Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 01 (11 page)

Chapter Fifteen

He stomped along raising dust, until he got hit by the idea that Luz might rat on him. He thought, man, what a sucker. You tell her your plans, then dump her and leave a scorned broad to get rich selling you out to the bad guys. He ought to tie her up and stick her down there with Boyle for a day or two. But he kind of loved her.

Up ahead was Leo’s Packard. Then Clifford ran out of Las Brisas and hustled down the road. When he reached Hickey he yapped, “We got the guns and everything.”

“Hush.”

“Sorry.” The kid’s voice sounded scratchier and a little mean. He wore a tight leather civilian jacket, and you could see the lump of a gun over his heart. It pulsed out with his heartbeats. “What’s the plan?”

“When we’re all here. I don’t wanta say it five times. Did you hear from the cabbie?”

“Sure did,” Clifford said, and Hickey felt like a clamp had loosed off his chest. “He wanted to talk to you,” the kid said. “Sounded awful funny, like he was sick or lying bad. I told him what you said.”

“And what’d he say?”

“Nothing. Hung up on me.”

“Least he’s alive,” Hickey muttered. “Okay, what’d Leo tell you?”

“Just that Zarp guy’s got her. I wanta stab him in the heart, Pop, I reckon the devil’s got me good.”

Hickey draped his arm over Clifford’s shoulder and walked him toward the cabaña. “Maybe he’s got us all.”

“Devils fighting devils,” Clifford mumbled. “It don’t make no sense.”

“Might if we were smarter.”

Hickey saw Leo at the corner table, same as last night. Beside him sat a giant, a young guy with a face all cheeks and a high tuft of wheat-colored hair. He was twice as wide across the shoulders as Leo. Hickey went over, dropped his duffel bag, and shook both their hands at once. He sat down beside McColgin, the giant. He knew the guy, a pool hustler, a maniac who’d got kicked out of the Marines. He was in a tank battalion, a driver, until on maneuvers he chased a Drill Sergeant over the hills, trying to squash him with the tank.

“Thanks for joining up,” Hickey said.

The giant drawled, “My pleasure.”

Hickey asked Leo if he’d gotten the money from their lawyer. The old guy nodded. “Only the flyboy won’t cough up fifteen hundred till you sign papers, and the pencil pushers can’t draw the papers for a couple days. I got eight bills, though.”

“Swell.” Hickey turned to McColgin. “I hear you brought an arsenal.”

The giant grinned and chanted, “M-1, pistols, silencers, a fifty-round Thompson, a buncha tear gas canisters.”

“Masks too?”

“Yeah, yeah, and Smythe gouged me,” Leo grumbled. “Four hundred. Didn’t come down a nickel when I told him my kid’s applying for Stanford.”

“We’ll meet that guy in hell someday,” Hickey said. “Then let’s beat the crap out of him.”

Leo raised his beer in a toast. Then he pointed at McColgin. “Burly here says he can get a couple more pool hall loafers to join you.”

“Just take a phone call,” McColgin said.

“No, Pop,” the kid said. “Can’t just the three of us fight ’em?”

Hickey stared him down. “You like to run this show?”

Clifford’s eyes turned down and in, as if to glare at the tip of his nose, and his lips squeezed tight in a surly way. Finally he looked up and away, over the cliffs. The beach was crowded. Toward the shoreline, heatwaves rippled up from the darker sand, and scores of people walked, mostly refugees, men in dark suits they’d been wearing for months, girls with skirts that billowed, fluttered, making them look angelic and free. Children built castles and dredged rivers. Refugees with broken hearts stared out at the water.

Hickey signaled the waitress, ordered beers. The four of them sat waiting, watching the beach and eyeing the waitress when she swished by. Clifford would glower for a while, then shut his eyes, and you could see his breaths get shallow, as he slipped in and out between fright and rage. He wanted to carry the Tommy gun. He told that to Hickey.

Hickey said nothing. He finished the beer and ordered black coffee. He smoked his pipe and watched the door for Tito. About 3:40 McColgin said, “I figure the Mex don’t plan to show.”

Leo growled, “Cut it out. You start figuring, you’ll want to charge more money.”

“We should get some more white guys anyway,” McColgin said. “I don’t trust no greasers.”

“Sure you don’t,” Hickey snapped. “Well, Tito’s good as they come.”

“You oughta go along,” the giant said to Leo. “Ain’t too old for a little shoot ’em up, are you?”

“Hell, yes I am.”

A two-tone, green-and-brown cab skidded to a halt out front, throwing up a tail of sand. Tito jumped out of the passenger side and bounded into the cabaña, wearing a maroon Hawaiian shirt with yellow palm trees. He spotted them and rushed over. The patch on his eye was new, dark green. He was shaved, his hair oiled. Even his teeth looked whiter. When he saw the giant, his eyes swelled with awe, then he looked brightly at Hickey and said, “Man, you going to love what I bringing you. I got all what the kid tells me you say. I got four hombres
con muchos cojones
. And they don’t need too much money. What you want them to do? Maybe you found La Rosa?”

“Yeah,” Hickey said. “Tonight she’ll be dancing upstairs in Hell, and we’re gonna take her. These guys you brought can shoot, to kill?”

“Sure, I don’t bring you no
putos
, man.” He threw back his shoulders, puffed his chest out. “Only thing, you better pay my amigos before they going to fight, so they believe you. And me, I’m going too, for only one hundred, just for I catch a bus to Matamoros, and a little extra. These
pendejos
turn my limo to a junk.” He bowed his head, snuffed, rubbed his eye. Then he straightened up and said, “Now you come see what else I got.”

He led them out to the green-and-brown cab, where five Mexicans waited. In the backseat were twin brothers, about thirty years old, stocky Indians with squarish faces. Yaquis. Teodoro and Isidoro Peña. Between them sat their older brother, Tito’s pal Enrique. They appeared tough, serious, the way Tito had told them to look. The driver was Enrique’s son Rafael, a sweet-faced kid about Clifford’s age. And beside him, roped to the seat, gagged, wearing a cake of blood where his mustache used to be, sat the little thug called El Mofeto.

When Hickey saw that, he croaked a great laugh, and Tito bowed deeply.

Hickey looked closer at the man. Besides a smashed lip, there was a gash an inch wide up the side of his head, and small red welts around his right eye. “Who knows you got him?”

The cabbie frowned and rubbed his neck. “Could be a lot of people. Hey, you want to know what he tells me about the girl?” Tito looked at Clifford, took a long breath, turned back to Hickey and led him away a few steps. “That part I think you don’t like so good.” He shuffled his feet. “What you believe in, boss? You Catolico, or what?”

“Just what’d he say?”

“Okay, he’s saying you don’t want La Rosa no more, no more she’s anything, only a killer and a whore of the Nazis.”

“A killer?”

“Yeah, she kills this gringo junkie.”

“George.”

“Maybe that’s the one.”

A sick feeling caught Hickey’s brain. He cast it out fiercely. “Who’re these Nazis she’s the whore of? Zarp? That shooter, Franz?”

“Sure. Maybe other ones too. Lots of them coming here, when Cárdenas don’t send all the Germans to the Capital like he is supposed to.”

Hickey grabbed the cabbie’s shoulders and squeezed. “Don’t tell the kid any of it. What else’d the skunk say?”

“Nothing. I ask him plenty, I kick him, but he don’t talk much.”

They walked back over to the cab. The kid looked pale enough to collapse, but savagely he demanded, “What’d he say?”

“Nothing about your sister.”

“Then how come it’s secret?”

Hickey backstepped a few paces, rubbed his eyes and stared at the faces, Clifford with the surly mouth and ferocious eyes. McColgin’s impudent sneer. The Mexicans relaxing in the cab. He told the twins and Clifford to ride with Leo and the giant, then he got into the cab, in back, and ordered Rafael to head for the border station.

Tito climbed in beside his prisoner.

A couple minutes later while they still bounced along the sandy road, Hickey said, “Ask him if they got guards there in Hell. If he’s lying we’ll put scorpions in his shorts.”

They turned onto the main road and started up the mesa. Tito lit a cigarette, took a drag, blew smoke at the runt, then moved the cigarette up to an inch from El Mofeto’s right eye.

“
Alla en Hell. Cuantos pendejos con armas?
”

It looked like the runt tried to spit, but drooled. With a grin, Tito touched his cigarette’s coal to the prisoner’s eyelid. Through the dusty heat you could smell flesh cooking. El Mofeto yelped, didn’t say a word.

Tito leaned over the seat. “First time I burn him, kind of makes me sick, you know. Every time gets easier.”

They were halfway up the grade. Hickey leaned out the window for air, then looked back and saw a Chevy, like Franz Metzger drove, pulling out of the Playas, about a half-mile behind. He kept one eye on the Chevy. “Ask him again, how many guys are gonna be upstairs in Hell tonight. And which of ’em pack guns. Or, we feed him to the rattlesnakes down by the river. When the poison hits, he’ll get crazy and talk. That’ll be more fun.” As the Chevy drew a little closer, Hickey put on his glasses, and decided the driver could be blond, though he wore a hat.

Tito lit another smoke, puffed awhile and lay a hand on El Mofeto’s forehead. With a thumb, he reached down and pulled back the right eyelid, then he moved the cigarette close and hissed, “We push the rattlesnake up his ass.”

Rafael the driver laughed gayly. His father, in the backseat, nodded and smiled as the cigarette eased closer. And Hickey sat wondering what kind of men they were. The Peñas. The cabbie. Himself. Last night he almost blew off somebody’s prick. Today he walked out on Luz, who’d treated him fine. Now he was helping the cabbie torture a guy. Finally he reached and tapped Tito’s arm. “Save it.” He told the driver to wait until they crested the hill and then speed, turn off somewhere, and lose the Chevy before it came back into view. When they crossed the hilltop, Rafael jumped on the gas and burned rubber.

Tito, innocently as though he never could dream of blinding a guy, said, “This is one hot rod, no?”

They cut right on a dirt street that led to Calle Tres, and bounded over the ruts downhill past the cemetery where the Virgin stood guard, on her feet once more. Another block and the traffic got heavy. Rafael had to bump a Studebaker to make it hurry, and when they made the intersection at Revolución they zoomed diagonally through a dirt parking lot, went flying off the sidewalk, just missing a taco vendor’s cart, then chopped into the wrong lane, and Rafael had to slam the binders and skid to miss front-ending a bus. He backed up and nicked a long blue sedan, but finally got straight and flew down Calle Quatro toward the river.

Hickey gave an order, and they pulled into an alley. He opened the door, stood on the running board, where he could see across traffic all the way down to Calle Uno, the border road, where a minute later, Leo’s Packard rolled by. They waited a couple minutes longer and no red Chevy appeared, so they drove on down along the river road, swung right and crossed the bridge, then cut back on the dirt trail to the riverbank across from the shantytown.

They had hardly stopped when the Indians began crossing the river, wading in groups of three or four. First came the men, then a few women and some older kids, until about thirty of them circled the car, just watching. A hundred more stared from the far shore. Hickey leaned against the taxi, his heart turning mushy at the sight of gaunt faces, bony ribs, legs like ostriches’, filthy rebosos that once had been colored like rainbows, old muslin rags twice too big for bodies they used to fit. Not one of them put out a hand or asked for a dime, but most of their eyes were begging.

The Olmecs, Crispín and two of his sons, stepped through the circle and up to Hickey. Crispín zestfully shook hands.

“Ask him if the bandito’s making trouble.”

After Tito translated, the Olmec smiled and said everything was fine, except the bandito had caught a fever.

Hickey pulled some bills from his pocket, held them out. “Tell him we got this other cabrón. Same deal.”

When Tito dragged El Mofeto rigid from the cab, a few Indians made crosses and backed away. Tito grabbed the runt’s hair and threw him hard to the ground, kicked him in the back, and told the Indians what to do. Finally he rolled the skunk over and stomped on his balls. El Mofeto just groaned a little. Tito got into the cab and slammed the door behind him.

Hickey told Rafael to park at Coco’s Licores. His nerves wanted a bottle, but his brain made him tell the Mexicans to wait there, and stay sober, while he went over the line to meet Leo and the kid, wait for Smythe to show with the rest of their arsenal, and decide for the final time if he ought to risk lives for the sake of some Nazi’s whore.

He crossed the road, walked past Leo’s Packard that was parked a hundred yards south of the line, saluted the Peña twins who sat in the car guarding its trunkful of weapons. When he reached fifty feet from the drive-through gate, Alvarez shouted, “You’re a goner, Pop.”

Hickey kept walking. “Yeah. What’s new?”

“Colonel’s been calling me up every hour, in person, using bad words, like deserter. Asked if I’d be on the firing squad. I’m s’posed to cuff you and call him on the double.”

“Good luck,” Hickey snapped. “Who’s out looking for the creeps that shot Lefty?”

“I guess nobody ’cept you.”

“Sure. They got their own problems, right? Japs. Nazis. Covering their own butts. Getting rich. Nobody’s gonna fix this Mex bunch unless it’s me.”

“Whew. Watch the blood pressure, Pop. Your face looks like a plum.”

As Hickey turned and walked his way, old Mr. Chee asked, “You okay, Tom? There’s been a very lot of people come for you.”

“Oh, yeah? Tell me about ’em.”

“Well, first two Mex cops—didn’t introduce themselves, but one in uniform. Other was made up like a cowpoke.”