Charles Willeford - Sideswipe

by Unknown

  Letters were written to the Cuban-born mayor and to the multi-ethnic members of the city commission. The tone of the letters varied, but the essential message was the same, reminding the commissioners that when they ran for their six-thousand-dollar-a-year seats that they had all claimed that they would serve -all- of the people in Miami if elected, not just their ethnic groups. They were also reminded that WASPs, although they only numbered approximately eight percent of Miami's population, still had a lot of money to spend in future elections.

  The mayor and the other members of the commission put considerable pressure on the city manager. The city manager, who had the authority to hire and fire police chiefs, applied even more pressure on the chief of police to find the killers. He, in turn, appointed a Special Task Force to solve this crime, to be headed by Major Willie Brownley. Major Brownley, in turn, made Commander Bill Henderson his operations officer, to coordinate activities, and Bill Henderson, in turn, canceled Hoke Moseley's leave without pay and called him back to do the actual work on the investigation with the help of Detective Speedy Gonzalez.

  Hoke and Gonzalez had lots of help from within the division and the department. Ellita, not only because she was a wounded cop, but because of her cheerful disposition and willingness to lend small sums of money, was popular with all of the detectives in the Homicide Division. They volunteered their off-duty time to Hoke the moment their shifts ended. Hoke gave them things to do, like the routine roundup of tall, black holdup men with previous convictions, who were then interrogated about their whereabouts at the time of the robbery-massacre. These interrogations didn't get any concrete results, but were considered necessary to eliminate possible suspects and on the off-chance that some information would turn up.

  Gonzalez and Sergeant Armando Quevedo interviewed the day-shift employees at the supermarket, and the day manager quickly identified the dead mulatto's photograph as that of a bag boy he had fired for stealing a couple of months back. The man's name, according to the three-byfive employment card, was John Smith, but the roominghouse address on the card did not exist, and the Social Security number on the card belonged to a forty-sevenyear-old John Smith in Portland, Oregon.

  "We don't run background checks on bag boys," the manager said. "They don't handle money, and they come and go too fast. Smith had a Caribbean accent, so maybe he gave us a phony name and Social Security number because he was here in Florida illegally. That sometimes happens with foreigners on student visas, who ain't supposed to work either. All I know about Smith is, he was a thief, and as soon's I spotted him stealing I canned him."

  Quevedo then checked the dead man's clothes in the lab with the head technician. Here their luck changed, and they got a valid lead.

  Hoke, of course, had to read and cross-check every supplementary report with the others, and the pile of paper mounted hourly on his desk. Hoke's phones, as well as Bill Henderson's, were busy night and day, after the numbers were listed in the newspapers. But Hoke welcomed the activity, knowing, from experience, that it was the kind of things they were doing now that eventually provided a breakthrough in any investigation.

  Hoke would have returned to Miami anyway, whether his leave had been canceled or not. He considered himself partly responsible for his partner's injuries. If he had been home instead of trying to "find himself again" up in Singer Island, he would have been the one to go to the store instead of Ellita, and she wouldn't have been wounded. Her face, the surgeon told him, when Hoke talked to him at some length in the hospital, would be okay when the surgery healed. The hole could be filled in with a piece of plastic, and the skin would stretch over it. Except for a small dent, and a fine line across her cheek, which could be camouflaged easily with pancake makeup, no one, unless he looked very closely indeed, would notice the repair work. The arm, unhappily, was a more serious injury, because of the nerve damage. In time, Ellita would regain partial use of her arm, eighty to eighty-five percent perhaps, with a lot of therapy, but the disability meant the end of her career insofar as full-time police work was concerned.

  The surgeon would recommend a thirty-percent disability pension for Ellita Sanchez, and because disability pensions paid a higher sum than regular police pensions, Ellita would make almost as much money as she would have made if she had stayed on the force for twenty years. In fact, in the long run, she would make a little more, because she still had eleven years to go for normal retirement, and she would be drawing the disability pension for those eleven years without working. Moreover, the disability payments would continue for the rest of her life, with a three percent COLA every year. She also received a Heroism medal from the Chief of Police, and considerable space in the newspapers.

  On the even brighter side, she would be able to stay home and raise her son, and the boy, Pepé Roberto St. Xavier Armando Goya y Goya Sanchez, was a healthy, beautiful blue-eyed baby. And, the surgeon added, he wished that Hoke, if he had any influence with Ellita at all, would ask her to reconsider and let him circumcise the boy before she took him home from the hospital.

  Hoke told him that he would think about it, although he didn't intend to say anything about it.

  Mr. and Mrs. Sanchez, Ellita's parents, were in Ellita's hospital room when Hoke and Sue Ellen visited her. One or the other had been there every minute since the time she had been brought back to a private room from Recovery. They sat quietly on metal folding chairs beside the bed. Mr. Sanchez, who had disowned his daughter when he had discovered that she was pregnant, still didn't speak to her, but the fact that he was there, and smiled in spite of himself when the baby was brought in for nursing, was a sign that there might be, eventually, some kind of a reconciliation. Hoke shook hands with the tight-lipped Mr. Sanchez, and smiled at Mrs. Sanchez, who merely pursed her lips and shook her head. Hoke kissed Ellita lightly on the forehead.

  "Have you seen the baby?" Ellita asked, smiling.

  "I sure did. He's a monster with black hair and blue eyes."

  "Didn't I tell you he would be a boy?"

  "I never doubted it. They wouldn't let Sue Ellen go up there, though, and she's dying to see him."

  "She can see him in here, when they bring him back to nurse. But you'll have to leave then."

  "I've quit my job, Ellita," Sue Ellen said. "So I'll be there to help you with the baby when you come home."

  "You didn't have to do that--"

  "It was my idea," Hoke said. "Aileen's coming back from L.A. next Saturday, and she's going to spend the rest of the summer with my dad in Singer Island. Those sisters at the convent straightened her out in a hurry. But she'll be back home when school starts, and the manager at the car wash said Sue Ellen could have her job back anytime she wanted it."

  "How's the investigation going?"

  Hoke turned to Sue Ellen. "Wait in the waiting room, honey. You can come back when they bring in the baby. Could you ask your parents to leave while we discuss this, Ellita?"

  Ellita said something to her parents in Spanish. They didn't reply, but they didn't move, either.

  "They won't leave, Hoke." Ellita shrugged. "But they won't repeat anything you say, don't worry."

  Sue Ellen went out, closing the door softly behind her.

  "The dead guy with the stocking cap was identified," Hoke said. "There was a numbered yellow cleaning tag stapled on his jacket, and I gave it to Sergeant Quevedo to track down. He was on the phone for four hours, tracing itto Bayside Cleaners. He went down there, but they didn't have any slip for the cleaning on file. The woman in the shop, though, a woman from Eleuthera, recognized his picture, because of his little car. He had an old Morris Minor, and when he came in she told him she hadn't seen a car like that since she left Nassau fifteen years ago. They had talked some about the islands, and she remembered that he told her he brought the car from Barbados with him. So Quevedo did some legwork in Bayside, found the mail carrier on the route, and the mailman knew him because he delivered his mail from Barbados. He was living in a garage apartment that belonge
d to Sidney Shapiro, watching their house while they were up in Maine. His name was James Frietas-Smith, and the little Morris was parked in the yard, all packed up with his stuff, and there were some weird paintings stacked up in the garage. Quevedo called Smith's father in Barbados, and he's going to make some kind of arrangements with a shipping firm to take the body back to the island."

  "That was good police work on Quevedo's part."

  Hoke grinned. "That's why Quevedo's a sergeant, and also why I'm thinking about sending Gonzalez back to duty in Liberty City. Gonzalez ain't gonna make it as a detective, and he should be back in uniform."

  "Give him time, Hoke."

  Hoke shrugged. "Anyway, that garage apartment was incredibly clean. The furniture was polished, and you wouldn't believe how neat it was. Not a dirty dish. But there was no evidence of anyone else living there. But that wasn't the main discovery. Quevedo asked Shapiro to come down to see if anything valuable was missing from the big house in front of the garage. Shapiro flew down, and when he and Quevedo went through the house, they found a dead guy and a dead baby rolled up in a carpet in one of the guest bedrooms on the second floor."

  "A dead baby? I don't under--"

  "The baby, about eighteen months old, had been strangled, but the dead man, a guy named James C. Davis, had been shotgunned. The baby had been kidnapped at Dadeland, and we got an ID from the mother already. They took the car and the baby, and then dumped the car and kept the baby to kill it. Davis was a detail man--"

  "A detail man?"

  "From a pharmaceutical firm. Lee-Fromach Pharmaceuticals, in New Jersey. A detail man is a guy who goes around and talks to doctors about his products. These guys work alone, you see, and Dade County was Davis's territory. That's why no one reported him missing. He was a bachelor with a pad in the Grove. We found his car, a blue Lincoln town car, parked at a Denny's on Biscayne Boulevard."

  "I still don't understand why they would kill a baby, Hoke." She brushed her eyes with the back of her hand. "An eighteen-month-old baby couldn't identify anybody. He'd hardly know his mother!"

  "It was a little girl. I know, it was totally senseless. But what we're dealing with, Ellita, is a crazy double-donged sonofabitch. The same guy who shot you probably killed the baby, and they must've shot Davis when they took his car for the robbery. This killer's a scary guy."

  "What about prints on the car?"

  "Nothing, except for smudges and Davis's prints. You said the person driving could've been either a man or a woman, probably a woman because there was the scarf over her head, but we can't verify that. You can't describe the guy with the shotgun because he was in silhouette, so we don't know if he was black or white."

  "That red light, flashing off and on, was like a strobe, Hoke. I couldn't tell anything for sure."

  "Well, we know the Bajan was a high yellow, so we've been figuring the guy with the shotgun's probably black, too. But that still doesn't explain the old white man. You say he was a shopper in the store, but he must be a member of the gang if he left with the one who was shot. The collection of groceries in his cart was such a weird mixture, he was obviously killing time in there for some reason or another.

  "Anyway, we circulated the Identikit picture of the old man you described, and now I've asked the TV stations to run it in the 'Crime Stoppers' series. At first, we thought the way you did, that the old man was a customer, just somebody doing a good-Samaritan act and driving the wounded man to the hospital. But none of the hospitals have reported any gunshot men who haven't been accounted for in some other way. If the gunshot killer was hurt as badly as you say, he needed medical attention. We've been checking clinics and hospitals by phone from Key West to West Palm Beach, but so far, nothing. There were no prints on the two weapons found either, so the guy must've been wearing gloves."

  "How much did they get in the robbery?"

  "About eighteen thousand. There should've been more, but because of those armored car robberies last month, Wells-Fargo's been varying their pickup schedules. They picked up at noon on Saturday instead of waiting for Monday. The chain had insurance for the money, but they may have to close the supermarket. People are scared shitless. It's not open at night anymore now, and a few of the businesses that had signed leases to move into the new mall have just canceled them. Willie Brownley asked the chain to increase the reward from ten to twenty-five thousand, and they probably will. If we don't catch the killer, nobody'll visit that mall when it finally opens--not at night, anyway."

  "I should've been more alert, Hoke. I was crouched right behind the Honda and I didn't get the license number. It didn't even occur to me. I noticed the roof rack, however, and those aren't standard."

  Hoke patted her arm. "If I'd been shot in the face and was going into labor, I wouldn't have thought of the license either. The Identikit drawing's a good one, you say, but do you realize how many old men there are who've retired to Florida and look like that? Every pensioner in Dade County owns at least one wash-and-wear seersucker suit."

  "What about the cane, Hoke? There was a brass dog's head on the cane, I think. Not every old man carries a cane. So why not run a picture of that along with the Identikit photo?"

  "What kind of dog was it?"

  "I don't know. But it was a shiny brass dog's head, not a duck or a snake, I'm almost positive."

  "Were the ears up or down?"

  "Down, like flaps, and the nose was a little pointed, I think, but it wasn't any special breed. I didn't pay that much attention, but I did notice the cane when he put it under his arm at the checkout counter."

  "Okay. We'll get 'em to run a picture of the cane, too. A cocker spaniel, maybe."

  "I wish there was something else, Hoke." Tears formed in Ellita's eyes again. "When I think about that dead baby..."

  "Don't think about it. I'll leave Sue Ellen here so she can see your baby, and I'll pick her up tonight on my way home. Do you need anything?"

  "Well, if you can, smuggle me in a can of Stroh's." Ellita wiped her eyes with the corner of the sheet. "My mother says that an occasional beer makes your milk richer. Because of the hops, and all. And the doctor said I couldn't have any."

  "Sure, I'll sneak you in a couple of beers, kid. Do you need anything for pain? I can bring you some codeine tablets if you want some."

  "No, I'm okay there. It's a steady kind of pain, in my shoulder, and it shoots down my arm once in a while, but I can stand it. They've been giving me Darvon every four hours, and that helps."

  "I know how these bastards are, Ellita. Doctors call pain 'discomfort,' and they don't give a shit whether you're suffering or not. If it gets too bad, you tell me, and I'll get you some codeine."

  Hoke patted Ellita on her good shoulder, nodded goodbye to the Sanchezes, and left to drive back to the police station. The Sanchezes, to Hoke's amusement, suspected that he was the father of Ellita's baby, and hated him for not acknowledging it, and for not marrying their daughter after getting her pregnant. Ellita had told them that Hoke wasn't the father, but they had never believed her. Hoke, of course, didn't care what the Sanchezes thought about him, or what they had thought his reasons were for telling them, in his halting Spanish while Ellita was in surgery, that he'd find the son of a whore who shot at her and her baby if it took him twenty-five hours a day.

  The next break in the case came when a black man giving his name only as Marvin telephoned Commander Bill Henderson and said he had some information on the robbery. But he wanted to make a deal, he said, before he would pass it on. Marvin also said he wanted the reward money, and a statement, in writing, that he was entitled to it, before he gave Henderson any information.

  "We get a lot of strange calls, Marvin," Henderson told him. "What've you got?"

  "Do I get my deal first?"

  "That depends on your information, and the deal you want."

  "I'm out on bond," Marvin said, "for soliciting a minor for prostitution, and I want the charges dropped."

  "That's a serious charge.
How old was the girl?"

  "It wasn't no girl, it was a boy. He's fourteen, but he was already hustling when I recruit him. It's a bum rap, but they don't like me over here on the Beach and they set me up."

  "You realize that Miami and Miami Beach are two different jurisdictions?"

  "I knows that, but I also knows that deals can be made, 'specially on something like this massacre."

  "I'll see what I can do, Marvin. But you'll have to come to the station to talk to me."

  "I can't do that. I done been told by a Miami vice cop never to come over to Miami again, or he'd shoot me on sight."

  "Who told you that? What's his name?"

  "A Miami vice cop. I don't know his name, but he knows mine and he knows me. I'll meet you this afternoon at four-thirty at Watson Island. In the Japanese garden, at the gate. I'll show you some proofs of what I'm saying, and then we can dicker."

  "Okay, Marvin. See you at four-thirty."

  Bill Henderson passed this intelligence on to Hoke, and then returned to making up duty schedules for the following week. He also had a supplementary payroll for the division to get out.

  That afternoon, Hoke and Gonzalez drove to Watson Island, only an eight-minute drive from the police station, and parked in the lot outside the Japanese garden. The garden, donated to Miami by a Tokyo millionaire in 1961, hadn't been maintained, but it was still open to the public every day until five.

  There was no one at the gate. Gonzalez looked at the jungly growth in the garden and shook his head. "This place was really something a few years ago, Sergeant. I remember bringing my girl friend over here on Sundays, just to walk around and look. There used to be a beautiful stone lantern over there, right by the bridge."

  "Somebody probably stole it. The city can't afford to have twenty-four-hour security on a place like this."

  "Maybe not, but it's a shame to let it run down this way. You think this Marvin guy'll show up?"

  "You never can tell, Gonzalez. Usually, anonymous callers don't show the first time, but if they really have something, they'll call again. That's the usual pattern. If this guy's got anything at all, he'll meet us eventually. Reward money brings them out, and it was in the paper this morning, about the reward being increased to twenty-five thousand."