Charles Willeford - New Hope For The Dead

by Unknown

  "You Latin girls lead a sheltered life. But the point I'm trying to make is, these marks look like hickeys to me."

  "Maybe so. From the smile on his face, he died happy."

  "That's not a smile, that's a rictus. A lot of people who aren't happy to die grin like that."

  "I know, Sergeant, I know. Sorry, I guess I shouldn't joke about it."

  "Don't apologize, for Christ's sake. I don't know how to talk to you sometimes."

  "Why not try talking to me like I'm your partner," Ellita said, compressing her lips. "And I didn't like that crack about my sheltered life, either. Growing up in Miami and eight years in the department, I don't even know what sheltered means. I realize I'm still inexperienced in homicide work but I've been a cop for a long time."

  "Okay, partner." Hoke grinned. "What's this look like to you?"

  "This is just an overdose, isn't it?"

  "It looks that way." Hoke closed his fingers and made tight fists, reaching for something that wasn't there. He crossed to the closet. A pair of faded jeans and a white, not very clean, short-sleeved -guayabera- were draped over the closet door. Hoke went through the pockets of the shirt and pants and found three pennies, a wallet, and a folder of Holiday Inn matches. He added these items to the Baggie and then looked at the top of the dresser against the wall. There was no suicide note in the room, either on the card table or on the dresser, but there were two twenties and a ten on the dresser top.

  Hoke pointed at the money without touching it. "See this? Amateurs. Our two fellow police officers left fifty bucks. A professional thief would've taken all of it. But an amateur, for some reason, hardly ever takes it all. It's like the last cookie in the jar. If there'd been twenty-two bucks on the dresser, they'd have left two."

  Hoke added the bills to the stack of hundreds and handed the money to Sanchez. "Later on, when you write the report, lock all this dough in my desk. I'll get it back to Mrs. Hickey later."

  The top dresser drawer contained some clean shorts and T-shirts, and a half-dozen pairs of socks. The other drawers were empty except for dust. The narrow closet held a dark blue polyester suit, still in its plastic bag from the cleaners, two blue work shirts, and one white button-down shirt on hangers. There were no neckties. There were no letters or other personal possessions. The only clue to the dead man's activities was the book of matches from the Holiday Inn-- but there were two dozen Holiday Inns in the Greater Miami area, with two more under construction.

  Hoke was puzzled. If there had been a suicide note, Mrs. Hickey could have found it and flushed it down the john. That happened frequently. A family almost always thought there was a stigma of some kind to a suicide, as if they, in some way, would be blamed. But this didn't look like a suicide. This kid, with a thousand bucks and more heroin to shoot up with when he awoke, should have been a very happy junkie. It was, in all probability, an accidental overdose, perhaps from stronger heroin than Jerry was used to taking. One less junkie, that was all.

  But Hoke still wasn't satisfied.

  "Take a look in the bathroom," Hoke said to Sanchez. "I'll call the forensic crew."

  Hoke called Homicide from a white wall phone in the kitchen. The OIC of the forensic crew would inform the medical examiner, who would either come out or wait at the morgue. In either case, there would be an autopsy.

  Hoke lit a Kool, being careful not to inhale, and went outside. The two girls with the bicycles had disappeared. Hannigan, wearing her cap, sat in the front seat of the police car with the door open. Hoke wondered what was holding up Garcia and Mrs. Hickey. He cut across the lawn. As he stepped through a break in the Barbados cherry hedge between the two yards, the front door opened and Garcia came out, hanging on to a struggling, giggling woman. The woman's face was reddened and blotchy and streaked with tears. She had a fine slim figure and was taller than Garcia. Her wide-set cornflower-blue eyes were rolling wildly. She was, Hoke estimated, in her late thirties. She wore a pair of green cotton hip-huggers, a yellow terrycloth halter--exposing a white midriff and a deepset belly button--and a pair of tennis shoes without socks. Her long, honey-colored hair was tangled. She stopped giggling suddenly, raised her arms above her head, and slid through Garcia's encircling arms to the grass. With her legs spread, she sat there stubbornly, sobbing with determination.

  "Where's your hat, Garcia?" Hoke said.

  "I left it in the house. It fell off."

  "Get it and put it on. When you wear a sidearm with a uniform, you're supposed to be covered at all times."

  A short, matronly-looking woman with steel-gray hair edged shyly out of the doorway, making room for Garcia to reenter the house. She was wringing her hands, smiling, and her face was slightly flushed. She wore red shorts and a T-shirt. She was at least forty-five pounds overweight.

  "It's all my fault, Lieutenant," she said. "But I didn't mean it."

  "Sergeant, not lieutenant. Sergeant Moseley. Homicide. What's all your fault? Mrs. Koontz, isn't it?"

  She nodded. "Mrs. Robert Koontz. Ellen."

  "What's all your fault, Mrs. Koontz?"

  "Lorrie--Mrs. Hickey--was very upset when she found Jerry dead. She came over here, so I thought it would be a good idea to give her a drink. To calm her down a little, you know. So before I called nine-eleven, I poured her a glass of Wild Turkey."

  "How big a glass?"

  "A water glass, I'm afraid."

  "Did you put any water in it?"

  "No. I didn't think she'd drink all of it, and she didn't. But she drank most of it, and then it hit her pretty hard. I don't think I've ever seen anyone ever get so smashed so quick." Mrs. Koontz giggled, and then put her fingers to her mouth. "I'm sorry, Sergeant, I really am."

  "You should've put some water in with it."

  Sanchez knelt on the grass beside Mrs. Hickey, and handed her a wadded tissue to wipe her face.

  "Perhaps you and Officer Sanchez can get Mrs. Hickey back into your house?" Hoke said. "I can't talk to her that way. Put her to bed, and tell her I'll be back this evening. It'll be best to have her out of the way when the lab group gets here anyway."

  "I'm really sorry about her condition--"

  "Don't be. The world would look better if everybody drank a glassful of Wild Turkey in the morning."

  Hoke signaled to Garcia, who had retrieved his hat from the house. They walked to the police car, and Mrs. Koontz and Sanchez helped the sobbing Loretta Hickey into Mrs. Koontz's house.

  There were a dozen area residents standing across the street on the sidewalk. The neighbors, muttering to one another, stared at the two houses.

  "Keep those people over there, Garcia," Hoke said. "I'll lock the back door, and you, Hannigan, can stay in the back yard to keep people from coming around to peep in the windows. You stay out front, Garcia, and don't answer any questions."

  Hoke returned to the Hickey house and opened the refrigerator. There was no beer, but he settled for a glass of Gatorade, which he topped off with a generous shot of vodka from an opened bottle he found in the cabinet above the sink. He sat at the Eames table in the dining area, put his feet on another chair, and drank the Gatorade-andvodka like medicine.

  Sanchez returned to the house, sat across from Hoke, and made some notations in her notebook. "Except for some Dexedrine, and it was in a prescription bottle for Mrs. Hickey, there's nothing of interest in the bathroom. Hickey obviously hasn't taken a bath in some time, and Mrs. Hickey hasn't had time, I suppose, to take a shower this morning."

  "We'll see how the P.M. goes, but it's probably a routine OD. I'll talk to Mrs. Hickey tonight, and we can work on the report tomorrow."

  "You didn't have the right to make Hannigan dump her purse, Sergeant."

  "That's right. I didn't."

  "How'd you know she and Garcia took the money from the dresser?"

  "I didn't. How could I know?"

  "The way you acted. You seemed so positive."

  "I just had a hunch, that's all."

  "If she reports you,
you'll be in trouble. I'm your partner, but I'm also a witness. It puts me--"

  "Do you think she will?"

  "No. It's just that..."

  "Just that what?"

  "If you hadn't found the money, you could've been in a jam. Or if they'd stuck to their phony story that they'd won the money at Jai alai, you--"

  "In that case, I'd've turned it over to Internal Affairs. Then, when Mrs. Hickey reported the money missing, Garcia and Hannigan would've been suspended for an investigation. Sometimes a hunch pays off, and sometimes it doesn't. Pour yourself a Gatorade-and-vodka and relax."

  "I don't drink," Sanchez said. "On duty."

  "Neither do I. I'm taking the rest of the day off to look for a place to live. I'll take my car, and you can wait for forensic. Garcia can give you a ride back to the station in their car."

  "We've got a meeting with Major Brownley at fourthirty."

  Hoke finished his drink and grinned. "I know." He washed his glass at the kitchen sink and put the wet glass on the wooden dryer rack. "I'll see you then. But until then, I'm on comp time."

  2

  Although Miami is the largest of the twenty-seven municipalities that make up the Greater Miami area, it does not have the desirable, middle-class residential areas or the affordable neighborhoods that the smaller municipalities have. There are several expensive, up-scale neighborhoods, but very few policemen, even those with working wives, can afford these affluent enclaves. There are slum areas and black neighborhoods with affordable housing, but WASP policemen with families avoid them, as they avoid the housing in Little Havana.

  When a neighborhood becomes black or Latin, Anglo policemen move out with their families. Latin cops prefer Little Havana and have no problem in finding decent housing for their extended families, but the middle-income housing where married WASP cops prefer to live is in short supply, now that Miami's population is more than 55 percent Latin. As a consequence, the Anglo family men in the department had moved out of the city to the burgeoning Kendall area, to suburban South Miami, to the giant condo complexes in North Miami, and to the new and affordable subdivisions in West Miami.

  The city's policemen were required to carry their badges and weapons at all times, to be ready to make an off-hours arrest or assist an officer in trouble. But with so many men living out of town, few were actually available. It seemed logical to the new chief of police that if all thousand Miami police officers were living within the city limits, there would be a marked drop in the crime rate. There had in fact always been an official rule to this effect, that a cop had to reside within the city, but until the new chief had taken over it had never been enforced. Now, uncompromising deadlines had been established for all of the Miami police officers living in the other municipalities to move back to the city. To most cops, the rule was unreasonable and unfair, because many of them had purchased homes in the other communities. Many resigned rather than move back, and had little difficulty in finding new police jobs in their adopted municipalities, although most took a pay cut. Others, with too much time in the department to resign, left their families in the other cities and rented small, cramped apartments or moved in with their Miami relatives. Still others, after desperate searches, of course, found suitable housing.

  The strict enforcement rule had resulted in the loss of more than a hundred officers, many of them highly competent veterans. Because of city budget problems, the department was already short more than 150 people, so the force was reduced to approximately 850 full-time policemen. With this personnel shortage, plus the difficulty in recruiting new minority policemen, who had a priority under the Affirmative Action plan, it now seemed imperative for the new chief to maintain the rule. The damage had been done, but at least most of the remaining cops now lived within the city limits and were available during their off-duty hours.

  Hoke Moseley, however, had a special problem. As a sergeant, his annual salary was $34,000. For a single, divorced man, this should have been enough to live on fairly well in Miami. But because of the terms of his divorce settlement, Hoke had to send half of his salary--every other paycheck--to his ex-wife, who lived in Vero Beach, Florida. Ten years earlier, when Hoke had signed the agreement--which also gave his ex-wife, Patsy, the full-time custody of their two daughters--he had been willing to sign almost anything to get out of his untenable marriage. At the time of their separation, he had been living rent-free with a young advertising woman named Bambi in her twobedroom condo in Coconut Grove, a desirable neighborhood within the city limits. But later on, after the divorce, and after he had broken up with Bambi, he realized how foolish he had been to agree to the pre-divorce settlement. He still had to pay the income tax on $34,000 out of the $17,000 he had left, plus paying out money for the pension plan, PBA dues, Social Security, and everything else. The everything else included medical expenses for his two daughters, and these bills had been costly over the years, especially dentists' and orthodontists' bills. Patsy also sent him the bills for the girls' new Easter and Christmas outfits, school clothes, and for the summer camp the girls liked to go to in Sebring, Florida, which included horseback riding--an extra fee. If Hoke had only had his own lawyer, instead of sharing Patsy's, and had opted for alimony instead of a pre-divorce settlement, he could have at least taken alimony payments off his income tax. But Patsy had hired a sharp woman lawyer who had persuaded Hoke to sign the financial agreement.

  After Bambi, he had been forced to live in cheap efficiency apartments, and he had even tried living in private homes with kitchen privileges. But he had gone deeper into debt as the years passed. He ran up large dental bills himself as his dentist tried vainly to save his teeth, but at last they were all extracted, and he was fitted with a complete set of grayish-blue dentures. These fragile-looking teeth were so patently false that they were the first thing people noticed about Hoke when they met him.

  Two years earlier, before the department had been taken over by the new chief, Hoke had found a solution that had solved some of his financial problems. Howard Bennett, the owner-manager of the Eldorado Hotel, a seedy Art Deco establishment in South Miami Beach, had taken Hoke on as security officer. Hoke was given a rent-free two-room suite, and all he had to do was to spend his nights in the hotel, and most weekends. He had a view of Biscayne Bay and the Miami skyline from his window, and he could take the MacArthur Causeway into Miami and reach the downtown police station in fifteen minutes. Or less, depending upon the traffic. On the other hand, Miami Beach was not Miami, and Major Willie Brownley, the Homicide Division chief, had told Hoke to move back inside the city.

  "It's imperative that you get out of the Eldorado as soon as possible," Major Brownley had told him. "Next to Coral Gables, South Beach probably has the highest crime rate in Dade County. And sooner or later, in that crummy neighborhood, you're going to get mixed up in a shooting or something and have to make an arrest. Then, when it comes Out that you're a Miami cop, and not a Miami Beach cop, I'll be blamed because you aren't supposed to be living there in the first place."

  "It's a quiet place, the Eldorado," Hoke had said. "Mostly retired Jewish ladies on Social Security."

  "And Mariel refugees."

  "Only five left now, Willie. I got rid of the troublemakers. But I'll get out. I just want to know how much time I've got, that's all."

  "Two weeks. You've got comp days coming. Take a few days off, find a place to live, and get the hell out of there. You're the only man left in my division who hasn't got a Miami address."

  "I've got a Miami address. Officially, my mail goes to Bill Henderson's house."

  "But I know you're still living in the Eldorado."

  "I'll be out in two weeks, Willie. Don't worry about it."

  "I'm not worried. Two weeks, or you'll be suspended without pay till you're back in the city."

  A week had gone by already, and Hoke still hadn't found a rent-free place to live. He had contacted several downtown hotels about the sort of arrangement he had with the Eldorado, but he h
ad been turned down flat. The fleabag transient hotels downtown weren't suitable for Hoke. The better hotels wanted full-time security officers only and weren't willing to provide a free room to a part-time security officer with irregular hours--not when they could rent out the same room for seventy-eight dollars a night or more.

  Maybe, Hoke thought, the Safe 'n' Sure Home-Sitting Service in Coconut Grove would be the solution. It was worth a try, and if it didn't work, he would have to find a room in a private house again, with kitchen privileges-- some place with a private entrance. The way rents had increased in the last few years, he could no longer afford a cheap efficiency apartment: There were no -cheap- efficiencies. Once again, Hoke marveled at the brilliance of Patsy's lawyer. No specific sum of money had been mentioned in the divorce agreement. It stated merely that Hoke would send every other paycheck, properly endorsed to Ms. Patsy Mayhew (his wife had resumed her maiden name), including any and all cost-of-living increments and raises. Ten years ago Hoke had been a patrolman earning $8,500 a year. He had lived much better, with Bambi, on half of that sum than he was living on now at $17,000. But ten years ago he had never dreamed, nor had any other police officer, that he--or even sergeants--would ever be paid $34,000 a year.

  Who could have predicted it? On the other hand, his oldest daughter would be sixteen now, and his youngest fourteen. In two more years, his new lawyer told him, when his oldest daughter became eighteen, he would petition the court and see if he could change the arrangement. Patsy's salary (she had an executive job of some kind with a time-sharing hotel chain in Vero Beach) would also be taken into consideration by the judge--when the time came. But right now, his lawyer advised him, nothing could be done. Hoke would just have to live with the agreement he had so unwisely signed.

  "Too bad," the lawyer had said, shaking his head. "I wish I'd been your attorney at the time. When a couple getting a divorce decides to share the same lawyer, he has two fools for his clients, but one of them is more foolish than the other. I would never have allowed you to sign such a dumb and binding agreement."