The Way We Die Now (10 page)

"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.

CHAPTER 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 ioop 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 dewladen 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 troubleshooter. Isn't that right, Mel?"

"Something like that, and a little more. For six years I was investigating 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."

"I still don't see where this is leading," Hoke said, looking pointedly at Brownley. "I'm working on the old Russell case right now, and I've got a fairly good lead--"

"Finish your beer, Hoke. Let Mel tell you the rest of it."

"The thing is, Sergeant," Mel continued, "you could put Delaware in Collier County and never notice it was there, and I'm only one man. I had me a clerk, but she quit last month because she can make more money puttin' pickle slices on burgers at McDonald's." Mel crushed his Pepsi can and placed it on the bench.

"I still don't know what you expect me to do about that."

"You speak any Creole, Hoke?" Brownley said, taking a sip of his beer.

Hoke grinned. "I just know their worst swearword. -Guette mama!- I was called it once in Little Haiti, so I checked it out."

"-Guette mama?-"

"Yeah. That's Creole for -linguette mama-, or 'your mama's little tongue.' At one time, in Africa and Haiti, they used to cut off a woman's clitoris when she got married. It was called the little tongue, a useless thing to be thrown away."

"My wife wouldn't agree on that," Brownley said. "Why would they cut off a woman's clit?"

"Without a clit, a man's wife's less likely to fool around, Willie. They don't do it in Haiti any longer. But it has a nice sound to it as a swearword, doesn't it?" Hoke lowered his voice and growled: "-Guette mama!-"

Brownley frowned at Mel. "Tell him, Mel."

Peoples nodded, and sucked his teeth. "Haitian farm workers've been disappearing, Sergeant Moseley. We didn't notice it for some time because they stay to themselves. Because of the AIDS scare, American black men don't even go after their women, you see. And Haitians don't complain about things 'cause they're afraid of being sent back to Haiti. But word gradually gets around. A family man'll disappear, and his woman'll ask if anyone's seen him. Then someone'll say, 'I think he went over to Belle Glade to work.' But a Haitian won't leave his wife without sending her money. And they all send money back to Haiti. They're Catholics and family-oriented. But once one of these Haitians disappears that's the end of him. He ain't in Belle Glade or anywhere else. And we don't know how many are missing altogether."

"When you say 'we,'" Hoke said, "are you talking about you and Willie here, or you and the clerk who went to work for McDonald's?"

Mel shook his head. "Me and Sheriff Boggis, in Collier County. I also had a dialogue with a deputy over in Lee County, but he said he wished they all were missing, so I didn't talk with him again. But what happened, we finally found a body."

"You and Sheriff Boggis?"

"No, a truck driver from Miles's Produce, over in Tice. He picked up a load of melons in Immokalee and then stopped on the highway, a couple of miles past the Corkscrew Sanctuary cutoff, to take himself a leak. He went behind the billboard there, the one that advertises the Bonita Springs dog track, and found some toes stickin' up. It had been raining, the ground was marshy, and the foot had worked its way up. He dug around a little with a stick, enough to see it was a foot, and then phoned Sheriff Boggis when he got to Bonita Springs. Boggis took a look, and then he called me out there to see if it was a missin' Haitian. And it was."

"How'd you know? Not just because he was black."

"He had a tattoo on the back of his left hand. Le Chat, with a couple of pointed ears below the words. The tattoo had been carved in, probably with a razor blade. Haitians, as you probably know, eat cats."

"No, I didn't know. These so-called ears, could they be little V's?"

"I guess you could say that. Why?"

"Nothing. I was thinking about another case. Go ahead."

"They eat cats because they think it'll make 'em invisible. It's a folk myth, because no one's ever become invisible by eatin' a cat. But they hear about it, believe it, and then get a cat and try it, you see. If you go to Port-au-Prince, you won't see any cats at all. Dogs, yes, but no cats. Man owns himself a cat he locks it up inside his house, or someone'll grab it and eat it. This Haitian cat eater had this tattoo on his arm to prove it. The little ears were put there to show that the rest of the cat was invisible and inside the man.

"So he was a Haitian, Sergeant. Afro-Americans don't tattoo French words on their hands. Besides, his feet and hands were calloused, and he'd been a field worker all his life."

"How was he killed?"

"The ME wasn't positive. He'd been badly beaten around his head, and the ME didn't know whether he was dead or just unconscious when he was buried, so he marked it down as 'Death by Misadventure.'"