Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 01 (5 page)

“The old guy won’t mess up, will he, Pop?”

“Naw. He’s sharp, you’ll see.”

The watch read 3:20. The rain fell softer. Hickey listened close for the saxophone from inside, but all he heard was some men’s rough laughter up the street, and the grinding of cars through the mud. A minute later he made out voices of gringos leaving the Club de Paris and taxi drivers shouting at them. Soon motors revved and tires whooshed away. Now he started to worry. In the distance a siren wailed.

He faked a chuckle. “Maybe one of those señoritas gave Leo a heart attack.”

“No,” Clifford moaned.

Hickey patted the kid’s gun hand and they waited. A little past 3:30, he said, “I’m going to look out front.”

Before he could move he saw a man walk fast around the corner of the building, and disappear behind the pile of rubble. Faster than Leo would care to move. Now the guy hurried across the street—Hickey caught a glimpse through the space between the garbage and the rubble. Maybe Leo was being watched, hustling to lose somebody. But too long passed. Hickey drew the automatic. The kid pulled his revolver.

They ran to the garbage pile, stopped still, and heard footsteps sloshing around the other side. Moving toward the sound, Hickey tried to step with the noise of the other man’s feet, but Clifford got out of time. The crunching of feet sounded loud as kettle drums. Hickey flashed his gun out and jumped around the pile.

With a bead on Hickey’s nose, old Leo held his ground. And after a hacking cough, he muttered, “You oughta meet your doom for sending me into that stinkhole.” Then he holstered his pistol. “On the other hand, I found out my critter’s still alive.” He looked over at Clifford Rose. “Easy kid, I didn’t see her. She’s gone.”

Hickey stamped the mud.

“Yeah, I asked around,” Leo said. “Gone, and nobody’s saying where to.”

The kid stood with downcast eyes and his pistol half-raised, pointed near Leo’s feet, so the old man growled, “And that’s only half the good news. You’re gonna love the rest. Take a look over here.”

They followed him across the road. The rain had lightened again, nearly to a drizzle. Hickey looked around, wondered where the Jeep had gone and why Lefty was sitting there on an old tire casing. Why he wasn’t wearing his helmet or arm band. Lefty’s head swayed loosely. He socked his own leg a few times then looked up and said, “I was sitting over there in that doorway, see. There was a couple greasers, nice enough-looking Joes. Class dressers. Spoke English. Had a bottle of some stuff. We got talking about muchachas. And then one of ’em had something you snoot up your nose. I give it a try. Pretty soon, bam.” He put his hands on his head, slapped water off his face. “Let’s get outa here. What’d you guys do with the Jeep?”

He sized up Hickey. Then Leo. And the kid. He gaped and threw an arm high. “Oh! Not the Jeep. Fuck! I’m dead. What’ll I tell the lieutenant? Hey, they’ll send me to goddamn New Guinea.” He yelled, “Pop, you—” and lunged for Hickey—who shoved him face into the mud. Lefty rolled over and socked the ground.

The rain quit. A half-round moon appeared behind a shadowy cloud, straight overhead. The four men started wallowing up the road with Leo in the lead, past a few Mexicans who’d appear, then vanish fast as Consuelo Metzger, toward Calle Siete where the taxis waited. Hickey stopped once to check on Clifford.

The kid’s arms were wrapped around his chest, squeezing his shoulders, and his head was cocked—he looked goofy and talked to himself without making a sound.

So Hickey gripped the kid’s arm. “We’ll find her. Mañana.”

The cabs had left Calle Siete. Lefty spotted one, a couple blocks down, near the river. The red-and-pink Chrysler limo. They plodded that way, past the Club de Paris.

When Tito saw them coming he jumped off the hood, ran a few feet up the hill, and with a grin, he called out, “Hey, you heros. Give me a help here.”

All five of them pushed, finally heaved the Chrysler a foot or so to higher, drier ground. Tito shook their hands. To Leo, Lefty, and the kid, he said, “I’m going to drive you for half-price, anytime, forever.”

The other three climbed into the limo while the cabbie pulled Hickey aside, and whispered, “I can help you find La Rosa, man. For very cheap, you’ll see.”

Chapter Eight

Back in Kansas, in the dry spring of 1929, a doctor said Wendy Rose would never learn to think right. The prettiest child around was a moron—he said you could tell by her wandering eyes, and because at four years she’d only spoken a few words, and now she’d forgot them.

Her ma fell to the floor and bawled. Her pa went out to drink and that night he started cursing God the way he’d been cussing the bankers who were stealing his farm.

Clifford Rose was just six years old that year when his ma got quiet and his pa got meaner. He didn’t understand much. He knew they left Kansas when they didn’t want to and he had to be careful with Wendy and protect her from things.

Now he sat on a harbor dock right next to a tuna clipper just back from delivering gasoline, rockets, mortars, and vegetables to the South Pacific. Staring at the oily water, he finally understood what had happened to his folks, why they changed, why his ma gave up and Pa got worse. When you’re supposed to keep care of somebody, he thought, and evil comes, you can try and shuck off the blame but it won’t go. At least not when you know, like Pa and him, there was times you hurt her. You can cuss or do like Ma, get all squeezed inside, don’t talk, just stand and bear the shame. You can swear to kill the rat that got Wendy. But the poison in you just won’t go away.

As Clifford sat waiting for dawn, he wanted to jump and sink beneath the oily water. Even though he figured Pop would help him. He thought Pop was the best man he ever knew. You couldn’t find a man in two hundred that would risk his skin for folks that weren’t his, like Pop did. He’d get Wendy back. That was pretty sure. Pop knew how to do things. But him nor nobody could fix Wendy when they got her, Clifford thought. Nothing could fix what the rat and those Mexicans had done.

Clifford felt shamed to be a man. You put a man with a girl like Wendy—first, maybe he’d cherish her but then something would flip him over and evil’d pour out. So Ma got smacked anytime she disagreed, if Pa was in one of his moods. Clifford used to hear Ma weeping, Wendy howling, from the room where his folks and sister slept when she was still a baby. Pa loved his family, still he belted them whenever the devil said so. Anybody weak, gentle, men would protect her, knock her bloody, buy her fancy clothes or kill her, depending how they felt that day.

He remembered 1934. They moved outside Reno when Pa got steady work as a ranch hand. There was a neighbor girl called Laura Kelly. Ugly, with a pocked face, black hair all matted, old, grimy dresses. But she had a comely ass she’d switch around and give the men her cockeyed grin so farmhands walked her down the road. Folks talked like she was less than a dog when she never harmed a soul. There was nothing bad in her. Just dumb and happy, and nobody kept watch on her. Her ma and pa were like herself.

A few times Clifford’s ma saw the girl and said, “That there’s what Wendy’s gonna look like, lest we keep her holy.”

The Kelly girl had three babies. Nobody owned up. She carried the babies around, hugging and cooing with them. She never got mean to them nor anybody, Clifford thought, so it didn’t figure how one day at the grocery men started pushing and slapping at her. They got crazy, bloodied her head, tore off most of her clothes. Busted some front teeth. After that you never saw her anymore—just heard her moaning like a hound some nights as she walked the road.

That was a reason Ma used when she talked Pa into keeping Wendy back from school, because a girl like her wasn’t fit to meet up with the world. Anyhow, Pa said schools were for regular people.

Wendy didn’t leave the ranch except with her folks. They’d take her to the grocery, the feed store, the church, and once after Pa got an old truck they drove forty miles to Lake Tahoe where Clifford landed a brown trout long as his arm. Wendy gaped at the blue glass water and the green-and-black jagged mountains rising to the stars. It was during one of the good times, when Wendy talked some, held her mind on real things without always dreaming off. She asked if this place was Heaven, and Ma said yep, it must be. They drove around the whole lake and ate sandwiches on a beach and swam in icy water. They were drinking soda in Tahoe City when a man approached them trying to sell land. Wendy got so excited that Pa walked off with the man and came back in a minute saying he’d bought her a place. Wendy believed him. She didn’t know about lies. It was the greatest day Wendy ever lived—she said that a lot of times after. Even two years later, when they were at church she told a preacher, “We been to Heaven, got us a piece of land there.”

She always smiled, too much, Pa said. You could warn her that men got crazy but she’d forget and smile at most anybody who looked her way and if it was men they’d get ideas. Folks who didn’t know her never could suspect she was a moron. She didn’t act stupid. For weeks she’d be talking, learning things, keeping her eyes on what was real, until Pa would get raging over something and take her out back, out of sight by the river, to whip her, he said. He might’ve whipped her when she was little, before she got her figure. After that, Clifford believed, he punished her a different way too. Every time she got punished, Wendy stopped talking again. Still, she didn’t act stupid, or smart either, but just like Wendy, quiet as a sleepwalker and with the brightest eyes, the softest touch. Nothing goofy-looking about her.

She didn’t have friends and Clifford supposed she got lonely, but she didn’t act so. She puttered around and played with the cats and sang or hummed to herself and the horses while she brushed them down. She learned to cook some and to clean the house and tend the garden and Ma finally taught her to read one Bible story out of a book made for six-year-olds. Ma taught her an easy solitaire game. The problem with trying to teach her, she’d keep her mind on the learning awhile, then her eyes would drift and she’d be smiling about things nobody else knew.

Ma got TB in 1936 but dying took her two years. About halfway through that time Pa started getting headaches that turned him meaner still. One time, after Ma died, all Wendy did was not hear him yell, and he was leading her out back. Clifford tried to stop them. Pa smacked him, caught him with the bone of an elbow right beside his ear, so Clifford let loose, ran for the woodpile and grabbed up a board. When Pa chased him down and lunged to clobber him again, the old man got a rib busted.

It was lying there, crippled up, nothing much to do but think, which broke the old man’s spirit. Made the rage go inside. A tumor started growing in his brain. It killed him, about a year after Ma died.

All he left was the rusty pickup and a broken down tractor that Clifford gave to a neighbor in trade for the deed to ninety feet of rocky shore at Lake Tahoe. That was something Pa had meant to do for three years.

Clifford was sixteen. He stopped going to school and took Pa’s ranch job. Wendy followed him around. She rode along on back of the horse when he went out mending fences. In winter she rode on the wagon, helping him carry feed to the pastures. He taught her fishing and throwing baseballs and poker.

Most Saturdays they drove into Reno for a movie or a soda. He could’ve left her in care of the Meyers who owned the ranch, but he would’ve felt bad, leaving her there like a nobody. In town the men gawked at her. He told her not to smile at them, but she might forget. She got whistles and sometimes a fellow walked over and asked her for a date. Clifford had to say no and maybe the guy said dirty things about them. Then Clifford took Wendy home and came back the next day alone—his nose got bent so he only had one breathing nostril and his jaw still popped when he opened wide, from those fights.

Meantime, Wendy kept forgetting to be modest. Like she’d call from her bath and ask Clifford to bring more hot water, especially in winter when the water nearly froze as you poured. He could’ve said no or gone in without looking but he didn’t because he wanted to see her, he dreamed about it, how she’d flutter her fingers on the top of the water and smile at him. Then his skin caught fever, his balls felt like jumping toads. Even so, for more than a year he didn’t touch her, before the devil got his way.

A cold night, when you couldn’t find a single place in their house where the wind didn’t blow through some crack, he followed her from the bath tub over to her bed. She kept smiling, whispering sounds that didn’t make words. As long as he touched her gently, rubbed soft and slow, she let him do anything. But if he clutched her, made a sudden jump or noise, she tightened into wood and whimpered.

It was only a few times, before he got too afraid she’d tell somebody, and he saw visions of a cavern where creeping and flying things attacked you in the darkness and the only ways out led to ditches you had to cross but they were full of boiling water. After that, even when she wanted him to hold her, he stayed firm-hearted. Two years before the Army called him.

They had no business calling him up, Clifford believed, and he told the draft board about Wendy. But they took him anyway.

He should’ve put her in the Catholic home except Ma was a Baptist. She would’ve sneaked back from the grave with fiery breath before she let her baby go with those nuns. Besides, Wendy begged to stay on the ranch to clean house for the Meyers and Mrs. Meyers was offering to give her a big room and teach her woman things, so Clifford could go off and fight the Japs. And home and Clifford were all she had. And it looked like she didn’t believe him when he promised to come back. Probably in less than a year they’d finish the Japs and Nazis, he supposed. But Wendy didn’t know time exactly—a month and tomorrow weren’t much different to her. And what if he didn’t come back? At the home they’d sure make her a nun and Clifford hated the thought of that. And she might tell the nuns about how Clifford used to hold her, how they lay cinched together all night those times. Besides, she’d always been half a prisoner. Maybe one day there’d come along a man to protect her and give her things that regular folks get. Somebody who’d cherish her and not mind too much that her brain wasn’t just so, and who could forgive Clifford for losing to the devil. A man full of good. Like Pop.

He’d probably done right to leave her with the Meyers except that he shouldn’t have left her at all. Most any man could fight a war but there was nobody like him to keep care of Wendy. That sure proved out. Not two months later.

Most of what happened he’d pieced together when he got leave, after Mr. Meyers called. Only a few parts of the story stayed missing, like he still didn’t know what’d driven her away from the Meyers. Somebody scared her, that was sure, and made her need Clifford.

He hitchhiked to Reno and followed her trail, found she’d sneaked out one night and got on a bus. Then George sat beside her. He was tall and had skin way darker than hers but lighter than most Mexicans. He wore a bright red fancy shirt, and a baseball cap with the letters SD. In Bishop, the rat was drunk. The driver saw him slap Wendy. The driver said he’d have kicked them off except he figured it’d go bad for the girl, then they left the bus in San Bernardino. Four days later, somebody saw them getting on the San Diego bus.

The trail ended there. Nobody at the San Diego depot remembered seeing her get off, and folks most always remembered Wendy. He gave a photo to the dispatcher who showed it to all the drivers and finally one said, yeah, he saw her get off at the border, with a loud Italian guy in a silver shirt.

In TJ Clifford showed her picture to a cabbie—right away he said, “Oh, si, la Rosa Blanca.”

Now Clifford took from his pocket the pint of mescal Pop had left with him. He drained the last sip and threw the bottle hard into the water. Its ripple made rainbow colors. The bottle slowly filled and sank beneath the greasy water. He felt the sun on his back and he watched it flash on the harbor. He stared hard and soon Wendy’s face came back like it was when they sat in the Paris Club two weeks ago. She was naked, right there beside him in a chair, and a hundred men leered at them. She had stopped in the middle of her dance and come down off the stage. She had sat beside him and touched his knee. The first thing she said was, “You are far away, my Clifford.”

He gave her his coat. She laid it neatly on the table. He sat trembling with shame. “Put it on, Sis, and we’ll leave, right now.”

“Oh, oh,” she whispered. “No, because George is dead.”

“Well then, that’s the only thing’ll save him from me. You don’t got some other rat keeping you here, do you?”

“My Clifford,” she said patiently, “you forget—when George is dead somebody has to get punished. Don’t you know—somebody stabbed George.” Clifford shook his head, bewildered. She stroked his hand with one finger. “If you kill somebody, you have to stay in hell for—two years.”

He jumped out of the chair, leaned up to her face. “Put on my coat, please, Sis.”

He ordered her and begged. Her eyes just kept drooping sadder. She said, “The devil hates me, my Clifford. I can feel. Do you hate me?” Her eyes wandered up and she whispered, “There is a war, you know.”

Finally he screamed, “What’re you talking about?”

She moaned, sprang up, ran to the stage and away through the curtains. The moment he started after her, a stick whacked his gut, then his head, and the room started floating away. He kept yelling, “Sis! Wendy!” while the Mexicans belted him harder.

Then came days in the infirmary. But he still couldn’t figure what held her there, and he sure didn’t believe she’d killed the rat. Whoever killed George must’ve tricked her somehow. Taught her to lie and be secret like she never knew how before. Clifford wouldn’t have a speck of mercy for the man that had deformed his sister—this Wendy onstage, who all these men got crazy for, she wasn’t half as beautiful as she used to be. They must’ve loosed a new part of her brain and it came out bad, he thought. She’d never be like before. Clifford wouldn’t either. For a minute he tried to raise the guts to drown in the oily water. But that was wrong. He couldn’t die until they got her free.