Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 02 (18 page)

He didn’t bother to change out of his uniform, just collected his gear, crammed it into his suitcase, and retraced his steps, leading the sergeant out of there. As the elevator descended, Hickey wondered briefly if Venus and the master were still asleep, and if they even knew what might’ve hit them last night.

On the drive to the airport, the sergeant pointed to a tract of shoe-box houses. “Used to be wheat fields.” Hickey pulled the watch cap over his eyes, trying to concentrate on simple things. The inside of his eyelids, how they kept looking redder. Whether he should eat cereal or eggs. The pain and weakness in his right ankle. “Over here, used to be a ranch of longhorns, now it’s some damned outfit makes runners for tanks.”

“The nerve,” Hickey grumbled.

In the airport he bought a sandwich and milk, devoured them, tried futilely to relax with his head on the table. Somebody’d left behind a
Denver Post
. Hickey’s eyes watered, couldn’t focus on the headlines. He got up, left two dollars, and walked to the phone booths. Two or three people waited at each one. He bribed an ensign and a Mexican woman to cut in front of them. He would’ve called home except that he couldn’t bear the thought of Elizabeth’s voice. Just as he’d given the operator Leo’s number, the loudspeaker announced his flight. In the middle of a ring, the line clicked and Leo grumbled, “It better be good.”

“Collect call for Mister or Missus Weiss, from Tom Hickey.”

“Yeah. Sure. You there, cheapskate?”

“I’m here. Tell Madeline, will you? I’ll get back sometime today.”

“Where’s Katoulis?”

“Same place we’re all gonna be, one of these days.”

The line buzzed a while. Finally Leo said, “You okay, Tom?”

“Sure. Top of the world.”

***

On the DC-3 to L.A., Hickey slept without nightmares, at least ones he could remember. He woke a few times in turbulence, his heart pounding as though it had prophesied the plane was about to nose-dive. He fell back into a reluctant sleep, trying to obliterate a weird idea he’d caught, that if the plane did crash, the blame for splattering a hundred and some people all over the desert would land on him.

At Los Angeles Airport the soldiers and sailors looked more battered and weary. It seemed half of them wore bandages, used crutches, lugged duffel bags with their solitary arm, or weaved through the crowds in agonized stupor. Hickey made a stop at the rest room, changed to his civilian clothes and left the uniform with the washroom attendant. Everything, including the long coat with his watch cap and gloves tucked into the pockets. The old Chinaman could make a few bucks. Hickey wouldn’t have to look at the costume again.

He walked outside, stood in the sunlight, caught a scent of ocean breeze through the sooty air. He pictured Madeline and Elizabeth. They stood blocking the doorway, underneath his carport. Madeline glared with contempt, her lips dry and twisted. Behind her stood a shadowy form, maybe Castillo. Elizabeth leaned against the doorjamb, watching her father with mournful, forsaken eyes.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The shiny thing in the carport wasn’t Paul Castillo’s Cadillac, like Hickey’d feared at first glance, when he was still half blinded from watching the sunset while the taxi brought him the final lap, down Pacific Beach Drive. It was his own Chevy. Madeline must’ve picked it up from the lot behind Rudy’s. Though he hadn’t washed it in too long, it glittered as if it ought to hang from a Christmas tree.

Hickey got out of the cab, empty-handed except for the suitcase that had ridden on the seat beside him. He’d dropped the suitcase and reached for his billfold when the driver’s door of his Chevy flew open and Elizabeth came running, her smile so wide it looked dangerous, as if it could tear her face. She squeezed him, rubbing her head and cheek into his chest.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Daddy.”

“I see, babe. How’d you know when I’d get here?”

“Didn’t. I’ve been waiting a couple hours. Did you see I washed and waxed your car?”

“You bet. Never looked so shiny.”

Most kids, Hickey thought, would’ve asked him straight off about the guy he killed. Elizabeth had more sense than most kids. Or she didn’t know. He fished for his billfold and, behind her back, while she still held on, paid off the cabbie.

“Mom’s cooking a feast. She said you get steaks every day at Rudy’s, and tomorrow we’ll have turkey. So tonight she’s making chicken stuffed with ham.”

“Cordon bleu?”

“Yep. I guess. And she’s got us a cabin reserved at the Pine Hills Lodge, for tomorrow. There’s brand-new snow up there, it fell again last night. Did you get me a Christmas present yet?”

Hickey wagged his head. “Been waiting till tonight.”

“How about a bigger sled? One we could ride together.”

He tickled her ribs, gave her a smile and a kiss on the forehead. She stepped back, picked up his suitcase, clutched his hand, and pulled him toward the house. “Close your eyes, Dad.”

Hickey followed her orders, got led past his car, inside and across the tile to where the hardwood began, at the entry to the living room.

“You can look now.”

When he opened his eyes, he might as well have been standing on top of a mountain gazing across a moonlit ocean at a city built of gold and jewels. Elizabeth’s face streamed with happy tears. Behind her, on his sleeping porch, a Christmas tree glowed, and beyond that, a bright orange boat with a silvery sail glided through the foggy dusk across the bay toward Crown Point. He heard the rustle of fabric, smelled lilac, and turned to face Madeline. Her damp hair and satiny face looked haloed in the light from the fixture in the kitchen. Her lips moved, then her chin began to quiver, as though she felt as shy and clumsy as Hickey did, like a boy and girl discovering love.

“I feel so awful, Tom,” she said breathlessly. For a moment she quietly watched his eyes, as if inspecting them for secrets, then reached a finger up to his lips, inviting him to kiss it. “I heard what you told me,” she said, “about Cynthia wanting to hire Katoulis, but I didn’t stop to think what it meant, I was so busy with poor little Madeline. Honest to God, it never occurred to me that you were going to take on Donny Katoulis. I know,” she whispered, “it should’ve been obvious.”

Hickey didn’t care to speak. Instead he squeezed her until he had to loosen up so she could breathe, and still he kept hold, losing himself in the pressure of her body and the touch and smell of her hair.

“You know how it is, Tom, being a cop’s wife. You teach yourself not to go around fretting, or you turn into a hag from worrying all the time. After a while, you start to ignore things. Even so…”

“Hush.” He kissed her lusciously, then drew back. “Forgive me for socking Castillo?”

“Dad,” Elizabeth gasped. “You socked Mr. Castillo?”

“All in fun, babe,” Hickey said.

Madeline gave him a neutral smile. “I bet it wasn’t the first time he’s got socked, or the last.” Laying the side of her head on his chest, she stood quietly awhile, then eased away. “I better get back to cooking before I scorch the whole mess. You want to lie down, or get a bath?”

“Naw. Not yet.”

“Lizzie’s got a party she’d like to go to, with that La Jolla crowd. You guys want to gab awhile? There’s about an hour before she ought to start getting ready.”

“I don’t have to go, Dad,” Elizabeth said.

“It’s okay, babe. Your mom and I need to do some things.” She made a wry face, and Hickey winked at her. “Like Christmas shopping. How about you and me go look at the bay? Make sure nobody swiped it, while your mom slaves over dinner?”

“Let’s go.”

They exited through the sleeping porch, past the Christmas tree, a bushy Douglas fir trimmed with the soft-colored round lights they’d bought last year and the angels, trees, stars, and such that Elizabeth had been making out of dough since she was a baby. “Where’d all those presents come from?” Hickey asked.

“You’ll find out. It’s getting dark. We should drop the curtains.”

“Naw. Japs aren’t gonna bomb us on Christmas Eve.”

“They’re pretty mean, Dad.”

“Well, some of ’em are Catholics who’d probably tell the other guys that God’ll smite anybody that pulls such a lousy trick.”

They scuffed through the sand, west and around the turn of the bay. Hickey asked what else, besides a new sled, she wanted for Christmas. She listed an angora sweater, Coty’s Emeraude perfume, pastel drawing pencils, a few shades of lip rouge.

Along that side of the bay, a sidewalk ran between the sand and the dwellings, small wood-frame or stucco cottages on narrow lots. They passed fifty or so houses. At least half were decorated, with bulbs hanging in oleander, bougainvillea, from a loquat or magnolia tree; with a wooden Santa on the roof, creeping through the mist toward the chimney; with glittery stars in the windows or atop a flagpole. While the sky’s last gray faded into dark, they passed three Nativity scenes and walked onto Santa Clara Point. Hickey stopped and turned, facing the bay. A speedboat thumped by, circling over its own wake. The driver whooped something at them. Elizabeth slipped her arm around his elbow and leaned against him.

“Want me to tell you what happened in Denver?”

“Sure, if you want.”

“How much your mom say?”

“I think she didn’t know too much, but she figured you must’ve gotten hired to protect somebody.”

“Yeah, that’s how it was. A couple of religious nuts were on a tour, giving speeches, trying to shuck people into giving them dough. I got wind of a plan to kill one of them.”

“Which one?”

“Probably the man.”

“Why’d somebody hate him that bad?”

Hickey rocked onto his heels deciding he should go no deeper unless he wanted to spill the whole truth. “Couldn’t keep his hands off women, for one thing. Anyway, I tailed this pair around Denver until I spotted the shooter, and I figured the best way to keep the most people safe was to get him alone somewhere.”

Now the story got tricky, Hickey thought. Either he lied, another crime to answer for, or he gave her the truth and risked everything, hoping she’d understand what he didn’t—why killing somebody just because you’re scared and furious could be right.

“I walked him a little way onto this lawn below the state capitol, and he started trying to throw me with lies, backing away.…” The shape of an unlighted sailboat motoring slowly around Santa Clara Point reminded him of Katoulis’ grin, which he’d already seen a dozen times, in a slice of orange at the Denver airport, in the crescent moon when it passed a break in the fog, and in the unpainted half of a headlight beam. He loosed his right arm from Elizabeth’s and laid it around her shoulders, pressed her closer against him, keeping her eyes off his face.

She reached up and patted his hand. “You’re cold, Daddy.”

“Not hardly. I just got back from Denver. You wanta hear about cold?”

“Uh-huh.” She reached her arm around his waist, held it firmly, and turned him back toward home. They’d walked about ten yards when Hickey got walloped by the news that a daughter can feel for her dad as much as the dad feels for her. It would take a hundred times more than his murdering Donny Katoulis to wrest him and Elizabeth apart.

“Look.” She swept her free arm across the length of the bay. The lights on Christmas trees glimmered in a dozen or so houses atop the low cliff of the west shore, as if the people had taken their cue from the Hickeys and declared that for tonight the Japs or nobody was going to dim their pleasure. They walked holding hands, arms swinging, admiring the airy lights diffused and brightened by the fog.

At home Madeline was chopping a cucumber. Elizabeth checked the clock and ran for the bathroom, hollering, “Uh-oh, Keeny’s gonna pick me up in twenty-five minutes.”

Hickey stepped into the kitchen, kissed Madeline’s neck. “Who’s Keeny?”

“Short for Joaquin. Portuguese. Heir to a million tuna boats. I called the kid, made him swear on the pope’s toupee that he’ll get her back by eleven, and no drinking.”

“You’re a tough customer,” Hickey said.

“You bet. Get out of the kitchen.”

Hickey laughed for the first time in so long that it felt awkward. He grabbed his suitcase from where Elizabeth had dropped it by the door, carried it into the bedroom, and discharged its contents, all but the bathroom gear and his .45, into the laundry hamper. He walked back out to the living room, used the phone directory, and called Marston’s to ask how late they’d stay open for Christmas shoppers. Ten o’clock, the girl answered.

A few minutes later, lounging in the bathtub with his briar and a tumbler of Dewar’s, Hickey marveled at how the world could change from hell to paradise so fast it left you dizzy.

The Portuguese kid arrived in his flashy red coupe while Hickey stood shaving, wrapped in a towel. Elizabeth ran in and kissed her dad good-bye. After he’d splashed on cologne and fixed his hair as well as the scraggly mess allowed, he called out to Madeline, “How we dressing?”

“Formal.”

In the bedroom he shed the towel and slipped into his best gabardine slacks and silk dress shirt. No underwear. He left the shirttail out and strolled through the kitchen to the dining area where Madeline waited, sipping red wine, wearing only the blue silk dress she’d bought for their third anniversary. No bracelets or earrings, nothing on her hands but the wedding band. She was barefoot like Hickey. When she leaned toward him to light the candle, the silk bodice clung to her roughened nipples.

They’d finished their salads and a glass of wine each, and had started on the chicken when Madeline finally said, “I think Thrapp’s a little tweaked at you.”

“How’s that? He call you?”

“Yeah. He’s not sure you didn’t just venture up there to get Katoulis. You might have to convince him. Own up about the girl and all.” Hickey shrugged, filled their wineglasses. “Thrapp let something drop about a gang war, like I was supposed to know what he was talking about. Can you give me a clue?”

“All I know is—the girl hired Donny to knock off a guy that raped her. I shadowed the rapist, spotted Donny, and got him first. That’s not the official story, which I’m going to tell you later, and which is the one I’m gonna have to give Thrapp. He’s not likely to buy it any better than the Denver bunch did, but maybe he’ll look sideways for a pal.”

“He’s mad, Tom.”

Hickey nodded. “Anyway, the toughest part’s over. You wanta know what the toughest part was?”

“Sure.”

“Leaving you guys.”

She reached out and caressed his fingers. Her other hand forked a bite of chicken and delivered it to her mouth without looking away from his eyes.

For dessert they had kisses, short ones at first, while Madeline sat on his lap in the easy chair, before she led him to the sleeping porch. On the way she peeled the dress over her head, shook out her hair, bent to unplug the Christmas tree lights. She made a half pirouette and toppled gently onto the hammock, where Hickey joined her. He’d kissed around her belly only for a minute before she invited him inside her. They rocked for a while, giggling and cooing, then for a long time they lay sideways where each could see the other and at the same time gaze across the bay, at the quavering water and foggy rainbow of lights. They lay coupled, sideways, then with Hickey mounted, then with Madeline riding him, for the longest time in almost sixteen years, since the week before their honeymoon, in Little Bear Hotel overlooking Lake Arrowhead, the night Hickey lay awake until dawn staring at her mouth, her eyelids, the flesh of her neck and shoulders, like a blind guy who’d only that minute got healed.

Madeline whispered, “Now make me scream, Tom.”

The hammock swayed. Once it nearly reached the ceiling. The porch creaked and Madeline screamed.

Twenty minutes later Hickey raced down Pacific Coast Highway, believing he might’ve discovered a natural law. It could be, he mused, that you can’t forgive yourself alone. First, you need somebody precious to forgive you.