Sideswipe (2 page)

Ellita brought out the Thermos of coffee, an empty regular-sized cup, and a demitasse cup. She poured the coffee-- four ounces for Hoke, one ounce for herself--and asked what was new in the paper.

"I'm finished with it." Hoke shrugged. He took his filled cup into the living room and sat in his La-Z-Boy, but he didn't switch on the television.

When Ellita had started her maternity leave, two weeks before, Major Brownley, the Homicide Division chief, had told Hoke he wouldn't be able to replace her. Hoke had Ellita and a young investigator named Teodoro Gonzalez (immediately nicknamed "Speedy" by the other detectives in the division) working for him on the "cold case" files. In the beginning this was supposed to have been a temporary assignment, but the three of them had so handily solved a half-dozen old murder cases that the major had made it a permanent assignment, with Hoke in charge. Without Ellita, and without any replacement for her, Hoke would have to depend solely on Gonzalez--a bright young investigator, but a man without a sense of direction--for most of the legwork. Gonzalez had a B.A. degree in economics from Florida International University in Miami, and had served only one year as a patrolman in Liberty City before being promoted to plainclothes investigator in the Homicide Division. He hadn't actually earned this promotion, but had been elevated because he was a Latin with a bachelor's degree. His black patrol sergeant in Liberty City had recommended Gonzalez for the promotion, but that was because the sergeant had wanted to get the man the hell out of his section. Despite the map in his patrol car, and the simple system of streets and avenues in Miami (avenues run north and south; streets run east and west), Gonzalez had spent half of his patrol hours lost, unable to locate the addresses he was dispatched to find. Gonzalez was willing and affable, and Hoke liked the kid, but Hoke knew that when he sent him out to do some legwork, an important function on cold cases, Gonzalez would spend most of his time lost somewhere in the city. Once Gonzalez had been unable to get to the Orange Bowl, even though he could see it from the expressway, because he couldn't find an exit that would get him there.

Gonzalez had, however, prepared Hoke's income tax return, and Hoke had received a $380 refund. Gonzalez had also prepared Ellita's Form 1040, and she had received a refund of $180 when she had expected to pay an additional $320, so they thenceforth both admired Gonzalez's ability with figures. Hoke had given Gonzalez responsibility for the time sheets and mileage reports, and they had had no trouble in getting reimbursed. Beyond this, however, Hoke didn't know quite what to do with Gonzalez and the fifteen new supps that had been deposited in his in-box the day before.

These supps all represented new cold cases which, in Hoke's opinion, were still too warm to be considered inactive. What these cases really were were difficult cases that other detectives in the division considered hopeless. But they were also much too recent to be hopeless, as Hoke had discovered by glancing through them yesterday afternoon. Hoke was getting them via interoffice mail because Major Brownley had put a notice on the bulletin board directing detectives in the division to turn over all of the cold cases they were currently working on to Sergeant Moseley. These new cases, added to the ten Hoke had selected already from the back files to work on, because they had possibilities, were not, in Hoke's opinion, beyond hope. Even his cursory reading of the new supps had indicated that the detectives could have done a lot more work on them before putting them on his back burner. What it amounted to, Hoke concluded, was a way for these lazy bastards to clear their desks of tough investigations and shift them over to him and Gonzalez. All fifteen supps had yellow tags affixed to the folders, meaning that there was no statute of limitations on these crimes because they were homicides, rapes, or missing-person cases. Hoke realized that his desk would be the new dumping ground for more and more cases from detectives who had run out of routine leads and gotten down to the gritty part of thinking about fresh angles that were not routine. The chances were, he thought gloomily as he finished his coffee and put the cup on the magazine table next to the La-Z-Boy, that there would be a few more of them in his in-box when he got down to his cubbyhole office on the third floor of the Miami Police Station.

Hoke stopped thinking about this new idea. Then he stopped thinking altogether, closed his eyes, and sat back in the chair.

The girls got up. (They shared a bedroom, Ellita had the master bedroom, and Hoke had the tiny eight-by-six-foot bedroom that was originally supposed to be either a den or a sewing room at the back of the house next to the Florida room.) They used the bathroom, took their showers, and fixed their breakfasts. They jabbered with Ellita out in the Florida room but didn't disturb Hoke when they saw him with his eyes closed, sitting in his chair. At 7:4 5, Sue Ellen kissed Hoke on the forehead (he apparently didn't feel it) before getting on her moped and riding off to work at the Green Lakes Car Wash. Ellita and Aileen washed and dried the dishes in the kitchen, and then, at eight o'clock, Ellita touched 1-Joke's bare shoulder gingerly, told him the time, and said that the bathroom, if he wanted it, was clear again. But Hoke did not reply.

At eight-thirty Ellita said to Aileen:

"I think your father's gone back to sleep in his chair. Why don't you wake him and tell him it's eight-thirty? I know he has to work because he told me last night he had fifteen new supps to read through today."

"It's eight-thirty, Daddy," Aileen said, her right hand ruffling the stiff black hairs on Hoke's back and shoulders. Aileen, every time she got an opportunity, liked to feel the hair on Hoke's back and shoulders with the tips of her fingers.

Hoke didn't reply, and she kissed him wetly on the cheek. "Are you awake, Daddy? Hey! You in there, old sleepyhead, it's after eight-thirty!"

Hoke didn't open his eyes, but she could tell from the way he was breathing that he wasn't asleep. Aileen shrugged her skinny shoulders and told Ellita, who was sorting laundry from the hamper into three piles, that she had given up on waking her father. "But he's really awake," she said. "I can tell. He's just pretending to be asleep."

Aileen was wearing a white T-shirt with a "Mr. Appetizer" hot dog on the front; some of the egg yolk from her breakfast had spilled onto the brown frankfurter. Ellita pointed to it, and Aileen stripped off the T-shirt and handed it to her. Aileen did not wear a brassiere, nor did she need one. She was a tall skinny girl, with adolescent chest bumps, and her curly sandy hair was cut short, the way boys used to have theirs trimmed back in the 1950s. From the back, she could have been mistaken for a boy, even though she wore dangling silver earrings, because so many boys her age in Green Lakes wore earrings, too.

Aileen returned to her bedroom to get a clean T-shirt, and Ellita went into the living room. "Hoke," she said, "if you aren't going downtown, d'you want me to call in sick for you?"

Hoke didn't stir in his chair. Ellita shrugged and put the first load of laundry into the washer in the utility room off the kitchen. She then made the bed in her bedroom (the girls were supposed to make their own), hung up a few things in her walk-in closet, and gave Aileen $1.50 for lunch money. Aileen, together with her girl friend Candi Allen, who lived on the next block, were going to be driven to the Venetian Pool in Coral Gables by the girl's mother. They would be there until three P.M., and then Mrs. Allen would pick them up and bring them back to Green Lakes. Aileen left the house, carrying her bathing suit in a plastic Burdine's shopping bag, after kissing her father again and running the tips of her fingers through the hair on his back and shoulders.

By eleven A.M., when Hoke had not stirred from his chair--he had urinated in his shorts, and there was a large damp spot on the brown corduroy cushion--Ellita was concerned enough to telephone Commander Bill Henderson at the Homicide Division. Bill Henderson, who had been promoted to commander a few months back, was now the Administrative Executive Officer for the division, and all of the paperwork in the division--going and coming-- crossed his desk before he did something about it or routed it to someone else. Bill did not enjoy this newly created position, nor did he like the responsibility that went with it, but he liked the idea of being a commander, and the extra money.

Ellita told Bill that Hoke had been sitting in the chair since breakfast, that he had pissed his underpants, and that although he was awake, she could not get him to acknowledge her presence.

"Put him on the phone," Bill said. "Let me talk to him."

"You don't understand, Bill. He's just sitting there. His eyes are open now, and he's staring at the wall, but he isn't really looking at the wall."

"What's the matter with him?"

"I don't know, Bill. That's why I called you. I know he's supposed to go to work today, because he got fifteen new supps yesterday and he has to read through them this morning."

"Tell him," Bill said, "that I just gave him five supps on top of that. I handed them to Speedy Gonzalez about fifteen minutes ago."

"I don't think that will make an impression."

"Tell him anyway."

Ellita went into the living room and told Hoke that Bill Henderson just told her to tell him that he now had five more supps to look at, in addition to the fifteen Bill had sent him yesterday.

Hoke did not respond.

Ellita returned to the phone in the kitchen. "He didn't react, Bill. I think you'd better tell Major Brownley that something's wrong. I think I should call a doctor, but I didn't want to do that without talking to you or Major Brownley first."

"Don't call a doctor, Ellita. I'll drive out and talk to Hoke myself. If there's nothing radically wrong with him, and I don't think there is, I can cover for him and Major Brownley'll never know anything about it."

"Have you had lunch yet, Bill?"

"No, not yet."

"Then don't stop for anything on your way over, and I'll fix you something here. Please. Come right away."

Ellita went back into the living room to tell Hoke that Bill was coming to the house, but Hoke was no longer sitting in his chair. He wasn't in the bathroom, either. She opened the door to his bedroom and found him supine on his narrow army cot. He had pulled the sheet over his head.

"I told Bill you weren't feeling well, Hoke, and he's coming right over. If you go back to sleep with the sheet over your face, you won't get enough air and you'll wake up with a headache."

The room air conditioner was running, but Ellita turned it to High-Cool before closing the door. Low-Cool was comfortable enough for nighttime, but with the sun on this side of the house, it would be too warm in the afternoon.

Bill arrived, and after pulling the sheet away from Hoke's face, talked to him for about ten minutes. Hoke stared at the ceiling and didn't respond to any of Bill's questions. Bill was a large man with big feet and a huge paunch, and he had a brutal, metal-studded smile. When he came out of Hoke's room, he carried his brown-and-white seersucker jacket over his left arm, and he had taken off his necktie.

Ellita had fixed two tuna salad sandwiches and heated a can of Campbell's tomato soup. When Bill came into the kitchen, she put his lunch on a tray and asked him if he wanted to eat in the dining room or out in the Florida room.

"In here." Bill pulled out an Eames chair at the white pedestal dining table and sat down. "It's too hot out there without any air conditioning. The announcer on the radio coming over said it would be ninety-two today, but it seems hotter than that already."

Bill bit into a tuna salad sandwich, sweet with chopped Vidalia onions, and Ellita put two heaping tablespoons of Le Creme into his steaming tomato soup.

"What's that?" Bill said, frowning.

"Le Creme. It turns ordinary tomato soup into a gourmet treat. I read about it in -Vanidades-."

"When you called me, Ellita, I thought maybe Hoke was just kidding around, and I was half ready to kick him in the ass for scaring you. But there is something definitely wrong with him."

"That's what I was trying to tell you."

"I know. But I still don't think we should tell Major Brownley. Was Hoke sick to his stomach, or anything like that?"

"No. He was all right when I fixed his coffee this morning, and he'd already read the paper."

Bill stirred the soup in his bowl; the creamy globs of Le Creme dissolved in a pinkish marble pattern. "I don't want to scare you any more than you are already, Ellita--but-- how's the baby coming, by the way? All right?"

"I'm fine, Bill, don't worry about me. I've put on ten pounds more than the doctor wanted me to, but he doesn't know everything. He told me I'd have morning sickness, too, but I haven't been sick once. What about Hoke?"

"What it looks like to me, and I've seen it more than once in Vietnam, is 'combat fatigue.' That's what we used to call it. A man's mind gets overwhelmed with everything in combat, you see, and then his mind blanks it all out. But it isn't serious. They used to send these guys back to the hospital, wrap them in a wet sheet for three days, put 'em to sleep, and they'd wake up okay again. Then they'd be back on the line as if nothing had happened."

"It's all psychological, you mean?"

"Something like that--and temporary. That wasn't a big problem in the Army. In the department, though, it could be. If Major Brownley calls in the department shrink to look at Hoke, I'm pretty sure that's what he'd call this. I mean, not 'combat fatigue,' but 'burnout' or 'mid-life crisis,' and then it would go on Hoke's record. That's not the kind of thing a cop needs on his permanent medical record."