Grimhaven, page 13
Hoke’s long swim in the pool had given him an appetite again. He broiled the thawed steak in the oven and heated a can of stewed okra-and-tomatoes to go with it. He broiled the steak a few minutes too long and it was well-done instead of the medium he liked, but it still tasted good with the okra-and-tomatoes.
After eating, Hoke put his dishes and utensils in the sink and drove down to the L’il General Store and bought a paperback copy of The Glitter Dome, by Joseph Wambaugh. He returned to his father’s house, sat in his leather armchair and finished reading the novel by midnight. The cops in Los Angeles, he concluded, were much crazier than the cops in Miami and a good deal of the novel read like sheer fantasy. The L.A. cops’ preoccupation with male attire and their difficulties in getting laid also struck him as unusual. But the author was an ex-police sergeant of the L.A.P.D., so he had to know what he was talking about. The most surprising thing of all was the $3.95 price of the paperback. The last time Hoke had purchased a paperback novel—although he couldn’t remember the title—he was positive that he hadn’t paid more than a dollar for it, and he thought it was less than that.
Hoke washed his jumpsuit in the guest bedroom, hung it on the shower curtain rail to dry, and went to sleep, remembering to pull the covers up. When he awoke at six a.m. it was to the drumming of heavy rain as the wind buffeted the outside metal shutters. Hoke got his toilet articles and dry jumpsuit out of the Buick in the garage, and put it on. The jumpsuit in the bathroom was still damp, so he rolled it in a dry bath towel before putting it and his toilet articles back into the paper sack.
There were nine eggs left, so Hoke hard-boiled all of them. He ate three for breakfast, together with two pieces of toast, and drank three cups of instant coffee as he listened to the rain. He then watched the “Today Show” on television until eight-thirty before clicking it off. He checked all of the windows and doors in the house to make certain everything was secure, then put his jumpsuit, toilet articles, and hard-boiled eggs into the truck. He deliberated whether to wear his trenchcoat, then decided it would be too warm, so he rolled his sweater into the trenchcoat and stuffed the garments behind the front seat of the truck.
Hoke stopped for gas and to have the oil checked at the Exxon station, paid cash for the gas, then reached the bank at nine a.m., just as it opened. He cashed the store check for three thousand dollars, asking for hundreds and fifties. Hoke was well-known at the bank because he made deposits and withdrawals four or five times a week for the hardware store.
“Did Mr. Moseley get away on his cruise all right?” the lady teller asked Hoke, after she had counted out the money.
“Yes, he did. I took them down to Fort Lauderdale myself.”
“I wish it was me going,” the young woman said, shaking her head.
“I do, too,” Hoke said. “But three months is a long time to spend on a boat.”
“It isn’t just a boat! It’s the Q.E. Two.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
After Hoke left the bank, he took the Sunshine Parkway north at the North Palm Beach on ramp. He didn’t look back at Riviera Beach when he turned left on U.S. 1. He had a long drive ahead of him, more than four hundred miles just to get out of Florida, but he welcomed every mile of it. The rain stopped suddenly and the sun appeared. The truck was his small island in the middle of nowhere and all Hoke had to listen to was the rush of the rain-cleansed air by his open window.
Chapter Thirteen
HOKE DROVE AT A STEADY FIFTY-FIVE, NOT WANTING TO GET A TICKET FOR SPEEDING, but was overtaken again and again. Some of the drivers who hurtled past him had to be driving more than eighty-five miles an hour. The state troopers had apparently given up on the 55 mph speed limit, but Hoke didn’t increase his speed. He had purchased time and he would take it. If he made three hundred miles a day, or a little more, that would be plenty. No one else had the keys to his father’s house, and Frank and Helen wouldn’t be back for three months. Hoke’s initial plan of burying the bodies somewhere had been a poor idea, although the pick and shovel in the back of the truck still might come in handy if he got stuck somewhere on the road to Los Angeles. The Florida soil was much too thin for deep burials, and the first hard rain—like this morning’s hard drumming rain—had a tendency to uncover bodies buried in shallow graves. Bodies that were dumped into canals were found every day by fishermen and fornicators. No, nothing stayed hidden for long in Florida, so leaving the bodies in his father’s house had been the wisest course of action to follow.
Hoke had a vague plan in mind about what he was going to do next, but had not worked out the details. He was positive, with all of the time he had to think things through, that he would know exactly what to do and say by the time he reached Los Angeles.
When he passed Orlando, he realized ruefully that he had never visited Disney World, which was something else he had put off and never got around to doing. People came from all over the world to visit Disney World and Epcot, and yet he had never taken off a couple of days to see these places for himself. Well, he thought, there were New Yorkers who had never gone up to the top of the Empire State Building, but that wasn’t a valid excuse. He could have, on several occasions in the Miami Police Department, obtained discount tickets for Disney World, but had never asked for them. It was too late now, and besides, he hadn’t missed anything important. After all, Disney World was just the Dade County Youth Fair writ large, and he had worked the Youth Fair several times, both in and out of uniform.
The sky was turning orange when Hoke reached Lake City. He left the highway and checked into the Alligator Motel, the first motel he saw that had a Vacancy sign. He paid the $24.00 tab, plus tax, in advance for a single, and then walked down the highway to a barbecue restaurant, following his nose. He ate a plate of barbecued pork, requesting all outside meat with french fries and cole slaw. Except for the hard-boiled eggs, he hadn’t eaten since breakfast and the charred pork was the best barbecued meat he had eaten in as long as he could remember. As he left the restaurant, a tipsy one-legged veteran from the Veteran’s Hospital in Lake City dinged Hoke for a dollar. Hoke gave the man five dollars, walked back to his motel, took a shower, washed his jumpsuit, and went to bed.
Early the next morning, Hoke left Lake City and took I10 across the state, passed Tallahassee and reached Pensacola by five-thirty that afternoon. It was taking forever, it seemed, to get out of Florida, so Hoke decided to drive on to Mobile instead of stopping, just to get out of the state. He drove past Mobile, however, and found a small, six-unit motel in Irvington, Alabama, where he paid ten dollars for a room with three double beds in it and no chairs. He obtained a Colonel’s takeout chicken dinner and ate it in his room. His back was aching from the bouncing he had taken on the highway. The interstate was smooth enough, but the truck springs were designed for a full load, not for travelling empty, and Hoke regretted not taking his father’s new Buick instead of the truck. He still had a long way to drive, and the big and easy-riding Buick would have been much more comfortable. But perhaps it was just as well; the old man was going to have enough on his mind when he got back from the cruise without worrying about what had happened to his Buick.
The next morning, under a drizzling rain, Hoke stayed on I10 until he reached Gulfport. During breakfast at a truck stop, Hoke studied his map and decided to take the northern instead of the southern route across the country. It would be a little cooler while the distance was about the same. Hoke took U.S. 40 to Jackson and then got on I20 until he reached Monroe, Louisiana where he spent the night in a downtown hotel. He soaked for an hour in the bathtub to ease his back, called room service, and ate a steak and a baked potato in his room. The next morning he had breakfast in the hotel dining room and asked the waiter to have the kitchen put up a box lunch for him, telling him he would be back for the lunch after he checked out. Hoke drove to a nearby gas station, left the truck to have an oil change and lube job and returned to the hotel lobby. He bought a New Orleans paper and leafed through it looking for news from Florida. There was nothing of interest, and he concluded that even if the girls were found, it would not, in all probability, make any out-of-state newspapers. The New 0rleans paper was concerned mainly with a long story about four local black men allegedly beaten to death by a half-dozen white cops.
Hoke paid his hotel tab, which included the box lunch, in cash, picked up his lunch in the dining room and got his truck from the service station. As a consequence, it was almost eleven a.m. before he got back on the highway.
Hoke stayed on I20 through Shreveport, then got a flat tire, right rear, after passing Tyler, Texas. Instead of changing the tire, he drove on the flat until he got to Canton and then had the spare put on. He also bought a new tire as a spare. He used Frank’s credit card to pay for the new tire and the labor and ate his box lunch (two ham sandwiches made with butter, a wedge of apple pie, and a small acrid tangerine) while he waited.
The mechanic, who had all of his upper teeth missing, explained how Hoke could avoid downtown Dallas and Fort Worth altogether by taking I635 and I35. He marked the route on Hoke’s road map and rejected Hoke’s offer of a two-dollar tip.
“I charged a fair price for the job,” he said. “I don’t work for tips, and you won’t find many white men in Texas who do.”
Although it was dark by the time Hoke reached the cut-off, he found the marked route without difficulty and checked into a Ramada Inn in Denton, Texas. Hoke asked the desk clerk if there was a good restaurant in town and the clerk told him that a lot of townspeople came to the Ramada Inn for dinner.
“But we require a jacket,” the clerk said.
“I don’t have one with me.”
“What size are you?”
“Forty-two regular.”
“Let me see what I can do.” The clerk left the desk and returned from the locker room a few minutes later with a soiled camel hair jacket.
“Try this on for size, Mr. Moseley.”
The jacket was a forty-four long and the sleeves were too long, but Hoke folded them back, and said it would do for dinner. Hoke had fried catfish and hush puppies for dinner, followed by blueberry cobbler and coffee.
Hoke returned the jacket after dinner, tipped the clerk two dollars for the use of it, and the clerk accepted the money, even though he was a white Texan.
Hoke left Denton at nine a.m., Friday morning, taking Federal Highway 380 to 287, and then drove north on 82, bypassing Wichita Falls, and stayed on 287 until he reached Amarillo. He bypassed Amarillo and then took I40 to Tucumcari, New Mexico. He bought a pair of swimming trunks, checked into the El Indio Motel which had a swimming pool, and stayed until noon the next day. He had huevos rancheros for dinner, ordered them again for breakfast, and lounged around the pool, swimming and taking the sun, until noon checkout.
As Hoke took I40 again, driving toward Albuquerque, he recalled that this highway was once the old Route 66, and he remembered snatches of Nat King Cole’s song. For the first time, Hoke paid close attention to the scenery. The red, desolate landscape was appealing to him, and although it was sweltering now, he imagined that it would be miserably cold the winter with no trees to slow down the freezing winds.
Hoke drove through downtown Albuquerque, a dark brown city, and because he liked the name, spent the night in an adobe boarding house in Bluewater, New Mexico. There were ten boarders, all Chicanos, and Hoke enjoyed the family-style dinner of roast chicken, rice and beans, with corn and flour tortillas. The Chicanos were polite and soft-spoken and bore no resemblance to the abrasive Cubans Hoke had known in Miami. Although some of the boarders had jobs in town, most of them were either unemployed or gandy dancers on the Santa Fe railroad. Hoke had a small windowless room to himself in the rambling adobe house and there was a candle burning under a gaudy picture of the Virgin Mary above his single bed. Hoke blew out the candle before he went to sleep.
In the morning, eating with the other boarders outside on the patio at three tables where they shared benches instead of chairs, Hoke felt well rested. Breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs, tortillas, hot sauce and refried beans. After breakfast, Hoke took a close look at the brown adobe wall surrounding the patio. In his mind, he tried to compare the wall with the painting of the wall in Bobby Stukes’s apartment. The real wall was downright ugly as it caught the fierce morning sun and the red dust-balls that powdered the rounded top of the wall rose and fell crazily as he looked at them. There was no doubt about it; the artist who had painted Stukes’s picture had painted something from inside his head—not the real thing. No wonder he hadn’t been able to finish the painting.
Although Hoke’s tab for dinner, his room, and breakfast was only twelve dollars, he decided that he would stay at more expensive motels with swimming pools for the rest of his trip. He had trunks and swimming in the pool at the El Indio Motel in Tucumcari had cleared his mind.
Before he did anything else, when he got to Los Angeles, he would find a lawyer and put him on retainer. That way, when the police allowed him his single phone call, he would have someone to call.
Hoke gassed his truck before leaving Bluewater and a teenager wearing hiking boots and bearing a backpack asked him for a ride to Gallup. Hoke told him to throw his pack in the back and to hop into the cab. The kid started to tell Hoke about his travels and Hoke told him that he didn’t want to hear about them. The kid nodded, and then, a few minutes later, started to tell Hoke about a party he had been to in Taos that had lasted for two days and three nights. Hoke stopped the truck and told the kid to get into the back. When Hoke reached Gallup, he dropped the kid off at the edge of town and drove on through. Late that afternoon, when Hoke checked into a motel with a small pool in Flagstaff, he discovered that the kid had stolen his flashlight. At any rate, the flashlight was missing and he had to assume that the kid had taken it, probably by wrapping his poncho around it when he climbed off the back of the truck with his backpack. Hoke still had the folded tarp and the pick and shovel, however, and he hadn’t really needed the flashlight, but he should have realized that the kid would do something or other to get even with him for having to ride in the open truck bed and eat all of that red dust.
After a long swim in the pool and a steak, Hoke slept until six a.m., and got an early start, not stopping for breakfast until he reached Kingman. In Kingman, he bought a desert water bag, filled it when he gassed the truck, and purchased a blue bandanna in a sundries store next door to the gas station. He knotted the four corners of the bandana, poured water on it to soak it through and then wore the bandanna as a hat. The bandanna dried completely after twenty minutes and he poured water on it again and replaced it on his head. Small red blisters had formed on his left arm, so he rolled the left sleeve of his jumpsuit down to keep the sunburn from getting any worse. He had had such a good tan, he hadn’t realized he could get so sunburned. The blisters had appeared gradually as he drove with his left elbow on the window ledge and he hadn’t noticed them.
The temperature was almost 110 degrees when Hoke reached Needles, California, and he pulled into the first motel that had a pool. After he checked in, he went for a swim. After climbing out at the far end, his body was dry and he was shivering by the time his feet cleared the ladder. The water was too hot to be refreshing, so Hoke showered in his room, turned the air conditioning to Coolest and took a nap until seven p.m. His jumpsuit, which he had washed when he showered, was bone dry and was slightly powdered from the alkali in the water. Hoke had a hamburger and two glasses of ice tea down the street, and checked out of the motel. He reached Riverside, California, at five a.m., and was too tired to drive any farther. He was only forty-some-odd miles from Los Angeles now anyway, and Riverside seemed as good a place to stop as any.
Hoke checked into a Howard Johnson’s Motel, and, after a short shower, fell asleep on top of the bed without getting under the covers. The last thing he remembered as he fell asleep, was that this was the first time on his cross-country trip that he hadn’t needed air conditioning.
Chapter Fourteen
LOS ANGELES, SPRAWLING IN ALL DIRECTIONS WITH ITS HAZY SKYLINE LIMNED WITH FREEWAYS was a confusing city for the uninitiated driver. Hoke’s major problem, after leaving Riverside, was to determine whether he had reached the city or not. He noticed little or no difference between Azusa and Pomona and he had driven all of the way through Pasadena before he realized that he was still looking for Pasadena and had somehow missed seeing the sign that marked the city limits, if, indeed, there had been such a sign. He avoided getting onto the freeways because he wasn’t sure where to get off, and, as a consequence, he was subjected to a lot of stop and go traffic and unfamiliar street names.
But Hoke recognized City Hall when he found downtown L.A., having seen it hundreds of times on the old Dragnet TV series. He turned into a parking lot on Olive, surrendered his truck key and $8.00 in advance for parking, and started to walk back toward the Los Angeles Civic Center. There were more Asians on the street than Hoke had expected, but not nearly as many Chicanos as he had anticipated. Downtown L.A. was every bit as seedy as downtown Miami. The streets, if anything, were dirtier and derelicts stood in clusters on every street corner. He left Olive at Third Street, walked over to Hill Street, and checked the lobby of a four-story brick office building. He searched the white-lettered board for attorneys and arbitrarily chose J. B. Peralta because he had known a cop by that name in Miami who had been a fairly decent guy for a Cuban. He took the elevator up to the fourth floor. The office, 414, was one room with two desks. Juan Peralta was behind one of them and an old lady occupied the other.
