Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 02 (16 page)

Every twenty minutes or so he wandered outside, made a turn around the hotel or crossed the street and glanced through the window of the drugstore or scanned the newsstand racks with one eye while he fired up his pipe and smoked a half bowl. The third trip he bought a deck of playing cards at the newsstand.

Back in the lobby, the harpist was playing. Surrounded by celestial music, a decor he would’ve bet the pope’s house couldn’t match, and the fragrance of thirty or so cut cedars, Hickey kept snapping to attention in shock to remember he was waiting here to kill a guy.

He dealt five games of solitaire, slow ones, on account of his looking up and around between every card while he thought about his own life and death and those of Pravinshandra and Katoulis. There was some truth, he mused, to Cynthia’s observation that evil people thrive because good people don’t have the heart to kill them. Try to act righteous and peaceful—you and a continent full of innocents get skinned by Nazis. Choke when you should’ve wasted Donny Katoulis, the man returns to haunt you. Likewise, if you save a freak like Master Pravinshandra…

There might be a way to exterminate them both, Hickey thought. If he let Donny snuff the master first, before he silenced Donny, the girl might go free. Maybe he could cover for her, pitch a tale about the contract on the master being the work of Henry Tucker, who’d probably die before the New Year anyway. Not likely Cynthia’s daddy would deny the story. He might glory in saving his daughter’s neck and depart counting on a martyr’s reward. Only Charlie Schwartz and his chauffeur had the knowledge to botch things. What would Charlie do? Hickey sat wondering as Venus entered the lobby.

If she’d been surrounded by a dozen beauties her age, all with cinnamon hair, Hickey could’ve instantly picked her out. First, even in the flat pumps, she stood taller than most men, erect as though she marched in a drill team. She wore a tan business suit, but the hems of the jacket, the sleeves, and the skirt, as well as the collar, had been trimmed in rainbow fabric of red, orange, and blue. There were gems hanging off her ears and a big one, mounted in silver, pinned to the little hat that rested on the back of her head. From across the room he could see that her eyes were like Cynthia’s, emeralds in sunlit water. When she stopped just inside the door to let the man beside her remove her wrap, and she surveyed the room, Hickey caught himself ducking away from her eyes, as if he feared she had the power to recognize even somebody she’d never seen. It was Venus all right.

Her escort wore a turban. A slender man in his prime, built remarkably like Venus only without curves. Their chins, shoulders, hips, and knees all at the same altitudes. He wore a banker’s suit, gray with pinstripes, double-breasted, a cream-colored shirt, and a red tie. The only peculiarity except the turban was his footwear, beaded sheepskin moccasins. His skin appeared soft and dark as caramel, the trim, angular face serene as if he’d either faced every trial and vanquished all the demons or had his feelings gutted. His eyes were deep and steady, pale brown. He walked gracefully, arms swinging loosely at his sides.

Two bellhops followed the pair. The Negro labored with a steamer trunk across his shoulders; the white fellow juggled three large suitcases. As they followed the master and Venus to the elevator, Hickey gathered his cards, pocketed them as he got up, and walked to the stairway. When the elevator door shut, he double-timed up the stairs, peered around a corner and down the hallway while the elevator passed, then hustled up the next flight, and so on, until the elevator clanked to a stop on the fourth floor. He stayed out of sight behind a wall while the elevator door opened and shut and footsteps drummed softly along the hallway. Peeking around the corner, he watched one of the bellhops usher Venus and the master into their room. When the door closed behind them all, Hickey entered the hallway and ambled slowly toward the room. In a minute the bellhops stepped out and passed him by with hardly a glance, too busy laughing at something. Hickey sauntered past the room—409, wide as a suite—listening for a shot or a scream, just in case Donny had threatened to boil the desk clerk’s mother in oil, gotten the room key, and gone to wait in a closet, to greet them. Hickey circled the landing and turned down the stairs.

Venus and her pretty-boy would be freshening up, unpacking, for at least long enough to give Hickey the chance to use his toilet. After making that stop, he climbed back to the fourth floor, encountered nobody suspicious in the hallway, returned to the lobby. He scanned the place for newcomers, then wandered outside, stopping for a minute to chat with the doorman, who’d bought his nine-year-old a rusted bicycle and spent all last weekend at a cousin’s place sanding the thing, making ready for Christmas. His kid wanted to be a paperboy. Hickey admitted he hadn’t yet bought his daughter a gift.

He crossed the street considering what might happen if he took an hour off—he could buy Elizabeth a sheepskin coat, Madeline a silver fox stole—and returned to find Venus wailing over the master, who lay missing the back of his head. There’d be one less monster on earth, was all, and a slight chance they’d trace the murder to Cynthia. Hadn’t Donny been executing folks since 1929 and going free? It was almost enough to make you admire the guy.

Hickey returned to the hotel lobby, to the love seat from where he could watch three entrances and the doorway to room 409. He flagged a cocktail girl, ordered coffee, lit his pipe, and sat trying to anchor his mind on the business of watching while it kept floating off toward visions of a party dress, a swimsuit, a set of paintbrushes he could buy Elizabeth. Here in Denver he could probably find her a swell pair of cowboy boots that she’d love to wear in a couple months when the mountains warmed and they drove up to ride stable horses in the Lagunas.

Over two cups of coffee, he fought so hard to keep his mind on the job that an illegitimate fury brewed inside him. Not over Katoulis’ crimes or the master’s. Rather because it was on account of them that he couldn’t do what he wanted—go Christmas shopping. He was acting childish but didn’t give a damn. If Katoulis had entered the café, Hickey would’ve been tempted to exterminate the monster immediately and then run out and see if he could buy something special for Elizabeth before the cops tracked him down. Otherwise, he thought, he might go to hell and leave his daughter nothing but grief and a bitter taste on Christmas morning.

Chapter Twenty-One

That far north, dusk came too early. It wasn’t even 4:00
P.M.
in the Brown Palace when the bellhops started lowering blackout curtains.

Hickey used the last daylight to run an errand, to go out and cross Treemont, hustle to the drugstore at the corner of Seventeenth, and buy a tin of Walter Raleigh. Through the drugstore window and from the curb outside, he could watch both the Seventeenth Street and Treemont entrances to the hotel.

Down on the corner of Broadway, the Salvation Army woman still tooted her oboe. Only the highest notes carried over the wind. Traffic had multiplied. Merchants, clerks, secretaries, and tailors fled their shops, the U.S. Mint, the federal, local, and state offices clustered around. The eastbound streetcar rattled up Seventeenth, blocking Hickey’s view. He tapped out his pipe on a lamppost, jaywalked, nodded to the doorman.

For tea and cocktail hour, the lobby had filled with guests who jabbered rudely as though the harpist were a lounge hack. Hickey found a stuffed chair near the front desk and tried not to let his mind drift too far skyward with the music. When the harpist curtsied, packed up, and fled, Hickey thought all the lights and colors dulled a little. Soon a fellow wearing tails and a black upturned mustache approached the grand piano, sat, and loosened his fingers. Hickey didn’t get to watch him play.

A strange pair had entered from Treemont. They wore long belted robes and Arab headgear, like towels cinched on top with headbands and draping down their shoulders. Their cowboy boots clip-clopped on the floor. The taller one laughed and slapped the other fellow’s shoulder. The shorter man was too flabby, pale, and hairless to be Katoulis. The other might’ve been Donny on stilts twenty years hence, except that the laugh was high-pitched and gay. Hickey remembered Katoulis’ laugh. Like the bark of a sea lion.

As the pair approached the desk, gabbing, Hickey decided that they must be costumed as biblical shepherds. The taller, louder one instructed the desk clerk to ask Master Pravinshandra and party to join Randolf Drew in the Ship Lounge. The desk clerk turned to his switchboard. The shepherds crossed the lobby to the lounge entrance. Hickey began rotating like a periscope, scanning all around, every floor, staring into shadows where Donny might stand with his sights on the door to room 409, if these shepherds had set the master up. Or Donny might be waiting in the Ship Lounge. Hickey felt for his gun, straightened his army cap, adjusted his glasses, and continued scanning the atrium. Finally Venus and the master stepped out of their room.

She wore a long ermine coat, a dark fur hat. The master wore a double-breasted suit, light brown and pin-striped, a maroon tie and turban, a woolen coat thrown over his shoulder. They walked arm in arm to the elevator and waited. When the elevator door shut behind them, Hickey stood and made a final sweeping check of the mezzanine and ground floor, then followed the shepherds’ lead.

The Ship Lounge reminded Hickey too much of home. Porthole windows. Around every table sat captain’s chairs. Wall shelves held model square-riggers, frigates, clipper ships. Above one end of the bar hung a painting of a sultan in a rowboat so crowded with naked dolls that they barely could hang on. At the bar sat a cowboy, an air force captain, three prosperous civilians, none as swarthy as Katoulis. Only two tables were occupied. One by a gang of secretaries and the boss. The other was a long banquet table that paralleled the bar, where the shepherds sat flanked by a third of their kind, three men in frilly shirts with bloused sleeves and caps with peacock feathers, and several uncostumed, stylish women.

Hickey declined to check his hat and coat. The maître d’, large and wary as a bouncer, scrutinized Hickey’s uniform and frowned. Corporals weren’t legendary tippers. A dollar got him the table he wanted, a small one beyond the bar, next to the Seventeenth Street door. He seated himself, folded and piled his overcoat and hat on the floor behind him, just as Venus stepped in.

She gazed around serenely, awarded Randolf Drew and party a delicate wave. They stood to welcome her and the master. Though Pravinshandra might be the guest of honor, everybody watched Venus. At least as tall as Cynthia. Full rosy lips. Darkly shaded emerald eyes so large they implied omniscience. The green stones of her earrings glimmered as though electrified. As she passed Hickey, her dress rustled loudly.

She and the master got seated at the head of the table, facing away from Hickey. He tried to eavesdrop but caught nothing except compliments and pleasantries above the piped-in orchestra tunes. A waiter who sported a hearing aid and a towel over his arm brought him a Dewar’s and a menu which he waved off and ordered a small dinner salad with Roquefort and a pile of soda crackers. He smoked, sipped, and nibbled, trying to keep one eye on the doors while the other admired Venus’ bare shoulders and loosely coifed cinnamon hair. He thought about a refill of scotch but settled on coffee. Another drink might lift the curtain behind which he’d been hiding visions of what could happen in the next few hours. Or he’d start missing Elizabeth, worrying about Madeline, loathing Paul Castillo. Coffee might sharpen his claws, make him a closer match to Donny Katoulis. Or it might give him the jitters, a terminal case. Whatever drug he used, waiting was hell when he couldn’t even guess how long or know if Katoulis might be stalking somebody a thousand and some miles away, or catching a nap, or swimming in a hotel bathtub with a hooker while Hickey sat wasting his finite pool of energy, sinking into a funk that could soon drive him back to room 306, where he’d probably curl up in bed and suck his thumb. He nibbled cheesy lettuce and Nabiscos, scrutinizing each man who stood up from a table or stepped into the room. He tried to think about nothing, imagine nothing. Above all, he coached himself, don’t think about Castillo and Madeline or about what it’d feel like to die with Katoulis grinning at you. Lose your head, he mused, and your ass goes with it.

About 6:30 Randolf Drew and his fellow shepherds led Venus, the master, and the rest across Treemont to the Trinity Methodist Church. The sky and the city had gone so dark that Hickey was forced to wedge himself among the dinner guests to keep the master in sight. The shepherds led Venus and Pravinshandra through a side entrance.

Hickey lined up with the public, “donated” five dollars. Stepping inside, he decided he’d get his money’s worth as long as somebody played the organ. There must’ve been forty pipes, the shortest about twenty feet tall, others rising twice that high to the vaulted ceiling. At floor level were a couple dozen rows of polished wooden pews separated by two wide aisles. About half the seats were filled. Eyeing the people as he passed, Hickey gravitated toward the front. He took an aisle seat in the second row. From there he could look back and see faces, watch the first row closely, peer into the opera boxes that recalled pictures of John Wilkes Booth firing on Mr. Lincoln, and watch the dimly lighted balconies. Most of the lighting was toward the front, over the altar. The chorus benches ascended to the right and left of the altar and the podium which was flanked on each side by a pair of red upholstered seats as big as thrones. The altar’s red carpet tinted the light all around.

Hickey began studying the people up front. Out of twelve in the first row, eight were women. One of the four men was stone bald. The man straight in front of Hickey showed a ruddy, heavy-jowled profile. Of the two men farthest away, he couldn’t certify that either wasn’t Katoulis. The best he could hope for, Hickey figured, was to eliminate most of the crowd and keep watch over the remainder.

People kept filing in, a curious assortment. A tycoon rancher in shiny, tooled boots. A flock of dowagers so old and stuffy Hickey wondered if they might’ve got lost and mistaken this place for a meeting of the DAR. Others looked like factory workers. Laborers. Housewives. Young widows. Retired teachers. Three cripples escorted by nurses and a guy whose face was a tapestry of burn scars and scabs. Maybe they’d come to get healed. Several could’ve been protestant ministers. There was a trio of Salvation Army officers, and a few sets of parents with children hanging off them, others pushing surly boys along, hoping the holy man would inspire their brat to change his hoodlum ways. A couple about Hickey’s age with a golden-haired daughter of thirteen or so sat directly behind him.

A section on the opposite side from Hickey, from the sixth row back to the eleventh, an usher had been holding in reserve until a pack of lost souls got led in by a fellow in a railroad porter’s outfit. The men looked frozen stiff and filthy, as though they’d ridden across the Rockies on a flatcar and gotten dumped in the railyard. Their presence must’ve dismayed the audience. After the usher seated and silenced the hoboes, the hall lay tensely quiet.

Finally, led by the tall shepherd, Master Pravinshandra and Venus entered by the door behind the altar. Venus had left her ermine coat, her gloves, and her hat backstage. Before taking her seat on one of the thrones left of the podium, she made a subtle turn, giving the audience a chance to gaze. The master had stripped off his turban and let down his wavy dark brown shoulder-length hair. He lowered himself into the chair beside Venus, his eyes sweeping the audience slowly as if he meant to hypnotize them all.

Randolf Drew gave a brief introduction and took his seat on the right side. Pravinshandra stood and approached the podium, where he seemed taller, stronger. The bones of his face looked straight and sharp, chiseled in wood. The whites of his eyes appeared gigantic, the irises tiny black dots. His hands lifted gracefully into the air and stopped level with his shoulders. When he finally spoke, the deep, calming voice filled the room. The girl behind Hickey whispered too loudly, “God, he’s sexy.” Her mother gave her a slap on the knee.

While Hickey’d sat loathing the man, Venus had joined him at the podium, gotten introduced as the better half of his soul. Resting a hand on her shoulder, the master explained that Venus would translate the message he’d receive from an ascended master whose initials were TLS. In this way, he could channel without distraction.

He stepped aside, folded his hands, let his chin drop to his breastbone. At last a soft, high-pitched voice issued out of him in a language of mostly vowels. After each phrase or so he paused, and Venus translated.

“It is written, ‘The Jews appear to have ascended no higher than to worship the immediate artificer of the universe. Moses introduces a darkness on the face of the deep, without even insinuating that there was any cause of its existence. Yet never have the Jews in their Bible—a purely esoteric, symbolical work—degraded so profoundly their metaphorical deity as have the Christians, by accepting Jehovah as their one living yet personal God.’

“In truth, the spirit world is like a tree that grows outward in concentric layers. The middle layer of a physical tree identifies the year of its creation. The eternal tree has no years, knows no middle. The layers reach inward and outward endlessly. Call the layers spirit realms.

“The angels inhabit six realms. The Aryan and Tibetan masters each claim a realm of their own, as do humans, a race no less spiritual than angels. The distinction between gods and other spirit beings is that gods can travel at will between realms.…”

Hickey’s brain shorted, his vision pulsed, and his ears rang, he loathed preachers so deeply. When the crowd murmured, nodded, sighed, Hickey supposed the master had tossed them something that made them feel like bigshots. Pravinshandra turned his hands palms upward and graced Venus, and the audience, with a beatific smile. Venus tenderly ran a finger down his cheek. Turning to the mike, giving her voice a tremolo on the first few syllables, she translated, “Who then is Jehovah but a god artist, the builder of the human realm? Not its architect. Not its conceiver. Not the source of the urge to conceive. Each of these is a god all his own.”

Hickey’s throat burned as if the sermon had activated a toxic secretion. He closed his ears, wondering if Cynthia might’ve fallen for this quack, flirted, gotten seduced, and made up the rest of her story out of shame. Maybe Emma Vidal had climbed the mountain and plunged into a chasm in despair, because she too adored the master. Half of the females present, Hickey thought, looked plagued right now with fluttery hearts and damp panties.

In the second seat from the far aisle, third row, a Santa Claus had appeared. He must’ve slipped in while Hickey’s brain was misfiring. The beard covered all but the man’s dark eyes and a couple inches of swarthy forehead. Hickey’s arms tingled. He reached into his coat and adjusted his gun. He shifted in his chair, trying to keep one eye on Santa, while scanning the audience and watching the podium.

The way Pravinshandra stood with head bowed and the high, watery voice he was using tweaked Hickey with a dose of sympathy. A guy that pretty, bright, and smooth—the way people fawned on him could’ve been his ruination. In L.A. Hickey’d known a few women who’d gotten so choked with vanity that they devoted their lives to snagging and devouring men. Like Pravinshandra, they’d dangled a vision of salvation in front of their hungry prey.

The master’s eyes closed, his voice dropped and quieted into a low monotone while Venus translated a spiel about the Aryans and Semites being the sources of all the great religions. The Semites, she claimed, infected the world with their dualistic monotheism, while the Aryan-inspired Eastern truths held closer to the wisdom of the primal revelation which was being recaptured piece by piece by seers such as Madame B and the pilgrims to Mount Shasta.

The master lifted out of his trance, raised his hand, held it for a moment over Venus’ hair. In turn she gave the audience a brief and humble smile, bowed, and floated to her chair. The master stepped forward, rested his hands on the podium.

The girl behind Hickey muttered, “I wish he’d shut up and throw fire.” Her mother jabbed with an elbow and the girl yelped in a low voice. Santa squirmed, scratched the back of his neck, replaced his hands on his lap, while Pravinshandra’s voice, a little hoarse, with an accent that sounded more Minnesotan than British or Indian, seemed to echo through the church.