Charles Willeford_Hoke Moseley 03

by Sideswipe

  “We get a lot of strange calls, Marvin,” Henderson told him. “What’ve you got?”

  “Do I get my deal first?”

  “That depends on your information, and the deal you want.”

  “I’m out on bond,” Marvin said, “for soliciting a minor for prostitution, and I want the charges dropped.”

  “That’s a serious charge. How old was the girl?”

  “It wasn’t no girl, it was a boy. He’s fourteen, but he was already hustling when I recruit him. It’s a bum rap, but they don’t like me over here on the Beach and they set me up.”

  “You realize that Miami and Miami Beach are two different jurisdictions?”

  “I knows that, but I also knows that deals can be made, ’specially on something like this massacre.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, Marvin. But you’ll have to come to the station to talk to me.”

  “I can’t do that. I done been told by a Miami vice cop never to come over to Miami again, or he’d shoot me on sight.”

  “Who told you that? What’s his name?”

  “A Miami vice cop. I don’t know his name, but he knows mine and he knows me. I’ll meet you this afternoon at four-thirty at Watson Island. In the Japanese garden, at the gate. I’ll show you some proofs of what I’m saying, and then we can dicker.”

  “Okay, Marvin. See you at four-thirty.”

  Bill Henderson passed this intelligence on to Hoke, and then returned to making up duty schedules for the following week. He also had a supplementary payroll for the division to get out.

  That afternoon, Hoke and Gonzalez drove to Watson Island, only an eight-minute drive from the police station, and parked in the lot outside the Japanese garden. The garden, donated to Miami by a Tokyo millionaire in 1961, hadn’t been maintained, but it was still open to the public every day until five.

  There was no one at the gate. Gonzalez looked at the jungly growth in the garden and shook his head. “This place was really something a few years ago, Sergeant. I remember bringing my girl friend over here on Sundays, just to walk around and look. There used to be a beautiful stone lantern over there, right by the bridge.”

  “Somebody probably stole it. The city can’t afford to have twenty-four-hour security on a place like this.”

  “Maybe not, but it’s a shame to let it run down this way. You think this Marvin guy’ll show up?”

  “You never can tell, Gonzalez. Usually, anonymous callers don’t show the first time, but if they really have something, they’ll call again. That’s the usual pattern. If this guy’s got anything at all, he’ll meet us eventually. Reward money brings them out, and it was in the paper this morning, about the reward being increased to twenty-five thousand.”

  At four-thirty, Marvin Grizzard left his hiding place behind the Japanese teahouse with the sagging roof, ambled over the arching bridge, and introduced himself. He was a tall black man, wearing pleated gray gabardine slacks, a long-sleeved flowered sport shirt, and shiny white Gucci shoes. The left sleeve had been rolled back one turn to show a gold Rolex watch on his wrist. He handed Hoke a square piece of black plastic, approximately six by six inches.

  “Here’s part of it,” Marvin said.

  “Part of what?” Hoke said.

  “Evidence, man. I cut that out of the Hefty bag.”

  “What Hefty bag?”

  “The bag that held the money taken in the robbery.”

  “Shit,” Gonzalez said. “A piece of plastic cut out of a Hefty don’t mean anything.”

  “It does,” Marvin said, raising his chin, “when you got the rest of the Hefty, which is complete ‘cept for this piece I cut cut. In fact, it’s two Hefty bags, one inside the other. And I’ve got all the money, too.”

  Marvin unbuttoned his shirt and took out a stack of banded twenty-dollar bills. The paper band was green, and the initials “V.P.” in black ink were scrawled on the band. Hoke riffled the bills and studied the initials for a moment.

  “’Cuff him,” Hoke said to Gonzalez. Hoke then moved to a stone bench, sat down, and carefully counted the money. It was a thousand dollars even. It was almost too much to hope for, but the initials should be those of Victor Persons, the murdered night manager of the Green Lakes Supermarket.

  18

  Marvin protested about being handcuffed, but to no avail. Hoke told him to sit on the bench and explain how he obtained the banded one thousand dollars.

  “What about my deal and the reward?”

  “Don’t worry about the reward. That money’s paid only if an arrest leads to a conviction. But if you’re a perp in this case, you can’t collect it.”

  “I’m not! I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it, and I got an alibi for the robbery. I was at the Dania fronton till it closed, and I got friends who was with me.”

  “You aren’t charged with anything yet,” Gonzalez reminded him. “And you don’t have to tell us anything. We can take you in on what we have, and anything you say can be held against you.”

  “You can have a lawyer present, too, if you want one,” Hoke added. “And if you can’t afford one, we’ll get one for you. D’you understand that?”

  “I don’t need no lawyer. I ain’t even no ’cessory after the fact. I’m a good citizen doing his public duty for the reward money, and a registered voter.”

  “You’re a convicted felon,” Gonzalez said. “How can you be a registered voter?”

  “Who told you ’bout that? Besides, I registered once, and I thought it was still good. My card’s right there in my wallet.”

  “Just tell us where the money came from, Marvin,” Hoke said. “We’ll check out everything you tell us, and if you’re in the clear, getting the reward money won’t be a problem.”

  “What about the soliciting charges?”

  “That’ll be up to the State Attorney. But she’s a reasonable woman, and if you help us, I’m sure she’ll do something for you. We can’t speak for the State Attorney, but we can make a recommendation. And that’s it. We won’t promise you doodly squat.”

  A middle-aged Latin man drove up to the gate, got out of his car, closed the gate, unlocked the padlock on the dangling chain, and then relocked the padlock on the chain.

  “Hey!” Hoke called out. “Don’t lock the fucking gate! Can’t you see us over here?”

  “¡Cerrado!” The man tapped his wristwatch, got back into his Escort, backed up, and drove down the gravel road to the causeway.

  “Jesus,” Hoke said, “the assholes we’ve got working for this city—”

  “That includes us, Sergeant,” Gonzalez said, “for arguing overtime with this funky bastard. I’ve got some leg-irons in the trunk. Why don’t we put ’em on Marvin here, and put him under the bridge overnight and come back tomorrow morning some time. If it’s five o’clock, it’s our quitting time, too, and I could stand a beer.”

  “We don’t have to do that,” Hoke said. “Marvin wants to tell us all about it. Don’t you, Marvin?”

  Marvin did, and he did.

  His story took them back to the night of the robbery. Dale Forrest, who had parked around the corner of the supermarket, with the nose of the Lincoln extended out far enough so she could watch the glass doors, had been instructed to wait for three minutes before driving up to the doors to pick up Troy and James. Troy had estimated that the job would only take three minutes, four at the most. When Dale heard the first two shots and the clanging bells, however, she had panicked and almost driven away without them. It was an instinctual feeling, but she didn’t leave because she knew, an instant later, that if she did drive away Troy would find her, no matter where she went, and kill her. Besides, Dale had never acted that independently. A man had always told her what to do, for as long as she could remember, beginning with her father, and her Uncle Bob, who had lived with the family and seduced her when she was eleven, and all of her brothers, and the men she had lived with, off and on, since she had left home. So she had gripped the wheel hard with both hands and kept he
r eyes on the luminous dashboard clock. She twitched and bit her lip when the shotgun fired again, but she waited till the three minutes were up before she left the concealed parking spot. She looked through the window just in time to see Troy deliberately kill James. She knew then that Troy was probably going to kill her as well, that Troy did not intend to take her with him to Haiti, and that there wasn’t any plastic surgeon in Haiti to fix her face, either. The pearl-handled .25 semi-automatic pistol was in her lap. When Troy threw the Hefty bag into the back seat and told her to move over so he could drive (that wasn’t the original plan; she was supposed to drive), she knew damned well that he would kill her, and she panicked, and with a swift motion she picked up the little weapon, fired, took her foot off the brake, and pushed the gas pedal to the floor. The heavy car, already in drive, sprang forward with the tires squealing as Troy dropped to the sidewalk. Dale heard him scream, so she knew as she turned onto State Road 836 that he wasn’t dead. She hadn’t seen Mr. Sinkiewicz either, so she suspected that Troy had killed him, too.

  At first, Dale was going to follow the original plan and drive back to the garage apartment, but she quickly changed her mind. Her packed suitcase was already in the back of the Lincoln, and so were Troy’s things. And with Mr. Sinkiewicz’s Honda still in the parking lot, Troy would undoubtedly follow her back to the apartment in the old man’s car. At the next exit, Dale got off the overpass and drove through unfamiliar neighborhoods until she reached Biscayne Boulevard. She stopped at a Denny’s, parked and locked the car in the back lot, and went inside, taking a booth in the corner. She ordered a ham sandwich she didn’t want, to go with the coffee she did, and tried to figure out what to do next. She couldn’t think very well at all, and she had to hold the cup of coffee, which was only lukewarm, with both hands to drink it. Dale was truly afraid for her life. Everything Troy had told her about going to Haiti and getting plastic surgery for her face and buying a nice home on the island where she could he on the beach and recuperate, everything, including her dancing career, had been destroyed when she shot him in the face. Now that she had a little time to think it over, she decided that maybe he wouldn’t have hurt her. In all probability he had just killed James and Mr. Sinkiewicz so he wouldn’t have to share the money with them. After all, Troy had loved her, and told her so, lots of times, especially when they were doing it in bed. For the first time in her life she had met a man who loved her, who appreciated her for herself instead of just for her body, and she had spoiled it all by panicking and shooting him. But if Troy found her now, he would surely kill her, and she could hardly blame him. Troy would believe—and how else could he think?—that she had intended all along to shoot him and keep the money for herself. She didn’t know what to do, she didn’t know where to go, and she couldn’t think of anywhere to hide where Troy couldn’t find her. With her face, her badly disfigured face, she could be tracked down no matter where she went.

  Not only that, but the car she was driving was stolen. Troy and James had hidden the owner’s body in the big Shapiro house. Mr. Sinkiewicz hadn’t been told about that because, as Troy had said, it might upset the old man, but the man and his car had been missing for three days now, and the chances were that the police were looking for the car. And if they found her driving it, and then found the owner’s body, she would be blamed for his murder and then it would all come out about the supermarket robbery plus the death of James and Mr. Sinkiewicz and she would be charged with those murders, too. Troy, of course, was way too smart to be discovered or caught, so she would be blamed for everything! And that could mean the electric chair.

  She ordered another cup of coffee.

  “Anything wrong with the sandwich?” the waitress asked as she refilled Dale’s cup.

  “It’s fine. But I think I’ll take it home and eat it. Have you got a doggie bag?”

  “No problem.” The waitress left with the sandwich.

  Doggie bag, Dale thought. She had all the money in that sack in the back seat of the Lincoln. She needed some advice and a place to hide and she needed it right away. That’s when Dale remembered Marvin Grizzard, the pimp she had hustled for when she had first moved down to Miami Beach from Daytona. Because of the way she looked she had been lucky to get as much as ten dollars a trick hustling Mariel Cuban refugees on the Beach. She hadn’t brought in enough income for Marvin, so after two weeks he had driven her across the causeway, dropped her off on Biscayne Boulevard, and told her she was on her own. He had been nice enough to give her a twenty-dollar bill, so she could rent a motel room, but he said that with her face she simply didn’t bring in enough money for him to take care of her. What little she did bring in each night wasn’t enough to pay the lawyer he had on retainer to get his girls out of jail when they were picked up by the vice cops. Dale hadn’t blamed Marvin. In his own way, Marvin had been decent to her, but business was business to Marvin, and he had a lot of expenses.

  But now she had a lot of money in the car.

  If she gave the money to Marvin, he would help her get out of town, or he’d come up with some way to hide her from Troy. She was sure she had never told Troy anything about Marvin. In fact, she had almost forgotten about Marvin until now. He was the only man she could think of who would know what to do.

  Dale paid for her sandwich and coffee at the cashier’s, then threw the foil-wrapped sandwich and Mr. Sinkiewicz’s signed traveler’s checks into the dumpster on her way to the car. She retrieved her suitcase and the Hefty bag from the car, wiped the steering wheel and door handle with a paper napkin from the restaurant, walked to the taxi stand at the Omni Hotel, and took a cab to Miami Beach. She checked into Murgatroyd Manor, a pink and green art deco hotel on Ocean Boulevard, paid a week’s rent in advance, and got a room overlooking the sea. She looked up Marvin’s telephone number, called his apartment, and spoke into his answering machine after the little ding.

  “Marvin, this is Dale Forrest. I’ve got the money I owe you. Five thousand dollars. If you’re interested, I’m in room 314, at the Murgatroyd Manor.” She hung up the phone, waited for a minute, and then called the desk and asked the clerk to send up a bottle of Early Times and a bowl of ice.

  An hour later, after she had had three drinks and had calmed down some, and decided not to drink any more, there was a knock on the door.

  Marvin, worried about some kind of a trick, but keenly interested in the sum of five thousand dollars, although Dale Forrest didn’t owe him any money—no one ever owed Marvin any money for very long—had sent Hortensia, one of his girls, to check on the situation while he waited in his Cadillac a block away. Dale handed Hortensia two hundred dollars in twenty-dollar bills.

  “Tell Marvin this is a sample, but tell him I want to talk to him in person.”

  Hortensia walked back to the car, gave Marvin the money, and told him that Dale was alone in her hotel room. She hadn’t seen anyone else lurking around, either. There was no one in the lobby, and the desk clerk was half-asleep behind the desk.

  Marvin went down the alley, climbed the fire escape to the third floor, walked down the corridor, and knocked on Dale’s door.

  The money, almost nineteen thousand dollars, had been counted and stacked on the double bed. The rolls of coins were beside the rows of stacked bills, and the Hefty bags, folded neatly into squares, were side by side on top of the pillows.

  Dale poured Marvin a drink over ice cubes in a plastic glass and told him about the robbery. She also told him that she had shot Troy, but that Troy, though he was wounded, was undoubtedly looking for her and the money, and that he was, in all probability, driving a brown Honda Civic. Marvin had nodded, asking a few questions but looking at the money instead of Dale. When she finished talking, he took another drink from her bottle of Early Times, this time drinking from the bottle instead of pouring a shot into his glass.

  All of this had taken considerable time. Dawn arrived before they finished discussing the situation. What he would do, Marvin told Dale, he would get her out of
the country. He would get her a ticket to Puerto Rico, and a passport so she could enter that country, but he would drive up to West Palm Beach and buy a ticket to the island from the Palm Beach airport, instead of Miami’s, because it would be unlikely that Troy Louden would think she would leave from Palm Beach. Troy might have the Miami airport covered, but he wouldn’t cover the Palm Beach airport.

  It would cost, Marvin told her, three thousand dollars to get her a false passport. The remainder of the money, except for a thousand dollars, which she would need to get started on in San Juan, would be his fee for these services. It might take a couple of days to get the passport, but she would be safe here in the hotel if she didn’t leave the room; meanwhile, he would drive up to West Palm and buy the ticket. He realized that his fee was high, but this Troy she told him about was a dangerous bastard, and he, Marvin, was putting his ass on the line—

  At this point, Gonzalez broke in: “You asshole. You don’t need a passport to go to Puerto Rico. It’s part of the United States!”

  “Since when? I thought it was like El Salvador—”

  “Never mind,” Hoke said. “Tell us the rest of it, Marvin.”

  “I reckon Dale don’t know that about Puerto Rico, either,” Marvin said, shrugging. “Anyway, that’s the plan I came up with. I took three thousand for the passport, and two hundred more to get the ticket, but I left the rest of the money in the room—to show my good faith and all. Then I left. I ate breakfast back in my apartment and watched TV. There was something about the robbery and massacre, but not too much details. I went down for the Miami Herald, you know, but there was nothing in the paper about it. The story had happened too late at night to get in. But at ten, when the Miami News came out, the first street edition, with the pictures and all, I realized that this situation was too heavy for me. I was gonna help Dale get away. I was gonna have a fake passport made up, and drive her up to Palm Beach myself, just like I said. But this was a big Murder One thing, so I put off doing anything, you see, trying to figure out what was best for me. If there’s one thing I don’t need, it’s a ’cessory rap to a Murder One rap, and on top of that, whenever I thought about this Troy dude my balls turned to ice cubes.