Charles Willeford - Miami Blues by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi

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.

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