On impulse, he turned into the Omni Mall and took the ramp to the third level before finding a parking space. The parking garage was color-coded as well as numbered, and he wrote -Purple 3- on his parking ticket before putting it into his hip pocket.

  Using the Mendez Visa card, he bought two short-sleeve sports shirts in the County Seat, and then paid cash for a featherweight poplin suit in an Italian men's store. The suit was on sale for $350. To make the sale, however, the salesman had to get a pair of pants with a twenty-nine-inch waist from another suit to go with the size forty-two jacket. He bought two $25 neckties in another men's shop, using the Mendez card, and then a pair of cordovan tasseled loafers for $150 cash at Bally's. He returned to the TransAm and locked his purchases in the trunk. He went back into the mall and bought a stuffed baked potato at One Potato, Two--, asking for the Mexican Idaho, which included butter, chili con carne, jack cheese, and tortilla chips. The chili was hot, and he drank a large Tab with lots of ice.

  All he had to buy now was a box of white shirts and a present for Susan. She was not the kind of girl who had been given many presents, and she would be happy with anything he got her. She was so passive in bed that he doubted that she had ever had any tips from her clients.

  In addition to its three shopping levels, the air-conditioned mall was anchored at each end with a Penney's and a Jordan Marsh department store. There was also an involved egress to the Omni Hotel. A man could get last quickly in the Omni Mall, but not for very long because of the color-coded exits and numbers.

  A portly man in a blue-and-white seersucker suit was standing in front of a store window and looking intently at the merchandise. As Freddy glanced at him, wondering what it was in the window that held his attention, a small dark man with a bushy head of curly hair bumped against the portly man, apologized, and walked on. Freddy saw the small man slip the wallet out of the heavy man's hip pocket, but the man hadn't felt a thing. Freddy trailed behind the small man, who was wearing a blue serge suit and a blue wool tie, to the escalator and watched him drop the wallet into another man's folded newspaper, -El Diario-. The pickpocket continued through the mall, and the one with the newspaper, a tall dark man with black sideburns down to and even with his mouth, took the Down escalator.

  Freddy got on the escalator behind him. He followed him past Treasure Island and the carrousel, and into the lowest level of the mall. The man strolled past the Unicorn Store, a T-shirt store, skirted a French sidewalk café, and then went into the men's roam. Freddy waited outside the door, counting to thirty, then went in. The tall man with the sideburns had the wallet in his hands. He looked up at Freddy for a moment and then back down at the wallet. Freddy grabbed his left wrist, twisted it behind his back with one motion, and then ran the man into the white-tiled wall, face-first. The man screamed something in Spanish and tried to get his right hand into his trousers pocket. Freddy jerked the left arm higher and it broke at the elbow. As the arm cracked, the man vomited and fell to his knees. Freddy kicked him behind the ear, and the man went unconscious.

  Freddy picked up the wallet from the floor and stuffed it into his pocket. He searched the man on the floor. There was a pearl-handled switchblade knife in his right front pocket and a roll of bills held together with a rubber band in the left hip pocket. He found another wallet in an inside jacket pocket. Freddy stuffed these into his pockets and washed his hands. A teenager, wearing a red-billed Red Man cap, jeans, and a CLASH T-shirt, walked in and saw the man on the floor, bubbling blood from his mouth and ears, then went to the urinal.

  "What's the matter with that guy?"

  "Ask him," Freddy said, blotting his hands dry on a brown paper towel.

  "I don't want to get involved," the teenager said, unzipping his fly.

  Freddy left the men's room and took the stairway up to Level Two. He bought a box of three white-on-white Excello shirts at Baron's. He bought a pedestal coffee cup that had -Susie- painted on the side in Old English script, and a half-pound bag of Colombian coffee. He asked the girl at the coffee shop to gift-wrap the two items together, which cost him an extra $1.50. He returned to his car and locked his new purchases into the trunk before getting into the front seat and turning on the engine and the air conditioning.

  Freddy counted $322 from the portly man's stolen wallet, $809 from the tall man's wallet, and $1,200 from the tight roll of bills. In the middle of the tight roll of American money, there was an even tighter roll of 10,000 Mexican pesos. So, not counting the pesos, which he might be able to exchange later, he was $2,331 richer than when he had arrived at the Omni--minus the cash he had put out for his shopping, of course. This was absolutely the best haul Freddy had ever made in a single day. He had also picked up two new credit cards--the fat man's-- a Visa and a MasterCard. The tall man with sideburns, apparently the other half of a Mexico City pickpocket team, had a green card in the name of Jaime Figueras in his wallet. This meant that he could work in Miami, but it didn't authorize him to work as a pickpocket; he would be unlikely to report his mugging to the police. If that damned kid hadn't come into the men's room, Freddy could have waited for a few minutes and made another nice haul after the short partner came down for his cut. But probably it was just as well. He had gotten in trouble before by staying too long in a men's room. Vice Squad caps pretending to be gay, and some who didn't have to pretend, hit public rest rooms all the time to top off their daily arrest quotas.

  Freddy paid the parking fee to the Cuban girl at the exit and drove south on Biscayne Boulevard, planning what he would say to Pablo Lhosa at the International Hotel.

  By the time he had crawled through the heavy traffic to Dupont Plaza, Freddy decided that it might be best not to see Pablo at all. Pablo knew him as Gotlieb, and by now, or at least in another day or two, the hotel would find out that it bad been stifled by a stolen credit card. Of course, the hotel would get its money, in all probability, but Pablo would have some leverage to use against him. Perhaps for the moment it would be best to do nothing. He would tell Susan not to answer her phone, and when Pablo came out to see her he could take care of him. By that time, some kind of solution would occur to him.

  Freddy circled the Dupont Plaza and drove back down Biscayne to the Omni. This time he pulled into the hotel entrance. He turned over the ignition key, but not the trunk key, to the valet. He registered at the desk as Mr. and Mrs. Junior Waggoner and pocketed the room key. He counted out $1,000 in cash for a $1 20-a-day room and told the clerk he would return with his baggage later when he came back from the airport with his wife.

  No, he told the clerk, he didn't know how long he would be staying, but to remind him when his bill got up to $900, and he would either check out then or put down some more cash as an advance. Freddy waved off the bellman and took the elevator up to his room.

  He stashed the extra wallets and the pesos in the bedside table next to the king-size bed and went back down to the lobby entrance for his car. He paid for the valet parking, gave the valet a quarter, and turned off the salsa that was blaring full blast from his radio. If the valet hadn't turned on the radio he would have gotten a dollar instead of a quarter, Freddy reflected. He headed south on Biscayne again. He crossed the Miami River and drove down Brickell. He now had two nice hidey-holes, one in Kendall and another downtown in Omni. To avoid the sun and the heat, he could work the Omni Mall; the way the Omni was laid out, it was a thief's paradise. If he only robbed pickpockets, he could work for weeks without any fear of detection. Of course, there would be competition; there was bound to be in a perfect setup like that. Freddy didn't mind a little competition. As the fly said, crossing the mirror, "That's just another way of looking at it."

  Freddy parked on the roof of the bus company's parking garage and spent two hours exploring the Miracle Mile in Coral Gables. The stores were owned by Americans, but they catered to Latin tastes. Women's clothing was on the garish side, with lots of ruffles and flounces. Primary colors were predominant, with very few pastels in evidence. Men's suits were gray or blue, with thin stripes in rust or coral, and the shirts and ties were like those Freddy remembered from Santa Anita, when he used to spend his afternoons at the track. Except for the incredible cleanliness, the Coral Gables shopping street reminded Freddy of East Los Angeles, although East LA had never been this prosperous.

  In a sporting goods stare, Freddy bought three All-American Official Frisbees, charging them to the Mendez credit card. He went back to the roof of the parking garage, took the Frisbees out of the paper sack, and ripped off their plastic wrappings. He then sailed them, one at a time, across the street, and aver a lower roof, watching them land and skitter in the heavy traffic an LeJeune Road. Two cellmates at San Quentin had owned a Frisbee, and Freddy had often watched them throw it back and forth to each other in the yard. They would laugh when they caught it, and they would laugh even harder when one of them failed to catch it. Freddy had always wanted to toss it himself, but the two cons never let anyone else into their game, and of course, no one ever asked them for a turn. But throwing the three Frisbees hadn't been much fun; perhaps you needed a partner to aim at.

  Freddy got lost twice trying to get through the complex of the University of Miami, gave up, and finally drove around the school before he could find Miller Road. He got back to Kendall Pines Terrace at six-thirty.

  Freddy dumped his packages on the couch, handed Susan her gift-wrapped present, and checked the new deadbolt lack on the front door. He accepted the girlish kiss she planted on his cheek for the gift and told her to buy some 3-in-One Oil the next time she went to the store. She told Freddy about Sergeant Moseley's visit and handed him the detective's card. Freddy made her repeat word for word everything that had been said.

  "Did he say 'local' mug shots, or 'wanted' mug shots?"

  "He just said mug books. He said you'd know what he meant."

  "You shouldn't've told him you worked for Pablo. That wasn't too bright."

  "I thought he knew."

  "The best thing to say to a cop is nothing. Remember that. Did Pablo call you?"

  "No. Well, he might have. There were two phone calls, but I didn't answer the phone. If it was Pablo, I knew I wouldn't know what to say, and if it was you, you would've said you'd call and you didn't."

  "At least you did something right. Get your purse. I'm going over to Miami Beach and see the cop."

  "What about dinner? Everything's ready."

  "We'll take it with us."

  In the closet there was a large cardboard box filled with Martin's fishing gear. Freddy dumped it out, and Susan packed the box with the Crackpot and the rest of the items on her menu. Working hurriedly, she was soon ready to go, and she had to wait for Freddy to shower and change into his new suit and Bally loafers. The.38 made a bulge in Freddy's jacket pocket, but he didn't like to carry a pistol in his waistband because of an accident a friend of his had once in San Diego.

  As the blacks used to say in the yard at Quentin when they wanted to get even with a bully, Freddy was "going to pull that fucker's teeth, man!"

  12

  When Hoke walked into the lobby of the Eldorado Hotel, Old Man Zuckerman jumped up from his faded brocade chair by the entrance and handed him a neatly folded paper napkin. Hoke thanked the old man and put the napkin in his pocket. Mr. Zuckerman smiled toothlessly and sat back down in his chair. Mr. Zuckerman was well into his eighties, and his "job" was to give every person who entered the hotel a paper napkin, and he forced it on visitors and residents alike, including Mr. Howard Bennett, the owner-manager, every time they came in. Hoke figured that this job that Mr. Zuckerman had invented for himself helped to keep the old fellow alive. And Old Man Zuckerman had an endless supply of paper napkins, because he helped himself to all he would need when he ate his meals at Gold's Deli down the street.

  The Eldorado Hotel was a deteriorating art-deco hotel that was on the verge of being condemned. It was scheduled to be torn down if Redevelopment came to South Miami Beach. But Redevelopment had been in the planning stage for almost ten years now, and nothing was ever done. Because of the building moratorium on South Beach the owners weren't repairing anything they didn't positively have to take care of, except for meeting the most minimal requirements for fire and safety. By acting as an unpaid hotel security officer when he was off duty, Hoke got a free room, but he had been considering moving out for several months.

  His problem was money. Every other paycheck went to his ex-wife in Vero Beach, and he had to live on the other half. After term life insurance payments, car insurance, retirement payments, and union dues, he had to live on less than $12,000 a year. With a free room and with his battered Le Mans paid for, that should have been enough--or more than enough--but there had been his own hospital bills, plus a new and enormous bill for his two daughters' orthodontist. He had ripped up the bill from the orthodontist, but then Patsy, his ex-wife, had threatened to take him to court. Part of the divorce settlement was that he would pay for the girls' medical expenses. Straightening teeth, in Hoke's opinion, came under beautification, and was not a necessary medical expense. But to avoid going to court, he had finally sent the orthodontist a check for $50 and told him he would try to make some regular payments on the $1,800 bill.

  The shabby lobby was depressing. Eight old ladies, all members of the Eldorado Hotel TV Club, sat in a silent half-circle, watching a television set that was bolted and locked to the wall. When Hoke looked across the roam, four Marielitos, playing dominoes at a corner table, got respectfully to their feet, nodded shyly at him, and sat down again when he acknowledged their greeting with a wave of his right arm. On his way to the desk Hoke took a look at the TV screen and saw a green snake eat a red frog. Education Night. He checked his mailbox (Eddie Cohen wasn't at the desk) and decided that tonight he would only make perfunctory rounds.

  On the way to his room on the eighth floor, he stopped the elevator at each floor, looked up and dawn the halls without getting out, and then went on. On the fifth floor, however, he saw Mrs. Friedman wandering around in her nightgown. He locked the elevator and led the old lady back to her room before going up to six. She often got confused, and when she happened to leave her room she could never remember her room number. Rumor had it that the meals-on-wheels program was either going to be reduced or cut out altogether, and when that happened, he didn't know what Mrs. Friedman would do for sustenance. Even when her social security check came in, she wouldn't be able to find her way dawn to Gold's Deli and back.

  It was depressing to think about Mrs. Friedman, but it had been even more depressing to find out that Susan Waggoner was a whore. Even Hoke wouldn't have figured that in a hundred years. Bill Henderson, who had worked Vice for three years, probably could have taken one look at Susan and known, but Hoke hadn't suspected it. Hell, Hoke's fourteen-year-old daughter was built better and was sexier looking than Susan.

  And then there had been that dead baby--and the maid. The kid probably couldn't talk in sentences yet, and the maid couldn't have been more than nineteen or twenty. He didn't mourn the two Colombians. They were men in their early thirties, and whatever it was that they had done to be killed for, they had done it in their maturity. The maid, if she had been hired locally, might be a lead, but he suspected that she had been brought along from Colombia to take care of the baby.

  Any way he looked at it, it was a rotten business.

  Instead of going to his room, Hoke took the stairs from the eighth floor to the roof. The only good thing about the Eldorado Hotel was the view from the roof. He lit a cigarette and looked across Biscayne Bay at Miami. The white uneven buildings looked like teeth, but at this distance it was a white smile. There was even a gum-colored sunset above the skyline, and in the northwest above the Everglades there was a stack-up of black clouds that looked like thousand-dollar poker chips. It was raining in the 'Glades, and perhaps enough rain would be left to reach the city and cool it off a little during the night. Hoke finished his cigarette and tossed it off the parapet into the swimming pool behind the hotel. The pool, a small one, had been filled with sand. Without water, no one could use it, but Mr. Bennett saved money on maintenance costs with a pool full of sand. There was a lot of trash scattered over the surface. Hoke decided to put in his report that the trash was a fire hazard so that Mr. Bennett would have to have it cleaned up.

  Hoke unlocked the door to his room and switched on the light by the door. The small room was stifling and smelled of dirty sheets, unwashed socks and underwear, bay rum, and stale tobacco smoke. Howard Bennett, the cheapskate ownermanager, had invaded Hoke's room during his absence and pulled the plug on Hoke's window air conditioner to save energy costs. Hoke plugged in the air conditioner and turned it up to High.

  He took off his leisure suit jacket, his gun, his handcuffs, and sap, and tossed the equipment on the top of his cluttered dresser. He switched on his small black-and-white Sony and poured twa inches of El Presidente brandy into his tooth glass. "Family Feud" was on the tube, and for the hundredth time Hoke wondered about the definition of -family- in America. There were five family members on both teams, but no mothers or fathers. Instead, there were various uncles and cousins and spouses of the cousins, plus one teenage kid who bore no resemblance to either family and had probably been borrowed from neighbors for the program.

  There was a knack on the door. Hoke sighed and hid the glass of brandy behind a photograph of his two daughters on the dresser. The last time he had had a visitor knocking on his door it had been Mrs. Goldberg, from 409. Her ex-husband, she told him, had sneaked into her room while she was watching television in the lobby and had stolen her pearl-handled hairbrush, the hairbrush that had belonged to her mother. Hoke had gone dawn to 409 with her and found the hairbrush in the bottom drawer of Mrs. Goldberg's dresser.