by Miami Blues
“Did she do it on purpose?”
“I think so. But Lopez, being Cuban, doesn’t. Cubans, he says, don’t punish their kids no matter what they do, so he thinks it was an accident. We’ll find out after we’ve knocked on a few doors. Incidentally, I found out who your new partner’s going to be. Ellita Sanchez. D’you know her?”
“The dispatcher? The girl with the big tits?”
“Girl? She’s at least thirty, Hoke, and she’s been on the force for six years.”
“Yeah, as a dispatcher. What does she know about Homicide? Shit, I’m sorry I called you.”
“No, you’re not. I got Wilson off your ass. Besides, Sanchez really has got a nice pair of knockers. And she can write in English, too. Lopez can’t. If it wasn’t for being married, I’d trade you Lopez for Sanchez, but Marie would have a fit if I had myself a female partner.”
“I thought Marie was liberated.”
“She is, but I’m not.”
“I’ll lock your little thirty-two in your desk drawer.”
“Keep it, old buddy. I’m not in any hurry for it.”
Captain Willie Brownley, wearing his navy blue uniform, complete with heavy jacket, sat behind a huge pile of paperwork in his glass-walled office. He gave Hoke a short lecture about hanging on to his new badge and .38 pistol this time.
“In my report, Hoke, I stressed the severity of the attack, and there’ll be no problems with your record. The only problem you might have is with Ellita Sanchez. She told me that she would rather work with someone else instead of you. I get the idea she doesn’t think you’re macho enough—losing your gun and all.”
“Jesus! Didn’t you tell her the circumstances?”
“She knows, yes. But all the same, she wants to do well as a detective and asked me to put her with someone else. I think I straightened her out on that score, but I want you to know how she feels so you can win her over. She realizes that you’re the sergeant, and she’ll do whatever you tell her.”
“I’m still going to be out for my two weeks’ leave.”
“I know. I’m moving Henderson and Lopez into the bullpen, and Sanchez into your office. Maybe she can catch up on some of your back paperwork.”
“In that case, I’ll see you in two weeks.”
“Get rid of that beard before you come back. You look like that Puerto Rican actor, José Ferrer.”
Hoke drove to the Trail Gun Shop and bought a new holster and a pair of handcuffs, charging them to his MasterCard, one that he had obtained from a bank in Chicago that issued them without a thorough credit check. It was the only charge card that he had left, and he never missed sending the bank in Chicago the monthly minimum payment of $10.
He then drove to the International Hotel, parked in the yellow zone, and looked for Pablo Lhosa. He showed Pablo his badge and ID, and asked him where they could go to talk. Pablo took him downstairs to the employees’ locker room and opened his locker, which was secured with two padlocks. He took out a leather sports jacket and handed it to the detective.
“He left this jacket in his room,” Pablo said. “He checked out of the hotel by telephone, paying by credit card. He was registered under the name of Herman T. Gotlieb, San Jose, California. The card, it turned out, was stolen. That’s all I know. This jacket’s too small for me, but it’s expensive, and brand new. I want you to find him, lieutenant—”
“Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir. This guy is scary. You should see his eyes—”
“I have.”
“What I think, I think he’s a hitman of some kind, imported from California.”
“What gave you that idea?”
“Just the way he acts.” Pablo shrugged. “I don’t have no proof, but I know what a killer looks like. I served ten years in the National Guard in Nicaragua, and I’ve dealt with men who looked like him before.”
“I’ll find him. If you see him again, or if you can think of anything else, call me at my home address.” Hoke gave Pablo one of his cards. “Let the phone ring for a long time. Sometimes no one’s at the switchboard. But don’t call me at the department for the next two weeks. Call me at home.”
“Have you checked her apartment?” Pablo said. “They might be out there. A friend of mine checked once, but they weren’t there. That doesn’t mean that they won’t be back. If you want to go out there, here’s the keys to her apartment.” Pablo took two keys off his ring and handed them to Hoke.
“How come you’ve got her apartment keys?”
“My friend gave ’em to me. He’s got keys to everything in Miami. Here, why don’t you keep the jacket, too? Except for the shoulders, you’re both about the same size.”
“Don’t you want it? It’s an expensive jacket.”
“It won’t fit me. I’m a forty-eight portly.”
“Thanks. I’ll find him, Pablo.”
“It can’t be too soon for me. I don’t like violence of any kind.”
“Yeah …” Hoke smiled. “That’s why you left the Nicaraguan National Guard after only ten years.”
Hoke used the pay phone in the lobby to call a friend of his in Records. He asked his friend to run a check on Herman T. Gotlieb in San Jose, California.
“How long will it take?” Hoke asked.
“It depends on a lot of things. Give me a couple of hours, okay?”
“I’ll call you back, then. I don’t know where I’ll be two hours from now.”
Hoke drove out to Kendall. He drew his pistol before he knocked on the door. When no one answered, he used the keys to get in. He looked through the rooms, but he couldn’t tell for certain whether the pair was still living there or not. There were no men’s clothes, but there was plenty of food in the refrigerator. The air conditioning was on, set for seventy-five degrees, and the brass bed in the master bedroom was unmade. There was a small jar of Oil of Olay and a can of Crisco on the bedside table. Except for two six-packs of San Miguel beer in the refrigerator, there was no liquor in the apartment. Hoke knew he shouldn’t be in the apartment without a warrant, but he was positive that a fingerprint check on the jock would turn up a record in California. But how could he get a warrant? He couldn’t tell a state attorney that he was positive it was Mendez who had attacked him. He had no tangible proof.
Hoke ate a bowl of chili and two tacos at a Taco Bell before going home. The hell with his diet. He needed to get his strength back. He took a shower and opened a package of Kools. The mentholated smoke tasted wonderful. A man would be a fool to give up smoking altogether. One cigarette, one, just one, once in a while, couldn’t hurt.
He called his friend in Records. Herman T. Gotlieb, a mugging victim in San Francisco, had been found unconscious on Van Ness Avenue. He had been DOA when his body arrived by ambulance at the San Francisco General Hospital.
Hoke was not surprised by the information. He looked in the telephone book, noted the page and a half of Mendezes, and laughed. There were five Ramons and one Ramona, but it would be useless to call any of them because he knew that the man’s name was not Mendez. All he knew for certain was that the man was armed and dangerous and that he somehow had to find him.
19
For several days after the fiasco at the 7-Eleven, Freddy was moody and inactive. His aching wrist gave him a good deal of pain, and although he didn’t admit it to Susan, the nagging nature of the hurt made it difficult for him to sleep at night. They didn’t have cable television, but he watched a Bowery Boys film festival on Channel 51 night after night, scowling at the commercials. Toward four A.M., when a faint Atlantic breeze wafted in through the open windows, Freddy would turn off the TV and fall into a restless sleep. Susan would be awakened by the sudden silence as the set clicked off. She would then tiptoe into the living room and cover him with a sheet.
After his shower and breakfast in the morning, Freddy sat on the back porch and looked through the screen at the lizards scurrying for survival in the back yard. There was a picket fence around the back yard, and a Barbados c
herry hedge had been planted against the fence. Susan had neglected her small garden, and the tomato plants had withered. A dead coconut palm—killed by lethal yellow—arched up obscenely in the center of the yard. The fronds were gone, and the top of the tree was a shredded stub. Two lizards, in particular, Freddy noted, made the palm their home base. One, a hustler, darted here and there in search of mosquitoes, but the other one, the fatter of the two, moved rarely, except to inflate and deflate its mottled purple throat. When a mosquito came within range—zip! it was gone. In addition to being skinnier than the fatter, immobile lizard, the hustler lizard had lost the tip of its tail. Freddy thought there might be a lesson of some kind here for him to learn.
Freddy was reminded of Miles Darrell, an old fence he had worked with in Los Angeles. Miles would sometimes plan and bankroll a robbery and take half the profits. If the perpetrators were caught, Miles wrote off his investment and let it go at that. On the other hand, Miles was never a participant, and his careful plans usually worked out successfully. If the hooligans he recruited for a job were picked up, they accepted the bust stoically, and none of them ever informed on Miles. To do so would have been foolish. Even when convicted, the average stay in the joint was only two years, and a man knew when he got out he could count on a stake from Miles until he got back on his feet again.
Freddy had learned early in his career that it was best to work alone. If two or three men were in on a job and one was caught, the others would almost invariably be picked up later. Either deals were made by the man who was apprehended, or they would be picked up as the apprehended man’s friends or acquaintances.
On the other hand, Miles, who had never been arrested, only got half the haul when a job was successful. The best method, Freddy concluded, was to plan and execute your own job. That way, no one could inform on you, and if you were successful, everything you got was yours. What he would like now was one large haul. One well-planned job, where the take would be large enough for several years of semiretirement living. Semi, not full retirement, because a man would have to put his hand in from time to time to keep from getting bored, but with enough money stashed away so that he could wait and pick and choose—like Miles. Miles had been a careful planner, and 90 percent of his jobs had been successful.
Perhaps Freddy had been too pessimistic about his life. He had figured, for as long as he could remember, that someday he would end up in prison for life, wandering around the yard as an old lag, muttering into a white beard and sniping cigarette butts.
But that didn’t have to be—not if he could plan and execute one big job. Just one big haul …
But nothing came to him. He had no concrete ideas except for the germ, and the germ was that he had Sergeant Hoke Moseley’s badge and ID. The badge was an automatic pass to free food and public transportation; it could also be used to bluff someone out of a considerable sum of cash. But who?
After lunch and a Darvon, Freddy usually napped on the webbed recliner on the back porch. He would awaken after an hour or two, covered with perspiration. He would then do a dozen one-arm pushups with his good arm and take a shower. He couldn’t shave because of the cuts on his face. After a few days these cuts began to fester. They filled with yellow pus, and he had to pull off the colorful Band-Aids. He awoke one afternoon from his nap with a fever, and it made him dizzy when he tried to sit up in the recliner. He asked Susan to bring him some Bufferin and a pitcher of lemonade.
Susan brought the Bufferin and lemonade, and then left the house. She returned a few minutes later with Mrs. Damrosch, a short middle-aged woman who talked through a professional, meaningless, saleswoman’s smile.
“Susan said you refused to see a doctor, and that you probably wouldn’t let me take a look at you either. But you’re wrong there, boy, I’m taking a look. I nursed my husband for three years before he died, and I can do the same for you—although you aren’t going to die.” She stuck a thermometer under his tongue and told him to close his mouth.
“Not bad,” she said, when she removed the thermometer. “It’s only one-oh-two, and we can get that down with some antibiotics. I’ve got a medicine cabinet full of ’em.”
She slipped her glasses down on her nose and peered into his face, still smiling and shaking her head. “Some of those punctures’ve still got glass in ’em. I’ll go home and be right back.”
“Go with her, Susie,” Freddy said, “and make sure she doesn’t call a doctor.”
Mrs. Damrosch had no intention of calling a doctor. She returned with medicines, unguents, a razor blade, and tweezers. She crosscut each of the punctures in his face with the razor blade and removed bits of glass with her tweezers, telling Freddy in her cheerful voice that it would hurt. She also removed the crude stitches Freddy had taken to replace his eyebrow. She made some butterfly adhesive patches and replaced them on the gaping places that had not, as yet, grown back together. She used two more butterfly patches on the two deepest wounds on his face but said it would be best just to let the others drain.
She and Susan helped Freddy walk to the bedroom. Edna Damrosch poured Freddy a glass of gin, made him drink most of it, and then sponged his muscular body with a mixture of water and rubbing alcohol. When she removed Freddy’s jeans, Susan took the sponge away from her and said:
“I’ll take care of that part.”
Edna laughed. “I would too if I were you!”
This drastic treatment, in addition to penicillin tablets every four hours, broke Freddy’s fever. By noon the next day he was sitting up in bed and eating a roast beef sandwich. He remained in the air-conditioned bedroom for two more days at Edna’s insistence, then felt strong enough to take a long, soaking bath.
When he looked at his face in the mirror, he could barely discern the scabbed crisscrosses beneath his beard. The thick stubble, a quarter of an inch long in some places, was a mixture of blond, brown, and jet-black whiskers—not matching his burnished yellow hair in the slightest. If he was careful he could probably shave, but he decided to keep the incipient beard. It would cover the scars somewhat, and it might be a way to change his appearance. By now the Miami police were looking for him, but they weren’t looking for a man with a blond, brown, and blackish beard. The beard, together with the healing scabs, made his face itch, but he was determined not to scratch his neck or face. His refusal to scratch caused jerky tics to develop on both cheeks, but at least the tics relieved the itching. The following day he took a hammer to the cast on his arm. His wrist was stiff and slightly atrophied, so while he watched TV he squeezed a tennis ball to strengthen his wrist and fingers.
Three weeks after the accident at the 7-Eleven, Freddy put on his Italian suit, took the car keys, and drove into downtown Miami. He had studied the Yellow Pages and the ads in the Miami Herald, and he had a tentative plan. He cased three different coin dealers before picking a major one on Flagler Street. Flagler was Miami’s main street, and the downtown stretch of Flagler was one-way, but just around the corner on Miami Avenue there was a yellow loading zone. If Susan pulled into the loading zone and sat in the car, a mere thirty yards around the corner from the coin dealer’s, she could probably stay there for a half-hour or more before some cop came along and told her to move. The coin dealer, a man named Ruben Wulgemuth, had a reinforced steel door to his shop, and there was a circular, revolving bulletproof window in the wall beside the door. To transact business with the dealer, patrons outside on the sidewalk placed their coins or whatever into the drawer of the revolving window. Except for his regular customers, Wulgemuth didn’t let anyone inside his shop. But Freddy knew how to get inside.
Over the asparagus that night, Freddy explained Susan’s duties to her. Freddy had never eaten asparagus before, nor had he ever tried hollandaise sauce, but he liked it a lot, especially with the center-cut ham steak and scalloped potatoes au gratin. Susan, whose part in the plan was minimal but essential, was apprehensive because Freddy did not feel that it was necessary to tell her what he was going to do.
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“I know you don’t like questions, Junior,” she said, “but I want to do it right.”
“I don’t mind questions,” he said, appropriating Susan’s uneaten asparagus. “I just don’t like dumb questions.”
“You haven’t told me what’s going down. If I knew what you were going to do, it would help me do what you want me to do.”
“No, it wouldn’t. All you have to do is park in the yellow zone and keep the engine running. Nothing could be simpler. I’ll get out of the car and do my business with the coin dealer. If a cop or a meter maid comes along, tell them that you’re waiting for your husband to finish a transaction with the coin shop around the corner. The cops know Wulgemuth does business with people on the street, and that’s a legitimate reason to park in a loading zone. They may make you move anyway, but then you just drive around the block as fast as you can without breaking the speed limit and park there again. If you’re forced to move, lean on your horn with a long two-minute blast as you come by the shop. I’ll be inside, but I’ll hear you.”
“It’ll only take a few seconds to pass the shop, so how can I blow the horn for two minutes?”
“Start blowing when you turn the corner onto Flagler, and keep the horn on all the way up the block after you pass the shop. That’s what I mean by a two-minute blast. Think, Susan, think. If someone looks at you funny for holding down the horn, pretend like it’s stuck.”
“Like this?” Susan dropped her jaw, made an O with her mouth, and opened her eyes wide.
“That’s it!” Freddy laughed.
“You laughed! I don’t remember you laughing before, not even at TV.”
“You never did anything funny before. I don’t laugh at TV because it isn’t real.”
“All right. So what I do is park there and keep the engine running. If nobody makes me move, I just wait for you. When you get back into the car I drive down to Biscayne, take the MacArthur Causeway, and pull into the parking lot on Watson Island.”