Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 02 (22 page)

“Go look at your back in the mirror, and try telling me anything smaller than a Bengal tiger gouged you like that through a shirt and coat.”

“Look at the shirt I was wearing, Madeline.”

“I did. It’s not torn. There’s some blood, but that might’ve got on it afterward.”

“You know,” Hickey said wearily, “I could’ve got killed easy in Denver, the way I couldn’t stick to business from thinking about you. You figure I was lying about giving up PI work? Elizabeth gave you my messages, right?”

“Of course.”

“Why the hell would I quit the work I do best, forsake old Leo, and spend my time glad-handing at Rudy’s, unless I was doing it so I could finally buy the stars for you, like I promised?”

Madeline swallowed hard. Her eyes roamed his face, then cast themselves down. “It could be a lot of jive.”

“Yeah, and Mrs. Roosevelt could be a chorus girl.”

“Are you really gonna let the day job go?”

“Depends,” Hickey said.

“Right, here it comes.”

“Depends if what Captain Thrapp has to say about your Cuban pal checks out.”

Her face shot up. “What about him?”

“Thrapp’s saying the Cuban’s a mobster. Maybe he comes from Havana, but he got here by way of New Jersey. One of the families sent him to squeeze out the Schwartzes, see who gets to corner the border action.” Hickey watched his wife’s eyes narrow, her flesh harden. “How’s that look to you?”

“Ridiculous,” Madeline snarled. “My God, I’ve spent…a good deal of time with Paul. At the club. And he’s said nothing, associated with nobody that’d make me believe such crap for a second.”

“Maybe it’s just your average gangster isn’t snooty enough to hang out at the Bigshot Club.”

“I’ve heard his life story, Tom. Want me to give it to you?”

“Nope. Not even part of it.” Hickey felt his lip curling, tried to flatten it down. “All I want’s your opinion.”

“You got it. Now…look me in the eye.…Have you made love with Cynthia Moon?”

“No, baby. How about you and Castillo?”

“No.” It was the closest he’d ever seen Madeline come to a whimper.

The door rattled. He looked that way, decided it must’ve been a gust of wind or a kid heaving a snowball. He leaned toward Madeline, pried her hands off the chair arms, squeezed them for a minute. Scooting farther back on the bed, he pulled her toward him. When she landed atop him, he grabbed her behind, pressed her hard against him, and kissed her neck ravenously.

Outside, snow crunched, the steps creaked. The door flew open. “Who let the fire go out?” Elizabeth hollered. “Oops.”

They ate turkey, succotash, yams, and rhubarb pie in a drafty lodge hall with a sopped wooden floor and sprigs of holly and mistletoe tacked on most every bare-log rafter. Later, around the fireplace in their cabin, they talked about fifteen years of Christmases.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Directly after breakfast Hickey itched to get back on flat land. Check on the girl. Make a date with Captain Thrapp and learn what dope the police had on Castillo.

His girls thought differently. So Hickey and his daughter crashed down the sled run a dozen times, and after checking out they stopped in Julian for cider and apple pies to carry home. The back road through the high meadows and the pine forest was icy, and most every time they rounded a blind turn, a coyote, a doe and a couple fawns, or a cow would step into the road. It was noon before, in Alpine, they passed the sign that boasted
THE BEST CLIMATE IN THE UNITED STATES
, just as a cleft in the hills offered a view of the coastal plain. Soon they rolled down the windows. There was a balmy onshore breeze. The bay, while they rounded it, looked jammed with an armada of sailboats.

Hickey let the girls unpack. He walked inside, straight to the phone, and dialed Riverview Hospital. When he asked for Dr. Carroll, the nurse squeaked, “Intake papers, Mr. Hickey?”

“Darn. How’d you recognize my voice? I was trying to sound like Jack Benny.”

“You were expected this morning.”

“Patience, dear. I’m on my way to see old Tucker, soon as you let me talk to the boss.” She made a
pfff
sound and deserted the phone. A minute later Dr. Carroll announced himself. He sounded like a Texan auditioning to play Hamlet.

“How’s the Tucker girl?” Hickey asked.

“I’m afraid that an adequate response, sir, would require volumes. The young lady’s quite an enigma.”

“Yeah, but is she pregnant?”

“She places the conception only two weeks ago today. It’s not yet productive to test her. Nowhere near.”

“She tell you who’s the lucky fellow?”

“I’m not free to repeat what she’s told me.”

“How about what I tell you? That confidential, too? Meaning you don’t blab anything I give you about her. Scout’s honor?”

“I suppose.”

“Yeah. Then see how this stacks up with what she’s professing. I’m going to spill only the stuff that, far as I can see, is what’s eating her. You got a notepad?”

“Always.”

“Tops has gotta be this baby. See, other than the one time, which she labels a rape, she’s either a virgin or was till a certain mobster got to her. The rapist—‘fiend,’ she calls him—is her mama’s lover boy and partner in crime. He’s quite a character, by the way. You ever seen anybody throw blue fire outta their fingers?”

“The
Nezah
master,” Dr. Carroll said, pronouncing each
a
like a Brit. “The
Los Angeles Times
ran an article, last year, I’d say.”

“I missed it. So, on top of the rape, and her daddy sinking fast of a broken heart, and a dear friend getting snuffed by an avalanche the same day this fiend sowed his seed in her—besides all that, she’s gotten hooked up with one, maybe two mobsters. And”—Hickey tried to phrase this last tidbit in a way that wouldn’t send Carroll squealing for a cop—“earlier in the week she set out to kill a guy and just got lucky, that she couldn’t pull if off.…That mesh with the line she fed you?”

“Fairly well.”

“How’s she acting?”

“Decently now, though it’s a pose. She’s quite a dramatist and has convinced herself that if she behaves, exhibits superior manners, charms us with her intellect, we’ll release her at any moment.”

“You’re not buying it?”

“Certainly not, thought my mind could change rapidly if the
signed
intake forms are not delivered posthaste.”

“A couple hours, I promise. Thanks, Doc.”

Hickey pushed the hang-up button, sat a minute with the receiver in his hand, considering that if Cynthia were actually pregnant and half the story she’d told him on the beach were true, Pravinshandra ought to be exiled to a stud farm in some underpopulated land. It had taken Hickey months to start Elizabeth percolating. The master appeared to hit the bull’s-eye every shot.

Hickey dialed the police. Their operator switched him through to Captain Thrapp. “Damn, Tom. I came close to sending a man out to chase you in here. You get my messages?”

“Sure. Merry Christmas, Rusty.”

“That was yesterday. Good riddance. Now, get down here, would you?”

“When a porpoise pitches for the Yankees, I’ll go down there. Your place has got lousy atmosphere, and I’m tired of cops. When’s your shift up? Meet me at Rudy’s.”

“Six-thirty.” Thrapp dropped the phone into its cradle from a foot or so high.

Hickey finished nibbling his sandwich, stood up to carry his lunch plate to the kitchen. The phone rang. His answering service switched through a call from Dunsmuir.

The sheriff sounded old, touchy, and displeased. Without introductions, he asked if Hickey had a murder to report. The shortened version of Cynthia’s story of her trip to the mountain lasted several minutes, while the sheriff never uttered a sound. At the end of his story, Hickey asked if he were still on the line.

The man snorted and finally said, “This Cynthia see the swami whack the lady, shove her into the crevasse?”

“I told you, she was back in the hut, doped. Knocked out.”

“Doped. Look, ain’t a whole lot I’m gonna do till the girl contacts me directly, least about any murder. Far as the rape goes, I’ll bring the swami in, all right, providing she promises to get herself up here and testify.”

“She’ll testify, but it’s gonna have to wait. At the moment she’s in the nuthouse.”

“Swell,” the sheriff droned. “Ain’t no problem with her credibility. Look, I’ll run the boy in, have us a talk.”

***

Hickey gathered some things, kissed Madeline, walked out back, and waved good-bye to Elizabeth, who sat gabbing with a neighbor girl on their pier. He took the Mission Valley route east to Palm Avenue, swung left on La Mesa Boulevard, and coasted down the hill to the Saint Ambrose.

His preference was to sneak in, confront Henry Tucker, convince the old man to scribble on the forms, and flee the tomblike joint before he got cornered by Sister Johanna or the priest. But the sun was out. A pack of old folks lolled around in the garden patio through which he had to cross from the lobby to Tucker’s room in the rear east wing. A stalwart, toothless old fellow, a baritone, stood before two ladies seated on a bench, crooning a slurred melody. The chaperon nun attended to a rosebush, pinching off buds or aphids. She didn’t look up to catch Hickey sneaking by. He would’ve gotten away clean if not for Donia, the old gal who suspected he might be the devil. She stood clinging to a stake among the bougainvillea against the chapel wall, peering around through her frizzed ropes of hair, intently as if the old folks were under siege by armies of malevolent spirits. Spotting her there, Hickey tripped along the path’s far perimeter. Just as he thought he’d evaded her gaze, she spied him and issued a shriek. Her call to alarm startled a tall fellow whose cane flew up as though to conk somebody, which skewed his balance and toppled him backward into the baritone, who tipped like a domino and landed on the lap of one of his frail admirers.

Hickey was double-timing toward the rear east wing when the nun who’d been tending roses hollered, “Sir. Sir, come back here.”

All he could do was retreat and surrender. He mustered his best innocent smile and strode over to the hefty, pug-nosed nun whose attention was split between watching him and caressing Donia’s arm. The old gal’s eyes wandered vaguely across the sky and she hooted, ever lower as if her battery needed a charge.

“Father McCullough available?” Hickey said cordially.

The nun gave him a scowl and a jerk of her head toward the arched doorway beneath the jacaranda. Hickey let himself in to the parlor, crossed the Turkish carpet, and rapped on the office door. Footsteps came trudging, the heavy door creaked slowly open, and the priest appeared. His eyelids looked puffy as if they’d swollen shut, had to be slit open. The father’s voice was raw, gravelly. “How is she?”

“Loco,” Hickey said. “Vicious. Came at me like a vampire. You got a cold?”

“A doozy.”

“Sorry. Look, when—if—she calms down enough so they’ll spring her, she’s got herself mixed up with a mobster, Charlie Schwartz. You heard of him?”

“No.”

“Well, he’s making like her sugar daddy. I expect if it wasn’t him, it’d be somebody else—the girl needs a dad, I guess, and now that Henry resigned…Schwartz plans to launch her career in L.A. But there’s a catch. She’s got this little fiend growing inside her that’s gonna rise hell with her hourglass figure. That’s what she says anyway. Could be hysterics, but I’m betting it’s real.”

The priest groaned, raised his hand as though to cross himself but left it in the starting position, arm across his chest. “A fiend?”

Hickey nodded. Once more, he recounted the story Cynthia’d told him on the beach. The priest blew his nose into a handkerchief as large as a bath towel.

“Venus’ lover is the father?” he moaned.

“That’s the one. You oughta see him throw fire someday. Quite a trick. Any idea how he does it?”

With a cock of his head, as though perplexed that anyone would ask such an obvious question, he muttered, “Demons.”

“Right. Glad you cleared that up.”

“Then it
was
him Cynthia plotted to kill. And you…?”

“Postponed it,” Hickey said icily. “Caught up with Venus and her boyfriend. Got sight of the gunman, called him out, and shot him dead.”

With cupped hands hiding his mouth and nose, the priest gazed studiously at Hickey, long enough so that Hickey got the idea he was waiting to see if the killer showed any trace of remorse. Hickey dug for his pipe and lit up.

At last the father offered him a drink. Hickey declined—two sips or another minute of silence, he’d commence spilling his guts. He was that close to making his confession, asking the priest how his God would judge somebody who knocked off a guy who hadn’t even reached for his gun.

“Tell you what I think, Padre—see, when I hijacked the girl, she was in TJ to get her womb scraped. Maybe I did wrong. This baby’s gonna mean nothing but danger and misery to all concerned, including itself.”

“You’re suggesting an abortion.”

“You bet. There’s a chiropractor across the hall from my office. You wouldn’t accuse him of being honest, but he’s clean and he knows if something goes awry, he’s on his way to Alcatraz, not just to the bank for a couple hundred pesos
mordida
like those TJ croakers. Think about it, Father, what this kid’ll mean to Cynthia.…Meanwhile, what we’ve gotta do is keep her locked up at least until Schwartz gets tired of waiting or she has a massive change of heart, decides to be a good little Catholic girl.”

Father McCullough nodded, rubbed his puffy eyes. “I’d feel most secure about her if Venus also agreed to her confinement. Otherwise…You see, they never settled custody—I find that peculiar, Henry being an attorney.”

“Makes sense if you buy Cynthia’s tale. Venus could’ve asked Henry to hack off his arm, feed it to the dog—Henry would’ve rolled up his sleeve.”

“True, and it still applies, doesn’t it? She could easily have Henry ruled incompetent. Suppose this Schwartz approaches her, convinces her with prophecies of fame and fortune to have the girl released, turned over to him.”

“Which Venus might jump at,” Hickey said. “A little piece of Cynthia’s contract might buy her a ton of loot.” Hickey pulled the hospital intake forms from his pocket, displayed them. “Let’s go get Henry’s
X
on here. I’ll see about keeping Venus outta the way.”

Father McCullough trudged in front, having used all his weight, grabbing the doors by the handles and leaning backward, to tug them open. He seemed to have aged a decade in the past week, and he wasn’t the only casualty. When Hickey asked about Sister Johanna, the father told him she was laid up with a high fever. There’d been an epidemic, the priest said. On the way to Tucker’s room, they passed three more nuns, each one appearing fatigued and downhearted.

“What’s the deal?” Hickey asked. “You and the sisters go on a Christmas bender?”

The priest chuckled wanly, lay a hand on Hickey’s shoulder, used it to balance himself as they entered the rear wing, and walked down the hall.

It was the first time Hickey’d seen Tucker sitting up and looking human. His thick hair was combed, almost glossy. The light beside his bed flickered and a Knights of Columbus tract lay closed on his lap. He stared at the wall as though pondering what he’d just read. Either, Hickey thought, the man was recovering, or he’d already made his appointment with death and resigned himself.

Tucker murmured hello to the priest, gazed blankly at Hickey for a second, then angled his head toward the window.

Hickey leaned in close. “Mr. Tucker, you got a beef against me, that’s fine. You can’t imagine how many people do. But you’re gonna listen, because I’ll stand here till you do, and then you’re gonna sign some things for me. Otherwise, your daughter’s sunk. By the next time you see her, she’ll be the moll of a mobster a couple years older than you, or locked up for conspiracy to commit murder. Or worse. You listening?”

Without shifting his head, Tucker gave a stiff nod. “Okay,” Hickey said, “Here’s the deal. I’m gonna do my damnedest to see that nobody, including and especially Venus, Laurel, or Pravinshandra—who’s still alive, by the way—will get near enough to Cynthia to meddle in her life. I’m gonna keep your darling out of jail and away from the mob. To make it work, she’s gonna have to spend a while at Riverview, the same place, I believe, Laurel visited after you all ditched Otherworld.”

Tucker yanked his head around, pinned Hickey’s eyes, coughed from the effort. “What’s your name?”

“Tom Hickey.”

“Cynthia’s told you our history?”

“A whole lot of it.”

“Then you must be an arrogant son of a bitch…to think you can pacify either of Venus’ daughters.” Tucker spewed his words, between coughing fits, holding one bloodshot eye on Hickey. “They’re addicted to turmoil, shackled by vanity. And they’re foes to the death. You might as well try to negotiate a truce between Lucifer and Gabriel. One will kill the other. The only question: Who will it be?” He lurched forward, began to cough and gasp in spasms. When the worst had passed, he reached out for the papers, skimmed each one for a moment, then scribbled his name on the line.