Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 03 (6 page)

Leaning back in a squeaky chair tipped against the wall, jotting notes onto a pad, Leo quizzed Hickey about Charlie Schwartz, Pete Silva, Teddy the beachcomber, the police report. Soon they both fell to yawning. After a second round of scotch, Leo said good night.

Hickey rolled across the bed for the phone and dialed long distance, gave the operator his home number. At nearly eleven, Wendy’d be asleep. But Hickey needed to assure himself that she and his life on the lake were more than a beautiful memory. He needed to hear her voice, to feel it inject him with wonder and innocence.

Claire answered, and asked for a report. He lied, said everything was falling his way. As she passed the phone to Wendy, during the moment of silence, Hickey pictured the two of them lying side by side in the double bed. They were so lovely, the room glowed.

“Hi, Tom.”

“Sorry to wake you, darling.”

“Well, I’m sure not sorry.”

“Even if I’m just calling to say good night and remind you I’m leaving here tomorrow by dark, anyway?”

“Yep. Even so.”

“You feeling okay?”

“Swell. Except I’ll be happy when the storm’s over.”

“Lots of snow?”

“No, but so much wind it makes the trees crack and moan. One time it got—the lake had waves so high, splashing so loud, it sounded like the ocean. Made me think about you, down there. Is the ocean pretty?”

“Sure. The wind scare you, babe?”

“Hardly any. But I wish the clouds would go away so we could have a little starlight. It’s awfully dark.”

“Is Claire sticking with you?”

“You bet. She won’t leave me be. She watches me like any minute Clifford will want out. But don’t worry. We’re waiting for you. Did you get the poor lady out of jail yet?”

“Nope. Probably tomorrow. You go back to sleep now, before you’re wide awake.”

“Okay, Tom. You love me, huh?”

“Oh, God, yes. If I could say how much, I’d put Shakespeare outta business.”

After he gave up the phone, downed another taste of scotch, and brushed his teeth, Hickey slipped out of his trousers and shirt, dove into the bed. Flushed with warmth, he felt himself drifting toward heaven.

***

A salesman or tourist banging his suitcase along the railing startled Hickey awake. He rolled to the window side of the bed, reached for the curtain, and pulled it aside enough to see the first glints of daylight on dusty tiled roofs. He rolled back the other way, out of the bed, and stumbled into the bathroom.

When the phone rang he had to cut short his business and tug up his shorts. He caught it on the third ring.

“Tom?” The voice stammered so timidly, dread washed through Hickey so swiftly, his pulse lunged into a gallop.

“Claire?”

“Tom, somebody kidnapped Wendy.” Her breaths sizzled against his ear. “Tom, are you there?”

“Yeah,” he said, but not into the receiver. He couldn’t see it or anything. A zealous black light filled his skull and throbbed spasmodically at the temples, as if some doctor using forceps had seized him.

“Tom!”

“Yeah, I hear you!” he yelped.

“I called your pal Leo, got this number. It wasn’t more than ten minutes ago.”

Hickey’d drawn his shoulders together to press on his ribs, to hold in his heart, which pounded like a bass drum imitating thunder. He found the hand holding the receiver, pressed it to his face. “Who grabbed her? You see them?”

“It was dark as hell. They couldn’t even see us. Only way they could tell which of us was Wendy was her belly. They knew about the baby. One of them shoved a note at me. Maybe if I read it, you can guess who they are.”

“Yeah, read.” The receiver shook in his hand, belting his ear.

“It says,
Greetings, snoop. At the moment, we don’t figure to hurt the doll. If you want to see her and the kid one of these days, shag your nosy ass back to the sticks and plant it there. We’ll be in touch, one of these days.
”

Hickey’s throat felt jammed shut, leaving only passage enough for puny breaths. When he tried to speak, he couldn’t breathe. Gulping breaths, he couldn’t speak. He dropped himself onto the bed, slid off it to the floor.

“I’ll call the sheriff, Tom.”

“Yeah.” He sucked down a mouthful of air. “I’m on my way.” In a sudden fit, he slammed the receiver onto the mattress and yowled, “God, no!”

As though from a block away, he heard Claire shouting. “Hurry, Tom!”

He jumped up and tugged on his pants, grabbed his shirt, hat, shoes with yesterday’s socks, and bolted for the door. When he got to the car he checked for his billfold and keys, found them in his pockets.

He wheeled out of the motel, leaving rubber on the turn.

Chapter Eight

Even rigged with chains and on a plowed dirt road, the Oldsmobile’s tires spun climbing the grade. The driver yanked the steering wheel, trying to wrestle the tires out of ruts. He was slender and so tall his sandy hair scraped the headliner. He cussed and grimaced. His face was all angles, as though sculpted out of wooden blocks.

“She talking to herself or what?” he snapped.

The man in back next to Wendy leaned forward, to make his whispery voice heard over the clatter of chains and springs. “Praying, I think. Don’t that beat all?”

He wore a hat pulled low, almost touching his thick wire-framed glasses. Though his hair showed gray at the temples, his skin was smooth as a pampered woman’s and his lips appeared molded into a permanent, boyish smirk.

“We got us a real character, Tersh. I’m not so sure she’s got eyes. All I’ve seen so far is eyelids. Say, you ever notice how pretty eyelids are? Prettier than legs, I think.”

“Depends on whose legs and whose eyelids, don’t it?”

“Could be.”

Near the crest of the grade, the driver commanded, “Shut her up, Bud. This drive’s bad enough without her squealing. How far we got to go?”

“How far’ve we gone since the pavement?”

“Damned if I know.”

“It’s right over the hump, I think,” the man in back said, “then a ways around the pond. Mile or so, I guess.” He fell back into the seat, reached over, and touched Wendy’s lips with a finger. “Keep it to yourself, cutie.”

Wendy sat wrapped in the patchwork quilt Claire had given her and Tom last Christmas. When the men had bashed through her door and she’d sprung from the bed, she’d dragged the quilt with her and thrown it around herself.

Even though she’d burrowed her feet into the quilt, they’d gone numb, except her toes burned. Every few seconds, the cramp in her belly pinched tighter. Her ears felt hard as ice. When the man touched her lips, she pressed them tightly together and continued her prayer in silence, asking God for a pair of warm socks and for the men to hurry to wherever they were taking her, out of this freezing car. She thought about Claire, rushing around the cabin aimlessly, her hair disheveled, her face bruised because one of the men must’ve smacked her. Something had made a noisy thump just before the time Claire screamed loudest.

The baby kicked. Wendy laid both hands on her belly and drummed her fingers. She pictured the baby listening intently, his hands cupped at his ears. Big hands like Tom’s.

She imagined Tom in his car, pounding the dashboard like he did when they drove to San Francisco last summer and got stopped on a bridge by a line of cars, when he needed to use a toilet awfully. He was chewing on the stem of his pipe and lighting the tobacco even though it already burned. A truck going the other way whizzed past, bellowing its horn. Because Tom had crossed the white line.

She prayed he wouldn’t cross the white line again. What if he couldn’t think about driving straight while he worried so awfully over her and Clifford? She asked God to hold the steering wheel for Tom. And to steer other cars out of his way.

The Olds made a leap and tossed Wendy into the air. Slamming back down, a pain shot across her middle, front to rear, as she hit the seat. Clifford must’ve socked her bladder or something.

“Our Father,” she murmured, “maybe you could make me a little softer inside.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth and sat still, feeling God’s spirit wash through her like a fever, chilling her skin and heating her blood until the cramp loosened. “Thanks so much,” she whispered, then silently begged God to hold Clifford safe inside her until Tom came and rescued them like before, when he’d snatched her away from the Nazis and the devil. Her blood seemed to thicken and seep like molasses; her spine hardened from its base to the top of her skull, as she realized that these men might be servants of the devil named Zarp, the Nazi who’d sworn that she and him would live and die together. This road didn’t look like the way to Tijuana, but tonight or tomorrow they might drive her there, and lock her upstairs in the bar called Hell.

The past eight years dissolved. As though the earth had gotten yanked from beneath her, she fell through a blizzard of lights into the room where the devil had made her stab George and pour blood on the
penitentes
. Once again, she sat with her arms bound and a sack over her head, cinched around her neck.

A rumbling started in her belly. In her throat it became a low growling noise. By the time it escaped through her constricted throat, it had turned to the squeal of a tormented pig.

“Knock it off!” the driver shouted.

The other man clapped his paw over her mouth. “Hush, sweetheart.”

When she opened her eyes, the window beside her glittered with dew. Dim morning lights and shadows through the cedar forest looked subtly glorious. The needles glimmered dark green under the shelves of new snow. They passed a clearing of logged stumps. The ground sparkled as if the whole earth were a black diamond. A wolf with dark bluish fur streaked across the clearing. Wendy smiled in admiration.

“Get a load of this! One second she bleats, now she’s grinning like a chorus girl. I think we got us a real screwball here, Tersh.”

Chapter Nine

Twenty minutes out of San Diego, Hickey had realized that chartering a plane might’ve got him home faster. Yet he wasn’t about to backtrack. Besides, the fog was soupy enough so he might’ve wasted the morning finding a plane, even a charter. Had he been called to stand still for an instant, he might’ve turned to ashes. Movement felt like his only salvation.

As he neared LA, the fog broke. Again he thought about flying. But the nearest airport to his place was an hour off, on the south shore, out highway 50. Anyway, it might be closed on account of the storm. And he’d risk losing hours if he cut across the city to the LA airport or passed the highway 99 merge and tried one of the airports in Burbank or Ventura.

So he jumped red lights through LA and Hollywood, rolled through stop signs. He clocked eighty topping the hill past Griffith Park. Through the groves of the San Fernando Valley and up and down the Grapevine’s switchbacks, past fire-blackened hills and a half dozen wrecked and abandoned cars, he kept the hand throttle wide open and panned the horizon for cruisers. He only had to back the speed down twice. One patrol car lay hidden behind a boulder, the other in a cluster of oaks. Hickey’s gaze felt so intense he could’ve spotted them through a ridge of granite. His brain seemed supercharged, as though he’d made up for years of lost sleep, only it kept firing arbitrarily until the San Joaquin Valley, when the explosions of fear and anger had quieted enough to let him reason.

He didn’t figure the kidnappers to be Angelo Paoli’s boys. Not a chance they could’ve gotten up north so fast, at night anyway. Charlie Schwartz might’ve sent some punks directly after lunch. Except, from all Hickey’d seen of the man, Charlie didn’t think that fast. It was hardly brains that’d made him top dog. Meanness was Charlie’s weapon.

More likely they were hired guns, out of San Francisco or maybe from around the lake. If they were locals, that’d make them fellow employees of his, since his neighbor and boss Harry Poverman had his fist around the Tahoe action.

He thought of pulling over and calling Poverman but nixed the idea. That’d be like a burglar ringing the doorbell. He sped on until his gas ran dry. From a Sinclair station in Bakersfield, he phoned Leo at the office and got lucky.

“Another minute, I was gone,” Leo said. “Got any news?”

“Claire told you, right?”

“Sure. I hopped in the Packard and blazed up to the motel, just in time to miss you. Had to pay the tab before they’d give me the stuff you left behind.”

“I paid it up front.”

“Well, she stiffed us. Where you at?”

“Bakersfield.”

“You’re making time, all right. Tom, don’t lose your head, will you?”

“Anything happens to her and the kid, I’m done.” Hickey wanted to explain how it felt, that if he lost Wendy his soul would flee, leaving nothing but the carcass, the withered heart and vanquished mind. But he choked on the first word.

“Don’t think about losing her, Tom. Think about next year, you and Wendy on a second honeymoon, taking the kid on a whirlygig at the Pike. Think about how that lousy valley you’re passing through stinks like fertilizer. Think about revenge or anything you please except losing her.”

Hickey opened his mouth, found it mute. The second attempt he managed a sigh; the third time he forced words out. “Claire read you the note?”

“Yeah, when I called her back. She’s staying put at your place, in case the punks call. Look, you’re doing like they say, getting outta town. They’re liable to cut her loose soon as they find out, which they’re gonna in about a half hour.”

“How’s that?”

“I’m meeting Schwartz at that fish place.”

“And saying what?”

“Haven’t rehearsed it. One thing, I’ll tell him you backed off, let Cynthia fry if she’s gotta.”

“Yeah? Only problem I see is the ten times better odds it’s Angelo had her grabbed, judging from the guys that shot up your house last night.”

“That could’ve been Silva on his own. My guess is you dented his pride. He wasn’t shooting to hit you, the way he binged it off the ground.”

“The ground where I was lying low, behind your car.”

“Yeah, why’d you pick my car?”

“Don’t,” Hickey mumbled. “I’ve got no heart for wisecracks right now.”

“Tom, you’ll get her back. I’m not gonna snooze anymore down here than you will up there, till she’s back home.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

“You wanta know how I figure it’s Charlie?”

“Yeah. Make it quick.”

“First off, since the war, he’s been frothing over one or the other of the Tucker sisters. Both threw him over. Sousa, like you said, was probably two-timing Mickey Cohen, double-dealing with Angelo.

“Mickey gets wise and tells Schwartz, Go ahead, knock off Sousa, and Schwartz decides to burn the place with Johnny in it. All he’s gotta do is pin the fire on Cynthia, he gets the last laugh all around. The two-timer’s rubbed out. One Tucker sister’s a widow and the other’s busting rocks.”

If Hickey’d felt able to stand still another minute, he’d have asked his partner, If Charlie’s as vindictive as all that, how come he’s never popped me for wasting Donny Katoulis? In 1942, Hickey’d finished Katoulis, Charlie’s best gunman and pal. Maybe all these years, Hickey thought, Charlie’s been waiting for the perfect opportunity. Or he’d written Hickey into this whole arson deal. Maybe Charlie was shrewder than he seemed.

“Or maybe you’re just wishing, Leo. You
want
it to be Schwartz and Cohen. If you could pin the fire on Mickey, you’d be dancing with glee. Mickey and Schwartz weren’t teamed up, I guess you wouldn’t be so damned sure.”

The operator came on, squawking for another fifty cents. Hickey plunked in the quarters, though he only had a few words left. “Tell Schwartz, without Wendy I’m a goner. And if that’s what I am, so is he.”

“Yeah, Tom. I’ll talk sense to the lard-ass.”