The Way We Die Now (2 page)

Most of the houses, but not all, backed up to a series of small square lakes--formerly rock and gravel quarries-- that looked as though they were filled with green milk. The houses all were built from the same set of blueprints, but many owners, over the years, had added garages, carports, Florida rooms, and short docks for small boats. There were a few swimming pools, but not very many, and even a few gazebos. Because of drowning accidents, swimming was prohibited in the lakes. This rule wasn't enforced, and sometimes, late at night, a few bold people did some skinny-dipping. The lakes were bordered by tall Dade County pines, and the residents had planted their yards with orange, grapefruit, and mango trees, hedges of Barbados cherry and screw-leaf crotons, and several varieties of palms, including a few stately Royals. At one time coconut palms, planted by the original construction company, had lined the vertiginous streets, but when lethal yellow attacked the trees in the late seventies, they all had been removed by the Metro government. Nevertheless, the subdivision was a green oasis in the middle of a highly urbanized city, and Green Lakes, with its own Class B shopping center and mall, was considered a desirable location for white Americans to live. There was a zealous Crime Watch program, and the curving streets had large speed bumps spaced out every fifty yards and fifteen-mile-per-hour speed limit. Drivers who ignored the limit and the high, rounded speed bumps soon needed new shocks for their vehicles.

Hoke, with the windows of his car rolled down (although he had air-conditioning), observed the speed limit, easing his car over the bumps at an angle, and tried to open garage doors with the door opener whenever he passed a garage with a closed door. Not every garage had an electric dooropener; but many of them did, he knew, and he was trying to see if the late Dr. Russell's door opener would work on any of them. He tried it on at least a dozen garages before he pulled into his own driveway, but it didn't open any of them. Apparently each garage door opener had its own frequency.

Hoke's house had an open-sided carport but no garage. Ellita's Honda Civic was in the carport, and Sue Ellen's Yamaha motorcycle was chained and padlocked to the left steel roof support. Hoke parked behind the Civic and entered the house.

Pepe, Ellita's one-year-old, was crying and shrieking as Hoke came through the front door, and Hoke's two daughters, Sue Ellen, seventeen, and Aileen, fifteen, were setting the table in the dining room.

"What's the matter with Pepe?"

"He needs changing," Aileen said.

"Why don't you change him then?"

"We're setting the table now, and Ellita's in the kitchen."

Hoke lifted Pepe out of his crib in the living room and carried the screaming, writhing body into the bathroom. He removed the soiled Pamper and tossed it into the black plastic Hefty bag that was kept in the bathroom for this purpose. The bag was half-filled with dirtied Pampers, and the fetid odor permeated the small bathroom. Hoke turned on the water in the shower, adjusted the taps one-handed until it was warm, and then, holding the boy by his wrists, hosed him down with the hand-held shower head. He dried Pepe with Ellita's face towel, sprinkled the boy's bottom with Johnson's baby powder, and put on a clean Pamper.

Pepe had stopped crying now, and Hoke returned him to his crib in the living room.

Hoke went down the hall to his own small bedroom at the far end of the house and changed from his leisure suit into a pair of khaki shorts and an old gray gym T-shirt that had the arms cut off at the shoulders. He lay on his cot and looked at the cracked ceiling, holding the garage door opener in his right hand. The device was simple enough. It worked on radio waves, or something, and each garage mechanism was set a little differently. You pressed the button, aiming at the radio box in the garage ceiling through the closed door, and the door opened. If you pressed the button again, still aiming, although you didn't even have to get close to the box in the garage ceiling, the door closed. There was also a button inside the garage, usually by the door to the kitchen. If you pressed that, it also opened the door. When the door was closed, no one could open it manually from the outside, although it could be raised manually from inside the garage. An opener like this was not supposed to assist in a murder--and yet it had. Of that much, he was positive.

But he wasn't certain; he merely had an intuition, and that meant that he was getting anxious again, pressing too hard. When he was first assigned to the cold cases, together with Bill Henderson and Ellita Sanchez, they had been lucky, solving three three-year-old cases during the first ten days. Then Henderson had been promoted to commander, and Hoke and Ellita had worked alone. He had pushed, trying too hard and putting in too many hours, and had come very close to suffering a breakdown. A month's leave without pay had given him enough distance to realize that this was just a job, not a mission. After Ellita had been shot and retired on disability, he had worked alone until they gave him Gonzalez, a young investigator too inexperienced to provide much help. Hoke hadn't come close to solving a cold case since he had returned from his month's leave, and now, what with the shortage of detectives in the Homicide Division, this was an assignment Major Brownley couldn't keep him on much longer. He was needed for regular duty, and so was Gonzalez; but it would be rewarding to solve at least one more case before he returned to straight duty.

Hoke shook his head. It didn't pay to become obsessed with anything, especially a case as gelid as the Russell murder. If he solved it, fine; if he didn't, what difference would it make a hundred years from now? Hoke clicked the door opener several times, aiming at nothing. Then Ellita called to him that dinner was ready. He tossed the opener onto the dresser and, barefoot, padded down the hall to the dining room.

CHAPTER 3

Hoke shared a leased house with Ellita Sanchez; her baby son, Pepe; and Hoke's two teenaged daughters from his broken marriage.

Patsy, Hoke's ex-wife, had kept the two girls, following their divorce, for ten years. She had then married a pinch hitter for the Dodgers, a black ballplayer named Curly Peterson, and moved to Los Angeles. Before she left Vero Beach, Florida (she had met Curly Peterson there during spring training), she had shipped the two girls down to Miami and Hoke on a Greyhound bus. Hoke had not seen or heard from the girls in ten years, when they had been six and four years old. Because there was no way he could think of to get out of the responsibility for them, he had, of course, taken them in. Ellita had moved in with him to share the expenses when her father had thrown her out of his house when she became pregnant. Hoke was not the father of Pepe Sanchez; that honor belonged to a one-night stand Ellita had picked up in Coconut Grove, but Ellita's parents suspected strongly that Hoke was the father because Ellita had moved into the house with Hoke and his two daughters.

Then, one night, Ellita had been shot in the shoulder by an escaped holdup man. As a result of the wound, she had lost approximately twenty percent usage of her right arm, and now she stayed home full-time with Pepe. Because of the rehabilitation exercises she had had to perform to get her arm and body back into shape, she looked better now than she had before she had been wounded. She had trimmed down to 120 pounds, her pretty face was thinner, and although she was thirty-three, she could pass easily for twenty-nine.

Sue Ellen and Aileen helped Ellita with her baby, so she had ample time to shop every day and have a "standing" every Thursday at the beauty parlor. By living with Hoke and his daughters, instead of living under her father's tyrannical thumb, she had unlimited freedom and no longer had to hand over half her salary to her father. Her disability pension was more than adequate to pay her share of the expenses, and she intended to stay home with Pepe and keep house until he was old enough to go to school before she looked for a part-time job.

The girls adored the baby and were always willing to baby-sit if Ellita wanted to go out with one of her old girlfriends to lunch or dinner, or to attend mass at St. Catherine's in Hialeah. After the baby was born, Ellita's father had forgiven her and asked her to move home again, but she had refused. At thirty-three Ellita had no intention of giving up her freedom again. Ellita's mother, who sold Avon products in Little Havana, visited the house frequently, and Ellita took Pepe home occasionally (Señor Sanchez, a security guard, would not set foot in Hoke's house) to see his grandfather.

Hoke did not even pretend to be the titular head of this household. He accepted his responsibility for the girls as their father, and he would feed and clothe them and give them a home until they reached maturity (or got married); but they were allowed to do pretty much as they pleased so long as no one else in the house was inconvenienced. Sue Ellen had dropped out of school to take a full-time job in the Green Lakes Car Wash and was allowed to keep all of her weekly paycheck and tips. She was also encouraged to buy her own clothes, now that she had a steady income, and so long as she was paying for them, Hoke didn't feel that he could tell her what to wear. She had bought a motorcycle, on time payments, without his permission, and he wasn't happy about that; but he taught her how to ride it and insisted that she wear a helmet, leather pants, and jacket every time she mounted the vehicle. If she skidded across the asphalt, he explained, in an accident (and the chances were sixty-forty that she -would- have an accident), the leather clothes would prevent the pavement from scraping her skin and flesh right down to the bone.

Sue Ellen and Aileen both were sensible girls, so even when the heat and humidity reached the nineties in Miami, Sue Ellen wore her helmet and leathers when she rode her Yamaha. Hoke had ridden a motorcycle when he had been assigned to Traffic, and he knew how dangerous it could be. He had explained the dangers, but that was as far as he went with it. He had had some narrow escapes as a motorcycle cop, and the fact that he would not ride Sue Ellen's bike, under any circumstances, had helped make her take his warnings seriously, but not enough to give up the motorcycle. The bike, she insisted, gave her a certain status at the car wash, and she needed an edge to put her on equal terms with the male black and Cuban teenagers she worked with every day.

Aileen was filling out nicely after recovery from bulimic anorexia, but at fourteen she had been so thin Ellita had nicknamed her -La Flaca- ("The Skinny One"). She now ate everything within reach at the table and snacked between meals as well. She was reconciled to being a female now, and her curly chestnut hair fell down to her shoulders in soft waves. Her pointed breasts had swelled, and because she didn't wear a brassiere, they bobbed under her T-shirt as she helped set the table. Aileen's teeth were slightly crooked, and she had a noticeable overbite; but her generous mouth provided her with a big white smile.

Sue Ellen, who toweled down wet cars under a blazing sun every; day, was sunburned a deep golden brown and was almost as dark as Ellita. Her short, curly hair, clipped an inch from her skull and dyed electric blue down the middle, gave her the punk look she coveted, but she was attractive in spite of herself. She wore two pairs of plastic earrings and was considering the idea of having third holes punched into her earlobes for another pair. Both girls, when they were home, wore shorts and T-shirts and usually went barefoot around the house as well. Ellita, unless she was going out, almost always wore jeans, sensible heels, and a longsleeved blouse. She thought her thighs were too fat to wear shorts, but the Miami heat didn't affect Ellita as much as it did Hoke and his daughters.

It was habit--not a rule--but everyone did his or her best to eat dinner at home every night, and it was the only time of the day they all were together as a family. Hoke, of course, as a homicide detective with odd hours at times, couldn't always make it home in time for dinner. But when he couldn't, he phoned, and Ellita always saw to it that he had a hot meal when he did come home. The rest of the time each family member went his or her own way, getting up at a different time and preparing personal meals other than dinner.

Hoke took care of the finances, the rent and the utilities, and Ellita purchased everything else that was needed for the house, including food, cleaning materials, or the odd plumbing job that called for a professional. At the end of each month Hoke and Ellita sat down and figured out how much each owed, and then they paid the bills.

Hoke ate and slept much better than he had when he was single and unencumbered, and he also spent more time watching television than he had when he had lived in a hotel room as a single man. Even with Pepe to care for, Ellita still managed to keep the house neat and clean, and she prepared enormous meals at night.

The major drawback to living as a family man (when the girls' stereo made too much noise, Hoke could always retreat to his small bedroom and close the door) was that Hoke couldn't very well bring a woman home with him to spend the night. He knew that Ellita wouldn't mind, but he had to set an example for his daughters. He was afraid that if he brought a woman home, they might decide to bring boys home to their room overnight. As a consequence, when Hoke managed a rare conquest, which now happened at longer intervals, he had to take the woman to a hotel or motel. Miami hotel rates are expensive, even during the offseason, and there had been times that he had dropped a promising pursuit when he knew he would have to pay at least seventy-seven dollars, plus tax, for a hotel room. Hoke was forty-three and looked every single day of it. The women he attracted, divorcees and widows he met in bars, were not, in most instances, worth that much money to him. Unhappily the divorcees and widows who were interested in sleeping with Hoke were usually in their late thirties, or older, and more often than not had teenaged children of their own; that also denied them the use of their own houses and apartments. It had been more than four years since Hoke had slept with a woman who didn't have stretch marks. But he didn't mind the stretch marks so long as she didn't complain about his middle-aged paunch.