Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 02 (19 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Hickey’s watch read 10:15 when he got back to his car in the lot behind Rudy’s and crammed a small fortune’s worth of parcels, all labeled
MARSTON’S
, into the trunk. The girl ought to be in the middle of her second set, he calculated as he walked to meet Skeeter. He tipped the boy three dollars. “Watch my car extra close tonight, huh?”

“Sure, boss.” The kid gave him a dopey smile. “How come everybody’s riled at you?”

“Who’s everybody?”

“Miss Moon. Mr. Castillo, and that bald guy that has the big Chrysler.”

“Charlie Schwartz. What’d they say?”

“All I heard was them cussing you while they came out the door. Then I had to run for Mr. Castillo’s car. It was just a while ago.”

“They all leave together?”

“Only Mr. Castillo. Miss Moon and the bald guy went back in.”

Hickey nodded, told Skeeter happy Christmas, and walked through the kitchen door. Over the clatter of pans and the steaks hissing, the girl sang a promise to work and slave for her man. Hickey dashed through the kitchen to avoid Chef LeDuc, Phil, and the waiters who, after his two days gone, would sure have disputes or petitions to throw at him.

Rudy’s was so packed it didn’t leave people enough room to sweat. Castillo must’ve gathered more tables, squeezed everything together, pinched the dance floor down so small that Hickey figured they ought to post a sign—
NO FAT DANCERS OR PETTICOATS
. He made his way to the dimmest corner, where the bar ended near the door to his office. From there he watched Cynthia. The Santa cap she wore was white. A red one would’ve clashed with her hair. Christmas lights above the stage—green, blue, red, orange—reflected off her shoulderless knee-length pearl-colored gown. The shoes and gloves matched. A ruby brooch adorned her chest, dead center.

She’d talked to Charlie Schwartz, must know about Katoulis and realize that any second a cop might stroll in and drag her away, yet no agitation appeared in her voice or demeanor. Lost in the song, she radiated passion, and afterward she stood coolly as Venus in Denver, basking in the applause. As though each of them believed she’d caught fate in a headlock.

Again Hickey scanned the dining booths and tables, searching for Leo or Charlie Schwartz. He spotted the gangster at a table along the wall near the kitchen and made his way there through the bustle of waiters, busboys, wandering customers. Schwartz faced the stage, sitting across from a Latin doll who looked as if she’d spent three sleepless nights and days perfecting her makeup. There were no empty chairs to pull up. Hickey squatted beside the gangster, who turned just far enough to shoot a murderous scowl.

“Go on,” Hickey said. “Tell me I’m a goner or something, before I boot you out of here.”

Scooting his chair around, the man faced Hickey. His right eye squinted while the rest of his face looked mild, perplexed, as though he couldn’t comprehend anybody wasting such a kind soul as Donny K. “All I’m gonna do is wreck your life, Tom. Buy you a ticket to the gutter.”

“How’s that?”

“First, the girl’s mine. You can have her till New Year’s. Don’t want her to land in L.A. with a bum reputation, for leaving you cold. Two weeks, she’ll be headlining at the Doubloon, Santa Monica pier. Me and my brother are buying the place, branching out. Real estate’s a bust these days.”

The orchestra kicked into a bouncy number, “Don’t Sit under the Apple Tree.” Clyde had snatched Harry James’ arrangement from the film
Private Buckaroo
. When Cynthia cut in, she energized the lyric more than had all three Andrews Sisters. Charlie Schwartz offered Hickey a predatory smile.

“Drink up and scram, before I’ve gotta embarrass you in front of the lady.” Hickey stood, ambled away.

“Watch out for Donny’s ghost,” the gangster called after him.

Hickey weaved his way back to the bar, where he found Leo straddling his own favorite stool, next to the olives and cherries. Offering a handshake and troubled frown, Leo said, “Hell, I figured you’d take the night off or else crawl in looking like what’s-his-name when he climbed out of the whale’s belly.”

“Jonah?”

“Sure. And you come strutting—makes me wonder if Denver was a lie and you been hiding out at Warner Springs, soaking up mineral waters, leaving your old partner to drive himself loco following this jailbait around, watching her shimmy and croon. Meanwhile, Mrs. Dortmeyer’s in a tizzy on account of I haven’t had an hour to deduce which one of the Okies is pilfering chocolate cream pies outta her bakery, and Vi’s badgering me just as bad as the Dortmeyer dame. The girl beds down, I sneak home, figuring to snooze a couple hours, but first I gotta whisper sweet-heart stuff to Vi, else in the morning she’ll pout and accuse me of planning to run off with some piece of young fluff, on account of she’s gone droopy. I gotta tell her droopy’s pretty as anything. It wears a guy out, lying at four
A.M.
”

“That was a mouthful,” Hickey said.

“You try mixing bourbon and coffee,” Leo grumbled, “see if you can shut up. You feeling as good as you look?”

“Better. Charlie Schwartz threatens to ruin me, first by stealing the girl. Oughta bother me, but no—see, after tonight it looks like Madeline and I are okay.”

“Swell news. You drinking the usual?”

“Yep.”

Leo hailed the bartender, motioned toward Hickey. “Bring my pal a Dewar’s, on the house.”

“How’s she doing?” Hickey asked.

“Who’s that?”

“The girl?”

“Looks mighty fine to me. Tom, next time she puts a hit on the guy, if there is a next time, Schwartz’ll take care of the deal. You could follow her till doomsday, all the good it’ll do. You and me oughta get some rest, forget the girl.”

“Soon as I talk to her,” Hickey said. “Wait around a few minutes, would you?”

Leo nodded. Hickey took a sip of Dewar’s, then set down the glass and walked through the crowd to where he could watch the girl more closely, from the street-side corner of the stage. He stood against the wall. The girl leaned toward the microphone.

“Takin’ a chance on love,” she crooned.

Clyde waved the horn section to a crescendo, then lowered them into the melody, while Cynthia announced that she heard the trumpets.

Hands behind her back, she swayed a little, side to side, as if the delight she sang about had loosed her body to move as it pleased. Her head bobbed. The ball on the end of her Santa cap swung like a metronome. When Ben Sykes soloed on trumpet she stepped back, holding her wistful smile, and gazed across the room, from the kitchen wall where Charlie Schwartz still sat to the opposite side, where her eyes caught Hickey’s. Her lips shrank inward, her body stiffened, and the hands jerked around from behind her to grip and press against her thighs. For the last two bars of the solo, she stood like that, before stepping forward to sing about rainbows and happy endings.

The first couple words had strained, then her hands unpeeled, swung at her sides. A blissful smile broke free and carried her through the last few lines. An instant after the final note, her knees folded slightly, her shoulders seemed to drop a foot. It looked like she’d faint. She held herself up. Tried to bow. Her head jerked so fiercely that the Santa cap flew off. For a hideous moment, before the eyes of Rudy’s all-time biggest crowd, Cynthia wept into the microphone, with guttural sobs and her face streaming as if her tears were the last drops of hope leaking out.

She started to bolt toward Hickey, then halted and groped on the stage for the Santa cap. She clutched it to her breast and leaped off the stage. When she hit the floor, one of her heels snapped. She kicked the other one free and ran, shouldering her way through the crowd, jarring a couple tables, clipping a waiter so that his tray slipped and steaks got delivered plateless onto a booth. Cynthia plowed and staggered her way past the coat check and out the front door.

Hickey found her perched on the green rim of the sidewalk, waving her arms as though hailing a cab or any other car that might stop and whisk her away.

When he touched her shoulder, the girl wheeled and socked him in the belly, hard as some men had walloped him there. “Judas,” she screamed, and tried to kick him in the groin. Hickey sidestepped, only got a glancing blow to his thigh. It must’ve sprained her bare toes. She hopped on the other foot and bellowed, “Bastard, you killed my daddy,” then whipped around toward the street and yelled it again.

Leo, who’d been watching from the doorway, edged close to Hickey. “Schwartz just beat it. See him running?”

Hickey looked in time to watch the gangster jump the curb and disappear behind the office building across A Street. The girl must’ve believed she saw a cop or her guardian angel up the block because she’d started hollering in that direction, “Help me. Get me out of here.”

Charlie Schwartz’s silver limousine nosed around the corner off Fourth onto A, drove halfway up the block, then swung a U-turn that included both curbs and prompted squealing brakes and a medley of horns all along A Street up past Sixth. It skidded to the curb’s green zone. The rear door flew open. Cynthia dived in, and the Chrysler sped away.

Clutching Leo’s shirtsleeve, Hickey yelped, “Keep it in sight.” He darted into Rudy’s, dodged like a swivel-hipped halfback through the kitchen, and sprinted out to his Chevy; he sped out of the lot and up Fourth to where Leo waited beside the stop sign. The old guy jumped in. “They made a right on Broadway, Tom.”

The Chrysler had only gotten a few blocks head start. Hickey caught sight of it as it passed the Santa Fe depot. The girl, Schwartz, and probably the driver, all knew Hickey’s car. But in traffic with all the lights dimmed, you couldn’t tell a Chevy from a houseboat as long as it kept more than fifty feet away. The silver limousine—a beast like that you couldn’t miss. It crossed Pacific Coast Highway, swung north on Harbor Drive, and cruised at a polite speed passing the Municipal Pier. Over the harbor the sky was sooty black. The barrage balloons gyrated in an erratic offshore wind. Where Harbor Drive veered left following the bay, the limo made a right, then cut into the parking lot beside the Pacific Ballroom, bullied its way through a gang of sailors trying their moves on the jailbait who gathered there, scheming to get inside. Hickey’d pulled into the public spaces out front of the civic center, across Harbor, flicked off his lights. He and Leo watched the ballroom’s valet open the girl’s door, then sling it shut and run to the driver’s side rear, where he ushered Charlie Schwartz out of the Chrysler. Schwartz tipped the valet, enough to keep the guy stuck to his elbow while the gangster knocked on the girl’s window, spoke to her, then turned toward the entrance. His limousine pulled out. It made a right, then another, and headed south on Pacific Coast Highway.

Near the city jail, across from the ferry landing, the Coast Highway and Harbor Drive merged, snaked right, then right again and left, became Main Street in National City. The limo and Chevy rolled past the shipyards, trailer courts, junkyards masquerading as used car lots, Okie saloons, Mex cantinas. The wind had risen, gotten wet and steady. It blew handbills, rags, newspapers across the road. Mist shimmied on the windshield.

“What the hell?” Leo grumbled. “They sneaking the girl over the border?”

“Could be. Got any ideas why?”

“Suppose Charlie got word the cops are on to Cynthia—about the hit, I mean.”

“Somebody clued the cops to Cynthia?” Hickey snarled.

“How should I know?”

“Not you?”

Leo angrily snuffed his cigarette in the ashtray. “Only cop I saw was Thrapp, and he did all the talking.”

“About what?”

“I been waiting to tell you after we got some rest, when we had a while to jaw, but I’m getting doubtful such a time’ll ever come. I’ll tell you now. Thrapp’s losing his wits, Tom. He’s got this notion of how Castillo was sent out here from New Jersey by some mob bossman—that old fool with the big red nose, gets his mug in the paper a lot, what’s his name?”

“Santa Claus?”

“Yuk yuk. Anyhow, Thrapp figures the Jersey Italians and the Hollywood Jew gang are both drooling over the loot that’s gonna fall on whoever slips the noose around what used to be our sleepy little border town. You’ve heard talk, right?”

Hickey nodded. “Had to happen. Soon as the hordes came migrating. Somebody’s gotta steal their paychecks.”

“So Thrapp says the Italians figure if they work both sides of the line, they can launch this international gambling mecca. Beach and bay resorts here, casinos in TJ, gambling ships out past the three mile. Big time. Now, it may be no coincidence, says the captain, that you got hooked up with Castillo, that Katoulis is Schwartz’s best boy, that you got a grudge against Donny going back to the Dark Ages. Thrapp can’t feature you in on the mob action, but he thinks maybe Castillo knew what he was doing when he partnered with you, and he’s got hooks in you some way.”

“Christ,” Hickey muttered. He fished in his coat pocket for his pipe and tobacco. “Thrapp figures I knocked off Katoulis for the Jersey mob?”

“Not intentionally. He figures you’re a dupe.”

Hickey lit up, squinted at his partner. “And maybe you slipped him something about the girl, trying to save my neck.”

“Hell, I did.”

“Who did, then? Thrapp talk to Madeline?”

“How do I know? Nobody’s saying anybody snitched on the girl.”

“Why else are they taking her over the border?”

“Ask me in about a half hour.”

National City had fallen behind them. Hickey rolled down his window to clear the smoke away, got his nose bitten by the chill, misty air and acrid whiffs of fertilizer rising off lettuce, tomato, and strawberry fields. The limousine cruised a half mile ahead, one car between them. The fog kept thickening. When he could barely make out taillights, he hit the throttle until he closed the gap. On the northbound side of the highway, a few jalopies crammed full of soldiers and sailors passed, weaving back from the dives of Tijuana, where the boys had drunk away Christmas Eve singing carols to the hookers on their laps. One convertible, a ’38 Chevy, had soldiers spilling out of the rumble seat.