Charles Willeford_Hoke Moseley 04

by The Way We Die Now

  Hoke had fixed his own breakfast that morning and had heard Ellita and the girls talking in Ellita’s bedroom while he ate his Grape-Nuts and toast in the dining room. When Ellita came out to fix her own breakfast, she hadn’t said a word about her date. It was none of his business, and he hadn’t asked. But his curiosity was high. If she didn’t volunteer any information, there was nothing he could do to find out. He could always ask Aileen, who would tell him anything he wanted to know, but he wouldn’t take advantage of his daughter’s desire to please him.

  Hoke flipped his cigarette butt into the shrine and wondered if he had been at the party long enough to leave without hurting the Sánchezes’ feelings. He could drive Ellita’s Honda home and leave the keys to the Pontiac so she could bring the girls and Pepe home later. Then Ellita appeared on the porch, holding a bowl of mixed rice and beans (moros y cristianos) and a plastic spoon.

  “I saw you sneak those pig’s feet back on the table,” she said, smiling, “so I brought you something you could eat.”

  “You didn’t have to do that.” Hoke took the bowl and spoon. “There’re plenty of things on the table I could eat. But those pig’s feet are gross.”

  “Major Brownley hasn’t called yet, Hoke. But I told my mom I’m expecting him to call, and she’s been listening for the phone.”

  “There’ve been about a dozen calls already.”

  “It’s always that way. At a party like this it rings off the hook. People who can’t come want to talk to Tío Arnoldo anyway, and people who’re coming later want to know what to bring, or they say they’ll be late—you know— Cuban time.”

  Hoke nodded. “I didn’t hear you come in last night. I watched the news but didn’t stay up for Saturday Night Live because I was too sleepy.”

  This wasn’t the whole truth. Hoke had gone to bed earlier than he had wanted to because he didn’t want Ellita to think that he was waiting up for her to come home. There was nothing physical between Hoke and Ellita—no sexual sparks—and he had always considered her asexual. But as he had watched the eleven o’clock news, he had considered the possibility that Donald Hutton, after ten years in prison, had looked at Ellita as a desirable sex object and was probably trying to get his hand up under her dress as he sat beside her in the Trail Theater watching the old Buñuel film. And Ellita, being a mature woman, might very well open her legs and encourage such explorations. Why not? She was entitled, and it was none of his business what she did.

  “Los Olvidados was a good movie, Hoke. It was in Spanish, with English subtitles, but whoever wrote the titles really didn’t understand the street idioms. So I had to explain a lot of them to Donnie during dinner.”

  “Donnie?”

  Ellita nodded. “He likes to be called Donnie instead of Don or Donald. His mother always called him that, he said.”

  “Jesus Christ, the man’s forty-five years old! Isn’t that a little old for the diminutive?”

  “What about Ronnie Reagan? He’s thirty years older than Donnie.”

  “But Reagan’s primarily an actor, like Swoosie Kurtz.”

  “Donnie did some acting in prison, he said. They had a little theater group there for a while.”

  “I’ll bet he did. He did plenty of acting at the trial, too, but it didn’t help him any.”

  “He told me he was innocent, Hoke.”

  “You don’t believe him, do you? Monday, if you like, I’ll dig out the old files and bring them home so you can take a look at the evidence.”

  “I’m not a fool, Hoke,” Ellita said with a little laugh. “I was a cop for nine years, remember? They all say they’re innocent. I told Donnie he should try to put it out of his mind. Innocent or guilty, it didn’t make any difference to me. He was free now, I told him, and he could start a new life. All of that was behind him.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “That he was trying. But inasmuch as he hasn’t been given a new trial, and he accepted the parole, his name will never be cleared now. So when he thinks about it, it still galls him.”

  “We proved conclusively that he was fucking his brother’s wife.” Hoke put the untouched bowl of rice and beans on the porch rail next to the empty beer bottle.

  Ellita nodded and smiled. “He explained all that to me at dinner. His brother wasn’t altogether infertile, he just had a low sperm count, that’s all. Marie Weller and Virgil had a regular sex life, but she was impossible for him to impregnate. So Donnie was doing his brother a favor, he said, because Virgil wanted a son. She really wanted a baby, too, and was planning to adopt one. So Donnie said he would impregnate her instead, and Virgil would then think it was his, you see. Being they were brothers, the baby would even look something like Virgil and Donnie, and Virgil would think it was his. Virgil and Donnie even had the same blood type—AB. But Donnie said he couldn’t get her pregnant either, and he really tried.”

  “What a crock of shit! Jesus Christ, Ellita—”

  “Isn’t it?” Ellita threw her head back and laughed. “But he was wonderful, Hoke. He told me all this shit with such a solemn face and was so earnest about it. I could just picture him working on Marie Weller with this proposition. She did go to bed with him, you know. Not only in Key West that weekend, as they proved at the trial, thanks to you, but he met her several times at the Airport Hotel. They have reasonable day rates at the Airport Hotel, he said.”

  Hoke cleared his throat. “That’s what I heard, too. Look, Ellita, give me your Honda keys, and you drive my Pontiac home.” He handed her his car keys, which were attached to his old army dogtags with a small chain. “I’d better go home and wait for Brownley’s call there. I’ve met your uncle and put in my appearance, so your folks’ll understand if I have to leave for police work.”

  “There’s going to be a cake later and—”

  “Fuck the cake.”

  “I’ll bring you a piece when I come home.”

  Ellita took Hoke’s car keys and left to look for her purse and the Honda keys.

  MAJOR WILLIE BROWNLEY CALLED HOKE AT SEVEN-THIRTY. By then Hoke had finished three beers, and he suppressed a belch when he picked up the phone.

  “Good!” Brownley said when Hoke answered. “I’m glad I tried your house first before I called the Sánchezes. It’s always hard to get through to a Latin house. When they hear you speaking English, they think it’s the wrong number and hang up on you.”

  “We do the same, Willie. When I get an answer in Spanish, I hang up, too.”

  “I never thought about that, but I do, too, now that you mention it.”

  “I went to the party, Willie, but bugged out as soon as I could. It’s a madhouse over there. And just as I was leaving, a neighborhood group of kids was setting up to play salsa. The phone was tied up most of the time anyway. Besides, I was getting eager to hear from you so I can shave off this damned stubble.”

  “You haven’t shaved, have you?”

  “Not yet. I’ve let my beard grow since Thursday, such as it is, and my neck itches. If this is some kind of joke on your part, Willie—”

  “It’s not a joke. Here’s what I want you to do. Wear some old clothes tomorrow.”

  “All my clothes are old.”

  “I mean some old jeans, maybe a blue work shirt, if you’ve got one. An old pair of shoes. And meet me at seven-thirty at Monroe Station.”

  “Out on the Tamiami Trail?”

  “That’s right. It’s about forty miles out, maybe a few miles more, on the other side of the Miccosukee Trading Post.”

  “What’s this all about, Willie? Are we going hunting?”

  “Something like that. Have you got a hat, a straw hat?”

  “I haven’t got any hats. You’ve never seen me wear a hat.”

  “Okay, I’ll bring you one. What’s your hat size?”

  “In the army I wore a seven and an eighth.”

  “With a straw, I guess it doesn’t make that much difference. I’ll see what I can find.”

  “What�
��s this meeting all about?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it on the phone, Hoke. And don’t tell Ellita about it either. I’ll explain everything tomorrow morning. Now when you get out to Monroe Station, don’t go inside. You can park out front where the trucks and dune buggies are, but then you take a little dirt trail on the right of the restaurant, the other side of the gas pumps. That’s west of the building. There’s a small clearing in the scrub palmettos and pines there called the wedding grotto. The restaurant owner’s a notary public, and sometimes he marries people in the little grotto. You’ll see the sign. I’ll meet you there, in the grotto. The owner uses that clearing as a marriage chapel.”

  “Should I bring a present?”

  “A present? What do you mean?”

  “If I’m going to a wedding, I thought maybe I should bring a wedding present.”

  “Don’t try to be funny, Hoke. I’m not up to it. I got badly sunburned down in the Keys. And when a black man gets burnt, it’s a lot worse than when a white man does. My neck and shoulders are on fire. It seemed cool out on the water, and I took my shirt off. Anyway, that’s it. Seven-thirty A.M. In the wedding grotto at Monroe Station. Got it?”

  “I’ve got it. Did you catch anything?”

  “We were fishing for permit, so even when you catch one, you still haven’t got anything, if you know what I mean. In the morning then.”

  Without a good-bye Brownley hung up the phone. Hoke listened to the dial tone for a moment and then racked the phone himself. Willie Brownley was not a secretive man, and this mysterious business was out of character for him. Well, he would just have to wait and see.

  Without the girls around, it was lonely in the house. Hoke went out to the White Shark on Flagler Street. He played bottle pool with a detective he knew from Robbery until ten-thirty, drank four more beers during their games, and then went home.

  8

  HOKE LEFT THE HOUSE EARLY, STOPPED FOR BREAKFAST at a truck stop at Krome and the Trail, and then drove cautiously down the two-lane Everglades highway toward Monroe Station. The Tamiami Trail was an extension of Eighth Street, renamed Calle Ocho by the Cubans, but was still referred to by the old-time Miamians as the “Trail.” When the two-lane highway had been built from Naples to Miami, road crews had worked toward each other from both sides of the state. Monroe Station had been a supply camp then for workers and had found its way onto the state map.

  As ordered, Hoke wore an old pair of blue jeans and a plaid, almost threadbare, long-sleeved sport shirt. Remembering the fierce mosquitoes, he wanted sleeves that rolled down to the wrists. He wore his regulation, high-topped policemen’s shoes, figuring they were old enough. Although the temperature was in the eighties, he drove with the car windows rolled down, and it was cool enough with the wind coming through. Except for a few trucks, the traffic was relatively light this early in the morning. On weekends, with cars bunched up in clusters, all waiting for an opportunity to leapfrog along the ninety-six-mile stretch to Naples, the Tamiami Trail was a dangerous highway. Head-on crashes were not infrequent. The Miccosukees and the Seminoles who lived in reservation villages at intervals along the Trail had special licenses and rarely drove more than fifteen miles an hour. The Indians were never in a hurry, and sometimes there would be a string of twenty or thirty cars behind an Indian, all waiting for a chance to pass him.

  Although Monroe Station is still on the state map, there are just a two-story building and a few sheds on the property. Behind the restaurant, on the ground floor of the wooden building, two hundred yards south on the old loop road, there’s an abandoned forest ranger station and a shaky, unoccupied lookout tower. Now that the Big Cypress National Preserve is all government property, the restaurant is merely “grandfathered” in. When the current owners die, it will be razed, and only the sign on the Tamiami Trail, MONROE STATION, will be left. At one time a good many people lived on the loop road that wends through the Everglades, and Al Capone once owned a hunting lodge in the area. But that’s gone, and most of the shacks and trailers that loners and pensioners lived in out on the loop road have been destroyed, too.

  Hoke had been out to the Big Cypress Preserve a couple of times on wild pig and wild turkey hunts, but that had been four or five years ago. It had been fun for the first hour or so to ride in a dune buggy; but the hordes of lancing mosquitoes had always spoiled the day for him, and he had never managed to shoot either a turkey or a wild pig. Now, except for the Indians and a few men with special permission, dune buggies and airboats have been outlawed in the preserve.

  Hoke parked beside a rusty Toyota pickup in front of the Monroe Station restaurant and glanced at the homemade signs plastered onto the building as he got out of his car.

  STOP AND EAT HERE BEFORE WE BOTH STARVE

  COUNTRY HAM BREAKFAST WITH GRITS RED EYE GRAVY

  AND HOT BISCUITS

  NOTARY PUBLIC—MARRIAGES, BUT

  NO DIVORCES…

  Near the gas pump, on the side of a whitewashed generator shed, a fading blue and white poster proclaimed THIS IS WALLACE COUNTRY. George Wallace, when he ran for president, had racked up a sizable vote in rural Florida, and Hoke had all but forgotten the Wallace frenzy. Hoke found the narrow path to the grotto and brushed away some dew-laden cobwebs before he reached the small clearing in the hammock of pines and scrub palmettos. He sat on a wooden bench, lit a cigarette, and slapped some of the gnats away from his eyes.

  At seven thirty-five Major Brownley and another black man joined Hoke in the clearing. The major, a squat man in his early fifties, with skin the color of a ripe eggplant, was wearing a pink T-shirt, with “Pig Bowl” printed on it in cherry red letters. He wore faded jeans and unlaced Reebok running shoes. The other black man, who was about the same age, was at least a foot taller than Brownley. He wore khaki trousers and a shirt with the creases sewn in, and he had pulled a snap-brim fedora well down on his forehead. His skin was the color of a dirty basketball, and mirrored sunglasses hid his eyes. His Wellington boots, rough side out, had seen hard wear. Brownley was carrying two unopened cans of beer and a new straw hat. He handed the hat and one of the beers to Hoke.

  “Try this for size.”

  Hoke put on the hat and pulled down the brim. “It fits okay.” He popped the top of his beer and took a long pull.

  “This is Mel Peoples, Hoke. Mel, Sergeant Hoke Moseley.” Hoke shook the tall man’s hand. Instead of a beer, Peoples was drinking a Diet Pepsi, and his spidery fingers were damp and cold.

  “Let’s sit down,” Brownley said. Peoples and Hoke sat on the bench, but Brownley remained standing. His short, kinky hair, with shiny black sidewalls, resembled bleached steel wool, and he scratched his scalp with his right forefinger. There was a razor-blade part on the right side of his head. “I guess you’re wondering what this is all about.”

  “Not at all,” Hoke said. He put his beer on the bench and lighted a Kool. “It’s pleasant to meet in the Glades like this instead of in your air-conditioned office, although I imagine it’ll be pretty hot out here along about noon.”

  “It won’t take that long. Mel and me go back a long way, Hoke. We were roommates at A and M for two years, and we majored in business administration. We were even in business together for a while, scalping tickets to the FSU games.”

  Mel chuckled. “But it didn’t last the full season.”

  “You got caught?” Hoke said.

  “No.” Mel shook his head. “Our source at FSU was expelled. He never got caught for the football tickets, but he stole the final exams from the social science department.”

  “I thought it was the history department—”

  “This is interesting,” Hoke said impatiently. “Should I tell you now about my year at Palm Beach Junior College?”

  “Sorry, Hoke,” Brownley said. “Mel’s a field agent for the State Agricultural Commission. A kind of trouble-shooter. Isn’t that right, Mel?”

  “Something like that, and a little more. For six years I was investig
ating complaints statewide, concentrating on migrant workers. But for the last two years I’ve been in Collier County on a permanent basis. In the last few years lots of things have changed. What with unemployment insurance, food stamps, and welfare, a lot of former migrants have quit migratin’. After the harvest season, instead of moving on the way they used to, they stay put and pick up unemployment or go on welfare. Then, too, we’ve got us a large illegal Haitian population, and they ain’t movin’ either. They’ve got a language problem, and they wouldn’t have no one to talk to if they moved on up to Georgia, say—”

  Hoke nodded. “So now you stay in Collier County because you’ve got enough migrant problems without moving around the state?”

  “That’s the size of it. I check growers’ complaints as well as migrants’. Haitians are good people, but they’re used to tiny one-man farms back in Haiti, so they can’t understand teamwork. This makes for discipline problems, and we’ve tried to get some training programs started. But that takes money, and the legislature ain’t going to give us money for people who’ve entered the country illegally. Technically they ain’t even here. But they are here.”

  “Discipline? You’re punishing Haitians because they don’t understand teamwork?”

  “No, not at all. Say you’ve got ten Haitians, and you assign each one to a row of tomatoes. They all start out okay, and then one guy gets a little ahead and sees a nice tomato in the next row. He goes over and picks it. Then he spots another, three rows over, even bigger, so he gets that one, too. The other Haitians do the same, and the first fucking thing you know Haitians are scattered all over the field. And half their assigned rows are unpicked.”

  Hoke laughed. “The bigger the tomatoes, the sooner a man gets a full basket, right?”

  “Right. But the growers have to use ’em ’cause, like I said, the old-time fruit tramps have quit pickin’ and migratin’. They either sit tight on welfare or find other jobs. Then they put their kids in school and register to vote. We’ve still got a trickle of illegal Mexicans and lots of Haitians, but our old reliable source has dried up. To get harvests in on time, the big growers’ve been hiring tougher crew bosses.”