Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 01 (4 page)

Chapter Six

The limo spewed mud, pulling away. They bounded up the hill, crossed Revolución, and stopped at the telephone office on Calle Cinco where Hickey struggled with the language and finally got a line across the border, to his partner. He asked Leo to check out this del Monte and to help figure an angle he could use on the Tijuana police, either the locals or the Federales.

When Leo talked back, he sounded underwater. “Ha. Where you been, son? You can’t scare ’em, can’t blackmail ’em, if they steal right out front. All you can use on a Mex is in your billfold.”

After the call, Hickey asked the clerk for a listing on Juan Metzger. There was no private phone, only a message number, at Groceria La Portal, on a road Hickey knew was out past the Playas.

He walked outside and stood in the drizzle grumbling. Four days without sun. He thought of one more drink but his watch read 3:20; he wanted to make another stop before looking up this Metzger, and at 6:00 his duty began.

The police station was a rickety wooden building in the shadow of the Jai Lai palace and the bull ring at the south end of town, two miles from the border, at the foot of Las Lomas where the big shots lived. Cops sat on the long front porch, glaring at the rain, then at Hickey.

Inside were Indians, refugees, all kinds of poor, evil, or luckless folks slumped in chairs or resting on the floor. Some waited for sons or brothers to be released. Others loitered there, out of the storm. The room smelled like pestilence, as if you’d find dead people swept into the corners. Hickey stepped to the desk, gave the clerk a dollar, and asked to see the chief. Soon a fat, bleached secretary cooed, “Señor.”

She clutched his arm and led him to the office where Chief Buscamente sat on his desk, wearing a cowboy shirt, a Stetson, and a big pistol on his hip. He was lean, smooth, all Spaniard. From the cocky lips and squinting eyes, Hickey made him as the kind of joker always wanting to help you play the fool. He gestured Hickey to a stuffed chair. Offered a cigarette.

Hickey lit up and started talking. The chief listened intently to Hickey’s version of the story Clifford had told on the way to San Diego the night before, about this backward girl being tricked and hustled over the border, and turning up onstage at the Club de Paris. “So her brother tried to get to her, and the bouncers worked him over.”

Buscamente dragged on his cigarette. “This is a terrible thing, you know. I think the brother is a mean one. He beats her too much. Or does something worse to her, huh? That’s what you think too, no?”

Hickey riled, tapped his foot on the floor until it seemed he could speak without yelling. “The brother’s a good kid. I’ll give big odds he doesn’t hit ladies. It’s those caballeros at the Club de Paris who got her scared to death. Maybe on dope. Anyway, she’s a prisoner there.”

The chief leaned back and blew smoke, nodding earnestly. “Ah, now I see what you think. You must be a smart one to figure all this out. And you are the police from someplace. And you got a badge and everything, no? And that makes it okay for you shooting this hombre last night at the Club de Paris?”

After he cringed then recovered, Hickey took out his wallet, passed the joker his investigator’s license, slowly brought out fifty dollars and held it between them.

But the chief dropped his hands to his sides. His face lunged forward. Hickey scowled—that way he wouldn’t blush—and put the money away. “Look, the brother needs help, so we’ll pay.”

The chief walked to the door, put his hand on the knob, and said harshly, “How much do you pay, Señor?”

“Say, five hundred when you bring us the girl.”

With a hiss, Buscamente opened the door and motioned for Hickey to pass. “This brother, this good kid, maybe he don’t tell you about the murder she does. Now, you are going to stay on your side of the line. I’m giving you a big favor, see. Then you call me next week. Comprendes?”

The cop didn’t get an answer. And when Hickey started to ask about this murder he’d accused Wendy of, with a final glower the chief said, “Ask the brother,” and slammed his door.

Hickey left his business card with the fat secretary. “
Por el jefe
,” he said. Then he walked through the miserable crowd, out into the rain, ducked into the cab and gave Tito the address he had for Juan Metzger, southwest of TJ, between the coast road and the inland route to Playa Rosarito.

They clattered over about ten miles of gravel road all the way around Las Lomas, through olive groves and cotton fields, past a brick foundry, an orphanage, cattle ranches, and the headquarters of Cárdenas’ army—a base of Quonset huts, corrals full of horses, dirt lots jammed with trucks, cannon, artillery, a few tanks, a biplane taxiing along the dirt runway and two others gathering dust.

Hickey smoked his pipe, thought about the girl and murder. Sure, you couldn’t always tell from looking which guy was a killer. But he’d bet this Wendy Rose couldn’t be. There was no hardness to her, no masks. You could read all the feelings in her eyes, expressions, gestures, in the moves of her body. He thought she was the kind who’d cry about a run-over dog or from watching newsreels about the war. That cop had been blowing smoke, was all, playing for time.

One the west side of Las Lomas, at Groceria El Portal, they turned up Calle Huerta. Metzger’s place was a middle-sized stucco, three or four rooms, flat-roofed, painted bright green. In the yard were citrus and avocado trees, a cactus garden, no goats, chickens, or pariah dogs. A middle-class neighborhood, rare as a blizzard in Mexico. There were screens on the windows and a screened front door. Hickey knocked at it.

A beauty appeared. Young, tall, a little stocky yet with good curves, and slender, with angular features like a Yaqui or Aztec, along with Spanish grace and hot eyes that met Hickey’s straight on, telling him she was protecting somebody, or something.

Hickey asked for Juan Metzger. She opened the screen door cautiously, looked beyond him to the street. In perfect English she introduced herself as Consuelo Metzger. She ushered him to one of two padded chairs, and disappeared. Besides the chairs, a small table and desk were the only furnishings. Nothing on the walls. Two children peeked around a corner. Finally Juan Metzger stepped in.

He was a smallish, pink-faced, bulb-nosed man. He could’ve played the butcher or baker in a Dickens novel, Hickey mused. But his accent was thickly Germanic. He smelled of hard liquor, and carried a beer. Consuelo brought them each a Suprema and disappeared again, as if she only existed when they needed her, a guardian spirit.

“I got your name from Herman Frick,” Hickey started. “Asked him for somebody who’d know the Germans around here. You guys probably stick together, being in a new place and all?”

Metzger took a long gulp of his Suprema, and tried politely to muffle his belch. Hickey began the story of Wendy Rose. He told about Clifford, the police chief, the Club de Paris with its German employees and clientele. He told Metzger he might need an insider’s help. Say from a German who wanted his ticket north. If he’d help spring the girl, Hickey could buy him passage over the border, set him up with papers and everything—a guy who owed Hickey a favor worked for Immigration.

Metzger swallowed the rest of his beer, held the bottle out in front of him as if finding the table required too much thought, so he’d wait for the table to appear. He gazed at the floor and out the window, as though nothing Hickey said called for answers. Either the girl was no surprise to Metzger, or he was too drunk or weak to pity anyone but himself. Anyway, questions and propositions seemed lost on the man.

Just get him talking, Hickey thought. “What brought you folks up this way?”

Consuelo materialized, rescued the empty bottle from Metzger’s hand, delivered him a full one. She stood with her back to the wall and listened to her husband launch his story.

In the remote Mexican state of Chiapas, on Metzger’s coffee finca, New Year’s day, he woke up thinking about Nazis. He’d tried to hold his thoughts far from Germany and its wars. But in December his cousin Franz had arrived, to give speeches for the Reich. New Year’s eve, the German planters had gathered for a party, and Franz told them why the Reich would soon rule the world. He explained that their Fuehrer and the High Command had captured an icon, the sword that had pierced Christ’s body the day of his crucifixion and had become, through Christ’s blood, a vessel of power. It had belonged to Charlemagne, to all the Holy Roman Emperors. Now the Fuehrer held it.

While most of the Germans had laughed and derided Franz, many others praised him. By midnight, two fistfights and a near-brawl had started, and Metzger had drunk a gallon of beer.

New Year’s morning, while Metzger’s head still reeled, there came shouts from out front. The door rattled open. Boots stomped over the wood floor and the big, dark Federale, with whiskers like a bush, tromped into the bedroom. Perez, the jefe from Villa Flores. Consuelo jumped up and yelled at Perez to get out.

When they were alone, Metzger told Consuelo what she already knew, what they’d talked of many times in the last year. He said Perez would surely command them to leave the finca, to go and report to the Capital, where they’d be ordered to stay as long as the government willed. Their land could be stolen by the Indios and left as a socialist commune, an
ejido
. That was what had happened to Germans in Mexico, in one state after another. But Chiapas was the farthest state south, a land of its own, a wild place, and its Germans had been there for decades. Most had never seen the fatherland. So they’d been spared this far—until Franz arrived with his mad speeches.

Consuelo only wept for a minute or so. Then she lay with her cheek on her husband’s lap and spoke of how, after six years she’d grown to love this place, the jungle, the smells of coffee, flowers, rain, and the mountain sky. But poor Juan, she said—all his life was here. She thanked God that he was a brave, wise man who knew how to protect her and the babies. Since last year, Juan had been sending the money they could spare to her sister in Baltimore. Now if, like the stories they heard about Queretaro and other places where Germans had been dispossessed already, the government allowed them ten days to settle business before sending them to the Capital, where they’d have to stay with other Germans in one neighborhood, under house arrest—before ten days, Consuelo, Juan, and the babies could get to a boat in Juchitán, and sail to Baja California. Where Lázaro Cárdenas would leave them in peace.

This fellow was like himself, Hickey thought, a drunken guy who’d worked hard, loved somebody, gotten kicked around. The German had only broken easier. Hickey wanted to stay for a couple more beers, console the man a little, but his watch kept ticking. At 5:40 he asked, “So can you help me…help the girl out?”

Metzger shrugged, sighed deeply, placed the heels of his hands on his eyes.

“Okay then, tell me about the del Montes.”

The German shook his head. “No, it would be unwise for me to tell you anything.”

“Unwise. You mean dangerous?”

“Unwise.” Metzger looked at Consuelo. For another cervesa, for help sending Hickey on his way? Or both. Then he leaned back into the stuffed chair, stiffly as though he might as well die.

Hickey checked his watch, sighed and gave up for now. As Consuelo showed him to the door, he gave her a business card and left, thinking what a lucky fellow this Metzger was, compared to most, having a wife so rare, who kept him alive. That German better snap out of this funk, Hickey thought, before she walks, leaves him there to aim the gun at his ear, hitch his finger and pull.

Hickey asked Tito if they could make the border by six. The cabbie jammed the gas pedal. They flew over washboard, north between the hills and the sea.

As they neared the border and crossed the bridge, Hickey watched the poor squatters along the river. One guy stood all alone on the bank, shaking like he had St. Vitus dance. Many of them cramped together under cardboard roofs, five or six deep around low, smoky fires. Others were at work, heading out with gunny sacks to search for treasure, old batteries, Coke bottles, mushrooms that thrived in the rain. Hickey wanted a drink.

“You think this world’s worth living in?” he asked the cabbie.

“Maybe,” Tito said. “What you thinking?”

“Not when you’re sober. Not this year anyway.”

“Yeah. That’s right, man. It’s a stinking place. Hey, I got to tell you. I guess you owe me about seven more dollars.”

“Stop at Coco’s.”

Hickey got a bottle, gulped enough to cut the chill he had, then walked back across the border with some time left before his duty. He went into the office shack, sat on the desk by the phone, and dialed Weiss’ home number.

“What?” Leo snapped. Hickey could hear he was gobbling food.

“What’d you get on del Monte?”

“Guess.”

“Naw. Tell it straight.”

“Naw. Guess.”

“Christ,” Hickey muttered. “Be kind, will you.”

“Right. Santiago del Monte’s the richest guy in Baja. He’s got eight sons. And they got cousins. The mayor, the police chief, the governor’s right hand. And, Santiago plays cards with Lázaro Cárdenas, every Tuesday night.”

Chapter Seven

The rain fell lighter. A few stars blinked above the Pacific and screeching gulls hovered over the borderland sloughs.

Hickey drank on duty for the first time, as he brooded about what to do, whether to go on chasing this girl. Besides the risk, it was costing him money. By tomorrow it might cost more than he owned. Then he could let the flyboy and his wife who’d rented his cottage buy the place. Like they kept trying to. Three times the flyboy had called saying he might go down overseas and he wanted to leave his wife a home. And maybe you ought to get rid of the place, Hickey thought. He couldn’t imagine living around all those memories of Madeline and Elizabeth.

The kid was offering him some Lake Tahoe property. But even if that was real, it wouldn’t be worth more than a few hundred, up there in the sticks.

Maybe he’d get the girl without paying any more, then sell the bay cottage and the Tahoe lot, and hold the money toward the day he could take Elizabeth back, somehow. He toasted that day with a taste of mescal, and for a minute his spirit glided free. Until reason complained it’d take a fortune to buy for Elizabeth what a slimy big shot like Paul Castillo could give her.

Hickey nipped the mescal, enough so that when Clifford Rose appeared suddenly out of the dim brown light, at first Hickey thought the kid was a hallucination.

Clifford dragged a full duffel bag behind him. He wore civilian dungarees and a sweater. He gave Hickey a feeble smile, then heaved the duffel bag beside the post and squatted next to it. Looking at the ground, he asked, “You get her?”

“Not yet. You jumped ship, huh?”

Clifford let out a sigh and slumped forward, resting his arms and head on his knee, his eyes glancing up. “You won’t turn me in, will you, Pop? Not till I get Wendy outa there.”

“They hang deserters.”

He didn’t move except to shut his eyes. “Reckon they’ll hang me?”

Boyle, the fink, stood nearby searching a car, maybe listening. Hickey shouldered the duffel bag, since it looked like the kid might collapse from lugging it. He pulled the kid up and led him across the two lanes around dark puddles to the office shack. Inside, Clifford flopped heavily onto the sofa. He curled up, placed hands under his head, and, shyly, he asked, “You mad at me, Pop?”

“Yeah. Mad’s a good word. You’re making a fool of me. First you try and get me killed. Then I’m chasing all over TJ. Now I gotta cover for a deserter. And there was a murder you forgot to tell me about?”

“Murder?”

“Yeah.”

“George,” he muttered. “I ain’t told you about George.” Hickey stared him down until the kid put a hand over his eyes. “Them guys are lying, sure. Wendy ain’t killed nobody.”

“What guys?”

“At the Paris Club. They said she killed that George, but it ain’t so. Heck, you seen her. She never could.”

“Who’s George?”

“The rat that brang her down there, like I told you.”

Hickey stood thinking, got out his pipe and chewed on the stem.

“You go down there?” the kid asked.

“Yeah. I tried to talk, offered to pay, but no dice. Maybe we’ll grab her.”

“You will, Pop? For real?”

“I’ll think on it,” Hickey said.

The kid’s eyes dropped slowly and closed. In a few seconds his stiff body gave up and rested. And Hickey walked out, smoking, rubbing his temples, wishing he’d laid off the mescal.

He stood at his post and went through the motions but mostly let Boyle take care of business, with his hand out. A few times each night somebody would slip Boyle a favor. Between the war, with rationing and all, and the border’s huddled masses seeking freedom, there was big money in law enforcement these days. Fortunes. Like toward the end of Prohibition when Hickey could’ve got rich as a cop in L.A. Yet while Boyle pulled in a few hundred, right beside him Hickey stood worrying about the fate of a dumb kid gone AWOL. They might forgive the boy, with the reasons he had, but you didn’t count on anything from the military, except orders, skewed logic, death that didn’t need to be. Just lately, in Tucson, since too many soldiers and flyers had gone catting around, families in Mextown had raised a fuss and the brass had put Mextown off limits. Then some private, drunk on the night of his eighteenth birthday, got pinched with a naked muchacha in her papa’s delivery wagon. Papa owned a grocery. He screamed to the sheriff, who brought the MPs, who blabbed to some general, who ramrodded a court martial. The boy got his. Like a traitor. As if a person meant nothing except as a symbol, a lesson. The fools hung him.

Then Hickey wondered why he should stew about Clifford. He’d hardly known the kid until yesterday, and he wasn’t worth any more than the thousands falling every day in Russia, or the people who dropped from malaria, pneumonia, or hunger in the Tijuana riverbed. He wasn’t trying to save them, so why this Rose slut? She might be happy down there. And maybe she had killed a man. Her angel looks could sure be a lie.

One reason he worried about her was that she made him think of Elizabeth. She looked the same age, the same kind of innocent. He could’ve gone down Market Street or Revolución and found dozens of child-whores he could try and save. But then, nobody’d asked him to help those girls. Clifford had.

Maybe something in this business would stir his blues. Change his luck. Something had to break. So he started making plans.

Later he walked over to Lefty and said he needed a driver and the Jeep after their duty that night. He told about the girl and offered twenty dollars, but Lefty called him nuts, turned the post over to Hickey, and walked south toward Coco’s Licores.

At 11:00, Hickey went to the office shack, phoned Leo, raised the old man out of sleep and snapped him awake by saying there was a little girl in danger.

Leo groaned, “A charity case. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“Naw, there’s money in it. Say a hundred for you. And think about this. The lousy banditos snatch this little girl. Imagine what they’re doing to her, then if you can go back to sleep, go ahead. If you can’t sleep, get down here pretty soon.”

“Night, night, Tom.”

The kid lay on the couch with arms wrapped around himself, snoring softly as a purr. As Hickey walked out, he wondered if Clifford knew how to shoot or just how to wave a gun around. You couldn’t be sure, the way they rushed them through boot camp and sped them off to war.

He went back to his post and stood figuring, laying off the mescal. Boyle got into a fight with two rowdy civilians. A big kid jumped on his back and rode him around. Hickey had to rap the boy with his club, though he would’ve rather conked Boyle.

The graveyard MPs arrived late, and not far behind them, Weiss’ Packard rolled in. Carrying a thermos, a cigarette hanging from his lip, Leo got out and faced Hickey nose to nose. “I rue the day we met,” he growled, then yawned and hacked a cough.

They walked to the office shack and Hickey told his partner about Clifford and the girl, and his plan. The old man lit a smoke, flopped into a chair. “Hearken to this, Tom. I’ll go on down and take a look. If it’s a sure thing, maybe we’ll do it. Otherwise, I’m out.”

Hickey nodded. He tapped the kid, shook him and kept shaking harder. When Clifford finally roused and sat up, Leo handed him the thermos. They passed it around, while Hickey strapped on the shoulder holster and automatic under a pilot’s jacket he borrowed off the shelf. Then he fitted Clifford with the big wooden MP coat so a Colt would stick under his belt without showing the bulge.

The kid eyed Leo warily. The old guy didn’t inspire confidence. He looked slow, dumpy, with a graying walrus mustache and wrinkled eyes. His hat was cocked sideways.

A horn beeped several times before the others stepped outside and found the Jeep, with Lefty behind the wheel slugging down a beer. “Changed my mind,” he said. “Give me thirty bucks and I’m in.”

Leo eyed the Jeep. “Hell with this contraption. Let’s take a real car with a roof and everything.”

“We might need to drive back across the river. If del Monte alerts the cops, they might roadblock the bridge.”

“Gimme the scoop once more, Pop,” Lefty said.

“All you gotta do is drive.” Hickey passed a twenty. They piled into the Jeep and Lefty wheeled south. They crossed the bridge, bounding at forty mph into the dark with the browned headlamps barely shining ten feet ahead, and turned onto Revolución. Suddenly the drizzle quit. For a second you could vaguely see a shifting of the clouds, before the rain came in great walloping gobs. They hunkered under their arms, except Lefty who sped up, cussing all the way. To beat the stalled traffic he ran over a curb, raced through a parking lot, an alley, another parking lot, and crashed back off the curb. Sailors, pimps, drug pushers, whores, and street kids all ran for cover from the rain, while Lefty zoomed into the wrong lane, hung a left on Calle Siete, and flew downhill toward the Club de Paris.

At the base of the hill where he pulled over, the mud reached the hubs of some cars. The four men jumped out and ditched under a balcony of the Ritz hotel. Leo coughed and leaned against the wall. He jabbed Hickey with an elbow and grumbled, “If I die of pneumonia, I’m taking you with me.”

“Swell, now let’s snatch the girl and get back on land.” Hickey lifted his hat and shook it drier. “Okay—Lefty pulls the Jeep right over there.” He stepped out into the rain and pointed around the corner, over the vacant lot to a point across the road from the rear wall of the Club de Paris. “Just wait there, make sure it’ll start any second. And keep the seats bailed out.”

“In the rain?” Lefty moaned. “I wanta go inside.”

“Give the wimp a parasol.” Leo lit a smoke, crumbled the empty pack and sailed it into the Jeep, fifteen feet through the rain.

“Leopold, you go in the joint and wait till she comes on for the act. She’ll dance a while, then do this routine of letting everybody touch her. I guess she always does that, right, Clifford?”

The kid snapped around with fierce, red eyes, and studied each of the men. Finally he nodded and Hickey went on, “When she’s, say, three guys from the end of the line, you slip out and get around back fast. There’ll be a door on the west end of the rear wall. It leads to the back room, where the girls dress. We’ll be in cover as close to the door as we can get.” Hickey laid his arm on Clifford’s shoulder. “By then she’ll be in the back room. At least I hope to Christ she will.”

“What if she ain’t there?” Lefty asked. “Suppose she goes for a drink?”

“Then we hand it over to you, smart guy.”

Leo turned and started lumbering toward the club but Hickey caught him. “Keep an eye out for a little tough they call Mofeto, the ‘skunk,’ big hat, thin mustache.” With a nod, Leo trudged on.

“The old guy oughta drive,” Lefty said. “I’ll go in the bar. They’ll spot him. He don’t look like the kind that goes in there.”

“Move it.” Hickey gave Lefty a nudge. He led the kid out around the corner to the vacant lot, where their feet sank deep and squished loudly. A few times Clifford got stuck. Broad shouldered, a farmboy’s arms, half Hickey’s age, still he slogged through the mud like somebody decrepit. They might as well hang the kid as send him to war this way, Hickey thought. He’d lean right into the first bullet.

They stepped on rubble, broken hunks of concrete and old adobe. A trail of concrete chunks laid into the mud led into a swampy little grove of tule weeds, where they came upon a family of Indians sprawled across each other, sleeping beneath a roof of woven tules. Clifford stopped to gaze at them but Hickey pushed him on. The path ended. They broke through the last wall of tules and stepped into the clearing behind the Club de Paris. The backstage door stood about thirty feet away. Clifford kept walking blindly ahead, but Hickey grabbed and held him back.

The closest cover to the door was a pile of fermenting garbage that even in the rain stank of ammonia. Hickey decided to stay where they were, crouching in the dark, a little sheltered by the tules, and try not to wake the Indians who slept about twenty feet behind. The downpour would help give them cover. He told Clifford to stay put. He crept out to look around the garbage pile, and caught sight of the front end of Lefty’s Jeep. Between the garbage and the heap of another collapsed building lay a straight, clear run to the road from the backstage door. Only a hundred feet of mud to slow them down.

Hickey turned back to the tules and squatted beside Clifford. He strained to read his watch. 2:45. The night before, Wendy Rose had come on about now, and should’ve finished around 3:15. In Mexico, you didn’t count on schedules, but she’d always be the last act, that was sure, to hold the spenders there.

They stayed quiet. The rain pelted and bathed them. Clifford drew loud, gasping breaths. Hickey had to stand often and straighten his legs. He wished for a smoke. He sipped mescal and passed it to Clifford. Time passed strangely. In a place that dark and wet, your senses lose contact and for a while each minute seems twenty, then your mind sails away and ten minutes can flash by instantly. When Hickey’s mind sailed away, it flew to a brown city street in New Jersey. His daughter was out walking. Hoodlums slouched around, whistling the way they used to at her mother, pawing her with their eyes.

He snapped back to life and said, “You don’t talk much.”

“You told me to hush.”

“Good soldier.” He mussed the kid’s hair. “Well, if somebody draws on you, then what?”

“I blast him, Pop.”

“Think you can do it okay?”

“Can’t wait,” Clifford muttered, then sat a minute quietly. “Reckon that makes me a killer.”

“Well,” Hickey said, “let’s don’t start blasting everybody in sight. An eye for an eye, maybe you’re not a killer. Some guys want two eyes, or three, or a bucketful.”

“I never shot nobody,” Clifford mumbled. “You done it a lot?”

“A couple times.”

He drew his gun and checked it, holding it under his coat to keep it dry. Clifford did the same. Then they stayed quiet, listening, watching, until Hickey said, “Ol’ Leo’s probably in there with a muchacha on his lap. Drinking Irish coffee.”

Clifford lunged toward Hickey. Up close he looked cross-eyed and deranged. Far different than yesterday. It seemed they’d better finish this business quick, before the kid cracked all the way and turned maniac, or dumb like his sister.