Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 02 (17 page)

“On my last journey to the mountain…”

“You raped Cynthia and killed Emma Vidal,” Hickey mumbled.

“…the Aryan master whose initials are YOS appeared as a ball of light, dense as the sun, small as an orange. To my inner ear, he revealed that the origin, the spark of creation, lies in the darkness Christians call hell.”

Hickey’s brain throbbed with anger and disgust while the master spouted off about the current war being a blood sacrifice by which some gods had to be appeased. Hickey wanted to spit, but Santa and the rest applauded heartily.

As Randolf Drew replaced Pravinshandra at the podium and proclaimed that now they would witness an achievement only reached by the highest caste of yogis, Hickey’s wandering eyes found their mark. Seven rows back, halfway across, one man over from the front right corner of the pack of hoboes, Donny Katoulis sat paring his fingernails.

Hickey’d only caught the briefest glimpse of the man when suddenly the overhead lights flickered out, all except a very dim one above the altar.

The man had a two- or three-day stubble and a tattered hat pulled so low you couldn’t see if the hairline, like Donny’s, ran a couple inches above his bushy eyebrows. He’d been slouched in the seat. Not like Donny. But any second now, while every stare was fixed on the fire-throwing act, the man would probably stand up and force Hickey to choose between risking the life of whoever might dodge in front of a deflected bullet and letting Katoulis drop the master.

As he squinted through the dark at the hobo, Hickey only caught sidewise glances of the blue fire. He saw Pravinshandra raise his arms above and outside his shoulders as though to flex his biceps for the ladies. He curled his fingers inward and they started to glow, first yellow, then orange, which instantly transformed to blue. The fire, or whatever it was, lengthened steadily out of the fingers of each hand, until it formed a straight, quavering line. For his next trick, he sent the fire upward, about ten feet high, fading as it climbed.

All around Hickey, people issued groans, sighs, impulsive bursts of applause, and when Venus stood, several men whooped as if the rodeo’d just hit town. Venus and the master faced off in front of the podium, about five feet apart. He slowly lifted his arms straight in front and pointed the fingers, already glowing, at a slight angle down from his shoulders, as if to make a lunge at her tits. He bowed his head, switched on his magic fingers. The fire jumped between them. For about two seconds, before it poofed away, it haloed all of Venus in blue.

A ninety-yard touchdown pass at the Rose Bowl could hardly have gotten such devoted applause. Venus and the master bowed sedately three or four times, and Hickey perched on the edge of his seat, watching the hobo and thinking,
He’s got to move now
.

The lights flashed on. Venus stepped to the podium. She gave a little sigh and whistle that implied the blue fire had humbled and thrilled her.

Melodically, as though asking for a kiss, she launched into a pitch about the Black Forest and their plans for expansion. Though she failed to plead for donations, any dunce would’ve inferred that the
Nezahs
needed benefactors if they were to carry on the great Theosophical work interrupted by Judas elements blind to the fact that spiritual matters had to precede the battle against social injustice, because everything on earth must begin with the spiritual.

Hickey kept watching the hobo, again hidden behind the bushy wino next to him. But the man sat still.

The longer Hickey tailed them, the greater chance he’d get recognized. Maybe Donny’d already spotted him. If so, he’d be sure to reason that Hickey can’t stand by the master through the entire reception. All he’s got to have is patience. Until Hickey starts to piss his trousers or gets a violent urge for peanuts, or some Theosophist doll asks him to polka. Then Donny steps in, invites the master to bend over, listen to a secret. He places a small, silenced gun between the master’s eyebrows and wishes him a pleasant trip back to Hell.

Or, if Hickey could maintain perfect vigilance, always stay by the master’s side without Pravinshandra getting suspicious of his attentions and siccing a gang of shepherds on him—eventually Donny would creep around behind Hickey, splatter his guts, then pop the master. He could do it all in about three seconds. If a spectator rubbed his eyes, he’d miss the whole scene. Donny was that good. He’d shag out one of the doors in an instant. If Hickey was still alive, not a chance he’d catch Katoulis running. Hickey’d been fast enough to play fullback but not because he could outrun the defense. Because it took both tackles and a guard to bring him down.

Hickey got a vision of tomorrow’s
Denver Post
. “
RELIGIOUS NUT MURDERED BY ZEALOT
—…the perpetrator, claims Sheriff Beauregard, was undoubtedly a Christian offended by “Master” Pravinshandra’s heretical doctrines, which include his reverence for the Aryan race, his pantheism, his reference to the global war as ‘a blood sacrifice.’ The gunman appeared to be a transient. ‘He’s probably long gone by now,’ Sheriff Beauregard speculated.”

Randolf Drew was inviting everyone to the Raja Yoga schoolhouse on the corner of Thirteenth and Logan to witness their Nativity play and imbibe their food and libations. By the time he’d finished his invitation, the hoboes were already on their feet, migrating toward the door. While Hickey rushed around to the front of the seats, he lost sight of his quarry. He shouldered a path through the crowd and out to the sidewalk, caught up with the pack of hoboes, and sidled in among them. Finally he spied the man, about five yards ahead. Several hoboes walked between them. The man’s hair wasn’t as shaggy as the others’. It looked like a barber’s work. The olive skin of his high cheeks and forehead didn’t appear raw or windblown.

At Seventeenth and Broadway the Salvation Army woman was tooting “O Come All Ye Faithful.” Hickey caught himself muttering the words. As he glanced her way, the woman’s appearance whacked him like a short dose of lightning. A white, violet-tinted glow surrounded her. Her doughy potato-shaped face looked glorious. He slapped his head and jumped to catch up with the hoboes. Following the railroad porter, who took strides like a gazelle, they crossed Sixteenth and Colfax, then turned east along a row of bus benches beside the capitol lawn. Up the hill, across some acres of dead grass and snow, the dome of the capitol looked like a black puddle in the iron-gray sky.

The man was Donny’s height and build, for sure, but he didn’t strut like Katoulis, which might only indicate that Katoulis was a consummate actor. A burly hobo staggering beside Hickey tripped over his feet or a rut in the sidewalk and jostled Hickey so that he slammed into the guy on his other side. He wheeled back, with an urge to sock the fellow who’d bumped him. Only the voice in his head stopped him. It commanded, “Take the punk out now, Tom, or you’re a goner.”

Hickey loosed a button on each of his two coats, plucked the .38 from the holster, and lunged between the two men who separated him and the guy he felt certain was Donny. The hobo had sensed the action behind him and started to turn just as Hickey clutched his left arm, twisted it behind his back, lodged the gun in his kidneys, and yanked the man out of the pack, onto the capitol lawn.

“What the hell?” the hobo screeched. “Lemme go, bub.”

It wasn’t Katoulis’ voice. It rasped like a veteran wino’s. Hickey almost dropped the arm. But he stepped on ice, skidded. Clutching the hobo tighter, he toppled them both. He fell across the man’s legs. He’d lost his grip, needing one arm to break his fall, another to hold his gun. The hobo slid out from under him, sprang up, and bolted toward the capitol. A native of snow country would’ve gotten away. Donny was another Californian. While his slick shoes grabbed for traction, Hickey clipped him in the spine. Knocked him chest-first into the snow. He wrenched the hobo to his feet, spun him around, bent the arm behind his back, and jerked the man’s wrist nearly up to his shoulder. The hobo yowled.

“You’ve got one hand,” Hickey snarled. “Use the gun.”

The man tucked his chin around his shoulder, rolled his eyes sideways, caught a glimpse of his tormentor. “Hey, save it for the Krauts, why don’tcha, pal. Lemme go now or I’ll…”

“Go on, Donny. You’ll…?”

“Hell! Donny ain’t my name. Lemme go. Lemme turn around. Take a look at me, will you?”

Suddenly the world got bright. Hickey inched around, turning the hobo with him, just enough to see the glare of a cruiser or taxi’s spotlight at the curb. “Turn the damn thing off!” he shouted.

“No, I ain’t,” a man yelled back. “Not till the police comes.”

“Lemme go, pal,” the hobo rasped. “You got things all bungled up here. You and me both gonna land in jail, for nothing.”

Hickey pondered a moment, then released the hobo, who whipped around and faced him, eyed the gun pointing at his middle. “See, now. I ain’t who you think. I ain’t no Donny. Name’s Lester Coolidge, swear to God.” Each couple words he gained a step backward toward a monument the size of a walk-in tomb, topped by the statue of a horseman. Though Hickey still believed the guy was Katoulis, he knew he was fatigued, confused, capable of error. The man could’ve gotten away. Except that just as he tipped his left shoulder and crooked it an inch toward the monument—the second he’d gotten set to bolt for cover—he flashed Hickey a grin.

Hickey didn’t feel himself squeezing the trigger either time. But the noise thundered in his ears and the man flew backward as though an invisible tackler had caught him gut high. A woman began wailing. She sounded like Hickey’s damned mother.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The detective named George ground his elbow into the desk and yawned. “How is it the cabbie tells us Stavros didn’t show his gun? First anybody saw his piece was when you lifted it out of his belt.”

They sat in the lieutenant’s office, Hickey in a hard straightbacked chair by the window that overlooked Thirteenth Street, a vacant lot, gray trees along a creek. George, in the leather-quilted swivel chair behind the desk, had slick dark hair from which a scar angled down to his eyebrow. Sickly pale. A big fellow, yet his clothes fit like a kid’s who’d borrowed from his older brother.

The lieutenant sprawled on the love seat squeezed between two wooden file cabinets. Past retirement age, he might’ve been hacking at golf balls in Phoenix if not for the war. He was paunchy, with buzz-cut hair and puffy, reddened eyes. He kept kneading both sides of his neck, underneath the ears, as though trying to fix his swollen glands. Every couple minutes he’d sneeze heartily.

“What’d I tell you?” Hickey droned. “I didn’t say he got to his gun. I said he was reaching for it.”

“How’d you know he had one?”

“Twenty years I’ve known the punk. When has he not had a gun?”

“Michael Stavros?”

“Donald Katoulis. Anybody call San Diego yet?”

“Sure. And your pal Captain Thrapp’s out on the town. We even told him to call collect. Generous, huh? How about you reciprocate, partner? Tell us the awful truth so the lieutenant can go home and snooze. If he comes down with pneumonia, we’re gonna see that you fry.”

“Uh-huh.” Hickey gazed out the window, through the space between the window frame and the blackout curtain, at the headlights of three airplanes flying toward him side by side. Every word he uttered or breath he exhaled seemed to waste valuable air, as if Denver weren’t just one mile high but four or five, and his lungs were like divers’ tanks—once they ran out, he was through.

“Make him run through it again, George,” the lieutenant grumbled. “Tell him, watch out every detail’s the same, no slip-ups, or his ass is charcoal.”

“Take it from the top, will you, Tommy?”

“I got a phone call,” Hickey muttered. “Some guy, squeaky voice, says Donny K’s gonna knock off this swami. He wants me to stop him.”

“Why?”

“Beats me.”

“Why don’t he call the law?”

“He says cops’ve been after Katoulis a long time. They had their chance. Anyway, Charlie Schwartz owns cops. This guy isn’t taking any chances.”

“How’s he know so much about the kike mob?”

“Maybe they go to the same temple,” Hickey snapped. “He wants me to take a few guys along, grab Katoulis in the act. I tell him I’ll think it over. Next I know, a messenger drops off two grand for me at the nightclub.”

“Ruby’s.”

“Rudy’s. I’m supposed to get five grand more when Donny’s in the joint.”

“Or dead?”

“Wasn’t supposed to happen. I messed up. This guy didn’t want anybody done in. That’s the point of why he called, George. I think the fellow hired Katoulis, then had a nightmare or something. All of a sudden his feet get cold. That’s my surmise.”

“Fuck your surmise. I’m asking what’d he say.”

“Not so much. I’m telling you what I got from his tone of voice.”

“Hey, Lieutenant,” George called over his shoulder, “Ol’ Tom’s not lying about one thing. I’m damned sure he used to be a Tinseltown cop, the way he thinks he’s Sigmund Freud.” He cocked a big finger, gazed down the crest of it at Hickey’s right eye. “So how many sidekicks you bring along?”

“Nobody. I only had a few hours.”

George rubbed his eyes, scowled disgustedly. “Tom, if you’re gonna lie, make it good, will you? I’ll give you an easy straight line here, see what you can do with it. Why’d you drag Stavros out onto the tundra? Invite him to a picnic, did you?”

“I got spooked. I figured, once we got to the reception, it’d be too easy for Katoulis. Too crowded, might’ve turned into a bloodbath.”

“Try this angle, George,” the lieutenant offered. “Tommy’s not a liar, he’s a retard.”

“I like it.” George slapped the desk, leaned closer, craned his neck. “Mystery man’s paying you to take some guys, grab this shooter in the act, turn him in. So you go it alone, drag him onto capitol lawn when as yet he hasn’t so much as tickled the swami. Then, like maybe you don’t want him to talk about something, you pop him twice, dead center. Make a hole you can already see daylight through, then widen it a little.”

Hickey was staring out the window, trying to follow the line that silhouetted the Rockies against the obsidian sky, using his vision to blur the movie that played on the backs of his eyelids, of Donny’s fall onto the snow. Every few seconds a shiver zinged across his back, between the shoulder blades. A numb spot at the base of his skull felt like an ice pack rested on it.

“What’s he gonna come up with next?” The weary lieutenant raised the pitch of his voice, gave it a tremor, like an actor trying to sound appalled. “He figured to hold the bum until we showed to bust Stavros for trespassing on the capitol lawn? Ask him, George.”

“I messed up,” Hickey mumbled. “I lost my head and messed up bad, all right?”

“Yeah.” George leaned back in his swivel chair, clasped his hands behind his neck for a second, then lunged forward and grabbed a cigarette out of the tray on his desk. “Want a smoke, Tom?”

“Naw.”

“Shot of bourbon?”

“Not unless you’re planning to cut me loose directly, give me a lift back to the hotel.”

“Why’s that?”

“A drink and I’d probably nod off.”

“Or mouth off, right?”

“I’m tired, is all.”

“Take it lightly, don’t you, this murder routine?”

Hickey glared silently, pinning George’s eyes until the cop wagged his head and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Maybe we’ll cut you loose before long. Soon as you spill your guts. About your mystery man. He tell you how he knew your buddy Katoulis was gonna hit the swami?”

“Way I figure,” Hickey droned as if repeating for the fiftieth time, “he’s some religious quack, maybe a rival Theosophist, didn’t like the swami’s game. So he buys a hit on the swami, then gets this nightmare—or, hell, maybe an angel visits him, he thinks—something tells him to repent. That’s a common MO of religious fanatics—sin big, repent, sin big.”

“Can’t fault you there, Tommy,” the lieutenant grumbled. “I got a son-in-law’s that way.”

George chuckled quietly, crushed out his cigarette. “Suppose we’re gonna buy the mystery-man story. Not that we’re about to, but suppose. Here’s what I think. It was like you say, except he wasn’t paying you to get Stavros busted. He was paying you to hit the guy. What I mean, Tom, Stavros gets nailed, he rats on the chump that hired him, next thing you know the mystery man’s busting rocks. How do you figure?”

Hickey kneaded the back of his neck, giving himself a moment. “Could be he knows Donny wouldn’t rat on anybody. He’d wait thirty years if he needed, then pop the guy that set him up. Maybe the guy that called me figured on getting lost. Or he’s the kind of nut that wants to get punished.”

“Oh Lord,” George moaned. “Freud again.”

The lieutenant sneezed, sat up, and gave Hickey a wry smile. “You’re a lotta laughs, Tommy.”

For another half hour the detectives fired the same questions in different disguises, until a sergeant rapped on the door. George let him in. He looked like a rookie, promoted every couple weeks since all the able-bodied cops had run off to the war. He wore a fuzzy mustache, a mop of blond hair. “I got what we needed outta L.A.,” he said, “and outta the morgue. The stiff’s name’s Katoulis, an old-timer with that kike mob that runs Hollywood.”

“Who says?”

“Not much doubt, Lieutenant. He’s got the same tattoo, says
Irene
, on the upper right bicep. Same appendectomy scar. Name on the driver’s license, Michael Stavros, is one of the guy’s aka’s. The prints are on their way, special D.”

The lieutenant sneezed, wiped his nose with his sleeve. “Get Tommy outta here, will you, son? I’m allergic to him. Give him the honeymoon suite.”

The sergeant motioned Hickey to his feet, held the door for him, followed behind giving Hickey directions down two flights of stairs. He chatted a minute with the jailer about some local basketball team, then used a giant key to open the cell block and waved Hickey in.

The jail looked like a kennel. No interior walls, only bars, small cages with iron bunks. Some Mexicans who’d clustered around the junction of four cages—shooting dice or playing cards by flashlight—fired commands at the cop. The Spanish all mixed together. “
Venga cabrón su madre dame una mota
.” Beyond the Mexicans were the whites. Orientals next. Negroes, Hickey guessed, were at the far end. He couldn’t see that far in the dark. An old fellow with gray skin pushed his face between the bars. “Boy mussed hisself. Ain’t nobody goin’ clean him?”

“I sure ain’t,” the sergeant said.

Hickey got shoved into the fourth cell on the right. There was a seatless toilet alongside a one-tap basin, beneath the small, high window. In the adjoining cells, everybody looked asleep except a wild man who shot piercing glances around as he paced from the cage door to his wall and back. Hickey’s cellmate, a bald white fellow wearing khaki work clothes, lay facedown on the upper bunk, snoring like a V-8 with corroded spark plugs.

Hickey flopped onto the lower bunk, wrapped the fetid, scratchy blanket around him, cussed the police for taking his army coat. Bone-cold and sore, his stomach painfully tender, his head throbbing, muscles taut as guitar strings, he lay sideways, his knees tugged against his chest for warmth, wondering if there could be any relief or if he’d always feel this way. He’d amazed himself by holding his desolation in check the two or three hours those detectives had made him sit there lying until they saw there wasn’t going to be any wearing him down beyond where the hunt for Katoulis had dragged him. They’d recognized that, like a prisoner of war, Hickey’d steeled his will, locked the truth so deeply inside him he might choose to have his nuts removed before he’d tell. It might be less painful. If he gave up now, turned on Cynthia, every time he looked in a mirror or reflecting window, he wouldn’t only see a murderer. He’d see a weakling, a forlorn clown.

What he couldn’t figure, what tormented him most, was—why couldn’t he rationalize it, take a little pity on himself? No matter what he’d done, somebody had to die. If he’d backed off, minded his own affairs, and let everything else run its course, then Pravinshandra would’ve got it between the eyes. If he’d called in the law—with no solid evidence against Donny, and the girl knowing who’d betrayed her—wouldn’t Katoulis have been waiting behind the oleanders at the end of Fanuel Street when Hickey stepped out of his car one night? Sure, he would. And the girl, after a few years in jail for conspiracy, comes out with a felony record, dropping the odds to one in a million any bandleader’s going to take her on. Even if somebody did, likely she’d be so filled with venom, who’s going to fall for her love songs?

Somebody had to die. Who better than Donny Katoulis? In the past week or so, Hickey’d been too preoccupied to read the news or keep up with the headlines on the radio, yet just in passing he’d heard of a few hundred thousand soldiers and innocents shot, bombed, stabbed, cremated. There was no logic Hickey could find that wouldn’t excuse him for killing one of Earth’s viler creatures. He couldn’t find a single reason to grieve for Donny Katoulis or to blame himself for killing the man. But logic didn’t rule the heart. From the moment after Donny’s last spasm, his muscles felt colder and his blood flowed thickly, on account of the knowledge that he was going to pay forever. A day might not pass that he didn’t watch the man writhe and stiffen, didn’t feel himself standing there, playing God with his .38. What you don’t know about playing God until you’ve tried it, he thought, was that there’s no place lonelier. His mind pulsated with the noise of gunshots, the kick of the discharge against his hand and arm, and visions of Donny’s eyes dilating as if they filled with dark blood. For a couple hours, every time he’d accepted the sounds and visions, made them take on a rhythm that began lulling him into a dazed slumber, as close as he was likely to get to sleep, some Mexican would howl a curse or demand.

The jailer woke Hickey. The blond sergeant led him up the stairs to a counter where a pock-faced matron returned his wallet, coat, everything they’d appropriated except the gun that had finished Katoulis, while uniform and plainclothes cops sat on their desks swilling coffee and giving him a variety of stares. Cold. Amused. Analytical. The blond sergeant told Hickey to call him Mitch. Leading the way, he bobbed up and down, walking as if there were springs in his shoes.

The streets were icy, the sidewalks bunkered with ridges of snow. A near-empty streetcar rattled past while they waited at Broadway and Colfax, from where Hickey chose not to look at the scene of his crime. Otherwise the streets were deserted as though an air raid had driven the citizenry underground. A garbage truck crossed a distant intersection. A valiant newsboy skidded his bike along the icy street, saluted as they passed him.

“Seems your pal in San Diego made a deal,” Mitch commented. “Promised to conk you on the head and ship you back here if the DA won’t fall for your self-defense crap.”

“Swell,” Hickey said. “Where we going?”

“The Palace, pick up your gear. Next stop Denver Municipal Airport. Lieutenant wants you long gone. I guess you bored him.”

“You’re gonna break my heart, talking like that,” Hickey muttered.

“I wonder what kind of deal your chum made. He must’ve swore you was next in line to Christ, getting Lieutenant Pluim to let you go home when they got a solid witness against you.”

“Who’s that?”

“Why you wanta know? Maybe you figure to ice him?”

“Tell you what, Sergeant,” Hickey growled. “Let’s you and me practice keeping our mouths shut.”

Mitch slid the patrol car around the corner of Broadway and Seventeenth, where the Salvation Army woman had played her oboe. The thought of her and the sight of the Brown Palace, as they parked in its loading zone, touched Hickey with a violent nostalgia, as though one age had concluded last night, the moment he’d spotted Katoulis, replaced by a new and sinister one. The doorman, the desk clerk, the elevator boy all had new faces. The onyx looked duller, the copper more tarnished. On the chandelier and Christmas trees, he noticed all the darkened bulbs.