Charles Willeford_Hoke Moseley 01

by Miami Blues

  Freddy held the coin case in his lap. He took out his .38 pistol, checked it, and then put the pistol back in his right coat pocket.

  “You—you aren’t going to shoot Mr. Wulgemuth, are you?” Susan said, licking her thin lips.

  “Not unless I have to,” Freddy said. “But sometimes,” Freddy shrugged, “they make you do it.” Freddy smiled like a butcher’s dog. “Like the time I broke your brother’s finger. He irritated me, and I had to break it.”

  “You killed Martin?”

  “I didn’t kill anybody. I broke his fucking finger, that’s all. And if you force me into it, by not doing exactly what I tell you, I’ll break your skinny neck.”

  Freddy got out of the car and ordered two café Cubanos at the counter. He downed his quickly and took the other one, in its one-ounce paper cup, back to the car. Susan rolled down the window, and he handed her the coffee. Her hand trembled so much she spilled most of the coffee on her jeans. There was a rim of white around her lips. Freddy shook his head impatiently.

  “D’you want another cup?”

  Susan shook her head. Her knuckles holding the wheel were white.

  “All right, then. Stay awake, keep the engine running, and I should be back in about ten minutes.” Carrying the coin case in his left hand, Freddy walked away from the car.

  Hoke was stopped by the red light. Susan, in the TransAm, had made it across just in time. Hoke watched her pull into the yellow loading zone on Miami Avenue and then back up to the end of the zone. Except for the spaces in front of her TransAm, there were no other vacant spaces on the street. A horn honked behind him. Hoke rolled down the window and waved the driver around. The man had to back up before he could pull forward again to get around Hoke’s car. He cursed Hoke and shook his fist as he roared by.

  Hoke watched Mendez get out of the car and buy coffee at the cafeteria. He took a cup back to the car. Hoke wondered if that was why they had stopped—to get a fucking cup of Cuban coffee? Another car pulled up behind Hoke and stopped. The light was green again, and the driver leaned on her horn. Hoke waved her around.

  When Hoke looked back at the Trans Am, he noticed Mendez turning the corner onto Flagler. As Mendez disappeared into the rain, the TransAm pulled away from the curb, with its tires squealing on the wet street, and raced down Miami Avenue. Hoke followed the TransAm, thinking, he’s going to buy something on Flagler, and she’s going to circle the block to pick him up so he won’t get wet. But Hoke had guessed wrong. That’s why a man needed a partner. If he had had Bill Henderson with him—or even Ellita Sanchez—she could have followed Susan, and he could have gone after Mendez on foot.

  When Hoke realized that the TransAm had got into the lane leading to the I-95 overpass, he switched lanes, bluffed his way into the outside lane, and made a left turn at First Street. He drove down a block, made another left, and finally got back on Flagler. The cars were barely moving and Hoke was caught by two red lights, but he inched along Flagler, watching the pedestrians make short dashes from one overhanging awning to the next. There was a crowd of South Americans with shopping bags standing in the arcade that catered to Venezuelans and Colombians. Hoke stopped completely to look them over. Mendez, in his light suit, would stand out among all those foreigners in funereal black. Hoke took out his pistol and laid it on the seat beside him. He looked at the empty bracket from which his radio had been stolen, and swore. Horns honked behind him, and he moved forward again. His only chance was to spot Mendez in the street, and that seemed damned unlikely. Deep down, way down there in the pit of his stomach, he hoped he wouldn’t find him.

  Freddy’s hair was wet and the shoulders of his gray silk suitcoat were soaked through by the time he rounded the corner to Flagler and reached the window of Wulgemuth’s Coin Exchange. Freddy pressed the buzzer beside the window and smiled when he saw Wulgemuth’s alert face behind the glass. The coin expert was in his early fifties but looked older because of his bald head, which was encircled by a clipped wreath of stubby white hair above his ears. His bulbous nose and his sunken cheeks were pitted with old acne scars.

  “I’m a police officer,” Freddy said into the recessed microphone. “Turn the window.”

  The bulletproof window revolved. Freddy placed the cowhide coin case in the drawer, and dropped his ID card and badge, still in its leather holder, on top of the case. The window revolved and Wulgemuth’s face disappeared.

  There were more people shopping on Flagler than Freddy had expected to see on such a miserable, rainy day, but most of them, Freddy supposed, were used to the rain. The rain was warm, and in places the sidewalk steamed. The temperature, despite the rain, was eighty-two degrees, as Freddy could see by the lighted digital clock on the bank tower a block away. The time was 10:04. The time and temperature flashed off, and were replaced by an aqueous message in dotted green lights:

  THE AMERICAN WAY

  IS OUR IRA

  The message puzzled Freddy. What was an IRA? He heard the window revolve. The badge and the ID were in the drawer, but not the coin case. Wulgemuth’s face was in the window again. “What’s your business, sergeant?”

  “Police business,” Freddy said. “I’ve been trying to get a line on these stolen coins, and I’ve got some other things to ask you about. Open the door.” Freddy took his badge out of the drawer.

  The face disappeared. A buzzer on the door lock sounded, and Freddy turned the knob as the door lock was released. The buzzing stopped as he stepped inside.

  “Shut the door!” Wulgemuth called from the back of the shop.

  Freddy closed the door with his hip. Wulgemuth had the coin case open on the counter at the end of the narrow shop.

  “These coins were stolen, you say?”

  “Yeah. I brought them down from the property room. We picked them up on a fencing bust, and we figured if we could get a line on the owner we could find out something more on the burglars. Is this a valuable collection, or not?”

  Wulgemuth shrugged. “What you’re talking about here, sergeant, is intrinsic value. That’s what I deal in. It’s worth what someone wants to pay for it, and that’s probably a lot more than its face value. This is by no means a rare collection, even though a cursory look shows that all the coins are in pretty fair condition.”

  “Did you ever see it before?”

  “As a collection, no, but I’ve seen a lot like it. What happened to your eye, anyway?”

  “Car accident.”

  “You oughta sue the doctor who sewed you up. You could make a bundle.”

  “He said it would look okay once it scarred over.”

  “He lied. Anyway, this isn’t my coin case, either.”

  Freddy closed the lid on the case, and snapped the two hasp locks closed. “I’ll try another dealer. Can you show me one of your coin cases? I’d like to see how different yours are from this one.”

  “I don’t have any on hand, not right now.”

  “Not even in your safe?”

  “None for silver dollars.”

  “Who else sells cowhide cases like this one, then?”

  “You’re on the wrong track, sergeant. All the trade magazines advertise cases like this. You can order coin cases by mail, from cheap canvas jobs to custom-made ostrich with your initials in gold.”

  “I see.”

  “How come a Homicide detective’s so interested in tracing stolen property? Is there a murder involved in this collection?”

  “That’s confidential, Mr. Wulgemuth. I’m also checking out your place here for security. We’ve had a tip, you see, and we’re thinking about putting a stakeout in here. Someone—we don’t know who—has been hitting coin dealers.”

  “You’re telling me! D’you know how many times I’ve been robbed? Before I put in that window, I was hit three times in one month! But I don’t need any stakeouts now.”

  “Why not?” Freddy smiled, and reached into his jacket pocket for his pistol. His fingers closed over the crosshatched grip.

  “Be
cause of Pedro.” Wulgemuth turned his head. “Pedro!”

  The door in the back opened with a bang. A short, wide-shouldered, dark-haired man came through the doorway. His double-barreled shotgun was pointed at Freddy’s chest. His dark, serious face was expressionless.

  “He’s been watching you all the time through the peephole in the door.” Wulgemuth laughed. “It’s okay, Pedro. This is Detective Sergeant Moseley. He’s with the police department.”

  Pedro lowered his shotgun and turned toward the back door. As he turned, Freddy pulled out his .38 and shot him in the back. Pedro fell, face down, through the open door to the back storeroom. The shotgun clattered on the terrazzo floor but did not go off. Freddy was still looking down at Pedro, deciding whether to fire another shot, when Wulgemuth with a sweeping motion brought up a machete from beneath the counter. In a wide arc, he brought it down on Freddy’s left hand, which was resting on the coin case. Freddy’s little finger, the ring finger, and the middle finger were lopped off cleanly at their second joints. The force of the downward swing drove the blade into the leather of the case. Freddy shot Wulgemuth in the face. The bullet made a round hole just below his nose. He fell back with a gurgling sound, dead before his bald head hit the terrazzo floor.

  For a long moment, Freddy looked without comprehension at the exposed and bloody bones of his left hand. The hand was numb at first, and then he felt a jolt that raced back and forth from his hand to his elbow. The stumps of his fingers were bleeding, but not as much as he would have expected them to bleed. He wrapped his handkerchief around his wounded hand, lifted the hinged Formica lid, and went behind the counter. He tried to open the six-foot wall safe, but the combination safe was closed and locked. He opened the cash drawer behind the counter. There were several bills in various denominations, as well as change in separate compartments. Freddy dropped his pistol back into his jacket pocket and scooped up the stack of tens and twenties. He turned over Wulgemuth’s body with his good hand and took the coin dealer’s wallet out of his hip pocket. Freddy stuffed the wallet and the bills into his inside jacket pocket and went to the front door.

  He couldn’t open it. He returned to the counter and stuck a paper clip into the door’s buzzer release so he could get out. He shut the heavy door behind him as he left, and the door lock continued to buzz. Anyone could walk in now, and the first one to do so would discover the bodies. But he still had plenty of time. Freddy put his wounded hand into his trousers pocket and walked through the rain to the corner, fighting an urge to run.

  There was a white Toyota half-ton truck in the yellow loading zone, but Susan and the white TransAm were gone.

  Freddy made an abrupt about-face and started back toward Flagler. Perhaps it had been a mistake to tell Susie that he had broken Martin’s finger. Anyone else might have questioned him about it; it was so unlikely to meet a brother and a sister in two different places on the same day in a strange town. But she had believed him because he had never lied to her before. He hadn’t told her much of anything about himself, so there had been no need to lie. But her whining had pissed him off. Of course, she might have been forced to move by a meter maid. In that case she would be coming up Flagler by now and he could wave her down from the curb. In the pelting rain, he stared down the street at the crawling cars on Flagler. A battered Pontiac Le Mans stopped suddenly in the middle of the street.

  Freddy and Hoke recognized each other at the same time. Hoke stuck his left arm through the open window and pointed his pistol at Freddy.

  “Freeze! Police!” Hoke shouted.

  There were three women with umbrellas on the sidewalk. Freddy stepped in among them, gave Hoke the finger, and ran. He knew that the cop wouldn’t fire into the pedestrians. For a cop to use deadly force, his life had to be threatened. Freddy crossed the street against the red light, dodging the slowly moving cars, ignoring their horns, and trotted up Flagler toward Burdine’s Department Store. He looked back once as he entered the store, but no one was following him. He walked briskly through the store, past the men’s clothing section, and then took the back exit to First Street. There were more than a dozen people in a ragged half-formed line as the Hialeah Metro bus pulled up to the bus stop. Freddy pushed through the umbrellas to the head of the line, and as the door opened, entered the bus and flashed his badge in the driver’s face.

  “Police,” he said. “I’m looking for a nigger with a radio.”

  The bus driver jerked his thumb. “There’s three of ’em back there.”

  The bus was crowded. Every seat was filled, and Freddy had to elbow his way through the standing passengers. There were three black men with radios in the long back seat, and they had spread out so no one else could sit down. But only one man, with a khaki knitted watch cap pulled low over his forehead, had his radio turned on. He was bobbing his head to a reggae beat. Freddy showed the man his badge and told him to turn off his radio. Sullenly, the man turned down the volume a fraction of an inch.

  “I said, ‘Off!’”

  The man apparently saw something in Freddy’s eyes. The radio was clicked off, and several nearby passengers clapped their hands. After three blocks, Freddy pulled the cord, and the driver stopped at the corner. As Freddy pushed through the back doors, the radio started again.

  Hoke got out of the car and watched Mendez dodge nimbly between the cars as he ran across the intersection and up the crowded sidewalk. Hoke lost sight of him when he slipped in front of two elderly women with shielding umbrellas. Hoke looked around for a uniformed policeman. There was usually a traffic officer on this corner, but there was no cop here today. He was probably inside somewhere, drinking coffee and staying out of the rain. The stalled traffic behind Hoke’s car honked ominously. He couldn’t leave the car in the middle of the intersection and run after his quarry. Hoke got back into his car, scanning the sidewalk as he picked up some speed, but he didn’t have much hope. The man could have zipped into any one of thirty stores, including Woolworth’s and Burdine’s.

  Susan, Hoke figured, was taking the I-95 Expressway back to Dania, which would get her home twice as fast as a trip back to Dania on South Dixie. Hoke would have to go back to Dania, question her, and then if she refused to tell him where Mendez was, could threaten to book her on a solicitation charge. He could threaten her, but he couldn’t pick her up. Dania was in Broward County, and Hoke had no jurisdiction in Broward County.

  At Sixth Street, Hoke turned right and found a parking space in front of a cigar store. He went inside, showed the man behind the counter his badge, and asked for the phone. The phone was on the wall behind the dealer’s back, but the receiver was on a long cord. The dealer, a white-haired Latin with a hoarse voice, handed the receiver to Hoke.

  “You tell me number. I dial. No one can come behind counter. I dial.”

  Hoke gave the man his office number. Ellita Sanchez answered the phone.

  “This is Sergeant Moseley, Sanchez. Is Bill Henderson around?”

  “He was in earlier, but he’s not here now. I think he went downstairs for coffee.”

  “You don’t happen to know any cops in Dania, do you?

  “No. I’ve never even been to Dania.”

  “That’s okay. I want you to get a message to Sergeant Henderson. Tell him that I need a cop from Broward County to meet me at two-four-six Poinciana, in Dania. You remember—the address of Susan Waggoner in Dania you got for me yesterday.”

  “I’ve got a cousin on the force in Hollywood. I could call him, if you want.”

  “He’ll do, but I’d rather have a Dania cop. Talk to Henderson first. He’ll know what to do. But if you can’t find Henderson, call your cousin in Hollywood. Tell Henderson that I’ve got a good chance to pick up Mendez.”

  “You can’t arrest anybody in Broward County.”

  “I know it, Sanchez. That’s why I want a cop from Dania, and I don’t know anyone there and it would all be too complicated to explain to anyone there over the phone. So just tell Henderson what I’
ve told you. D’you understand?”

  “I’ll go down to the cafeteria right now and look for him.”

  “Good girl.” Hoke handed the receiver back to the white-haired man. The man smiled and held up two fingers as he took the receiver. “Last month at Dania I hit two trifectas.”

  “Wonderful,” Hoke said. “Thanks for the phone.”

  There was a tiny cafeteria next to the cigar store. Hoke ordered a double espresso, drank it, and then bought two Jamaican hot meat patties to eat in the car on his way to Dania.

  22

  As the taillights of the Metrobus disappeared into the rain, Freddy walked through an A-1 Park-and-Lock lot and into an Eckerd’s drugstore. He bought a roll of gauze and a roll of adhesive tape and left the store. He kept his injured hand in his trousers pocket, and flexed his thumb and forefinger. They responded in time with the shooting pains to his elbow. The hand was no longer numb, but the pain wasn’t steady. It flashed and flickered off and on like a broken neon sign.

  A bearded man in his early thirties wearing a dirty yellow T-shirt stood under a ragged awning in front of a boarded-up storefront. He was drinking from a bottle in a brown paper bag.

  “Are you drunk?” Freddy asked him.

  The man shook his bearded chin. “Not yet.”

  “I’ll give you five bucks to do something for me.”

  “Okay.”

  “Bind up my hand.”

  Freddy handed the bearded man the sack from Eckerd’s, moved back into the recessed doorway, and took his wounded hand out of his pocket. He unwrapped the sticky handkerchief.

  The derelict put down his bottle carefully by the wall and took the gauze and adhesive tape out of the sack. Freddy held out his hand and the man shook his head and clucked.

  “Nasty,” he said.

  He wrapped Freddy’s hand tightly with the gauze, including the unimpaired forefinger, but left the thumb free. The man’s fingers were shaky but functional.