Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 02 (24 page)

The captain repeated what Leo’d passed on. “See, Castillo’s just a pretty-boy that got his start dealing cards in Havana. One day he lands in Jersey, finds his way to a back room establishment. A few years, he’s managing the joint, for Angelo Paoli. That’s all we got from the Jersey police. The FBI’s not cooperating. Pissants.”

“Paul got a record?” The captain shook his head. “Maybe he decided to go legit,” Hickey speculated, “put a few thousand miles between him and the bad company he was keeping.”

“Yeah, except out here he ain’t only fraternizing with tennis bums and your wife.”

“Who else?”

“A few other dames and Vic Sozzani. Know him?”

“Fill me in.”

“He’s an old codger, spent about half his golden years in Leavenworth, bookmaking, conspiracy to murder. Came out here to retire, in Leucadia. He and Angelo Paoli’s daddy grew up together, insofar as their kind grows up.”

“Maybe Paul and him just swap stories about old times.”

“Okay. Then where’s Jaime Montenegro fit in?”

“Who’s that?”

“See, Montenegro runs the Las Olas Casino down in Rosarito Beach. A couple of our guys, off duty, saw Jaime, Vic and Castillo—them and a few
señoritas
—yapping, making toasts, having a grand old time. My guys’ve seen this little party more than once. What you gotta understand, Tom, this ain’t Chicago. It’s a border town. TJ’s wide open. You want dope, nooky, roulette, horses, where do you go? You need muscle, a shooter—why not hire some pachuco? He works cheap. It’s a gesture for international brotherhood. He can disappear faster than your paycheck. What I’m saying is, whoever’s gonna run San Diego is gonna run both sides of the line. Castillo—he’s the perfect liaison. A charmer. He’s clean. Talks Spanish, English, a little Guinea lingo.”

Hickey sucked the last of his scotch off an ice cube. “I hear you. Tell me something else. You’ve gotta know, everybody else does, about we’re getting ten times our share of prime beef, all we can use. How you figure Paul managed that one?”

The captain snorted as though the simple question insulted his intelligence. “Vic Sozzani’s cousin, guy name of William Martino, Senior, owns Broadway Meat Packers, your suppliers, no? Ain’t that why you turn Billy Boy loose on the bandstand, when he’s been booed out of clubs from here to Nome? You gotta ask me this, you’re losing your touch, Tom.”

“Touch has got nothing to do with it,” Hickey muttered. The Cuban must’ve put a squeeze on Clyde. Why else would a classy bandleader settle for a hound like Martino? “It’s just you don’t learn much you don’t wanta know.”

“Uh-huh.”

“See, Madeline’s dying for a bigger place, a car for herself, enough loot to keep our kid in that fancy school and still take a second honeymoon to Paris, after they kick the Germans out.”

“Sure. I get it.” Thrapp leaned across the desk, squinting, curling his lip. “I mean why you tossed in with Castillo and took care of Charlie Schwartz’s best boy.”

Hickey stiffened, pressed against the back of his chair. He clutched his glass, his arm itching to fire it at the wall. “You and your mouth better get outta here.”

“Not a bad idea.” In one move Thrapp rose, grabbed his coat, slung it over his shoulder, and opened the door. “Been swell knowing you, Tom.”

Hickey sat a minute, relit his pipe, felt the meal he’d eaten churn in his stomach. Long before he was ready for the next round, Castillo stepped in, looking drawn and petulant as a jilted lover. He turned the chair, sat down hard, dug his elbows into the armrests, folded his hands. “I make you the deal of a life. I make you a bigshot. Now you got so much dough you think you can knock me down, I don’ do nothing?”

“First thing, Pablo, you even say the word
Madeline
I’m gonna jump over the desk.”

“Oh boy, you making things tough on yourself. Maybe so tough you don’ survive.”

“Yeah, I hear you got some muscle behind you. Who you gonna sic on me, partner? Vic Sozzani or Montenegro? Maybe Angelo Paoli?”

The Cuban strained to hold Hickey’s gaze. His eyes watered. He sighed, crooked his chair around, opened the door, and whistled for the bartender. Held up two fingers, slung the door shut, and turned back to Hickey. “You wanting me to say I don’ know those fellows? I know many people. I having dinner with two or three doctors, you gonna come to me when you got a fever?”

“I get it. Sozzani, Montenegro—you guys are chums, is all. Which is why you stuck Clyde and us with Billy Martino, on account of he’s Vic’s nephew.”

The Cuban raised his hands and bowed his head in mock tribute to Hickey’s astuteness. The bartender knocked, new drinks got delivered. Castillo sipped. “He don’ sing so bad. We know he’s going to show up, anyway.”

“You bet, and his uncle’s gonna keep those sides of prime beef coming. Army doesn’t know how to cook the good stuff anyway. They probably serve it well done. I gotta hand something to you, Paul. I figured you for a rich kid. Spanish aristocrat type. Then my pal Captain Thrapp, he says you started off a poor boy. You’ve done pretty well. What’s the secret? How’d you get the dough to open this place? Paoli help you out?”

Castillo smiled wryly, then cleared his throat, leaned over the wastebasket, and spit. “The difference, you and me? That’s a good question. Maybe we both make some money, but I keep mine, I invest, I watch it get bigger. What do you do with your money? Maybe give it away, huh?”

“Who told you that? Madeline?”

Hickey waited for a nod, a pronoun, any excuse to slam Castillo against the wall, rattle his head like a speedbag instead of sitting here playing patty cake. The Cuban didn’t bite. “Nobody tol’ me. A guess, it’s all.”

Hickey cleaned his pipe with the golf tee he carried, tapped the briar on the ashtray, finished his drink. He stood and donned his hat. “Clyde and I are gonna audition singers, hire a new one, and get rid of Martino. If that means we get no more beef at all, what the hell, we’ll specialize in tuna salad. And I’m gonna start nosing around, talking to folks about Sozzani, Montenegro, their associates.”

“You and this cop got it wrong, Tom. You go asking around, you see. Tell me something, huh? If I’m a gangster, why I need you for my partner?

“Maybe it looked like good cover, working with an old cop, a guy who’s mostly upright, but he’s hungry for loot. Or maybe it’s just you’re stupid. Or how about this—it’d give you an excuse to come knocking on my door, visiting the family.” He rounded the desk, patted Castillo’s shoulder, and grasped the doorknob. “While I’m nosing around, keep yourself a good, safe distance from…what’s her name? My wife?”

The Cuban sneered. Hickey walked out, told Phil to run things, call him at home if a problem arose. The maître d’ gave a nod and patient smile.

“Yeah,” Hickey said. “I know. If this keeps up, I’m gonna have to promote you to manager and double your pay.”

***

There were lots of bonfires around the bay. From Santa Clara Point and across Mission Boulevard between the ballroom and the tent city, skyrockets whizzed up a couple hundred feet and fizzled. Hickey reached home before nine, in time for dessert with Madeline and Elizabeth, one of the pies they’d bought in Julian. His girls both looked flushed and dreamy, as if they’d gotten too much sun that day. After dessert Elizabeth returned to designing pastel swimsuits on a drawing pad. Hickey phoned Clyde McGraw at his apartment, asked him to pass the word they were auditioning singers tomorrow afternoon.

For an hour or so Hickey sat on the sofa, Madeline leaning against him, Elizabeth on the floor, while they listened to the radio. To “Dreamland,” which tonight featured an anthology of the Dorsey brothers’ orchestras, and the ten o’clock news. The Nazis, in their push toward Stalingrad, had gotten driven back fifteen miles. Fourteen thousand, five hundred Germans were reported slain. The recent murder of a tycoon in Chicago had been attributed to gangsters. Sugar Ray Robinson was named boxer of the year. Finally Elizabeth staggered off to bed.

Hickey stroked his wife’s hair. “Let’s take a stroll. Out to the pier?”

“Naw, Tom. I’m ready for the sheets.” She crooked her neck to look at him, noticed the resolve in his eyes. “Our pier, right?”

“Yeah.”

She got up and went for her slippers and housecoat. Hickey took her hand, opened the door. They crossed the beach and shuffled to the end of the pier. The tide was low, the water glassy with hardly a ripple. Tiny swells whispered against the pilings. Sitting with his feet on the bench of his rowboat, Hickey said, “Thrapp’s not buying my story. It’s a chance they might haul me back to Denver. The cops up there are still interrogating witnesses.”

Madeline squeezed his hand tighter. She kept kicking her foot as though splashing water, brushing his ankle. “What’re the witnesses gonna say, Tom?”

He reached his free hand across and patted her hair. “I doubt anybody but me saw Donny’s gun.” The last couple words had quavered from a shudder that passed through him. He sat waiting for Madeline to let go of his hand, get up, and walk away, to go off by herself and sort through things. Instead, she rested her head on his shoulder. He stroked her hair. “Remember when I came back you said Thrapp mentioned something about a gang war?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Here’s what he suspects—that Castillo’s part of a New Jersey gang, working for Angelo Paoli. So, on account of Donny and I go back a long ways, and the Cuban knows Donny’s Schwartz’s toughest boy, and Schwartz answers to the Hollywood mob that’s got its eyes on the same territory Paoli wants, he offers me a bundle to pop Katoulis.”

“Who does?”

“Castillo.”

“Paul Castillo paid you to kill Donny Katoulis. That’s what the captain thinks?”

“It’s what he’s saying.”

“Jesus, Tom, that’s insane.” Her arm and shoulder lay rigid against him. She pinched his fingers.

“Will you do something for me, babe?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Stay away from Castillo—don’t even play tennis with the guy.”

Her hand went limp. She lifted her head, looked across the bay, started kicking her foot in the air again. “You got anything on Paul, Tom? Anything but rumors?”

“Not so far, but I’m looking. How about it?”

For a minute or so, nothing in the world made as much racket as the thud of Hickey’s heart against his rib cage. “All right,” she whispered. “Let’s go in now.” She let go of his hand, got up, and walked a step ahead of him, taking long, slow strides as if her destination were a place she hated to go, but she’d vowed to go anyway.

In bed Hickey fitted himself against her backside, and she wriggled to make the fit snug as could be. Her skin felt dry and cool. He wrapped his arms around her waist. She folded her arms over his. He listened to her breathing grow soft and regular. Every minute or so he kissed her somewhere. The neck. Her ear. Her cheek. Finally he rolled away from her, lay on his back, and watched the moon shadow on the curtain, thinking of all the ruined lives. Henry Tucker. Mr. Murphy. Will Lashlee. Emma Vidal. Cynthia, barring a miracle. They made him feel queasy, vulnerable as a bicyclist crossing the highway at rush hour. Everything you’d worked a lifetime for could instantly flash away.

He rolled onto his back, felt as if he were sinking through dark water, groping for a hand to redeem him. His chest tightened, the room began to whirl, and suddenly he remembered Mr. Bair’s offer—Emma’s half of everything he owned.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Nine singers had been waiting in front of Rudy’s at 3:00
P.M.
Over the next half hour while the band members straggled in, a few more arrived. All flouncy, restless girls.

Clyde McGraw sat in a booth with Hickey, twisting the ends of his mustache, tapping his fingers in 6/8 time. He’d appointed Swede the clarinetist to conduct the orchestra. The singers ranged around the room, each performing her nervous routine. One stared at her image in a compact and dabbed on rouge. Another hitched up her nylons. A stump-legged, buxom girl paced like a stilt artist on her six-inch heels. The oldest of them, dressed in tight pants and sweater, leaned against a wall chewing on a clump of her hair.

Two perky sisters auditioned first. They’d come prepared to sing duets, but Clyde wanted soloists, so each did a number of her own. One sang “Sunny Side of the Street” dolefully. The other crooned “Deep Purple,” wiggling as if she’d stepped on an anthill. Of the next few auditioners, one had a cute but trilly voice that probably would enchant young sailors while reminding the admirals and bankers who frequented Rudy’s of their daughters and send them running home; another looked as if her cheeks were stuffed with cookies; the prettiest, a slinky brunette, sounded operatic.

Number nine was Carline Biggs, a mulatto with soft, wavy hair, somebody Hickey’d watched a few months before in the Blue Note on Market Street. She’d been singing with Earl Watson’s group, a Negro quartet. Hickey remembered thinking how she’d fit better fronting a big band. She looked too proud and domineering for the quartet, like she ought to have a brigade of musicians behind her, more concerned with showing her off than with taking their solos.

Clyde gave Hickey a dubious glance. “Who invited her?”

“Beats me,” Hickey said. “Word gets around.”

She led off with “Mood Indigo.” Her voice was silky, tinted with gloom. One of the girls still waiting gave up and left. She might’ve noticed Hickey fold his arms behind his head, lean back, and give Clyde a nod. This one had the range, the tone, the poise and beauty. A couple bars and it didn’t matter if she were a mix of Negro, Siamese, and polar bear—she could draw in the fellows, get them longing, make them want to drown in booze. All she lacked was the magic that convinced every man she was singing to him. She wasn’t Cynthia Moon.

Clyde called out to Swede and rolled his hand. Swede conferred with Carline, got the key she wanted, then cued the orchestra to “Moonglow.”

Hickey leaned over to McGraw. “If you rehearse her every afternoon, maybe one day off, think you could lose Martino by Monday?”

Clyde crooked his lips and nose sideways, wagged his chin. “I don’t know about this one, Tom.”

“What’s the problem?”

“You don’t have to ask, man, ’less you’re color-blind.”

“No offense, pal, but she’s a shade lighter than you.”

Clyde looked her over once more. “About the same, but she can’t hardly pass with those lips and that behind.”

“You think when you and Johnny tell folks you come from Saint Croix, half of them don’t figure that’s a street in Harlem?”

“Long as they hire us. Tom, maybe if I was Count this or Duke that, all the ritzy joints would do us the honor. But my name’s Clyde, and I got a white band.”

The cigarette girl, who’d just come in, still wearing the coat over her tutu, appeared and tapped Hickey’s shoulder. “There’s a guy wants to see you, boss.”

Hickey nodded, turned back to Clyde. “Fine. When you leave Rudy’s, dump her. Meantime, give her a bunch of Cynthia’s numbers.” He got up, rounded the booth, spotted the man at the bar. He was leaning backward, both elbows on the rail. He hadn’t checked his hat or coat. A cop, judging from the impudent frown. Hickey’s fists clenched, eyes blurred. He felt the plane lifting off, carrying him to Denver.

The man straightened up and stepped forward. Another young fellow who’d sidestepped the military and was hustling up the abandoned ladder. Already made detective. Medium build. Cool, dark, heavy-browed eyes. He didn’t offer his hand. “You Tom Hickey?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Detective Sergeant Ripperger.”

“What town?”

The cop scowled as though Hickey were toying with him. “What do you think? Tokyo?”

Hickey caught his breath, let his shoulders drop from where they’d been squashing his ears. “Thrapp send you?”

“You determined to ask all the questions, or do I get a chance?”

“Sorry. Habit,” Hickey said.

The cop plucked a notebook from inside his overcoat, browsed a page to refresh his memory. “Seems a couple weeks ago…That’d be December seventeenth, Thursday. A guy that looks about like you was driving a 1941 Chevrolet happens to be registered to you, harassed and threatened a motorist, couple blocks from here. Out on Broadway.”

Hickey tried not to snicker, couldn’t manage.

“Think it’s pretty cute, do you?”

Waving a hand toward the office, Hickey led the way. Inside, he shut the door, sat on the desk, left the cop standing beside the coatrack. “I gotta tell you, pal. In the last couple weeks—first my singer disappeared, I tailed her up north. Then a fellow sends me to Denver on a bodyguard job. A louse gets shot and I spend the night in jail. Come home, I lose my singer
and
meat supplier. My wife and I are squabbling. Now you stroll in, remind me I yelled at this horn-blowing fool. Come on, Sergeant. Laugh.”

The detective barked a couple times. “Okay, now we got that out of our systems, I’d suggest you devise a way to get the horn blower to drop charges.”

“I’ll apologize. Give me his number.”

“Naw. Suppose you go over there and sock him? My pretty ass gets burned.”

“Okay. I drop a letter by your office, you pass it on. Who do I address it to? Dear horn blower?”

“That’ll do.”

Hickey walked Ripperger out, shook his hand at the door. “Come back off duty, Sergeant. I’ll set you up with dinner and drinks, for two, for your trouble.”

The cop wagged his head. “I don’t hang around any mob joint. Bring me the letter tomorrow.”

Hickey sat staring out the door long after the sergeant had vanished, sorting through the mix of dismay and fury that was gnawing at him. Finally he wheeled and grabbed the phone. Dialed the Playroom. The Pacific Ballroom. The Del Mar Club. Castillo didn’t answer the pages, and nobody’d seen him. Hickey’d started out to the bar for a scotch when the phone rang.

“Person to person for Mr. Tom Hickey.”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

Fay Giles’ voice rasped urgently. “Have I got news.”

“I’m listening.”

“Sheriff Poole suggested I call you, but I would’ve anyway. Mr. Hickey, a forestry man was driving up Black Forest Road when he met the swami. Their master. You know. He was staggering down the mountain, Joe Kraft said. At first he didn’t recognize him, almost passed by thinking it was a drunken hobo. Oh God, this is horrid.…The man was delirious.”

“The forestry guy?”

“No. The master. They’d bound his hands behind him. That’s how Joe knew something was wrong.” She muffled the phone.

“Who’d bound his hands? You there?”

“I’m here. I don’t know. There was blood on his trousers. Joe got him into the bed of his truck and rushed him to Doctor O’Day. Oh Christ, Mister Hickey, I knew those people were devils, but…”

Hickey rapped on the desk a dozen times. “Yeah. But what?”

“…There were wounds on his thighs and his torso as if they’d beaten him and…someone had tied off his…scrotum, with a band of rawhide. Of course Doctor O’Day tore it off. But not in time.” She muffled the phone once again, returned with a groan. “Mister Hickey. They castrated him.”

“Whoa,” Hickey muttered. He squirmed from a cramp in the pit of his stomach.

“Do you believe anybody could…”

“You don’t know who did it?”

“No, how could we? The sheriff’s on his way to the Black Forest now. I’ll call you later.”

Hickey let her go, resumed his walk to the bar, knocked down two shots of Dewar’s. He thought of phoning Mr. Bair with the news, but to gloat over somebody losing his nuts seemed too foul. Even when the nuts were Pravinshandra’s.

Just after eight, when Billy Martino took the stage, Hickey turned the place over to Phil, promised him twenty dollars more each week.

On the drive home, until he was rounding the bay, he noticed nothing. Not his speed, or whether he ran any stop signs, or whether he almost careened off the Ingraham Street bridge into the bay. All he saw were visions of hands with painted fingernails tying a rawhide thong around the master’s scrotum. He even heard the man screaming, clearly as though it were broadcast over his radio.

Dark mist had erased the moon and stars. Tonight the bay looked miles deep and blue-black, treacherous. He didn’t expect his house to be dark, for Madeline to have gone out, at least without calling him at Rudy’s. She’d left a note on the kitchen counter:

He felt mildly annoyed with Madeline but vicious toward whatever chance or fate had snatched her away at this moment when he ached to hold her, hear a gentle voice, find a little assurance that life contained at least a trace of normalcy. He changed to old dungarees, a sweater, and a USC baseball cap. He sprawled on the living room sofa beside the bay-view window, propped himself on a pillow and the armrest so he could look out, reached over his head for the
Tribune
on the end table, and glanced at headlines.

REDS CLAIM
22
NAZI DIVISIONS PENNED IN TRAP
—

German toll 116,000 dead in 11 days

OFFICIALS HINT EARLY RATIONING OF CANNED FOOD

That afternoon in the Pro Bowl, the Redskins had gotten trounced by the National Football League’s all-stars. Dagwood was sleeping on the couch, dreaming of wood nymphs, and because Mickey had called his home a castle, Goofy built a moat around his house to discourage his creditors. Gene Krupa would be at the Pacific for New Year’s Eve. As soon as Madeline got home, Hickey’d promise to call in a favor, hustle them up front seats.

He rose and grabbed a pair of oars from where he stored them in the corner of the sleeping porch. He crossed the beach to his pier, unleashed the rowboat, and climbed in. The first quarter mile he rowed strong, straight out; then he angled toward Crown Point, following a track of moonlight. The water looked dark and thick as motor oil. He passed not a single bird or fish jumping. Not a single shoreline house had left the curtain open to its Christmas tree. He rowed in bursts and drifted between, again picturing the mutilation of Pravinshandra, but also worrying, pondering matters from the odds of his being summoned back to Denver to the dumping of sewage in the bay. Anything to fend off doubts about Madeline. He kept looking up, spotting his house, waiting for a light to flick on.

The house was still dark when he tied up the boat. He went inside, to the bookshelf in the dining area, chose a history of China from the books he’d been collecting since his reading time got swallowed by obligations at Rudy’s. He lay in the hammock, read the first page several times, and listened to cars on Pacific Beach Drive, waiting for the one that would deliver Madeline. About half past ten, a car pulled onto the gravel of Parker Place. Hickey sat up and listened, recognized the voice of his neighbors, a pair of sisters who both taught at Pacific Beach School. He lay back down, read for another hour. Three pages.

He was in the bathroom when the next car turned onto the gravel. It stopped beside their carport. A loud man said, “Three and a quarter.” A minute later the cab backed away. Madeline’s heels clicked across the concrete.

Hickey met her in the kitchen. She looked radiant, young enough to be Elizabeth’s girlfriend, wearing the burgundy sweater and the diamond ring he’d given her for Christmas, a white, snug-fitting skirt and pumps with medium heels.

“Been home long?” she asked.

“Yeah. You gonna sing for the old dames?”

“They want me to. Mrs. Thorndike had her son play that new Johnny Mercer tune, ‘Tangerine.’ It’s kind of cute. I gave it this sultry mood, like I was this jealous broad. Tom, you look a little peaked.”

As he told her about the phone call from Dunsmuir, Madeline staggered toward the living room and flopped onto the sofa. Hickey sat beside her. When the story was done, she reached over and fondled him, extra gently. Her hands felt steaming.

“Imagine,” she whispered.

“Naw,” Hickey said. “I don’t want to.”