New Hope for the Dead

by Charles Willeford

  “There’s never been no dog here!”

  “I’d like to see for myself. I’d also like to see your landlord’s license for renting out rooms. You’ve got one, haven’t you?”

  “I don’t need no license. Jerry was staying here, but I just let him stay as a favor, that’s all.”

  “Did you charge him rent for the favor?”

  “Jerry didn’t have no room—not exactly. I just let him sleep in the utility room. I don’t run no roomin’ house. I told the other two mens that, who pushed their way in here.”

  “I’d like to see where he slept.”

  “I reckon I can show you where he slept. But you got no right to look in the rest of my house.”

  “That’s all I want to see. Just where he slept.”

  Mrs. Fallon stepped back, and Hoke came into the kitchen. She opened the door to the utility room, off the kitchen. There was a canvas cot, a three-legged wooden stool, and some nails on the wall where clothes could be hung, but the spotlessly clean room was bare otherwise. There was no window. A single 40-watt bulb dangled on a cord from the ceiling. A long piece of brown twine was attached to the light chain. It would be possible for someone to lie in bed and turn the light on and off without sitting up.

  “Did Jerry have kitchen privileges?”

  “No, sir. He didn’t eat much, but I fed him sometimes. I always got somethin’ or other on the stove.”

  “You didn’t let him keep things in your refrigerator then?”

  “No, but he never ast.”

  “At least he was a clean housekeeper.”

  “I cleaned up after he left. And you can see there ain’t no dog in here.”

  “The two men who searched his room—what did they look like?”

  “They was white mens, but they spoke Spanish to each other. They was driving a green Eldorado with the top down. They didn’t stay long. I was gonna call the police after they left, but I didn’t want to get involved. I had a little cardboard box packed up with some of Jerry’s clothes he left here, but they took that along. It was just some underwear and socks and a blue work shirt. I always did Jerry’s laundry with mine, and it was in the wash when he left. He was staying with Reverend Jordan after that, but I wasn’t going to carry it down to him. He knew it was here, and he could’ve come and got it.”

  “Did those men take Jerry’s dog, too?”

  “Jerry didn’t have no dog! I done tol’ you that ten times!”

  “All right. Thank you, Mrs. Fallon. But if those two men come back, or if Jerry’s dog comes back, call me at this number.” Hoke gave her one of his cards. “And thank you for your cooperation.”

  As Hoke drove out of the yard, Mrs. Fallon started to walk toward the garage. She’ll pump Harry Jordan, Hoke thought. Jordan will tell her that Jerry’s dead, and then she’ll pray for Jerry, too. Mrs. Fallon’s Christian prayers, Hoke decided, would help Jerry just about as much as Harry Jordan’s.

  17

  A wire fence separated the Bajan sculptor’s garage apartment and yard from the Robert E. Lee housing project. At least thirty black kids were playing some kind of grab-ass on the other side of the fence. They came over to the fence to stare at Hoke while he pulled into the narrow backyard and parked. There was a huge sculpture of a birdlike creature in the yard, blocking the way to the closed door of the garage. The wings were fashioned from automobile fenders, and the body was formed with welded auto parts. The “bird” had been painted with red rustproofing primer, and its eyes were red glass taillights. The eyes were unlighted, and Hoke wondered for a moment if the sculptor would wire them for electricity when he was finished with the sculpture. He then realized that he didn’t give a shit what the sculptor decided to do, because he would never have to look at it again.

  Ellita, if she moved into the small apartment above the garage, would be an object of curiosity, and she would be harassed by the kids in the project. Nor could he take the place himself; there was no way that he could leave his girls alone all day in this neighborhood. Without getting out of his car, he backed out of the yard. Before his back wheels reached Tangerine Lane, a rock hit the windshield on the passenger’s side, but it didn’t crack the glass. The kids on the other side of the fence, squealing, ran off in a dozen directions.

  Hoke turned east to South Dixie Highway and then drove south to North Kendall Drive. He took Kendall west to 136th Avenue, and turned into a Kendall Lakes shopping mall. He parked in the lot, and then paced off the approximate distance to where Mary Rollins’s hot pants and T-shirt were discovered. The location was now a chain sandwich shop, featuring roast beef sandwiches. The “Sunday Special” was a roast beef sandwich with a free Coke for $2.99. Hoke went inside, ordered the special, and doused his sandwich with the chain’s special horseradish sauce. The teenagers behind the counter wore oversized red muslin tarns and little red jackets that didn’t meet in front. Their white muslin shirts had balloon sleeves. They wore their own blue jeans, however, which diluted by about five hundred years the medieval effect intended by the management. The tables and benches were bolted to the floor, and the benches were set too far back from the table for comfortable seating. Three years ago, this shopping center had been a U-pick pole-bean field. Now it held fifty different shops, anchored by a Publix supermarket and a K-Mart. The mall was filled with Sunday shoppers, most of them wearing Izod alligator shirts and shorts, or running togs. There were a great many small children. Every one of them was eating some thing or other as the parents walked aimlessly around the mall.

  Perhaps, Hoke thought, this cold-case idea of Brownley’s was not such a good one after all. West Kendall was the fastest-growing area in the county, and there were hundreds of condos filled already, with more under construction. Not only did Miami have hundreds of new permanent residents moving in every day, there was also a daily tourist influx of at least thirty thousand strangers staying from one day to two months or more on vacations. A colder case than Mary Rollins—missing only, with no body—would be hard to imagine. It was perfectly possible that her body was buried somewhere under the thirty acres of asphalt parking lot.

  Of course, Hoke hadn’t expected to find anything out here anyway, but it had been more than two years since he had been this far out on Kendall Drive, and he hadn’t realized how much the area had boomed. Hoke finished his sandwich and Coke, then showed the kid behind the counter his badge.

  The phone was in the small back storeroom, and the kid stood uneasily beside Hoke as he dialed.

  “This is police business, sonny. Get out and close the door.” The boy left reluctantly but didn’t argue.

  Eddie Cohen answered on the twelfth ring.

  “This is Sergeant Moseley, Eddie. Did Ms. Sanchez phone and leave a number for me to call?”

  “Just a second. I got it written down.”

  Hoke waited, and then Eddie gave him a number in Del-ray Beach. “It’s a pay phone, she said, and she’ll either wait there, or be there at exactly two o’clock. If you don’t call by two, don’t call at all, and she’ll drive back to the hotel.”

  Hoke looked at his Timex. It was 12:30.

  “All right, Eddie. If she calls again, tell her I’m on my way to the station, and I’ll call her at two from there.”

  “I’ll tell her. Anything else?”

  “Yeah. Don’t pull the plug on the air conditioning in my suite or in Ms. Sanchez’s room.”

  “I already did. Mr. Bennett told me—”

  “I don’t care what he said. You plug ’em in again right now, understand?”

  “I’ll see if I can find Emilio.”

  “Never mind Emilio. You do it yourself. Now.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I say so.” Hoke replaced the receiver.

  Before leaving the sandwich shop, Hoke bought an eight-ounce bottle of the special horseradish sauce from the boy behind the counter and thanked him for letting him use the phone.

  When Hoke got to his office and turned on the desk light,
two detectives on Sunday duty wandered over. They stood in the doorway, not quite coming into the small room, waiting for an invitation they didn’t get. They both wore tattered jeans, ragged running shoes, and filthy sport shirts. They both had scruffy beards and long hair. Quevedo was a few years older than Donovan, but they had both been in the Homicide Division for more than three years. They looked like the bums who hung out in Bayfront Park and the Miamarina, because that was where they were working. In the last month, two sleeping bums had been doused with gasoline and set on fire, and they were trying to get a lead on the killer(s).

  “I hear,” Donovan said, “you’re on a special assignment.”

  “You hear a lot of things around here,” Hoke said.

  Quevedo pointed to the stack of files. “Looks like a lot of cases to have out at the same time.”

  “It is indeed.” Hoke said. “What’s new on the torchings?”

  “We got some leads.”

  “Well, don’t let me keep you. I’ve got some reading to do and some phone calls to make.” Hoke belched, and got a second, searing taste of the horseradish sauce. His stomach burned.

  “We’re going downstairs for coffee,” Quevedo said. “Want me to bring you a cup?”

  “No thanks.” Hoke took the bottle of horseradish sauce out of his jacket pocket. “Here, Quevedo. You like hot stuff. This horseradish sauce is muy sabroso.”

  “You don’t want it?” Quevedo said, taking the bottle.

  “I’ve got another bottle in my car. Keep it. It goes great on hamburgers.”

  “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

  The two detectives left. Hoke got up and shut the door. He sat at his desk again, watching the detectives as they crossed to the elevator.

  The word was out already, Hoke realized. Quevedo and Donovan already knew about the cold-case assignment and were fishing around for confirmation. That meant his problems would soon multiply. Someone would notify the press, and then when the state attorney arraigned Captain Midnight, there would be reporters coming around to the division looking for details.

  And what could he tell them? That the Captain Morrow collar had been merely a lucky break? That they hadn’t even read through the old cases yet? It was impossible to keep anything secret in Miami; despite its huge population, Miami was like a small town where everybody knew everyone else’s business. And there was too much business in the Homicide Division.

  The phone rang. It was Ellita, calling from Delray Beach.

  “I called Mr. Cohen again, Hoke, and he said you were going to the office. I called early because the girls are getting restless hanging around the mall here. Besides, the news is good for a change. I found Mary Rollins. She’s alive and working as a waitress in Delray Beach.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. It was fairly simple, although I had to talk to Mrs. Fridley for a long time before she would tell me where Rollins worked. It’s a long story, but now that I’ve found Rollins—which we didn’t expect—I don’t know the next step. Wanda Fridley and Mary Rollins both went to Miami High together. In the same class. Mrs. Fridley married a pre-development salesman in Boca, and she’s been living in Boca ever since. She just happened to run into Mary by accident at the Delray Beach café where Mary works. Mary told her not to tell anyone she was there. Apparently, Mary staged her own disappearance as a way to escape from her mother. Mary worked at an S and L in Miami, and lived at home. She had to turn over her paycheck each week to her mother, and she was a virtual prisoner. Then she met a guy in the S and L one day, and dated him. He’s a married man with three children, and he lives here in Delray Beach. Mary got a raise at the S and L, but didn’t tell her mother about it. She started saving her extra raise money, telling her mother the company was paying in cash now each week instead of by check. That way, her mother wouldn’t know about the extra money—”

  “Can you shorten this a little?”

  “Not very well. Then, when Mary had two hundred dollars saved, she planted her bloody shorts and T-shirt in the pole-bean field out in Kendall, and caught a bus to Delray Beach. She thought if her mother figured she was dead, she wouldn’t look for her.”

  “Where did the blood come from?” Hoke said.

  “Most of it came from a bloody nose. When she gets excited, she said, her nose bleeds. The rest was from a cut finger. She already had a suitcase with some other clothes and things in it stashed away at the bus station in a locker. She rented a room here in Delray, got a job as a waitress, and she’s been up here ever since. Her affair with the married man is still ongoing, as they say, and she gets to see him once a week—sometimes twice a week. This is the story she told Mrs. Fridley, and the same one she told me. Mrs. Fridley would’ve kept the secret, she said, but Mary borrowed fifty dollars from her, promising to pay her back the following week. Then, when she didn’t pay it back, Mrs. Fridley got mad and called Homicide and said she’d seen Mary Rollins. By the time we finally got around to sending MacGellicot up to Boca, Mary had already seen Mrs. Fridley again and paid her ten dollars on account. She was short, and could only pay her back at ten dollars a week. So then, when MacGellicot talked to Mrs. Fridley, she’d decided not to turn in her old school friend and she stalled MacGellicot. She was ashamed, she told me, for not trusting Mary to pay her back the fifty bucks. Mary lives in a ratty little room here in Delray, and she only spends an occasional afternoon in a motel with her boyfriend.

  “Actually,” Ellita chuckled, “Mrs. Fridley was dying to tell someone the story. Once she got started talking, it all tumbled out.

  “Anyway, I drove up to Delray and found Mary. She’s working at the Spotlight Café, so I got her address from the manager. I talked to her then, and I believe her. She knew, she said, that her mother was using her for support, and that she’d never have a life of her own unless she ran away. I feel sorry for her, Hoke. She’s not too bright, and for a thin girl she’s not bad-looking, either. But she doesn’t seem to realize that this guy’s using her just as much as her mother did. Eventually, she believes, after her boyfriend’s children are grown, he’ll divorce his wife and marry her, you see.”

  “But did you get a positive ID?”

  “Of course. Driver’s license and birth certificate. She showed me both of them. Do you want me to pick her up and bring her back down with me, or what? I hate to turn this young woman over to her mother again, although—”

  Hoke laughed. “Sure. Bring her in! And then, after we return Mary to her mother, I’ll drive you home and return you to your mother and father.”

  After a five-second silence, Ellita said, “I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

  “No, you weren’t. Just borrow Rollins’s license and birth certificate, and we’ll make Xeroxes down here and mail them back to her. Major Brownley can then call Mrs. Rollins and tell her that Mary’s alive and well. That’ll be the end of it. We don’t have to tell Mrs. Rollins where her daughter lives. Twenty-six years old, she can live anywhere she wants. We don’t have to tell her mother shit. But before you come back down here, reassure Mary that we won’t give her address to her mother. Otherwise, she might stage another fake disappearance and take off again.”

  “She’s really afraid of the mother, Hoke. Do you want to talk to her?”

  “Hell, no. Just get her address and place of employment so I can write a memo on it to Brownley. We’ll attach the Xeroxes to it, and the case is closed.”

  “I can give you the address now.”

  Hoke wrote the information Ellita gave him on a yellow legal pad.

  “You did a good job, Ellita. You know I can’t give you any overtime, but if you put in a voucher for mileage up there and back, I’ll sign it. Did you have lunch yet?”

  “We ate at the Spotlight Café, where Mary works.”

  “Okay. Add your lunch receipt to the mileage, and I’ll reimburse you for lunch on the voucher, too. See you back at the hotel.”

  Hoke chopped up the onion and added it to the three cans of beef stew s
immering in the pot on his hot plate. He set the switch to Low-Low and sniffed the aroma. This was one of Hoke’s favorite meals. The girls would enjoy it.

  Ellita and the girls didn’t ask for seconds, however, when they ate dinner. Hoke told them they could reheat the stew for lunch the next day. While they ate, Ellita retold the story about Mary Rollins and showed Hoke the birth certificate and driver’s license.

  “Has she got a new license under a new name?”

  “She doesn’t have a car, and she didn’t change her last name. She just calls herself Candi now, with an i and no e. She’s got a little nameplate on her uniform. She was pretty happy when I told her—convinced her, rather—that we wouldn’t tell her mother where she was living. She showed me a photo of her boyfriend. He’s about fifty, and he’s got a gut out to here.” Ellita made a circle with her hands to demonstrate and burst into tears.

  “What’s the matter, Ellita?” Sue Ellen said.

  “Nothing.” Ellita wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’ve got to wash my hair.” As she got up from the table to go to her room, Hoke’s phone rang.

  Hoke picked it up and gestured for Sue Ellen and Aileen to stay seated and not follow Ellita to her room.

  “Tony Otero’s down here, Sergeant Moseley.” It was Eddie Cohen. “He wants to talk to your daughter Sue Ellen. Shall I send him up, or does she want to come down here?”

  “Tell him to wait at the desk. I’ll be right down.”

  Hoke hung up the phone. He told the girls to clear the card table, fold it up again, and put things away. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, and then we’ll have a little talk.”

  Tony Otero, wearing a white linen suit, white shoes, and a red silk necktie, smiled at Hoke and shook hands with him when Hoke met him in the lobby. When Tony smiled, Hoke noticed a dark line above Tony’s four upper front teeth. He realized that the little boxer was wearing an upper plate. He hadn’t noticed it when Bill Henderson had introduced him to the lightweight a few weeks ago.

  “Let’s sit over here, Tony.” Hoke gripped the boxer’s elbow with a thumb and two fingers and led him over to a tattered divan in the lobby, away from the desk. The divan was well separated from the old ladies watching the TV set on the wall.