Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 03 (12 page)

Those sixty years had included the battle for Manila, infantry, First California Brigade, police work long enough to get him retirement pay, and private snooping ever since, yet up until now he’d never thought of death as quite so near. There’d been plenty of close calls, only none he’d had leisure to think about until they were past.

He puzzled about why it is that the older you get, when you’d figure on growing bolder since every day there’s less to lose, usually the opposite befalls you. Peculiar, he thought, how at nineteen years old you could charge the battlements against Gatling guns and still feel immortal. It’s later that death starts sinking in, as if something in your brain doesn’t form until maturity. Like wisdom teeth.

The tires screeched, dragging both right sidewalls against the curb. Leo raised his head, snuffled, saw a yellow wooden house trimmed in white, frilled with lace curtains and fringed shades on pole lamps at each of the front windows. Suddenly his throat tickled, made him cough. Part two of the grippe he’d been fighting.

Take a puff of the cigaret and spit it out, he thought. Any way you play it, you’re dead. Mickey’s punks have got the numbers, the weapons, the muscle. Sure, they’re not too bright, but you’re no Einstein either.

The only hope, all he could list on his side, was a strangely calm feeling, as though peace was his destiny from now on. Almost as if he were already dead and looking backward.

“Bass,” he said coolly. “How about I move my arms now? Else I’m gonna blow my nose on your floorboard here.”

“Go on, get out.”

Leo straightened up, opened the door, hoisted the satchel, and stepped onto the sidewalk. He plucked the handkerchief out of his coat pocket, blew his nose. Checked up and down the street. Nobody was out mowing, pruning, waiting for the mail. A tidy neighborhood of bungalows wedged on narrow lots between smallish Victorians and double-deck haciendas surrounded by orange trees and agave.

Leo watched his Packard pull in behind the Lincoln. Seeing the old workhorse racked him with a deep nostalgia. The first year they owned it, the summer of 1939, he and Vi and the girls had driven all the way to Oklahoma, feeling like kings of the road. He stood still a moment, hoping that dead guys didn’t have to look back. Missing what you’d left behind could be hell.

Bass took his arm, like somebody leading a blind man. The driver and Denny the clotheshorse fell in behind. In the rose garden off the front porch lay a toppled
for sale
sign.
sand dollar realty
. Leo’d seen plenty of those signs around San Diego. Charlie Schwartz’s brother Al used to run the business, before a stroke knocked him out of the ring.

“Classy joint, huh, Pancho?”

“You got a nickname for everybody, Bass?”

“Fair’s fair, ain’t it? You know anybody calls me Gregory?”

Denny had stepped around, flung open the screen, and unlocked the door. The others followed him inside, over shellacked hardwood floors, past a green velvet wingback chair, through a dining room furnished in dusty maple, the table littered with empty beer bottles, ash trays, and a scattered deck of cards adorned with loud pink flamingos. Off the dining room, beside the archway that led to the kitchen, there was a door. Denny opened it. The stairs beyond the doorway led downward.

Denny stood aside. Bass ushered Leo in front of him. “Toss the suitcase, Pancho.”

“Naw, I’ll take it along.”

The fist came out of nowhere, a roundhouse. It smacked Leo in the gut, dead center. As the old man gasped and heaved forward, the driver grabbed his satchel and slid it across the floor. Denny turned Leo toward the stairs. Bass gave him a shove.

“You in the market for a house, Pancho? This baby’s got it all. How many basements you find in LA?”

Wheezing, staggering, Leo made his way down the staircase into clammy darkness. His head felt as if it were bouncing between the two walls.

Dripping water splashed somewhere. The only daylight entered through a screened slit near the ceiling, along what Leo figured must be the rear of the house. He tripped on the bottom stair. Tumbled to his knees on the basement’s concrete floor. He stayed there until the overhead light flashed on. Denny had found the chain and pulled it.

Except for a stack of wood in the corner and an old trunk beside it, the basement was empty. Bass told the driver to run up and bring some chairs. He scrutinized the room for a minute, then directed Denny to grab one of those boards and wedge it in between the ceiling and the concrete, to cover that air hole.

“We gotta have a little air, Mister Kitain.”

Bass wheeled and jabbed Denny in the chest with a finger. “You think we oughta talk this over, that right?”

“No, no, I’ll just do like you say.”

Leo was rising to his feet when Bass gave him a two-hand shove that knocked him stumbling across the floor and into the wall beside Denny, who stood pounding on a board with the heel of his hand. As Leo smacked the wall, his legs buckled and he dropped. The back of his head bounced down along the wall.

“Denny, long as he’s got his legs like that, kick him in the nuts.”

“This board ain’t quite right yet.”

“Shit. I gotta do it myself?”

Grumpily as a harried schoolmaster, Bass walked over and gazed down at Leo, who was trying his damnedest to squeeze his legs together. They wouldn’t budge except to hop an inch or two off the ground. As Bass drew his foot back, Leo noticed the pointed toe, about a second before it hit him. It seemed to split him in two, at least chest high, and fill his belly with Ping-Pong-sized fireballs. All he did right was yell. Because Denny hadn’t yet wedged the board tightly into the air slit, though Leo’s head bobbed like a guy drowning in high seas, he managed a howl that could’ve brought a less sturdy house crashing upon them. Maybe somebody outside would hear.

“The old man’s got a fine set of lungs. Denny, grab that other board and bust his ribs, will you?”

Denny gave the board in the air slit a last whack. “Sure.” He stepped to the woodpile.

The driver appeared at the foot of the stairs, cussing the effort of trying to juggle two wooden captain’s chairs. Denny picked up a two-by-four about five feet long and stood with it balanced on his shoulder like a rifle at shoulder arms.

“Pancho, what’d you say that fella’s name was, the one works for the
Herald
? The fanatic?”

Leo managed to hold up his hand and wrestle for a minute with the question of whether he ought to confess that his story about a snitch was a lie. If he confessed, even if they believed him, they’d still finish him off. If he stuck with the lie, maybe at least he could set up the reporter Mickey had in his pocket. One less stooge.

Leo dropped his hand and mumbled the name of Mickey’s reporter.

“Naw.” Bass groaned. “You and me both know he ain’t about to tell some lie that lands him on the rock. You a little confused, Pancho?”

“He’s gonna snitch,” Leo croaked, just before a fit of coughing racked him. Through the haze that whirled in front of his eyes, he glimpsed Denny lifting the two-by-four.

It caught him low in the chest, felt as if he’d swallowed a grenade. It blasted all the way to his toes, his fingers. Pounded against his skull. For a few seconds, he held still; then he started shaking like a fish trying to lose the hook.

“Look at the old guy go,” Denny exclaimed.

“You really mashed him,” the driver said. “Maybe we oughta put him outta his misery.”

Bass gave a sigh of distress. Probably at the plight of having to work with morons. “Swell. We don’t get the name, and we gotta sit here till dark with a corpse, and by the time we lug him out he stinks bad.”

As the shaking eased, Leo toppled onto his right side. By now the pain centered in his chest. Like a vise coated in broken glass, cranked tight. He started breathing in short gasps. The effort filled half his mind. The other half, he focused on a tiny spot just above his solar plexus, where the pain was sharp but tolerable.

“Want me to bust him again?” Denny asked.

“Not yet. Give him a breather. We got all day.”

“Lunchtime,” the driver said. “We oughta leave him take a nap and us go down to that Mexican joint back on Pico. What’s it called?”

“La something,” Denny muttered.

Bass placed two fingers on the bridge of his nose and rubbed gently. He backstepped and dropped himself into a captain’s chair, leaned forward, rested his chin on his fists, and gazed around the room like a guy who’s worked in the same office a few years too long, who’s counting the days until he can retire.

Chapter Eighteen

The sky had been gray-blue for an hour or so, but now the sun had topped the ridge and forest across the lake, lighted the angry black clouds as they fled south. It sparkled on the water, gleamed off the glacier-polished boulders. The shoreline fringed in ice flashed like a shattered mirror.

Wendy sat by the window. The man named Bud had let her move to the other chair. Hands resting on her belly, she felt Clifford squirming. She wondered if he’d be a terror, the kind you have to watch every second or else he’ll bust stuff or disappear. She wondered if he’d have a notch in his chin like Tom did, or Tom’s shiny blue eyes.

Bud sat in a rickety chair that squeaked with his every move. He used a tiny whetstone to sharpen a giant carving knife like the one Tom had saved from the restaurant he used to own, when he was married to the lady. Elizabeth’s mom. Wendy called Tom’s first wife “the lady” because she looked so grand in pictures. Besides, it saddened Wendy to say or even think the lady’s name. Especially after she’d read Mr. Poe’s story about the Usher family where another lady with the same name, Madeline, gets so sick people think she’s dead. They lay her in a casket in the cellar but she scrapes and kicks at the lid, yet they don’t understand the noise until finally they hear her muffled screams. The horrible thing—though Mr. Poe didn’t write it, Wendy could feel the girl’s horror—all Miss Usher wanted was to die or get well, either one. But God wouldn’t set her free.

For days after reading the story, Wendy’d fretted about why God wouldn’t spare the lady. Even if Mr. Poe made up the story out of nothing, God
did
let some people suffer that way. Twice since reading that story Wendy’d gotten a nightmare, the same both nights, about a house where she and Claire were visiting because it was for sale. It was far from the village, but Claire liked it and talked of moving there. So Wendy was already sad when they stood in the parlor and she heard scrapes, knocks, muffled screams. But she couldn’t tell where they came from. Claire said maybe there was a cellar. They spotted a cellar door and ran for it, threw it open, and plunged into the darkness.

Both times she’d woken up just then, before she had to scream. So Tom didn’t know about the nightmare. If she’d told him, he’d have worried awfully. She only told Claire, who didn’t worry as much, though she’d taken Mr. Poe’s book, traded for Willa Cather, and promised a new book every time Wendy finished the other. Claire was trying to protect her from scary authors like Mr. Poe.

But once you’d read a story, it was part of you.

Here in captivity the plight of Miss Usher gripped her heart once again. She heard the girl’s frantic howling, her bloody fingers clawing the coffin lid, the coffin nails creaking as the girl thrashed harder.

Wendy riveted her eyes on the bank across the lake, where a gray fox had stood a few minutes before until something made him jump straight up on all four legs and spook off into the brush. Maybe, she wished, he saw Tom or one of his angels.

Tersh slammed through the cabin door. “Goddam jalopy won’t start.”

“It turn over?” Bud asked.

“Yeah, at first.”

“You cranked it dead?”

“How else I’m supposed to get it started, I don’t crank it?”

“Wait till the day gets warmer, that’s how.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sick of waiting. We been here a day and a half. The rat was supposed to show this morning, first thing.”

“He found a dame, spent the night at Harry’s, that’s all. He’s sleeping in. Maybe he’ll play a couple hands of blackjack. Then he’ll be here.”

“
He
found a dame,” Tersh growled. “Son of a bitch promised to show this morning, take the milkmaid off our hands, so we can get down to Harry’s and
I
can be the one finds a dame.” He stepped closer to the wood stove, peeled off his gloves, and slung them onto the floor. Rubbing his hands, he crooked his head, gave Wendy a leer. “Hey, Bud, don’t she look like one of those girlies in the picture book wears the wooden shoes and the stupid hat looks like it’s made out of a handkerchief? She’s going out to milk the lousy cows, only she don’t mind, she thinks it’s peachy. You wanta know why she’s happy? I’ll tell you why. She’s too dumb to know any better. That’s why.”

Bud studied Wendy awhile. “Must be. Hell, she doesn’t hardly ask questions. Won’t beg us for anything. Hasn’t cried once. That’s gotta be it, Tersh. Awful dumb.”

“Whatta you suppose this guy—what’s his name?”

“Jack.”

“How you think he’ll get rid of her?”

“Shut up, Tersh.”

“Aw, you worried I’ll frighten the dolly? Hey, let her sweat. This smiley-face act is getting on my nerves. Check her out, Bud, she still ain’t sweating. Looks like she’s waiting for the postman to bring her a Valentine.”

In two strides he reached her and bowed his head, wrinkling his nose and grinning wide, lifting his brows to enlarge his eyes, which looked like prunes floating in soapy water. His hands came around from the sides and touched her cheeks.

Wendy bit her lip and pinched her eyes closed. His fingers were rough, like Tom’s had been while they were building the cabin. Like her pa’s and Clifford’s used to get when they were farmhands. They scraped down the height of her cheek, down her neck, out across her shoulders, under the shirt until a button popped. His teeth clacked as if he’d soon bite her nose. Wendy felt her spirit compress, the way it used to: from a power that lit and flooded her body to the size of a pellet, a little petrified thing.

Tersh yelped. His head whipped backward and his hands flew back with the rest of him. His face contorted into a Halloween mask.

Bud laughed raucously. “She give you a kick, Romeo?”

“Naw—shit, ow! It’s like pincers. Like they caught me right here.” He pointed to both sides of his head behind the ears. “Oh, hey!” He flopped into the chair and rubbed his eyes and forehead with both hands. “Feels like I got conked with a sledge.”

“Headache?”

“Yeah. Aw, yeow! I musta pulled something chopping that lousy wood. Yeah, that’s it.” He reached to the woodbox beside him, grabbed a stick, and hurled it at Bud, missing by several feet. “From now on, I’m the nursemaid while you do the dirty work. Hey, bring me a damp cloth or something, will you? This is a killer.”

Wendy sat making herself breathe steadily, to fool Clifford so he’d feel safe, and shading her eyes from the glare that’d filled the room, as if the sun had raced down and perched just outside the window. The flash had come so bright and sudden that she’d hardly noticed Tersh back away, and the cabin had filled with dots of flame yellow and blue that gradually dimmed until she saw them like tiny birds that slowly flew away. And now that she could see Tersh and Bud leaving her be, a pretty tune filled her mind.

“The angels so sweetly are singing,

up there by the beautiful sea,

the chords of their gold harps are ringing,

how beautiful heaven must be.”

At first it was a single voice, maybe her own. For the chorus, a choir joined in.

“How beautiful heaven must be,

home of the happy and free.

A haven of rest for the weary,

how beautiful heaven must be.”

On the last notes, they’d reached a crescendo. The next moment, a stony silence fell. Suddenly, for no reason she could figure, Wendy found herself whispering, “Thank you, Zeke.”

About ten times she whispered the same thing, before she stiffened and her fists slapped against her cheekbones.

“Oh, no,” she groaned, and sat trembling in wait for her mind to whirl away into the starry regions beyond heaven, so distant maybe God wouldn’t follow you there. To the place where she’d fled from the Nazis, from where it takes years to come home. “No!” she shrieked. “I’m staying here with Tom and Clifford!”

Tersh shot her a petulant glare, as if she’d been the one who’d conked him with the sledge, and mostly it’d hurt his tender feelings.

“What’s your beef now?”

“Oh, I’m going crazy,” she moaned.