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house.”
    “You, too? What’s the problem out there, anyway?”
    “Well, part of the deal is that you have to jerk the dog off every day. I don’t know why he didn’t tell you about that in the first place. But Mr. Ferguson owns a concupiscent Airedale.”
    “What kind of Airedale?”
    “Sex-crazed. He humps your leg, and he won’t let go till you jack him off.”
    “How long does it take?”
    “Less than a minute. Closer to thirty seconds than a minute.”
    “What’s the big deal then, Sergeant? I used to jerk guys off in junior high. Oh, don’t look so surprised. If you didn’t, you never got a second date. It seems to me that getting a lovely home to live in free, and five dollars a day besides, should be worth a minute of your time every day.”
    “Not to me it isn’t. If it ever got out in the division that I—look, I’m just not interested.”
    “Let’s talk a minute. I’ll tell you what. It’ll only take me ten minutes to get over there. Why don’t you take the house, and then when the dog jumps your leg you can call me. I’ll drive over and handle it for you.”
    “Why don’t you sit the house yourself? Then you could get a secretary and let her live here. You’d have someone here to answer your phone when you were out, and you’d have a nice house with a pool for a few months.”
    “That isn’t a bad idea, you know.”
    “I know. What else do you have?”
    “I’ve got a duplex in Hialeah.”
    “No, it’s got to be in Miami. Not necessarily in the Grove, but within the city limits.”
    “All I’ve got in the Grove right now is a week at Grove Isle. A two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar condo, complete with sauna.”
    “A week isn’t enough. I need a place for at least a month or two.”
    “I’ll call you. But you should’ve told me you didn’t like dogs. It would’ve saved a trip out to Mr. Ferguson’s house.”
    “Until I met Rex, I didn’t know I didn’t like dogs. But please call me soon, because I need a place before the end of the week.”
    “I’ll see what I can do.”
    But from the cool tone of her voice, Hoke had a hunch, as he headed downtown on Dixie Highway, that it would be a damned cold day in Miami before she called him again.

3

    Hoke shared a small office at the Homicide Division with Ellita Sanchez. The upper half of the wall that faced the squad room was glass, and there were several wanted posters affixed to the glass with Scotch tape. Most of the space in the little office was taken up by a large double desk, the kind favored by small real-estate firms. There was a D-ringbolted to the desk so that suspects could be handcuffed to it. A glass top covered the desk, and lists of telephone numbers and various business cards were scattered beneath the glass for easy reference. As a consequence, even when the desk was cleared, it looked messy. The desk was rarely cleared, however. There was a two-drawer filing cabinet, two metal swivel chairs, and one customer’s straight chair that was usually piled high with copies of the two daily Miami newspapers. The IBM Selectric typewriter was, of course, on Ellita’s side of the desk.
    On the wall facing Hoke’s side was an unframed poster of a masked man pointing a pistol. Beneath the picture, in large boldface, was the current Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce slogan: MIAMI’S FOR ME! Technically, this small office, the only enclosed office in the division other than Major Willie Brownley’s much larger glass-walled office, belonged to Lieutenant Fred Slater, the executive officer and number-two man for Major Brownley. But Lieutenant Slater, who preferred a desk in one corner of the bull pen, where it was easier to keep an eye on everybody, had given the small office to Hoke Moseley and Bill Henderson to use. A few weeks earlier, when Major Brownley had broken up their partnership, Hoke had been assigned Ellita Sanchez as his new partner, and Sergeant Bill Henderson had been moved to the bull pen.