Charles Willeford - New Hope For The Dead

by Unknown

  Hoke had never attended any of the army's special schools, which could have led to a promotion, nor had he applied for any. He made PFC when he completed basic training, and he was discharged as a PFC. He then went home to Riviera Beach, worked in his father's hardware and chandlery store for two years, and married Patsy, a girl he had dated at Palm Beach High School.

  He finally quit at the hardware store when he realized that his father would never relinquish the management to him for as long as he lived. Hoke's salary was no larger than any of the other clerks', and Hoke's father, who had become wealthy from his real-estate investments on Singer Island (having bought up island property during the 1930s), refused to give Hoke a larger salary because he said it would smack of favoritism. The old man was tight, there was no question about that, but he had married an attractive well-to-do widow after Hoke's mother had died, and the two of them lived very well in a large house on the inland waterway.

  Frank Moseley was seventy now, and he still went to the store every day. He had never given Hoke a share of the profits, nor did Hoke expect to get anything when he died. Hoke suspected that the bulk of the estate would go to the widow and to Hoke's two daughters, Sue Ellen and Aileen. The old man doted on his granddaughters, and Patsy was wise enough to drive down from Vero Beach often enough to maintain the old man's interest, yet not often enough to become a nuisance. Hoke had not seen his girls since Patsy divorced him and moved to Vero Beach. Patsy thought it would be better that way. The most recent photographs he had of the girls were from four years ago. He had never paid much attention to the children when they had lived together, Patsy said, and she didn't want their new lives upset by occasional, so-called duty visits.

  Patsy was unfair in this regard, Hoke felt, but there was enough truth in what she said to discourage him from pursuing the matter legally.

  Thanks to Hoke's M.P. background, limited though it was, he had no trouble getting into the Riviera Beach Police Department, and he and Patsy were happy enough during the three years he spent on the force as a patrolman. As a hometown boy--and a "Conch"--Hoke got along well with people, and Riviera Beach, before the 1970s boom and the unforeseen development of condominiums on Singer Island, was relatively crime-free. Patsy kept busy with the children all day, and Hoke drove a patrol car, alternating between day and night shifts. During his off-duty time, he either fished or went to the beach at Singer Island, the widest and nicest beach on Florida's east coast.

  One night Hoke stopped a speeding Caddy. The driver dismounted with a gun in his hand when Hoke approached the car, and Hoke shot the man without even thinking about it. There were three kilos of cocaine in the trunk of the Caddy. The driver had been killed instantly; Hoke was cleared almost immediately and received a commendation from the chief. The rest of his police work at Riviera Beach was routine.

  A few months later, after three years on the Riviera Beach force, Hoke applied for and was accepted by the Miami Police Department. It had been pleasant living in Riviera Beach, and Patsy had some family there, too, but with the girls growing up, Hoke needed the larger salary he could earn as a Miami policeman.

  It was difficult at first. Hoke made more money, but it cost more to live in Miami. To earn extra money, Hoke volunteered for overtime, and he always worked the football games on Saturdays and Sundays in the Orange Bowl during his off-duty time. He neglected Patsy and the girls, but after she started to nag him and make his life unpleasant at home, he spent even fewer hours there. He met Bambi, began an intense affair, and studied for the sergeant's exam in the downtown public library. The girls were noisy at home, and he couldn't concentrate. Then Patsy joined a neighborhood "consciousness-raising" group, found out about Bambi, and their marriage was over.

  Without any family obligations, except for endorsing and mailing every other check to Patsy, Hoke had prospered in the department. He had enjoyed his earlier work in Traffic and liked being a detective even better, especially after he was promoted to sergeant. But the life had taken a toll on his face.

  Without his false teeth, Hoke looked much older than forty-two, and this morning, when he looked into the mirror, still thinking about Loretta Hickey, he wondered if she would ever be interested in him as a lover. She could hardly be interested, he thought, if she saw him without his teeth. His eyes were his best feature. They were chocolate brown, a brown so richly dark it was difficult to see his pupils. During his years in the Miami Police Department, this genetic gift had been useful to him on many occasions. Hoke could stare at people for a long time before they realized he was looking at them. By any aesthetic standard, Hoke's eyes were beautiful. But the rest of his face, if not ordinary, was unremarkable. He had lost most of his sandy hair in front, and his high balding dome gave his longish face a mournful expression. His tanned cheeks were sunken and striated, and there were dark, deep lines from the wings of his prominent nose to the corners of his mouth.

  Hoke took his dentures out of the plastic glass where they had been soaking overnight in Polident, rinsed them under the faucet, and set them in place with a few dabs of Stik-Gum. He looked a little better, he thought, with the blue-gray teeth, and he always put his dentures in before shaving. One thing he knew for certain, he looked much trimmer and felt much better at 182 pounds than he had at 205.

  The window air conditioner labored away while he dressed (today he wore the yellow leisure suit), and then he made a final check of the room to see if he had forgotten anything. Today was Friday, and his sheets wouldn't be changed until Saturday morning. The sitting room was a mess, and there was a pile of dirty laundry in the corner of the bedroom. The Peruvian maid would pick up his laundry when she changed the sheets and bring it back on Saturday evening. There was a sour, locker-room smell in both rooms.

  Hoke checked his.38 Chief's Special, slipped it into his holster, and clipped the holster into his belt at the back. He would be reading most of the day, so he left his handcuffs and leather sap on the dresser before going down to the lobby.

  As Hoke took his daily report into Mr. Bennett's office, Eddie Cohen, the desk clerk, called to him from the desk.

  "Sergeant Moseley," the old man said, "you had a call about three A.M., but I told the lady I couldn't wake you up unless it was an emergency. She said it wasn't an emergency, and she didn't give her name. But I wouldn't wake nobody at three o'clock in the morning for nothing."

  "Thanks, Eddie. What did she sound like? The caller, I mean?"

  "Like a woman. It was a woman's voice, that's all."

  "Okay. If she happens to call back today, try and get her name and number. The plug on my air conditioner was pulled out again when I got to my room last night. I've told you before not to pull it out. The room was like a damned oven with the burners on high when I came home."

  "Mr. Bennett sends me around to pull out the plugs when nobody's home. If no one's in the room, it just wastes energy, he said."

  "I understand your position, Eddie, but that rule doesn't apply to me. It takes about two hours for that beat-up air conditioner to cool off the suite. Also, tell Emilio to set some rat traps around the dumpster again. I spotted two Norways in the back corridor last night."

  "It ain't the dumpster they're after." Eddie shook his head. "These old ladies put their garbage in the hallways instead of taking it down to the dumpster."

  "Never mind. Have Emilio set the traps. I put it in my report to Mr. Bennett. He can pay off the inspectors, but if one of these old ladies ever gets bitten by a Norway, they'll come down on us again."

  Hoke got into his car, wondering why he should be concerned. Within a week, he'd have to get out of the hotel anyway. He didn't know where he would be, but he would be somewhere else. With all of the money he owed, a suspension without pay would be a disaster. And any time his check to Patsy was more than a day late, he got a threatening call from her bitchy lawyer.

  When Hoke got to the station at seven-thirty, he learned that Ellita was already there and had moved all of the cold case files d
own to the interrogation room. He sent her down to the cafeteria to get coffee and a jelly doughnut. He hadn't felt like poaching eggs, and boiling two more, on his hot plate this morning; now his stomach rumbled with hunger. He divided the huge pile into three more or less even stacks without counting them. He also got some legal pads and Bic ballpoints from his office. Sanchez returned with three coffees and Hoke's doughnut.

  "Sergeant Henderson's still out there in the bullpen talking to Lieutenant Slater and Teddy Gonzalez," she said, "but I brought coffee for him, too. Are you going to brief Teddy on what we've been doing?"

  "Gonzalez'll be busy enough as it is. For now, we'll hang onto our own cases. There's only the one child-abuse case and a suicide. We can complete them and handle the cold cases, too."

  "But Major Brownley said--"

  "I know what he said. But there's no hurry on our pending cases. After we get the P.M., we can close out the Hickey overdose case, too. I talked to Mrs. Hickey last night and found out that the kid was in over his head. Two guys came around yesterday afternoon and told her that Hickey had ripped them off for twenty-five thousand bucks."

  "There was only a thousand in his room."

  "I know. I'm giving it to her today. What I figure, Hickey stashed the money somewhere, and then was so excited by the idea that he gave himself a stronger fix than he thought he was getting."

  Ellita nodded. "It could've happened that way. But Mrs. Hickey could've also taken the extra twenty-four thousand and left the thousand on top of the dresser."

  "No." Hoke shook his head. "She wouldn't do that."

  "You told me yesterday that an amateur never takes it all, and that only pros take everything."

  "That's true as a general rule, but it doesn't apply to Mrs. Hickey. I talked to her for a long time, and she isn't the kind of woman who'd steal from her stepson."

  "Jerry isn't her son?"

  "No, she inherited him from her ex-husband, along with the house, when they got divorced."

  "It's a possibility, just the same."

  "No way. She's a successful businesswoman, with her own flower shop in the Gables. Forget about it. We've got a lot of work to do."

  Sanchez watched him and sipped her coffee.

  Hoke took off his jacket and draped it over the back of the folding chair. He had been wearing the same shortsleeved flowered sports shirt for three days, and there were three concentric white rings of dried sweat under the armpits. He wouldn't have a clean shirt until Saturday evening. The windowless room was cool enough, with plenty of cold air coming through the ducts, but he realized that if he could smell the dried perspiration on his shirt, Ellita could, too. So what? He could smell her overdose of Shalimar perfume, with an extra overlay of added musk. Like most Cuban women, she used too much perfume.

  "Just take a stack," Hoke said, "and read them all. When I get through my stack we'll exchange. After we've read all the cases, we'll each vote on the three most likely cases to work on. Then we'll see what we've got. Take your time, Ellita. My idea's to discover the ten most likely cases. If we all come up with the same ten, we'll have a consensus. But we won't look at each other's choices till we've each gone through all fifty of them. I don't want to prejudice you or Bill by telling you my choices as we go along."

  "You won't. But we won't get through all these cases today."

  Hoke shrugged. "We've got two months. But the ones we do agree on, even if it takes us a week, will save us a lot of useless running around later."

  They went to work, not speaking, and taking occasional notes. Bill Henderson joined them at nine-thirty. Hoke briefed him on the plan, and Henderson moved his stack down to the far end of the table.

  "That extra cup of coffee's yours, Bill," Hoke said.

  "Thanks, Ellita," Henderson said, removing the plastic lid. He sipped the coffee and made a face. "Christ, it's stone cold. I'll go down for some more. Anybody else ready for more coffee?"

  "I'll get it," Ellita said, getting up. "I didn't think you'd be out there so long with Slater and Gonzalez."

  When she was gone, Henderson got up and sat on the table next to Hoke. "I was already late this morning in the first place, and then I had to argue with Slater. He wanted me to go over tomorrow afternoon to Miami Beach and guard wedding gifts at a reception. There's fifty bucks in it, less Slater's ten percent for giving you the job, but you have to wear your uniform. That isn't bad, Hoke, fifty bucks for drinking champagne for three hours while you just stand around. But I couldn't take it because I promised Marie I'd take her and the kids to the Metrozoo. Now if you can use fifty bucks, Hoke, you could get the job if you asked Slater."

  "My uniform's too loose on me now, Bill. But I wouldn't take it anyway. When I made sergeant, I promised myself I wouldn't do any more moonlighting. I'm not uptight about it, and I could use the dough, but I resent Slater's ten percent rake-off. I've told him so, and that's why he never asks me to take any moonlighting jobs. So if I asked him for this one, he'd think I'd changed my mind."

  "I know what you mean. I was just passing along the suggestion. The other reason I'm late, I had to talk to my son this morning. I had a note from his P.E. coach that Jimmy won't take a shower after P.E."

  "How old is Jimmy now?"

  "Fourteen. I asked him about it, and he said he doesn't want the other boys looking at his thing."

  "Is it too big or too small?"

  "I don't know. He won't show it to me either. But he was stubborn about it, so I gave him a note to take to the coach, telling him that Jimmy has scabies. I said he couldn't take showers until he got through using sulfur ointment to get rid of it."

  "He'll have to take a shower sooner or later."

  "I know. But Jimmy's sensitive, Hoke. Daphne's a year younger, and she's tougher than he is. If they'd let her, she'd take a shower with the boys in Jimmy's place."

  "That's because your wife's in NOW. Does Marie let Daphne read her -Ms-. magazines?"

  "Daphne doesn't read anything. And she hasn't learned a fucking thing in school. Last week, she asked me when we were going to have the next Bicentennial celebration. She still reads at the third-grade level. But she isn't dumb. She can watch a mystery on the tube, and tell you who the guilty person is before the first commercial. I thought she might have dyslexia, but I had her tested and her eyes are okay. She just doesn't like to read. But Jimmy's read my entire Doc Savage collection already, and most of my Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars books."

  "I don't know whether my daughters can read or not."

  "Do you ever miss 'em,Hoke? The girls?"

  "No. I mean, I do once it a while... but I don't. They were real little when they left, and I didn't know them that well. I'm just not a family man."

  The three of them worked until eleven-thirty, and then Hoke checked his in-box in the office. There were two phone messages to call Harold Hickey, in addition to the regular distribution. The second telephone message from Hickey said he would be at home all day. There were no lab reports, and nothing pressing to answer in the mail.

  Hoke told Henderson and Ellita that he was going out for a few hours, and suggested that the two of them break for lunch.

  "I should be back before four o'clock, but I've got some house-hunting to do."

  "Don't rush into anything, Hoke," Henderson said. "If push comes to shove, I can always put you up on a cot in my Florida room for a few days."

  "Thanks, Bill, but I don't get along too well with Marie, as you know. She's always accusing me of making a sexist remark, and I never know what she's talking about."

  "I didn't mean on a permanent basis. But it would be better to sleep in my Florida room for a few days than to get a suspension without pay."

  "Thanks, Bill. If I have to take you up on it, I will. Anyway, if I'm not back by four-thirty, lock the files up in my office and we'll start on 'em again Monday. Until we start work on an actual case or two, we'll just put in a normal eight-hour day."

  "I might come in tomorrow for a couple of hours," E
llita said.

  "That's up to you. But you don't have to--anyway, I should be back before four."

  Hoke left the office and drove to Hallandale, but he took U.S. 1 instead of the I-95 Expressway. About once a month, when Hoke had to be in the north part of town, he stopped at Sam's Sandwich Shoppe for a tongue on rye. Hoke didn't abuse the privilege (once a month was just about right), but he liked to stop at Sam's because Sam always tore up his lunch check. Not only was the sandwich free, but except for Wolfie's in Miami Beach, Sam made the best tongue sandwiches in Dade County.

  7

  The guard at the sentry box outside the Hallandale Mercury Club wore a powder-blue uniform, a gold cap with a black bill, and a shiny black-patent-leather Sam Browne belt, complete with holster. There was no weapon in the holster. The man held a Lucite clipboard in his left hand and a one-ounce paper cup of Cuban coffee in his right. Droplets of coffee from the guard's thick mustache had dribbled onto the light-blue jacket.

  Hoke stopped at the lowered black-and-yellow-striped semaphore arm. The guard looked at his clipboard, and at his coffee, then put the cup down, realizing that he would need his right hand to write on the pad in the clipboard.

  "Ramon Novarro," Hoke said, "to see Mr. Harold Hickey."

  The guard looked at his mimeographed sheet, found Hickey's name and apartment number, and wrote "R. Novarro" opposite Hickey's name. He checked Hoke's auto tag number, added that to the clipboard, and pushed a button that raised the arm.

  "Apartment 406," the guard said.

  Hoke drove through the gate, parked on the grassy verge, and walked back to the gatehouse. The compact complex of clubhouse and three separate low-rise apartment buildings was enclosed by a buff-colored ten-foot wall. The wall was topped with three strands of barbed wire. Two locked gates on the ocean side, opening to the marina and the beach, were marked "Members." Hoke assumed that members held keys to both gates.