Free New Hope for the Dead by Charles Willeford Page A

many occasions. Hoke could stare at people for a long time before they realized he was looking at them. By any aesthetic standard, Hoke’s eyes were beautiful. But the rest of his face, if not ordinary, was unremarkable. He had lost most of his sandy hair in front, and his high balding dome gave his longish face a mournful expression. His tanned cheeks were sunken and striated, and there were dark, deep lines from the wings of his prominent nose to the corners of his mouth.
    Hoke took his dentures out of the plastic glass where they had been soaking overnight in Polident, rinsed them under the faucet, and set them in place with a few dabs of Stik-Gum. He looked a little better, he thought, with the blue-gray teeth, and he always put his dentures in before shaving. One thing he knew for certain, he looked much trimmer and felt much better at 182 pounds than he had at 205.
    The window air conditioner labored away while he dressed (today he wore the yellow leisure suit), and then he made a final check of the room to see if he had forgotten anything. Today was Friday, and his sheets wouldn’t be changed until Saturday morning. The sitting room was a mess, and there was a pile of dirty laundry in the corner of the bedroom. The Peruvian maid would pick up his laundry when she changed the sheets and bring it back on Saturday evening. There was a sour, locker-room smell in both rooms.
    Hoke checked his .38 Chief’s Special, slipped it into his holster, and clipped the holster into his belt at the back. He would be reading most of the day, so he left his handcuffs and leather sap on the dresser before going down to the lobby.
    As Hoke took his daily report into Mr. Bennett’s office, Eddie Cohen, the desk clerk, called to him from the desk.
    “Sergeant Moseley,” the old man said, “you had a call about three A.M. , but I told the lady I couldn’t wake you up unless it was an emergency. She said it wasn’t an emergency, and she didn’t give her name. But I wouldn’t wake nobody at three o’clock in the morning for nothing.”
    “Thanks, Eddie. What did she sound like? The caller, I mean?”
    “Like a woman. It was a woman’s voice, that’s all.”
    “Okay. If she happens to call back today, try and get her name and number. The plug on my air conditioner was pulled out again when I got to my room last night. I’ve told you before not to pull it out. The room was like a damned oven with the burners on high when I came home.”
    “Mr. Bennett sends me around to pull out the plugs when nobody’s home. If no one’s in the room, it just wastes energy, he said.”
    “I understand your position, Eddie, but that rule doesn’t apply to me. It takes about two hours for that beat-up air conditioner to cool off the suite. Also, tell Emilio to set some rat traps around the dumpster again. I spotted two Norways in the back corridor last night.”
    “It ain’t the dumpster they’re after.” Eddie shook his head. “These old ladies put their garbage in the hallways instead of taking it down to the dumpster.”
    “Never mind. Have Emilio set the traps. I put it in my report to Mr. Bennett. He can pay off the inspectors, but if one of these old ladies ever gets bitten by a Norway, they’ll come down on us again.”
    Hoke got into his car, wondering why he should be concerned. Within a week, he’d have to get out of the hotel anyway. He didn’t know where he would be, but he would be somewhere else. With all of the money he owed, a suspension without pay would be a disaster. And any time his check to Patsy was more than a day late, he got a threatening call from her bitchy lawyer.
    When Hoke got to the station at seven-thirty, he learned that Ellita was already there and had moved all of the cold case files down to the interrogation room. He sent her down to the cafeteria to get coffee and a jelly doughnut. He hadn’t felt like poaching eggs, and boiling two more, on his hot plate this morning; now his stomach rumbled with