"Only by one month--"

  "--you'd better forget about things like -fair- and -unfair-. Even when people talk about the weather, -fair- doesn't mean anything."

  "But there's such a thing as--"

  "No, there isn't. Jesus, is this your car?"

  Susan unlocked the driver's door to a white 1982 TransAm. There was a flaming red bird decal on the hood and flowing red flames painted on all four of the fenders.

  "It's mine now, if they don't take it away from me. It was the first thing we bought when we had enough saved for the down payment. Marty was crazy about it. But he only got to drive it two or three times. What he wanted was a car that would impress his friends when we went back to Okeechobee. That's why I'm pretty sure he never told daddy about the car. He wanted to surprise everybody. These are real leather seats, you know. Black glove leather. D'you want to drive, Junior?"

  "No. I can drive, but I'm not a very good driver. And even though I've got three California licenses on me, I don't fit the descriptions. Besides, you'd have to tell me where to turn and all."

  Freddy got into the passenger's soft bucket seat. He felt as though he were sitting in a deep pit, even though the visibility was excellent through the tinted front window. The side and back windows had been layered with chocolate film; they were almost black.

  Susan started the engine. "I'll turn the air conditioning down in just a second. It'll really freeze your ass off if you leave it on high very long."

  "Do you need gas? I've got Ramon Mendez's Seventy-six card."

  "This thing always needs gas. It only gets about nine miles to a gallon. Something's wrong with the carburetor, I think."

  "Well, don't worry about gas. I can get all of the gas credit cards we'll need."

  Susan roared down the spiraling driveway and into the street. She drove through the streets aggressively, taking the Eighth Street ramp to the overhead freeway to South Dixie. But once on South Dixie, in three lanes, the traffic was heavy, and it was stop-and-go driving until they reached South Miami and Sunset Drive. The heavy traffic thinned out slightly when she turned west on Sunset.

  "People can't see in at all, can they?" Freddy said.

  "Not very well. To see inside you have to put your face right up against the glass."

  "I haven't seen much of the city, either."

  "You can't see much at night. I'll take you around tomorrow, anywhere you want to go."

  They had the car filled at a Shell station. Freddy paid for the gas with Gotlieb's credit card. As the attendant wrote down the license number on the sales slip, Freddy shook his head. "I forgot they did that. Tomorrow we're going to either get some new license plates or a new car. We should've stopped along the way so I could've picked up some new license plates. I could've changed them before we got the gas."

  Susan opened the door, jumped out, and dashed after the attendant. She got the credit slip back, and paid the man cash for the fuel. She got back into the driver's seat and tore up the credit slip.

  "I'll probably lose the car, but we might as well keep it as long as we can."

  "That was quick thinking, Susie. I'm so used to using credit cards, I never thought about paying cash."

  "I always pay cash. Still, I try not to carry more'n fifty dollars on me at a time."

  "Tomorrow I'll get us some out-of-state plates we can switch. And tomorrow night I'd better get some Miami credit cards. I'll get some for you, too, some ladies' cards, so you can buy things when I'm not around."

  There were thirty four-story condominium apartment buildings in the complex that made up Kendall Pines Terrace, but only six of the buildings had been completed and occupied. The other buildings were unpainted, windowless, concrete shells. Construction had been suspended for more than a year. Almost all of the apartments in the occupied buildings were empty. For the most part, their owners had purchased them at preconstruction prices during the real estate boom in 1979. But now, in fall 1982, construction prices had risen, and very few people could qualify for loans at 17 percent interest.

  "There's been some vandalism out here," Susan said, when she parked in her numbered space in the vast and almost empty parking lot. "So they built a cyclone fence and hired a Cuban to drive around at night in a Jeep. That's stopped it. But sometimes, late at night, it's a little scary out here."

  There was a tropical courtyard in the hollow square of Building Six--East. Broad-leaved plants had been packed in thickly around the five-globed light in the center of the patio, and cedar bark had been scattered generously around the plants. There was a pleasant tingle of cedar and night-blooming jasmine in the air.

  Susan had a corner two-bedroom, two-bath apartment with a screened porch facing the Everglades. There was eggshell wall-to-wall carpet throughout the apartment, except for the kitchen, which had a linoleum floor in a white brick pattern. Both bathrooms had been tiled in blue and pink. The furniture in the living room was rattan, with blue-and-green-striped cushions. There was a large brass bed in the master bedroom. In the smaller bedroom, Susan's, there was a Bahama bed and a rattan desk. There were antique white Levolors in all of the windows, but no curtains or draperies.

  While Freddy looked around the apartment, Susan got two San Miguel beers out of the refrigerator. She took Freddy out to the screened porch and pointed toward the dark Everglades.

  "In the daytime you can see them, but not now. For the next four miles or so, those are all tomato and cucumber fields. Then you get to Krome Avenue, and beyond that it's the East Everglades--nothing but water and alligators. It gets too drowned with water to build on the other side of Krome, and Kendall Pines Terrace is the last complex in Kendall. Eventually, the rest of those fields will all be condos, because Kendall is the chicest neighborhood in Miami. But they won't be able to build anymore in the 'Glades unless they drain them."

  "This apartment looks expensive."

  "It is, for the girl that owns it. She put every cent she had into it, and then found out she couldn't afford to live here. She's just a legal secretary, so she had to rent it out, furniture and all. We only pay her four hundred a month rent, but she was glad to get it. She tried to sell or rent it for four months before we came along. Even with our four hundred, she still has to come up with another four-fifty every month."

  "Where does she live now?"

  "She had to move back with her parents in Hallandale, and she's twenty-five years old. I know how bad she feels. I'd never move back in with daddy. I'd rather die first."

  "This is good beer."

  "San Miguel dark. It's the best, and it comes all the way from the Philippine Islands. The man at Crown gets it for me. Of course, in addition to the four hundred a month, the electric bill comes to another two hundred."

  "No shit?"

  Susan nodded. "On account of the air conditioning. And it'll be going up again soon. The anchorette on Channel Ten said so last night. Without the money from Marty coming in, I don't think I can handle it. I'm worried."

  "Don't be. We're engaged, so I'll take care of it."

  Freddy put his fingers on the screen. The dead man in the morgue was sure as hell the same guy at the airport. He hadn't meant to kill him; all he had wanted to do was break the guy's finger. Just because of the jacket, and now he didn't even have the leather jacket with him. What he did have was the simple. minded younger sister. He could feel the damp jets of air corn. ing through the screen. There were only six cars parked in the ten-acre parking lot. The white TransArn, in its numbered slot, seemed to glow in the sixth row. Every other parking light in the lot had been turned off, to save energy, perhaps, and the other lights had been dimmed. The moon wasn't up yet, and beyond the cyclone fence was blackness. Looking out and down into that dark land mass, Freddy felt as if he were on the edge of an abyss. Perspiration from his armpits trickled down his sides.

  "Let's go back inside," Freddy said. "Doesn't it even cool off at night?"

  "A little. Around four in the morning it'll drop down to seventy-seven or so, but then the humidity'll go up."

  Freddy took off his shoes and his shirt. Susan sat on the couch in the living room. "D'you want to watch some TV, Junior?"

  "Not now. I've got to make a phone call. Where's the telephone book?"

  "There's two books over there, under the breakfast table. The phone's on the--"

  "I can see the phone."

  Freddy looked up the number of the International Hotel. He called the desk, checked out, and told the clerk to charge everything, including his barber bill, to his Gotlieb credit card. "Yes," he finished, "I did have a pleasant stay."

  Freddy joined Susan on the couch and told her to bring him a pair of scissors. He cut up the Gotlieb credit and identification cards, and put the cut pieces into the ashtray.

  "Now," he said, "Mr. Gotlieb's no longer in Miami."

  Freddy patted the lounge, and Susan sat beside him. "I liked the way you handled yourself at the morgue, Susan. What were you thinking about, anyway, when you saw your dead brother?"

  "I was thinking about the times when he used to bend my fingers back when he wanted me to do something. It really hurt, and after a while he didn't have to bend them back. All he had to do was threaten to do it, and I'd do whatever he wanted. He was religious, I guess, but he was awfully mean. He said he wanted to go to heaven, and now he's finally got what he wanted." She was lost in thought for a moment, then she looked up.

  "What I want to do, first thing tomorrow, is go down to the bank and take out the CD. Then I can start another one some place else. We've got a ten-thousand-dollar CD saved, plus another four thousand in our joint NOW account. And I sure don't want daddy or the Krishnas to get it."

  "Good. We'll do that first thing. Now that we're engaged, we're going to start our platonic marriage. D'you know what that is?"

  Susan nodded. "Beth had one, on 'The Days of Our Lives,' when she moved in with the lawyer. And I want one too. I've been really lonely out here at night. I didn't like Marty, but even so, I missed him when he moved out to the camp."

  "Why didn't you like him? He was your brother."

  "Remember, before, when I told you I never went steady? Marty's why, that's why. He's the one that got me pregnant, and I think daddy suspicioned it, too. And then when we came down to Miami and I got the abortion, Marty couldn't find any work. He met Pablo when he was looking for work at the hotel. So then he made me go to work for Pablo. I don't like working at the hotel, Junior, I really don't. That old man from Dayton, Ohio, today was disgusting."

  "You've turned your last trick for Pablo. You're living with me now."

  "You really don't know Pablo. He smiles and bows and all that, but he's mean. And he knows where I--where we live, Junior."

  "Don't worry about Pablo. I'll take care of him. Do you remember that Bob Dylan song about the lady laying across a brass bed?"

  "I don't remember. Maybe I did. They don't play much Dylan on the radio anymore."

  "Well, here's what you do. Go into the bedroom, take off your clothes, put two pillows under your stomach, and lay face down on that big brass bed. I'm gonna have another beer, and then I'll be right in."

  "You're gonna do it to me the back way whether I want to or not, aren't you?"

  "Yeah."

  "In that case, I'd better get another San Miguel for you, and some Crisco for me."

  Later, bars of moonlight came through the slanted vertical Levolors and made yellow bars across Freddy's hairless chest. Susan, in a shorty nightgown, snuggled close to him and used his extended right arm as a pillow. Freddy chuckled deep in his throat and then snorted.

  "Remember that haiku the teacher wrote?"

  "Not exactly," Susan said.

  "-The Miami sun. / Rising in the Everglades. / Burger in a bun-. That's what I was laughing at. Now I know what it means."

  8

  There was a middle-aged man sitting in the glass-walled office with Sergeant Bill Henderson when Hoke arrived in the squad room. Hoke checked his mailbox and then signaled his presence to Henderson with a wave of his arm. Henderson beckoned for him to come over. Henderson got to his feet and smiled as Hoke crossed the crowded squad room. Most of Henderson's front teeth were reinforced with silver inlays, and his smile was a sinister grimace. Hoke and Bill had been working together for almost four years, and Hoke knew that when Henderson smiled, something horrible about human nature had been reconfirmed for his partner.

  Hoke cracked open the door. "I'm going down for coffee, Bill. I'll be right back."

  "I already got you coffee." Henderson pointed to the capped Styrofoam cup on Hoke's side of the double desk. "I want you to meet Mr. Waggoner. We've been having an interesting little chat here, and I know you'll want to hear what he's got to say."

  Hoke shook hands and sat in his chair. "Sergeant Moseley. I'm Sergeant Henderson's partner."

  "Clyde Waggoner. I'm Martin's father." The man from Okeechobee was wearing a white rayon tie with a blue chambray work shirt, and khaki trousers. There was a thin nylon Sears windbreaker folded over his left arm. He had short brown hair with shaved temples, the kind of haircut they call white sidewalls in the armed forces. His skin was sallow, but it was blotchy in places from long exposure to the Florida sun, and there were scars on his nose and cheeks from debrided skin cancers.

  "I suppose you came for your son's effects," Hoke said, unlocking his desk drawer. "Sorry I'm a little late this morning, but I had to drop off some dry cleaning."

  Mr. Waggoner looked down at his scuffed engineer boots, made a goatlike sound in his throat, and began to cry. The sound was softly muffled, but the tears that came down his blotchy cheeks were genuine. Hoke directed a puzzled look at Henderson, and his partner broadened his brutal smile.

  "Just tell Sergeant Moseley the same story you told me, Mr. Waggoner. I could summarize it, but I might leave something out."

  Mr. Waggoner blew his nose on a blue bandanna and stuffed the handkerchief into his left hip pocket. He wiped his cheeks with his fingers.

  "I can't prove nothing, sergeant, as I told Sergeant Henderson here. All I can tell you is what I think happened. I hope I'm wrong, I surely do hope so. My business is bad enough already, and a scandal like this could make it worse. Okeechobee's a small town, and our moral standards are a lot different up there than they are down here in Miami. You know what they call Miami up in Okeechobee?"

  "No, but I don't suppose it's complimentary."

  "It ain't. They call it Sin City, Sergeant Moseley."

  "Are you, perhaps, a man of the cloth?"

  "No, sir. Software. I got me a software store in Okeechobee. I sell video games, computers, and rent out TV sets and movies."

  "My father owns a hardware store in Riviera Beach," Hoke said.

  "He's smarter than me, then. What I had in mind when I opened the store was a computer business for the commercial fishing on the lake. The government sets quotas, you see, and I figured if the fish houses had computers they could always prove exactly how much fish they caught and all that. Plus they'd know when they was falling behind, and so on. Then last year, when the lake went down to nine feet, the government stopped commercial fishing almost altogether. No nets allowed, you see, so all the fish houses're just about out of business now. Besides, nobody's buying computers up there because there ain't no programs written up for lake fishing anyway."

  "So you're just about out of business, right?"

  "Oh, no-I'm doing all right. But I borrowed money to expand, and the interest is hurting me. My movie rental club alone pays my rent each month, but I'm in pretty heavy to the bank, you see. But I ain't here to talk business. What I was telling Sergeant Henderson here is that I suspect foul play."

  "What kind of foul play?"

  "That was no accident that killed Martin. That was murder."

  "If so, it's the first of a kind."

  "Let him finish," Henderson said. "There's more."

  "That's the best kind," Mr. Waggoner continued, "the kind that looks like an accident but really ain't. I've seen it on 'The Rockford Files' more 'n once, and if it wasn't for Jim Rockford, a lot of people'd get away with it, too."

  "What makes you think your son's death wasn't an accident?"

  "I'd really rather not talk about it because it's so painful to me, as a father, you see. But I'm also a good citizen, and justice, no matter how harsh, must be done. Even to kith and kin..." He started to cry again, softer this time, and reached for his handkerchief.

  Hoke took the plastic lid off his coffee and sipped it. It was cold. "When did you get this coffee?"

  "I got in a little early today," Henderson said. "But I didn't know you'd be a half-hour late."

  Hoke replaced the plastic lid and dropped the cup of coffee into the wastebasket. He lit a cigarette, took a long drag, and butted the cigarette in the ashtray as he allowed the smoke to trickle out through his nose.

  "So you think, Mr. Waggoner," Hoke said, "that this unidentified assailant who broke your son's middle finger killed him on purpose? Is that right?"

  "That's about the size of it." Mr. Waggoner blew his nose, examined his handkerchief, and then put it back into his pocket. "I think the man, whosoever he was, was hired to do it. That's what I think."

  "The chances of killing a man that way are pretty remote, Mr. Waggoner. I doubt if more than one man in a thousand-- I don't know the actual statistics--would die from a trauma to his finger. It would be pretty stupid to hire someone to kill anybody in that manner."

  "You might be right about that. But if a man was hired to injure somebody on purpose, and then that person died because of the injury, wouldn't that be a murder for hire?"

  "A case could be made for that, I suppose. Except for a thousand unidentified passengers a day who don't like Hare Krishnas, who hated your son enough to hire someone to break his middle finger?"

  "That's what's so painful to me." Mr. Waggoner sighed. "I think my daughter hired him."

  Hoke took the morgue identification form out of his notebook, unfolded it, and placed it on the desk. "Susan, the daughter who identified the body? Or do you have another daughter in mind?"

  "No. Susan's the only daughter I got. And Martin was my only son. None of us got along too good, I'll admit that, and I sent her packing when she got pregnant. But Martin, even though he's the one that done it to her, was my only son, and she shouldn't've had him killed. Susan's just like her mother, who was no good either, so I know she talked Martin into doing it to her in the first place." Mr. Waggoner lowered his voice and his head. "Men are weak. I know that because I'm weak when it comes to women myself. We all are, even you two gentlemen, if you don't mind my saying so. A woman can make you do anything she wants you to do with that there little hair-pie they've got between their legs. I know it, and you know it, too."