Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 02 (26 page)

“It’s Laurel,” Hickey said.

“I know.”

“The way I figure, making the guy a eunuch sounds like the work of a betrayed lover. Meaning it could be any one of who knows how many. But I’m betting on Laurel.”

“Did Henry give this to you?”

“Nope. Gave it to Cynthia.”

“I see.” She leaned back, stared overhead around the room. At last she nodded, returned her gaze to his eyes, intently as though to spook him or fracture his will. “Cynthia hired the killer.”

“Forget the killer. Here’s the deal. I want you to pay for Cynthia’s stay in Riverview, as long as it takes. I want you to leave her alone, for good. You, Laurel, the
Nezahs
.”

She flashed a delighted smile, as though she found his gall fascinating. “Is that all?”

“Nope. You’ve gotta sell back all the Dunsmuir property. Keep the Black Forest if you want.”

Her smile crimped, then re-formed into one as patronizing as a bishop might give to a heathen, or a scientist to a monkey. “Anything else?”

“That’s all.”

“What leverage do you intend to use to make me accept this proposal? You’ve already done all you could to see Pravinshandra arrested. You say Laurel perpetrated this castration, but don’t delude yourself that the citizenry of Dunsmuir will convict her of punishing the man who raped her. The less if he’s a dark-skinned man who threatens their feeble religion.”

“None of that,” Hickey said. “I’m thinking about the seventy grand of Otherworld’s loot you had in your mitts when you skipped town.”

She picked the napkin off her lap and began folding it restlessly. “I’m truly amazed at how thoroughly you’ve fallen for Cynthia’s lies, considering she’s now committed to the sanitarium where she obviously belongs.”

“Look,” Hickey said. “If you’re clean, don’t make the deal.”

“Don’t you think if I’d embezzled from Otherworld, they would’ve pursued me?”

“Naw. Madame Esmé was sick. The place was going to collapse, no matter. From what I read in the paper, plus Cynthia’s story and what I got out of Joshua Bair and Mr. Murphy, looks like people just ran, on account of they were heartbroken over losing their home. Losing faith. They ditched, cut their losses.”

“Mr. Bair.” She sighed languidly. “I’m innocent, you know, but I’m sure you could stir a caldron of trouble. You certainly know how to pry.”

“Yeah. How about it?”

She placed her hands on the arms of her chair, gracefully pushed herself up, glanced out the window, then gazed down at him coolly as if she’d just granted him knighthood. “Of course I’ll pay for the hospital, and if she believes we’re dangerous, you’re right, we should stay out of her life. The property—that’s just business. Business is everywhere. I’ll sell, if you insist. I’ll buy elsewhere.”

Hickey stood, admired the way her face had paled, her eyes and lips became deathly still. One of those people who with a glance could make you ashamed to have bettered her. She offered her hand, pressed his warmly. The damned woman didn’t know how to act any way but gracious. If she were slitting your throat, Hickey thought, she’d do it politely, with elegance.

“Thank you for looking after my daughter. Please ask the waiter to bill my room. Two-seventeen.” With a pallid smile, she turned and walked off, left Hickey to marvel at her. From behind she could’ve passed for the queen of heaven. Her voice lingered in the air.

While Hickey sat recovering from the strain, a vision appeared in which he was the master, lying on a cot with trousers bunched around his ankles and a leather thong hitched in a stranglehold around the topmost edge of his scrotum. Kneeling beside him, the Bitch whispered viciously, “It’s okay, baby.”

He tossed a five onto the table and walked out, his gut constricting, his pulse on double time. Breaths came hard. He stood on the curb through two green lights, telling himself he’d beaten the woman, made the deal, seen the last of Venus. It was no use. Thirty-seven years had taught him to recognize people who wouldn’t stay beaten.

As he crossed the street, he allowed himself to think about Madeline for the first time since he’d left home, and he still couldn’t believe it was her on Crystal Pier. He leaned against the wall of the Owl Drugstore and reviewed everything Madeline had said and done last night after she’d come home. He recalled her tone of voice, her expressions. Not a damned thing seemed amiss. “Hell,” he muttered, “old Eva’s jealous, thinks she can land me for her own.”

***

There was a message on the office desk, to phone Thrapp. The switchboard rang about ten times, Thrapp’s extension another dozen, before the captain grumbled his name.

“What’s up?” Hickey asked.

“Your lieutenant called from Denver. Seems a couple days after the fact, this old woman shows up and swears she saw Donny go for his gun. Swears she saw his hand on it. Lieutenant says why the hell didn’t you come in sooner? She pleads too much to do at Christmas. He described her as a churchy-looking dame. Anybody you know?”

“Yeah, Rusty. It’s my mother-in-law. We rehearsed a couple days, then I sent her up there.”

“I figured. Lucky that lieutenant’s not smart as me. You’re off the hook, Tom,” he said glumly.

“He say what makes this witness the one they’re gonna believe?”

“I’d guess, when you got a sweet old dame saying she saw something, and a Negro fella saying he didn’t see it—you know. Besides, if one person saw it, a hundred of them that didn’t don’t mean a damn. Only way they could convict you is break the old lady down. Who’s gonna want to risk a lightning bolt in memory of Katoulis?”

Hickey was trying to remember a woman near the railroad yard. He only recalled the taxi and Katoulis, the men swarming after he tossed the guns away. “Swell news, Rusty. I owe you a big one. Look, about the other—believe me or don’t, but if Paul’s fronting for anybody, I’m in your corner. Doesn’t matter if I land in the poorhouse. I’ll find my way out.”

“Yeah, okay,” Thrapp said flatly. “See you around.”

It was becoming a glorious day. He’d backed Venus into a corner, made her deal. Some anonymous angel had lifted the noose off his shoulders. At this rate, the clouds would make way for rainbows, soon an old client might show up and give him a fifty-foot ketch. This afternoon the war would end. By tomorrow he, Elizabeth, and Madeline could sail away.

He called the Saint Ambrose Home. Father McCullough answered the first ring, loudly as if he’d been dozing by the phone.

“Good news,” Hickey said. “I had a chat with Venus this morning. She’s gonna pay the Riverview bill, leave the girl alone, and keep Laurel away. Looks like Henry and you are Cynthia’s mama and daddy now. You better try and keep the old boy alive.”

“He’s breathing better.”

“I’ve got a tidbit you can pass along, might have him up chasing sisters around the garden.”

“Oh?”

“The
Nezahs
got tired of their master acting like a bull. They made a steer out of him.”

“Oh, aw, uhn,” the priest groaned.

“Yeah. I’ll say. When you tell Henry, bring a nurse along so he won’t die laughing.”

***

Hickey sat parked out front of Riverview Hospital, debating whether, if he even got the chance, he should tell Cynthia about Laurel’s revenge. Still undecided, he walked in, holding the door for a hunched, drooling kid in a wheelchair pushed by a stalwart-looking army corporal, probably his brother. Hickey turned in to the reception area. The receptionist was plump, Indian-looking. On Hickey’s request, she paged Dr. Carroll. Hickey took a seat and listened to a volley of shrill cries that sounded blocks away, but probably were close, behind a couple walls. In apparent response to the cries, a howl rose. Like a caveman giving orders to the moon.

The doctor appeared and led Hickey down a short corridor to an office almost as cramped as the one at Rudy’s. A dozen or so frameless diplomas looked glued onto the walls. The doctor was sallow-faced, long-necked, about Hickey’s age. He had a mop of frizzy blond hair, shoulders so thin that coat hangers must’ve stretched his shirts.

They shook hands. Hickey asked how Cynthia was acting. The doctor gave a shrug, said he was hopeful.

“Still think she’s carrying a baby?”

The doctor raised his eyebrows. “When did I say I thought she was?”

“I don’t know. My mistake. What do you think?”

“She may well be.”

“Look, I know I’m acting hasty, but I figure it’s best we get prepared. So we can act fast if the time comes. You know where she was when I grabbed her?”

“Tijuana.”

“Yep. You’ve probably heard her yelling about the devil baby and the Fiend. As far as I can see, it’s a fact she got raped. I’m not suggesting we take her back to TJ, but I know a fellow, a doctor—well, a chiropractor—that’ll do it safe and clean.”

The doctor wrinkled his nose. “You know this person, what he’s doing, and you allow him to go unpunished?”

“You bet. The ones that don’t go to him, it isn’t like the kid lives happily ever after. Mama gets the job done by some after-hours grease monkey, or she goes to TJ, and you don’t know who’s doing what down there. A girl dies, a cop takes a third of the fee, undertaker another third, leaving the doc a little short that evening, no big deal.”

“I see your position,” Dr. Carroll said. “It’s rather callous, and fortunately it doesn’t apply here. Father McCullough called me. If there is a child, as long as Miss Tucker and her parents assent, the church will see to adoption.”

Hickey pondered the idea, decided he liked it. They’d need to hold Cynthia until the child was born, to keep her from ripping it out. Eight months at least. Long before then, Charlie Schwartz would discover another doll.

“Miss Tucker won’t agree,” Hickey said. “I’ll help you get a court order if you need. And somebody better make damn sure they get that baby far enough away so he never comes looking for his mama. I’m no prophet. But I’ll give mighty odds on this one—there won’t be a moment of peace in that family until they’re extinct.”

The doctor nodded as though humoring Hickey and began doodling on a file folder. “In all probability, there is no baby.”

“Sure. You gonna let me see the girl?”

A few minutes later Hickey followed a sour young nurse down a hallway that led off the reception room. They passed a line of closed doors. One of them rattled as something powerful crashed into it, from inside. The hall opened into a wider area, where a nurse stood beside a counter chatting with a Negro orderly while she filled syringes.

Hickey’s nurse peered through a window in a set of double doors. She reached for a key ring from a hook on the wall and used one of the keys.

The brightness of the room behind the doors shocked Hickey’s eyes. At first he couldn’t see where the music came from, the piano intro to a melody he knew. The nurse ushered him through, then backed out and shut the doors. The lock clicked.

As his vision adjusted, Hickey stared around the long, wide room, one side of it walled in plate glass looking out at a dead vegetable garden. Brown tomato plants. Wilted beet greens. A row of sunflowers stooped almost to the ground. The room held about thirty occupants, a few of them orderlies dressed in green, the others white-garbed patients. Along the right wall several men and a skeletal woman slouched on low stools. Two men stood leaning against the window, one thumping his head on the plate glass. A giant fellow with silver teeth and a nose about an inch off center strode toward Hickey, his eyes flaming. He veered left, circled behind Hickey, and strode back the other way. A gray-skinned woman squatted, stood, squatted again as if that were her style of dancing.

Hickey guessed the oldest person, except a couple of the orderlies, was a few years younger than he. They made him think of massacre victims in a common grave, dead on their feet, mutely staring back at the treacherous world.

The piano, an old upright, sat at the far end of the room. The pianist was a Negro orderly. Another, darker orderly stood nearby, scowling like a tyrant’s palace guard, his arms tensed and ready to snap the neck off anybody who might harm the girl standing beside him, her elbow leaning on the piano, the spread fingers of her other hand pressing her abdomen.

She gazed vaguely around, scratched her face nervously, pinched the bridge of her nose, then darted the hand back to cover her belly. The pianist stopped once, tapped the girl’s arm. As he ran through the intro a second time, she stood straight, slightly bent her knees. A wistful smile appeared. Her eyes flickered on like a searchlight. All at once she looked at everyone, welcomed each of them into her heart, and sang.

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