Raw Bar. Captain Billy’s had been owned and lost by eight different owners during the last ten years, but the neon sign that flashed CAPTAIN BILLY’S off and on had never been changed. The sign had cost the original proprietor a good deal of money, so the name of the restaurant didn’t change when the owners did. The current owner had finally made a success out of the place by enlarging the patio and having Seminole Indians construct palm-thatched chickees over more than half of the outside tables. Some patrons still preferred to sit at tables in the sun instead of beneath the roofed chickees, because they were afraid that a lizard might fall from the fronds into their conch chowder. The patio was popular with a younger crowd in the evenings. There was a small raised stage in the center of the patio, and at night a bluegrass group played until 2 A.M. At lunchtime, however, rock music was played over outside speakers, so Hoke got a table by the edge of the pier, as far away from a speaker as he could get.

  Hoke sat with his back to the bay under the shade of a chickee. He was only about ten feet away from the restaurant’s tame pelican, which sat on a post at the base of the short wooden pier. This pelican had squatted on this same post for more than three years, and he had lost his ability to fish because restaurant patrons fed him chunks of their leftover fish sandwiches. In the beginning of his residence, the pelican had eaten pieces of fish with the breading still on them, but now he wouldn’t accept any fish unless the breading was removed. Every time Hoke came to Captain Billy’s, he looked for the pelican. He was always glad to see that the bird was still there.

  The short luncheon menu was printed in black ink on a polished empty coconut. Hoke’s teenage waiter, wearing a T-shirt that read I EAT IT RAW AT CAPTAIN BILLY’S, sauntered over to Hoke’s table.

  “For now,” Hoke said, “just bring me a pitcher of Michelob draft. I’m waiting for a friend, and we’ll order later.”

  Hoke took out his n
otebook, glanced through it, and then listed on a blank page the points he wanted to make with Loretta Hickey. The possibility that she might not show up never entered his mind, although he had finished four of the six glasses of beer the pitcher held before she arrived at one-thirty.

  Loretta was wearing a lemon-colored silk blouse and a green linen suit skirt. She carried the matching jacket over her left arm. Her dark green lizard purse matched her pumps. The purplish eye shadow she was wearing made her cornflower blue eyes seem paler, and her bare arms were very white and lightly freckled. Hoke waved to her when she came through the gate, and she crossed the gravel patio slowly, teetering slightly in her high heels.

  The wooden benches to the hatch-cover tables were affixed permanently to posts driven into the ground, so Hoke just got to his feet and nodded when she reached the table.

  “It’s hot out here, isn’t it?” she said, as she sat across from Hoke.

  “A breeze comes and goes, and a beer helps.”

  “I’d rather have a drink, I think.”

  “They just serve wine and beer here.”

  “A white wine spritzer then.”

  Hoke handed her the coconut shell menu and signaled the waiter.

  “What’re you going to eat, Hoke?”

  “The fried clam sandwich is always good, but I’m going to have a dozen oysters on the half-shell.”

  “Bring me a cup of the conch chowder,” Loretta told the waiter.

  “And bring the lady a white wine spritzer and another pitcher of beer for me.”

  The waiter left, and Loretta took a package of Virginia Slims out of her purse. Hoke leaned across the table and lighted her cigarette with a paper match.

  “This has been a hectic morning for me,” Loretta said, watching him. “That’s why I’m a little late.”

  “That’s okay. It’s been hectic for me, too. I got a court order this morning and had a temporary seal put on your new lock-box at the Coral Gables International Bank.”

  “You what? You had my lock-box opened?”

  “No, I didn’t say that. I had it sealed so that no one can open it. A temporary seal, that’s all. I can get the seal removed at any time, and I won’t have to open it first.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “That’s why I invited you to lunch, Loretta, so I could explain some things to you. The box is sealed temporarily, and it won’t be opened until after the indictment. If I do ask for an indictment, they drill it open if you won’t turn over your key, and then they’ll also charge you for the drilling fee.”

  “What’s this all about, Hoke?”

  “Jerry Hickey. I don’t know how much money’s in your lock-box, but I think it’ll either be nine thousand or twenty-four thousand bucks. But you left a thousand of it on Jerry’s dresser. Not a large sum for drug dealers either way, but a big score for Jerry Hickey and a woman with a small business going down the tubes. If there was more than twenty-five thousand involved, the guys Jerry ripped off might’ve looked for him a little harder. And if there had been much more than that, you’d have been afraid to kill Jerry.”

  “Kill Jerry? Me?” A hint of dampness appeared above the lipstick on her upper lip. “Jerry died from an overdose, and you know it!”

  “Let me tell you what happened, Loretta.” Hoke held up his hand as the waiter approached the table. The waiter brought the conch chowder and the oysters on a tray. He also gave them silverware, wrapped in paper napkins. He placed Loretta’s wine spritzer in front of her. Hoke poured the last of the beer into his glass and topped it off with a head from the fresh pitcher. The waiter put the empty pitcher on his tray.

  “Anything else?”

  “Bring me some freshly grated horseradish,” Hoke said.

  “Yes, sir. I’ll be right back.”

  Hoke squeezed lemon juice on his oysters and shook a few drops of Tabasco sauce on each oyster. Loretta sat rigidly on her bench, with her back straight and her hands in her lap. Her cigarette, forgotten in the abalone shell ashtray, sent up a thin column of smoke. Perspiration was dotting her upper lip.

  The waiter returned with a saucer of horseradish and two packets of oyster crackers in little plastic bags. Hoke put a spoonful of horseradish on each oyster.

  “I’m off on some details, Loretta, but I can give you a broad outline. The missing details will come out during the investigation. Jerry was a bag man for some dealers in town. His father probably got him the job to give him something to do, or perhaps as a favor for one of his clients. Most of his clients were dealers. Jerry ripped off the dealers. I don’t know what his motivation was. For all I know, you put him up to it, or suggested it. Jerry probably didn’t know himself, because junkies never make long-range plans.

  “Then he came to you and asked you to hide the money for him, and maybe to hide him as well. You needed this money for your business. The whole amount, I mean. You were already two payments behind in your bank loan, and you didn’t know what to do about getting any more. At any rate, when Jerry trusted you with the money, you rented a lock-box and put it away, except for a thousand bucks. Then you went home and made love to Jerry that night. Or at least you tried to. When a junkie’s got his fix, he’s not all that interested in sex.”

  Hoke forked an oyster into his mouth, chewed for a moment, and then took a long swig from his glass of beer.

  “But you had another little trick to get him aroused, didn’t you, Loretta? Only this time you had a different variation. You slipped a Nembutal suppository into his ass along with your finger. I think he had shot up already. Then, when Jerry fell asleep, you gave him a second shot of heroin in the same punch-mark he’d made before.

  “The combination killed him. Good shit, and prescription-quality Nembutal. More than enough to kill a skinny run-down junkie like Jerry Hickey.”

  Hoke ate another oyster and took another swig of beer.

  “That’s the most preposterous story I’ve ever heard,” Loretta said.

  “But it’s a hell of a story, isn’t it? A weird case like this one’ll make the front pages, not just the local section. Harold Hickey’s name’ll come into it, too, so when I take it to the state attorney’s office, they’ll love to pry into your ex-husband’s activities. This will give them the excuse they need.”

  “Why are you doing this to me, Hoke? What have I ever done to you?”

  “I don’t have to do anything at all, Loretta. What I’d like to do is something for you instead.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A proposition. What do you pay on your mortgage at Green Lakes?”

  “My house, you mean? The mortgage is one sixty-eight a month, but it goes up every year when the taxes change. What’s this got to do with anything? I never did anything to Jerry, and you can’t prove I did.”

  “I don’t have to prove anything, Loretta. I’m a detective, an investigator. I turn in my findings, and based on my report the state attorney either makes an indictment herself or turns the information over to the grand jury. The guilt or innocence is determined by a jury of your peers, and half of that jury will be Roman Catholics with very little English. But either way, the trial will get a lot of notoriety. No matter what the jury decides, by the time the trial’s over, you’ll be lucky if you can get a job hawking flowers at a stoplight. No matter what happens, your career as a Coral Gables businesswoman is finished.”

  “I’m innocent, Hoke. I’ve got some money in my lock-box, I’ll admit that. But this was money a man in Atlanta owed me for a long time, and—”

  “What’s his name and address?” Hoke said, taking out his notebook. “I’d like to talk with him.”

  “I can’t tell you that.” Loretta shook her head. “He wouldn’t want his name brought into this. He’s a married man … His wife doesn’t know he paid me the money back.”

  “Sure.” Hoke put his notebook away and ate another oyster.

  “You’re not going through with this, are you?”

  “I don’t h
ave to, no. I’ve got a little plan where you and Jerry can redeem yourselves. Jerry never did anything for anyone while he was alive, and you’re as selfish as he was. But I’ve got a proposition for you. Move to Atlanta, and take that designer’s job you’ve been offered up there. Sell your shop in the Gables for whatever you can get for it, and clear out. Stay in Atlanta for four years. During those four years I’ll live in your house in Green Lakes and pay the mortgage payments of one sixty-eight a month. At the end of this exile you can have your house back, and if you save your money in Atlanta, maybe you can open a new business down here again. I don’t give a shit what you do. All I want is the use of your house for four years, and I’ll maintain the place.”

  Loretta stubbed out the butt of her smouldering cigarette. For a long moment she stared at the brown pelican on the post. “None of this makes any sense,” she said at last. “Why do you want my house? If you think I’ve got money hidden in the walls, or anything like that, you’re crazy.”

  “I need a house to live in for four years. It’s that simple. There’s nothing crazy about it.”

  “You have no evidence against me. Zero. If you went to the state attorney with a wild story like that, she’d laugh at you.”

  “I wouldn’t go today. I have a few more loose ends to tie up first. That’s why I only put a temporary seal on your lock-box. But when I file my report, all the gaps will be filled. Meanwhile, it’ll just say in the newspapers tomorrow that you are being investigated in the alleged homicide of your stepson, Jerry Hickey. Sex, drugs … your Gables customers will like that, won’t they? And so will the bank, when you ask for another loan.”

  “What about my furniture?”

  “Take it, leave it, or put it in storage. Just be out of the house by noon Friday, and I’ll drop everything. I’ll come by your shop tomorrow for a few minutes and bring a written agreement for a four-year lease. Then I’ll take the seal off your lock-box, you can get your money, and you’re off to Atlanta. Or wherever you want to go.”