Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 01 (21 page)

Mexican soldiers drew beads on the heads of Indians and Indians aimed back at them, while almost everybody cussed loudly and shouted threats and challenges.

Hickey got halfway to the crest idling the big Chrysler at five mph. From eight guys in that car, the only sounds were Santiago’s muted squawling. A couple of words sounded French but the rest were too slurred to tell. The men at the windows held tightly to their guns. Those in the middle, and Hickey, pressed forward, staring through the windshield at the M-4 Sherman tank. With its 75-mm gun and the three machine guns below, it looked like a battleship on top of the hill.

Suddenly the big gun turreted right. Hickey stomped on the brakes. The Cadillac behind knocked them a good jolt, drove them ten feet up the hill. The tank’s tracks moved. Stopped. Inched forward.

The monster turned right—and crawled away into the field.

Chapter Twenty-eight

As the tangerine limo took off like a missile over the crest of the hill, the whole motorcade sped after it. With whoops, prayers, battle cries, blasts on the horn, they flew out of Las Lomas, swung left, and zoomed like a hot-rod funeral down Avenida Revolución, a straight shot of two miles to the river bridge. Some Kickapoos broke out rum, bread, oranges they’d swiped, passed the loot around for inspection, and laughed like the next stop was paradise. In all the cars, Indians chattered and dreamed about the farms, machines, and women they’d buy.

But Tom Hickey just drove, smoking his last brown cigarette, looking out for an ambush while he tried to figure what had saved them. What had made the Feds and Army act reasonably? Why the Mex officers had allied with gringos and Indians against their own kind.

Finally he slapped the dashboard then switched on the radio beside him. “You there, Leopold?”

“Just across the river, Tom.”

“Swell. Say, you know what got us outa there?”

“Sure. I figure it was Cárdenas. Means he’s on the level.”

“You bet.”

“Some damn general he is, too. Let us handle all his dirty work, break up the coup, deliver his boys a ton of gold.”

“Yep. We played to his hand, like dopes. And all we got to show for it is a million or so.”

“Damn shame. Say, how much you figure he knew about del Monte?”

“Probably a bunch,” Hickey said.

“So, why’d he let it go on so long?”

“Figured he oughta wait till they did something besides talk and hocus-pocus. That’d be my guess. Suppose he had it under his thumb, like Finnegan said, ready to squash ’em the second they made their move. If it was like that, it was him that gave us half the gold.”

“Swell guy. Think I’ll invite him over to dinner.”

After a minute, when Hickey didn’t talk back, Leo said, “You okay, Tom? Something bothering you?”

“Yeah. The girl.”

“Aw, some guys never learn.”

He thought about the girl while they raced through downtown past Indians scavenging through the gutters and sidewalk litter, into and out of the acrid smells, alongside the nightclubs where pimps and whores stood beneath rotting signs and broken windows, hustling even in the last hour before dawn. When they turned toward the river and the town receded behind them, as he saw it in the rearview mirror, Hickey mused—TJ was some place. It had everything. As if it spanned the border between heaven and hell. In TJ a guy might find his precious dream dancing on the same stage with his nightmare. One side of a street might be stacked with tons of garbage while across the street lay a mountain of gold. This place had it all. Terrible, wondrous, obscene. Anything you could dream, all the world was there, usually standing naked, sometimes in disguise.

Fords and limos raced over the bridge, tooting horns and waving at the shantytown until naked kids and women wrapped in threadbare serapes crawled out from the jacales and from beneath derelict cars with eyes so bright you could see them shining all that way.

Hickey pulled his limo up in front of Coco’s Licores. He jumped out beside a bus driver and a laborer who’d been standing there, and offered them each a pistol and twenty dollars for an errand—to deliver seven prisoners to the border and tell an old Chinese gringo to throw these wetbacks in a cage, since Tom Hickey’d caught them trying to jump the line.

When he’d gotten all the prisoners out and marching, Hickey thought about a pint of mescal, to celebrate. Except he didn’t want to celebrate. He wanted peace.

He waved. The tangerine limo shot across the road. It led the way, bounding on a trail up Otay mesa.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Forty-two miles inland, a mile north of the border, not far off the Campo-to-Tecate road, Hickey’s gang rested. The oak log cabin belonged to a friend of Leo. Twenty men squeezed into the one room crowded with gold and smelling like an old wild dog. Leo had to drag the trunk he sat on to the window. Then, on his clipboard and paper, he scribbled the name and tribe of each Indian, before letting him grab some big stuff, or a half-lunch box full of coins and jewelry out of the open trunk. Outside, the Indian bundled his gold into a gunny sack or stashed it in one of the limos or cars that waited in the pasture.

Hickey sat in the dirt beneath an oak, leaning back, feeling as loose as a sober man could. He watched the Indians. Now and then he got a vision that rushed back from last night. For a while he crumpled and tossed up some dry oak leaves and watched the specks drift a few yards on the spent wind and fall. He smoked a cigarette and daydreamed of Elizabeth.

The two of them stood on the patio of a swank nightclub. Havana sparkled across the bay. Inside, the orchestra struck up a tango rhythm. Elizabeth wore a gold tiara, a slinky dress, gold bracelet and rings, a gold mesh necklace. Stunning. A princess. Like Madeline used to be. Except his daughter’s lips had an uppity turn. Convinced of her charm, with a steady gaze, she turned toward the ballroom as two gentlemen came strutting her way. They made Hickey want to puke.

About fifty feet away, in the backseat of the tangerine limo, Tito and Malu sat cuddling. He’d already packed his gold in the trunk. After Leo, he’d gotten first pick and taken candleholders, vases, a few nude figurines, a gold rosary, two large pockets full of coins. Now he sat with a hand up Malu’s frock, on her thigh, dreaming of a classy four-room house in Matamoros. He felt her fingers tighten on his arm and wondered if maybe he should leave her behind. Already she looked plenty older than last night, with puffy eyes and her makeup running. But she’d be a hot one, better than the putas who were all he’d known since El Mofeto carved out his eye with the razor-sharp point of a switchblade.

He’d drive to a hidden place and wait and have this Malu rubbing his huevos all day. Then at dark, he’d feel safer—what you think about when you’re going to cross a thousand miles of borderland in a stolen limo with a trunk full of gold. Good thing a couple of those tough Yaquis would be riding with him. His Yaquis sat on the hood of the limo. One of them kept looking inside over his shoulder. Finally Tito pried himself away from Malu and jumped out, told the Yaquis to get off his car, before they scratched the paint, and make ready to leave in a minute or two. He walked around some cars, squatted next to Hickey.

“What you did with your gold, General?”

“Didn’t get it yet. Later.”

Tito looked the man over. He didn’t like the way Hickey’s eyes wandered—when he used to stare right at you. “Boss, you feeling sick?”

“Naw. I feel swell.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Lay off,” Hickey snapped. “When I don’t eat, I get a little dizzy, maybe.”

From his pocket Tito pulled a Hershey bar and a bag of peanuts. Hickey only took the peanuts. He ripped the bag and chomped a big handful while the cabbie scrutinized him, and finally said, with a shy smile, “You know, maybe someday I going to have this son, call him Heecky Pacheco.”

Hickey blushed at that one. Tito donned his sunglasses, stood up, unwrapped the Hershey bar. He munched and promised that when he got to Matamoros he’d write down his address and send it to the place on el Weiss’ business card. Because Hickey better come to Matamoros pretty soon, to meet the wildest chicas in Sonora.

“Maybe when I get out of the Army,” Hickey said.

“Army? Man, you know, they going to hear what we did, and they going to make you a general maybe with four stars, and probably they send you for an invasion. I think Tokyo.”

“Ugh.” Hickey chuckled and yawned. “You better scram.”

“Okay. I’m going now. And you better get your gold, boss, or the pinche Indios will steal it all.”

He walked off, hollering to the Yaquis. In a minute the limo bounded away across the field. Hickey wadded the peanut sack, tossed it into the breeze, leaned back against the oak, and shut his eyes.

He saw Wendy, in a blue sleeveless dress, sitting in a pile of leaves beside a redwood tree where a streak of sunlight angled through the shadows. Her hands and fingers made a little dance on the side of her face.

A motor fired. Springs creaked and metal scraped the ground. A Cadillac and limo pulled away—the rest of the Yaquis heading east. Hickey slapped his head, looked around, and saw that the Olmecs and Kickapoos had already gone—maybe he’d dozed off awhile. The only Indians left were the Otomis standing near the cabin. All six of them. He wondered why they weren’t inside grabbing their gold. So he got up, walked past the smiling, sad-faced Otomis, and stepped inside.

The only gold left was in one trunk. Leo was on his knees sorting through it. He sifted the coins and jewelry that looked most valuable, piled that left of the trunk, and put the stuff that only looked worth its weight on the right. He looked up at Hickey. “About time you give me a hand here, loafer.”

“What’re you doing?”

“Plucking out your share and getting the coins for the little fellas out there. They gotta have small bundles, since they’re riding the bus home.”

“Got a smoke?”

Leo took out his Luckys, lit one, passed it to Hickey, and grumbled, “My back’s sore as hell.”

“Go on, take a walk. I’ll finish up here.”

After Leo trudged out, Hickey knelt in front of the trunk and looked at the treasure. He picked up a heart-shaped locket. He saw it on a gold chain against Wendy’s skin above her breasts. It looked splendid—but when he gazed up to her face, her mouth twitched and her eyes closed against the terror. Then he saw Zarp lying naked and blubbery atop her on that golden bed. Her hands reached for the sky. Finally he remembered the altar in Hell, as Wendy stepped to it, threw back the sleeves of the scarlet robe, and lifted her arms. A big golden knife fell, into George’s heart.

Hickey growled, spat, shook his head, and commanded his mind not to wander so far. Then he thought of sending Elizabeth a pile of money that Castillo or Madeline couldn’t get their mitts on. Maybe having her own would turn her away from the snobs. She might delight him, do something fine like give a heap of money to somebody who needed it. But he knew her better—she was more like Madeline than anybody in the world, and Madeline would never leave the snobs. She needed to feel singled out that way, like one of the chosen.

Hickey’d known plenty of rich guys, but only a few he could bear. It’d take a giant, he figured, to get rich yet stay true.

For a while he stared at the treasure and thought about where it came from. Finally he grabbed a handful of coins and small jewelry, held it there over the trunk, feeling mean, low as Paul Castillo. Only worse. Not just a thief, a murderer too.

He knelt, rapping a knee on the floor, breathing smoke, haunted by at least nine dead people. Maybe eleven. And two madmen, El Mofeto and old del Monte, who probably weren’t so crazy before. He dropped the junk and stared where it fell until the cigarette burned down to his fingers. Suddenly he jumped up and booted the trunk—in three kicks the side gave in and collapsed under a pile of gold trinkets. Then he grabbed up the bust of some old dame and heaved it against the wall. Finally, seeing he couldn’t break the stuff, he turned and stomped outside.

Around back of the cabin in the oaks, he found Leo pissing. When he started to talk, nothing came out. He steadied himself against a tree and rasped, “I got what I wanted outa there. Go take some more, for what I owe you, and enough to pay Smythe and Boyle. Give the rest to these Indians.”

Quickly he turned and walked away, as a high, silky voice like Madeline’s came out of nowhere, saying, “Tom, oh God, you’re such a loser.” His step faltered, like something was pulling him back toward the gold. It took all his will to move his legs toward the limo.

The limo would give him a thousand or two. It’d be a start. That was all he wanted. He dropped to the cushiony seat behind the wheel and watched Leo amble over.

When his partner gave him a nod of understanding, put a hand on his shoulder, told him to wise up and take his fair share, Hickey said, “Okay then, grab me something that’ll bring a few grand. But do like I say with the rest. Just get me enough so I won’t feel like a perfect chump.”

“You sure oughta feel like that.”

Hickey shouted, “Do like I say, huh.”

Leo jerked back his hand, took a step away, and stood there with his face scrunched up like at a bad joke. “You’re acting like a nut, Tom.”

“I got my reasons.” Hickey turned the key. Pushed the starter. Threw the limo in gear. “I’ll tell you all about ’em someday.”

Chapter Thirty

From the window of his cell, you could look over the warehouse across the street and see the tops of a dozen battleships with masts like oil derricks, crows nests on top above the highest big guns, and the stars and stripes flying everywhere around the harbor. Sometimes a B-24 taking off from Lindbergh Field, or a seaplane lifting off from the harbor, shuddered across the sky.

Leo had brought him a new pipe, a good Kentucky briar, a pound of Walter Raleigh, a stack of books.
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Undercover
, a new book about Nazis on the home front; Bernal Diaz’s
Discovery and Conquest of Mexico
.

There’d be plenty of time to read, once the guards quit pestering him. They kept nosing around, asking to hear his story. The WAC typists looked in on him, bright-eyed. All the brig personnel treated the old, busted private like a hero, on account of the rumors that with a few pachucos he’d wiped out a company of Nazi troopers on their way to a hit-and-run attack on Ream Field. Hickey didn’t straighten them out. The less the Army knew the better. So far, they’d only charged him with AWOL.

The San Diego cops, where Hickey and Leo had friends, didn’t care a damn about what they’d done in Mexico. And nobody down there had called to gripe. The del Montes, Zarp, and the rest had got sent home after a couple days. Old Santiago couldn’t talk a word of sense anymore. He’d kept shouting his mixed-up language and he’d got lost in time—he spent whole nights in jail screaming at his dead mother. Zarp, with his head and face wrapped in bandages, seemed a changed man, quiet, lost—maybe building a world of his own somewhere, like Wendy did. And since Boyle decided not to charge Hickey with kidnapping, on account of they were old friends, he said, and there was no use stirring up the past, it looked like Hickey might get out of this joint someday. For now, he only wished the window was bigger, sunnier, that they’d let him send out for grub to the Pier Five Diner, and allow him visitors, one anyway.

But nobody got all he wanted. And that was okay. Life would be smooth enough if he could just quit thinking about that money.

Leo had paid his debts, got him the bayside cottage back for what the flyboy had paid him plus five hundred, and dropped seven thousand into a bank account for him. Sometimes he felt like a thieving mercenary. But it was only a tenth of what Leo and Tito had bagged, a twentieth of what he could’ve grabbed. He wondered if he’d done right. Not about the killing. All that blood, those years somebody wouldn’t get to see—he’d be grieving that a long while. But the money—if he should’ve kept his share—that was the puzzle. He tried to remember his reasons. Maybe he’d gotten too tired, forgot to eat, and fatigue or something had kayo’d his mind—a million dollars’ worth. He wondered so much it made his guts churn.

The only escape was to think about the good—how ten days ago it seemed he’d failed perfectly, played every note until it went flat, and left himself sapped, wasted, powerless to turn anything around. He’d let everybody down, even his own little girl. Then Wendy appeared.

Which gave him plenty more to think about. Like how does a guy his age handle a nineteen-year-old doll who can hardly read, who thinks like a kid, and who, every time she gets spooked, flies up into the heavens. He figured he must be a sleaze, a pervert, considering a few urges he’d gotten about her. He couldn’t decide what to do with her. Send her to a nunnery or asylum? Find somebody else to take her? Or play like her dad, teaching her modesty, manners, and such, then marry her off to some kid? He couldn’t feature any of that.

There seemed no end to questions but hardly any answers. Still, what to do with a beautiful, innocent girl who’s devoted to you—Hickey knew he shouldn’t bitch too loud about having to solve that one. Besides, he didn’t need to rush. She’d room with Leo for the duration. After the war they could go up to Tahoe and spend a summer building Wendy a house on that lot she owned. Fishing for rainbows. Walking on the beach, swimming until they got numb. Climbing the high peaks and looking down at the lake on one side, desert on the other. Maybe they’d get a little sailboat.

But damn, he thought. You’re almost forty. In a couple of years your chest will sag, eyes droop, teeth cave in. Your glasses will get an inch thick, and your little scraggle of hair might turn gray. Almost forty, he thought, and so far a map of your life would look like a two-year-old’s scribbling. All you need is to go off playing house with the kid. She’ll either bore you crazy or run out and leave you a bitter, nasty old fool.

***

Toward evening on Thursday, six days after the battle, a lieutenant allowed Hickey the visitor he wanted.

She came into the brig on Leo’s arm. When Hickey heard the old man’s voice out there, he jumped to the bars and tried to get a look through the door. It was nearly closed. But Leo said her name. A minute later they stepped in, behind a guard and his keys. Out in the lobby an MP whistled. A different guy yapped, “What a babe!”

As they walked toward the cell, Wendy’s free hand covered her eyes. The guard used his key and the door creaked open. Wendy let go of Leo, dropped her other hand, and seemed to float into the cell. She stood there in Magda’s yellow dress with butterflies, with her lip slightly raised on the left side, and her hands out halfway toward him. Her eyes wandered all around before they caught Hickey’s straight on. They stopped and sparkled. Flecked with gold. They didn’t even blink anymore.

She wanted to say something. But first Hickey stepped near and wrapped his arms around her waist. He pulled her so close her breath came out a sigh. Just one note that moved him like a whole symphony. Sure as hell, he wasn’t going to leave her.