New Hope for the Dead Read online

  Mrs. Hickey’s bedroom held a round, unmade king-sized bed, with a half-dozen pillows and an array of long-legged nineteenth-century dolls. There was a pink silk chaise longue, a maple highboy with a matching dresser and vanity table, and a backless settee. The vanity table, with three mirrors, was littered with unguents, cold creams, and other cosmetics. The round bed was a tangle of crumpled Laura Ashley sheets in a floral pattern not observed in nature, with a wadded lavender nightgown-and-peignoir combination at the foot of the bed.

  Sanchez picked up one of the long-legged dolls. Hoke sniffed the anima of the owner—Patou’s Joy, perspiration, cold cream, bath powder, soap, and stale cigarette smoke.

  “You ever notice,” he said, “how a woman’s room always smells like the inside of her purse?”

  “Nope.” Sanchez dropped the doll on the bed. “But I’ve noticed that a man’s bedroom smells like a YMCA locker room.”

  “When were you”—Hoke started to say “inside a man’s bedroom” but caught himself—”inside the Y locker room?”

  “When I was on patrol, a long time ago. Some kid claimed he’d been raped in the shower.” She shrugged. “But nothing ever came of the investigation. No doubt someone cornholed him, but we figured he claimed rape because the other kid wouldn’t pay him. It became a juvenile matter, and I was never called to court.”

  “How long were you on the street?”

  “Just a little over three months. Then I spent a year guarding manholes all day so Southern Bell could hook up wires under the street. Then, because I was bilingual, they made me a dispatcher. Seven years listening to problems and doing nothing about them.”

  “Okay … let’s take a look at the body. You can tell me what to do about it.” Hoke closed the door to the master bedroom and they crossed the hallway.

  Jerry Hickey, with his teeth bared in a frozen grin, was supine on a narrow cot. Except for his urine-stained blue-and-white shorts, he was naked. His arms hugged his sides, with the fingers extended, like the hands of a skinny soldier lying at attention. His feet were dirty, and his toenails hadn’t been clipped in months. His eyes were closed. Hoke rolled back the left eyelid with a thumb. The iris was blue.

  On a round Samsonite bridge table next to the bed there were three sealed plasticene bags of white powder and shooting paraphernalia—a Bic lighter, a silver spoon, and an empty hypodermic needle with the plunger closed. There was the butt of a hand-rolled cigarette in an ashtray, and three tightly rolled balls of blue tinfoil. Hoke put the butt, the tinfoil balls, and the square packets of powder into a Baggie, which he stuffed into the left-hand pocket of his poplin leisure-suit jacket. The right-hand pocket was lined with glove leather and already held several loose rounds of .38 tracer ammunition, his pack of short Kools, three packages of book matches, and two hard-boiled eggs in Reynolds wrap.

  Hoke stepped back a pace and nodded to Ellita Sanchez. There was a knotted bandana tied around the dead man’s upper left arm. She examined the arm without loosening the crude tourniquet and looked at the scabs on his arm. “Here’s a large hole,” she said, “but the other track marks look older.”

  “Sometimes they shoot up in the balls.”

  “You mean the scrotum, not in the balls.” Sanchez, with some difficulty, pulled down the stained boxer shorts and lifted the man’s testicles. There were a half-dozen scabs on the scrotum.

  “This malnourished male,” she said, “about eighteen or nineteen, is definitely a habitual user.” She pointed to a row of splotchy red marks on the dead man’s neck. “I don’t know what these are. They could be thumb marks or love bites.”

  “When I was in school,” Hoke said, smiling, “we called ’em hickeys. That’s what we used to do in junior high in Riviera Beach. Two of us guys would grab a girl in the hall between classes, usually some stuck-up girl. While one guy held her, the other guy would suck a couple of splotches onto her neck. Then”—Hoke laughed—”when the girl went home, it was her problem to explain to her parents how she got ’em.”

  “I don’t get it.” Sanchez appeared to be genuinely puzzled. “Why would you do something like that?”

  “For fun.” Hoke shrugged. “We were young, and it seemed like a fun thing to do to some stuck-up girl.”

  “Nothing like that ever happened at Shenandoah Junior High here in Miami. Not that I know of, anyway. I saw girls with hickeys at Southwest High, but I don’t think any of them were put there by force.”

  “You Latin girls lead a sheltered life. But the point I’m trying to make is, these marks look like hickeys to me.”

  “Maybe so. From the smile on his face, he died happy.”

  “That’s not a smile, that’s a rictus. A lot of people who aren’t happy to die grin like that.”

  “I know, Sergeant, I know. Sorry, I guess I shouldn’t joke about it.”

  “Don’t apologize, for Christ’s sake. I don’t know how to talk to you sometimes.”

  “Why not try talking to me like I’m your partner,” Ellita said, compressing her lips. “And I didn’t like that crack about my sheltered life, either. Growing up in Miami and eight years in the department, I don’t even know what sheltered means. I realize I’m still inexperienced in homicide work but I’ve been a cop for a long time.”

  “Okay, partner.” Hoke grinned. “What’s this look like to you?”

  “This is just an overdose, isn’t it?”

  “It looks that way.” Hoke closed his fingers and made tight fists, reaching for something that wasn’t there. He crossed to the closet. A pair of faded jeans and a white, not very clean, short-sleeved guayabera were draped over the closet door. Hoke went through the pockets of the shirt and pants and found three pennies, a wallet, and a folder of Holiday Inn matches. He added these items to the Baggie and then looked at the top of the dresser against the wall. There was no suicide note in the room, either on the card table or on the dresser, but there were two twenties and a ten on the dresser top.

  Hoke pointed at the money without touching it. “See this? Amateurs. Our two fellow police officers left fifty bucks. A professional thief would’ve taken all of it. But an amateur, for some reason, hardly ever takes it all. It’s like the last cookie in the jar. If there’d been twenty-two bucks on the dresser, they’d have left two.”

  Hoke added the bills to the stack of hundreds and handed the money to Sanchez. “Later on, when you write the report, lock all this dough in my desk. I’ll get it back to Mrs. Hickey later.”

  The top dresser drawer contained some clean shorts and T-shirts, and a half-dozen pairs of socks. The other drawers were empty except for dust. The narrow closet held a dark blue polyester suit, still in its plastic bag from the cleaners, two blue work shirts, and one white button-down shirt on hangers. There were no neckties. There were no letters or other personal possessions. The only clue to the dead man’s activities was the book of matches from the Holiday Inn—but there were two dozen Holiday Inns in the Greater Miami area, with two more under construction.

  Hoke was puzzled. If there had been a suicide note, Mrs. Hickey could have found it and flushed it down the John. That happened frequently. A family almost always thought there was a stigma of some kind to a suicide, as if they, in some way, would be blamed. But this didn’t look like a suicide. This kid, with a thousand bucks and more heroin to shoot up with when he awoke, should have been a very happy junkie. It was, in all probability, an accidental overdose, perhaps from stronger heroin than Jerry was used to taking. One less junkie, that was all.

  But Hoke still wasn’t satisfied.

  “Take a look in the bathroom,” Hoke said to Sanchez. “I’ll call the forensic crew.”

  Hoke called Homicide from a white wall phone in the kitchen. The OIC of the forensic crew would inform the medical examiner, who would either come out or wait at the morgue. In either case, there would be an autopsy.

  Hoke lit a Kool, being careful not to inhale, and went outside. The two girls with the bicycles had disappeared. Hannigan,
wearing her cap, sat in the front seat of the police car with the door open. Hoke wondered what was holding up Garcia and Mrs. Hickey. He cut across the lawn. As he stepped through a break in the Barbados cherry hedge between the two yards, the front door opened and Garcia came out, hanging on to a struggling, giggling woman. The woman’s face was reddened and blotchy and streaked with tears. She had a fine slim figure and was taller than Garcia. Her wide-set cornflower-blue eyes were rolling wildly. She was, Hoke estimated, in her late thirties. She wore a pair of green cotton hip-huggers, a yellow terrycloth halter—exposing a white midriff and a deepset belly button—and a pair of tennis shoes without socks. Her long, honey-colored hair was tangled. She stopped giggling suddenly, raised her arms above her head, and slid through Garcia’s encircling arms to the grass. With her legs spread, she sat there stubbornly, sobbing with determination.

  “Where’s your hat, Garcia?” Hoke said.

  “I left it in the house. It fell off.”

  “Get it and put it on. When you wear a sidearm with a uniform, you’re supposed to be covered at all times.”

  A short, matronly-looking woman with steel-gray hair edged shyly out of the doorway, making room for Garcia to reenter the house. She was wringing her hands, smiling, and her face was slightly flushed. She wore red shorts and a T-shirt. She was at least forty-five pounds overweight.

  “It’s all my fault, Lieutenant,” she said. “But I didn’t mean it.”

  “Sergeant, not lieutenant. Sergeant Moseley. Homicide. What’s all your fault? Mrs. Koontz, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “Mrs. Robert Koontz. Ellen.”

  “What’s all your fault, Mrs. Koontz?”

  “Lorrie—Mrs. Hickey—was very upset when she found Jerry dead. She came over here, so I thought it would be a good idea to give her a drink. To calm her down a little, you know. So before I called nine-eleven, I poured her a glass of Wild Turkey.”

  “How big a glass?”

  “A water glass, I’m afraid.”

  “Did you put any water in it?”

  “No. I didn’t think she’d drink all of it, and she didn’t. But she drank most of it, and then it hit her pretty hard. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone ever get so smashed so quick.” Mrs. Koontz giggled, and then put her fingers to her mouth. “I’m sorry, Sergeant, I really am.”

  “You should’ve put some water in with it.”

  Sanchez knelt on the grass beside Mrs. Hickey, and handed her a wadded tissue to wipe her face.

  “Perhaps you and Officer Sanchez can get Mrs. Hickey back into your house?” Hoke said. “I can’t talk to her that way. Put her to bed, and tell her I’ll be back this evening. It’ll be best to have her out of the way when the lab group gets here anyway.”

  “I’m really sorry about her condition—”

  “Don’t be. The world would look better if everybody drank a glassful of Wild Turkey in the morning.”

  Hoke signaled to Garcia, who had retrieved his hat from the house. They walked to the police car, and Mrs. Koontz and Sanchez helped the sobbing Loretta Hickey into Mrs. Koontz’s house.

  There were a dozen area residents standing across the street on the sidewalk. The neighbors, muttering to one another, stared at the two houses.

  “Keep those people over there, Garcia,” Hoke said. “I’ll lock the back door, and you, Hannigan, can stay in the back yard to keep people from coming around to peep in the windows. You stay out front, Garcia, and don’t answer any questions.”

  Hoke returned to the Hickey house and opened the refrigerator. There was no beer, but he settled for a glass of Gatorade, which he topped off with a generous shot of vodka from an opened bottle he found in the cabinet above the sink. He sat at the Eames table in the dining area, put his feet on another chair, and drank the Gatorade-and-vodka like medicine.

  Sanchez returned to the house, sat across from Hoke, and made some notations in her notebook. “Except for some Dexedrine, and it was in a prescription bottle for Mrs. Hickey, there’s nothing of interest in the bathroom. Hickey obviously hasn’t taken a bath in some time, and Mrs. Hickey hasn’t had time, I suppose, to take a shower this morning.”

  “We’ll see how the P.M. goes, but it’s probably a routine OD. I’ll talk to Mrs. Hickey tonight, and we can work on the report tomorrow.”

  “You didn’t have the right to make Hannigan dump her purse, Sergeant.”

  “That’s right. I didn’t.”

  “How’d you know she and Garcia took the money from the dresser?”

  “I didn’t. How could I know?”

  “The way you acted. You seemed so positive.”

  “I just had a hunch, that’s all.”

  “If she reports you, you’ll be in trouble. I’m your partner, but I’m also a witness. It puts me—”

  “Do you think she will?”

  “No. It’s just that …”

  “Just that what?”

  “If you hadn’t found the money, you could’ve been in a jam. Or if they’d stuck to their phony story that they’d won the money at Jai alai, you—”

  “In that case, I’d’ve turned it over to Internal Affairs. Then, when Mrs. Hickey reported the money missing, Garcia and Hannigan would’ve been suspended for an investigation. Sometimes a hunch pays off, and sometimes it doesn’t. Pour yourself a Gatorade-and-vodka and relax.”

  “I don’t drink,” Sanchez said. “On duty.”

  “Neither do I. I’m taking the rest of the day off to look for a place to live. I’ll take my car, and you can wait for forensic. Garcia can give you a ride back to the station in their car.”

  “We’ve got a meeting with Major Brownley at four-thirty.”

  Hoke finished his drink and grinned. “I know.” He washed his glass at the kitchen sink and put the wet glass on the wooden dryer rack. “I’ll see you then. But until then, I’m on comp time.”

  2

  Although Miami is the largest of the twenty-seven municipalities that make up the Greater Miami area, it does not have the desirable, middle-class residential areas or the affordable neighborhoods that the smaller municipalities have. There are several expensive, up-scale neighborhoods, but very few policemen, even those with working wives, can afford these affluent enclaves. There are slum areas and black neighborhoods with affordable housing, but WASP policemen with families avoid them, as they avoid the housing in Little Havana.

  When a neighborhood becomes black or Latin, Anglo policemen move out with their families. Latin cops prefer Little Havana and have no problem in finding decent housing for their extended families, but the middle-income housing where married WASP cops prefer to live is in short supply, now that Miami’s population is more than 55 percent Latin. As a consequence, the Anglo family men in the department had moved out of the city to the burgeoning Kendall area, to suburban South Miami, to the giant condo complexes in North Miami, and to the new and affordable subdivisions in West Miami.

  The city’s policemen were required to carry their badges and weapons at all times, to be ready to make an off-hours arrest or assist an officer in trouble. But with so many men living out of town, few were actually available. It seemed logical to the new chief of police that if all thousand Miami police officers were living within the city limits, there would be a marked drop in the crime rate. There had in fact always been an official rule to this effect, that a cop had to reside within the city, but until the new chief had taken over it had never been enforced. Now, uncompromising deadlines had been established for all of the Miami police officers living in the other municipalities to move back to the city. To most cops, the rule was unreasonable and unfair, because many of them had purchased homes in the other communities. Many resigned rather than move back, and had little difficulty in finding new police jobs in their adopted municipalities, although most took a pay cut. Others, with too much time in the department to resign, left their families in the other cities and rented small, cramped apartments or moved in with their Miami relatives. Still others,
after desperate searches, of course, found suitable housing.

  The strict enforcement rule had resulted in the loss of more than a hundred officers, many of them highly competent veterans. Because of city budget problems, the department was already short more than 150 people, so the force was reduced to approximately 850 full-time policemen. With this personnel shortage, plus the difficulty in recruiting new minority policemen, who had a priority under the Affirmative Action plan, it now seemed imperative for the new chief to maintain the rule. The damage had been done, but at least most of the remaining cops now lived within the city limits and were available during their off-duty hours.

  Hoke Moseley, however, had a special problem. As a sergeant, his annual salary was $34,000. For a single, divorced man, this should have been enough to live on fairly well in Miami. But because of the terms of his divorce settlement, Hoke had to send half of his salary—every other paycheck—to his ex-wife, who lived in Vero Beach, Florida. Ten years earlier, when Hoke had signed the agreement—which also gave his ex-wife, Patsy, the full-time custody of their two daughters—he had been willing to sign almost anything to get out of his untenable marriage. At the time of their separation, he had been living rent-free with a young advertising woman named Bambi in her two-bedroom condo in Coconut Grove, a desirable neighborhood within the city limits. But later on, after the divorce, and after he had broken up with Bambi, he realized how foolish he had been to agree to the pre-divorce settlement. He still had to pay the income tax on $34,000 out of the $17,000 he had left, plus paying out money for the pension plan, PB A dues, Social Security, and everything else. The everything else included medical expenses for his two daughters, and these bills had been costly over the years, especially dentists’ and orthodontists’ bills. Patsy also sent him the bills for the girls’ new Easter and Christmas outfits, school clothes, and for the summer camp the girls liked to go to in Sebring, Florida, which included horseback riding—an extra fee. If Hoke had only had his own lawyer, instead of sharing Patsy’s, and had opted for alimony instead of a pre-divorce settlement, he could have at least taken alimony payments off his income tax. But Patsy had hired a sharp woman lawyer who had persuaded Hoke to sign the financial agreement.