Sideswipe (24 page)

Back at the El Pelicano, as Hoke gave him his key and a receipt, Beefy said that as a pharmacist he could make thirty thousand a year if he worked at a drugstore all year round, but circus life got into a man's blood.

"You have something in common," Hoke told him, "with Professor Hurt on the first floor. He's a horsefly man, and would probably enjoy talking to you about elephants and Africa..."

Hoke shaved, showered, and washed his dirty jumpsuit while he showered. He put the damp suit on a hanger and hung it over the showerhead to dry. The poplin material would be bone dry in about three hours. So far, the jumpsuits were the only items that had simplified his life. Everything else seemed to be as complicated as ever, and he still hadn't managed to slow his life down to the leisurely pace he had envisioned when he had accepted the management of the El Pelicano.

There were several cardboard boxes of Aileen's things in the apartment, and the small room was much too crowded. He decided to clean out the old office downstairs and store her bicycle and boxes there. The boxes had been opened, and he noticed the yellow-and-black Cliff Notes for Catcher in the Rye. He remembered reading the novel, and a simpler story would be difficult to find. Why would Aileen need the help of Cliff Notes to understand a boy like Holden Caulfield? He riffled through the pages of the Notes. Holden Caulfield was sixteen, but that was back in 1951, when the book was first published, so Holden was fifty-two years old now. Hoke took two boxes downstairs, one under each arm, thinking that Caulfield was probably either a balding broker on the stock exchange or one of those gray-faced corporation lawyers who had never been inside a courtroom. Either way, the thought was depressing.

Hoke unlocked the office door behind the short Formica counter. He put his cardboard boxes on the counter and looked inside the office. The room was about six by eight feet with an enclosed half-bath--a toilet and a washbasin, but no shower. If he cleaned it up and redecorated, and if he could somehow squeeze in a shower stall, he could probably rent this little room out as a one-person efficiency. Either that, or use it as an overflow bedroom for some family with an adult son or daughter. If he added a hot plate, he might be able to rent it to some permanent worker on the island--say, a dishwasher like Dolly Turner--for one hundred fifty or two hundred dollars a month. Then, if he didn't tell his father about it, he could pocket the money and Frank wouldn't know the difference. Fat chance. Frank would know about it within an hour; there were no secrets on the island.

The room was a mess now. A dusty metal desk took up most of the space, and there were two rusty rollaway beds on top of it. Boxes of discarded sheets and battered cooking utensils were stacked haphazardly against the walls. Hoke tried the toilet, but it didn't flush. The water didn't run from the washbowl taps, either.

"Maybe the water's turned off, Sergeant Moseley?"

Hoke looked over his shoulder. A thin, dark man in his early twenties with a fluffy bandito moustache stood in the doorway. He had dark blue eyes, but Hoke recognized a Latin when he saw one. He wore a light tan summer suit with a yellow shirt and an infantry blue tie. He held a large brown envelope with the tips of his fingers.

"I'm Jaime Figueras," he said, shaking Hoke's hand. "You're a hard man to find, Sergeant Moseley. I came over about ten, hung around awhile, and then had a couple of beers at The Greenery. I decided to try again, and then if you weren't here I was going back to the station. How come you don't have a phone?"

"There's a pay phone fifty yards away in the mall."

"I didn't know that number. Besides, when you call a pay phone, nobody answers. And if someone does, he always tells you it's a pay phone and hangs up."

"I'm trying to simplify my life a little, that's all. If I had the only phone in the building, I'd be the message center for all my tenants. They'd also be knocking on my door at midnight wanting to use it. Anyway, what can I do for you, Figueras?"

"I haven't got a clue. Chief Sheldon said you might be able to help me out with these burglaries." He tapped the envelope against the Formica counter. "That's about it. He said you were a famous homicide detective from Miami, and that I could probably learn something from you."

"Famous? What else did he say about me?"

"That's about it. Except that you were Frank Moseley's son, and that you used to be on the Riviera force before you went down to Miami."

"You're pretty young to be in plainclothes already."

"I'm twenty-four, and I've been a cop for more than three years now. I joined when I graduated from Palm Beach Junior College. I was going to transfer up to Gainesville, but I decided that two more years of education at the U.F. wasn't worth borrowing twenty thousand bucks, plus the interest. Besides, I was offered a job here, so I took it."

"As a cop, you'd make more money in Miami."

"I know. I went down there and talked to some of the Latin contingent on the P.B.A. But they discouraged me when they found out I was a Mondalero."

Hoke laughed. "What did you expect? Cuban cops think that anyone who didn't vote for Reagan is a Communist sympathizer. If you voted for Mondale, you should've kept that information to yourself."

"I meant to, but I'm a Puerto Rican, not a Cuban. The trouble with Cuban-Americans, even when they're born here, is that they think of themselves as Cubans first, and then Americans. We love our island as much as they say they love theirs, but we know that without some kind of welfare, an island with a growing population can't support itself. All these Reagan cuts are killing us down there, man."

"You're probably night." Hoke shrugged. "You must've made the right choice, staying here in Riviera, or you wouldn't be a detective already. Want some coffee?"

"No, but I'd like to use your john. Like I said, I had a couple of beers in The Greenery."

Hoke put the two boxes inside, relocked the office door, and led the way upstairs. Hoke pointed to the bathroom door and took the envelope from Figueras. It contained two Xeroxed rosters listing the names of the residents with stolen items at the Supermare. The items each resident was missing were typed beneath the names. Many of the items were small objects, but there were also three paintings and a Giacometti sculpture on the list. The dimensions of the Giacometti weren't noted, but the paintings included a Corot, a Klezmer, and a Renaissance cartoon, artist unknown. The artists' names, except for the Klezmer, were vaguely familiar to Hoke.

"What've you done so far?" Hoke asked, as Figueras, zipping his fly, came back into the living room.

"I've talked to these people, and to the manager, Mr. Carstairs. These residents come and go, you know. Mr. Olsen--he's the president of the Supermare board of directors--he and his wife went on a two-week trip to the Galapagos a couple of months back, but they didn't miss their stuff right away. The cartoon was in the hallway, he said, and he never liked it much anyway. But it was plenty valuable. He didn't know whether it was missing before they left or not. His wife lost a diamond ring and a halfdozen elephant-hair bracelets. She had another diamond pin in her jewelry box, but that wasn't taken."

"What was the cartoon about?"

Figueras grinned. "I asked her the same question. It isn't a comic cartoon. It's a preliminary drawing of a Madonna and child, and it's supposedly after Raphael, Mrs. Olsen said. In other words, it's a brown-tone drawing, the kind the artist makes before he does the painting, and it's called a cartoon. 'After Raphael' means that it might've been drawn by Raphael but probably wasn't. It could've been done by one of Raphael's apprentices."

"It couldn't be worth much."

"I don't know. Mr. Olsen said it's worth quite a bit. Just as it is, without authentication, it's valued at twenty grand. And if it's ever authenticated, the value would triple. Mrs. Olsen isn't so worried about the diamond ring, but she wants the elephant-hair bracelets back because her granddaughter gave them to her last Christmas."

"Who gave you this list?"

"The manager. Carstairs. Then I talked to the tenants."

"Let's take another trip down there, Figueras. My father's wife's got an apartment there, and I promised her I'd check it out. She hasn't been in it for several months, so she might have something missing, too."

"Your stepmother has an apartment there?"

"Stepmother--come on. We're about the same age; she's just my father's second wife."

"Sorry."

"No cause to be. Technically, I guess she is my stepmother, but I've never thought of her that way. My kids call her Helen, not Grandma."

"Want to take my car?"

"No, you go ahead. I'll ride my daughter's bike down and take my trunks. After we check things out, I'll swim in the pool. I'd invite you, too, but a guest can't invite another guest."

"I got plenty to do back at the station. I really should come over here to the beach more often, but somehow, when I get through work and go home, I just don't think about it."

"You married?"

"No, but I got a live-in. Girl works at the International Mall. Suave Shoes. Nothing serious. She just wanted to get away from her parents and couldn't afford a place of her own."

"Lot of girls like that nowadays, it seems."

Figueras shrugged. "One, anyway."

Mr. Carstairs, a tanned, middle-aged man wearing khaki cargo shorts, a short-sleeved blue workshirt, and a pair of blue felt house slippers, was outside by the Supermare swimming pool. With a twelve-foot skimmer he was scooping dead dragonflies and bits of dried grass from the surface of the pool. When Hoke introduced himself, Carstairs put the skimmer down, nodded at Figueras, and lighted a menthol True.

"Your stepmother already called me about you, Mr. Moseley. The pooi's open from nine to nine, but there's no lifeguard so you swim at your own risk. And no children are allowed."

"That's what Mrs. Moseley told me. Suppose I want to swim earlier, say, six or six-thirty in the morning?"

"I don't enforce the rules. I live over in Riviera, so I don't get here till around eight. But Mrs. Andrews, who lives right over there in 101-A, has threatened to shoot anyone who goes in before nine A.M. with her BB gun." Carstairs laughed harshly, and it brought on a paroxysm of coughing. His body doubled over and his face turned bright red. He clutched the back of an aluminum beach chair for support, coughed some more, and finally managed to take another short drag on his cigarette. That seemed to work; he stopped coughing.

"You okay?" Hoke asked.

Carstairs nodded, catching his breath. "It's the damned menthol. I might as well have stuck with the Camels. 'Course I don't think she'd really do it, Mrs. Andrews, with the gun. But she said she would, and ever since she made her threat at the monthly meeting, nobody's taken a chance. She brought her Red Ryder BB rifle to the meeting to show she had one."

"In that case," Hoke said, "I'll abide by the rules." He took one of the folded lists out of his pocket and handed it to Carstairs. "You got any more additions to your list? Any more reported thefts?"

Carstairs ran a finger down the list and shook his head. "No, this is complete. But a lot of people are still away for the summer. When people get back, there may be more. I haven't inventoried any of the unoccupied apartments because I don't know what's supposed to be there in the first place. And even if the apartments are messed up, the owners could've left them that way when they went north."

"I understand."

"As a matter of routine," Figueras said, "I checked both pawnshops in town, but nothing showed up. These aren't the kind of things people would pawn anyway. A Corot, for example, worth maybe a hundred thousand bucks, wouldn't be fenced, either. A painting that valuable's usually held for ransom from the insurance company."

"I don't know what else to tell you, Mr. Moseley," Carstairs said. "We've got a twenty-four-hour guard on the gate, but the owners voted down a TV surveillance system. Most of the people living here are old enough to go to bed early. After ten at night, the gate guard checks the lobby and the pool area every hour or so."

"Have you got keys to all of the apartments?" Hoke asked.

"Sure. It's the law. I've got a master through-the-doorknob key, and those who've added bolt locks are required to give me the extra key. I keep 'em on a board in my office."

"What about the exterminator?"

"He's on a monthly schedule. I send out a mimeographed notice for the day and hours he's here, and they're supposed to let him in to spray. When he finishes all of the occupied apartments he comes back to me, and then I go with him while he works through the unoccupied units. If people are here, and don't let him in, they don't get sprayed, that's all. Our contract's with Cliffdweller's Exterminators, and they're bonded. They do most of the condos on the island."

"What about U.P.S., and other deliveries?"

"The gate guard signs, and then takes the packages up himself. And that includes pizza deliveries. That way"-- Carstairs !aughed--"the guard gets the tip the delivery man should get. Why not? We only pay the guards four bucks an hour."

"When he's on an upper floor making a delivery, the gate isn't covered."

"That's true. But it's locked. Nobody has to wait very long, and all the owners can open the gate with their plastic cards. There haven't been any complaints--except from pizza delivery men." Carstairs laughed harshly and fell into another spate of coughing. He sat heavily on a webbed beach chair, gasping for almost a minute before he recovered his breath. "Not everybody living here knows about these burglaries, but when the place begins to fill up again in November, and it turns out that some more absentee owners have been ripped off, there'll be hell to pay, and I'll be blamed. I like this job. I managed a condo in North Miami Beach for three years before coming up here, and they all complained down there because they thought I was overpaid. Twenty-two thousand a year, and they thought I was overpaid. Here, everybody thinks I'm -under-paid, and I get plenty of tips and sympathy."