New Hope for the Dead

1 "CRAP," Sergeant Hoke Moseley told his partner, "is the acronym for finding your way around Miami." He glanced at Ellita Sanchez as he shifted down to second gear, and waited for her to nod. She should know that much already, having been a police dispatcher for seven years, so there was no need to explain thatCstood for courts,Rfor roads,Afor avenues, andPfor places. It didn't always hold true that courts, roads, avenues, and places all ran north and south. Sometimes they looped in semicircles and wild arabesques, especially the roads. Hoke's major problem with Ellita was making conversation. He never knew exactly what to tell her or what to take for granted, even though he was the sergeant and she was the new partner. She seemed to know almost everything he told her already, and she had only been in the Homicide Division for four months. Some of the things Hoke knew from experience and had tried to explain to her--like the fact that junkies sometimes rubbed Preparation H on their track marks to reduce the swelling--she knew already. CRAP was one of those oddities that very few cops knew about, and he really hadn't expected her to say, "I know." Perhaps, he thought, her two-year A.S. degree in police science at Miami-Dade Community College was actually worth the time and money she had invested in it. At any rate, she was getting more sensitive to his moods. She just nodded now, instead of saying "I know," and this had begun to irritate him visibly. And something else was bothering Sanchez. Her pretty golden face was more somber lately, and she no longer smiled as broadly in the mornings as she had at first. Her quiescent moodiness had been going on for more than a week now. At first, Hoke had attributed it to her period--if that's what it was--but a week was a long time. How long did a period last? Well, whatever it was that was bothering her, it hadn't affected her work. Yet. One thing Hoke knew for sure: He hadn't done anything to offend her. If anything, he had bent over backward to make her anequalpartner--subject to his directions, of course. He almost always explained why he was doing something. But Sanchez was, first of all, a woman, and she was also a Latin, so perhaps there were some sexual and cultural differences here and he would never really know what was on her mind. Sometimes, though, when he wanted to make a humorous comment, the way he had with his old partner, Bill Henderson, and then took a look at her, with those huge tits looking voluptuous and maternal in the loose silk blouses she always wore, he held his tongue. Having a female partner in the car instead of Bill wasn't the same. Maybe he should let Sanchez drive the car once in a while. But that didn't seem right either. The man always drove, not the woman, although when he and Bill had been together, Bill had driven most of the time because he was a better driver than Hoke, and they both knew it. For all Hoke knew, Ellita Sanchez was a better driver than either Bill or himself. Tomorrow, then, maybe he'd let her drive--see how it worked out . . . "The next street," Sanchez said, pointing to the green-and-white sign, "is Poinciana Court." "Yeah." Hoke laughed. "And it's running east and west." They were looking for an address in Green Lakes, a Miami subdivision built during the housing boom of the mid-1950s when the developer was looking for young families with small children, for Korean war veterans with $500 saved for a down payment and jobs that paid them enough to afford a $68-a-month house payment. These had all been $10,000 houses then, with thirty-year fixed mortgages at 5 1/2 percent interest. That wasn't expensive, even then, for a three-bedroom, one-bathroom house. Today, however, these same houses in Green Lakes, now thirty years old, were selling for $86,000Willeford, Charles is the author of 'New Hope for the Dead' with ISBN 9780345338396 and ISBN 0345338391.