Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 03 (18 page)

Harry shook his head glumly. After a long, heartful gaze at Claire, he gulped a breath and blew it out slowly, his lips pursed as though for a whistle. His eyes had swollen and sunk deeper, as if he were an innocent who’d just witnessed mayhem. He gave Hickey a grimace, then looked around the room and shouted for the cowboy, who appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, a large sandwich in his paw.

“Mac, go warm up
Prudence
.”

“Warm up what?” Hickey growled.

“A speedboat.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

“What the hell?” Laura snapped. “A boat ride? You ain’t getting me out there this time of year.”

“Just the boys. Mac, Frankie, me, and Tom.”

“No Mac,” Hickey said. “Just you, me, and Frankie’ll be plenty.”

The boss dramatically rolled his eyes. “Miss Blackwood, what’ve I gotta do to make this character trust me?”

“Three or four years in a monastery might do the trick.”

“You got a wit.”

Claire walked over and sat on the arm of Hickey’s chair. “Nobody called.”

“I figured you would’ve said.”

“You okay, Tom?” Between the frown and her quivering chin, it looked as if the wrong answer could’ve launched her into hysterics.

“Swell,” Hickey muttered.

She petted his hair, stood, moved behind the chair, and began kneading his shoulders. Every minute or so, she’d bend and tell him something hopeful. Wendy was strong. Maybe she’d gotten away. Any second the phone could ring. She had to lean close to Hickey’s ear, to make herself heard over the noise of Laura spitting curses at Harry for accusing her father of teaming up with a bug like Jack Meechum and for letting some damned cop hold a gun on his guests. Harry stood grimacing, hands folded behind his back. Every time he glanced at Claire, Laura’s nostrils flared wider.

When Mac returned and said the boat was ready, warmed up and tied at the end of the pier, Harry made a signal to Claire, called her aside, and started toward the southwest cube. Hickey caught up. Handling the gun in his coat pocket, he followed Claire into the poolroom.

Claire gazed sourly around at the decor. A Picasso still life beside a Remington noble savage. The corner above the refrigerator twinkled with green and mauve neon stars. Shaking her head, she turned to the gambler. “Are you going to hurt the old man?”

Harry picked out a cue and screwed the two halves together. “Let me ask you something. Suppose the old boy don’t make it back—are you gonna think I’m a louse?”

“Sure.…But I won’t turn you in for it.”

He rapped the butt end of the cue on the plush carpet like a ballplayer checking for cracks in his bat. “Keep in mind, if Frankie disappears, I’m not the dealer here. It’s Tom calls the game. Whoever makes it back and who doesn’t, that’s on Tom’s say-so. Agreed, neighbor?”

“That’s how it is,” Hickey muttered.

Claire removed her snow cap and wrapped it around her hands. “If Foster doesn’t make it back, what do you do about his daughter?”

“We let her try and prove it wasn’t an accident. Say, you’re gonna stick around, aren’t you?”

“I can.”

“You know what it means,
mi casa su casa
, right?”

“Let’s go,” Hickey commanded.

Out in the living room, a gesture of the .45 got Foster to his feet and started toward the door. But Hickey had to shout twice to pry Poverman away from Claire.

Harry made a little bow to her, then called Mac to walk beside him. “Keep the ladies happy. You find yourself reaching for the phone, or the Foster broad starts to go for it, think how displeased Harry’s gonna be. Can you handle that, Mac?”

“Oh, yeah. I would’ve stayed off the line before, boss, except you didn’t say to.”

“I’m saying it now, Hopalong. Stay off the phone, don’t let the Foster broad outta your sight. If she starts peeling off her clothes, get her a robe. Her mouth gets too dirty, stuff a sock in it. What I don’t want is you or her or anybody offending Miss Blackwood. Get it?”

Foster, Poverman, and Hickey grabbed coats and hats off the rack in the entryway. The cowboy opened the door, and the others walked out and across the deck single file. From the bottom of the steps, a trail led past the row of tamarack and through the grove of lodge pole pine toward the lake. The trail was marked every few feet by the corner of a stepping stone jutting out through the snow.

Foster halted and spun around. “Hey, I’m not getting on any boat. You wanta rough me up, do it here.”

“Okay,” Harry said. “Clip him, Tom. We’ll dump him in the lake, then go back and knock his little girl around. She probably knows as much as he does.”

Hickey raised his Colt, zeroed it between Foster’s eyes. The old man’s arms flapped like a pair of crippled wings. He muttered curses and turned back down the path.

Because every step he expected a bullet to zing from behind a tree, Hickey walked in zigzags and bobbed slightly. From inside his head came volleys of croaks and chirrups, like monstrous bullfrogs and crickets at war. They faded and ceased as he reached the dock.

Prudence
, a twenty-foot Chris Craft mahogany speedboat, bobbed on choppy water at the end of the pier, beyond the aluminum boathouse, trembling like a Thoroughbred at the starting gate. The Chrysler power plant grumbled as though chomping at the bit. The pier was icy. Foster slipped twice, fell to his knees.

The boat featured custom swivel bucket seats at the wheel, at shotgun, and in the middle. A padded plank in the rear. Harry ushered Foster into the left middle seat and got behind the wheel. He loosed the mooring rope as Hickey settled onto the rear plank.

The boat took off like a dragster, the front end lifting, whopping, lifting over the choppy water. Surrounded by a tent of dark spray, they couldn’t see the shore or the mountains until Harry cut the throttle and they drifted to rest about a mile off the point at north Stateline, on a dead line between Incline and Hurricane Bay.

The only clouds looked like a blanket made of charcoal topping the South Carson range and feathery wisps over Mt. Rose. The stars were hot and greenish seen through Hickey’s eyes, which felt coated with rust. Close around, the water was the royal blue that meant if you dropped a stone into it and chucked another stone at the moon, no telling which would hit its target first. The quivering sickle moon seemed to teeter above the Desolation wilderness.

Nobody else was out on the lake except an antique steamer that chugged southward along the western bank, and a small fleet of lighted fishing boats a few miles south. Alongshore there’d been breeze and swells. Out here the air and water were mostly still. Yet, as though to help strike terror into Frankie Foster, an eerie moan like wind through a tunnel issued from someplace invisible.

The boss swung his seat around. “Okay, Frankie. You get the rules? See, we’re gonna finish this, one way or the other, before our nuts freeze. So don’t jerk us around. How about it?”

“I been telling you straight,” Foster muttered.

“That right? I must’ve missed it, maybe when I was rubbernecking your daughter. Say it again, Frankie, would you? Where do we find these boys and Tom’s wife?”

Foster sat crouched over, head nearly on his knees, blowing into his hands. “It’s like I told you. I got nothing to do with Meechum or Schwartz.”

“Dunk him,” Hickey said.

“Yeah. On your feet, Frankie.”

He didn’t budge. The boss stood up, caught his balance. He plucked Foster’s hat off and grabbed the man by the collar, heaved him off the seat as if he were weightless. Jammed him against the rail.

“What do I gotta do?” the old man yelped, clutching at the rail.

Harry shoved him, head and shoulders, over the side. Dunked his head and neck and held on. Foster’s legs kicked out behind him. His belly across the rail, he squirmed and thrashed with his right arm like a skin diver who’s run out of breath and has to dash for the surface. When the boss yanked him up, he gasped and made toots like a toy choochoo. “Swear to God,” he wailed. “I don’t know nothing!”

Harry threw him into his seat. Retrieving a hat from the deck, he smashed it onto the old man’s head. “Yeah, you do. Think about it a minute. Warm yourself up, Frankie. Next time you’re going in all the way.”

“Look,” Foster gasped, “maybe I can find out. Back at your place I’ll make some calls.”

“You think he’s on the level, Tom?”

“Maybe.”

“Yeah. That shows what a smart guy you are. What, you think you’re talking to a Boy Scout leader? This guy’s the only one of Bugs Moran’s boys Capone didn’t knock off on Valentine’s Day. On account of Frankie overslept. They’re all invited for tea and crumpets in this warehouse. Everybody else Bugs invited shows. Nine or eleven of them, I forget, but no Frankie. He’s home snoozing when Capone’s boys crash the party. Nine or eleven guys get stuck with a one-way ticket, but not ol’ sleepyhead.”

The boss chucked Foster’s chin.

“Overslept, did you, Frankie? Or set your pals up, like they say? Capone see to it you got outta Chicago safe?”

“What the fuck’s Valentine’s Day got to do with this cop’s wife?” Foster yowled like an indignant tomcat. “You got it in for me, Harry? You trying to muscle some of my action in Reno? That it?”

Poverman chuckled. “Hey, I got a whole casino. Better than half the take goes to me. So I’m gonna try and squeeze your puny book?”

“Yeah, maybe. Some guys want in on all the action. Look, you can’t get rid of me. It don’t work. Beau knows I’m up here. Laura, Beau, all they gotta do is call Graham or Lansky; a half hour later, you guys are on ice. Unless you figure on drowning Laura and Beau.”

“Aw, you’re all wet.” Harry reared back and laughed. “Get it, Tom?”

Hickey nodded anxiously. In some cranny of his mind lurked the thought that someday he’d look back in astonishment at the bloody stupor he’d fallen into, where it seemed he could’ve witnessed a dozen murders, or the massacre of a city, without a twitch. The way he felt now, he would’ve swapped every soul on earth for Wendy. He could hardly make sense out of Harry or Foster’s talk, while listening so hard for the moment the old bookie would come clean.

“Hey, nobody cares about you, Frankie. Graham, Lansky—it’d be like somebody called them to snitch that Harry Poverman just stepped on a sow bug. Beau’s a hired hand, pal. He goes to the highest bidder.”

“Laura,” Foster moaned. “You gonna clip her too?”

Harry snorted. “Suppose we go back, tell her you’re sunk; the broad’ll propose a toast. She hates your guts, Frankie. Told me that three, four times last summer. Why do you think she struts around nude in front of Daddy? She laughed like hell, telling me about it. Gives her a kick, to watch her old man limp around with a boner. She’s a real gem, Frankie.”

With a chirp like Hickey’d heard out of penguins, Foster curled back up, hands between his thighs and forehead on his knees.

“You gonna talk, Frankie?”

“I said it all.”

“Okay. I wonder how far you’re gonna sink. You know, nobody’s ever found the bottom of this damned lake. Maybe you’ll wash up in—what’s on the other side of the world from here, Tom?”

“Must be Siberia.”

“I wonder why it is, everyplace else, some guy drowns or gets dumped in a lake, mostly he’ll float to the surface—but Tahoe, nobody does. Every body sinks. Could be there’s a dragon-fish, like in Scotland.”

“Let’s get it done,” Hickey snapped. He laid his gun on the plank beside him, got up, and teetered to Foster’s right side, because Harry was already on his left, prying the man’s arm out from between his legs. When they’d gotten the arms gripped tightly, each of them grabbed an ankle. They lifted the bookie straight up. As they stepped to the rail, Hickey swinging around the seat toward the front, the boat listed. It might’ve capsized, except they tossed Frankie into the water.

His head knocked against the rail and bounced down into the dark, below the surface. His shoulders and carcass followed. All they held onto were his ankles.

And Hickey thought, Oh, Lord! Harry was on the wrong side, about three feet from where Hickey’d left his .45. If he let go and lunged for the gun, in the second it’d take him to drop Foster and squeeze between the middle seats, Harry could easily beat him to the gun and waste him.

“Pull him out,” Hickey yelped.

“Naw, give him another few seconds. I don’t wanta have to do it again. I’m getting cold and thirsty.”

Hickey couldn’t pull him in alone. If he wanted the gun, he’d have to give Foster up to the lake, and Wendy along with him. So he waited until the gambler called out, “Heave ho!”

They gave a yank and Foster came flying up like a huge trout wearing an overcoat, hooting in soprano. Poverman slammed him into the seat. Hickey jumped back to his automatic.

“See the dragon?” Harry asked.

“Yeah,” the old gangster whimpered. “Don’t put me down there no more.”

“Suits me. You’re gonna talk, right?”

“Yeah. This is Meechum’s deal, all right. It’s none of mine.”

From the way everything brightened, Hickey could’ve sworn the moon had miraculously become full. He checked and saw it remained a sickle. He looked around for a Coast Guard boat or a yacht throwing a rescue beam. Nothing. The new light must’ve been his eyes dilating and swelling in accord with his heart.

“Go on.”

Between the chattering of his teeth and the pauses when all he could manage to do was tremble, Foster stammered, “Look, all I did was call a couple guys. Laura begged me, to save Meechum’s neck. She’s still got the hots for the rat, thinks they can work things out. Meechum gave her a line of crap, I don’t know exactly, but I got the truth out of him.”

The old man shuddered so wildly, Hickey grabbed him by the shoulders as though holding him still could keep him alive. “Talk!” Hickey roared.

“Yeah, I’m talking. This Cynthia dame, she made a deal with Jack, got him to connect her with an arsonist, let on she’d put out for him, then reneged because the arsonist wanted too much loot. Meechum’s nuts about this Cynthia; besides that, he needed lots of dough to pay off a Mex bookie. So he torched Sousa’s place himself, took what money the gal could raise.”

Foster gritted his teeth and appeared to intercept and hold a shudder before it cut loose.

“He didn’t know Sousa was in there. When Sousa burned, Jack got spooked. He’s a sissy. I don’t know what she sees in the punk except she’s always mooning over some fruit that blows a horn.”

“Leave out the gossip, would you?” Harry grumbled.

“There was some beachcomber that saw him in the act. So Jack got the guy tanked, whopped him with a hammer. A couple days later, Jack’s in Vegas and gets a phone call says this old pal of Cynthia’s is snooping around. Putting heat on Charlie Schwartz and the wops. So he gets crazy from thinking pretty soon one of these guys—Charlie, Angelo, the snoop, maybe the cops—are gonna nail him.”