Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 03 (8 page)

Chapter Twelve

Hickey pointed toward the far wing, from where he’d seen another smoking chimney. “Who’s back there?”

“Mac and a gal.”

“Anybody else around besides Tyler and Frieda?”

Harry wagged his head, gave a pensive scowl. For a minute he tapped the phone receiver against his shoulder. Then he dropped it back onto the cradle. “Tom, let’s cut the jive. See, I know you’re not gonna pop me.”

“Uh-huh,” Hickey muttered, peering into the shadows of corners and doorways.

“You wanta know how I know?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You’re not the kind who could pop a guy just because he won’t take orders. You know how I know?”

“I don’t have to. You’re gonna tell me.”

“I know because I’m the kind who could.” He flashed a wan smile. It looked tainted by regret. He picked up the receiver, dialed, and a moment later said, “Pauline, give me some phone numbers. Charlie Schwartz. Sal Randazzo. The guy they call the Jockey, what’s his name—Schweidel, something Schweidel.” He cupped a hand over the receiver and hollered, “Tyler, bring me a paper and note pad.”

Instantly, Tyler came strolling from the kitchen. Halfway across the room, between the snake tank and the Formica desk, he stopped cold, staring at Hickey’s gun.

“Don’t get all hot and bothered, Tyler,” Harry drawled. “Tom just needs some, whatta you call—security. Like a guy falls asleep holding his dick, that’s all the rod’s for.”

Tyler shrugged and opened the desk, fished out a steno pad and pen, delivered them. With a quizzical look at Hickey, he turned back toward the kitchen. The boss uncovered the receiver.

“Okay, hon. One more time.” He jotted on the pad. “Yeah.…Check.…Okay. Yeah, see you tonight. Late, probably. How you dressed?…Ooh, that red angora with the poofy sleeves? I’d climb Mount Everest to see you in that.”

Frieda poked her head out from the kitchen, long enough to verify the story Tyler must’ve given her, about the loco neighbor who’d probably get snuffed any minute now.

“Who’re Randazzo and Schweidel?” Hickey demanded. “I never heard of the guys.”

“You been outta touch, Tom. Sidekicks of Angelo and Cohen, respectively. They oughta know what’s up. Paoli and the Mick don’t take calls straight from a nobody like me. To them, I’m a nickel-and-dime hustler from the boondocks. How about I ring Charlie first?”

Hickey nodded. The boss dialed the operator, gave her a San Diego number. He reached one of Schwartz’s errand boys, left a message that Charlie should call him on urgent business. He pestered the operator again, got forwarded, gave a similar message to a Mrs. Randazzo.

Arnold Schweidel he caught at home. After gabbing a minute, Harry pardoned himself, muffled the phone, and asked, “How about it, Tom? Ought I tell him you’re threatening to plug me? Give him a laugh?”

“Tell him whatever you want.”

“So, Jock,” Harry said, “the deal is, a neighbor of mine stopped by here a while ago, pulled a heater, waved it around. Then he ran off someplace.” He listened a moment and reared back chortling. “The Jockey asked can I change my will,” he told Hickey. “Bequeath him one of my speedboats.”

Harry told the man that persons unknown had snatched his neighbor Tom Hickey’s wife, on account of Tom was a snoop and had got a little arrogant, trying to push guys around to deliver some female from an arson rap, for which behaviors Tom was sorely ashamed and willing to make amends anyhow he could. All he wanted was his wife back. The wife being pregnant, Harry figured Mr. Cohen might take pity, ferret out whoever put the snatch on, and persuade them to reconsider.

Or else, he said, this lunatic was apt to waste somebody and get the yokels all flustered, just when there’s already talk of Washoe County putting the screws on gambling.

“I could take him out, but the thing is, I like the guy, and he does good work when he’s not off his rocker. Talk to Mickey, will you?”

He told Schweidel they’d wait for a call. He hung up, slid to the middle of the couch, picked his ale bottle off the floor, and leaned back contentedly. “Now we relax, huh? Don’t wanta tie up the line.” He sipped, sighed. “You know why I didn’t tell him you were pointing a gun at my ear?”

“It would’ve made you blush.”

“Close. What kinda reputation’d it buy me, getting stuck up in my own parlor? You’re compromising me, Tom. I don’t like that.”

A wiry fellow with flyaway black hair, shirtless, wearing jeans and a silver cowboy belt buckle had appeared in the doorway to the northeast cube, leaning on a rifle as if it were his cane. A Latin woman stood behind him, peering over his shoulder.

Raising his gun to where the cowboy could see it angled in his direction, Hickey said, “Get Mac over here.”

The boss hollered and Mac obeyed, letting his rifle drop to the floor. The stock landed on the woman’s instep. She yipped and jumped from the doorway into the dark. Mac ambled through the maze of couches to stand beside the hearth, about five feet from Hickey. He sucked a deep breath as though to expand and exhibit his furry chest. “Problem, boss?”

“Don’t sweat it,” Harry said. “Tell Tom what you saw this morning.”

“Big blue four-door, looked like an Olds. About six. I was making the rounds. It came clunking out from behind the trees out front of your place.”

“Clunking?”

“Yeah. Had chains.”

If they were flatlanders, Hickey thought, if they’d driven up from the coast, they must’ve stopped in a gas station to buy the chains. “You get a number, see anybody inside?”

“I look like a cat? Hey, last night was so dark I couldn’t see the tip of my nose.”

Hickey stared hard.

Mac yawned, wrinkled his nose. “Hey, I’m sorry. That good enough? You want me to keep a watch on your place, you gotta tell me ahead of time.”

“I’m telling you now. Bundle up and go over to my place. Claire Blackwood’s there. Send her here and wait till she gets back. Stay by the phone.”

Mac turned to Poverman, got a nod, and strolled off toward the cube from where he’d appeared.

“Another drink?” the boss asked. Hickey declined. “So, while we’re sitting by the phone, how about a card game?” When he got no response, Harry clapped his hands for attention. “Cards?”

“No.”

“Tell me something, then. How’s it feel, being a family man after playing the field all those years?”

Hickey sat glowering, at the fire for one long moment, another at Harry, a third scanning the room. He didn’t want to talk, didn’t believe he could muster the heart to sit conversing. Besides, talk would shift his mind off business. Off Wendy. But the tempest inside him had to find some release, or else it might blow him apart at the seams. He filled and lit his pipe, smoked awhile, watching Harry and wondering about the man. Sure, he was a gambler, probably had his finger in some other rackets. But Hickey’d known a few mobsters who had a decent side. If he had to make book on the roster in heaven, there were mobsters on whom he’d put shorter odds than on plenty of churchgoers he’d met. At least on one churchgoer he’d known intimately: his mother.

When Mac came out dressed and started for the north door, Harry shouted a command. “Hey, not a peep to anybody! One yokel laughs at me, whoever spilled the beans gets crucified.” Mac waved his assent and left.

“Look, Tom. I don’t mind you holding that piece. Just don’t bore me to death. How about it? Talk to me.”

“Give me a topic,” Hickey muttered.

“You and the wife. What else?”

“You wanta hear about me and Wendy?”

“Yeah. Give me the scoop. I been wondering a long time. When I first saw you and her, with the Blackwood dame always hanging around, I figured you and Blackwood were smooches. Wendy I made as your kid, maybe the Blackwood doll’s niece. How much older are you?”

“Plenty.”

“Yeah, well, young’s just fine. Young’s magnifico. Only she’s…you know. What keeps you stuck on a gal like that?”

“Like what?” Hickey growled.

“Aw, how do you say it? Sweet. Pure. One of those. What’d you think I was gonna say?”

“Lots of people think she’s stupid,” Hickey muttered.

“Hell, Tom, if I spurned dames on account of their intellect, I’d be a horny guy. She stupid?”

“No,” Hickey said adamantly. “Claire’s got her reading these books—I’d guess she’s brighter than me, only she never went to school.”

“Why’s that?”

“Her ol’ man wouldn’t let her.”

“I get it,” Harry said. “Must’ve been a German. So the tale I heard, you and a gang of pachucos stormed the old Agua Caliente Casino, swiped a ton of gold, and massacred about a thousand Nazis who were holed up there scheming an invasion. The way the yokels tell it, the girl was some Nazi honcho’s sweetheart. That story pretty accurate?”

“That’d be the Hollywood version.”

The north door flew open and Claire ran in, looking robust as if in the past hour she’d taken a magic elixir. In the entryway, she halted and gawked at Harry’s decor. Then she hustled through the maze of dyed leather couches, pulling the snow cap off her head and shaking out her hair, pausing for a glance at the snakes.

“Quite a layout,” she remarked flatly, just before noticing Hickey’s gun.

Her cheeks flushed, and her eyes flashed darkly. She strode past the gambler to the fireplace side of Hickey’s chair, leaned over him, and demanded, “What the hell are you doing, Tom?”

Hickey smiled bitterly. “You got any smarter ideas?”

“No. But I can’t match this one for ignorance, either.” After scalding him with her glare, she turned it on the boss.

“Miss Blackwood,” Harry drawled, in his silkiest bass. He rolled his hand toward the .45 and shrugged. “Never mind the prop. Tom and I are having a swell time, chewing the fat. Say, I don’t recall our being properly introduced, and I’d remember if we had.” He stood and offered his hand.

Claire stayed beside Hickey long enough for the gambler’s arm to tire, yet he resolutely held it out. Finally she stepped to meet him halfway and awarded her hand for a second. As he started lifting it toward his lips, she yanked it away and hustled back to kneel beside Hickey’s chair, scowling.

“Sit down,” Hickey snapped at the boss.

With a mock servile nod, winking at Claire, Harry retreated and sat primly on the sofa’s edge. “Drink, Miss Blackwood? Hors d’oeuvres?”

“Look, you wanta put the make on Claire, you had the last two years and maybe you’ll get a few more. It’s not what I called her over here for.”

“Why
did
you send for me, Tom?”

“A couple chores. How about you call every gas station, starting from here, to Truckee, over the pass, all the way to Auburn if you have to. Ask did anybody in a blue Olds buy chains last night. Somebody says yes, get all you can. Maybe there’s a receipt with a license number. Maybe an attendant can describe the guys. If nothing turns up that direction, start back here and go south, off the hill at least to Placerville. Got it?”

“Sure.”

“Call from your place. That’ll leave my line clear. Stop on the way and tell Mac to stay put, would you?”

“Okay. Is that all?”

“Yeah. Thanks, babe.”

“For the record, Tom, you’re acting like a dope.” Sorrowfully, she gave him a peck on the forehead and hustled off.

“A pleasure, Miss Blackwood,” Harry called after her.

Chapter Thirteen

Hickey paced in front of the picture window: five steps, wheel, and back. He shot glances at the boss and at the doorways to the other cubes, in case Tyler, the maid, or Mac’s brunette had a rifle sighted on him. He listened to his breath, to the heart drumming his ears.

“So you whipped the Nazis, won the girl. Then what?”

It took a minute for the gambler’s question to cut through Hickey’s trance. “She was a mess,” he muttered, and got a sudden rush of joy, in which he realized that talking about Wendy would deliver him out of the present, and for now memory was the closest to her he could get.

“A couple years, till winter after the big boom in Japan, when I finally got discharged, Wendy stayed with my partner, Leo, and his wife and daughter. Only family she had was some aunts she didn’t know, in Oklahoma, and she wasn’t having any of them, people she’d never met. Anyway, they belonged to her old man. A sicko.”

“What kinda sicko?”

“The worst kind,” Hickey said as though issuing a curse. “The thing was, her brother Clifford was all she had left, and he didn’t make it. We got into a scrape in TJ. A Nazi blew his skull in half. And after the Tijuana business, the army wanted me long gone. They shipped me out to the desert: Tucson. Two years handcuffing drunks, slinging them into a panel truck.

“Now and then I’d get a day or week’s leave, drive home, and see Wendy. Every week, I’d drop my wages into the pay phone, calling her up.”

“What was left after you visited Nogales, right? Made friends with the señoritas?”

Hickey sat glowering.

“Hey, you don’t like interruptions, shoot me,” the boss quipped. He chuckled and clucked as though awed by his own wit. “Naw, I’m just ribbing you, Tom. I’ll zip it up. Go on.”

“See,” Hickey said, and reached for his pipe, “the Nazis messed her up bad. The first year, no telling when she’d bust out weeping or howling. It was all Leo and Vi could do to keep her from casting herself into the riptide. One time, they left her in the kitchen with Magda, their kid. Magda got careless, stepped outside, came back, and found Wendy with a knife aimed between her ribs, the tip already bloody. Most often, though, they could lift her spirits by promising in a week or two I’d visit, and reminding her that soon as the war wrapped up, I was going to take her up here, to heaven.”

“Whoa. Cut. You lost me.”

“See, when she was little, they lived down by Reno. One time they brought her up here, and she got the idea this place was heaven. So, after my discharge, I kicked the renters out of my house on Mission Bay, gave her my daughter’s old room. All winter, on account of I told her about blizzards and avalanches to keep her from coaxing me up here before spring, she worried about whether the angels had houses, slippers, and things.”

“Angels, you say?”

“If it’s heaven, there’s gotta be angels, right? She figured the place was infested with angels. Matter of fact, she still does.”

“I’ll be damned.” The boss leaned forward as though thinking intently. He touched his fingers together and worked them like twin Siamese spiders practicing knee bends. “You’re telling me she sees angels?”

“Nope. Only believes they’re hanging around.”

“How can she believe what she can’t see?”

“You believe in anything? Luck?”

“Naw. So, your wife’s got a screw loose?”

“Not anymore. Back then, after the war, she was a mess.”

“Yeah, but she musta been a tiger in the sack, or you’d have stuck her in a nuthouse.”

Hickey gave the man a contemptuous glare. “You’re a piece of work.”

“Huh? Why’re you giving me that look, like a snooty dame at some guy with lousy table manners?”

“Get this through your head: a man can keep his pistol in the holster if he wants to. I never more than gave her a squeeze till last year.”

“Naw.”

“Yep.” Hickey sighed wistfully, for a moment losing sight of the truth that right now some freak could be drooling on Wendy or rolling her into a grave. When he remembered, he wheeled and glowered savagely at the phone as if he could intimidate it into ringing.

“How long you kept her around like that?”

“About five years.”

“Five years!” Harry groaned. “And you’re calling me a piece of work. You’re gonna tell me she cooked and cleaned. So what? Meantime, you’re checking into the motel every time you wanta score.”

“I
didn’t
score.”

Harry flashed a grin that meant he’d finally caught on, seen how badly ol’ Tom was ribbing him. “Get lost. I’ve seen you at the club, overheard the dames chatting. Hardly a one doesn’t think you’re hot stuff.”

“Did I tell you I didn’t have offers?”

“What’re you saying here? That you’re such a lame you get an offer from a piece of fluff like Ruby the croupier and you tell her to hit the road?”

Hickey stood up, turned sideways, stepped a couple of paces to where he could see out the window while keeping Harry and the doors to every cube in sight. “I say, ‘No, thanks, babe. There’s somebody at home. If she knew it’d break her heart.’” His vision had blurred, his temples throbbed fiercely. For a minute, all his will got spent to keep from grabbing the closest Formica and hurling it through the picture window.

Moonlight cast a greenish, fan-shaped stain on the water. Thousands of stars pulsated like the headlights of spaceships nearing earth. From a tourist lodge across the lake beneath the silvery, jagged Rubicons, lights blinked like someone in distress dispatching a signal. Hickey got elated with hope, for a second, until his heart received the news that lights from over there always seemed to blink. He groaned and flopped back into his chair.

“Okay,” Harry said. “You telling me you did without, all those years?”

“Yeah.”

“Naw. I don’t buy it.” The gambler had stiffened and begun shaking his finger like a scolding grandma. “I mean, you take some hermit, stick him out in Death Valley for five years, maybe he don’t go crazy, long as he’s got a fist and a couple pinups. But you’re over there all this time, sleeping how far—how far can anybody get from each other in that shack of yours? Either you’re giving me the business, Tom, or you’re from Mars.”

“Let’s drop it,” Hickey said sharply, and checked his watch. “Get back on the phone. To Charlie Schwartz. By now he’s at the Golden Lion.”

“Yeah, soon as you come clean.”

“Do like I say,” Hickey snarled.

“Sure. Just one question. Okay, let’s suppose you’re giving me the straight dope, that you managed five years or so rooming with a doll before you wised up—what I wanta know is how you did it? And
why
?”

“You do what you’ve gotta.”

“What’s that mean?”

Stressing most every syllable, Hickey said, “It means I couldn’t risk shoving her back into hell. I had to wait till she grew up some, forgot some things, forgave herself for others. And till she quit wondering if every fella was a Nazi at heart.” Scowling viciously, Hickey waved his .45 toward the phone.

“Chrissake.” Harry groaned. “Five years!”

The aroma of baking bread wafted from the kitchen. Tyler stepped out and asked if anybody needed a drink or something. Hickey declined. The boss called for another ale; then, still wagging his head in consternation over Hickey’s five years of celibacy, he slid to the end of the couch and dialed the operator, who switched him through to San Diego information. He got the number of the Golden Lion, a downtown supper club with a lounge where, according to Lieutenant Palermo, Charlie Schwartz held court most evenings.

After giving his name to the maître d’ and waiting a couple of minutes, the boss growled, “Yeah, well, it’s about time, Maurice.” He turned to Hickey. “They’re bringing him a phone.…Yeah, Charlie, it’s me. You got my message?…And you figured urgent meant something like tomorrow. I’ll tell you what urgent means. There’s a chump up here thinks he’s gotta beef with you so he’s threatening to whack me.…Sure it’s Tom Hickey. He’s saying you sent some boys up to snatch his wife—who’s my neighbor and a personal friend, by the way—and I’d appreciate you cut her loose.…I ought to fix Tom, you say? How do I fix him when he’s hiding out someplace? I only got a call from him, is what I told you.”

Hickey caught himself biting his hand to restrain it from snatching the phone, so he could tell Schwartz what would befall him if the freaks didn’t bring Wendy home. Except Schwartz should’ve already gotten that message, through Leo. Besides, Poverman could talk and deal without throwing a tantrum, and his lying might save Hickey’s neck, if Schwartz’s boys were speeding this way, cleaning and loading their machine guns.

The boss sat rubbing his eyes. “Yeah? Well, do me a favor. Tell whoever oughta get told that Tom damn sure left San Diego already. He’s up here someplace.…What old guy?”

As Harry sat listening, he wheeled on Hickey and rapped his knuckles on his forehead. “Yeah, Charlie. I’ll pass it along, next time he calls.”

Harry slammed down the receiver, missed its mark, hit it on the second try. “I just figured out why you live in a shack, Tom, why you gotta toot a horn to make change. You got no brains. Hell, you had me fooled. All along I took you for a sharp one.”

“What’d he say about an old guy?”

“Some partner of yours name of Weiss. He pulled a move so crazy it makes your strategy look shrewd as one of Eisenhower’s. He goes to Charlie, says there’s some jerk works for the
LA Herald
is gonna rat on Mickey Cohen about a dirty deal he might’ve ran. Guns for Israel. Where Mickey set up that charity, raised a bundle. Your partner buys the rumor there wasn’t any ship set sail, no ship went down at sea, only some
Herald
reporter scribbling what Mickey tells him to say. This what’s-his-name …”

“Leo.”

“…says to Schwartz, ‘You get Wendy cut loose and this other dame sprung from the arson charge, I’ll hand over this fink’s name, you pass it on to Mickey.’ Who’s the old guy think he’s messing with?”

Hickey sighed and rubbed one of his throbbing temples. “Leo’s hated Mickey ever since back when. On account of he figures Jews more than anybody oughta play it straight, that whatever any one of ’em pulls gets pinned on the whole race.”

“Yeah, well, he ain’t the only Jew thinks that, but he might be the dumbest, going up against Mickey. Aw, hell, and I was dreaming another half hour, the Olds’d come rolling in with Wendy, let me get on over to the club. I got a business to run and a doll to meet.”

“What else did he say?”

“Number one, you’re screwy thinking he lit any fire or snatched the girl. Number two, it don’t appear like you’re backing off, as long as you’re threatening me and sending the old guy around to put the squeeze on him and try to pin a bum wrap on Mickey.” Harry flung up his hands in dismay. “Son of a bitch, I’m going stir crazy here. Hey, Tyler!” he shouted. “It’s suppertime. Tom, how about a T-bone? Potato, salad?”

“Nothing,” Hickey said. “Bring me the phone.”

While Tyler appeared, walked over, and took the boss’s order, Hickey called the operator and asked for Leo’s number. The phone rang long enough for a tortoise to run a dozen laps around the tiny beach house. When the operator returned, Hickey gave her Leo’s office number, which connected him to the answering service, a new girl named Susie who told him Mr. Weiss was out of town.

“Who’s calling?”

“Tom Hickey.”

“Ah-ha. Mister Hickey, I have to ask you a few questions. First, what was the name of your last captain on the LAPD?”

“Pepper. What is this?”

“Mister Weiss’s orders, sir. And what kind of dogs does your sister breed?”

“Poodles, damn it. Ugly ones.”

“Please, sir. Be patient. What’s your daughter’s birth date?”

“May ninth, nineteen twenty-eight.”

“Bravo. Mister Weiss is waiting for your call. He’s in the Los Angeles area, at Brentwood four-five-oh-five.”

Hickey grumbled thanks and hung up. Repeating the number out loud, he rose and sidestepped to the Formica table, .45 in hand. He picked up the note pad and pen, jotted the number. He took the phone and sat back down. Holding the receiver between his shoulder and chin, he dialed O, got connected to the Las Palmas Motor Court in Los Angeles, and switched to the line for room 6. Midway through the third ring, Leo gasped hello.

“You been out sprinting?”

“Singing in the shower. What’d you think of my quiz game?”

“Never mind your quiz game. How the hell you figure you’re gonna survive throwing beanballs at Mickey Cohen?”

“Survival ain’t everything, Tom.”

“Big talk. What’re you doing in LA?”

“Disappearing, mostly. Keep from getting more bullets lodged in my front door. And tomorrow I got an appointment to see a guy.”

“Who’s that? Not some reporter who plans to snitch on Mickey?”

“There’s no such guy, Tom. Wise up, will you? I’m going to see a fella named Gomez, FBI agent. You remember Arturo?”

“Yeah.”

“His kid’s a G-man. I figure he might shed some light on the action up your way, know some mob hideouts up there, give us a hand finding Wendy.”

“Swell,” Hickey said. “Now, you phone Charlie at the Golden Lion, tell him you’re full of crap up to the eyebrows, and you were just blowing steam about this person who’s gonna snitch on Cohen. And give him scout’s honor that you’re outta the whole deal, that Tom Hickey ordered you out, and that’s where you’re going. Got it so far?”

“I hear you.”

“Don’t go home. Stay hid. You put Vi somewhere?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, then call Thrapp. Talk sense to him, how the shooting at your place and Angelo’s boys waiting outside my place and Wendy getting snatched oughta make it a breeze for him to talk the DA into releasing Cynthia. Only make damn clear that Cynthia can’t get sprung till Wendy’s home. Cynthia walks, whoever grabbed Wendy’ll get so steamed he’ll …” Hickey’s jaw locked tight, of its own will.

“Yeah, Tom. I know what Charlie’d do.”

“So you gonna lay off Mickey Cohen?”

“You got most at stake. You call the shots.”

“Okay. I’ll do that. Soon as you talk to the Gomez kid, get yourself up here. I need somebody to spell me, give me a chance to sleep, maybe do some legwork. How about it?”