New Hope for the Dead

by Charles Willeford

  “Is he dangerous? I mean, dangerous to himself? If he is, you’d better have him locked up in the psycho cell at Jackson.”

  “He’s disoriented, but not suicidal. Altogether he lost more than two hundred thousand bucks, including the insurance money he collected on his wife. Losing the money’s just about all he can think about. Everything else seems irrelevant to him now, and the confession’s just a minor annoyance. If we put him in a psycho cell, it might weaken the case. I think the best thing to do is just book him and then let the judge decide whether he wants a psychiatric evaluation or not. Morrow didn’t ask for a lawyer, but I called the public defender’s office anyway, and they’re going to send someone over. But the confession’ll be signed before anyone gets here. Sanchez has just about got it typed now. Besides, we still have his confession on tape.”

  “You read him his rights?”

  “It’s on the tape.”

  “You did a good job, Hoke.”

  “Henderson spotted him, not me. It was just a fluke, Willie, a lucky accident. We didn’t even know Morrow was back in the city. So I don’t think it’s a good idea to put out any PR about our special assignment yet. Hell, we haven’t finished reading through the cases you picked out.”

  “The papers’ll pick up on it soon, Hoke. Morrow’s wife was pregnant when he killed her, and reporters love stuff like that.”

  “But we can still release this first one as just another routine case for the division. Later on, if we get lucky again, we can fill them in on the cold-case business. So why not just say we’ve been working on this case for a long time, which we have, and let it go at that?”

  “Okay. If the public defender gives you any flak, have him call me. I’ll be home all evening.”

  Hoke went down to the cafeteria and got four cups of coffee. By the time Hoke got back to the office, Morrow’s confession was signed, all five copies, and had been notarized by the division secretary. Ellita and Henderson had signed it as witnesses.

  The assistant state attorney was a happy man, but the public defender, a young woman who had passed the bar recently, was not. If they had called her in time, she complained, she would have advised Captain Morrow not to sign the confession.

  “Why not?” Hoke said. “We had it on tape anyway, and this makes it easier to follow.”

  “Are you going to ask Captain Morrow any more questions?”

  “No. All we need to know’s in your copy of the confession. But if we do, we’ll call you first, now that you’ve advised him to remain silent.”

  “You guys think you’ve got away with something, don’t you?”

  “The important thing is that Morrow didn’t. He killed a young woman of twenty-five who was carrying his child. She never did any harm to anyone, and she didn’t deserve having her head crushed by a sledgehammer just so this sonofabitch could gamble away their savings.”

  “He’s unbalanced now, and he had to be insane at the time of—”

  “Maybe so, but if you plead him not guilty by reason of insanity, he’ll fry for sure. I’d advise you to plead guilty to second degree and let him take a mandatory twenty-five years. But I don’t care what you do. Right now, unless you want to talk to him some more, we’re taking him over to the jail.”

  Hoke told Ellita to lock up the cold cases in the office and go home. He and Henderson would take Morrow to the lockup.

  Henderson took Morrow’s arm and guided him out of the office. Ellita got to her feet, blocking Hoke from the door. “Did you people say anything while I was out of the room at Grogan’s?”

  “No, but I didn’t think it was very professional for you to take a side trip to the can in the middle of an interrogation.”

  “It was all I could think of to do,” Ellita said. “The battery in the recorder went dead, so I had to get out of the room to change it, that’s all.”

  “Did you have an extra battery?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay, then. That’s professional. Did you get it all on tape?”

  “Everything, if you didn’t talk while I was out of the room.”

  Hoke patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “You did the right thing, Ellita. Go on home.”

  On the way to the Dade County Jail in the car, Morrow cleared his throat. “I signed the confession, the way you wanted and all, so I’d like to ask you guys a favor.”

  “Sure, Captain,” Henderson said. “What can we do for you?”

  “Well.” Morrow licked his lips. “I’d appreciate it if you guys didn’t tell the airline about this matter. If they found out I was a gambler, they’d put the word out on me, and I’d never get another crack at flying again. Airlines are like that. They consider gambling as obsessive behavior, you know, and if it ever gets on your record, they won’t rehire you as a pilot.”

  “I won’t tell the airline,” Bill said. “How about you, Hoke?”

  “I won’t tell ’em either.”

  “Thanks,” Morrow said, “thanks a lot.” Relieved, he sat back and studied his notebook until they got to the jail.

  It was after 11 P.M. when Hoke got back to his suite at the Eldorado. He was exhausted from the long day, and he was hungry. He heated a can of chunky turkey-noodle soup on his hot plate and sat at his small Victorian desk to eat it out of the pot.

  Above the desk there was a painting of three charging white horses pulling a fire wagon. There was a brass chimney on the back of the wagon, spewing white smoke. The nostrils of the horses flared wildly, and the crazed eyes of the horses showed whites all around. Hoke liked the picture and never tired of looking at it when he sat at the small desk. The little sitting room was busy. The previous tenant, an old lady who had lived in the suite for twelve years before her death, had furnished the room with small items she had picked up over the years at garage sales. There was a mid-Victorian armchair stuffed with horsehair, and a Mexican tile-topped table holding Hoke’s black-and-white Sony TV. There were several small tables on long spindly legs (tables that are called either wine or cigarette tables), and each table held a potted cluster of African violets. There was a patterned, rose-colored oriental rug on the floor (a Bokhara, and quite a good one), but it had faded over the years and was spotted here and there with coffee and soup stains. On flat surfaces, including the built-in bookcases, there were abalone ashtrays, stuffed and clothed baby alligators, seashells, and a black, lacquered shadow box on the wall contained several intricately intaglioed mezzusahs, including one that had been made from a cartridge used in Israel’s Six-Day War with Egypt. There was more than enough room on the bookshelves for Hoke’s books: Except for a copy of Heidi (overlooked by Patsy when she left him), Harold Robbins’s A Stone for Danny Fisher, and a Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, Hoke didn’t keep any more books in his collection. When he bought and read an occasional paperback novel, he dropped it off in the lobby so that one of the guests could read it.

  There were purple velvet draperies for the single window, but they were pulled back and secured by a golden cord so they wouldn’t interfere with the efforts of the laboring window air conditioner. The walls were crowded with pictures, watercolors of palms and seaside scenes for the most part, but Hoke’s second-favorite picture was a copy of Blue Boy, with the boy’s costume fashioned of real parrot feathers. Each fluffy blue feather had been painstakingly glued in place by someone, and when a breeze from the air conditioner reached the picture and ruffled the feathers, the figure shivered. The face, however, was not the boy in the original picture, but a photograph of Modest Moussorgsky’s head, scissored from an encyclopedia, complete with the composer’s magnificent mustache. The walls were papered with pink wallpaper, and dotted with tiny white fleurs de lis.

  The bathroom was also small, but the sitz-bath tub had a shower as well. There was also the little windowless bedroom. Most of the bedroom was taken up by a three-quarter-sized brass bed, but there was still room enough for an eight-drawer walnut dresser. The closet was roomy enough for Hoke’s old uniform
s and blue serge suit, and he kept a cardboard box of his papers in the closet as well.

  This small suite was Hoke’s sanctuary, and he was reluctant to leave it. Not only was it rent-free, it was home. He wondered if Mr. Bennett would let him take the Blue Boy and the fire horses when he left, and decided that he would not. If the pictures were removed, they would leave lighter-colored square spaces on the wallpaper, and would have to be replaced with others.

  After washing the small boiler pan and the spoon in the bathroom basin, and putting the utensils back in the highboy drawer, Hoke bundled up his laundry, wrapping it all in his yellow leisure suit jacket. The Peruvian girl, a maid with no English, would pick up his laundry in the morning, including his gray sheets, and have it all back to him by Saturday night. She would wash and iron his two poplin leisure suits, put them on hangers, and by Monday morning he would be all set for another week’s work.

  Hoke took a long shower, put on his last clean pair of boxer shorts, and decided to watch The Cowboys, an old John Wayne movie he had seen before and enjoyed. He poured the last two ounces of his Early Times into a glass, added water from the basin tap, and put the empty liter bottle into the wicker wastebasket under the desk. He drank half the drink and turned on his Sony before sitting in the Victorian armchair. The telephone on the desk buzzed.

  It was Eddie Cohen. “I hope I didn’t wake you …”

  “I wasn’t asleep. Who’s calling?”

  “No one’s calling. It’s these two girls. There’re two girls down here, and they say you’re their father.”

  “What?”

  “I thought they was kidding me at first, and I told them you wasn’t married. Then one showed me your picture, and it’s you all right, wearing a police uniform.”

  “Two girls?”

  “Teenage girls. They don’t look nothin’ like you, Sergeant. But they say they’re your daughters. You want me to bring ’em up, or do you want to come down?”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  Hoke put on a pair of khaki Bermudas, a gray gym T-shirt, and slipped into his shoes without putting on any socks. There were no clean black socks left in the drawer. He put his wallet and ID case and badge into his pockets, and slipped the holstered .38 into the belt at his back. His keys were on the desk, and he dropped them into his right front pocket. He went into the bathroom, put his dentures in, and quickly combed back his thinning hair.

  In the elevator down, he recalled the 3 A.M. phone call from the woman Eddie had told him about. That must have been Patsy, he thought, but she had claimed it wasn’t an emergency. If sending his daughters down to Miami in the middle of the night wasn’t an emergency, what would Patsy consider an emergency? But then, maybe the caller hadn’t been Patsy. Something was up.

  The desk was well-lighted by overhead fluorescent tubes, but most of the lamps in the lobby had been switched off. The TV set was dark, and there were no Cubans playing dominoes. On Friday nights, the resident Cubans went out to nearby bars to spend their weekly paychecks. Sometimes, when they got drunk and brought women back, Eddie Cohen had to call Hoke to quiet them down, since the resident pensioners were usually in bed by nine or nine-thirty.

  The two girls, both wearing shorts, T-shirts, and tennis shoes, were standing by the desk. Hoke wouldn’t have recognized either of the girls on the street, but he figured that the taller girl was Sue Ellen, and the smaller was Aileen. Despite Cohen’s observations, the girls bore a greater resemblance to Hoke than they did to their mother, now that Hoke had a look at them. They both had Hoke’s sandy hair—an abundance of it—and Sue Ellen had an overbite. With her mouth closed, her two upper teeth rested on her lower lip, where the teeth had left permanent tiny dents. Both girls were slim, but Sue Ellen was well-rounded at the hips, and she needed the brassiere she was wearing under her “Ft. ’Luderdale” T-shirt. Aileen was more gangly, with a boyish figure, and there were no adolescent chest bumps yet beneath the thin cotton of her T-shirt. They weren’t pretty girls, Hoke thought, but they weren’t plain either.

  Aileen’s generous mouth was filled with gold wire and tiny golden nuts and bolts. Her teeth were hardly visible, because the places that weren’t covered by gold wires were concealed by stretched rubber bands. She wore a black elastic retainer, with the cords stretched across her cheeks, and headphones, with a cord leading down to a Sony Walkman on her red webbed belt. Both girls appeared a little anxious. Sue Ellen looked down at the photo in her hand, and then looked back at Hoke again before she favored him with a tentative smile.

  “Daddy?”

  “You’re Sue Ellen, right?” Hoke said, shaking her hand. “And this is Sister.” Hoke smiled at the younger girl.

  “We don’t call her that anymore,” Sue Ellen said.

  “Aileen,” the younger girl said. She shook hands with Hoke, and then backed away from him. But Hoke didn’t let her get away. He hugged Aileen, and then hugged Sue Ellen.

  Hoke turned to Eddie Cohen, who was grinning behind the desk. “These are my daughters, Eddie, Sue Ellen and Aileen. Girls, this is Mr. Cohen, the day man and the night man on the desk, and the assistant manager.”

  “How do you do,” Sue Ellen said. Aileen nodded and smiled, but didn’t say anything. She took off the earphones and switched off the radio.

  “Where’s your mother?” Hoke said.

  “She should be in L.A. by now,” Sue Ellen said. “She tried to call you, she said, but couldn’t get ahold of you. But I’ve got this letter …” Sue Ellen took a sealed envelope from her banana-shaped leather purse and handed it to her father.

  Hoke unsealed the envelope, but before he could remove the letter, a Latin man of about thirty-five or -six pushed through the lobby doors, shouting as he approached the desk. “What about my fare? I can’t wait around here all night! I gotta get back to the terminal.”

  “Did you girls fly down from Vero Beach?” Hoke said.

  Sue Ellen shook her head. Her curls, down to her shoulders, swirled as she looked toward the cab driver. “We came down on the Greyhound. We got into Miami about seven, and we tried to call here a couple of times”—she looked at Eddie Cohen—”but no one answered the phone. We had a pizza, and then we went to a movie. Then, after the movie, we decided to take a cab over here.”

  “You girls shouldn’t be wandering around downtown Miami at night. Don’t ever do that again.”

  “We were all right. We checked our suitcases in a locker at the bus station before we went to the movie.”

  The suitcases were next to the desk: two large Samsonites and two khaki-colored overnighters.

  “What about my fare?” the cab driver said. He was wearing a white dress shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and tattered blue jeans. There were blue homemade tattoos on the backs of his dark hairy hands. He put his hands on his hips and pushed his chin out.

  “How much is it?” Hoke said.

  “I’ll have to take another look, now. The meter’s still runnin’.”

  “I’ll go with you. Eddie, wake up Emilio and have him take a folding cot up to my room—and the girls’ suitcases.”

  “I’ve got some empty rooms on your floor,” Eddie said.

  “I’m aware of that.” Hoke shook his head. “But Mr. Bennett would charge me for them. The girls’ll stay in my suite.”

  Hoke followed the driver outside, reached through the window, and punched the button to stop the meter. The charge on the meter was $26.50.

  “How long you been waiting?” Hoke asked.

  The driver shrugged.

  Hoke looked into his wallet. He had a ten and six ones. Hoke showed the driver his shield and ID. “I’m Sergeant Moseley, Miami Police Department. I’m going to inspect your cab.”

  Hoke opened the back door and looked inside. The back seat had a small rip on the left side, and there were three cigarette butts on the floor. All of the cab’s windows were rolled down.

  “Did you turn on the air conditioning when the girls got into the cab?” />
  “No, but they didn’t ask.”

  “That’s a Dade County violation. You’re supposed to turn it on when passengers get in, whether they ask for it or not. The floor’s dirty in back, and the seat’s ripped. Let me see your license.”

  After exploring his wallet, the driver reluctantly handed Hoke his chauffeur’s license. It was expired.

  Hoke, holding the license, jerked his head toward the lobby. “Let’s go inside. Your license has expired.”

  At the desk, Hoke got a piece of hotel stationery, a ball-point, and took down the man’s name, José Rizal, and license number, and the number of his cab. “If you came across the Mac Arthur Causeway, José,” Hoke said, “a trip from the bus terminal wouldn’t have been more than ten or eleven dollars. So you must have come over to Miami Beach by way of the Seventy-ninth Street Causeway to run up a tab of twenty-six bucks.”

  “There was too much traffic on Biscayne, and I couldn’t get on the Mac Arthur.”

  “Bullshit.” Hoke returned the driver’s license and handed him six one-dollar bills. “I don’t have my ticket book with me right now, but if you’ll come by the Miami police station on Monday morning, I’ll pay you the rest of your fare and write out your ticket for the county violations and your expired license.”

  For a long moment the driver stared at the bills in his hand, and then he wadded them into a ball and put them in his pocket. He turned abruptly and walked to the double doors. At the doorway the cabbie turned and shouted:

  “Lechon!”

  He ran out the door, got into his cab, and spun the wheels in the gravel as he raced out of the driveway. Hoke knew that he would never see the driver again.

  “Did he cheat us, Daddy?” Sue Ellen asked.

  “Not if you enjoyed your unguided tour of Miami Beach.”

  Hoke then opened and read the letter from Patsy:

  Dear Hoke,

  I’ve had the girls for ten wonderful years, and now it’s your turn. I’m going out to California to join Curly Peterson. We’re going to get married at the end of the season. The girls were given a choice, and they said they’d rather live with you instead of with me and Curly. Perhaps they’ll feel differently later, and can spend the Xmas season with us in California. Anyway, you can take them for the next few months, and if they don’t come out to Glendale at Xmas-time, I’ll see them when spring training begins again in Vero Beach. It’s about time you took some responsibility for your girls, anyway, and even though I’ll miss them and love them, they want me to have my share of happiness and I know you do, too.