Charles Willeford - Sideswipe

by Unknown

  "How long's he been dead?" Figueras asked the old man.

  "Three days. I didn't know what else to do. He was suffering, but he wouldn't let me call no doctor or let me take him to the hospital. I brought him home, and when I thought he couldn't stand it no more I gave him two cyanide pills. I didn't know what else to do for him."

  "Cyanide?" Hoke said. "Where in hell did you get cyanide?"

  "Inside my cane, Sometimes people keep vicious dogs that bite strangers and little kids. They won't bite their owners because they feed them, you know, but you can walk down any sidewalk and they'll come right at you before you know it. So I always kept some pills to poison a bad dog once in a while, when I got the chance. Troy was a good boy, good to me, anyway, maybe because I fed him, too, I guess. But he was a lot like a bad dog. I didn't want to do it, but I didn't know what else to do. I even thought about taking some pills myself. But then I thought, Why should I? I ain't done nothing wrong. Troy managed to keep me out of everything so I wouldn't get involved, so all I'm responsible for is putting to sleep the only person who ever really loved me. Anyone who ever heard Troy cry and carry on that way would've done the same. You just can't imagine."

  "Why did he kill all those people?" Hoke said. "Did he say?"

  Stanley shook his head. "He never said, but I think I know why. It was the responsibility. Me and Dale and James. We was all too much for him, and he couldn't stand the responsibility. That's what it was..."

  Stanley began to cry then, and Hoke didn't try to stop him. He realized that the old man had been holding it in for a long time, and that it would be best to let him get it all out. There would be time for more questions later.

  "I'll Mirandize him, Jaime, while you call Chief Sheldon. This is going to be a jurisdictional ordeal, but no matter what you people up here in Palm Beach County think you want to do, I'm taking this old fart back to Miami with me to be tried first for the supermarket murders."

  "What difference does it make, Hoke," Jaime said, "whether he's tried down there first, or for the guy?" Figueras pointed down the hall.

  "There're lots of reasons, but I'll give you one you can understand. Before the old man and the whore are tried to fry in Raiford, I'm going to make lieutenant out of this case. When the next promotion list is posted, I'm going to be at the head of it."

  Hoke was so pleased with the way it sounded that he left off the part about the answer sheets Major Willie Brownley still had in his briefcase.

  It was well after nine P.M. that night before Hoke got onto the Sunshine Parkway and headed south for Miami. Stanley, handcuffed to the D-ring Hoke had welded onto the passenger door, sat quietly beside him in the dark. Stanley had promised not to try and run, so Hoke hadn't put leg-irons on him. Ordinarily, the drive to Miami would have been a six- or maybe a seven-cigarette ride, and for the first time, Hoke truly missed his Kools. But he was over the habit, and he wouldn't smoke again. Not smoking, and counting the weight he had lost, his blood pressure was almost normal again for a man his age.

  To get around the heavy, crazy traffic at the Golden Glades exchange, which every wise Floridian avoided, if possible, Hoke left the Sunshine Parkway at the Holly- wood exit and picked up I-95 for the rest of the way into the city. As the thousands of lighted windows in the tall Miami buildings came into view, Stanley spoke for the first time on the trip.

  "What's going to happen to me, Sergeant?"

  "Hell, Pop," Hoke said, not unkindly, "except for the paperwork, it already has."

  The End