Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 03 (7 page)

Chapter Ten

Leo arrived at the seafood mart twenty minutes early. He walked around back, past the sportfishing dock, and up to the yacht club, where the sun-wrinkled dolls who noticed him either crimped their noses, disappointed again, or practiced the coquettish smile they figured to use on richer, younger guys.

He strolled out past the day sailors and small cabin cruisers rigged with marlin gear, to the longer sloops and schooners that he and Tom used to mutually admire, especially when they’d owned the Chris Craft dealership together—the reason they’d both given up the LAPD and moved south. In 1935, sure the depression was about to lift, they’d bought the dealership cheap. Summer of 1936, they’d sold out even cheaper.

Leo stood gazing at a white Newporter, about forty feet, plenty big enough for himself and Vi. Maybe they could swing a trade with some old salt finally ready to forsake the sea. Their house for the boat, straight across. They could sail through the islands off British Columbia. Visit Magda in Seattle, Una in Berkeley. Follow the gray whales south. Drift around the cape into the Sea of Cortez. Or cut across Panama.

After he leaned on Charlie Schwartz.

He strode back up the dock, along the wharf past the sportfishers, turned into the patio behind the seafood mart. He took the first seat inside the gate. The waitress swept over haughtily, dressed like a flamenco dancer.

“I’m meeting Charlie Schwartz,” Leo said.

He suspected she muttered, “
Lo siento mucho,
” as she ushered him across the patio, into the corner closest to the yacht club. He sat down, checked the menu, ordered a sweet rum drink called a mai tai, and wondered if the doctor who’d hounded him into giving up cigarettes could be a quack.

When his mai tai arrived, he swilled the top half and was sipping when Charlie and the freckled brothers showed. All three were in shirtsleeves with open collars. Leo slipped his jacket onto the back of the chair. A sudden breeze tickled his ribs, damp from sweating.

“Mr. Weiss,” Charlie said cordially.

Leo rose, shook hands. Charlie used the finger-pinch grip, like most guys trying to keep their edge.

“These here are my protégés,” Charlie said, pronouncing the last word as if there were a hyphen between each syllable. “The brothers McNees.” They nodded glumly and perched on the two end seats across from Leo. Schwartz took the seat between them. “Mr. Weiss, we got something to talk about? You bring an apology from your pal Tom?”

“Not exactly.”

“That’s a shame. I had one coming. Then, maybe you’re thinking, at our age it’s time to make new friends outta old foes. That it?”

“Yeah. You’re a mind reader.” Leo tapped the menu. “Any recommendations?”

“Clams. Nothing but clams. Perfect with the sissy punch you’re drinking. Clams it is?”

“Sure.”

Schwartz nudged the skinny brother, who got up slowly and meandered across the patio on a line to intercept the waitress. Leo raised a finger and crooked it at Schwartz. The gangster leaned closer.

“Now that we’re friends,” Leo whispered, “you wanta tell me who grabbed Tom’s wife and where they got her?”

Schwartz leaned back, wrinkled his brow. “Tom’s wife? The dimwitted gal? When’d this happen?”

“Sometime after Tom and you talked.”

“Who grabbed her?”

Over the rim of his mai tai, Leo stared daggers into the gangster’s smoky eyes, thinking there ought to be something different, if you looked close enough, between the eyes of humans and those of a ghoul.

“They asking for ransom or what?”

“Just to get him outta town, Charlie. Who’d want him outta their hair, do you think?”

“Angelo Paoli, could be. I heard Tom was trying to hang the Sousa fire on Angelo.”

“Damn, Charlie, you’re confusing me here. Way I understood, Tom was trying to hang the fire on you. Matter of fact, that’s why I figured we oughta be pals, you and me, on account of then I could do your chum Mickey Cohen a favor, and in turn you’d see that Cynthia gets sprung and Tom’s wife shows up at home by tonight.”

The gangster had clenched his jaw so tight it made his jowls tremble. “Supposing I had the power to fix all this crap—this whatever you could do for Mr. Cohen’d have to be a whopper.”

“Yeah. That’s the kind I mean.”

“Spill it, then.”

“The Guns for Israel scam. There’s a guy on the
Herald
knows all about the phony stories. The ship sailing. The ship sinking. This guy, there’s a little voice in the back of his head shouting he’s gotta pass the truth on. If the cops don’t want it, and the FBI don’t, he gives it to the newsreels,
Life
magazine, Mr. Ben Gurion. No way he’s gonna let Mickey off the hook on this one. The guy’s a fanatic, I hear. Thinks God’s talking to him, saying, ‘Clip ten million off my people, you burn for it.’” Leo smiled, thinking he could hear the gangster’s teeth gnash.

“That so? Gimme a name.”

“Yeah, I will. You know when.”

Schwartz bunched his fists together, braced his elbows on the table, leaned his chin on the fists. “Listen up. I get around, hear things. Nothing you’d like better than to watch me and Mickey take a fall. How about that?”

“I might’ve said that once or twice. Blowing off steam, is all, Charlie.” He offered an ingenuous smile.

“Okay, now let’s suppose it’s like you say and Guns for Israel wasn’t exactly on the level. How come you’d sell out this fanatic, and the Holy Land to boot, for one stinking goy?”

“You oughta know. Hey, I’ve got my excuses, same as you. Twenty years we been best pals, Tom and me.”

“So, when he hears you been playing games with Mickey, and Mickey had to send a couple boys to squeeze this fanatic’s name outta you before they cooked you on a spit, he’ll send flowers. I bet he’ll send a truckful.”

Leo sat panting through his nose. He lifted the drink, gave himself a double dose. “What’s the advantage in knocking me off? Why would Mickey wanta do it the hard way? Why not just spring the two girls and pin the fire on some other chump, if the cops need a fall guy? Pin it on Angelo, say.”

“On account of Mickey ain’t got Hickey’s wife, and I ain’t got her, and maybe can’t anybody spring the Cynthia dame, if the cops are holding her dead to rights. That’s why.” Charlie whipped his head around to the rail and spat onto the dock, a step in front of a prim tourist zeroing her camera at a pelican. “Mr. Weiss, you oughta give me the name of this fanatic, save a lot of grief. Suppose, before Mickey hears you’re trying to pin a bum wrap on him and sends for you—suppose before that you get lost or fall over dead or something? Now Mickey’s gotta slap around every pinhead that works for the
Herald
to figure which one’s spreading lies about him.”

“That’s a lot of slapping,” Leo said.

Charlie’s boy and the waitress crossed the patio, each of them carrying two plates of clams. The boy was in the rear, his eyes beaming down on the waitress’s prancing hips.

When the plate landed in front of him, Leo picked up his fork, pricked a clam, grimaced, and stabbed the thing. Slowly he lifted and placed it on his tongue. He rolled it around his mouth a minute, finally bit, and swallowed. His face crimped in revulsion.

“Hey, Charlie,” he said. “Want my clams?”

“I got plenty.”

“Put ’em in the bait bucket where they belong, then.” Leo heaved himself up, slipped into his coat. “Oh, yeah, I got a message from Tom. He says, without the girl, his life comes to a screeching halt, and so does yours.”

“Hey, pigface, how is it I’m getting blamed for everything?”

“Pigface?” Faster than the eye, Leo snatched up a fork and pronged the gangster’s neck, on the jugular vein. Charlie only sat frozen, sneering, while the skinny boy wedged between the table and the patio rail, jumped behind Leo, and got him by the throat. He wrenched the old man up and out the dockside gate, kneed him around to the alley alongside the seafood mart and a drydock. He shoved Leo’s face down onto a stack of cardboard that was slimy and reeked of fish guts. A cat yowled and squirted out from between layers of cardboard.

By the time Leo rolled over, the redhead was turning the corner, out of the alley. “Hey,” Leo called after him. “This mean you’re picking up the tab?”

He dragged himself up and around the fish mart to his car, worrying about which hotel in LA he should check into, and where he might sequester Vi, and if some innocent folks that worked for the
LA Herald
were about to get squashed by Mickey Cohen.

Chapter Eleven

The storm had blown down trees all over the Sierra Nevada, but the snowfall had been light. Plows and sun, a high of near 50 degrees, had cleared the highway up from Sacramento, across Donner Pass, and along the Truckee River, which cascaded out of Tahoe’s north shore. All the way down, the Truckee was rapids that flooded its banks. Rivulets cut every hillside, unsettling roots, felling trees, emptying into the river.

The lakeside highway was clear and slick. Hickey reached the village at dusk and skidded his Chevy down the hill toward the shore, to his place. Ten feet into his driveway, mud stopped him. He left the car and ran through the slush. He slammed the door open.

Claire sprang up from the easy chair next to the phone. She’d been dozing. Her exquisite, regal face looked battered. The whites of her eyes were bloodstained pearls. The pupils had faded to milk chocolate. Tangled black hair jutted in all directions. Her willowy body seemed aged, brittle. Beside her stood an easel holding a half-finished portrait, the eyes, forehead, and hair of a Reno banker. Claire made her living with portraiture.

“I’m sorry, Tom.”

“Nothing new?”

“Nothing.”

With a groan, he strode over and hugged her. While she wept with her head on his shoulder, Hickey wished to God he could join in. But even if he were capable of weeping, now it would feel like giving up. Giving in. As if Wendy were already lost.

“I’ve been here every second,” she sobbed. “In case they called.”

He helped her back to the easy chair and took the wooden chair beside it. “Cold in here.”

“I fell asleep.”

Hickey got up and went to the wood stove, stirred the coals, and threw in a couple of small logs. He filled and lit his pipe, returned to the chair, and noticed, on the coffee table, Wendy’s stack of
Saturday Evening Posts
, her Bible, her dictionary, and the stories of Isak Dinesen. He choked on a breath. His brain smoked and crackled.

“The sheriff came, right?”

“Uh-huh. He looked for stuff they might’ve dropped. Nothing. A fellow dusted for fingerprints, even though I told him they were sure wearing gloves. The one was, I know, and coming in out of the cold.…Sheriff Boggs looked at their prints in the snow, said one of them had awfully big feet, size thirteen or so. And a deputy asked around, all the neighbors. Only one who said he might’ve noticed anything at that hour was Harry Poverman’s cowboy, Mac. He said there was a dark blue Oldsmobile passed by. That’s all.”

Hickey gazed around at the half-knitted blanket thrown over a chair back, at the fur-collared woolen coat he’d bought Wendy for Christmas, and at the snow cap and muffler, all on hooks beside the door. “They drag her out in her nightgown?” he snarled.

“She had a blanket. They wouldn’t let her freeze, Tom. I’ll bet they wouldn’t.”

Hickey needed to scream, curse, or weep but, stuck between impulses, he sat pounding his fists together. Claire leaned and touched his knee. “The sheriff said you ought to call when you get in. Left his home number, for after six.”

“He phone Leo, ask what this is all about?”

“I passed on what Leo told me, about the two gangsters you threatened.”

Hickey nodded, checked his watch: five-twenty. He reached for the phone, put it on his lap, looked at the card Claire held out, dialed the Washoe County sheriff’s north shore station, and asked for Sheriff Boggs.

“Yeah, Tom. I didn’t expect you this early. You holding up?”

“Fair. You got anything?”

“Not a damn one. Those boys slipped in and out like ghosts, except one of Harry’s guard dogs saw an Olds driving away, could’ve been them.”

“Mac saw the Olds. He give you any descriptions?”

“No. Said he couldn’t tell if there were two men or a brass band inside the car, dark as it was.”

“Let’s don’t bet on Mac. It might’ve been a couple of Harry’s boys that snatched her. Suppose you’re a mobster down south who wants to fix somebody here, who’d you call?”

“Poverman. I’m with you. Fill me in, though, would you? I only got pieces from Mrs. Blackwood. Give me the whole story.”

Starting with the phone call from the lawyer, Hickey explained that he’d raced down to San Diego, in a hurry to do the job and get back to Wendy. He admitted his carelessness, that he’d pissed off the wrong guys: Schwartz, Paoli, possibly Mickey Cohen. He confessed that, even after Angelo’s stiffs had fired on him, he still hadn’t considered that a phone call, maybe to Harry Poverman, could stop him cold. Stop him good as dead.

“Let’s try it this way, Tom. S’pose it’s Harry’s boys, all right. That’d indicate the instigator was this Schwartz fella, or Cohen. Since Harry’s a Jew.”

“Except you’ve got Jews shooting for Jack Dragna, Italians knocking off their cousins for the Jews. You’ve got Greeks, Hungarians. Forget race or creed. These guys aren’t patriots.”

“I’m saying Poverman’s thick with the Hollywood Jews, no matter if he’s an Eskimo. You oughta know, Tom, working for him, living next door and all.”

“He doesn’t take me in his confidence.”

“Look, you sit tight, don’t pull any more boners, huh? I’ll make some calls to South Shore. They got a list of Harry’s boys that’d fit this kinda action. If a couple of ’em are outta touch, maybe we got something. Meanwhile, think you can muster some patience?”

“If I had any patience,” Hickey muttered, “or sense either, I wouldn’t of blown this game, and Wendy’d be home right now.”

“Sit tight, Tom. Have a few drinks. Read a good book.”

Through the phone call, Claire had leaned close with a hand on his arm. The instant he hung up, she said, “What?”

“The sheriff’s got an angle.”

“Harry?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think he’s that evil?”

Hickey shrugged, got up, and walked into the kitchen. All day he’d been groping for answers about what to do when he got here, without a single inspiration. So he’d kept dreaming that, if a miracle hadn’t delivered Wendy, at least a clue might await him. Besides a dark Oldsmobile and Harry Poverman, he’d found nothing, except a house full of reminders that his carelessness might’ve cost him everything. All he’d gotten from Claire or the sheriffs were questions and comments that deepened his shame.

Some thirty hours had passed since his last meal. He considered a plate of crackers and cheese or something, decided he couldn’t force it down. He reached to the cupboard above the sink where he used to keep whiskey before he cut back, almost a year ago. He thought there might be a little left out of the fifth they’d bought when Claire and her cousin visited on New Year’s Eve. It was gone. He must’ve used it to spike coffee once or twice, coming in from the cold.

As he passed through the living room, Claire asked, “You want a bowl of soup, Tom?”

“Naw.”

He walked into the bedroom, opened the linen closet, and reached behind a pile of sweaters for a bundle, out of which he unwrapped his .45 Colt automatic. His .38 could drop most guys, except wild men, if you hit them square. The Colt could’ve felled Goliath. He went to the closet, got his heavy woolen coat with big pockets, and stuffed the pistol into the one on the right at hip level. After returning to the living room, he backtracked again to the linen closet, dug behind the sweaters for two seven-round clips, and pocketed them.

Claire had returned to dabbing oils on the portrait she’d been painting. The dabs looked like liver spots on the forehead. When she turned and saw Hickey wearing the coat, her eyebrows furled. “Where you going?”

“Over to Harry’s.”

“Do you think that’s smart, Tom? What can you do there, except yell and get beat up?”

“Borrow some whiskey.” He stepped over and patted her cheek. “Thanks, Claire. You’re tops.” He kissed the summit of her head, at the part, then turned to the door. On the way, he picked up his pipe and tin of Sir Walter Raleigh off an end table.

Outside, he set out trudging in ankle deep snow through a stand of lodge pole pine, and across the meadow where the snow had melted into crunchy layers. As it deepened, he kicked it aside.

Harry’s place was five cubes, each nearly thirty feet square. All four outside cubes attached to the middle one, in a lopsided wheel pattern. Each cube had at least one chimney, making eight chimneys in all. Smoke poured out of two of them, one in the center cube, another in one of the bedroom wings. Tyler, Harry’s daytime bodyguard, stood watch on the deck that led off the center cube on the lake side, his arm around the shoulder of a blonde in a maid outfit, pointing toward the lakeshore where, in moonlight, a tall, meaty, five-point buck stood gazing back toward the mountains as if he’d lost his way.

Hickey crossed a swampy expanse and sank calf deep in frosty mud. Cussing, he plodded out and picked up his pace across the meadow, keeping to the shadowed, icy places along the tree line.

The maid, Frieda, nudged the bodyguard. He turned from viewing the buck, spotted Hickey, and waved. They’d first met a few years ago when Tyler was a bouncer at Harry’s casino. A Kansas farmboy, he’d played two years of college football, same as Hickey. He wore a Russian hat and a hayseed smile. He met Hickey at the steps.

“Problems, huh, Tom?”

“Yeah. You see anything that could help me out?”

“Nope. Talk to Mac. You won’t catch me up at dawn.”

“Smart man. The boss in?”

“Yep. Wait here a minute.”

Tyler and the maid went inside, shutting the door behind them. Hickey watched the moon ripples on the lake, felt the pounding in his temples increase each time he got a vision of Wendy. In every frame, she was turned aside. He only could see her profile. She wouldn’t look him straight on.

Frieda poked her head out the door. “Come on in, Mister Hickey.”

The place reminded Hickey of an ice cream parlor. Floored in ceramic tile in neapolitan colors, chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla, like Claire’s sorry eyes. The walls matched the floor, except the lakeside wall around the picture windows was the pastel of lime sherbet. Each wall had a sliding glass door leading to a deck that connected the bordering cubes. In the southwest corner was a stainless steel sinkboard and bar polished to gleam like chrome. The fireplace, beginning ten feet east of the bar, beyond the sliding door, was of brick painted neapolitan strawberry.

The furniture was all Formica, cast iron, and dyed leather. There were seven couches: two each of strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla, one black. In the room’s dead center, between a strawberry and a vanilla couch, sat a large glass tank, home to a rosy boa and a pair of sidewinders. Harry claimed he kept the damned things because they got women all giddy.

The man of the house lay sprawled on the black couch, which faced the lakeside window. Slow as a dreamer, he got up to greet Hickey.

He stood at least six feet three inches, an inch or so taller than his neighbor. Several years younger. The tight polo shirt showed off his long, lean, muscular arms. He strutted like an Olympian. His skin was olive, his dark hair curly, his nose a classic. He had a slightly cleft chin and full lips. His voice was a rich and confident bass that charmed women so profoundly, those who didn’t nearly swoon at least fluttered. “Hey, Tom. I heard, pal. Give me the latest.”

Hickey walked over and shook hands. “Nothing new.”

“Drink?”

“Scotch.”

“Hey, Tyler. Ale for me, scotch for Tom. Tall one.”

Tyler stepped out through the doorway near the bar. It led into the northwest cube. The kitchen. After a few visits, Hickey’d come to know the layout.

He and the boss sat on the black couch facing the lake. Harry seemed to understand his neighbor’s silence. He leaned back, hands folded on his neck, and sighed ponderously.

The buck was gone from the beach. A lighted party boat chugged near shore, over the dark glassy water striped with foam. Hickey caught a shiver. As soon as it passed, the throbbing in his temples came so hard he went blind for a moment. When his sight returned, he glimpsed what seemed the outline of a huge person reflected in the window, for an instant before it disappeared and the shiver began to fade.

Tyler served the drinks, threw a couple of logs on the fire, and wandered back into the kitchen wing beyond the bar, while Hickey knocked down his scotch in three swallows. He set the glass on the floor, got up, shoved a strawberry leather chair into the corner between the fireplace and the lakeside picture window. From there, he could view the entire room and the doors that led to every deck and cube.

He sank into the chair and spilled his confession. All the bad he’d done yesterday. The guys he’d accused and threatened. The new enemies he’d made.

“One of these guys put the snatch on Wendy,” Harry drawled. “That’s what you’re telling me?”

“You got it.” Hickey reached into his coat. Plucked out the automatic.

The boss’s arms jerked out like wings, then dropped slowly until they touched down lightly on his knees. “Look here. A new toy?”

“Naw. It’s a few years old. From the army. They invented the things to knock down crazy Filipinos the thirty-eight wouldn’t stop. You heard that story?”

“I heard. You wanta tell me a war story? That it?”

“Nope. What I want is, either you find out who’s got Wendy and where, or it goes boom.”

“You’re gonna
shoot
me?”

“Depends what happens to Wendy.”

Harry braced his arms on the couch beside him. “That simple, huh?” He cocked his head sideways, pursed his lips. “I get the message, Tom. This thing’s bowled you over.”

“You bet. Now, tell me where they’ve got her. You don’t know, then pick up the phone and start asking.”

“Hey, I didn’t snatch her.”

“Don’t,” Hickey snarled. “No games. You didn’t snatch her, then you know somebody who knows somebody who knows who did. Now, the phone.”

His eyes fixed on Hickey’s, the boss inched along the couch to the far end, where a phone sat on a Formica table. With his hand on the receiver, he said, “Thing is, you didn’t need the toy. You and me are pals, is what I thought. All you had to do was ask.”

“Swell,” Hickey muttered. He raised and jerked the gun.