by Miami Blues
“You can’t do nothin’ without your thumb,” he explained.
He used all the gauze and all the tape because he didn’t have a knife to cut off the excess, but the wrapping was so tight it looked like a professional job.
“That’ll do her till you get to a doctor.”
Freddy gave the man $10.
“This is a ten,” the man said.
Freddy shrugged. “Five’s for the bandage job, and the other five’s for getting me a cab.”
“I’ll be right back.” The man hesitated. “Don’t let nobody touch my bottle.” Limping slightly in his huaraches, the man hurried toward Flagler in the rain. The rain had a steady beat to it now, as though it would last forever.
Freddy picked up the bottle and took a long swig from it. Muscatel wine. Sweet and fruity, and devoid of subtlety. Freddy drank the rest of it anyway and put the bottle down by the wall again. The sweet wine didn’t lessen the pain in his hand. He needed whiskey for that, but the Darvon he had back at the house in Dania would help more than whiskey. He regretted his hasty retreat from the coin exchange. He should have scooped up the stubs of his fingers he left behind. The cops would get his fingerprints from them. Shit. Murder One. The time had come to get the hell out of Miami. He would tell Susie to drive him to Okeechobee. She undoubtedly knew a doctor up there, and after he got his hand fixed up they could head north. They could hole up along the way in one of those Days Inns that dotted I-95 in every small Florida town. Then, when his hand had healed, he would decide what to do next. Maybe they could fly out to Vegas. There was a lot going on in Vegas.
A Veteran’s Cab pulled up to the curb. The derelict got out, and Freddy handed him another $5. “I finished off your bottle,” Freddy said. “Buy yourself another.”
“That’s all right. Thanks a lot. I didn’t mean you, anyway. I meant if somebody else came along. Thanks!”
Freddy got into the cab. He began to sweat, and a wave of nausea swept over him as his stomach cramped. He leaned forward and vomited on the floor. It all came up, filling the cab with the aromas of chipped beef, milk gravy, and muscatel wine.
“That’s gonna cost you, mister!” the driver said bitterly.
“Don’t worry about it.” Freddy passed a twenty-dollar bill across the back of the seat, and the driver’s fingers snatched it. “Just drive north on Dixie until I tell you to stop.”
“Okay,” the driver said, “but this twenty’s for the cleanup, not for the fare on the meter.”
When they reached Dania, Freddy told the driver to stop at a closed Union service station on the highway. Freddy doubled the tab on the meter, but he got no thanks from the grim-faced driver. The cabbie made a U-turn and started back toward Miami without a word.
Freddy’s house was twelve blocks away from the gas station, a long walk in the rain, but now that he had a Murder One rap hanging over him he sure as hell didn’t want the driver to know his address. Jesus, it had all happened so fast. He had gone by the place three or four times when he had cased out the coin dealer, but the man had always been alone in his shop. Who would have suspected that Wulgemuth had a dumb sonofabitch in the storeroom with a shotgun? Well, that was tough shit for Pedro, and tough shit for Wulgemuth—and tough shit for his fingers, too. Susan would be home now, unless she had misunderstood everything he had told her and had driven over to Watson Island and parked in the Japanese Garden parking lot. But she wasn’t that dimwitted. Some traffic cop or meter maid had made her move, and she had either circled the block while he was still in the coin shop, or made a second tour of the block and perhaps a third. She might still be downtown, circling the block again and again, but she would give up eventually and drive home to Dania.
Wet all the way through his jacket and shirt, Freddy slogged through the rain with soggy trousers and wet feet. When he got home he would take a Darvon and drink some chocolate milk to settle his stomach. It might be a good idea to get Edna Damrosch to take a look at his injured hand. No, that would mean explanations, and this time she would call a doctor. He would just take some Darvon, some penicillin tablets, and wait till they got to Okeechobee. The pain wasn’t all that bad. He could stand a little pain, but those missing fingers would certainly make him a marked man—and for life, too.
The TransAm wasn’t parked in the driveway. The stupid little bitch. She was still downtown, circling the block and looking for him. He should have given her a time limit. He needed her right now, and she wasn’t home.
He let himself into the house, surprised to see that the lights were still on in the kitchen. He thought he had turned them off when they left. He went into the bathroom, swallowed two Darvons, and sipped some water from the cup on the sink. The door to the closet was standing open. Susan’s two suitcases were missing. Her black dress wasn’t on the hanger in the closet. He ran into the kitchen, took down the Ritz Cracker box from the back shelf where the provisions were kept, and ripped open the top.
The money was gone. All of it, including the 10,000 Mexican pesos they hadn’t been able to exchange. Freddy laughed. So Susan had skipped out on him, taken some of her clothes, the money, and gone home. He had known she was nervous—she told him so—but he hadn’t taken into account how truly scared she must have been. Maybe she thought he was going to shoot the coin dealer. Well, as it turned out, she was right.
She must have bolted as soon as he had rounded the corner to Flagler. It was understandable, but unexpected. Now he would have to find his own way up to Okeechobee, track her down, get his money back, and find a way to dispose of her body. He couldn’t let her live, not now, not after finding out what he had already known from the beginning—that he couldn’t trust Susan; that, in the final analysis, a man couldn’t trust anyone. But especially a whore.
Freddy took Wulgemuth’s wallet and the wad of bills from the till out of his jacket pocket. With his good hand, he counted out five twenties and eight tens on the kitchen table. He had another six or seven hundred in his own wallet, and there were seventy-five dollars in Wulgemuth’s wallet. Even though he had left the coin case in the shop, he was still ahead in the operation. He wasn’t broke, and he still had a shitload of credit cards—
Hoke Moseley stepped through the door to the kitchen from the screened back porch. He pointed his .38 at Freddy.
Freddy turned and stared at Moseley for a long moment, taking in the gray haggard face, the steady pistol, the wet, ill-fitting leisure jacket.
“Raise your hands,” Hoke said, “level with your shoulders.”
“What’ll you do if I don’t, old man, shoot me? And what are you doing in my house? Where’s your warrant?”
“I said to raise your hands.”
Freddy grinned and raised his hands slowly.
“Where’s Susan?” Hoke said.
“You tell me, man.” Freddy lifted his chin. “I had all my money in that Ritz cracker box, and she cleaned me out and took off.”
“Why’d she take off that way, after she dropped you off downtown on Miami Avenue?”
“Look, my hand hurts, and I’ve got to get to a doctor. Can I drop my left hand? It hurts like a sonofabitch. You got some crazy people in this town, d’you know that? I go into Wulgemuth’s to sell some coins, and the crazy bastard and his bodyguard try to kill me with a damned sugarcane knife. Is that why you’re here? I was coming down to tell you about it as soon as I saw a doctor.”
Hoke was genuinely puzzled. “What happened in Wulgemuth’s?”
“I just told you.” Freddy rested his bandaged hand on his chest. “I took some silver dollars down to Wulgemuth’s Coin Exchange to get them appraised. If the price was right, I was going to sell ’em. Then him and his bodyguard, a crazy Cuban with a shotgun, tried to rob me. Old man Wulgemuth tried to hack off my hand with a damned machete, and he got most of it, too. I’m hurting, man, and you’ve got to get me to a doctor!”
“Then what happened?”
“When?”
“After this respectable businessman�
�s unprovoked attack.”
“I took a cab home, because Susie wasn’t waiting for me any longer, that’s all.”
“Before that, before you left the store?”
“I got lucky. Before these two crazy people could kill me, I was able to get the gun out of Wulgemuth’s drawer and defend myself with it.”
“And you shot them?”
“I have no idea. I just started shooting, and when they ducked for cover I ran out. I don’t think I hit either one of them. I was just concerned with getting out and finding a doctor, that’s all.” Freddy moved his feet, inching toward Moseley. Hoke stepped back and extended his arm.
“Back up! Turn around slowly, lean against the wall, and spread your legs.”
Freddy shook his head. “I can’t do it. I’d pass out. Most of my fingers are gone, and I’m liable to go into shock any minute …” Freddy’s voice dropped to a theatrical whisper. “Things are going black, all purple and black …” His knees buckled, and as he dropped to the floor, he managed to break his fall with his right hand. He fell over on his left side, groaned piteously, and fished in his jacket pocket for his pistol. As the .38 cleared the pocket, Hoke shot him in the stomach. Freddy screamed and rolled over, trying to get to his feet and get the pistol out of his pocket at the same time. Hoke shot him in the spine, and Freddy stopped moving. Hoke bent down and fired another round into the back of Freddy’s head.
Hoke slumped into a kitchen chair and put his pistol on the table. When Bill Henderson, Ellita Sanchez, and Sanchez’s uniformed cop cousin from Hollywood came through the unlocked front door, Hoke was still sitting in the kitchen chair, smoking his third cigarette.
23
“You okay, Hoke?” Henderson asked.
“I’m not hurt, if that’s what you mean.” Hoke dropped the cigarette on the floor and stepped on it as he got to his feet.
“Stay there,” Henderson said. “Sit down.” Henderson told the uniformed officer to go out to the front porch, and to prevent anyone else from coming into the house. “You don’t have to stay out in the rain, Mendez. Just turn on the porch light, and stand inside the front door.”
“Mendez?” Hoke said, starting to get up again.
The officer left the kitchen. “Yeah,” Henderson said, “Mendez is Sanchez’s cousin, a traffic officer from Hollywood. Why in the hell didn’t you wait for us, for Christ’s sake?”
Sanchez was on her knees beside Freddy’s body. She took a Swiss army knife out of her handbag, opened the small scissors, and started to cut away the bandage on Freddy’s left hand. Hoke watched her with keen interest.
“I was afraid he’d get away, Bill. It looked as if he was preparing to leave, and I didn’t think I’d have any trouble. I didn’t intend to shoot him, but when he went for his gun … well …”
“Did you know he killed Wulgemuth and his bodyguard at the coin exchange store?”
“He said he shot his pistol, but denied hitting anyone. According to him, he was attacked by the two men and he shot back in order to get away.”
“Bullshit. It was on the radio. Didn’t you have the radio on when you drove after him to Dania?”
“I haven’t got a radio. Remember? Somebody stole it when I was in the hospital.”
“But you did see him coming out of Wulgemuth’s Coin Exchange, right?”
“With a gun in his hand,” Sanchez said, looking up with a smile. She raised Freddy’s unbandaged left hand. “See? Three fingers missing. When the ME matches them up, Sergeant Moseley’ll be credited with a quick solution to a double murder.”
Hoke shook his head. “I didn’t see him come out of any coin exchange. I was tailing him, hoping to get some probable cause to shake him down. As an ex-felon, if he had a pistol on him, I was going to pick him up. I lost him, and then picked him up again on the corner of Flagler and Miami Avenue.”
“Listen carefully, Hoke.” Bill took a chair from the table and sat in front of Hoke, looking directly into his eyes. “You’re in some jurisdictional trouble if you don’t get your story straight. And here’s the way you tell it, and this is the way we’ll write it up. You were tailing him, yes, and you lost him for a while, right? Then you saw him coming out of Wulgemuth’s store and putting a gun into his pocket as he came out. Suspecting him of a robbery, you called Sanchez for backup from Broward County, and then drove here to his house after losing him downtown when he ran away. Isn’t that what happened?”
“Something like that.”
“No, exactly like that.”
“All right. Exactly like that.”
“After you called Sanchez and she got a hold of me, we found out about the killing of the two men. Sanchez called her cousin, and he came here in his own car. We knew you were in danger, so we didn’t have time to contact the Broward County sheriff’s office, you see. You knew he had a gun because you saw it when he came out of the store. As an off-duty police officer, you went after him and contacted higher authority, through Sanchez.”
“I also suspected him of a California assault, and I had reasonable cause to pick him up on that.”
“Okay. That’s your story. Don’t change it. I’ll call Captain Brownley and Doc Evans. Brownley’ll call the Broward sheriff, and I imagine Doc Evans will contact the Broward County ME. The report’s going to be a jurisdictional mess.”
“What about the girl?” Sanchez said, joining them at the table. “What’s her name?”
“Susan Waggoner,” Henderson said. “We’ll put out an APB on her. In this rain, she can’t get too far away. I’ll get out the all-points as soon as I call Brownley.”
“D’you want me to call?” Sanchez said.
“No, I’ll call. Why don’t you make some coffee? This is going to be a helluva long evening.”
“I’ll make the coffee,” Hoke said, getting up.
Sanchez went to the sink, and turned on the tap. “Find the pot,” she said. “We’ll make it together.”
Captain Brownley and the Broward County sheriff both made some compromises, and so did the Broward County medical examiner. It was more important to clear up the murders of the coin exchange proprietor and his bodyguard than it was to hold hearings in Broward County. A young lieutenant from the Dania Police Department, who was temporarily in charge while the Dania chief of police was hunting wolves in Canada, was awed by all of the brass from Dade and Broward counties and was willing to do almost anything to get Freddy’s body out of town as quickly as possible. In a small town like Dania, shootings of any kind were bad for business.
Susan Waggoner was picked up by a Florida state trooper in Belle Glade. Her TransAm was impounded there, and she was brought to the Miami police station by the trooper. The trooper who picked her up also gave her a ticket for having tinted windows in the TransAm that were twice as dark as the law allowed.
Hoke, Henderson, and Sanchez were still working on their joint report when Susan was brought in. They took her down to an interrogation room, and Henderson read her her rights.
“D’you understand,” Hoke said, “that you can have a lawyer present? You don’t have to tell us anything if you don’t want to, but we need to clear up a few things.”
“I don’t know what this is all about,” Susan said. “When we had the windows tinted on the car, the man said it was legal. You see a lot of people driving around Miami with tinted windows, and a lot of them are darker than mine.”
“Never mind the tinted windows,” Hoke said. “I followed you in my car from Dania to downtown Miami, and I was across the street when you parked in the yellow loading zone on Miami Avenue. I saw your boyfriend get out of the car—”
“Junior?”
“Junior. And then you took off almost immediately. Did you know he was going to rob the coin store?”
“No. Why would he rob the store? He had some silver dollars to sell. That’s what he told me, and he wanted me to go with him. I didn’t want to go because of the rain, and when I said I’d stay in the car and wait for him he got mad
at me. That’s when he told me that he was the one who broke my brother’s finger out at the airport. Remember that?”
“He told you that?”
“That’s right. And I’ll sign a statement to that, too. We’d had some arguments before, and he even hit me once, but I stayed with him because of his other good qualities. But when I found out that he was the one responsible for Martin’s death, I got scared. I realized that I was in danger from him, and I got scared. Once he told me that, you see, he’d always know that I had something on him, and he could kill me, too. So I just took off, came home to Dania, got my money, and left. I was on my way back to Okeechobee when the state trooper pulled me over in Belle Glade.”
“What were Junior’s good qualities?” Sanchez asked.
Susan frowned. She poked out her lips. “Well, he was a good provider, and he liked everything I cooked for him. There were lots of good things about Junior I liked. But I’m not going to live with him anymore.”
“Junior’s dead, Susan,” Henderson said. “Didn’t you know he had a gun?”
“Yes, but I didn’t know he was going to rob anybody. He carried a gun for protection. He almost got killed a few weeks ago by a gunman in a Seven-Eleven store. So he needed the gun for protection, he told me. Junior’s dead?”
“That’s right,” Henderson said. “He was killed.”
“I guess his gun didn’t do him much good, then, did it? I’m sorry to hear that. I never wished him any harm. I wasn’t going to tell on him, either, about Martin, I mean, but I don’t want to get in no trouble on account of Junior. I didn’t do anything. I just want to go back to Okeechobee. All I’ve had is trouble of some kind or other ever since I came down here for my abortion. What I’d say, if you asked me about Miami, I’d say it’s not a good place for a single girl to be.”
“Jesus Christ,” Hoke said, “let’s get out of here a minute, Bill.”
Hoke and Henderson went out into the hallway.