by Miami Blues
Freddy parked on the roof of the bus company’s parking garage and spent two hours exploring the Miracle Mile in Coral Gables. The stores were owned by Americans, but they catered to Latin tastes. Women’s clothing was on the garish side, with lots of ruffles and flounces. Primary colors were predominant, with very few pastels in evidence. Men’s suits were gray or blue, with thin stripes in rust or coral, and the shirts and ties were like those Freddy remembered from Santa Anita, when he used to spend his afternoons at the track. Except for the incredible cleanliness, the Coral Gables shopping street reminded Freddy of East Los Angeles, although East LA had never been this prosperous.
In a sporting goods store, Freddy bought three All-American Official Frisbees, charging them to the Mendez credit card. He went back to the roof of the parking garage, took the Frisbees out of the paper sack, and ripped off their plastic wrappings. He then sailed them, one at a time, across the street, and over a lower roof, watching them land and skitter in the heavy traffic on LeJeune Road. Two cellmates at San Quentin had owned a Frisbee, and Freddy had often watched them throw it back and forth to each other in the yard. They would laugh when they caught it, and they would laugh even harder when one of them failed to catch it. Freddy had always wanted to toss it himself, but the two cons never let anyone else into their game, and of course, no one ever asked them for a turn. But throwing the three Frisbees hadn’t been much fun; perhaps you needed a partner to aim at.
Freddy got lost twice trying to get through the complex of the University of Miami, gave up, and finally drove around the school before he could find Miller Road. He got back to Kendall Pines Terrace at six-thirty.
Freddy dumped his packages on the couch, handed Susan her gift-wrapped present, and checked the new deadbolt lock on the front door. He accepted the girlish kiss she planted on his cheek for the gift and told her to buy some 3-in-One Oil the next time she went to the store. She told Freddy about Sergeant Moseley’s visit and handed him the detective’s card. Freddy made her repeat word for word everything that had been said.
“Did he say ‘local’ mug shots, or ‘wanted’ mug shots?”
“He just said mug books. He said you’d know what he meant.”
“You shouldn’t’ve told him you worked for Pablo. That wasn’t too bright.”
“I thought he knew.”
“The best thing to say to a cop is nothing. Remember that. Did Pablo call you?”
“No. Well, he might have. There were two phone calls, but I didn’t answer the phone. If it was Pablo, I knew I wouldn’t know what to say, and if it was you, you would’ve said you’d call and you didn’t.”
“At least you did something right. Get your purse. I’m going over to Miami Beach and see the cop.”
“What about dinner? Everything’s ready.”
“We’ll take it with us.”
In the closet there was a large cardboard box filled with Martin’s fishing gear. Freddy dumped it out, and Susan packed the box with the Crockpot and the rest of the items on her menu. Working hurriedly, she was soon ready to go, and she had to wait for Freddy to shower and change into his new suit and Bally loafers. The .38 made a bulge in Freddy’s jacket pocket, but he didn’t like to carry a pistol in his waistband because of an accident a friend of his had once in San Diego.
As the blacks used to say in the yard at Quentin when they wanted to get even with a bully, Freddy was “going to pull that fucker’s teeth, man!”
12
When Hoke walked into the lobby of the Eldorado Hotel, Old Man Zuckerman jumped up from his faded brocade chair by the entrance and handed him a neatly folded paper napkin. Hoke thanked the old man and put the napkin in his pocket. Mr. Zuckerman smiled toothlessly and sat back down in his chair. Mr. Zuckerman was well into his eighties, and his “job” was to give every person who entered the hotel a paper napkin, and he forced it on visitors and residents alike, including Mr. Howard Bennett, the owner-manager, every time they came in. Hoke figured that this job that Mr. Zuckerman had invented for himself helped to keep the old fellow alive. And Old Man Zuckerman had an endless supply of paper napkins, because he helped himself to all he would need when he ate his meals at Gold’s Deli down the street.
The Eldorado Hotel was a deteriorating art-deco hotel that was on the verge of being condemned It was scheduled to be torn down if Redevelopment came to South Miami Beach. But Redevelopment had been in the planning stage for almost ten years now, and nothing was ever done. Because of the building moratorium on South Beach the owners weren’t repairing anything they didn’t positively have to take care of, except for meeting the most minimal requirements for fire and safety. By acting as an unpaid hotel security officer when he was off duty, Hoke got a free room, but he had been considering moving out for several months.
His problem was money. Every other paycheck went to his ex-wife in Vero Beach, and he had to live on the other half. After term life insurance payments, car insurance, retirement payments, and union dues, he had to live on less than $12,000 a year. With a free room and with his battered Le Mans paid for, that should have been enough—or more than enough—but there had been his own hospital bills, plus a new and enormous bill for his two daughters’ orthodontist. He had ripped up the bill from the orthodontist, but then Patsy, his ex-wife, had threatened to take him to court. Part of the divorce settlement was that he would pay for the girls’ medical expenses. Straightening teeth, in Hoke’s opinion, came under beautification, and was not a necessary medical expense. But to avoid going to court, he had finally sent the orthodontist a check for $50 and told him he would try to make some regular payments on the $1,800 bill.
The shabby lobby was depressing. Eight old ladies, all members of the Eldorado Hotel TV Club, sat in a silent half-circle, watching a television set that was bolted and locked to the wall. When Hoke looked across the room, four Marielitos, playing dominoes at a corner table, got respectfully to their feet, nodded shyly at him, and sat down again when he acknowledged their greeting with a wave of his right arm. On his way to the desk Hoke took a look at the TV screen and saw a green snake eat a red frog. Education Night. He checked his mailbox (Eddie Cohen wasn’t at the desk) and decided that tonight he would only make perfunctory rounds.
On the way to his room on the eighth floor, he stopped the elevator at each floor, looked up and down the halls without getting out, and then went on. On the fifth floor, however, he saw Mrs. Friedman wandering around in her nightgown. He locked the elevator and led the old lady back to her room before going up to six. She often got confused, and when she happened to leave her room she could never remember her room number. Rumor had it that the meals-on-wheels program was either going to be reduced or cut out altogether, and when that happened, he didn’t know what Mrs. Friedman would do for sustenance. Even when her social security check came in, she wouldn’t be able to find her way down to Gold’s Deli and back.
It was depressing to think about Mrs. Friedman, but it had been even more depressing to find out that Susan Waggoner was a whore. Even Hoke wouldn’t have figured that in a hundred years. Bill Henderson, who had worked Vice for three years, probably could have taken one look at Susan and known, but Hoke hadn’t suspected it. Hell, Hoke’s fourteen-year-old daughter was built better and was sexier looking than Susan.
And then there had been that dead baby—and the maid. The kid probably couldn’t talk in sentences yet, and the maid couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty. He didn’t mourn the two Colombians. They were men in their early thirties, and whatever it was that they had done to be killed for, they had done it in their maturity. The maid, if she had been hired locally, might be a lead, but he suspected that she had been brought along from Colombia to take care of the baby.
Any way he looked at it, it was a rotten business.
Instead of going to his room, Hoke took the stairs from the eighth floor to the roof. The only good thing about the Eldorado Hotel was the view from the roof. He lit a cigarette and looked across Bisc
ayne Bay at Miami. The white uneven buildings looked like teeth, but at this distance it was a white smile. There was even a gum-colored sunset above the skyline, and in the northwest above the Everglades there was a stack-up of black clouds that looked like thousand-dollar poker chips. It was raining in the ’Glades, and perhaps enough rain would be left to reach the city and cool it off a little during the night. Hoke finished his cigarette and tossed it off the parapet into the swimming pool behind the hotel. The pool, a small one, had been filled with sand. Without water, no one could use it, but Mr. Bennett saved money on maintenance costs with a pool full of sand. There was a lot of trash scattered over the surface. Hoke decided to put in his report that the trash was a fire hazard so that Mr. Bennett would have to have it cleaned up.
Hoke unlocked the door to his room and switched on the light by the door. The small room was stifling and smelled of dirty sheets, unwashed socks and underwear, bay rum, and stale tobacco smoke. Howard Bennett, the cheapskate owner-manager, had invaded Hoke’s room during his absence and pulled the plug on Hoke’s window air conditioner to save energy costs. Hoke plugged in the air conditioner and turned it up to High.
He took off his leisure suit jacket, his gun, his handcuffs, and sap, and tossed the equipment on the top of his cluttered dresser. He switched on his small black-and-white Sony and poured two inches of El Presidente brandy into his tooth glass. “Family Feud” was on the tube, and for the hundredth time Hoke wondered about the definition of family in America. There were five family members on both teams, but no mothers or fathers. Instead, there were various uncles and cousins and spouses of the cousins, plus one teenage kid who bore no resemblance to either family and had probably been borrowed from neighbors for the program.
There was a knock on the door. Hoke sighed and hid the glass of brandy behind a photograph of his two daughters on the dresser. The last time he had had a visitor knocking on his door it had been Mrs. Goldberg, from 409. Her ex-husband, she told him, had sneaked into her room while she was watching television in the lobby and had stolen her pearl-handled hairbrush, the hairbrush that had belonged to her mother. Hoke had gone down to 409 with her and found the hairbrush in the bottom drawer of Mrs. Goldberg’s dresser.
“He must’ve hidden it there,” she said.
Later on, when Hoke had mentioned the incident to Mr. Bennett, the manager had laughed and told Hoke that Mrs. Goldberg had been a widow for fifteen years.
Hoke reached for the doorknob.
13
Susan drove. The traffic was all coming their way, so she made good time as she drove east on Killian to Old Cutler, then turned north to drive through Coconut Grove. The tropical foliage was thick and green on Old Cutler, and after they passed Fairchild Gardens, the air roots from the overhanging tree branches frequently whipped the roof of the car.
Susan rejoined South Dixie beyond Vizcaya, then took Brickell Avenue to Biscayne Boulevard. She took the toll-free MacArthur Causeway to South Beach. The Eldorado Hotel was near Joe’s Stone Crab Restaurant, and because Susan knew where the restaurant was she had no trouble finding the old hotel on the bay.
“Wait in the car,” Freddy told her, after she parked in the small lot beside the hotel.
“How long?”
“For as long as it takes me. If he’s home, it won’t take long. If he isn’t home, I’ll have to wait in his room till he gets there. So just sit here and wait.”
“Can I play the radio?”
“No. It might attract attention. Stop asking dumb questions.”
Freddy went into the lobby, and Old Man Zuckerman tottered over to him and handed him a napkin. Freddy nodded his thanks, and the old man went back to his chair and fell into a half-doze. There were four men playing dominoes in the corner of the lobby and some old ladies watching TV at the other end. The battered card table, where the Latins were playing, was lighted by a 1930s wrought-iron bridge lamp with a rose shade and tarnished gold tassels. The men all wore T-shirts and jeans, none of them clean. One man had a machete scar running from the top of his head down his left cheek, ending beneath his chin. All four men had blackish homemade tattoos on the backs of their hands and arms.
Freddy walked to the table, and the conversation stopped.
“Sergeant Moseley’s room?” Freddy handed $10 to the man with the scar.
“Top floor.” He pointed his finger at the ceiling. “Eight-Oh-Nine. Gracias.”
“A casa?”
The man ignored the question, pursed his lips, and studied his dominoes. Freddy grabbed the man’s wrist, squeezed it, and took the $10 bill out of his paralyzed fingers.
“Sí, señor,” the man said. “A casa.”
“Un hombre duro,” Freddy said. He wadded the ten into the man’s palm and closed his fingers on it.
“¡Despotico!” The scar-faced man nodded, and the other three Cubans laughed. Freddy crossed the dim lobby to the elevators.
Outside 809, Freddy took out his pistol, knocked on the door, and pressed his back against the wall. Hoke Moseley opened the door, saw no one, and took a step forward. Freddy, with a sweeping motion of the gun, caught Hoke on the side of the jaw. As Hoke fell sideways, Freddy had time for another backhand blow, and Hoke’s false teeth flew out of his mouth and bounced on the dusty hall carpet. Freddy put the teeth into his jacket pocket and dragged the unconscious body inside the room. After closing the door, he kicked the supine man in the jaw with the point of his shoe. The jaw cracked audibly, and blood poured from Hoke’s nose and mouth.
After taking off his jacket, Freddy sat on the edge of the unmade bed. He needed to cool off for a minute or so. His shirt was already drenched with sweat, and he didn’t want it to darken his new suit jacket. The air conditioner in the window labored away, but it produced more noise than cold air. In the humidity, the slightest exercise provoked a good deal of perspiration. In California, Freddy would have had to work out for at least a half-hour to build up such a sweat. It was like breathing through a wet bath towel.
The room was grungy. Here was a pig, Freddy thought, who actually lived like a pig. Aluminum foil covered the sliding glass door that opened onto the tiny balcony. The foil was there to reflect the heat away from the room in the afternoons, but it hadn’t helped much. The dirty beige carpet was ringed and spotted with coffee and other food spills. The sheets on the three-quarter-size bed were dirty, and there was a pile of unwashed laundry in the corner next to an overflowing wastebasket.
There were two police uniforms in heavy plastic garment bags in the closet, along with a black suit and two poplin leisure suits. There were a half-dozen clean short-sleeve sports shirts on hangers, one white dress shirt, and three neckties.
In the bottom drawer of the dresser there was a one-ring hot plate, a small saucepan, a tablespoon, a knife, a fork, three cans of Chunky Turkey Soup with noodles, and a box of Krispy saltines. There was a half-loaf of rye bread, four eggs in a brown carton, ajar of instant coffee, and a bottle of Tabasco sauce. The other dresser drawers contained papers neatly filed away in cardboard folders, Fruit of the Loom underwear, and black lisle socks. There were several T-shirts, two pairs of ragged khaki gym shorts, and a pair of blue-and-red running shoes. The cop didn’t have another pair of black dress shoes, except for the pair he was wearing. Of course, Freddy thought, he might have more shoes and clothes in his locker at the police station.
The detective, in any event, was living incredibly cheap, and Freddy couldn’t understand it. On top of the man’s dresser was a ticket to a lot of money: a badge and an ID in a worn leather holder, a holstered .38 police special, a sap, and handcuffs. Freddy searched Hoke’s pockets. He found keys, a wallet, a package of Kools, Dupont Plaza Hotel paper matches, and eighty cents in change. There were $18 in the wallet, several business cards with notes on them, and one MasterCard. There were also two small photos in the wallet, older versions of the two young girls in the framed photo on the dresser. The detective’s notebook was in his leisure jacket. Freddy flipped thro
ugh it idly but could make out nothing intelligible from the shorthand Hoke used in the notebook.
Freddy sat on the edge of the bed again and tapped the black leather sap gently into the palm of his other hand. The light blow stung. The tapered sap, eight inches long, with a wrist loop at one end, was filled with buckshot. Once, in Santa Barbara, a cop had slapped Freddy on the leg with one almost like this one. There had been no reason to hit Freddy with the blackjack; Freddy had been handcuffed at the time and was sitting quietly in a straight-backed chair. The cop had tapped him because he had wanted to tap him. The pain had been excruciating. His entire leg had gone numb, and unbidden tears had burned his eyes.
Still seated, Freddy reached out, and slapped the sap sharply against the top of Hoke’s right leg. Hoke groaned, and made scrabbling motions with his fingers on the frayed carpet. Freddy shrugged. Hitting the unconscious man had given him no pleasure; he still didn’t know why the cop in Santa Barbara had tapped him with the sap. Policemen undoubtedly had some kind of inborn perverted streak that normal men like himself didn’t have.
Freddy got a brown paper sack from the closet and dropped the holstered .38, the badge, and ID holder into it, along with the sap. He now possessed a cop’s license to steal, and the equipment to go with it. He added the handcuffs to the sack and put Hoke’s $18 on top of the dresser. He then put five $20 bills on top of the $18; it would help to confuse the pig even more when he woke up.