Charles Willeford - Way We Die Now

by Unknown

  "It could be."

  "Not if you saw the house. The previous owner let it go to hell, and it's been vacant for more than a year. He's gonna have to spend a lot of dough just to get it back into livable shape."

  "He's -got- a lot of dough, Hoke. Look, I've got two guys waiting here to see me...."

  "Thanks, Blackie. I'll keep in touch."

  A few minutes later Gonzalez came into the office. He handed the garage opener to Hoke.

  "It opened the door okay," he said. "But when I pressed it again, and I was parked right there in front of the driveway, it wouldn't close again."

  "If it opened the door, it should've closed it."

  "What can I tell you?" Gonzalez shrugged.

  "Did anybody see you?"

  "Nobody was around. It's a quiet neighborhood. But I felt bad driving off leaving the door open. Somebody could conic along and steal the riding mower that's parked inside the garage."

  "That's Robbery's problem, not ours. Take the opener back down to Property, and turn it in. Bring back the receipt, and I'll put it in the file."

  Hoke hid his disappointment from Gonzalez. At least he had been half right.

  Until Ellita had phoned him, Hoke had forgotten all about the Donald Hutton case, but there were some interesting parallels between the Hutton case and the Dr. Russell case. When he had more time, maybe he would dig out the old Hutton file and compare the two to see if he could discover anything else that was similar. He needed a fresh idea. But that was the trouble with cold cases. They were cold because everything, or practically everything, had been checked out already before they were abandoned and filed away in pending. That's why they were called cold cases.

  Hoke decided to go out and eat lunch before Gonzalez came back from Property. He had to work with Gonzalez, but if he timed it right, he didn't have to eat with him.

  CHAPTER 5

  After lunch Hoke typed his notes about the opener, his speculations, and put them into the Russell file, together with the receipt Gonzalez brought back from Property. He slid the accordion file back into his pending drawer. He would let his subconscious mind work on the case for a couple of days before he took the file out and looked at it again.

  Hoke and Gonzalez sat across from each other at a glasscovered double desk in their small two-man cubicle. They shared a phone and a typewriter. A two-drawer file cabinet with a combination lock held the cases they were currently investigating. The other cold case they had been studying for the past week was equally baffling. Instead of two accidental deaths, or suicides, it had turned out to be two homicides, and there were no discernible leads.

  Miami has termites, just like every other city, but they breed quickly and eat a lot of wood in the subtropical climate. Once they are discovered in a house, a "tent job" is the only way to get rid of them. It isn't unusual for a homeowner, once termites have been discovered, to have a new tent job every two or three years. Termite swarms have an uncanny knack for finding their way back to an edible house, and exterminators in South Florida thrive on repeat business. The house is put under canvas, and the tenants must stay away for from thirty-six to seventy-two hours while the Vikane gas kills the termites and other insects inside the house. Food and other perishables are placed in plastic bags during the tenting, and homeowners either stay with friends or put up in a motel until it's safe to return home. Burglaries of tented houses occur frequently, and three or four times a year, and sometimes more often than that, dead burglars, overcome by the Vikane gas, are discovered together with the dead insects when the owners return home. Vikane is a powerful poison, and it kills people as easily as it does termites. Burglars who specialize in tent job invasions wear gas masks and get in and out quickly with their loot. But amateurs who hold dampened handkerchiefs over their mouths and stay too long looking for valuables can be overcome by the fumes and drop dead to the floor like the roaches and termites. Usually, dead burglars are teenagers, high school dropouts with low IQs, but occasionally they are mature men who should know better. Warning signs are posted on all four sides of the tented house, in English and Spanish, but more than thirty percent of the Miami burglars are illiterate in both languages and cannot read signs. At one time the exterminator used to post a guard in front of the house. But the insurance rates went up considerably. The insurance companies told the exterminators that the fact that they did have guards meant that they could be sued by a dead burglar's family for failing to keep the man out. While a guard was sitting in his car out front, smoking and listening to a rock station on his radio, a house prowler could sneak under the tent through a back entrance. After this decision exterminators no longer posted guards and merely put up warning signs. Exterminators were not responsible for illiterate burglars because high school principals were not responsible for graduating illiterate students.

  No female burglar, teenage girl or mature woman, has ever been found dead from Vikane gas in a tented house. Females, Hoke reflected, taught by their moms about the danger of household cleaners, wouldn't be caught dead going into a tented house.

  Two dead black men, well bloated by the heat, were discovered in the foyer of their home, after a tent job, by Mr. and Mrs. James Magers. The Magerses, during the tenting, had made a holiday out of it and had taken the Friday evening to Monday morning cruise to Nassau on the -Emerald Seas-. When they cleared customs and drove home, it was almost 11 :00 A.M., and the canvas had already been removed by the exterminating company. The windows had been opened, and the Vikane gas had blown away. The exterminator was still there, however, and so were two uniformed policemen, who had been called by the exterminator when he reopened the house. The Magerses couldn't identify the two dead men, and they had been removed to the morgue. Except for crude tattoos on the backs of their hands--stars, circles, and two inverted V's-- there was no other identification on the two men. It was apparent that nothing in the house had been taken. There were no valuables in their pockets, and the house hadn't been ransacked. After checking, the Magerses said nothing was missing. Mr. Magers had left his World War II Memorial.45-caliber semiautomatic pistol (a highly pilferable item) in the house, and it was still safe in its glass display case. Mrs. Magers had prudently taken her jewelry with her on the cruise, and the purser had kept it locked in his safe when she went ashore in Nassau.

  The two men, or someone, had jimmied the front door open, after slipping under the canvas, and dropped dead in the foyer. Death was caused by the Vikane gas. The medical examiner then discovered bruises on the backs of both skulls, indicating that the men had been sapped and then tossed, still alive but unconscious, into the foyer. Also, the killer(s) knew that the bodies would be safely hidden inside the house for at least seventy-two hours, allowing ample time for a getaway. Hoke's problem, and Gonzalez's, was to discover the identity of the two men. The case was now two years old, and Hoke had no leads. The original investigator, a detective who was no longer on the force, had given up on the case after three fruitless months of checking. The homemade tattoos on the backs of their wrists indicated that they had once been in a Cuban prison or perhaps in some other Latin American prison, and that was all Hoke had to go on. Latin prisoners, in many cases, tattooed the backs of their hands with their crime specialty--burglar, arsonist, holdup man, and so on. But the stars, circles, and V's were not listed on the tattoo ID sheets Hoke had requested from Atlanta, where a thousand Mariel prisoners awaited shipment back to Cuba someday--if Dr. Castro ever decided to take them back.

  If the two men had arrived during the 1980 Mariel boatlift, they would have been fingerprinted. But there was no record of their fingerprints in Atlanta or in the FBI files in Washington. There were several Mariel prisoners at the Krome Detention Center in Miami. These men had served their sentences for crimes committed in America and were waiting deportation to Cuba, although they would probably remain incarcerated in Krome until Dr. Castro died before they could be returned.

  "I'll tell you what, Teddy," Hoke said. "Take these Polaroid mu
g shots and the tattoo photos out to Krome, and talk to some of the Cuban detainees. Even if we can't get an ID, they might know what the tattoos represent. We haven't got anything else. They're black men, but most of the Marielitos were black Cubans."

  "Will they cooperate with me at Krome?" Gonzalez asked. "The INS, I mean."

  "The INS, yes. But the Cubans may not. They're bitter, you know. They've served their sentences in Atlanta and want to be released to their families here. But you speak Spanish, and you can talk to them. After all, these poor bastards are in limbo here, with nothing else to do. They might cooperate, just to be doing something, or else think that if they help you, you might help them later by putting a good word in their files."

  "Is it okay to promise them that? That I'll write a favorable report for their files if they help me?"

  "Why not? A promise means nothing. They aren't going back to Cuba till Castro says they can, no matter what you tell them. See what you can find out about the tattoos."

  "How do I get out to Krome? I've never been out there."

  "First, drive west on Calle Ocho until you reach Krome Avenue. Turn left, or south, and look for the sign. Then talk your way in, and see if they'll let you interrogate some of the black Marielitos. Be sure to wear your jacket. It'll impress the Marielitos with its sincerity."

  "What's wrong with this jacket? This is a Perry Ellis jacket."

  "Nothing. It's perfect for this job, kid. If I had one like it, I'd wear it out to Krome myself. Take your own car, instead of one from the pool, and go on home when you're finished. I'll see you Monday morning."

  After Gonzalez left, Hoke wrote redline memos to Quevedo and Levine, appointing them to his crack committee. He placed the memos in their mailboxes. They both were on the night shift, and he would be gone before they read the memos and cursed him for giving them this opportunity to serve their division and community.

  When Hoke pulled into his driveway and parked behind Ellita's car, Donald Hutton, wearing a dark blue suit, was still sitting in a dining room chair on his front lawn. Hoke got out of his car without rolling up the windows first, slammed the car door, and crossed the street. He stopped on the sidewalk, not wanting to trespass on the man's property.

  "Why are you sitting there, staring at my house?"

  Hutton, who had been a tall, spare man to begin with, unlike his dead brother, Virgil, had lost more weight in prison. He unfolded his long arms, which had been crossed over his chest, and placed his spatulate fingers on his bony knees. Unlike Hoke, he had retained all his hair, and it had been teased into ringlets. A fringe of black curls obscured the hairline on his high forehead. His long nose hooked slightly to the left. His deep-set dark eyes were more violet than blue, and he had long black eyelashes. As he widened his eyes, Hoke could see the outline of the full optic circle. A half-smile made Hutton's full lips curl on the right side only, and there was a tiny square of dentist's gold on his right front tooth. He had been a handsome man at the trial, ten years ago, and he had worn a different suit and tie every day. Now that he had a few craggy lines around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth, he was even more handsome. Or craggy. Yes, that's the word for him, Hoke thought: -craggy-.

  Hutton pointed a forefinger at Hoke. "I think I know you, sir. Aren't you Detective Moseley?"

  "Sergeant Moseley."

  Hutton nodded. "I thought you looked familiar, but you've lost a little hair. And you live over there?" Hutton moved his finger slightly to the right, so it was no longer pointing directly at Hoke. "Then we must be neighbors. What do you do, Sergeant--congratulations on your promotion, by the way--rent a room from Mrs. Sanchez?"

  "That's Ms. Sanchez, and she lives in my house."

  "You aren't married then? That isn't your baby?"

  "No, that's Ms. Sanchez's son. My two daughters also live with me."

  "I saw them earlier. Nice-looking girls. How old are they?"

  "What are you doing out here, staring at my house?"

  "There's not much else to look at. But sitting out in the sun has been a rare privilege for me in recent years. I occasionally look down the street because I'm watching for the FPL man to turn on my electricity. The water man came already; but the FPL promised faithfully to send out a man today, and I don't want to miss him."

  "How come you bought this house? This particular house, right across from mine?"

  "Oh, I didn't buy it, Sergeant. I leased it for a year at a very attractive rate, with an option to buy at the end of the year. But I don't think that's any of your business. How much did you pay for your house?"

  "I'm leasing it."

  "At least your house is on the lake, and mine isn't. D'you ever swim in the lake?"

  "Swimming's forbidden. It was a pretty deep quarry, and some kids drowned."

  "A nice breeze comes off the water, though, doesn't it?"

  "A hot breeze. But you haven't answered my question."

  "I thought I did. I got an attractive deal, and I've always thought that Green Lakes was a quiet part of Miami to live. It's not quite as nice as I remember it, but it's convenient for shopping. The new shopping center's only five blocks away."

  "You threatened my life, Hutton. D'you remember that, too?"

  "Yes, I did, didn't I?" Hutton smiled crookedly. "But I was upset at the time. After all, I was an innocent man and was sentenced for a crime I didn't commit."

  "You killed your brother, all right. That was proven to the satisfaction of the jury."

  "A new trial would bring a different verdict. But I was denied a new trial. I took the deal, anyway, to get out of prison. But I still didn't kill my brother. Did you ever ask yourself how I, a man fifty pounds lighter than my brother, managed to get him to eat two spoonfuls of rat poison?"

  "Many times. How did you persuade him? There were traces even in the roots of his hair, so he took it over a long period of time."

  "I didn't put it in his shampoo either, Sergeant. I loved my brother and wished him no harm. I only hope that someday you people will catch the real killer. But it's written off now, isn't it? I don't hold a grudge against you or the system. I think now you were only doing your job, as they say, so I don't hold a grudge against you. You may disregard my old threat, Sergeant, if you haven't already. I hope we can be good neighbors."

  "-We'lI- never be good neighbors, Hutton."

  Hoke was perspiring freely. It was only 6:oo P.M., and with DST there would be another two and a half hours of sunlight. Hoke took off his jacket. The heat had no apparent effect on Hutton, despite his heavy blue serge suit.

  "The only way we'll ever be good neighbors, Hutton, is if you stay on your side of the street and I stay on mine. And keep away from my family." Hoke turned on his heel and crossed the street. He imagined that he could feel Hutton's violet eyes boring into his back. He rolled up the windows in his car and went into the house without looking over at Hutton. Hoke realized he had come out badly in the little confrontation. He should have ignored the man altogether, but it was too late now.

  Hoke showered and wished that he could shave. The dark gray stubble on his chin and cheeks, and the thick mixture of black and red hairs on his upper lip, made him feel seedy and unclean, even after his shower. He put on a pair of khaki shorts and a clean white T-shirt and sat on the edge of his army cot in his small bedroom.

  He was angry about Hutton, but there didn't seem to be anything he could do about it. Ten years was a long time for a man to hold a grudge. Either a man would forget about it altogether, or he would nurse it, hugging it to his chest, and let it become an integral part of his being. Donald Hutton was an educated man, with a degree in agriculture from Valdosta State College. He still had a trace of Georgia accent in his voice, but not very much. Voices flattened out, and accents--except for Latins--eventually disappeared after a man had lived in Miami for a few years. Even Hoke called the city "Miami" now instead of "Mi-am-ah," as he had when he first moved down here from Riviera Beach, Florida.

  How -did- Do
nald persuade his brother to take strychnine? This was a point that Hoke had never been able to clear up, although it hadn't mattered too much at the time. Hoke's part in the process was to find enough evidence to go to trial, and he had. What the state's attorney and the jury and the judge did with the evidence was not important to Hoke. Cases where the evidence had been very strong indeed had been lost by the state; other cases, with little or weak evidence, had obtained convictions. But if Hoke worried about lenient judges and juries letting people off, he would be (as some of his fellow detectives were) in a constant state of rage. In Hutton's case the man was surely guilty. Hoke was certain of that, although it hadn't mattered to him whether or not Hutton was convicted and put away. That part of the process was not his job, and Hoke was objective about the outcome of most murder trials, including the ones he had worked on. Hutton, of course, hadn't shared his objectivity. Perhaps now, with the knowledge he had gained at Raiford, Hutton had mellowed out. What did he say? "You were just doing your job." Right. By the time Aileen came back to his room to call him to dinner, Hoke had decided that Hutton was not an immediate threat to him or his family. The girls didn't know anything about the Hutton case, but he would remind Ellita to keep the threat a secret from the girls. There was no need to alarm the girls unless there was a need to alert them.

  Hoke went into the kitchen and told Ellita to say nothing about Hutton's ten-year-old threat.

  "You don't have to tell me that," she said. "I'd never tell them anything without talking it over with you first."

  "I realize that. But I don't want anything to slip out. We don't want the neighbors to find out who he is either. Otherwise, they'll be taking walks every night to take a gander at him out of morbid curiosity."

  Hoke took the platter holding the turkey breast out to the table and began to carve it into even quarter-inch-thick slices. There was Stove Top corn bread dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, and boiled rutabagas. There were avocado halves filled with shrimp salad as appetizers. Ellita had always laughed at the TV commercials of the housewife tests for Stove Top dressing. "Did the husbands prefer Stove Top dressing to mashed potatoes?" The husbands invariably wanted the Stove Top dressing, instead of the mashed potatoes, but Ellita knew that most men would want both--not one or the other.