The Way We Die Now (26 page)

"I can't tell you what it's about, Hoke. The new chief will do that. Just be at Molly's at eight. That's all I can tell you."

"Will you be there, Willie?"

"No. It'll just be you and the new chief."

"I'm not going to do any more undercover work, Willie."

"I wish I could tell you about it, Hoke, but I can't. I'll just say you'll be surprised. Pleasantly surprised. Okay?"

"I'll be there. One more thing, while we're on the phone. Let's do the division a favor and transfer Gonzalez the hell out of Homicide. Ordinarily, when a man loses his ignorance, he doesn't regain it, but that doesn't hold true for Gonzalez."

"We're short seven detectives already, Hoke, counting three on suspension."

"We can get a mutual. Do you know Murdock, over in Robbery?"

"I think so. What about Murdock?"

"I talked to him about a month ago, and he wants to get out of Robbery and into Homicide. He's been in plainclothes for about six years or so, and maybe we could make a mutual transfer between him and Gonzalez."

"No, we can't do that, Hoke, even if Robbery was willing to let Murdock go. It would throw off the ethnic balance. On a mutual transfer we'd have to have another Hispanic. But I'll check around, and if I can trade Gonzalez for another Hispanic somewhere, I'll see what I can do."

"That doesn't make sense, Willie. Murdock's an experienced investigator, and Gonzalez is good with figures and statistics. He'd fit in well over in Robbery. They could let him handle inventories and simple things like that."

"I know you're right, but Murdock's a WASP, and we can only make a mutual for another Hispanic."

"Forget it then. Anything else, Willie?"

"No... I don't think so. What've you heard from Ellita?"

"She's just fine. I'll tell her you sent your regards." Hoke hung up quickly before Brownley could ask any more questions.

A long blue stretch Lincoln pulled up in front of the house at eleven-thirty. As Hoke watched from behind the screen door, Sue Ellen and Aileen got out, and the driver opened the trunk to get their luggage. The driver, a squat dark-faced man with short muscular arms, was probably Goya y Goya, Hoke thought. Hoke retreated to his bedroom instead of going outside to help the girls with their luggage and to avoid giving the chauffeur a tip. Ellita and Hutton--"Donnie"--were not in the car. When Hoke heard the girls talking in the living room, he walked back down the hail to greet them. Both girls were wearing straw hats, purchased from straw market vendors in Nassau, and their faces were bright with sunburn. Aileen ran to Hoke, hugged and kissed him. Sue Ellen, showing more restraint, kissed him on the cheek.

"How was Nassau, and where's Ellita?" Hoke said.

The two girls exchanged glances.

"I've got a present for you, Daddy," Sue Ellen said, opening her bag on the couch.

"Me, too," Aileen said, getting her bag.

Something is wrong, Hoke thought. So far neither one of the girls had looked him in the eye. Sue Ellen hadn't redyed her hair blue; it was now brown and curly, and she was wearing a new powder blue sundress. The skirt barely reached her bony knees. She handed him a gray T-shirt with dark red printing: MY DAUGHTER WENT TO THE BAHAMAS AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT.

"Thanks," Hoke said, checking the collar to see if it was extra large. It was. "I appreciate the sentiment. When I came home, I didn't know where you were. There was no note, and I had a problem finding out where you'd gone."

"We wanted to leave a note, Daddy," Aileen said, "but Ellita wouldn't let us."

"Why not? It's customary in this house, isn't it, to say where you're going and when you'll be back? I was worried, for Christ's sake."

Aileen handed Hoke a small blue box, tied with a piece of red string. "Open it, Daddy. Go ahead."

Hoke untied the string and took off the lid. It was a ceramic salt and pepper set, covered with tiny coquina shells. One cellar read "Salt" and "Nassau"; the other read "Pepper" and "New Providence." A few shells had become unglued and were loose in the bottom of the box.

"Thanks, honey," Hoke said, putting the lid back on the box. "This is very nice and something we can all use. Where's Ellita?"

Sue Ellen sat on the couch and placed her knees together. She clasped her hands and looked at her father, widening her eyes. "You're going to find out sooner or later, Daddy, but I'm sorry you're hearing it from me instead of Ellita. Ellita and Donnie got married. That's why they didn't come back with us. They're going to stay another week for their honeymoon at the Paradise Island Hotel and then come back on the boat next Sunday."

"Is that why you didn't leave a note? Were you afraid I'd fly over to the wedding? This doesn't sound like Ellita."

"You don't understand, Daddy. She was afraid. She thought you might do something or other to stop them from getting married."

"Hutton's on parole. Did he have permission to leave the country?"

"I don't think so, but you see what I mean? Ellita was sure you'd try to stop them some way."

"It's none of my business what Ellita does. Why should I care if she gets married--even to a convicted killer like Hutton? What the hell, she's thirty-three years old. Who's taking care of Pepe?"

"The hotel got them a nurse for the baby. There's no problem getting women as maids in Nassau. Me and Aileen didn't go to the wedding, but--"

"Aileen and I."

"Aileen and I. But we had a little party afterward, in their stateroom on the boat. Just the four of us, with wine and a plate of canapes the steward brought in. And Donnie gave both of us fifty dollars apiece to gamble with. I won eighty dollars playing blackjack--"

"They let you gamble? You're underage."

Sue Ellen shrugged. "I had my fake ID, but no one asked to see it. Besides, when I've got makeup on, I look eighteen."

"When did they decide to get married?"

"Before we left, I guess, because they shared a cabin. But they didn't tell us about it till we got on the ship. Ellita, like I said, was afraid you'd find out and stop them some way."

"I wonder why she'd think something like that. I'm happy for them, for Christ's sake. He's got plenty of money, and without the crying baby we can have a little peace and quiet around here. You're the oldest, Sue Ellen, so you can have Ellita's big bedroom. It's about time you girls had your own rooms anyway."

To Hoke's surprise, the girls didn't argue about his hasty decision. Instead, they told him about their trip, the meals on the ship, playing the slot machines, and riding around Nassau on the wrong side of the road on. rented motorbikes. They didn't want to talk about the marriage, and because Hoke knew that telling about a cruise afterward was the best part of it, he let them ramble on. They weren't hungry, having eaten a large breakfast on the ship, but he made sandwiches anyway. They ate them and went to bed. The girls had stayed up in the ship's casino until two-thirty the night before and then had to get up early because they were on the first sitting for breakfast. Aileen had lost the fifty dollars Hutton had given her on the slot machines, but she didn't mind because it wasn't her money in the first place. She had won at first, but it had all gone back into the machines.

While the girls napped, Hoke went into Ellita's room and put a sheet on the floor. He placed all her clothes from the closet on the sheet and pulled it together into a huge bundle. He needed another sheet to hold all her things from her dresser drawers. He took the two bundles out to the living room and placed them by the door. There were a lot of Ellita's and Pepe's possessions and furniture in the house, but she could sort them out later, after she got back. He knocked down her double bed, however, and put the carved head- and footboard and mattress in the Florida room, so Sue Ellen could have room for her bed when she woke up.

Hoke then drove to the Green Lakes Shopping Center and got a haircut. He bought a white button-down oxford cloth shirt at K-mart, and a green-and-white-striped necktie, so he would look presentable when he met the new chief in the morning. He drank two draft beers at the Green Grotto before driving home. The girls were up, and he helped Sue Ellen move into the master bedroom.

Hoke cooked spaghetti for dinner and made three lettuce and tomato salads and a pitcher of iced tea. There was ice cream in the freezer, but no one wanted any. Both girls were pleased to have their own rooms, but they were subdued at dinner. Reduced to three people, the family seemed very small, and the girls had run out of things to say about the cruise.

While the girls did the dishes, Hoke watched -60 Minutes- on television. There was a rerun of -The Burning Bed- on Channel 33, and they all watched it together. Farrah Fawcett was beaten and battered by her drunken husband for an hour and a half, and then she set fire to him when he fell asleep and drove away in the car with her kids.

"What I don't understand," Sue Ellen said when the movie ended, "is why Farrah ever married a creep like that in the first place."

"Probably because he asked her," Hoke said. "Women are like that, even mature women. Sometimes that's all it takes."

"I don't think I'll ever get married," Sue Ellen said.

"Me neither," Aileen said.

"Good," Hoke said. "You can stay home and take care of me. That's my life's ambition: to grow old and be a burden on someone. Thanks, girls, you've made me a very happy father."

"I don't mean I won't live with someone someday," Sue Ellen said. "That's natural. A woman's entitled to a sex life. But if you get married and have kids like Farrah did, the man thinks he owns you."

"It's just a movie, Sue Ellen. Who wants some ice cream?"

"I don't think so, Daddy. I'm going to bed."

"I can hardly hold my eyes open," Aileen said.

They kissed him good night and went off to their respective rooms and closed the doors.

Hoke stayed up and drank a couple of beers while he watched the tube. But he couldn't get interested in anything and soon turned off the set. He wondered what the new chief wanted to see him about. The new chief of the Miami Police Department was always called the new chief because he was always a new chief. The average tenure for a new chief was about eighteen months. The average tenure for a city manager (who hired and fired the police chiefs) was also eighteen months. So every time the city commission fired a city manager and hired a new one, the new one soon found a reason to fire the new chief and put in a new chief of his own. Then the new new chief shook things up in the department, transferring and promoting people he thought would be loyal to him. The three assistant chiefs, all colonels, had all been demoted and promoted several times apiece. Survival at or near the top was a tough proposition, no doubt about it. And the three assistant chiefs had to be the right ethnic balance--one black, one Hispanic, and one white man (but the white man couldn't be a Catholic because the Hispanic was a Catholic).

The new new chief was moving cautiously so far--Hoke had to give him credit for that--although he had vowed, when he was sworn in, that he intended to modernize the department, whatever that meant. The city manager was new, and his new chief was new, so there probably wouldn't be any radical changes for at least another year or so, Hoke thought.

Hoke popped the top on another can of Old Style and went outside on the front lawn to drink it. The house across the street was dark, and most of the lights in the other houses on the block were turned out. Tomorrow was a Monday, and people had to go to work again. They went to bed early in the Green Lakes subdivision on Sunday nights. Hoke returned to the kitchen, got an ice pick out of the utility drawer, and then crossed the street. He jabbed the point of the pick into the left front tire of Donald Hutton's Henry J. As the air hissed out, the sound seemed to direct him around the little car, and he punched through the other three tires. As the air hissed out, the little car sank perceptibly.

"There's a wedding present for you, you bastard," Hoke said softly. Then, feeling a little sheepish but happier, he returned to his house and put the ice pick back into the drawer. Hoke undressed and finished his beer while sitting on the edge of his army cot. His muscles were sore, his cracked ribs ached, and his head buzzed from the beers. He fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

CHAPTER 17

Molly's Coffee Shop didn't have much of a breakfast crowd, Hoke thought, but when he examined the menu, he could see why. There was no pass-through coffee bar, and this was an anomaly for Little Havana. Most of the Cuban restaurants on Eighth Street served a -desayuno especial---two fried eggs, ham or bacon, long slices of margarined Cuban toast, and -cafe con leche---for $1.49. Molly's breakfast was standard American--two eggs (your way), bacon, ham, or sausage, with grits or home fried potatoes and white bread toast for $2.79. Coffee, at fifty cents, was extra, and there were no free refills. Molly probably made her money, if she made her nut at all, he thought, with the white-collar lunch crowd, workers from the office buildings over on Brickell Avenue. There were several salads on the lunch menu and a few light lunch items that would appeal to legal secretaries.

Hoke got a table by the window and ordered coffee. He was early, and he had brought the sports section from the -Miami Herald- along to read while he waited for the new chief. He read a long interview with Vinny Testaverde, the Miami Hurricanes' hotshot quarterback, and then folded the paper and tossed it onto the empty table behind him. In another five years, Testaverde would be a multimillionaire, Hoke thought, and he'd be trying to make ends meet on a pension of $734 a month, unless, of course, he stayed on the force and tried for thirty years. He shuddered at the prospect.

Hoke signaled the waiter, a sullen-faced Iranian, and asked for another cup of coffee. The new chief came in and joined Hoke at the window table at eight-fifteen. Hoke had talked to the new chief only a couple of times, but then the man had had his job for only three months and hadn't settled in. Hoke hadn't made up his mind about him yet. The old new chief had always worn his uniform, one he had designed himself, complete with four stars on each collar and four more on each epaulet. His cap bill was loaded with gold scrambled eggs. He had been a reserve major in the U.S. Marines, and by giving himself four stars to wear, he had achieved his lifetime ambition to become a general. And like most generals in the army and marines, he had delegated everything, including some important decisions he should have made himself. When a few scandals broke, he didn't know whom to blame, so he had been fired.