Charles Willeford - New Hope For The Dead

by Unknown

  Hoke had more than an hour to kill before his appointment in Coconut Grove with the house-sitting service. It was too early for lunch, but he was starving. He stopped at a 7/Eleven, bought a grape Slurpee, and then ate his two hard-boiled eggs and slurped the Slurpee in his car in front of the store. This was his usual diet lunch, and it was as unsatisfactory as his diet breakfast, which called for two poached eggs and half of a grapefruit. He could get by on this diet fare all day, but could rarely stick to it by nightfall. By the end of the day he was always too hungry to settle for the three ounces of roast beef and can of boiled spinach his diet called for, so he usually ate something that tasted good instead--like the Colonel's extra-crispy, with a couple of biscuits and gravy. But even so, Hoke had lost weight and was down to 182 pounds. He had given up a daily sixpack habit, and that had helped, but he felt deprived and resentful. He was also trying to quit smoking, in an effort to lower his blood pressure and save some money, but that was harder to do than it was to diet. Although, now that cigarettes cost $1.30 a pack, it made a man think twice before lighting up a cigarette worth six and a half cents. Hoke stubbed out his short Kool, put the butt in his shirt pocket for later, and drove to Coconut Grove.

  Hoke parked on Virginia Street, not far from the Mayfair shopping complex, and put his police placard on top of the dashboard in lieu of dropping a quarter in the meter. The Safe 'n' Sure Home-Sitting Service, the outfit Hoke was looking for, was only a short distance away from the Mayfair's parking garage. Hoke had selected this agency from one of six display ads in the Yellow Pages. Not only was Coconut Grove a desirable place to live, but out here he might be lucky enough to get a residence with a swimming pool.

  Ms. Beverly Westphal, the woman Hoke had talked with on the telephone, was on the phone again when Hoke came into her office. He was fifteen minutes early. A tinkly tocsin above the door announced his entrance. The small room--the front room of what was undoubtedly Ms. Westphal's private residence--looked more like a living room than an office. The first impression was reinforced by the round oak table that served as her desk. The desk held a metal tray and the remains of a pizza, as well as her telephone, nameplate, and a potted philodendron.

  Ms. Westphal was about thirty, and she wore Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, a black U-necked T-shirt with the word MACHO across the middle in white block letters, and greenand-red jogging shoes. A small pocket watch dangled from the T-shirt. She didn't wear a brassiere beneath the T-shirt, and her breasts had prolapsed. Her brown eyes were popped slightly, Hoke noticed as she hung up the phone. She was the kind of woman with whom Hoke would avoid eye contact if he happened to see one like her in a shopping center.

  Ms. Westphal told Hoke to pull a chair up to the table.

  "At least you're a WASP, Sergeant Moseley."

  "Yes, and I'm not bilingual."

  "That isn't important. I've got more Latin house sitters now than I can use, but there's a shortage of WASP sitters at present. There's a thousand-dollar security bond, and if you don't have a thousand dollars--"

  "I don't have a thousand dollars."

  "--I can get you a bond for a hundred in cash."

  "I can raise that much."

  Ms. Westphal summarized the situation for Hoke. Three years before, when white flight had begun in earnest, it was easy to move away from Miami. A house could still be sold for a handsome profit then, and the happy seller moved to Fort Lauderdale or Orlando or far enough north to avoid hearing any Spanish. But white flight had increased as the crime rate increased, especially after the influx of Castro's 125,000 Marielitos, and the newer and higher interest rates kept young couples from buying used homes. Nevertheless, the inflated prices were holding steady. A used home sold eventually, but instead of a quick turnover, sellers often had to wait for a year or more to find a buyer. But people who wanted to move away still moved, and if they couldn't sell their house or rent it, they needed someone to watch the empty residence to discourage burglary and vandalism.

  Ms. Westphal had separate lists of homeowners. One was a group that had moved and didn't want their houses to remain unoccupied while their agents were trying to sell them; the other was a shorter list of homeowners who wanted to take vacations of from two weeks to two months in North Carolina, and didn't want their houses left unoccupied. Homeowners on both lists paid her fifteen dollars a day for the service. Out of this amount, the sitter received five dollars a day. At the end of each two-week period, she gave the sitter seventy dollars in cash.

  "If there's anything I hate," she said, "it's fooling around with all of that withholding tax and minimum-wage bullshit paperwork."

  "I understand," Hoke said. "Using cash eases your paperwork burden, and the government's."

  "Exactly. What d'you know about house plants?"

  "I've never owned one."

  "That's an important duty. You have to take care of the house plants. But the owners usually leave detailed instructions, so all you have to do is follow them."

  "I can do that."

  "What about dogs and cats?"

  "Cats are okay. I lived with one once, but I've never owned a dog."

  "Well, this place I'm sending you to has a dog that goes with it. You'll have to feed and water the dog as well as the house plants. The last five people I've sent out there have turned the place down. I don't understand what the problem is. None of them would say why they backed out. It may be the dog. But you, being a cop and all, should be able to handle a dog."

  "As I told you on the phone, Ms. Westphal, I'll be coming and going at odd hours, so it's probably a good idea to have a dog on the place. I don't mind the dog."

  "That's about it, then." Ms. Westphal handed Hoke her business card, with the address of the house scribbled on the back. "But if you tell me no, too, you'll have to give me a reason. Otherwise, I'm going to ask Mr. Ferguson to try another agency."

  "What is it? A house or an apartment?"

  "It's a small house, but it's quite lovely. Two bedrooms, one bath, with a kidney-shaped pool in back. There are some orange trees, too, but you won't have to worry about the yard. Mr. Ferguson's got a gardener for that. You'll have to spend your nights there, but the fact that you come and go at different times is a plus. The house has a TV and air conditioning, but there are no nearby stores. You've got a car, haven't you?"

  "A 1973 Le Mans, but it's got a new engine."

  "Good. I'm going out now myself, but I'll be back by two or two-thirty. Talk to Mr. Ferguson. Then come back here and we'll work out the bond arrangement and the contract."

  The mailbox on Main Highway had the number and Mr. Ferguson's name stenciled on it. There was a gravel driveway in a sigmoid loop, and the house was hidden completely from the road by palmettos and a thick stand of loblolly pines. As Hoke parked in front of the house, Mr. Ferguson, together with his dog, a bushy black-and-burntorange Airedale, came out of the house. The moment Hoke got out of the car, the dog, slavering, gripped Hoke's right leg tightly with his forelegs, dug his wet jowls into Hoke's crotch, and began to dry-hump Hoke's leg in a practiced, determined rhythm. Mr. Ferguson, a red-faced, red-haired man in his early forties, wearing a gray, heavy cardigan sweater despite the eighty-five-degree temperature, lit his pipe with a kitchen match.

  Hoke tried to shake the dog loose. "Ms. Westphal sent me out about the house-sitting job."

  "I know," Mr. Ferguson said after he got his pipe going, "she called me. Come on inside." Mr. Ferguson started toward the door, and Hoke managed to kick the amorous Airedale viciously enough to dislodge him when Mr. Ferguson turned his back. But the dog darted ahead through the door before Hoke could close it. The moment Hoke closed the door, the dog was on him again, his forelegs clamped like a vise around Hoke's right thigh. Hoke took out his pistol.

  "if you don't get this animal off me, I'm going to kill him."

  "No need to do that," Mr. Ferguson said. "Rex! On the table, boy!"

  The dog released Hoke's leg at once and jumped to a chair, then onto the ki
tchen table, which still held the dirty dishes from Mr. Ferguson's lunch. Mr. Ferguson reached between the dog's legs, above the red, pencil-sized penis. "Old Rex gets horny living here without a mate, but if you jack him off once or twice a day, he stays mighty quiet." The dog climaxed, and Ferguson wiped the table with a paper napkin. Rex jumped to the chair, then to the floor, and crossed to a corduroy cushion under the stove.

  "What I want to do," Mr. Ferguson said, "is go up to stay with my mama in Fitzgerald, Georgia. She's dyin' of cancer, you see, and the doctors only give her six or seven months to live. I don't think it'll be that long, but however long it takes, I'm gonna stay with her. She's all alone up there, with no friends, so I have to go up whether I want to or not. A man only has one mama, you know."

  "Why not bring her down here? Wouldn't that be better than leaving your job and your house?" Hoke shivered. The air conditioning was set for sixty or lower; no wonder Mr. Ferguson was wearing a sweater.

  "No, I can't do that. She's too old, and she don't want to leave her friends up there."

  "You just told me she didn't have any friends."

  "She has friends, all right, but they're all dead and in the cemetery. Mama's eighty-six years old. But she's got her own little house, and sick as she is, she wouldn't want to come down here to Miami. And I can't take Rex up there with me. Mama don't like dogs, and she never did. And I know she wouldn't 'low Rex in the house. I hate to leave Rex down here, but I don't see no other way out of the situation. Do you?"

  "You could hire somebody to stay with her."

  "No, I couldn't do that. Jesus Christ Himself couldn't get along with that old woman. Nobody'd stay with her for more'n a day or two. No, I have to go. A man's only got one mama. Want to see the rest of the house? I got a pool out back. Rex likes to dive for rocks. You can throw a rock in the deepest part, and he'll dive right in and bring it to you. Labrador retrievers do that, but not many Airedales."

  "I've got another appointment, Mr. Ferguson. Ms. Westphal will call you later."

  "You gonna sit my house for me?"

  "I don't think so. I've still got a couple of other options."

  "That's too bad. Rex liked you a lot. I could tell."

  Hoke drove back into the Grove, parked behind the Hammock Bar, and drank two draft beers before returning to the Safe 'n' Sure office. After his experience with the frigging dog, Hoke felt entitled to the drinks. Except for Rex, the house would have been ideal.

  Ms. Westphal unlocked the front door, and they went into the office together. "Sorry you had to wait," she said. "What I need is a secretary. I was going to buy an answering machine, but most people won't talk to them anyway."

  "I don't want to sit Mr. Ferguson's house."

  "You, too? What's the problem out there, anyway?"

  "Well, part of the deal is that you have to jerk the dog off every day. I don't know why he didn't tell you about that in the first place. But Mr. Ferguson owns a concupiscent Airedale."

  "What kind of Airedale?"

  "Sex-crazed. He humps your leg, and he won't let go till you jack him off."

  "How long does it take?"

  "Less than a minute. Closer to thirty seconds than a minute."

  "What's the big deal then, Sergeant? I used to jerk guys off in junior high. Oh, don't look so surprised. If you didn't, you never got a second date. It seems to me that getting a lovely home to live in free, and five dollars a day besides, should be worth a minute of your time every day."

  "Not to me it isn't. If it ever got out in the division that I--look, I'm just not interested."

  "Let's talk a minute. I'll tell you what. It'll only take me ten minutes to get over there. Why don't you take the house, and then when the dog jumps your leg you can call me. I'll drive over and handle it for you."

  "Why don't you sit the house yourself? Then you could get a secretary and let her live here. You'd have someone here to answer your phone when you were out, and you'd have a nice house with a pool for a few months."

  "That isn't a bad idea, you know."

  "I know. What else do you have?"

  "I've got a duplex in Hialeah."

  "No, it's got to be in Miami. Not necessarily in the Grove, but within the city limits."

  "All I've got in the Grove right now is a week at Grove Isle. A two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar condo, complete with sauna."

  "A week isn't enough. I need a place for at least a month or two."

  "I'll call you. But you should've told me you didn't like dogs. It would've saved a trip out to Mr. Ferguson's house."

  "Until I met Rex, I didn't know I didn't like dogs. But please call me soon, because I need a place before the end of the week."

  "I'll see what I can do."

  But from the cool tone of her voice, Hoke had a hunch, as he headed downtown on Dixie Highway, that it would be a damned cold day in Miami before she called him again.

  3

  Hoke shared a small office at the Homicide Division with Ellita Sanchez. The upper half of the wall that faced the squad room was glass, and there were several wanted posters affixed to the glass with Scotch tape. Most of the space in the little office was taken up by a large double desk, the kind favored by small real-estate firms. There was a D-ring bolted to the desk so that suspects could be handcuffed to it. A glass top covered the desk, and lists of telephone numbers and various business cards were scattered beneath the glass for easy reference. As a consequence, even when the desk was cleared, it looked messy. The desk was rarely cleared, however. There was a two-drawer filing cabinet, two metal swivel chairs, and one customer's straight chair that was usually piled high with copies of the two daily Miami newspapers. The IBM Selectric typewriter was, of course, on Ellita's side of the desk.

  On the wall facing Hoke's side was an unframed poster of a masked man pointing a pistol. Beneath the picture, in large boldface, was the current Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce slogan: MIAMI'S FOR ME! Technically, this small office, the only enclosed office in the division other than Major Willie Brownley's much larger glass-walled office, belonged to Lieutenant Fred Slater, the executive officer and number-two man for Major Brownley. But Lieutenant Slater, who preferred a desk in one corner of the bull pen, where it was easier to keep an eye on everybody, had given the small office to Hoke Moseley and Bill Henderson to use. A few weeks earlier, when Major Brownley had broken up their partnership, Hoke had been assigned Ellita Sanchez as his new partner, and Sergeant Bill Henderson had been moved to the bull pen. Sergeant Henderson's new partner, Teodoro "Teddy" Gonzalez, was the newest investigator in the division, and Henderson was supposed to break him in to homicide work, as Hoke was supposed to break in Ellita Sanchez. Bill and Hoke had worked together as partners, even after Henderson had been promoted to sergeant, for more than three years. They had worked well together, but because neither of them spoke Spanish, and both refused to learn the language, Major Brownley had broken them up and assigned them bilingual partners. Hoke, being senior to Henderson, had kept the little office, and Henderson and Gonzalez now occupied two beat-up metal desks next to the men's room. There was no women's room; Ellita had to take the elevator down to the second floor.

  With more than half of Miami's population a mixture of various Latins, but mostly Cubans, and with more Salvadoran and Nicaraguan refugees coming in daily, the change in partners had been inevitable. Bill and Hoke hadn't been happy about the switch, but they had accepted it without complaint because there was nothing they could do about it. Altogether, there were forty-seven detectives in Homicide, and, thanks to Affirmative Action, the balance was about even between Anglo and Latin officers. Not counting Major Brownley, who was black, there were three black detectives, and one of these was a Haitian. The Haitian detective, a Sorbonne graduate, spoke French fluently, as well as Creole and English, but he had less work to do than any of the others. The Miami Haitian population, about 25,000, was the most peaceful ethnic group in town. The occasional homicides in Little Haiti usually involved
somebody from outside their district shooting one of them for fun from a passing car.

  When Hoke came into the office, Ellita Sanchez, with the help of a small hand mirror, was applying a coat of American Dream to her lips. Except for this vividly red and wet-looking lipstick, Ellita used no other makeup. Because the corners of her mouth turned down slightly, unless she was smiling the two tiny red lines that tugged at the corners of her lips sometimes made it seem, at first glance, as though her mouth were dribbling blood. Hoke wondered if anyone had ever told her about this effect.

  "How'd it go?" Hoke said.

  "We'll know more later. The assistant M.E. said he thought it was an OD, not a suicide, but not for the record. I sent for Hickey's file. According to the computer, he's got a record, so I asked for a printout."

  Hoke handed her the Baggie with the items he had picked up in Hickey's room. "Send the tinfoil balls and the bags of powder to the lab to be checked out. Send the roach, too, if you want--or take it home and smoke it."

  "I don't smoke pot, Sergeant." Ellita put the roach into her purse.

  Hoke went through Hickey's wallet, a well-worn cowhide fold-over type, and removed a driver's license, expired; a slip of paper with a telephone number, written in pencil; a cracked black-and-white snapshot of a mongrel with a ball in its mouth; a folded gift coupon for a McDonald's quarter-pounder, expired; a Visa credit card in Gerald Hickey's name, expired; and a tightly folded twenty-dollar bill that had been hidden behind the lining of the wallet.

  "Not much here." Hoke passed the twenty across the desk. "Put this bill with the others."

  "I've already sealed the money in an envelope."

  "In that case, you'll have to unseal it, won't you?"

  Ellita cut the flap of the brown envelope with the small blade of her Swiss army knife, took out the money, flattened the twenty, and added it to the other bills. She placed the money in a new brown envelope, threw the mutilated envelope into the wastepaper basket, and then sealed the money inside. She wrote "Gerald Hickey" and "$1,070" on the outside of the envelope before passing it to Hoke across the desk. Hoke put the envelope in the side pocket of his leisure jacket, and shook his head.