Charles Willeford - New Hope For The Dead

by Unknown

  "Why do I need a lawyer?" Morrow frowned. "I haven't done anything illegal."

  "It's just that we don't know what you're working on," Hoke said. "Maybe it's legal and maybe it isn't."

  "My system," Morrow said, compressing his lips, "isn't for sale!" He closed his notebook and slid it under the slipless pillow. He crossed his arms in front of his chest.

  "It looks to me," Hoke said, glancing around the room, "like your system, whatever it is, isn't working. You seem to be living under--what's the term?--reduced circumstances, Captain. The last time we talked to you, about three years ago, you were living in a nice neighborhood with a swimming pooi in your backyard."

  "That's because they changed the wheels on me. My system is foolproof, but they got onto me and rigged the wheels."

  "When did you invent your system?" Bill asked from the doorway. "Before or after you killed your wife?"

  "Before. Frances just didn't understand, that's all. I told her we could become millionaires within a year or so, but she wanted me to keep flying. She didn't have faith in me. She wouldn't let me resign from the airline, or even take an extended leave of absence. And she refused to sign the papers so I could sell the house."

  "We always wondered why you killed her, but could never come up with a motive," Hoke said. "Let me take a look at your notebook for a moment. I promise not to use your system."

  "You can believe Sergeant Moseley, Captain Morrow," Henderson said. "He's got his own system."

  "He couldn't understand mine anyway." Morrow shrugged. "Even if I explained it, you still wouldn't understand it. Look at the notebook all you like." He handed Hoke the Blue Horse notebook.

  Hoke paged through it. There were long columns of figures on each page, with the arabic numbers written as small as possible with a ballpoint pen. The numbers 36, 8, 4, and 0 were circled on each page.

  "You're right, Captain," Hoke said, passing the notebook to Henderson. "It's too complicated for me." Henderson riffled through the pages, shook his head, and returned the notebook to Morrow.

  "If we promise not to use it, will you explain some of it to us?" Hoke said.

  "Do you promise?" Morrow narrowed his eyes.

  Henderson raised his right hand, and so did Hoke.

  "I promise," Hoke said.

  "Me, too," Bill said.

  Morrow pointed to Ellita. "What about her?"

  "I won't tell anyone either," Ellita said, raising her right hand. "I promise."

  Morrow wet his lips. "It's too complicated for a woman to understand anyway. Frances couldn't understand it, and I tried my best to explain it to her."

  "Is that why you killed Frances?" Bill asked. "Because she was too dumb?"

  "Frances wasn't dumb!" Captain Morrow raised his voice. "She was a receptionist for a lawyer when I met her, and she had a high-school diploma. But mathematics are beyond a woman's comprehension. They're too emotional to understand arithmetic, let alone logarithms. Here, let me show you." Morrow opened his notebook and pointed to the vertical columns of figures. "It's not that hard to understand, not if you have the patience. Even you two men should be able to grasp the basics. You bet the eight and the four three times, then you bet thirty-six five times. Meanwhile, you watch the Oh, the house number. The Oh and the double-Oh are both house numbers, but the single Oh is the one you watch. If the Oh doesn't come up during your first eight bets on the three numbers, then you start to play the Oh only, and double up until it hits. Four, eight, and thirty-six come up more often than any of the other numbers, and I can prove it by my notebook. So you'll break even, or pull ahead a little while you wait for the Oh to miss eight times. After eight times, the Oh's odds change, and it only takes a few turns of the wheel, doubling up, before it hits. Then, what you've done, you've made a nice profit for the day. If you play my system every day, betting with fifty-cent chips, you'll earn about five hundred dollars a day. No one understands roulette any better than I do."

  "Where'd you play roulette?" Hoke said. "Nassau?"

  "Aruba. After I sold my house I moved to Aruba and rented a little beach house. I just rented it. I could've bought it, but I didn't. Sometimes, when the wheel wasn't right--it's dry in Aruba, but there's more humidity some days than others, and humidity affects the wheel, you see--I'd fly over to Curacao. I'd play the casinos there. But I liked Aruba best. I had a housekeeper, and learned enough -Papiamento- to tell her what I wanted for lunch and what to get at the store. I got up late, swam some, ate lunch, took a nap, and then had another swim. Then I would eat dinner at one of the hotels, and play in the casino till midnight. I put in a six-hour working day, and my system worked fine. When I won five hundred, I quit for the day. Otherwise, on slow days, when I only won two or three hundred, I still quit after putting in six hours of play. After six hours, it's hard to maintain your concentration, you see."

  "You must've made a lot of money," Bill said.

  "I did. But then something happened. What I think is they got onto me and changed the wheels or something. I started to lose, but it wasn't my system's fault. My system's foolproof. All you need is concentration and patience. One mistake, one bet on the wrong number out of sequence, and it won't work. And that's what I don't understand. I never varied from it. Before I took my leave of absence from the airline, I'd already tested the system in Nassau, in San Juan, and in Aruba, you see. I'd fly deadhead down there and spend a weekend in the casinos. It never failed me, and that's what I tried to explain to Frances. I hated flying. Flying a plane's the most boring job in the world, and roulette was our ticket out. But Frances just couldn't understand."

  "But your wife was two months pregnant," Hoke said. "Maybe she wanted the security your job offered her?"

  Morrow snorted. "There is no security,' General Douglas MacArthur once said, 'there's only opportunity.' Besides, I told her there'd be no problem in Aruba with the baby. It would be Just as easy to get an abortion in Aruba as it was in Miami. Or, if she wanted to, I told her, she could have her abortion in Miami, and then join me later in Aruba."

  Ellita started to cry. She didn't make a sound, but tears rolled down her cheeks. Hoke and Bill looked at her, and then at each other.

  "Excuse me," Ellita said, breaking in sharply. "But I've got to go to the bathroom across the hall. Would you guys mind waiting till I get back before you go on? I don't want to miss any of this conversation, and I... I think your system's brilliant, Captain Morrow."

  Captain Morrow smiled, and got to his feet. "Not at all." He sat down again as Ellita left the room and closed the door behind her.

  "Did you lose it all, Captain?" Hoke asked.

  Morrow nodded. "I think we'd better wait for the little lady. She said she didn't want to miss anything."

  "Sure." Hoke nodded. Henderson broadened his metalstudded smile, and then offered Morrow a cigarette.

  "No thanks. I don't smoke."

  Ellita opened the door, and took her place against the dresser. "Thanks for waiting," she said.

  Morrow nodded and pursed his lips. He looked blankly at Hoke.

  "Did you lose all the money?" Hoke said.

  Morrow nodded. "Except for a thousand dollars I left here in Miami. I've been living on that. They wouldn't extend my leave of absence, so next week I've got to find another flying job somewhere and get requalified. Then, when I get another stake together, I'm going to Europe. But this time I won't stay so long in one place. I'll go to Monte Carlo for a few days, and then to Biarritz. The system works on any roulette table, so long as they don't change the wheel."

  "You won't have to go back to flying again, Captain," Henderson said, unhooking his handcuffs from his belt. "We're going over to the station now, and then, after we get your confession typed and you sign it, about eight years from now--it takes about eight years for all the appeals, right, Hoke?"

  "About eight years." Hoke nodded.

  "About eight years from now," Bill went on, "they'll burn your gambler's ass in the electric chair."

 
Bill handcuffed Morrow's hands and pushed him toward the doorway. Ellita snapped her purse closed.

  "Can I have my notebook?" Morrow asked.

  "Sure." Hoke picked up the notebook, unbuttoned the top button of the pilot's shirt, and dropped the notebook in.

  Then, while Henderson and Sanchez escorted Morrow to the car, Hoke got six dollars back from an unhappy Grogan (for the two nights' rent Morrow had paid in advance), gave the landlord a receipt, and added the six dollars to the thirty-seven dollars left in Morrow's wallet.

  10

  Bill Henderson had Captain Morrow handcuffed to the desk in Hoke's office. While Ellita typed a condensed confession for Morrow to sign, Hoke telephoned Major Brownley at home.

  "It isn't necessary for you to come down, Willie," Hoke explained. "I'll get an assistant state attorney over here and get Morrow booked for first degree."

  "Is he dangerous? I mean, dangerous to himself? If he is, you'd better have him locked up in the psycho cell at Jackson."

  "He's disoriented, but not suicidal. Altogether he lost more than two hundred thousand bucks, including the insurance money he collected on his wife. Losing the money's just about all he can think about. Everything else seems irrelevant to him now, and the confession's just a minor annoyance. If we put him in a psycho cell, it might weaken the case. I think the best thing to do is just book him and then let the judge decide whether he wants a psychiatric evaluation or not. Morrow didn't ask for a lawyer, but I called the public defender's office anyway, and they're going to send someone over. But the confession'll be signed before anyone gets here. Sanchez has just about got it typed now. Besides, we still have his confession on tape."

  "You read him his rights?"

  "It's on the tape."

  "You did a good job, Hoke."

  "Henderson spotted him, not me. It was just a fluke, Willie, a lucky accident. We didn't even know Morrow was back in the city. So I don't think it's a good idea to put out any PR about our special assignment yet. Hell, we haven't finished reading through the cases you picked out."

  "The papers'll pick up on it soon, Hoke. Morrow's wife was pregnant when he killed her, and reporters love stuff like that."

  "But we can still release this first one as just another routine case for the division. Later on, if we get lucky again, we can fill them in on the cold-case business. So why not just say we've been working on this case for a long time, which we have, and let it go at that?"

  "Okay. If the public defender gives you any flak, have him call me. I'll be home all evening."

  Hoke went down to the cafeteria and got four cups of coffee. By the time Hoke got back to the office, Morrow's confession was signed, all five copies, and had been notarized by the division secretary. Ellita and Henderson had signed it as witnesses.

  The assistant state attorney was a happy man, but the public defender, a young woman who had passed the bar recently, was not. If they had called her in time, she complained, she would have advised Captain Morrow not to sign the confession.

  "Why not?" Hoke said. "We had it on tape anyway, and this makes it easier to follow."

  "Are you going to ask Captain Morrow any more questions?"

  "No. All we need to know's in your copy of the confession. But if we do, we'll call you first, now that you've advised him to remain silent."

  "You guys think you've got away with something, don't you?"

  "The important thing is that Morrow didn't. He killed a young woman of twenty-five who was carrying his child. She never did any harm to anyone, and she didn't deserve having her head crushed by a sledgehammer just so this sonofabitch could gamble away their savings."

  "He's unbalanced now, and he had to be insane at the time of--"

  "Maybe so, but if you plead him not guilty by reason of insanity, he'll fry for sure. I'd advise you to plead guilty to second degree and let him take a mandatory twenty-five years. But I don't care what you do. Right now, unless you want to talk to him some more, we're taking him over to the jail."

  Hoke told Ellita to lock up the cold cases in the office and go home. He and Henderson would take Morrow to the lockup.

  Henderson took Morrow's arm and guided him out of the office. Ellita got to her feet, blocking Hoke from the door. "Did you people say anything while I was out of the room at Grogan's?"

  "No, but I didn't think it was very professional for you to take a side trip to the can in the middle of an interrogation."

  "It was all I could think of to do," Ellita said. "The battery in the recorder went dead, so I had to get out of the room to change it, that's all."

  "Did you have an extra battery?"

  "Of course."

  "Okay, then. That's professional. Did you get it all on tape?"

  "Everything, if you didn't talk while I was out of the room."

  Hoke patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. "You did the right thing, Ellita. Go on home."

  On the way to the Dade County Jail in the car, Morrow cleared his throat. "I signed the confession, the way you wanted and all, so I'd like to ask you guys a favor."

  "Sure, Captain," Henderson said. "What can we do for you?"

  "Well." Morrow licked his lips. "I'd appreciate it if you guys didn't tell the airline about this matter. If they found out I was a gambler, they'd put the word out on me, and I'd never get another crack at flying again. Airlines are like that. They consider gambling as obsessive behavior, you know, and if it ever gets on your record, they won't rehire you as a pilot."

  "I won't tell the airline," Bill said. "How about you, Hoke?"

  "I won't tell 'em either."

  "Thanks," Morrow said, "thanks a lot." Relieved, he sat back and studied his notebook until they got to the jail.

  It was after 11 P.M. when Hoke got back to his suite at the Eldorado. He was exhausted from the long day, and he was hungry. He heated a can of chunky turkey-noodle soup on his hot plate and sat at his small Victorian desk to eat it out of the pot.

  Above the desk there was a painting of three charging white horses pulling a fire wagon. There was a brass chimney on the back of the wagon, spewing white smoke. The nostrils of the horses flared wildly, and the crazed eyes of the horses showed whites all around. Hoke liked the picture and never tired of looking at it when he sat at the small desk. The little sitting room was busy. The previous tenant, an old lady who had lived in the suite for twelve years before her death, had furnished the room with small items she had picked up over the years at garage sales. There was a mid-Victorian armchair stuffed with horsehair, and a Mexican tile-topped table holding Hoke's black-andwhite Sony TV. There were several small tables on long spindly legs (tables that are called either wine or cigarette tables), and each table held a potted cluster of African violets. There was a patterned, rose-colored oriental rug on the floor (a Bokhara, and quite a good one), but it had faded over the years and was spotted here and there with coffee and soup stains. On flat surfaces, including the builtin bookcases, there were abalone ashtrays, stuffed and clothed baby alligators, seashells, and a black, lacquered shadow box on the wall contained several intricately intaglioed mezzusahs, including one that had been made from a cartridge used in Israel's Six-Day War with Egypt. There was more than enough room on the bookshelves for Hoke's books: Except for a copy of -Heidi- (overlooked by Patsy when she left him), Harold Robbins's -A Stone for Danny Fisher-, and a -Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary-, Hoke didn't keep any more books in his collection. When he bought and read an occasional paperback novel, he dropped it off in the lobby so that one of the guests could read it.

  There were purple velvet draperies for the single window, but they were pulled back and secured by a golden cord so they wouldn't interfere with the efforts of the laboring window air conditioner. The walls were crowded with pictures, watercolors of palms and seaside scenes for the most part, but Hoke's second-favorite picture was a copy of -Blue Boy-, with the boy's costume fashioned of real parrot feathers. Each fluffy blue feather had been painstakingly glued in place
by someone, and when a breeze from the air conditioner reached the picture and ruffled the feathers, the figure shivered. The face, however, was not the boy in the original picture, but a photograph of Modest Moussorgsky's head, scissored from an encyclopedia, complete with the composer's magnificent mustache. The walls were papered with pink wallpaper, and dotted with tiny white -fleurs de lis-.

  The bathroom was also small, but the sitz-bath tub had a shower as well. There was also the little windowless bedroom. Most of the bedroom was taken up by a threequarter-sized brass bed, but there was still room enough for an eight-drawer walnut dresser. The closet was roomy enough for Hoke's old uniforms and blue serge suit, and he kept a cardboard box of his papers in the closet as well.

  This small suite was Hoke's sanctuary, and he was reluctant to leave it. Not only was it rent-free, it was home. He wondered if Mr. Bennett would let him take the -Blue Boy- and the fire horses when he left, and decided that he would not. If the pictures were removed, they would leave lightercolored square spaces on the wallpaper, and would have to be replaced with others.

  After washing the small boiler pan and the spoon in the bathroom basin, and putting the utensils back in the highboy drawer, Hoke bundled up his laundry, wrapping it all in his yellow leisure suit jacket. The Peruvian girl, a maid with no English, would pick up his laundry in the morning, including his gray sheets, and have it all back to him by Saturday night. She would wash and iron his two poplin leisure suits, put them on hangers, and by Monday morning he would be all set for another week's work.

  Hoke took a long shower, put on his last clean pair of boxer shorts, and decided to watch -The Cowboys-, an old John Wayne movie he had seen before and enjoyed. He poured the last two ounces of his Early Times into a glass, added water from the basin tap, and put the empty liter bottle into the wicker wastebasket under the desk. He drank half the drink and turned on his Sony before sitting in the Victorian armchair. The telephone on the desk buzzed.

  It was Eddie Cohen. "I hope I didn't wake you..."

  "I wasn't asleep. Who's calling?"

  "No one's calling. It's these two girls. There're two girls down here, and they say you're their father."