Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 01 (9 page)

Alvarez said, “
Vaya con Dios
.”

With Hickey a few steps behind, the gun beside his stomach where people couldn’t spot it in the dark, they crossed the port of entry road toward Coco’s.

“You get brought up religious?”

Boyle twitched and kept walking. “Yeah. Presbyterian.”

“Ever think about the Commandments and feel slimy?” Hickey caught the fink’s neck, wrenched his face around to look at it. “Wanta pray?”

With bulging eyes, Boyle whined, “What’d I do?”

“I just can’t figure guys like you, is all.”

Outside Coco’s stood workers from the upholstery shop across the bridge and two bus drivers with their caps on. Hickey gave them a nod, over his shoulder to be sure they wouldn’t see the gun. Then he led Boyle up the sidewalk of the bridge. “Think anybody’ll come to your funeral? Your kids? You buy ’em lots of stuff with the blood money? Buy the wife minks and all? I bet they’ll miss you—folks love a winner, huh?”

Boyle walked stiff and slow as they neared the crest of the bridge. “Better’n a bright-eyed chump like you.”

“Yeah,” Hickey muttered. “What you suppose makes one guy get stuck with a conscience the next guy doesn’t have?”

“You got a conscience? So take that gun off me.”

“Naw.”

“You oughta wise up, Tom.”

As they stepped off the bridge, Hickey said, “Yeah, I am, and you oughta go to hell. So let’s both do what we oughta. What you say?”

He gave the fink a nudge with the gun, made him turn left toward the river and the shantytown. About thirty feet ahead, near the bank, a gang of Indian men stood around a campfire just big enough to give light to their game, throwing sticks and bones at a spot in the dirt. At once they all looked up.

“
Buenas noches
,” Hickey said.

There were two grandfathers. A middle-aged guy. Three grown boys. All thin, but with round, passive faces even while they stared at Hickey’s gun. From the lively eyes and shiny hair you could see they hadn’t been starving at the border as long as most.

Hickey tried his poor Spanish. The others turned to the middle-aged guy, who offered his hand and bowed slightly. They shook, made introductions, and the one named Crispín told Hickey that the others only spoke Olmec. The gentle tenor voice and small bright eyes got Hickey trusting this fellow.

Nodding toward Boyle, Hickey said, “
Hombre malo. Bandito. Asesino
.” That about exhausted his Spanish. “
Necesito ayuda
,” he said. “You help me?”

The Indians stared while he pulled the rope off his belt, and gave it to Crispín along with a five-dollar bill. The others moved closer and gawked at the bill. Hickey pointed to Boyle’s hands and feet, mimed tying him up.

“God, no, Tom,” the fink yelped, “they got diseases down here.”

Hickey got out more bills, passed them to the other Indians, who thanked him and chattered with glee. Then he gave Crispín Boyle’s police .38. The Indians leaned in close, sighing as if they’d seen diamonds hanging between a princess’ breasts. Turning to Hickey, Crispín muttered something and bowed solemnly. Hickey told him to keep the gringo hidden until tomorrow.

He walked up close and winked at Boyle. The fink squirmed and strange little toots came out of him. Hickey turned to the Indians. “
Alguno problema, tirar los cojones
.”

As he walked back to the bridge and up, Hickey gazed out across the dozens of little fires flickering in the gray light of the shantytown and out over the brown and reddish lights spaced around the lowland of Tijuana, up the west mesa, and the far hills called Las Lomas. As he looked at the moon, something moved inside him. He suddenly felt content for the first time this year. Maybe he needed the kind of power you get from pushing creeps around. Maybe he needed to feel a grip on things.

Chapter Twelve

Sunset cooled the dust and gilded the air, as El Mofeto swung the red Chevy coupe off Calle Seis and onto a dirt road that angled across the red dirt slope of the west mesa. Beside him sat a big mestizo with a smashed nose, and an Indian from Guatemala.

They bumped over dips and rivulets. As they neared the shack where Tito lived, El Mofeto gunned the motor, flew the last fifty yards, whipped around behind the limousine, and skidded broadside to a stop a couple feet from Tito’s door. The two big thugs leaped out. The mestizo fired twice at the door before they crashed through it.

The place was only one small room, with no place to hide. El Mofeto stepped in past his men. He kicked a blanket on the pallet bed. A cat screeched, shot out, and dove through a window. From a shelf, the runt picked up two sun-blued glass jars and smashed them on the brick floor. He kicked in the side of a dresser, knocked over a kerosene lamp. He spat on the retablo, a painting on tin of the Virgin and Child that hung above Tito’s pallet.

Finally the thugs trooped outside, El Mofeto in the lead. He checked both ways down the street. His hand with the pistol lifted high, and he squawked, “
Ven a fuera, Tito, putón
.” He waited a minute, shouted again, chuckled and walked to the Chevy, unlocked the trunk, and got out crowbars and a heavy chain. The mestizo grabbed the chain. The Guatemalan picked up a crowbar. Each took one side, smashing the limo’s windows and lights. The Guatemalan wedged his crowbar and kicked until a door fell off. Both of them pulled another door and the hood loose. The Guatemalan jumped on a fender, leaned toward the motor and golfed with his crowbar, knocking the carburetor twenty yards. He ripped hoses. Gouged the radiator. Then he climbed on the roof with the mestizo. They trampolined until the roof became a deep bowl.

All that time, El Mofeto stood cackling. As his grin soured he yelled his men down, then raised his pistol, blasted tires. Finally he shouted, “
Estas un muerto, Albertito!
”

He walked coolly to the Chevy. The thugs climbed in and they drove away back to Calle Seis. At the corner they passed a police car with two cops. The Chevy turned down the mesa. The cops sat gazing where the limo had got smashed and neighbors were starting to gather.

Three shacks north of the demolished limo, Tito stood beside his friend Enrique Peña, a Yaqui with gray flecked bushy hair. They’d been staring through cracks in the walls, and Tito knew better than to go outside yet, with the cops down there. They’d arrest him for owning a junk car, or something else, and sell him to El Mofeto. He cursed and smacked his head with his palms but couldn’t think of any curses foul enough. Finally he turned to Enrique and his teeth started clacking. He felt his bladder loosen then spill down his leg. When he moaned, his friend reached out to hold him, but Tito didn’t move. He couldn’t see, as tears flooded his eye. He fell to his knees, bowed lower, and socked his head on the dirt floor. After a minute he straightened. Stood up. Embraced his compadre. Then stepped back and asked Enrique why it could be that he hadn’t killed El Mofeto already, before.

Chapter Thirteen

Hickey bought a pint of mescal at Coco’s, and a liter of anís for Luz. She liked that stuff and it made her breath smell good. He caught a cab, then lounged in the backseat, uncorked his bottle, nursed it, and thought about Luz’s sweet breath, her breasts that he could burrow between, and the thick black hair cascading over his face when she got on top, so all he could see was the shadow of her face, and that swell hair, and soon the rest of the world was beyond the moon somewhere. Then he’d forget the sorrows, dangers, dreams he needed to give up on. He’d forget to long for Madeline and kick himself in the heart for loving somebody who’d betrayed him, somebody he tried every day to hate for stealing his daughter. Leaving him wasn’t so bad. For that she had plenty of reasons. But she could’ve run to some officer out of the hundreds prowling uptown looking for a classy dame like her, and stayed in town where Hickey could visit Elizabeth and take her riding horses up in the mountains, sailing on the bay.

Crossing the east mesa on the border road, as you started down the grade, the first thing you saw was the Pacific. Bigger than the sky, it glowed dark emerald with streaks of red in the moonlight. There were tiny ships, dark currents, clouds like puffs of smoke passing in front of the moon. Straight below on the coastal plain lay the marshland and sloughs of the river, and just south of the border, the town of Las Playas, a thicket of rundown hotels, bars, derelict mansions.

Luz’s place was up sandy roads about two blocks back from the seacliffs. It was built of scrap wood and tar paper, with chicken wire instead of glass for windows.

Hickey paid the cabbie, got out, stood for a minute listening to the crash of waves and shouts from the Casino de Lux. He stepped to the door, gave a holler and waited, then reached through a disguised hole and unhooked the latch. He went in and tossed his duffel bag beside the mattress. He looked around, grumbled, walked back out and turned down the road toward the cliffs, suddenly thinking about Leo, Tito, Wendy Rose. Any of them could be in a jam, while he was coming to get laid, when he ought to be visiting Juan Metzger, trying to figure things like who El Mofeto and the slick German worked for. He should walk down to the Hotel Esperanza where the wealthier refugees stayed, ask about Zarp. Or he could walk on the beach to clear his head. But he turned into the Casino de Lux.

It was an old barn next to a bull ring that had been part of a rancho before the war. Now there were afternoon bull fights, roosters jousted at night, and Sundays they brought in pit bulls since the pariah dogs they tried would just lie down and make peace. You couldn’t rile dead spirits.

The air was thick with fishy smells and mildew from straw on the dirt floor. Around the ring stood a couple dozen gringo troops, half that many girls, a few Mexican caballeros, and a platoon or so of Mex soldiers from their fort just south of the Playas. They wore fatigues, and kept their rifles beside them—a couple weeks before, Cárdenas had placed the coastline on twenty-four-hour alert, suspecting a Jap invasion. Mixed through the crowd you saw refugees of the kind who wouldn’t grieve too much for the homeland, since they’d escaped Antwerp or Prague with a bankroll. The men and the whores yelled for blood and money. The cocks ripped each other’s feet off. They flew, screeched, beat their wings like they’d gone berserk from wanting to become real birds and fly. As Hickey pushed through the crowd, he paused to watch the banty lunge at the Polish cock’s gizzard.

For a minute, as he stood beside Mexican soldiers, Hickey thought again of going to their general. But it seemed like the girl was enslaved at a brothel and casino where, on Tuesdays, Cárdenas played cards with old del Monte. Cárdenas, as presidente, had shut down gambling in TJ, six years ago. Now maybe he was part of the crowd who ran this Casa de Oro, which made Hickey wonder how great a fraud the old Presidente could be. Hell, you might trace the whole deal to him. Down here you never knew where things could lead. The worst stench might be on top of the heap. Like in ancient Rome. Maybe like most times, everywhere.

Finally he caught sight of Luz’s thick, shiny hair. She was holding the arm of a Marine. Hickey scowled and started that way. He’d been giving Luz twenty dollars every week or so, plenty enough to live on down here, to keep her clean, to make him feel less like a john. He pushed his way through, getting cussed by the sailors he bumped. Then he grabbed her shoulder. She turned fast, panting.

“Ay, Tomas.”

The Marine spun around. A corporal with battle scars, as though he’d caught a fist or two with his lips. He bared his teeth, then sighted Hickey’s MP armband and turned back to the roosters. Luz slid past Hickey and started tugging him out through the crowd. On the way she got pinched and goosed, and she tongue-lashed one sailor until his chin quivered and eyes misted, but outside, she gently laid her head on Hickey’s shoulder as they strolled up the sandy road.

“Where you are for eleven days? I think you don’t love me, no?”

“I got you a present.”

“Aw,
mi amorcito
.” She hugged tighter against him.

When they got to her place, she stepped to the table that was an old crate and lit a votive candle. Above the candle on the wall, a crucifix hung and beside it a picture of Jesus with flat black eyes that followed you everywhere.

Hickey got the anís from his duffel bag, and Luz took it with a flourish, blowing him a kiss and dancing a spin around the room. Then she leaned toward him and whisked off her blouse and skirt as if they were bandages that itched. Hickey liked that way that Luz had. Only now it made him think of Wendy Rose.

A vision came to him. The girl kneeling down, crying, head on her knees. A gang of Germans, soldiers, Mexicans surrounded her, hooting at her, nudging and jabbing her with their feet.

Suddenly he wanted to get to a phone, talk to Clifford, see if anybody had called in. He checked his watch. 10:12. Before long he’d meet Leo and maybe the cabbie. So he flopped on the mattress, the only furniture except the crates and a low table with a small gas cookstove, some canned food, a bottle of water. He got out his pipe, loaded, fired it up, and watched Luz as she stood naked brushing out her hair and gazing down at him. He smiled at her pendulous knockers, flat belly, slender hips, all that black wavy hair, and those heart-shaped lips blowing kisses at him, making his brain steam.

“Don’ you lay down?”

“Yeah,” he said, and sat there smoking. She came and sat beside him. She took off the MP armband, the tie and shirt. With one hand she fingered his hair in back where it still was thick. Her other hand rubbed his chest. She kissed his forehead lovingly now, lingering, not a whore job like the first couple times.

He took a swallow of mescal. “Tell me something—you know a guy, Señor Zarp?”

She looked away and huffed, “Why you talk about him?”

“Tell me.”

She pulled her hands off him, squeezed them between her thighs. “I know he kills a girl, Carmencita, up there.”

“Whoa—up where?”

“The bar called Hell, hombre. For the goddamn men!”

“Like a show, you mean.”

“For the goddamn
pinche cabrones ricos
!” She put a hand across her mouth and muttered, “And those goddamn Nazis.”

“Wait now, doll. I been there, and it looks tame compared to stinkholes like the Blue Fox and the Club Paris.”

“You don’ go upstairs.” She reached for her bottle and took a long pull, swished it around in her mouth, spit it out on the dirt floor.

And Hickey sat thinking, upstairs, upstairs,
arriba
, the
ricos
, the Nazis.

He jumped up, grabbed his shirt, threw it on, and strapped on a .45 and holster, while Luz watched him savagely, shaking her fist in front of her. Finally she gnashed her teeth and screamed, “You don’ go there.”

“I’m going after that Kraut.”

Luz dropped her hands and stared, her lip curled into sneer. “You don’ go watching the show?”

“Yeah, I don’t. And I’ll be back after midnight. Wait up for me, huh?”

Slowly, she got up and hugged him. She was trembling. Hickey rubbed her back and squeezed her for a minute or so. Then he said, “If I don’t show up by midnight, go to Las Brisas and find an old gringo named Leo. You and him wait for me there.”

He eased away from her, grabbed and pocketed his mescal, then walked out and hurried down the road toward the Casino de Lux.

He picked the newest, fastest-looking cab and told the driver to race downtown, but the driver shook his head, didn’t move even when Hickey flashed a ten. Hickey didn’t find a taker until the fourth cab. Either the cabbie had missed hearing the threats El Mofeto sent around, to stay clear of Hickey, or he was some daredevil the skunk couldn’t scare. Or he was a snitch.

As they started up the sandy road, puttering along, lights out, Hickey squinted at his watch. 10:35. This way, just getting there could take halfway to midnight. “Hey, forget the Japs. Turn the damn lights on and speed.” The driver shrugged, so Hickey got out another bill and slapped it on the dashboard. “
Luces. Ándale. Rápido
.”

The cab went hurdling over the sandy ruts. And Hickey figured, no matter about the meeting at Las Brisas, he only had until midnight. Because three nights ago at the Club Paris, somebody said La Rosa never came on until midnight. He was betting they’d worked her two shifts. The swing shift in Hell. Where they preferred blondes, like the Dutch girl and her pal who’d talked to Clifford.

Sure enough, he thought, the real enemy wasn’t del Monte, the police chief and his gang, El Mofeto, the slick German. Zarp, it was.

He grabbed for his bottle and took a gulp, then smoked his pipe while they roared up the grade and across the east mesa. The few cars on the border road, all with lights out, pulled over to let the beaming cab flash by, while Hickey sat digesting fear. The rest of these punks didn’t spook him much. But Zarp did. He didn’t know how to fight the man. He’d met guys like Mofeto and the Tijuana cops. You look in a man’s eyes and read a little of his mind—like he’d read Zarp as a deep looney you couldn’t predict, a man who’s threatened by peace because when everything else is quiet, he hears his own screams. So he goes out seeking chaos. Like Hitler. A guy turned inside out. The kind who might punch when you know he’s got to feint, or hit you with a bomb when you’re watching for a knife, or kill a girl with pure joy.

When they made the stoplight at Revolución, Hickey told the driver to cut the lights, drive slow down Calle Siete, and circle the block around Hell.

On the bright yellow building, the upstairs windows were shaded but from alongside one shade came a strip of flickering reddish light and running down from that same window a fire-escape ladder hung. They turned right on Avenida Cinco de Mayo, the cross-street just west of the Club de Paris, and cut back up Calle Ocho. Hickey told the driver to park and wait on Revolución.

He got out, straightened the coat over his gun, walked around the corner, and stopped. He waited a minute then peered back around the corner, to see what the cabbie was up to. Sitting on the fender, the cabbie took in the balmy air.

At 11:05, Hickey stepped carefully down the hill, looking out for cops and other dangers. Ahead on the narrow street lit only by the moon, he couldn’t see anybody except a gang of drunk sailors climbing the hill and trying to whoop like Mexicans. Then, as he crossed the street a block up from Hell, he spotted the doorman out front and the cop resting on a porch across the street.

Hickey stepped back into the dark by the door to a medical clinic where poor gringos got their teeth pulled and their offspring aborted. He waited while the sailors stumbled up the hill and met a whore and her Marine coming out of an alley. They all walked into a tattoo parlor. Finally the doorman went back inside Hell. The cop sat gazing downhill. Hickey eased out to the dirt sidewalk and crept, staying close to the buildings until he reached the passway between Hell and the bakery next door. It was a stinking passway about eight feet wide. His feet slipped on moldy trash. Three cats and a gang of smaller creatures scattered out of his way just as he reached the base of the fire-escape ladder.

When he grabbed hold it rattled loudly. He stepped back, looked around, up, stood listening for a minute. Then he held the ladder gently and started to climb, his right hand pulling while his left stayed on the gun. He got five rungs up and saw that the next three were missing.

He cussed in a whisper, shimmied down, stood a minute with his ears keened, finally turned to the bakery next door, a one-story place with a flat roof. After sloshing through the crud to the rear of the buildings near the corner of the bakery, he found an oil drum full to the top with ashes packed down hard by the rain. He muscled it over next to the wall, inches at a time—it must’ve weighed three hundred pounds—then he climbed onto the drum and grabbed the eaves of the roof. When they started to crack he let go and caught hold of a sturdier place. Then pulled, strained, and got up. The roof was too rickety to walk on. So he crawled along the edge on the wall line, about thirty feet before he reached the spot across from the upstairs window toward the front of Hell. Now he had to stand and focus through the flickering light on the space down the side of the windowshade. What he saw looked so weird, he reached for his glasses.

A naked man lay on his back on a long wooden table. A red mask covered his face. His hair was slick and blond like the German’s in the red Chevrolet. His chest stuck out. The arms lay flat alongside his slim waist and hips. He might’ve been dead, except for the giant erection. Behind him stood another, higher table, and on it a cactus in a gold pot, and a golden cross entwined by a serpent, about three feet high. Beside that stood a crystal pitcher full of red.

Hickey felt knocked off balance, as if the building shook. His legs kept tipping but he held still, waiting for the man to rise or do something. Then came the sound like a chant, low and muffled through the walls and windows of Hell. Eerie, dense, harsh words, maybe Latin. Hickey’s mind wound tighter, higher until he pulled his gun and sighted on the blond man’s erection. A tremor ran down his neck and arm to his trigger finger. He stood like that for a couple minutes while his hand twitched and he conjured pictures of the stiff’s rod exploding. He made himself chuckle at the sight, trying to release some pressure from inside him. Until the girl appeared.