New Hope for the Dead (13 page)

“I don’t get it. How’d she sell the same house twice?”

“Marie says the house sells itself. The entire interior,
every damned room, is paneled in cypress, and the wood’s waxed and polished. People flip when they see the paneling. Then when they buy it and move in, the wood’s so damned dark they have to keep the lights on all the time, even at high noon. If they painted the paneling, the house would be ordinary, so they can’t do that, you see. But a woman, spending her days in a dark house like that every day, gets depressed after a couple of weeks. So they sell it again, and move. Marie says she’ll probably sell the house again before the end of the year.”

“At any rate, you won’t get stuck for her Bloomie’s bills.”

“No way. So what’s up, Hoke?”

“I’d like to talk to you. Can you meet me at the Shamrock for a beer?”

“I guess so. But I want to look at some Toros this afternoon.”

“Toros?”

“The mowers. I’ve been thinking about buying me a riding mower, and Toro’s supposed to be the best. If I had a Toro riding mower, I could probably get my son to mow the lawn. Kids love to ride these things. In fact, if I had a mower, I wouldn’t mind doing the lawn myself.”

“Why not tell Jimmy that he can’t use the Toro until he takes a shower after P.E.?”

Henderson laughed. “Because that would probably work, and then I’d never get to ride it.”

“I need to talk to you for a while, Bill, but I don’t want to interfere with your afternoon.”

“I’ll meet you at The Shamrock in a half-hour, Hoke. There’s no hurry about the Toro. It was just something I was going to do, that’s all.”

“Thanks, Bill. In a half-hour then.”

Hoke hung up the phone, thanked the cashier, and walked back to the bus station to retrieve his car.

Hoke was pleased with himself, by his boldness. He hadn’t known in advance that he was going to kiss Loretta,
but she had leaned right into it. If that fucking Asian woman hadn’t been there, the kiss would have lasted a lot longer. For a moment, he had forgotten all about Ellita and the girls; he had almost changed the date from Monday to tonight. He drove to The Shamrock, parked in the dirt lot in the back, and went into the bar.

The lighted clock in The Shamrock said two-thirty. Henderson was already there, sitting at the bar with a light Coors draft in front of him. Two men in three-piece suits were at the end of the bar talking about cars. They looked like used-car salesmen, but Hoke knew that they were both detectives with the Metro Police Department. Prince was on the jukebox, singing “Head.” The two elderly men who had played the song—one was an investigator for the D.E.A.; Hoke didn’t know the other one—were listening to the lyrics, frowning with concentration.

Hoke ordered a draft Michelob for himself, and then he and Henderson moved to a table in the corner by the front window.

Hoke told Henderson about the arrival of his daughters, and then told him about Ellita’s pregnancy and about checking her into the Eldorado. Henderson’s fixed smile didn’t change, but he listened attentively, and he didn’t touch his beer while Hoke was explaining.

“Right now,” Hoke finished, “they’re over at the Fifth Street Gym watching Tony Otero work out. So far, I
haven’t had enough time to think everything out, and I don’t know what to do about Ellita. That’s why I wanted to talk to you about it.”

“The situation’s newer to me than it is to you, Hoke.” Henderson sipped his beer. “Ellita’ll be okay, I think. In the long run she’ll be in a healthier situation. No one in her thirties should still be living at home. A few years back, she’d’ve been fired for getting pregnant, but not now. She can work till she starts showing, and then she can get an authorized maternity leave, married or not. Then, once the baby’s born, she can be back to work within a month or two.”

“I don’t know what to tell Willie Brownley, or whether I should tell him or not.”

“It’s not your problem, Hoke. Our new assignment’s only for two months, and if Ellita’s only seven weeks pregnant, she’s not going to show anything for another two or three months. Besides, it’s up to her to talk to Willie, not you. Her being pregnant sure as hell won’t interfere with our assignment. There’s no danger involved, and if it ever looks like there might be, we can always leave her in the office. Or something.”

“Ellita won’t ask for any favors, Bill. She may not be a libber like your wife, but we can’t patronize her just because she’s knocked up. She wouldn’t stand for it.”

“In that case”—Henderson widened his metal-studded smile—”we’ll have to be subtle.”

“You’re about as subtle as a hurricane.”

“What about you? You’ve already given her the weekly reports to do, and you had her type Morrow’s confession. I could’ve done that, you know.”

“Ellita types without looking, and you and I both have to look. There’s another thing she told me. The battery went dead on the tape recorder when we were talking to Morrow, and she saved our ass by getting the battery changed out in the hall.”

“Jesus, I didn’t know that. I just thought it was a bad time to take a piss.”

“I didn’t know either, till she told me last night.”

“Don’t tell Brownley anything about the pregnancy. We’ve got to hang onto Ellita, Hoke.” Henderson shook his head. “Do you really think she was a virgin, and got knocked up her first time out?”

“I’d like to believe it, Bill, but I can’t. She’s thirty-two years old. I don’t see how she could live in Miami for twenty years and stay a virgin. I don’t doubt that this Bruce guy she picked up was a one-night stand, but she must’ve experimented at least a few times before she met him. Hell, she went to Shenandoah Junior High, Southwest High, and Miami-Dade.”

“Think about what you just said for a minute, Hoke.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve got two teenage girls now, that’s what I mean. Fourteen and sixteen, right? Have you talked to them about sex yet? If you don’t talk to them soon and get them on the pill, you could have three pregnant girls on your hands before school starts.”

“I hate to think about anything like that.”

“You have to, Hoke. You’re a father now, and you don’t know what Patsy told them, or if she told them anything. Over on Miami Beach there’s teenage boys running around with perpetual hard-ons, and they can talk a couple of provincial girls from Vero Beach into doing damned near anything.”

“Okay, I’ll talk to them. You want another brew?”

“I’ll get ’em.”

Henderson went over to the bar to order. Hoke had wanted some advice, but not the kind he was getting. Henderson came back with two frosted mugs of beer.

“You ever talked to your kids about sex, Bill?”

“That’s Marie’s department. I might talk to Jimmy a little later and give him the standard lecture. I’ve warned them about drugs. Cripes, even the kids in elementary school are smoking pot already.”

“I’ve got to find a decent place to live, Bill. That’s my first priority.”

“Why don’t you borrow some money from the credit union?”

“I owe ’em too much already. I’m still paying for last year’s vacation and for the new engine in my car. But I’ll be a little better off now, because I won’t have to send Patsy any more paychecks.”

“Do you want to bring Ellita and the girls over to the house for dinner tomorrow? I can barbecue some burgers in the back yard, and we can drink a few beers. It’ll get Ellita’s mind off her troubles.”

“I’ll take a raincheck, Bill. I’m gonna spend the day looking for a house, or maybe a two-bedroom apartment.”

The afternoon rain began, and the temperature in the air-conditioned bar dropped immediately. The bartender switched off the overhead fans. Hoke looked through the window. The rain came down so hard and the sky was so dark, it was difficult to see across Red Road.

“I haven’t been much help, have I?” Bill said.

“Sure you have, Bill. Sometimes just talking about things is enough. The problem is I’ve got girls instead of boys. If they were boys, I could give ’em ten bucks apiece, tell ’em to hitchhike out to the West Coast for the rest of the summer. Then, by the time they came back, I’d have everything straightened out.”

“Would you do that?”

“Why not? That’s what my old man did for me when I was sixteen. When I got out to Santa Monica, I worked on a live-bait boat and saved enough money to ride the Greyhound back to Riviera Beach. I had a great summer out there in California, even though the ocean was too damned cold to swim in. But you can’t do something like that with girls. I’ll get them jobs next week, though. If they’re working all day, they won’t get into any trouble.”

“I might be able to help you there, Hoke. Marie knows a lot of people. Sue Ellen can get a work permit. But Aileen, all you can get for her is maybe a baby-sitting job. You have to be sixteen to get a work permit.”

“I’ll worry about that next week. But if you can find something for Sue Ellen, I’d appreciate it.”

“I’ll talk to Marie.”

“You want another beer, Bill?”

“I don’t think so. To tell you the truth, I feel a little guilty about taking the day off. Teddy Gonzalez called me at home last night. He’s stuck on the triple murder in Liberty City, and Slater’s no help at all. These three guys—all of them black—were tied hand and foot with copper wire, and then machine-gunned from the doorway. We know the killer was in the doorway because of the way the empty cartridges were scattered, and because there were no powder burns on the victims. Two were dead when the patrol car got there, and the third guy died before the ambulance arrived.”

“It sounds like a professional hit.”

“More like a semi-professional hit, Hoke. The guy said ‘Leroy’ before he died. A pro would’ve made sure they were all dead before leaving.”

“Just ‘Leroy’? Nothing else?”

“That’s all. There was no evidence of drugs in the house. The neighbors said these three guys had been living there about a week. We got an ID on all of them, but none of them was a Leroy.”

“Christ, Bill, there must be ten thousand men named Leroy in Liberty City.”

“It could’ve been worse. He could’ve said ‘Tyrone.’ Anyway, Slater told Teddy Gonzalez to check out everyone in the neighborhood named Leroy. In the first place, no one wants to talk to a white cop down there, especially a Latin cop, and Teddy’s been running into problems without a partner. That’s why he called me, and I didn’t know what to tell him.”

“What about Leroy’s floating crap game?” Hoke said, taking a sip of beer. “I don’t know if it’s still in business, but Leroy’s game used to move around the neighborhood in the vicinity of Northside, and that might be what the guy
was talking about, or trying to say. Tell Teddy to check out the game. If it’s still around, that might be a lead.”

“I never worked in Liberty City. Where was the game?”

“Tell Teddy to check the files. Leroy’s game was busted a few times, and he moved it around a lot, but the game was always in the vicinity of the Northside Shopping Center, because that was where the gamblers had to park. They had to walk to the game from there. Tell him to check with some of the patrol cars in the area.”

“I don’t know, Hoke. But it’s a better lead than trying to check ten thousand Leroys who won’t open the door. I’ll give Teddy a ring when I get home.”

“Sure you don’t want another beer?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t really want this one. It’s still early; I think I’ll drive over and look at the Toros.” Henderson got up, slapped Hoke on the shoulder, and pushed through the swinging doors into the rain.

The Clash was playing “London Calling” on the jukebox. Hoke strained to listen, trying to make out the lyrics, but could only understand every third or fourth word. The whole song made no sense to him. He finished his beer and the rest of Henderson’s.

Hoke drove back to Miami Beach in the pelting rain. He drove slowly. He was in no hurry to get back to the hotel. His little suite was no longer a sanctuary; it was full of females with unresolved problems.

After Hoke parked in his space at the Eldorado, he circled the hotel to check the bay side. Some of the residents had been dumping their trash into the sand of the filled-in swimming pool again, and the garbage pickup people had left a lot of litter scattered around the dumpster. Hoke entered the hotel from the rear entrance and wrote out his report at the manager’s desk, reminding Mr. Bennett to call the exterminators again. Hoke wondered sometimes whether Mr. Bennett ever read his reports. The conditions rarely changed, but that was the manager’s problem, not his—although Hoke hadn’t considered the Norway rat invasion as one of his reporting duties when he had agreed to take on the unpaid security position at the hotel.

The girls were in Ellita’s room. The three of them had been shopping, and Ellita had made curtains from red crepe paper and tacked them above the window with thumbtacks. The girls had arranged two large crepe paper bows, and these bows had been thumbtacked to the gray walls. Ellita had bought takeout food from a Cuban restaurant, together with red plastic plates and tableware. The girls had brought up one of the card tables from the lobby. There was enough red crepe paper left over for a table-cloth, and the table was set for four. A small pot of African violets had been brought from Hoke’s suite as a centerpiece. A styrofoam cooler filled with iced Cokes and beer was next to the card table.

“What’s all this?” Hoke said. “A party?”

“I hope you don’t mind, Hoke,” Ellita said, “but we decided to eat in instead of going out tonight. The girls said they never had any Cuban food before, and we wanted to surprise you.”

“I’m surprised. But there’s only one chair. If you move the table by the bed, I can sit on the bed. I’ll get a couple of more chairs.”

Hoke walked down the hall, opened an empty room with his master key, and brought back two straight chairs.

“Where’d you get all this stuff, anyway?” Hoke said, arranging the chairs around the table.

“The food’s from El Gaitero’s, but the rest of the stuff’s from Eckerd’s and the 7/Eleven.”

“We met Tony Otero, Daddy,” Aileen said, smiling behind her hand, “and Sue Ellen asked him if she could feel his muscle.”

“Shut up, Aileen,” Sue Ellen said, punching her sister on the arm.

“Did he let you feel it?” Hoke asked.

Sue Ellen nodded and blushed. “Aileen felt it too.”

“How about you, Ellita?” Hoke said. “Did you feel Tony’s muscle, too?”

Ellita laughed, showing her white teeth. “He’s just a little fellow, Hoke. He only weighs a hundred and thirty-four pounds.”

“I didn’t ask you how much he weighed.” Hoke grinned. “I asked you if you felt his muscle.”

“Of course.” Ellita laughed again and began to open the cartons.

There were fried pork chunks, black beans and rice, yucca, and fried plantains, all packed in separate cartons with tight foil-topped cardboard lids. There were two loaves of buttered Cuban bread, sliced lengthwise.

The girls didn’t like the yucca and refused to eat it. Aileen pushed the chunks of pork around on her plate, and Hoke asked her why she wasn’t eating the best part of the dinner.

“They hurt my teeth and gums, Daddy. My teeth hurt all the time anyway, and I can’t chew anything hard. I was supposed to see the orthodontist last Wednesday, but Mom was too busy to take me and said you’d make an appointment with someone down here.”

“Do you like those ugly braces?” Hoke said. “They look like hell, to tell the truth.”

“They’re too tight. I told Dr. Osmond that, but he said they’re supposed to feel too tight.”

“I’ll take ’em off for you when we finish eating. You got any Valium in your purse, Ellita?”

“I should have,” Ellita said. She got up from the table and looked into her purse for her pillbox. “I’ve got Valium, Tylenol-3, and some Midol.”

“Give her a half Valium now, and one T-3. By the time we’re through eating, they should be working a little.”

Aileen took the Tylenol-3 and the half Valium with a sip of Coke.

“Do you know how to take off braces, Daddy?” Aileen asked.

“Sure. I was a dental assistant for a while when I was in the army. I learned how to do everything, including extractions. They never taught me how to make false teeth though. If they had, I’d make a better set than the ones I’ve got now.”

“I think I feel a little dizzy already,” Aileen said, putting the back of her hand to her forehead dramatically.

“Are you all through eating?”

Aileen nodded. “I’m not hungry.”

“There’s flan for dessert,” Ellita said, “but I’ll save yours for you.”

“Flan?”

“It’s a caramelized custard. You can eat it without chewing.”

“I don’t think I want it. Not now, anyway.”

“In that case,” Hoke said, “go back to the suite and sit in the armchair. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

Holding the back of her hand to her forehead, and staggering slightly, Aileen left the room, closing the door behind her.

Hoke grinned. “She’s pretty good, isn’t she?”

“I never knew you studied dentistry, Hoke,” Ellita said.

“Neither did I. But you want the girl to have a little confidence in me, don’t you?”

Sue Ellen giggled. Hoke poked Sue Ellen in the ribs with a forefinger, and she giggled again.

“And don’t
you
tell her any different.” Hoke finished the rest of his dinner. He then ate the pork chunks on Aileen’s plate, and opened another can of beer.

“Are you ready for your flan?” Ellita said, opening another carton.

“I’ll skip dessert. I’m trying to cut down on sweets. What I’ll do, Ellita, I’ll clip those braces off with my toe-nail cutters. I’ve got a good pair, made in Germany, and they’ll cut damned near anything. You can hold her head still. Here, go down to the suite now and give her the other half Valium, and take her Coke along.”

It took Hoke more than a half-hour to clip off the rubber bands and the tiny bolts that held Aileen’s braces together. The tight rubber bands were more difficult to snip away than the tiny bolts. There was a narrow gold strip glued to her lower teeth, however, and he couldn’t get it off. There was no way that he could get a purchase on it with the clippers.

“I think,” Ellita said, “you’ll need some kind of solvent to remove that.”

“Does the lower band hurt, Aileen?” Hoke said.

“I don’t know. My whole mouth hurts now, so I can’t tell.”

“I’ll leave the lower band on, then. I’ve got to go to the morgue on Monday or Tuesday, and I’ll ask Doc Evans about it. He’s probably got some kind of solvent he can lend me. But right now, you’d better lie down. Give her another T-3, Ellita.”

Ellita took the girl into the bedroom. Hoke told Sue Ellen to gather up all the garbage in Ellita’s room and take it downstairs to the dumpster. “But don’t throw away the plastic silverware or plates. Wash that in Ellita’s bathroom, and put it away in her dresser.”

Hoke lit a cigarette and turned on the TV. Ellita came out of the bedroom and closed the door just as the phone rang. She picked it up.

“Put him on,” she said into the phone. “Yes, sir, he’s here. Me? We were just going over our plans for Monday, that’s all. Yes, sir. Just a second.”

She covered the mouthpiece. “It’s Major Brownley.”

“Shit,” Hoke said. “You shouldn’t’ve answered the phone.” He took the phone from her.

“Sergeant Moseley.”

“What’s Ellita doing in your room, Hoke?” Brownley was pissed.

“We’re trying to get a handle on what to do Monday, that’s all. In fact, I met with Bill Henderson earlier this afternoon. We’re all enthusiastic about the assignment, Willie, but there’s so much to do it’s hard to tell what to do first.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem if you saw my flag.”

“What flag?”

“The red flag I attached to the Mary Rollins file. I put the Rollins file on the top of the stack so you’d get to it first.”

“I didn’t see it. What I did, you see, was to divide the piles into three batches. So either Bill or Ellita must’ve got that one. Hold on a minute.” Hoke put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Did you look at the Mary Rollins file? Do you remember?”

Ellita nodded. “I had it, and then put it into my reject pile. It isn’t even a definite homicide, it’s a missing person.”

“Ellita saw it, Major Brownley,” Hoke said into the
phone, “but I didn’t. I told them we’d read all the cases first before we decided which case to work on.”

“Consider that number one, then,” Brownley said. “I just had another irate call from Mrs. Rollins, Mary’s mother. I’ve had one or two calls a month from this woman for the last three years. I want this woman off my back. Anyway, I told Mrs. Rollins that you were working on this case personally, so from now on you’ll get all her angry phone calls. Then you’ll see what I mean.”

“I’ll look at it first thing Monday, Willie.”

“That’s all I had to tell you, Hoke. That, and that it was an unpleasant surprise to have Sanchez answer the phone in your hotel room on a Saturday evening. You know how I feel about things like that.”

“I explained that. We were just—”

But Brownley had hung up.

Hoke hung up, turned, and grinned at Ellita. “Willie suspects a little hanky-panky. When you get up enough nerve to tell him you’re pregnant, he’ll put two and two together, come up with five, and tell you that Bruce, your detail man, is another Coconut Grove myth.”

“I didn’t plan to tell him about Bruce. The major’s entitled to know I’m pregnant, but there’s no hurry about telling him. But you’re right, Hoke, I shouldn’t have answered your phone.”

“Fuck him.” Hoke shrugged. “Let Willie think what he likes. He will anyway. Tell me something about this Rollins case.”

“It goes back about three years. Mary Rollins disappeared, but they found her car. They also found her shorts—they called ’em hot pants then—in a pole-bean field off Kendall Drive. Her bloody T-shirt was with the hot pants. They both had Type-O bloodstains, and Mary had Type-O blood. That’s about it. There was no body. Her friends at work were interviewed, but no one saw her after she left work to go home on a Friday afternoon. She didn’t have any boyfriends, apparently. Because of the bloody
clothing, it was listed at first as a possible homicide, but was changed later to a missing person case. I remember it from yesterday because I had to look up a word in MacGellicot’s notebook. He talked to a woman in Boca Raton, and then he wrote in his notes, ‘Hostile to males. Nugatory results. Maybe female investigator should talk to her.’”

“You mean ‘negatory.’”

“No. ‘Nugatory.’ I looked it up. It means having no worth or meaning. It’s about the same as negatory, but what MacGellicot meant, I think, was that the woman was stalling him because he was a man, and she didn’t like men.”

“Why didn’t he say ‘lying’ then? Why use a dumb word like ‘nugatory’?”

“We could ask him.”

“He left the department two years ago. Mac had a degree in sociology from the University of Chicago, and he got a police chief’s job in some small town in Ohio. We lose a lot of good detectives that way. These little towns that advertise for a chief in the journal always flip when a Miami homicide cop applies for the job. But they usually want a new chief to have a degree besides. It’s not a bad life compared with the things we have to do. Six cops, one patrol car, and a sign hidden behind a tree to make a little speed-trap money. The only crime you have to worry about is teenage drinkers pissing on the gravel in front of the town’s only gas station.”

“We can call MacGellicot on Monday, can’t we?”

“No, we’ll just look at the file. See what else it says. Maybe you can drive up to Boca and talk to the woman, if she’s still there. We’ll have to do something, now that Willie called. Funny you didn’t notice the red flag.”

“A bunch of the files are flagged, Hoke. You haven’t got to yours yet, maybe.”

“That’s what pisses me off. I don’t mind doing the job, but I hate to be told how to do it. I don’t like being called
at home either, just to get some woman off Brownley’s back.”

Hoke finished his beer.

“Tomorrow I’m going to see Ms. Westphal at the house-sitting service again. She’s got an efficiency available for three weeks in the black Grove, starting next Friday. She also pays the sitter five bucks a day for living in it. If you don’t mind living in the ghetto, Ellita, I can talk her into letting you have it. Three weeks’ll give you a base, and you can then look around for a decent place to live. Or maybe, after three weeks, you can move back home.”

“I’m not going back home again, Hoke. If I did, I’d get the silent treatment from my father. It’s time I left anyway. I would like to get a place in the same neighborhood though. That way, my mother could come over and help me with the baby.”

“You’ve got months to go before you have to worry about a baby-sitter.”

“I know, but I’ve thought about it.”

“How do you feel? Physically?”

“I feel fine. I like your girls, Hoke. Not only are they well-behaved, they adore you.”

“How could they? They don’t even know me, for Christ’s sake. And I don’t know what to do with them either. You’ve helped me a lot.”

“Did you call their mother yet? To let her know that they’re all right?”

“Except for a few letters, I haven’t talked to Patsy in ten years. If she wants to know how they are, she can call me.”

“Maybe she’s tried, Hoke? It’s hard to get you at the hotel.”

“I’ll tell you what. Get her phone number from Sue Ellen, and you can call her. Reverse the charges, and if she won’t accept the call, the hell with it.”

“Sure you don’t want to talk to her?”

“Positive.”

“I’ll call her then. If I were their mother, I’d want to
know that they got here okay.” Ellita cracked the door to the bedroom, then closed it softly. “Aileen’s sleeping like a baby. That was awfully kind of you, Hoke, taking her braces off.”

“What the hell.” Hoke shrugged. “She was in pain. I’m her father, for Christ’s sake.”

Ellita started to cry. Hoke looked at her for a moment, then picked up his leisure jacket, left the suite, and took the elevator down to the lobby. He didn’t know why he felt so lousy, so useless.