"Nothing is enforced until something happens. Then it's a different story. A black division chief isn't allowed to make any mistakes. I gave you temporary permission to live on the Beach, and you stayed for a year. It's my mistake for not following up on you, because now there's a thief running around Dade County with your gun and buzzer. If he ever realizes the kind of power that represents, the department'll be in a lot of trouble."
Hoke shrugged and reached for the ball point pen. "When do you want all this info?"
"Why don't you do it now? I'll go down to the cafeteria downstairs and get a sandwich and some coffee. I want to get that info into the computer." Brownley turned in the doorway. "You want anything? Coffee?"
Hoke shook his head, and pulled his wheeled tray closer to the bed.
"Okay, then, Hoke, I'll be back in an hour. Don't let the nurse or no one else touch my briefcase."
Hoke filled in the forms, and wrote the red-liner memo. Although it was possible for a cop to be suspended with pay for not living in Miami, the rule was never enforced, and he thought Brownley was a little paranoid about it. But then, Brownley wanted that promotion, and Hoke didn't want to jeopardize it. Perhaps he would, after all, have to move away from the Eldorado-but he sure as hell wouldn't move in with Henderson. Hoke didn't like Marie Henderson, and he liked Henderson's kids even less.
When Captain Brownley returned for the forms, Hoke told him to thank his wife for the fudge.
"I'll tell her. D'you want any visitors, Hoke?"
"I'd rather not, captain. I look like hell, and it hurts me to talk."
"Okay, I'll pass the word, but I'll be back ex officio. One other thing, Hoke, you'll have a new partner when you come back to duty. I let Henderson stay with you when he was promoted to sergeant because you guys work well together, but things've changed lately. I'm getting five new investigators, all Cubans, all bilingual, and neither you nor Henderson speak Spanish. I've put Lopez with Henderson, and you'll have a bilingual partner when you get back. Even if you and Henderson were bilingual, I'd have to break you up. I'm too short on experienced people to let two sergeants work together any longer."
"I'm not surprised," Hoke said. "Did you know that Red Farris resigned?"
"In Robbery?"
"Yeah, and he had ten years in. He was in Homicide before you came in as chief."
"I knew Red. I didn't know him well, but I knew him enough to talk to him. He was a good man. We're losing too many good people, Hoke."
With his memory refreshed by the reports he had just written, Hoke went over again in his mind what had happened. There had been a knock on the door. Was it timid or imperious? Was it three raps or two? He couldn't remember. Masculine or feminine--he felt, somehow, that it was feminine, but he wasn't sure. His response had been so automatic, it was as if he had known the caller. He had hidden his drink behind the photograph of his two daughters. Why? He was entitled, for Christ's sake, to have a drink in his own room and to answer his door with a drink in his hand. It wasn't the Dominican maid, he knew her timid, tentative knock; and it wasn't Mr. Bennett. If that bastard Bennett had wanted to clobber him, he would have gypped the assailant on the fee, and the job wouldn't have been so thorough.
That left the Marielitos, but Hoke felt that the resident Cubans could be eliminated. When Hoke had first moved into the Eldorado, the refugees had been a continual problem. There had been twenty of them all in one room, and Mr. Bennett had charged them three bucks a night to sleep on mattresses on the floor. They got drunk, they fought, they were loud, and they brought women in, terrifying the Jewish retirees who lived there on social security. Hoke had shaken down their room a couple of times and picked up a .32 pistol (no one had claimed it or knew how it got there) and three knives. Finally, when Reagan took away their $115-a-month government checks, the refugees without jobs had moved out, unable to pay the three bucks a night. Hoke had then persuaded Mr. Bennett to get rid of the worst offenders, so now there were only five or six Marielitos left, and they all had jobs of some kind. Hoke figured they all liked him. He would pass out a dollar now and then--to wash his car or to bring him a sandwich from Gold's Deli. So if his attacker was a Marielito, it had to be one that he had evicted. But the attack wasn't in the Latin manner. When a Latin wanted revenge, he also wanted you to know all about it, and he would tell you at great length precisely what he was going to do to you and why before he got around to doing it.
Hoke knew that he had his share of enemies. What policeman hasn't? He had put his quota of people away, and the parole board released them faster than they were incarcerated. There were bound to be a few who might keep their promise to get him when they were released. On the other hand, a stretch in prison had a way of cooling people off. There was ample time for reflection in prison, and time, if it didn't eliminate animosity, at least ameliorated it. Hoke, like most men, considered himself a good guy. He couldn't conceive how anyone who knew him could attack him in such a cruel, impersonal way.
Hoke came to the conclusion that he had been mistaken for someone else, and the incident was some kind of crazy mixup.
He also thought it was peculiar that both boxes of fudge, the one from Louise and the one from Captain Brownley, had been wrapped in the same gold paper and tied with the same kind of flexible gold string. A few days later, when he was limping around the hospital corridors, just to get out of his room, he went into the hospital gift shop. There was a pyramid of fudge on the counter, each pound wrapped in gold paper. Hoke looked at a box and saw the sticker on the bottom: _Gray Lady Fudge--$4. 95_.
15
Freddy had always been a light sleeper, but noise had seldom interrupted his sleep. In prison, he could sleep soundly while two men in the same cell argued at the top of their voices, and with bars clanging throughout the block. But if there was a change in the pattern of the usual noises he would awake immediately, as alert as an animal, until he discovered what had disturbed the pattern. He could then drop back to sleep as easily as he had awakened.
He awoke now, at four-thirty A.M., but heard nothing except the gentle hissing of the cold air from the wall ducts. Susan, her left thumb in her mouth, slept soundlessly beside him, naked except for the sheet they had pulled waist-high over themselves. There was a gentle flurry in Freddy's stomach, as though mice were scrambling around inside. His mouth was dry, and despite the air conditioning, there was a light film of perspiration on his forehead. His right leg began to jerk involuntarily, and it took him a moment or two to control the tic. He threw off the sheet and sat on the edge of the bed. To his surprise, he was a little dizzy. He poured a glass of water from the bedside carafe and ate the piece of chocolate that the maid had left on his pillow when she had turned down the bedcovers.
Freddy was having an anxiety attack, but because it was his first, he didn't know what was happening. He picked up his watch and watched the second hand sweep around as he took his pulse. He found the rate of seventy disturbing; as a rule, his pulse was a steady fifty-five. He went to the dresser, picked up Hoke's .38 police special, cocked it, and checked both closets and the bathroom. No one. He lowered the hammer carefully and replaced the weapon in the holster. He wanted to smoke a cigarette. All he had to do was to pick up the phone and he could have a carton in the room within minutes, but he didn't reach for the telephone. People in hell, he thought, want pińa coladas, too. Their problem is that they can't have them. My problem is that I can have everything and anything I want, but what do I want?
He didn't want anything, including the cigarette he had thought he wanted. What did he want? Nothing. In prison he had made mental lists of all kinds of things he would get when he was released, ranging from milk shakes to powder blue Caddy convertibles. But he didn't like milk shakes because of the furry aftertaste, and a convertible in Florida would be too uncomfortably hot--unless he kept the top up and the air conditioning going full blast. So who would want a convertible?
What he needed was a purpose, and then, after he had the purpose, he would need a plan.
Freddy pulled Susan into a sitting position. "Are you awake, Susie?"
"I think so."
"Then open your eyes."
"I'm sleepy."
Freddy poured a glass of water and splashed some water into Susan's face. She rubbed her puffy eyes and blinked. "I'm awake."
"Tell me again," he said, "about the Burger King franchise."
"What?"
"The Burger King franchise. You and your brother, remember? How does it work? How much money do you need, and why do you want one?"
"It wasn't my idea, it was Marty's. What you need, he said, is about fifty thousand dollars. Then you borrow another fifty thousand from the bank and go to the Burger King people. They tell you what's available, and you buy it or lease it and run it by their rules. Marty wanted to build one up in Okeechobee. He even had the location picked out."
"But why did he want it? What was his purpose?"
"To make a living, that's all. You hire school kids real cheap, and you make a nice profit. All you have to do, as the manager, is hang around all the time, see that the place is clean, and count your money. When you pay back the bank loan, everything else you make from then on is gravy."
"What was your part supposed to be in all this?"
"Well, he said we'd split up the work, so that one of us would be there at all times. Otherwise, these kids who work for next to nothing will steal you blind. So if he was there days and I was there nights, we could prevent that."
"Is that what you wanted?"
"I don't know. It seemed like such a long way off, I didn't think much about it. Marty liked to talk about it, though. I guess I didn't care. It would be something to do, I guess. I don't know."
"Well, I think it's stupid. I can't see any point to hanging around a Burger King all day, no matter how much money you make. Don't you know why it's stupid?"
"I never thought too much about it."
"I'll tell you why. Your life would depend on the random desires of people who wanted a hamburger. So you can just forget about Burger King."
"Okay. Can I go back to sleep now?"
"Yeah. I'm going out for a while. Don't let anyone in while I'm gone. Do you want anything while I'm out?"
"Uh-uh . . ." She was asleep.
Freddy, carrying Hoke's sap and handcuffs in his jacket pocket and the holstered pistol clipped to his belt in the back, and with the badge and ID case in his right trousers pocket, left the deserted lobby. He walked down Biscayne toward Sammy's, which was open twenty-four hours. The predawn air was damp, cooler this time of morning, and there was a taste of salt in the air from the bay.
At the corner, a tall black whore at the curb clawed at his arm with long black fingers.
"Lookin' for some fun?" she said.
Freddy showed her his badge. "Call it a night."
"Yes, sir." She crossed the street on the yellow light and walked swiftly away, her high heels clattering in the dark.
Freddy continued on to Sammy's, went into the clean, welllighted restaurant, and took a corner booth. Power, he thought. Without the badge, he would have had an argument, and it would have been difficult to get rid of the whore unless he had decided to kick her in the ass. And that could have, might have, caused him some trouble. It was trouble he could handle but a hassle all the same. With the badge, it was so easy . . .
A rangy red-haired waitress came over to take his order.
"Coffee. Is that okay, or do I have to order something with it?"
"Most people do, but you don't have to."
"Okay. And pie, then."
"What kind?"
"I'm not going to eat it, so what difference does it make?"
"Yes, sir."
Freddy didn't want the coffee, either. But the long walk in the cool air had allayed his anxiety somewhat, and he began to work out a plan that would lead to a purpose. What he needed to do, he decided, was to get organized and to start over. The haiku about the frog coming to Miami and making a splash of some kind made a lot of sense. Alone, with this new city and a new chance, he could do something or other if he could only figure out what it was he was meant to do. What he wanted to do was to dump Susan, but he realized that he was now stuck with her. He had, strictly by accident, caused the death of her stupid brother. The fact that it was her brother's fault and not his didn't make any difference. Without anyone else to look after her now, she had become Freddy's responsibility. She would get no help from her father, that was a certainty. So now it was up to him. His first idea, about buying her a Burger King franchise, was out. She had no real interest in the idea, and she wouldn't be capable of running a place like that if she had one. Her dumb brother, in all probability, wouldn't have been able to run one either.
Freddy sipped his black coffee and counted the pecan halves on top of the piece of pie the redhead had brought with the coffee. The pie was warm and smelled good, but he had eaten one hell of a dinner. He wasn't hungry .
A black man wearing a Raiders fedora walked into the restaurant carrying a hunting knife. He grabbed the red-haired waitress's wrist and twisted her arm into a half-nelson. She squealed and he put the point of the knife into her neck a quarter of an inch, just far enough to draw a trickle of blood, and told her to open the register.
There were two patrons in the restaurant besides Freddy, and they sat paralyzed at the cuunter. They were middle-aged Canadian tourists, getting an early breakfast before a drive to the Keys. The robber apparently hadn't noticed Freddy in the corner booth, or else he wasn't concerned about him. His concentration was on the waitress and the money in the till when Freddy shot him in the left kneecap. The report of the .38 was loud, but the man's scream was piercing enough to make the Canadians shudder. He dropped the waitress's arm and his knife, then fell, still screaming, to the floor. Freddy stopped the screaming in mid-shrill when he tapped him behind his right ear with the heavy leather sap.