Charles Willeford_Hoke Moseley 04

by The Way We Die Now

  Hoke was also doing well professionally. He had a permanent assignment as sergeant in charge of the cold case files, which gave him almost unlimited time to work on the old and all but hopeless unsolved homicides. He had passed the examination for lieutenant and was at the head of the WASP list. Being at the top of the WASP promotion list meant that he had passed the exam with a higher score than any other candidate in the department, but it did not mean that he would be the next sergeant promoted to lieutenant. Because of affirmative action, there were three Latins and two blacks ahead of him for promotion (all with much lower scores than Hoke’s), but if the department ever did get around to promoting a white American to lieutenant again, Hoke would get the promotion. He had a little more than five years to go for retirement, and he was positive— or almost positive—that he would be promoted before he retired. And if not, whoever said that life was fair?

  When Ellita called him to dinner, Hoke broke his rule and decided to have a beer with his meal instead of waiting an hour after eating. To justify it, he decided he would drink only one more that evening and would hold off until 10:00 P.M., when the rerun of Hill Street Blues came on the tube.

  Dinner was roast pork loin, accompanied by boiled yucca, fried candied plantains, black beans, boiled pearl rice, hard Cuban rolls, and a salad of sliced tomatoes, avocados, and iceberg lettuce, with Ellita’s homemade Thousand Island dressing. There was a bottle of garlicky criollo sauce for the pork, a bowl of mixed green and black olives, and butter and guava jelly for the rolls. Hoke was served a baked potato instead of yucca (he didn’t like yucca). After he had split and mashed the potato, he spooned black beans over it and added a jigger of sweet sherry to the mixture. Ellita and the girls took ample portions as well, but unlike Hoke, they wouldn’t eat seconds. Ellita, who starved herself during the day, always felt entitled to at least one decent meal at dinnertime, so she still managed to keep her weight on a fairly even basis. Hoke took second helpings but ate only one baked potato.

  After everyone was served and eating, Hoke told them about the new chief’s planned no-smoking-in-the-station rules.

  “Henderson was taking a survey in the division, and it could be a narrow margin. A lot of guys have quit already, and it may be a majority for the new chief. If so, I’ll have to go outside every time I want a smoke.”

  “You’ve been trying to quit,” Ellita said, “and if he makes the rule, it’ll be that much easier for you to stop.”

  “That isn’t the point, Ellita. Smoking’s still a legal activity in this country, and cigarettes are still sold in the stores. If it’s legal to buy ’em, it should be legal to smoke ’em. It’s a hard habit to break, and I don’t think the new chief can enforce a rule like that for very long without a rebellion from the PBA. So tomorrow I’m going to get together with Bill and start a little office pool. I think, if the rule goes in, it’ll last for only three days.”

  “I’d say five,” Ellita said. “Put me down for number five in the pool. How much for each ticket?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it. Five dollars, do you think?”

  “That’s too much. Make it two dollars a ticket. I’ll give you the money after dinner. Save me number five.”

  “I still say three.”

  “According to the Miami News,” Sue Ellen said, “the army’s already stopped soldiers from smoking in their vehicles and inside all government buildings.”

  “Where’d you see that?”

  “In the paper. A few weeks ago.”

  “How come I didn’t see it?”

  “I don’t know, but it was in there.”

  “The army won’t be able to enforce that rule either. At least they wouldn’t’ve been able to when I was in the service, and I was an MP.”

  “When you were in the army,” Aileen said, “they didn’t know that cigarettes caused cancer. Not back in the world war.”

  “I wasn’t in the world war. I was in the Vietnam War.”

  “They still didn’t know, not way back then.”

  “They don’t know now either,” Hoke said. “They only suspect cigarettes cause cancer. There’s no real proof.”

  “The surgeon general says they do,” Sue Ellen said.

  “Who’re you going to believe?” Hoke asked. “The Tobacco Institute or the surgeon general?”

  “The surgeon general,” both girls said in unison; then they giggled.

  Hoke grinned. “Me, too.”

  Hoke put two slices of white pork on his plate, cut off the fatty edges, and frowned as he looked around the table.

  “Aileen,” Ellita said, “please get the Tabasco sauce for your father. You didn’t bring it in when you set the table.”

  Aileen went into the kitchen for the Tabasco. Ellita put her utensils down and looked sideways at Sue Ellen. “As a favor to me, Sue Ellen, I’d like to ask you one more time. Please dye your hair back to its natural color for Sunday, and I’ll help you dye it blue again on Monday. Mama wants Sunday to be a very special party for Uncle Arnoldo, and she says it would upset him to see blue hair on a woman. Tío Arnoldo’s a very conservative man, and he wouldn’t understand.”

  Sue Ellen shook her head. “No, Ellita. If he’s going to live here, he’ll have to accept America as it is, and it might do him good to see blue hair. Miami isn’t Cuba. We can do what we please here.”

  “He understands that, but he’s been waiting in Costa Rica for four years for his visa, and every relative we have will be at the party Sunday. He’s my father’s older brother and very dignified.”

  “I’m conservative, too,” Sue Ellen said. “But if you think the color of my hair’ll bother your uncle, I’ll just go to work instead. I can get more overtime in the car wash. In fact, I can work every Sunday if I want.”

  “I think you’ll enjoy the party, and I want you to come. It’s just that Mama wants everything to be nice for him. He was in prison for twenty-two years before he got to Costa Rica.”

  “I don’t speak Spanish anyway.” Sue Ellen shrugged. “I’d just as soon go to work.”

  “If you don’t come now, Sue Ellen, Mama’ll think it’s her fault, and you know she loves you.”

  “I like your mom okay, too, but I won’t dye my hair back just to go to a dumb party.”

  Hoke cleared his throat. “I don’t think I’ll be able to make it either, Ellita. I meant to tell you earlier, but it slipped my mind.”

  “You have to come, Hoke,” Ellita said. “Tío Arnoldo doesn’t know any Americans, and Mama’s already told him that I live here with you. If you don’t come, he’ll think you don’t approve of him.”

  Aileen returned from the kitchen and handed Hoke the Tabasco sauce. He unscrewed the top and sprinkled his pork liberally. “That doesn’t make any sense,” Hoke said. “Whether Sue Ellen or I come or not—or Aileen—makes no difference. We’re not related to your uncle. He wasn’t a political prisoner anyway. You told me he was sent to prison for killing a man, a man who was sleeping with his wife. He served his time and then got a visa to Costa Rica, so he’s paid his debt to Cuban society. I don’t hold anything against him. Now that he’s here in Miami, he’s just another lucky Cuban far’s I’m concerned. I can’t see why your family’s trying to make a big hero out of him. If he was a Marielito, with his prison background, he’d probably be locked up in Atlanta, waiting for shipment back to Cuba with the rest of the criminals.”

  “Tio Arnoldo’s not a criminal!” Ellita said. “He’s a man of honor, and he’s family! If you were getting out of prison and then exile after twenty-six years, we’d give a party for you, too. When you were married to Patsy, if you’d caught her sleeping with another man, wouldn’t you have shot the cabrón?”

  “Hell, no! You don’t shoot a man just because he falls in love with your wife. What you do, you get a legal divorce.”

  “You don’t understand Cuban honor.”

  “The Cuban judge didn’t either. He sentenced your uncle to life, didn’t he? Even though he got out in twent
y-two years. But I don’t hold it against him. I intended to go to the party, but I have to stay home and wait for a call from Major Brownley. This afternoon, just before I left, Bill Henderson told me to let my beard grow and that Brownley was going to call me at home Sunday.”

  “What kind of message is that?” Ellita raised her eyebrows.

  “It’s the message Bill gave me. It’s probably some special assignment. We’re shorthanded in the division, and Brownley decided to give it to me. What with the suspensions and resignations, I don’t think I’ll be on cold cases much longer.”

  “What time will he call you on Sunday?”

  “Bill didn’t say.”

  “Can Major Brownley do that, Daddy?” Aileen asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Make you grow a beard?”

  “I don’t know. One thing I do know—the department can make you shave off a beard, and a mustache, too, if they want. That was a concession we had to make with the new PBA contract. But I don’t know if they can make a man grow a beard or not. At any rate I won’t shave till I talk to him. Willie Brownley’s weird sometimes, but he’s not frivolous.”

  “Why didn’t he tell you himself, instead of Bill?” Ellita said.

  “He’s fishing down in the Keys with one of his old college buddies and won’t be back till Sunday.”

  “He can call you at my father’s house just as easily as he can here. I’ll phone Mrs. Brownley, give her the number, and he can call you there. You aren’t getting out of this party, and neither’s Sue Ellen.”

  “Okay.” Hoke shrugged. “Call her then. You heard that, Sue Ellen. We’re all going to the party.”

  “In that case,” Sue Ellen said, sighing, “I’ll dye my hair brown again—if you’ll help me, Ellita.”

  “I said I would, and I’ll help you dye it back again next Monday night.”

  “You don’t have to do that, Sue Ellen,” Hoke said, “if you don’t want to—I hope you know that.”

  “I know, but it’ll make it easier for Ellita. Besides, all afternoon those old Cubans will be whispering about the chica with the pelo azul, and I’m liable to say something nasty.”

  Hoke grinned. “You’ve picked up a few Spanish words, haven’t you?”

  “I hear the Cuban dudes talking behind my back at the car wash. They make jokes about my blue pubic hair, too— but not to my face. They know what kind of temper I’ve got.”

  “If you want my opinion—” Aileen said.

  “I don’t.”

  “—I think it looks gnarly. Blue hair, I mean.”

  “That’s enough about hair at the dinner table,” Hoke said. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  Sue Ellen glared at her sister for a moment and then doused her pork with criollo sauce without speaking. Pepe awoke and started to cry. Ellita got the baby from the crib, sat in her chair again, rolled up her blouse, and the baby began to suckle the left nipple.

  “Which breast does Pepe like best, Ellita?” Hoke asked. “The left or the right?”

  “What kind of question is that? He usually takes the left first, but that’s because I hold him that way. He doesn’t have any preference.”

  “Not according to Melanie Klein,” Hoke said. “When you took your psych course at Miami-Dade, did they ever discuss Dr. Klein’s theories about babies?”

  “I don’t think so. Melanie Klein?”

  “Dr. Klein. She was a child psychologist, like Anna Freud, one of the first to analyze children. She claimed that babies developed a love-hate relationship with breasts. Breasts are good, both of them, at first. Then, when the babies are weaned, sometime during the first two years, let’s say, and the breasts are denied to them, they become bad because they’re a source of frustration. Being denied means they’re bad objects instead of good objects, and they look at breasts as separate from their mothers. What mothers have to do then is to get them to see the mother as a whole person and not just as a woman who’s got two objects hanging off her to be loved or hated.”

  “What about the good breast and the bad breast?”

  Hoke thought for a moment but couldn’t remember. His complete knowledge of Dr. Melanie Klein was limited to a book review he had read of her biography in the New York Times Book Review. He had picked it up in the men’s room on the fourth floor of the police station. He had read the review while he was in the can, sitting on the commode, and he remembered thinking at the time that the theories of Dr. Klein were ludicrous.

  “It’s very complicated, Ellita. It has something to do with transference, but I haven’t read any Klein for several years, and I’m not sure exactly how it works. I do remember that Karen Horney supported Klein’s theories.”

  “We read Karen Horney at Miami-Dade. There was a chapter from Horney’s book Self-Analysis in our textbook. But I don’t remember any mention of Melanie Klein.”

  “It’s just a theory, I guess, like everything else in psychology. But if Pepe begins to favor one breast over the other, maybe you’d better look into it.”

  “I think Dr. Klein is full of shit,” Ellita said.

  Pepe dug his fat knuckles into Ellita’s left breast, trying to increase the flow. Ellita, eating awkwardly with her right hand, dropped a forkful of lettuce saturated with Thousand Island on Pepe’s head. She put down her fork and wiped the baby’s head with a paper napkin. She smiled.

  “Are you making all this up, Hoke?”

  “As I go through life”—Hoke shook his head—”I find that when I tell people something they don’t already know, they almost always think ifs a lie. Dr. Klein was a famous pioneer in child psychology. Just because you never heard of her doesn’t make her a nonexistent person.”

  “Daddy wouldn’t make up a story like that,” Aileen said. “He doesn’t have that much imagination.”

  Ellita and Sue Ellen laughed.

  “Thank you, sweetheart,” Hoke said, “for defending your old man.”

  Pepe squirmed, and Ellita shifted him over to the right nipple. He suckled and gurgled. The four of them smiled at the red-faced baby’s greediness.

  “So much for Melanie Klein,” Hoke said.

  AFTER DINNER SUE ELLEN AND ELLITA CLEARED THE TABLE and retreated to the kitchen to wash the dishes. Aileen, who usually helped, had a baby-sitting job down the street, and she left the house wearing the earphones to her Sony Walkman, listening to her new Jimmy Buffett tape.

  Hoke went into the bathroom, scrubbed his false teeth, and then put them into a plastic glass with water and Polident to soak overnight. He sat in his La-Z-Boy recliner, after turning on the set, and tried to change channels with the Telectron garage opener. It didn’t work on the TV either, so he turned off the set. He went over his theory in his mind.

  Three days before his death Dr. Paul Russell had parked in his marked space at his clinic—the clinic he owned in partnership with Dr. Leo Schwartz and Dr. Max Farris. Sometime during the day his garage door opener had been stolen from his white Mercedes. Nothing else had been taken. He missed the garage door opener when he got home because it wasn’t in the glove compartment where he always kept it. He parked in the driveway and entered his house through the front door. His second garage door opener— the one Hoke held in his hand—was kept as a spare, according to his wife, Louise, on a small side table in the foyer.

  For the next two days Dr. Russell had intended to get another opener but hadn’t got around to it. He was a busy doctor, and he still had the second opener. However, instead of taking the spare opener with him in his car, where it might be stolen again, he opened the garage from inside, backed his car out to the driveway, got out of his car, closed the door with his opener, and then went into the house through the front door. He put the opener on the little table in the foyer again. The procedure was annoying but not onerous, and he didn’t want to have the opener stolen again—not until he obtained another spare.

  On the third morning, after he had backed onto his driveway and closed the door, as he crossed the law
n to the front door of his house, someone stepped out from behind an Australian pine on Dr. Russell’s front lawn and shot him between the eyes with a .38-caliber revolver.

  Dr. Russell had had a gallbladder operation scheduled at 7:00 A.M. at the Good Samaritan Hospital and had backed out of the garage at approximately 6:15. His dead body, still warm, had been discovered at 6:30 by the Miami Herald deliveryman when he threw a paper onto the lawn. He had then knocked on the front door to call the police. Mrs. Louise Russell wasn’t home. She had gone to Orlando the day before to visit her younger sister, who taught the second grade. The deliveryman had then gone next door and called the police. He waited until the police came, standing beside the body, and said he didn’t touch anything. Dr. Russell had been killed instantly, and the garage door opener had fallen from his hand. His expensive gold Rolex wristwatch continued to keep accurate time on his wrist. The Russells’ Mexican maid didn’t get to the house until 7:30, and when she did arrive and saw the homicide team and the dead body, she became hysterical. It took Sergeant Armando Quevedo, the detective in charge of the case, several minutes to calm her down before she could tell them that Mrs. Russell was in Orlando. Sergeant Quevedo had called the clinic to inform the nurse about the murder. Dr. Farris had gone to the hospital to take out the gallbladder Dr. Russell had been scheduled to remove.

  All this had happened three years before—three years and three months ago—and now the case was very cold indeed. Some of Quevedo’s notes were in Spanish, but they were reminders to himself. The supplementary report was written in Quevedo’s clear, easy-to-follow English. There were no leads whatsoever, except that the killing had all the earmarks of a professional hit.

  Quevedo could discover no motive. Dr. Russell had no known enemies. He had been a hardworking professional, and he had put in long days. He earned more than $150,000 a year, and he also owned an eight-unit apartment house in Liberty City. The apartment house was managed for him by a company that specialized in renting properties to blacks, and the company kept fifteen percent of the rents it collected. And it always collected, or the residents were evicted immediately. Although the black people who rented the substandard apartments might have resented Dr. Russell if they had known that he was their slumlord, they were unaware of his ownership.