Charles Willeford - New Hope For The Dead

by Unknown

  "How do you know," Hoke asked the guard, "that my name's Ramon Novarro?"

  "What?"

  "I said, 'How do you know my name's Ramon Novarro?' You didn't ask me for any ID. You didn't look very hard to see if I was 'armed, either." Hoke took his.38 out of the belt holster, showed it to the guard, and returned it.

  "In fact," Hoke continued, "you don't know who I am, or who I'm going to see. All you know is that Harold Hickey has an apartment here, and you knew that much before I drove up to the gate. Why didn't you call Mr. Hickey and tell him that a Mr. Ramon Novarro was here to see him? He might've told you that Novarro is dead, and has been dead, for several years."

  Hoke showed the guard his shield and ID folder. "I'm a police officer. How much they pay you, three sixty-five an hour?"

  "No, sir. Four dollars."

  "For what you aren't doing, that's a good sum."

  Hoke got back into his car, drove to the guest parking area in front of the clubhouse, and made a guess. If the three buildings were each three stories, and they were, Apartment 406 should be in Building Two on the first floor. He was right. He lifted and dropped the brass knocker on Hickey's front door three times. The door was opened by a Filipino houseboy, actually a wizened man of about sixty wearing pink linen trousers, a gray silk house jacket and a white shirt with a black bow tie. He led Hoke down the hallway, past the living room, and into Hickey's den-office. The living room and the den were furnished with black leather and chrome armchairs and glass-topped tables. Hickey was seated in a black leather, deeply cushioned armchair. As Hoke came in, he got to his feet and switched off the television. Hickey wore a purple velour running suit and a pair of white rabbit-fur slippers. The air conditioning hissed quietly, and Hoke figured it was well below 65 degrees.

  Hickey smiled, revealing expensively capped teeth, and the smile made him almost handsome. His black hair was worn long, in a modified Prince Valiant cut, but the youthful effect was spoiled by a baseball-size bald spot at the crown. Hickey was tall and lean. His nails had been buffed and polished, and there was a gold University of Miami ring on his left hand.

  "I just got a strange call from the gate guard." Hickey smiled. "Words to the effect that a dead policeman was on the way to see me."

  "Did he tell you his name?"

  "Ramon Novarro. Wasn't he the actor who was killed by a hustler a few years ago?"

  "He's dead, but I don't remember the circumstances. I remember seeing some of his films, from when I was a kid, but none of the titles. He was always running someone through with a sword."

  "No matter. Sit down, Mr. Moseley. Would you like a drink?"

  "A Tab."

  "Two Tabs," Hickey said to the doorway. "You are Mr. Moseley, aren't you?"

  Hoke nodded. "I was testing your gate guard. You people pay for security, but you don't get very much."

  "I know. But a gate guard is a deterrent, if nothing else. We used to pay more for armed guards, and then one night a Nicaraguan guard at the gate shot a hole in the manager's car. The manager thought all the guards knew him, but he didn't take the turnover into account. So when he drove through the gate without stopping, a new guard took a shot at him. After that, we decided it would be best to have unarmed guards."

  Hoke sat in a leather chair that faced the sliding glass doors to a bare travertine marble patio. There were two potted spider palms on the patio, but no chairs. Hoke pointed toward the patio with his chin.

  Hickey smiled. "I never use my patio. If I feel the need of some sun, I go over to the pool by the clubhouse. That's why there's no furniture out there."

  "No. I was just thinking you don't have much of a view from here, with the wall only twenty feet away."

  "I didn't buy this place for the view. I bought it because I could finally afford to live in a place like this. I tried to call you last night, twice, but I didn't get an answer. You said on the phone that--"

  "I'm sorry about that. There's only one desk man at the Eldorado, and when he's not at the desk there's no one on the switchboard. I'm sorry you couldn't get through. It's been inconvenient for me, too, at times. At any rate, when I called you from Mrs. Hickey's house, I didn't know at the time who you were. Later on, I remembered that you were one of the drug lawyers profiled in the paper a few months back."

  "An inaccurate portrait. I handle drug cases once in a while, just like any other lawyer, but I specialize in taxes. Lately, I've been turning down drug cases. The dealers can afford my fees, but they think they can get off simply because they've paid a large fee. I always tell them in advance that I can get a few delays, or get them out on bond, but if they're guilty, they're going to do a little time. Things have changed a lot down here, you know, with the Vice President's task force on drugs."

  The houseboy brought in two cans of Tab; each can was wrapped neatly in a brown paper towel, with the towel secured by a rubber band. The houseboy left, and Hoke removed the straw. He noticed a crude blackand-white drawing on the wall above Hickey's computer table.

  "Is that an original Matisse?" Hoke asked, lifting his Tab.

  "James Thurber. It's a woman. That thing in her hand is either a martini glass or a dog collar, I've never been able to decide which."

  "Looks more like a bracelet to me."

  "Yes, it could very well be a bracelet."

  Hoke sipped from the Tab. "I suppose you phoned Mrs. Hickey last night?"

  "When I couldn't get you, yes."

  "You know that Jerry died from an overdose of heroin?"

  Hickey nodded. "That's what she said."

  "What I'd like to know is the kind of relationship you had with your son, Mr. Hickey. How close you were to him, for example; whether you were the stern father, or what?"

  "Why? What's that got to do with Jerry's death?"

  "I don't know. It occurred to me last night that he might've met some of your clients, your drug dealers. If so, he could've made a connection through them, or one of them. He'd been on drugs for a long time."

  "Jerry never met any of my clients. He never came to my office because it was off limits to him. To be frank, we didn't have any relationship, not of the sort you mean. In the first place, Jerry wasn't my real son. I suppose you know that already."

  "Your wife told me."

  "Ex-wife. Did Loretta also tell you how she happened to become my ex-wife?"

  "No. But I didn't ask."

  "I found out she was fucking Jerry, that's how. He was seventeen at the time. I don't know how long it had been going on, but as soon as I found out about it I moved out. I didn't really care. In fact, it was a good excuse to get a divorce. She couldn't fight me about something like that in court, so we obtained a simple no-fault divorce. I made some concessions I didn't have to make, but a man always. has to do that if he doesn't want to be distracted. I was just getting into making some big bucks, so I wasn't hurt financially. She got the house, of course, and one of the cars.

  "Legally, you see, I got stuck with Jerry when my first wife divorced me. Jerry was her son, and I was asshole enough when we first got married to adopt him. So not only did I get rid of Loretta, I got rid of Jerry at the same time when my divorce came through. It was a good deal all the way around."

  "Except, perhaps, for Jerry."

  "Jerry had no complaints. He had a place to live, and no one ever hassled him. Loretta didn't want to keep him, but she couldn't very well get out of it. What happened between them wasn't any love affair, or anything close to it. She'd been drinking one day, and I suppose she got a little horny. Jerry, who was seventeen, happened to be available. It happened a few more times, I suppose. You know how it is, once you get it, you can always get it again. But it was all over by the time I found out about it, I'm pretty sure."

  "How'd you find out? It's none of my business, but I'm curious."

  "Mrs. Koontz, the next-door neighbor, told me. I didn't believe her at first, but then when I questioned Jerry he admitted it right away. 'I didn't think you'd mind, Mr. Hickey,
' he said. And of course I didn't mind, because then I had an excuse to get out of a bad marriage."

  "Your son called you 'Mr. Hickey'?"

  "Most of the time, yes. I didn't want him to call me 'Dad' because he wasn't my real son. I don't see anything wrong with that. After all, I supported him, so I was entitled to a little respect."

  "Yours wasn't exactly a loving relationship then?"

  "He got some love from Loretta." Hickey smiled. "He admitted it, and so did Loretta after I confronted her with his confession. I made him put it in writing, in case she wanted to fight the divorce."

  "How'd Jerry get on the spike without you finding out about it?"

  "I did know about it. I recognized the signs right away. I advised Jerry to get off drugs at once. I also told him I'd pay for drug counseling. But he claimed he could handle it, and that was that. A lot of young people are into dope down here, you know."

  "I know."

  "I don't even smoke pot. But Jerry could get drugs anywhere in the city in five minutes, so long as he had the money."

  "But you gave him the money."

  "I gave him a small allowance after he quit school, but I advised him to finish high school. And I told him I'd put him through college. But when he dropped out of high school, I lowered his allowance. In this state, a father's no longer responsible for a child after he reaches eighteen. But I would've sent him to college. No one ever helped me." He leaned forward in his chair. "I put myself through the University of Miami by washing trays at night in the old Holsum Bakery in South Miami. And I did maintenance work to get a free efficiency apartment. No one ever gave me a fucking penny. Miami offers a young man more opportunities than any other city in the United States. If you want to get ahead down here, you take advantage of them. Jerry fell by the wayside. It's not society's fault, and it's not Reagan's, and it's not mine." Hickey, sitting back, started to yawn; he put a hand to his mouth. "Excuse me. But this is a sore point with me. Every day, if you look at the women's section of the paper, you'll see articles blaming the parents for the way their kids turn out. It's all bullshit."

  "It isn't easy to always know the right thing to do, I suppose. But then, I'm not a family man."

  "When can I get the body? I'd like to send somebody over to get Jerry cremated."

  "After the autopsy. I can recommend Minrow's Funeral Home, if you don't have anyone else in mind."

  "What do you get? A ten percent commission?"

  Hoke didn't mind the question, not from a Miami lawyer. As it happened, Hoke didn't get any commission, but he usually recommended Minrow when someone asked, because he and Minrow had been neighbors when Hoke first moved to Miami. If he denied getting anything, Hoke knew that Hickey would merely consider him a fool.

  "No," Hoke said. "I just get a flat fifty bucks for each referral."

  "Okay. I'll call Minrow's and mention that you recommended him. It makes no difference to me."

  "At one time," Hoke said, getting to his feet, and placing the empty Tab can on the glass-topped desk, "there was a number you could call in Miami, and a man would come by in a taxi cab. You paid him five bucks and he took the body away and you never heard of it again. But I don't think that number's in service any longer."

  "Is that the truth, Mr. Moseley, or are you trying to be funny?"

  "Sergeant Moseley." Hoke pointed to a framed blueand-green oleograph on the opposite wall. A blue man playing a violin floated upside down above a white house in a green sky. "Is that one of Jerry's crayon drawings, from when he was a kid?"

  Hickey shook his head. "No, it's a Marc Chagall." He leaned forward and switched on the television. A commercial touting the new aviary at the Metrozoo appeared on the screen, and Hickey turned off the sound.

  "I like the picture anyway," Hoke said, turning in the doorway. "Just one more question, Mr. Hickey, and I'll be on my way. Did Jerry ever carry any large sums of money for you?"

  Hickey got to his feet. He shook his head. "No. I never wrote Jerry a check for more than a hundred dollars at a time. The most money he ever had was when he sold his car. I paid four thousand for his Escort, and he sold it for only two. He should've gotten a lot more than that."

  "That almost always happens. You always pay more for a car than you sell it for."

  "I know that. But I should've kept the title so he couldn't've sold it at all."

  "We all make mistakes sooner or later, Mr. Hickey. Thanks for the Tab."

  The Filipino appeared and escorted Hoke to the front door.

  8

  As Hoke drove back toward the city after cutting over to I-95, he wondered why he had wasted time talking to Harold Hickey. Hoke wasn't fond of lawyers, especially lawyers like Hickey who managed to get low bonds for their drug clients and then advised them to skip the country to avoid prison. On the other hand, someone had been furnishing Jerry with money. Jerry's father gave him an allowance, but he wouldn't have given the kid a thousand dollars. A thousand bucks for a drug dealer, on the other hand, was small change. And now that he was dead, the missing $24,000 was gone forever. It was possible that Jerry had been a small-time pusher in the Grove to help him support his own habit. But it still bothered Hoke that an experienced user, with a large sum of money and more drugs available, would take a deliberate overdose, or even OD accidentally. It just didn't fit the pattern.

  Hoke returned to U.S.1, and then stopped at an Eckerd's drugstore to buy a package of Kools. After he paid for the cigarettes, he showed the clerk his shield and asked if he could use the telephone. Since the pay phone rates had jumped from a dime to a quarter a few years back, Hoke, as a matter of principle, had never paid to use a phone again. He called Ms. Westphal at the house-sitting service. When she answered after the first ring, Hoke identified himself and asked if she had found any more prospects for him.

  "I'm now willing," he said, "to take a short-time sitter's job, even if it's only a couple of weeks. How about that apartment on Grove Isle?"

  "That's gone. I've got a garage apartment on Tangerine Lane in the black Grove. It'll be available next Friday for twenty-one days. It's owned by a Barbadian sculptor who's going up to New York for a one-man show. He uses the garage under his apartment as his studio, and he doesn't want his tools and things left unguarded."

  "That's right in the middle of the black Grove, isn't it?"

  "Not exactly in the middle. It's off Douglas a few blocks. But you're a policeman, and you've got a gun, so it shouldn't bother you to live in a black neighborhood."

  "I told you I couldn't be there much in the daytime, except for weekends."

  "Daytime doesn't bother Mr. Noseworthy. The man who lives in the house in front'll be home during the day."

  "That's a pretty funky neighborhood, Ms. Westphal."

  "Listen, Sergeant, I think you're a little too finicky for this kind of work. Perhaps you should look for another agency--"

  "No, no, I'll take the garage apartment. Of course, I'd like to look at it first."

  "There's nothing to see. It's got a bed, a sink, a hot plate and a refrigerator, and you use the bathroom in the house in front of the garage. There's no dog, if that's what's bothering you. If you don't want it, I can easily get a black house-sitter for a furnished apartment like this one."

  "Okay, I'll take it. I'll drop by one day next week for the key."

  Ms. Westphal gave Hoke the address and reminded him to bring a hundred dollars for the bond when he came by for the key.

  "If you could give me my hundred-and-five-dollar salary in advance," Hoke suggested, "you could just hang onto the hundred for the bond and pay me five dollars."

  "You're very droll, Sergeant." Ms. Westphal laughed and hung up the phone.

  Hoke returned to his car. Major Brownley, he knew, would recognize the address in the black Grove and would wonder why in the hell he had moved there. He didn't want the major to know that he would be living rent-free as a house-sitter. He wondered if the Bajan sculptor had a phone. If not, he would have to make s
ome kind of arrangement with the neighbors to take his phone calls. The problem was, in that neighborhood, not many people could afford a phone. He'd just have to wait and see. Moving, at least, was no problem. Except for a cardboard box full of his files and old papers, all he had to move were his clothes and his little Sony TV. And his hot plate; he'd better take his hot plate. Even if Noseworthy had one, Hoke would probably need his own for the next move, although he could hardly move down any lower than a garage apartment in the Coconut Grove ghetto. Yes, he could; the Overtown ghetto was worse.

  When Hoke returned to the station, he stopped for a moment to say hello to Bill and Ellita and then he checked his mail. There was a printout on Gerald Hickey. Hoke sat in his office and read the rap sheet, which went back to Jerry's junior-high-school days.

  In the eighth grade Jerry had gotten into a fight with a black student, claiming that his lunch money had been taken. A knife had been confiscated, but neither boy had been cut. No charges filed, but the officer who had been called by the principal had made a written report of the incident.

  There were two separate arrests for "joyriding" in stolen cars. Jerry was merely a passenger each time, and stated he didn't know the car--in each incident--was stolen. No charges filed.

  There was another arrest when a woman claimed Jerry had exposed himself to her while standing on her front lawn. The misdemeanor was reduced to committing a public nuisance when Jerry claimed he had merely stopped to urinate on the woman's lawn. Although the incident happened at 3 P.M., Jerry said he didn't see the woman sitting on her front porch ten feet away. Charge dismissed. Counsel for Jerry had been Harold Hickey.

  Arrested for smoking marijuana, with two other juveniles, in Peacock Park, Coconut Grove. Charge reduced to loitering. No charges filed. Released in father's custody.