“What made them so certain?”
“Because the tattoos don’t mean anything. And only cane cutters would be dumb enough to make meaningless tattoos. I don’t see how any of this’ll help. There’s no cane in Miami to cut, so when I told ’em how the men were killed, they said they were probably droguistas”
“It’s more than we had before.”
“I had my watch before, too.”
“You don’t need a watch. You notice I don’t wear one. If you need to know the time, there’s always some asshole around to tell you.”
“Well, don’t ask this asshole again because I no longer have a watch.”
“Maybe it’ll turn up in the shakedown, Teddy.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I don’t either. Buy yourself a nineteen-dollar Timex.”
“I’ll do that, Hoke.” González laughed. “Soon’s I make my last two payments on my Omega. They all shook hands with me when I left, so one of those slick bastards must’ve slipped it off then. Far’s I’m concerned, those Marielitos can rot out there in Krome.”
“Write up your notes, and put ’em in the file. We might as well bury it in old cases now and give up on it. If they’re alien Haitians or Jamaicans, we’ll never find out who they were. Unless we get some new leads, it can’t be solved till we get some positive ID. But you did well, Teddy. See you Monday morning.”
HOKE SHOWERED AND THEN TOOK ELLITA GROCERY SHOPPING at the Green Lakes Supermarket. Aileen stayed home to give Pepe a sunbath and then a sponge bath. Sue Ellen had gone to work at the car wash. Saturday was the busiest day of her six-day week.
While Ellita fixed Hoke a turkey sandwich for lunch, Hoke tried to phone Quevedo and Levine to arrange a committee meeting. Mrs. Quevedo said she didn’t know where her son was or when he would be back. Myra Levine said her husband had gone to the races at Calder, and she had no idea when she could expect him home. Hoke thought both women were lying, but he couldn’t do anything about it if they were. He’d have to set up a meeting later on next week, when he could corner the two elusive detectives at the station.
Feeling restless, Hoke drove Aileen to the Cutler Ridge Mall, bought her a pair of Wrangler’s jeans, and then they went to the early bird movie at Multitheater No. 5 and watched Friday the 13th: Jason Returns. Aileen spent most of the movie with her face buried in Hoke’s right armpit. Afterward she told him that this was the best version of the Jason story she had seen so far.
“That’s because Jason killed mostly cops this time, as well as yuppies,” Hoke explained. “People hate cops and yuppies, and old Jason keeps up with the trends in each new movie.”
“You always told us that policemen are our friends.”
“We are, and most people know that, sweetheart. But everybody feels guilty about something or other, and cops in uniform remind them of their guilt.”
“Why do people hate yuppies? I don’t hate yuppies.”
“Americans hate anyone who’s more successful than they are.”
“I don’t know a yuppie from anyone else. How can you tell one? I dress well, but I’m not a yuppie.”
“Ask who they voted for. If they like Ronnie and Nancy Reagan, they’re yuppies. It’s a simple but effective test.”
“But you voted for Reagan.”
“My vote doesn’t count. I didn’t vote for Reagan, I voted against Carter. Carter let all those Marielitos in and ruined Miami as a decent place to live. You were still living up in Vero Beach with your mom then, so you don’t remember what a pleasant place Miami used to be before they let in all that scum.”
“Maria, my friend at school, is a Marielito, and she isn’t scum. She’s very nice—”
“I’m not an absolutist, baby. Some of them are all right, I suppose. But crime’s gone up twenty-five percent because of the Marielitos since they got here. I was talking to my partner, Teddy González, this morning. I sent him out to Krome yesterday to talk to some Marielitos, and while he was talking to them, one of them stole his wristwatch.”
“Right off his wrist?”
“Right off his wrist, and he never noticed it.”
“But he already knew that the Cubans at Krome were criminals. He should’ve checked his valuables at the gate before he talked to them.”
“That’s right. When you grow up, I’d like to have you as my partner.”
“When I grow up, I’m gonna marry a rich yuppie, buy a penthouse condo on Grove Isle, and tool around town in a red Ferrari.”
Hoke sighed. “My daughter’s a yuppie. Where did I go wrong?”
Aileen giggled and took his arm. They went out to find his Pontiac in the parking lot.
HOKE PULLED INTO HIS DRIVEWAY AT FIVE-THIRTY TWO LATIN gardeners were finishing their work on Hutton’s yard across the street. They had cut the grass, trimmed the Barbados cherry hedges, and lopped off some of the lower limbs of the smelly melaleuca tree in the front yard. A formidable pile of cuttings was stacked on the grass verge at the curb. The yard looks nice, Hoke thought. If he gives the house a new paint job, at least it will improve the appearance of the neighborhood. But he wasn’t going to suggest the idea; the less he had to do with Donald Hutton, the better.
Ellita met them in the dining room. She had rolled up her long black hair in empty Minute Maid orange juice cans. Ellita had an abundance of hair, and she had used eight cans. Her face was flushed, and her nails, freshly varnished, were the color of arterial blood. Her fingers were spread wide, to allow her nails to dry.
“Can you baby-sit tonight, Aileen?” Ellita held up her hands, palms outward, fingers spread.
“I’m supposed to sit for the DeMarcoses tonight.”
“Can’t you take Pepe along with you? I’ve already fed and changed him and prepared a bottle of water and another of orange juice. If he wakes later, you can give him one or the other or both.”
“You and Rosalinda going out?” Hoke asked.
“Rosalinda got engaged a month ago, Hoke. I told you all about that.” Ellita blushed and turned her head away. “I’ve got a date.”
“You’ve got a date?” Hoke asked.
“I’ll take care of Pepe,” Meen said. “But I’d better call Mrs. DeMarcos and ask her if it’s all right to bring him.”
“I already called her. She doesn’t mind. And Sue Ellen will be home later, if you run into any problems.”
“You’ve got a date?” Hoke asked again.
“For dinner and a movie. But we’re going to the movie first and then out to dinner. Los Olvidados, at the Trail. It’s an old Buñuel movie he made in Mexico about slum children. And I’ve never seen it.”
“Los Olvidados?”
“‘The Lost Ones.’ It’s supposed to have a lot of surrealistic symbolism, but I’ve never seen it.”
“Who’re you going with, if not Rosalinda?”
“I have a date. What do you care?”
“I don’t care. I think it’s nice. It’s just that you haven’t had a date, since, hell, I don’t know—”
“In almost two years. And I don’t want you to get all upset about it.”
“I’m not upset. I’m pleased. Why should I get upset?”
“Good. You’ll have to get your own dinner. But there’s turkey in the fridge, and you can make sandwiches. There’s still enough Tres Leches for dessert, and there’s ice cream, too. Heath Bar Crunch, the kind you like. Can you help me, Aileen?”
“Sure.”
They left for Ellita’s bedroom (Ellita and Pepe shared the master bedroom), and Hoke got a can of Old Style out of the refrigerator. He didn’t recall being told about Rosalinda, Ellita’s best friend, getting engaged. If she had told him, he would have remembered. She hadn’t told him; she only thought she had told him.
Sue Ellen roared into the yard on her motorcycle. She stripped off her leathers in the living room. She wore denim cutoffs and a Green Lakes Car Wash T-shirt under her leathers. She tossed the garments and her helmet on the couch and sat on the bean bag next
to Hoke’s La-Z-Boy reclinen Sue Ellen’s nose, prominent to begin with, looked larger because it was plastered with white Noskote.
“I’m really tired, Daddy. Can I have a sip of your beer?”
Hoke handed her the can. She took a sip and returned it. “It’s good and cold, but I still don’t like the taste of beer.”
“Sit there. I’ll get you a Diet Coke.”
Hoke brought her a Diet Coke and sat in his La-Z-Boy again. “I think six days a week is too much for you, Sue Ellen, especially out in the sun all day. Why don’t you work five days and rest on weekends?”
“On Saturday I get double time. And I usually don’t mind because we trade off jobs. But today I was drying all day and never got a job in the shade. Drying’s easier than vacuuming, but when you vacuum, you can sometimes talk the driver into a pine spray, and you get ten percent off the spray job. But Arturo hogged the vacuum all day and wouldn’t trade off with anyone.”
“Why not take Sunday and Monday off then?”
“Because if you don’t work five days, the sixth day isn’t a double-time day. You know that. But I’m so tired I’m going to take a shower and go to bed right after dinner.”
“I’m making sandwiches tonight. Ellita, apparently, is going out.”
“Ellita’s going out?”
“That’s what I said. She’s got a date.”
“Where is she now?”
“In her bedroom. Aileen’s helping her dress, I guess.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
Sue Ellen struggled out of the bean bag and ran down the hall toward Ellita’s bedroom. Hoke went into the kitchen and began to fix a platter of turkey sandwiches. There was pork, so he made some pork sandwiches, too. He used mustard on the pork sandwiches and mayonnaise on the turkey sandwiches. He put out another plate of sliced tomatoes, in case someone wanted to add them to a sandwich. He set the table and put the platter of sandwiches in the center. The table looked bare, so he opened a jar of pickles and a jar of olives, put some into bowls, and added the bowls to the table. He put glasses at the girls’ plates. There was a quart jar of iced tea in the refrigerator, Diet Cokes, and milk. Hoke was hungry, but he waited to eat with the girls. He sat in his La-Z-Boy and lighted a Kool.
Ellita, when she appeared in the living room, flanked by the two grinning teenagers, was transformed. A vision, Hoke thought. She wore a white organdy dress with a full circle skirt, and it fell just below her knees. She wore a pair of five-inch spike-heeled silver slippers, and a thin silver chain belt engirdled her narrow waist. Some cleavage showed in the V-necked dress, but not too much, and her golden skin seemed to glow. She had combed out her hair, and it hung in black curls to her bare brown shoulders. She wore coral lipstick and had touched her high cheekbones with traces of coral blusher as well. She had also used too much Shalimar perfume and had then added musk to that. Shalimar and musk filled the entire living room.
“Wow,” Hoke said, grinning. “You really look nice, Ellita.”
“Not nice, Daddy,” Aileen said, “beautiful.”
“What time is it? Is it six-thirty yet?” Ellita said.
“Six thirty-five,” Sue Ellen said. “Let him wait another five minutes. He’ll wait.”
“Where’s my purse? The movie starts at seven.”
“I’ll get it,” Aileen said. “It’s in the dining room.” Aileen brought the purse, a large patent leather bag. The shoulder strap had been broken and had been tied instead of mended.
“Your old bag spoils the effect,” Aileen said. “What you need is a little silver evening bag to go with that dress.”
Ellita shrugged. “No, I need my big bag. I’m just happy I could get into this dress again. Well, I guess I’d better go.”
“Isn’t he coming to pick you up?” Hoke asked.
“No.” Ellita lifted her chin. “He lives right across the street.”
Aileen and Sue Ellen giggled. Ellita looked at Hoke and smiled, but she blushed.
“You don’t mean you’re going out with Hutton?”
Ellita shrugged. “Donald came over this afternoon and asked me, so why not? He told me about the Buñuel movie, I haven’t seen it, so I said I’d go.”
“Have you got your pistol?”
“In my bag.” Ellita patted her purse.
“Good luck then,” Hoke said, “and have a good time.”
“I intend to.” Ellita left, and the girls, watching through the screen door, looked at her as she crossed the street.
“The table’s set,” Hoke said. “And I fixed sandwiches.”
They moved into the dining room and sat down.
“Isn’t Mr. Hutton a little old for Ellita, Daddy?” Sue Ellen asked.
“He’s only forty-five, and she’s thirty-three. Men like to go out with younger women, as a rule.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to go out with them.” Sue Ellen frowned. “I was propositioned last week by an old man—he must’ve been sixty-five—driving a Datsun. I told him to grow up!”
“I’d better take a look at Pepe for a sec,” Aileen said, getting up from the table.
“Don’t worry about Pepe,” Hoke said. “Let him sleep. He knows how to yell when he wants something. Get something to drink from the kitchen. I didn’t pour you anything because I didn’t know what you wanted.”
“Don’t get anything for me, Sis,” Sue Ellen said. “Did Ellita tell you where they were going for dinner, Daddy?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“The Biltmore, in Coral Gables. He made a reservation and everything, for ten o’clock.”
“When I came to Miami, the Biltmore was a VA hospital—”
“Ellita said he told the man on the phone to have the wine opened and burping on the table when they got there. Isn’t that funny?”
“Yeah,” Hoke said, biting viciously into a pork sandwich. “That’s funnier than a son of a bitch. I only wish I’d been here to hear him say it.”
7
THEY TOOK BOTH CARS TO THE PARTY FOR TÍO ARNOLDO Sánchez. All of his Miami relatives were there. Except for Ellita’s parents, Hoke didn’t know any of them. There were cousins and cousins-in-law by marriage and a few old men who had known Arnoldo back in Havana thirty years earlier.
Señor Sánchez (Ellita’s father) ignored Hoke, as was his wont, and because everyone at the party was speaking Spanish, Hoke didn’t try to mingle—nor did he want to mingle. The girls, both a little shy in this Latin gathering, stayed close to Ellita, taking turns holding Pepe so Ellita could talk unencumbered to her friends and relatives. Pepe began to cry, and Señora Sánchez, Ellita’s mother, filled his bottle with two ounces of jus from the roast beef platter. He enjoyed this greasy treat and stopped crying immediately. Hoke, with a plateful of pig’s feet and a long-necked bottle of Bud, shared a yellow velvet couch with two middle-aged, obese Cuban women who had no English whatsoever.
Hoke wanted desperately for Major Brownley to call him soon. No matter what Brownley told him on the phone, it would give him a chance to bug out early. This is why he had insisted on taking both cars, even though his Pontiac had ample room for the five of them, including Pepe’s paraphernalia.
Hoke, when they first arrived, had shaken hands with Tío Arnoldo and welcomed him to America. The old Cuban—who wasn’t really all that old in years but had been broken in prison and looked as ancient as God—had wept. He looked a little dazed and confused as well. He cried and smiled at the same time, exposing some snaggled teeth in his purple gums, and said something to Hoke in Spanish in a gargling voice.
This was a very emotional family, Hoke concluded—all of them. They laughed and cried at the same time as they talked rapidly and stuffed enormous quantities of food into their mouths.
Tío Arnoldo, Ellita informed Hoke, was the last one left in her father’s family, and now there were no more relatives to get out of Cuba. It had cost her father more than thirty thousand dollars to buy Tío Arnoldo a visa in Cuba and to support the o
ld man in Costa Rica until his entry visa to the United States came through. But everyone in the family had chipped in something or other, even if it was only a food package mailed to the old man during his four-year wait in Costa Rica.
Hoke admired the Sánchez family loyalty but didn’t think that the old man would contribute much, if anything, to America. Mr. Sánchez would support him, but within a few days Tío Arnoldo would be signed up for SSI and Medicaid and would be hospitalized eventually, free, of course, because he didn’t have a dime and was obviously going to die within a few months—certainly within the year. He was brown skin and frail bones, and the last job he had held—twenty-six years ago in Cuba—was that of a file clerk in an Havana bank. As a matter of “honor,” Ellita had said, Tío Arnoldo had refused to do any work in Castro’s prisons, and the wardens had been hard on him.
On the table the pig’s feet had looked appetizing, but now that Hoke had them on his plate he couldn’t eat them. They weren’t prepared the way he was used to eating pig’s feet (pickled, and from a jar), but had been fried in bacon grease saturated with garlic. He couldn’t cut the thick skin with the white plastic fork he had taken from the table, and the feet were so slippery with hot grease he couldn’t pick them up with his fingers either. Hoke returned the uneaten plate of pig’s feet to the table casually and went out on the porch to smoke a cigarette.
He finished his beer and put the empty bottle on the porch rail. There was a shrine to Santa Barbara in the front yard. It was surrounded by a well-tended bed of geraniums, and someone had placed a bouquet of roses in front of the three-quarter-size saint inside the concrete brick and stucco shrine. Hoke wondered if Señor Sánchez practiced Santería and if he had sacrificed a goat or a chicken in honor of Tío Arnoldo’s arrival. He wouldn’t put it past him, but he hoped that Ellita was too civilized for such practices. He didn’t know for sure. He had thought he knew her very well, after working with her in the division and living with her for more than a year, but apparently he didn’t know her as well as he had thought. He still couldn’t get over the astonishment that she would actually go out on a date with Donald Hutton, a man who had murdered his own brother.
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