Miami Blues by Charles Willeford

Author:Charles Willeford [Willeford, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 1400032466
Published: 2011-03-20T05:00:00+00:00

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.

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