New Hope for the Dead

by Charles Willeford

  The girls were still in the bedroom, and taking turns in the bathroom. Ellita stirred her coffee and sat back a little in the desk chair.

  “I called Patsy last night, Hoke,” Ellita said. “Collect. Sue Ellen also talked to her for a few minutes. She said she’d send a check to the girls to make up the difference between what you gave them as an allowance and what she usually gave them. Sue Ellen told her you were giving them a dollar a week, so she said she’d send them each a check for forty-six dollars every month.”

  “What else did she say?”

  “She wanted to know who I was, so I told her I was your partner. But then, when Sue Ellen talked to her and told her we were all living here together, she probably got the wrong idea.”

  “Does it bother you?”

  “What a woman who deserts her children thinks of me is not worth bothering about.” Ellita added more Sweet ‘n’ Low to her coffee.

  “She’s probably relieved that there’s a woman around to look after the girls, but I’m sorry she got the wrong idea about you.”

  The girls emerged sleepily from the bedroom and mixed their coffee in the red plastic cups Ellita had brought from her room.

  “I don’t see why we have to get up so early on a Sunday,” Sue Ellen said.

  “There’re bagels and cream cheese in the sack,” Hoke explained. “This evening I’ll cook some beef stew, and we’ll still have enough bagels to go with it. Do you think, Sue Ellen, that your mother’ll send you allowance checks, like she said?”

  “I know she will.”

  “In that case, I’ll lend both of you girls five dollars, and you can pay me back when you get your checks. That way, if you want, you can buy some cigarettes.” Hoke gave them five dollars apiece. Aileen put her money into her pocket, then soaked her bagel in her coffee to soften it.

  “How’re your teeth this morning?” Hoke asked.

  “Fine, Daddy. But I slept awful hard. I don’t think I moved all night.”

  “Good. But if they start to hurt again, and they might, ask Ellita for another T-3.”

  Aileen nodded.

  “How about you, Ellita?” Hoke said. “Did you call your mother too?”

  “Three times, but each time my father answered, so I hung up. Then I called my cousin Louisa and asked her to tell my mother I was staying here, and that I’d call her Monday.”

  Hoke opened his notebook and tore out a page. “I went to the office last night and took a look at the Mary Rollins file. Here’s the address of that woman up in Boca Raton. Her name is Wanda Fridley, Mrs. Fridley. If you don’t have anything else planned today, why not take the girls and drive up there and talk to her? Mrs. Fridley’s the woman who called the department and said she saw Mary Rollins in Delray Beach. Then when MacGellicot drove up and talked to her about it, she changed her story and said she wasn’t sure. His notes, that she probably didn’t like him because he was a man, may or may not be valid. But maybe she’ll talk to you. I was going to send you up there tomorrow, but it might be best to get this interview out of the way today, so we can work on our other cases tomorrow. This way, we can at least tell Brownley we’re working on the Rollins case. I’ll drive out to the site where they found her shorts and T-shirt and look around the area. I know I won’t find anything out there now, but it’ll be something else to add to the report. But if you don’t want to go today, that’s all right, too. You can buy a bathing suit, and you girls can spend the day on the beach.”

  “That’s no choice at all.” Ellita laughed. “You couldn’t pay me enough money to wear a bathing suit!”

  “Why not?”

  Ellitta patted the top of her leg. “Fat thighs. Cellulite. I don’t wear a bikini, and I don’t go to the beach.”

  “I know you can swim. You had to pass the swimming test at the academy.”

  “I did. But then I sat on my ass for seven years developing cellulite. I don’t mind driving up to Boca. We should be back by noon or a little later, and the girls can still go to the beach. I’ll go with them and watch them from a chickee.”

  “Okay, that’s settled. I’m going to check on that apartment in the Grove for you, and then see if I can run down Jerry Hickey’s former landlady. I got the address you left on my desk last night.”

  “What can she tell you?”

  “I don’t know. I just wonder where he got the money and the white lady, that’s all. There’s something weird about this case, and I’m not ready to close the file on it yet. Don’t you think it’s a little unusual for a white boy to take a room in a black woman’s house in the black Grove?”

  Ellita smiled. “Not for a junkie. Besides, aren’t you trying to get me a garage apartment in the black Grove?”

  “But you’ll be paid for living there. It isn’t the same thing.” Hoke recalled his reflections of a moment before, about Ellita’s color, but decided to keep his counsel.

  “Maybe Jerry was paid to live there, too,” Ellita said.

  “That’s another question I could ask, I suppose. Well, look, I’ll be back this afternoon, and if I’m not back, I’ll call the desk and give Eddie a number where you can call me. Then tonight we’ll fix the stew and all have dinner, the way we did last night. I enjoyed that.”

  Hoke turned to Sue Ellen and Aileen. “Remember, Ellita’s going to be on police business. So you do whatever she tells you, understand?”

  Hoke’s daughters assured him that they did.

  Hoke parked in front of the Coconut Grove Library, the only attractive public building in the Grove. With its field-stone facade, curving wooden walkway, and the shady branches overhanging the weathered steps, the building looked as though it had grown out of the ground. A police officer was sitting in his squad car reading Penthouse. The officer, still in his early twenties, was so absorbed by the magazine he didn’t look up until Hoke tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Open the back door.” Hoke showed the officer his shield. “I’m Sergeant Moseley. Homicide.”

  The officer clicked up the door lock, and Hoke slid into the back seat. The officer picked his cap up from the seat, slapped it on his head, and shoved his magazine under the front seat.

  “What’s up, Sarge?”

  Hoke looked across the street to Peacock Park. A women’s softball game was in progress. The harbor was filled with anchored Hobie Cats and other small sailboats with furled sails. Two bearded, shirtless men holding their shirts in their laps, their faces raised to the sun, sat on the stone wall that bordered the park. Hoke looked back at the officer. “How long you been assigned to the Grove?”

  “About six weeks now. I like it better’n Liberty City. I got hit with a rock during a fracas at Northside Shopping Center.” The patrolman pointed to a jagged red scar on his chin. “Fourteen stitches. After that, my squad leader thought I might be a little prejudiced, so he had me transferred to the Grove. Best thing that ever happened to me. I been working days, and things’ve been pretty quiet compared to Liberty City. Some chain and purse snatching, a little loitering, that’s about it. On Friday nights there’s been a kind of teenage invasion from all over, but I haven’t been on nights yet.”

  “Did you know a kid named Jerry Hickey?”

  “Uh-uh, but my partner might. He’s been in the Grove for ’most three years.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Up at Lum’s.” The officer pointed up the sloping street. “He’s getting himself a Lumberjack burger. At first, we used to eat together, but now, when we take a break for a sandwich or coffee, we take turns. That way, Red said, somebody’s always with the radio.”

  “In other words, you two don’t get along.”

  “I didn’t say that, Sergeant. We get along fine. I’ve learned a lot from old Red.”

  “Okay. You go up to Lum’s and get old Red and tell him I want to talk to him. Then you can stay in Lum’s and get your own Lumberjack burger.”

  “I was plannin’ on a tuna fish.”

  The officer started up the mild incline, an
d Hoke wondered how this incredibly stupid young officer had managed to get through the police academy. But perhaps he expected too much; the kid wasn’t so much dumb as he was young, that was all.

  The police car was nosed into the curb, so Hoke recognized “old” Red as he limped down the street from Lum’s. Red Halstead was thirty-nine, and he had been shot in the foot by a woman he had tried to disarm before she could pump her last bullet into her husband’s inert body. As a consequence, Halstead had worked in Property for more than a year. The woman’s husband had died, and she had been given ten years’ probation by a sympathetic judge. But Halstead, after narrowly missing out on a disability discharge, had endured the necessary therapy and the boring job in the Property office and had finally regained his old job on the street. The widow had married a man a lot wealthier than her dead husband. Now she lived in a condo in Bal Harbour.

  Hoke got out of the car and shook hands with Halstead. “Hoke Moseley, Red. I remember you from Property. How’s the foot?”

  “Fine, Sergeant, ’cept when it gets cold, but I haven’t had to worry much about cold weather lately. It’s eighty-eight already, and it’s only ten A.M.”

  “Sorry to interrupt your break.”

  “That’s okay. I was finished anyway. Who’s dead?”

  “A kid named Jerry Hickey. He died from an overdose at home. But he used to hang out around Peacock Park. I thought you might know him, or know someone who did.”

  Halstead nodded. “I knew him. He had an allowance of some kind from his father, the drug lawyer. Some of the kids around here would hit him up for small change once in a while. He also sold weed, but I never caught him with any, and I must’ve shook him down three or four times. He was also a junkie, and he hung out sometimes with Harry Jordan. Jordan used to be a Hare Krishna, but was kicked out of the cult for skimming off the top, or something like that. But he kept his yellow robes, and now he’s in business for himself. Instead of just skimming, he keeps everything he begs now.” Halstead laughed. “They should’ve kept him on and just let him take his percentage. But Jordan’s straight—I mean he’s not into dope. I don’t think he even drinks. He’s something of a guru around the Grove. He lives on Peralta, over in the black section.”

  “1309 Peralta?”

  “I don’t know if that’s the number, but I know where he lives on Peralta. He lives in a garage out back.”

  “A garage apartment?”

  “No.” Halstead shook his head and grinned. “A garage. What’s going down?”

  “Not much of anything. I’m doing a little backtracking, that’s all.”

  “You just want to talk to somebody who knew Hickey, right?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Well, Harry Jordan knew him as well as anybody. He used to crash at Harry’s, but I think he had a room somewhere here in the Grove besides. I could tell you how to get to Harry’s, but the easiest way would be to just drive by. You could follow me. When I pass the house I’ll flash my turn signal once and keep going. The garage’ll be around to the back. I won’t stop, because if I did, everyone in the neighborhood would know you were a cop.”

  “Okay. And thanks, Red.”

  Hoke trailed two hundred yards behind the police car and followed it down Main Highway, parallel with Grand Avenue. Halstead signaled and made a right turn into the black Grove. After two more blocks, Halstead slowed, flashed his signal, and then accelerated. Hoke made a sharp turn into a dirt driveway beside a pink two-bedroom house and parked in the backyard.

  A girl, sixteen or seventeen, was sitting in a webbed beach chair, nursing a baby. Her heavy bare breasts seemed disproportionately large for her slender body. Her acorn-brown hair reached almost to her waist, and she wore a soiled eggshell-colored skirt down to her ankles. Her dirty, slender feet were bare. A blue T-shirt was draped over the arm of the chair. As Hoke got out of his car, she looked at him incuriously with sienna eyes and drummed on the baby’s bare back with the tips of her fingers. Her left eye was black and swollen, and there were mottled black-and-blue marks on her puffy left cheek.

  The fenced-in backyard also contained a redwood table and two benches, a drooping clothesline hung with drying diapers, and several rows of vegetables—carrots, green peppers, and plum tomatoes. The garage at the end of the dirt driveway was being used as a residence. The wide garage door was missing, and the unpainted front of the small building, except for a normal door-sized entrance covered by a dusty blue velvet curtain, was composed of plywood and other odd-sized pieces of scrap lumber. The garage had an unpainted corrugated-iron roof that looked new.

  A monk came through the blue velvet curtain. He was wearing a clean saffron robe and leather sandals without socks. He was about thirty, and his head, except for a short tuft of blond hair at the crown, was shaved. Despite his shaven head, he was noticeably balding. He looked at Hoke with narrowed blue eyes.

  “Get in the house, Moira,” he said.

  The girl, carrying her baby and the blue T-shirt, got up from the chair and sidled through the curtain.

  “How old’s the girl, Harry?”

  “Old enough to have a baby.”

  “Does her mother know she’s here?”

  “No. If she did, she’d send someone like you to take her home again. And then it would take Moira another month or so to escape like she had to do the last time. Why don’t you people quit hassling us?”

  “Moira’s mother didn’t send me here. It’s just that I’ve got a daughter about that age.” Hoke took out his cigarettes, and then returned them to his pocket. “What I want is some information about Jerry Hickey. I’m a police officer.”

  “I think he left Miami, probably Florida.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “A couple of guys came around and searched his old room.” Jordan pointed to the pink house. “Then they talked to me. He was supposed to deliver a package or something to a Holiday Inn in North Miami, but apparently he never got there. They didn’t say what was in the package, but they searched my place, too, which I didn’t appreciate.”

  “Were they police officers?”

  Jordan smiled, and wiped his mouth. “Hardly. They were both Latins in silk suits. I hadn’t seen Jerry for two days, not since—did you get a look at Moira’s face?

  “It’s quite a shiner—”

  “Worse than that. Jerry chipped a piece of bone from her cheek, and she’s in a lot of pain. I don’t understand it, any of it. I felt sorry for Jerry because I thought he needed a place to be, you know. But when I was out, he tried to jump Moira. When she resisted, he hit her.”

  “He tried to rape the girl? That doesn’t sound like junkie behavior. Could be, now that Jerry’s dead, you’re blaming him for something you did yourself.”

  “I didn’t know Jerry was dead.” Jordan’s face became a solemn mask. Jordan held his hands out, palms up, and showed Hoke his forearms. They were covered with tiny red welts. “Ant bites, Mr. Policeman, from my garden. But I won’t kill those ants, or any of God’s creatures. And I wouldn’t hit my wife.”

  “You’re married, then?”

  “In the eyes of God, yes. Moira could also tell you I didn’t hit her, but you probably wouldn’t believe her either. But I didn’t know Jerry was dead. I’ll pray for him now, and for you, too, whether you want me to or not. Did those men kill him?”

  “No. It was an overdose. Heroin.”

  “May God rest his troubled soul.” Incongruously, Jordan crossed himself.

  “Can you show me Jerry’s room?”

  “That’s up to Mrs. Fallon. I rent the garage from her, and Jerry had a room in her house up till about a month ago. She caught him shooting up, and she kicked him out. Then I took him in.” Jordan shrugged. “He needed a place to be, and I still think I did the right thing, but I’m finding it hard to forgive him. I’m still working on that, but it’ll be easier now, now that I know he’s dead, I mean. Mrs. Fallon’s a member of the Primitive Baptist Church, and they’re do
wn on junkies, but she’ll probably let you look at his old room. I know she hasn’t rented it out again.”

  Hoke took out his wallet and gave Jordan a dollar bill. “Here. Better get some Tylenol for Moira.”

  The dollar bill disappeared inside Jordan’s robes. “God bless you, sir.” Jordan bowed from the waist, turned, and went into the garage through the curtain, colliding with Moira, who had been standing right behind it.

  Hoke knocked at the back door of the pink house. The door opened immediately because Mrs. Fallon, a large black woman in a shapeless gray housecoat, had been watching Hoke through the kitchen window as he talked to Jordan. Hoke had seen her sullen face when she pulled the white curtain to one side. Hoke showed her his shield and ID.

  “I’m a police officer, Mrs. Fallon, and I’d like to take a look at Jerry’s old room.”

  “You got a warrant?”

  “No. But I have reason to believe that you’re holding Mr. Hickey’s dog a prisoner in your house. And dognapping’s a serious crime.”

  “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout no dog. Jerry didn’t have no dog, and he’s been out of the house ‘most a month now, livin’ with the reverend.”

  “Who’d you sell the dog to? I know there’s been a dog here because of that digging around the bush over there—over there”—Hoke pointed—”by those oleanders.”

  “I done that diggin’ myself, weedin’.”

  “Did you know oleanders were poison? If you burn oleander bushes and breathe in the smoke, you can poison yourself and a dog, too.”