by Miami Blues
“In about twenty minutes, then?”
“Tell her to bring me up a club sandwich, with some dill pickle slices on the side.”
“She can’t do that, sir, but I’ll send the room service waiter up with the club sandwich.”
“Good. And I’ll take care of you later.”
“Yes, sir.”
The club sandwich, a nice one with white turkey meat, bacon, American cheese, lettuce, and tomato slices on white toast, was $12, plus a $1 service charge. Freddy signed for it and gave the waiter a $1 tip. Even though there were pickles, potato chips, cole slaw, and extra paper cups of mayonnaise and mustard on the side, Freddy was appalled by the price of the club sandwich. What in the hell had happened to the economy while he was in prison?
Freddy ate half the sandwich and all of the pickle slices, then put the other half into the refrigerator. The other half, he thought, is worth six bucks—Jesus!
There was a light knock on the door. Freddy unfastened the chain and opened the door, and a young girl with small and very even teeth came in. She was a small one, all right, standing about five-three in her high heels. Her well-defined widow’s peak and smallish chin made her face heart-shaped. She wore tight jeans with ROLLS-ROYCE embroidered on the left leg in three-inch white block letters; a U-neck purple T-shirt, and dangling gold earrings. Her soft kangaroo leather drawstring bag was big enough to hold schoolbooks. Freddy estimated her age at fifteen—maybe sixteen.
“Mr. Gotlieb?” she said, smiling, “Pablo said you wanted to talk to me.”
“Yeah,” Freddy said. “How old are you, anyway?”
“Nineteen. My name is Pepper.”
“Yeah. Sure it is. You got any ID?”
“My driver’s license. I just look young because I don’t wear makeup, that’s all.”
“Let’s see the license.”
“I don’t have to show it to you.”
“That’s right. You don’t. You can leave.”
“But if I show it to you, you’ll know my right name.”
“But I’ll still call you Pepper.”
She took her wallet out of the bag and showed Freddy her Florida license. The name on the license was Susan Waggoner, and she was twenty years old—not nineteen.
“This says you’re twenty.”
She shrugged. “I like being a teenager.”
“What’re the rates?”
“For nooners—half-hour limit—fifty dollars until five o’clock. Then it goes up to seventy-five. I get off at five, so for you it’s only fifty, unless you want extras.”
“Okay. Let’s go into the bedroom.”
Pepper pulled down the spread on the queen-size bed, then the sheets, and smoothed them out. She slipped off her shoes, her T-shirt, and her jeans. She was not wearing a bra, nor did she need one. She rolled off her panties, lay down on the bed, and put her hands behind her head as she spread her skinny legs. As she locked her fingers behind her head, her small breasts almost disappeared, except for the taut strawberry nipples. Her long auburn hair, in a ponytail fastened with a rubber band, made a curling question mark on the right side of the pillow. Her well-greased pubic hair was a kinky brownish yellow.
Freddy unwrapped the bath sheet and dropped it on the floor. He probed her pregreased vagina with the first three fingers of his right hand. He shook his head and frowned.
“Not enough friction there for me,” he said. “I’m used to boys, you see. Do you take it in the ass?”
“No, sir. I should, I know, but I tried it once and it hurt too much. I just can’t do it. I can give you a blow job if you like.”
“That’s okay, but I’m not all that interested anyway. You really should learn to take it in the ass. You’ll make more money, and if you learn how to relax—”
“That’s what Pablo said, but I just can’t.”
“What size dress do you wear?”
“It depends. I can wear a five sometimes, but usually I’m either a six or a seven. It depends on who makes it. They all have different sizes.”
“Try this on.” Freddy brought her the black silk dress from the sitting room. “Put your shoes on first, and then look at the mirror. There’s a full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door.”
Pepper slipped into the dress, turned sideways as she looked into the mirror, and smiled. “It looks nice on me, doesn’t it? I’d have to take it in some at the waist though.”
“You can have it for fifty bucks.”
“All I’ve got with me’s a twenty. I’ll give you a free blow job for it.”
“That’s no offer! A man can get a free blow job anywhere. The hell with it. I’m not a salesman. Keep the dress. And while you’re here, take this suitcase full of stuff. There’re some skirts and other things in it, and a nice cashmere sweater. Take the suitcase too.”
“Where’d you get all these nice clothes?”
“They belong to my wife. When I left my wife I took the stuff with me. I paid for it, so it was mine to take.”
“You left your wife?”
“Yeah. We’re getting a divorce.”
“Because of the boys?”
“What boys?”
“You said you were used to boys, and I just assumed that—”
“Jesus Christ. How long’ve you been working for Pablo?”
“Since the beginning of the semester. I go to Miami-Dade Community College, Downtown. I need the money for school.”
“Well, one of the first things you should learn is not to ask clients personal questions.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.” She started to cry.
“Why’re you crying, for Christ’s sake?”
“I don’t know. I just do sometimes. I’m not doing very good at this, not even nooners, and when I go back to Pablo without any money, he’ll—”
“There’s a plastic laundry bag in the closet. Put the clothes in it, and give Pablo the empty suitcase. He can get the locks fixed, and he’ll have a two-hundred-dollar suitcase. I’ll square you with Pablo later. Okay?”
Pepper stopped crying, wiped her eyes, and got back into her own clothes. She packed the clothing neatly into the plastic laundry bag.
“What do you do when you get off duty at five?”
“I usually walk downtown, have some dinner, and then go to class. Tonight’s my English class at six-fifteen, and it runs until seven-forty, unless Mr. Turner lets us out early. Sometimes, when we’ve got a paper to write, he lets us go home to write it.”
Why, Freddy wondered, is she lying to me? No college would ever accept this incredibly stupid young woman as a student. On the other hand, he had known a few college men in San Quentin. Although they usually got the best jobs there, they didn’t appear to be any smarter than the majority of the cons. Maybe the girl wasn’t lying. He didn’t know anything about college requirements, but maybe they would be much lower for women than for men. It would be a good idea to have a woman with a car show him the city. So far it was all white buildings and a blur of greenery.
“I’ll tell you what, Pepper. I’ll buy you dinner and then wait for you to get out of class. Then you can drive me around some. You’ve got a license, so I suppose you’ve got a car?”
“My brother’s car. I get to keep it all the time, but I’ve got to meet him at the airport at eight-thirty tonight to collect some money from him. He works out there, and gives me his pay every day to deposit in the bank. Where he works, he isn’t allowed to have a car.”
“You don’t live together?”
“Not anymore. We did at first, when we first came down to Miami from Okeechobee, but now I’ve got the apartment to myself.”
“That’s all right. I don’t mind riding out to the airport again. I just want to get familiar with the city. I’ll give you a decent tip, or buy you a drink, or maybe take you to a movie. What do you say?”
She smiled. “I’d like that. I haven’t had a date date since I came down here, Mr. Gotlieb—”
“You can ca
ll me Junior.”
“Junior? All right, and you can call me Susie. Pablo told me to call myself Pepper so that customers would think I was hot. Pablo’s my manager, like, and he knows all about these things. Most men, I’ve noticed, just laugh when I tell them my name is Pepper. You didn’t—Junior—and I think you’re awfully nice.”
“I am nice, Susie, and I like you a lot. I’ll tell you what. Just leave the bag of clothes with me and take the suitcase down to Pablo. That way he won’t know you got the stuff, and I can take it with me when we meet.”
“I usually eat dinner at Granny’s. It’s a health food restaurant right near the campus, about eight blocks from here. I walk because I leave the car in the parking garage near the school, but you can take a cab there. The cabbies all know where it is, even the ones who don’t speak English.”
She handed him the bag of clothing.
“I’ll see you at Granny’s at five, then.”
“It’ll be closer to five-fifteen, but I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
“Good. And have a prosperous afternoon.”
“Thank you. But whatever you do, don’t tell Pablo. We aren’t supposed to go out with the Johns—that’s why I want you to meet me at Granny’s.”
“Pablo, in my opinion, is an asshole. I’ll just tell him I had jet lag and that kept me from performing. I’ll slip him ten bucks and he’ll be so happy he won’t say a word to you. But I won’t tell him about our date. Don’t worry.”
Susan blushed, and looked shyly at the floor. “You can kiss me on the cheek and sorta seal our date. That way I know you’ll really come to Granny’s. I know you men don’t like to kiss us on the mouth …”
“I don’t mind kissing you on the mouth.”
“You don’t?”
Freddy kissed her chastely, almost tenderly, on the lips, and then led her to the door. She waggled her fingers and smiled; then he closed the door after her and chain-locked it. She had forgotten the empty suitcase, and he still had the bag of clothes. He would give the suitcase to Pablo instead of the ten bucks he had intended to give him. As long as he had the clothes, he knew she would come to Granny’s.
He still had plenty of time to do some shopping.
4
Bill Henderson and Hoke Moseley worked on their reports for the rest of the afternoon at the double desk they shared in a glass-walled cubbyhole at the new Miami Police Station. As sergeants they were entitled to the tiny office, which had a door that could be closed and locked, but it was much more crowded and uncomfortable than the space the other plainclothes detectives had in the large, outer bullpen. The room was underrated, except for a twenty-two by thirty-inch poster on the one unglassed wall. A hand holding a pistol, with the pistol pointed at the viewer, was in the center of the wall. The message, in bold black letters beneath the pointing pistol, read MIAMI—SEE IT LIKE A NATIVE.
When they took the depositions of the brothers Peeples, only one man at a time could be accommodated in the tiny room. Irritated by the Georgians’ uncooperative attitudes, they let the two men find their own way back to the airport by taxi instead of returning them to the PR man in a police car.
Hoke flipped a quarter. Henderson lost, which meant that Henderson had to call Martin Waggoner’s father in Okeechobee and break the sad news. While Henderson called, Hoke went downstairs to the station cafeteria and got two cups of coffee in Styrofoam cups. He drank his in the cafeteria and brought the other cup, now barely warm, back upstairs to Henderson. Henderson took one sip of the lukewarm coffee, replaced the lid, and dropped the cup into the wastebasket.
“Mr. Waggoner said his son had a sister living with him here in Miami, and he wouldn’t accept the truth of his son’s death until she identified the body. His son was a deeply religious boy, he claimed, and was not the kind to fight anyone. I told him there wasn’t any fight, and about how it happened and all, and he said that there had to be more to it than that. I know how he feels, the poor bastard. When I told him his son died from a broken finger I felt like I was lying myself.”
“He didn’t die from a broken finger. He died from shock.”
Henderson shrugged. “I know. And I told him what Doc Evans said about shock. Anyway, I made the call to Mr. Waggoner, so you can take the sister down to identify the body.”
“You lost the coin toss—”
“And I called Mr. Waggoner. The sister’s a new development, and my wife expects me home for dinner. We’re having company over. You’re single—”
“Divorced.”
“But single, with no responsibilities or obligations.”
“I pay alimony and child support for two teenage daughters.”
“Sometimes you break my heart. Your evenings are bleak and empty. You have no friends—”
“I thought you and I were friends?”
“We are. That’s why you can get a hold of the sister while I go home to my assertive wife, my gawky teenager son, and my daughter with acne. I can then entertain for drinks and dinner a couple my wife likes and I can’t stand.”
“Okay, since you point out the joys I’m missing, I’ll go. Got her address?”
“I wrote it all down, and I’ve made some calls. She lives in Kendall Pines Terrace out on One-fifty-seventh Avenue. Building Six-East apartment four-one-eight.”
“Kendall? That’s a helluva ways out.” Hoke transferred the information from the yellow pad to his notebook.
“Luckily for you she isn’t home. Susan Waggoner goes to Miami-Dade, to the New World Campus downtown. She’ll be in class at six-fifteen. I already called the registrar, so if you stop by the office, they’ll send a student assistant up to the classroom with you and get the girl out of class. You’ve even got time to get a drink first. Two drinks.”
“And so everything works out for the best, doesn’t it? You can go home to dinner, and I can escort a hysterical young girl to the morgue to see her dead brother. I can, then, in all probability, drive her to hell and gone out to Kendall and get her calmed down. Then I have to drive all the way back to Miami Beach. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll be home in time to watch the eleven o’clock news.”
“What the hell, Hoke, it’s all overtime pay.”
“Compensatory time. I’ve used up my overtime pay this month.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Twenty-five bucks. Haven’t we had this conversation before?”
“Last month. Only last month it was me who had to sit in the hardware store until four A.M. while you went home to bed.”
“But you were on overtime pay.”
“Compensatory time.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Twenty-five bucks.”
They both laughed, but laughing didn’t mask Hoke’s uneasiness. He didn’t know which was worse—telling a father that his son was dead or telling a sister that her brother was dead, but he was glad he didn’t have to tell both of them.
5
In his new clothes Freddy looked like a native Miamian. He wore a pale blue guayabera, white linen slacks with tiny golden tennis rackets embroidered at irregular intervals on both pants legs, white patent-leather loafers with tassels, a chromium dolphin-shaped belt buckle, and pale blue socks that matched his guayabera. He had had a $20 haircut and an $8 shave in the hotel barber shop, charging both to his room, together with a generous tip for the barber. He could have passed as a local, or as a tourist down from Pennsylvania to spend the full season.
Freddy arrived at Granny’s a little before five and ordered a pot of ginseng tea, telling the heavy-hipped Cuban waitress that he was waiting for a friend. He had never tasted ginseng tea before, but he managed to kill some of the bitterness by adding three spoons of raw brown sugar to his cup. The menu didn’t make much sense to Freddy. After looking it over, he decided he would order whatever Susan ordered and hope for the best. The ginseng tea was foul, but it had seemed like a better choice than the gunpowder tea the waitress had recommended. He had run out of cigar
ettes, his first pack smoked since leaving prison. But when he asked the waitress to bring him a fresh package of Winston 100s, she told him that no smoking was allowed at Granny’s, and that “cigarettes are poison to the body.”
Actually, Freddy realized, he didn’t truly want a cigarette. Kicking the habit in prison had been difficult. Six days in the hole without a cigarette had given him a good start, helping his body get rid of the stored nicotine, but it hadn’t helped his psychological dependence on smoking. There were very few things that a man could do alone in prison. Smoking was one of them. Smoking not only helped to pass the time, it gave a man something to do with his hands. Until he started pumping iron in earnest, those long days of wandering around in the yard without a cigarette had been his worst days in stir. And yet the first thing he had done when he got into the San Francisco bus terminal was to buy a package of Winston 100s. He had picked them because of the deep red package. He had somehow associated smoking with freedom, even though smoking was a form of slavery. That settled it. He would give it up before he got back into the habit. Otherwise, when he got back to prison, he would have to go through all of that painful withdrawal business again.
Susan, still in her work clothes, arrived a few minutes after five. She waved from the door and then joined him at the table-for-two against the wall. She ducked her head and sat under an ominous hanging basket containing a drooping mass of ferns. She was obviously pleased to see Freddy.
“You forgot the suitcase,” Freddy said, “but I gave it to Pablo. The clothes are in the bag under the table.”
“I didn’t really forget. I just thought better of it. A lot of employees know what I do in the hotel, and they don’t like me. They don’t like any of us girls, because of the money we make. So if a maid saw me with the suitcase, she’d call the security office and say that I stole it from a guest or something. Then, when I told the security officer the truth, he’d still check with you, and he’d find out that you didn’t have any other luggage. That could make some trouble for you. What I think, when you left your wife, is that you took the wrong suitcase. You took hers instead of your own. Isn’t that right?”