Charles Willeford - Way We Die Now

by Unknown

  What -was- he doing out here anyway? No driver's license, no weapon, no teeth, and no ID except for a handwritten identification card in his beat-up wallet--the kind that comes with a cheap wallet when you buy it. Not even a Social Security card for the unmourned Adam Jinks, stretched out now on a gurney in the Miami morgue with the top of his skull sawed off. He shouldn't have let Brownley take his teeth. Even if Adam Jinks was also toothless, he must have had a set of choppers stashed somewhere. The more Hoke thought about it, the more absurd the mission seemed to be. What was he supposed to do? Exactly. Get hired somehow by Tiny Bock or perhaps by his honcho, Cicatriz, and then poke around on the farm to see if he could discover a few more buried Haitians? Cicatriz. Cicatriz? The name sounded familiar. Of course. -Cicatriz-, in Spanish, means "scar," so that couldn't be the Mexican foreman's real name. He would have a scar, and it would be a lulu of a scar if he used it as his moniker. Jesus, what was he getting into, and why should he do it?

  Hoke lighted another cigarette and decided to return to Miami. He could cross the road to Monroe Station, buy a fresh pack of Kools, and then pay someone--sooner or later--five bucks to give him a ride back to Miami. This was not a legitimate assignment for a Miami homicide detective, and there wasn't a damned thing Brownley could do about it.

  A huge Mack sixteen-wheeler slowed slightly as Hoke held out his thumb and pulled to a wavering stop some two hundred yards past the Indian Village. Hoke ran toward the truck but slowed after the first hundred yards, panting for breath. He was almost out of wind by the time he reached the cab. He climbed the three steep steps, opened the door, and collapsed on the sheepskin seat in the airconditioned comfort of the monstrous cab.

  "Sorry," the young driver said, grinning, "I didn't stop a little sooner, but I was afraid she'd jackknife on me."

  Hoke nodded, gasping. "That's okay."

  "I don't know how to back her very good neither. To go one way, you see, you gotta turn the wheel the other way, and even then it don't always back straight. I'm still learnin' how to drive her. You may not believe it, but this baby's got seven shifts forward and three shifts in reverse."

  "Sure, I believe it. But you'd better move it on out 'cause you're still on the road, and someone might ram into you."

  "Right. I'll just take a quick look at this little diagram on the dashboard here. It's got all the shifts on it and stuff. I don't know what all this shit means yet on the dash. What's the tack-o-meter for? When I get her rolling past fifty, that needle spins around like crazy. So I slow her back down to forty-five."

  "It just measures the engine's revolutions per minute, that's all. Ignore it. But forty-five's a nice speed for a rig this size. What're you hauling, fish?"

  "Smells like it, don't it? But I don't think it's fish. The back's all sealed up, but the guy on the loading dock had him a couple of cartons marked 'lobster tails,' so I think that's what I'm carryin'."

  "Didn't he tell you?"

  "No, but it don't matter none to me. For two hundred bucks I'd haul a load of dead babies, wouldn't you?"

  The driver, with a long chestnut mane, a silver stud in his right earlobe, and smudgy traces of sparse brown hairs on his upper lip, was about nineteen, Hoke thought. He wore tight, faded jeans, running shoes with red racing stripes, and a rose-colored T-shirt with a white sailboat printed on it. A CAT gimme cap rested lightly on the back of his head. He bit his lower lip with concentration as he studied the gear diagram bolted to the dash and then took the lever noisily through five gears as he accelerated. He didn't double-shift, and the truck jerked at each progression.

  "I usually skip four and five," he said, sitting back, "and it don't seem to make no difference."

  "It probably won't hurt anything on a flat road like the Trail. There's only a one-foot drop in elevation between Miami and Naples."

  "That's where I'm goin'. Naples. You got a driver's license?"

  "Yeah, but not on me. I left it back in Miami."

  "Me neither. That's too bad, pops. The main reason I picked you up was because I thought you might have a license. I don't mean I'd let you drive or nothin', but I wanted to tell a trooper, in case he stopped me, that you were the driver and you was givin' me lessons drivin' across the Trail. See what I mean?"

  "Not exactly. Who're you driving for? What company?"

  "He didn't say. I was drinkin' a Miami Nice Slurpee and readin' -Auto Trader- outside the Seven-eleven on Bird Road when these two guys drove up in a brown Volvo. Black guys. I guess I must've looked at 'em a little funny, you know. I never seen a black man drive a Volvo before, have you?"

  "Never."

  "Anyway, the driver got out and asked me if I knew how to drive a truck. I told him I sometimes drove my dad's pickup, and then he asked me if I wanted to make two hundred big ones. 'Sure,' I said, and got into their Volvo. We went to this warehouse over in Hialeah, and this here's the truck they give me to drive. He paid me a hundred in advance, and when I get to Naples, to the warehouse there, I get the second hundred."

  "In that case," Hoke looked out the window, and peered at the rearview mirror on his side, "we should have a brown Volvo riding shotgun right behind us."

  "I did, for a while. But they had them a flat tire back at Frog City. I suppose they'll catch up, though, 'cause I've been holdin' her down to forty-five."

  "What you've got here, son, is a load of hijacked lobster tails."

  "I think so, too. But I didn't steal 'em. I'm just a driver, and I was paid to drive a truck to a Naples warehouse for two hundred bucks. So even if I'm stopped, the worst they can do to me is get me for not havin' no license."

  "They're robbing you."

  "What do you mean?"

  "This load's worth at least two hundred thousand bucks, maybe more, and you're only getting two hundred dollars. If I were you, I'd ditch this truck somewhere in Naples and then call the bastards and ask for more money before delivering the load."

  "Do you think I should?"

  "I would. You can do as you please. But now that nobody's trailing you, you could take the cutoff into Everglades City when we hit Carnestown, hide out overnight, and then make your call tomorrow. By then they'll be ready to dicker. Either that, or they'll find and kill you."

  "I think I'll just take her on in to Naples."

  "Suit yourself. But you can get another thousand, easy."

  "Or a bullet."

  "Or even a burst of bullets. Two hundred grand is a lot of bread."

  "It don't take all that long to fix a flat. They might be right behind me already, just hangin' back a little."

  "They might."

  "But it's sure temptin', what you said."

  "What else you do, son, besides hang around the Seveneleven?"

  "Well, I worked at Burger King for a while. But I don't really see myself as a fast-food man, not on a regular basis. I been thinkin' about joinin' the army."

  "When?"

  "When my two hundred bucks runs out!" The kid laughed. "I ain't in no all-fired hurry to join no army."

  They passed through Ochopee--a gas station, the world's smallest post office, a grocery store, an abandoned motel, and a restaurant that also offered dune buggy and airboat rides to tourists--and then continued on to Carnestown without talking. Hoke got out of the truck, and thanked the driver for the ride, wished him good luck in the army-- that made the kid laugh--and walked across the highway to the ranger station, thinking that he could have made a nice arrest of a hijacked truck. But he was confused by mixed feelings. It still wasn't too late. An anonymous telephone call to Sheriff Boggis in Naples would take care of it. On the other hand, the kid had been good enough to give him a ride, and he had liked the boy. Besides, at the moment, he wasn't Sergeant Moseley. He was Adam Jinks, itinerant fruit tramp. Fuck Brownley, and fuck the law; he didn't even have his badge or weapon.

  The gray-haired lady behind the counter handed Hoke a partially filled four-ounce cup of grapefruit juice. Hoke tossed it down and asked for another.


  She set her lips in a prim line and shook her head. "Sorry, only one cup to a visitor."

  "Two ounces isn't much grapefruit juice."

  "T'aint s'posed to be. It's just a sample, that's all. We get tourists in here who'd drink it all day, just 'cause it's free."

  Hoke left the counter and studied the large relief map of Florida on the wall. Carnestown was just a crossroads, and no one lived here. Most travelers would stay on the Tamiami Trail into Naples, but sometimes tourists, to avoid traffic in downtown Naples, took the state road north to Immokalee. From Immokalee, they could take the dogleg road west again to Bonita Springs and then get on the Tamiami Trail again north of Naples and miss all the stoplights downtown. Hoke hoped that some of them would take the longer road into Immokalee today. Hoke walked back to the crossroads and waited in the sun for a ride to Immokalee. An hour later an old black man driving a halfton Ford truck loaded with watermelons stopped. Hoke opened the door, and the black man shook his head. He pulled his lips back and squinted his eyes. "In the back! If this was your truck, would you let me ride up front?"

  "Sure. Why not?"

  "You want a ride, you get in back!" He jerked his thumb.

  Hoke slammed the door, climbed into the back, and found a narrow space for his feet on the truck bed. He didn't sit on the melons. He bent forward awkwardly to hold on to the front part of the bed, and the truck lurched away. The load was too heavy for the pickup, and the driver never got above forty all the way into Immokalee. When the old man backed into a loading platform of a packinghouse off the main road, Hoke climbed down stiffly. Both his feet had gone to sleep, and he pounded them awake, stamping on the asphalt lot. His back was sore from holding the scrunched-over position, and he hadn't seen any mailbox with a "Bock" on it when he had passed the widely spaced farms. As Hoke straightened, his back made little cricking noises. The black driver disappeared inside the warehouse before Hoke had a chance to thank him for the ride.

  It had been at least eight years since Hoke had been in Immokalee, driving through without stopping on a trip to Fort Myers, but he didn't think the little town had changed much. There was a fresh coat of oil on the main drag, and he didn't remember the stoplight's being there at the dogleg into Bonita Springs. But the buildings were just as ancient, and there was a fine layer of dust over everything. Hoke walked to the nearest gas station and asked the attendant, a teenager wearing a white "Mr. Goodwrench" shirt, for the key to the men's room.

  "Hell, you know better'n that," the kid said. "You're s'posed to use the place down by the pepper tree. Get outa here! My john's for customers."

  The rejection astonished Hoke at first, and for a moment he considered taking the key off the doorjamb, where it was hanging, wired to a railroad spike, and using the toilet anyway. But the moment passed. His cover was working; he looked like a tramp, and he was being treated like one.

  Hoke looked down the highway and spotted the tall, dusty pepper tree. It was on the edge of a hard-dirt parking lot next to a building painted a dull lamp-black. CHEAP CHEAP GROCERIES had been painted in white letters above the door of the black building. There were seven or eight Mexicans near or under the spreading branches of the pepper tree. One sat in a rubber tire that had been attached to a limb by a rope; three men sat together on a discarded, cushionless davenport; and the others merely stood there, talking and smoking. This was obviously a work pickup spot, but they were all Mexicans here. If someone needed a man for an hour or an all-day job of some kind, he drove to the pepper tree and picked up a worker. Pay for the job would be negotiated, and off the man, or two or three men, would go. There were several of these unofficial pickup stations in Miami, in Coral Gables, Liberty City, Coconut Grove, South Miami, but those were reserved for unemployed blacks. There were no black men here under this tree. Hoke walked across the lot and looked beyond the tree. Behind the tree was a row of dusty waist-high bushes, and behind them a wooden rail was balanced across a sluggish irrigation ditch. This was the open-air john, and the bushes screened it from the road. Clumps of wadded newspaper littered the ground. Hoke took a leak, returned to the shade of the tree. Across the street was a long row of one-room concrete blockhouses. Each house had been painted either pink or pastel green, but most of them were pink. There were several blacks in each house, and he could see them inside through the shadeless windows. A good many children played in the dusty yards. Three skinny black kids were kicking a sock-ball with their feet, passing it to one another without letting it touch the ground. There was no laughter. Not letting the sock-ball touch the ground was a serious matter to these Haitian boys.

  Two Mexicans looked at Hoke incuriously when he joined them under the tree. One was tall; the other was much shorter and had a gold tooth. Hoke offered them cigarettes, but they were already smoking, so they shook their heads.

  "How's the job situation?" Hoke asked.

  "Picky spanee?" the tallest Mexican said.

  "-A poco-."

  "-Malo-." The tall man field-stripped his cigarette and began to roll another with Bull Durhan and wheatstraw paper. Hoke offered his pack again, but the man ignored it.

  "You ever hear of Tiny Bock?" Hoke asked.

  The shorter Mexican smiled, flashing his gold tooth. "-El Des pótico!-"

  The taller Mexican lighted his fresh cigarette with a kitchen match and shook his head. "-El Falico! Buena suerte-."

  The two men moved away from Hoke as he lit his Kool.

  Hoke went into the Cheap Cheap Grocery Store. It was more than just a grocery, although there were plenty of canned goods and a small produce section. There were also farm implements, rope and hoses, and bins of hardware items. Tables were piled high with blue jeans, bib overalls, khaki and denim work shirts, and rolls of colored cloth. There was a strong smell of vinegar, coffee, tobacco, and disinfectant. A pasty-faced white man stood behind a narrow counter next to a chrome cash register. There was a heavy mesh screen in front of the counter, with a passthrough window blocked by a piece of polished cedar.

  "Let me have a pack of king-size Kools," Hoke said.

  The man reached behind him and put the pack on the counter. He slid the piece of wood to one side. "Dollar seventy-five."

  "In Miami they're a buck and a quarter."

  The man put the cigarettes back and pointed east with his meaty arm. "Miami's that way."

  "Give me a sack of Golden Grain and some white papers."

  "No Golden Grain."

  "A can of Prince Albert, then, and a pack of Zig Zag. White."

  Hoke paid for the tobacco and papers and rolled a thick cigarette. He lighted it and inhaled deeply. He hadn't rolled a cigarette in several years, and he had forgotten how good Prince Albert tobacco smelled and tasted. He would be able to roll at least forty cigarettes out of a can of tobacco, too.

  "Does Mr. Bock ever trade here with you?" Hoke asked.

  "Is a bear Catholic?"

  "I heard he was hiring."

  "My hearing's bad. But you can hear almost anything down at the Cafeteria."

  "What's the name of it, the cafeteria?"

  "The Cafeteria. I just told you. Cross the road and down two blocks. You'll see the Dumpster in the parking lot."

  "Thanks."

  "What for?" The proprietor moved the block of wood back into place.

  There were at least a dozen men in the parking lot, most of them in the near vicinity of an overflowing Dumpster, and a few cars were parked on the perimeter. Some of the men were hunkered down, Texas-style, squatting on their heels. Others were in small groups, and a few sat on wooden boxes. There were no Mexicans. Three bearded white men, middle-aged or older, were sharing a bottle of peach Riunite. The front glass window of the cafeteria, lettered THE CAFETERIA in black capitals and painted on the inside of the glass, had a handwritten menu taped to it beside the entrance. Hoke examined the menu, checking the prices.

  With one meat, either roast pork or roast beef, a diner could have all the vegetables he could eat for $3.95. Soup w
as fifty cents a bowl, or a person could order a bowl of vegetables for thirty-five cents. Bread pudding, with white sauce, was fifty cents. Coffee or iced tea was a quarter. Corn bread was eight cents a slab, and margarine was two cents a pat. At these prices most of the tables inside were filled with customers. Tables were shared, and none of the chairs matched; but the diners were eating seriously. Little talk was going on, and they were going and coming from the line, serving themselves from large square pans at the steam table.

  There was a heavyset black woman working the stoves and refilling pans at the steam table. Several large pots simmered on the stove. A brown-skinned man with a hooked nose, mottled skin, and glittering black eyes worked the cash register at the end of the line. He also checked the tickets on all of the diners who came back for refills. A person with a $3.95 check could have more vegetables--all he wanted--but the man had to make sure that someone with a thirty-five-cent check didn't get another refill without paying another thirty-five cents.

  Hoke got a tray, a bowl of thick lentil soup, and two slabs of corn bread, without the margarine. He paid and sat at a small table for two against the wall. Hoke thought this was the best lentil soup he had ever tasted. The soup was flavored with fatback, diced carrots, onions, barley, summer squash, beef stock, garlic, peppercorns, and just the right amount of salt. Condiments were in a tin rack on the table. Hoke shook a few squirts of Tabasco sauce into his soup and began to spoon it into his mouth. A meal like this in Miami, he thought, if a man could find one like it, would cost at least five bucks. Little wonder the place was so crowded.

  An Oriental woman nodded and bobbed her head and then slid silently into the empty chair across from Hoke. She had a large bowl of stewed okra and tomatoes and a piece of corn bread on her tray. Hoke stopped eating for a moment, to see if she was going to attack her gooey bowl with chopsticks, but she began to eat with a soup spoon.