Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 01 by The Loud Adios Read Free Book Online

on del Monte?”
    “Guess.”
    “Naw. Tell it straight.”
    “Naw. Guess.”
    “Christ,” Hickey muttered. “Be kind, will you.”
    “Right. Santiago del Monte’s the richest guy in Baja. He’s got eight sons. And they got cousins. The mayor, the police chief, the governor’s right hand. And, Santiago plays cards with Lázaro Cárdenas, every Tuesday night.”

Chapter Seven
    The rain fell lighter. A few stars blinked above the Pacific and screeching gulls hovered over the borderland sloughs.
    Hickey drank on duty for the first time, as he brooded about what to do, whether to go on chasing this girl. Besides the risk, it was costing him money. By tomorrow it might cost more than he owned. Then he could let the flyboy and his wife who’d rented his cottage buy the place. Like they kept trying to. Three times the flyboy had called saying he might go down overseas and he wanted to leave his wife a home. And maybe you ought to get rid of the place, Hickey thought. He couldn’t imagine living around all those memories of Madeline and Elizabeth.
    The kid was offering him some Lake Tahoe property. But even if that was real, it wouldn’t be worth more than a few hundred, up there in the sticks.
    Maybe he’d get the girl without paying any more, then sell the bay cottage and the Tahoe lot, and hold the money toward the day he could take Elizabeth back, somehow. He toasted that day with a taste of mescal, and for a minute his spirit glided free. Until reason complained it’d take a fortune to buy for Elizabeth what a slimy big shot like Paul Castillo could give her.
    Hickey nipped the mescal, enough so that when Clifford Rose appeared suddenly out of the dim brown light, at first Hickey thought the kid was a hallucination.
    Clifford dragged a full duffel bag behind him. He wore civilian dungarees and a sweater. He gave Hickey a feeble smile, then heaved the duffel bag beside the post and squatted next to it. Looking at the ground, he asked, “You get her?”
    “Not yet. You jumped ship, huh?”
    Clifford let out a sigh and slumped forward, resting his arms and head on his knee, his eyes glancing up. “You won’t turn me in, will you, Pop? Not till I get Wendy outa there.”
    “They hang deserters.”
    He didn’t move except to shut his eyes. “Reckon they’ll hang me?”
    Boyle, the fink, stood nearby searching a car, maybe listening. Hickey shouldered the duffel bag, since it looked like the kid might collapse from lugging it. He pulled the kid up and led him across the two lanes around dark puddles to the office shack. Inside, Clifford flopped heavily onto the sofa. He curled up, placed hands under his head, and, shyly, he asked, “You mad at me, Pop?”
    “Yeah. Mad’s a good word. You’re making a fool of me. First you try and get me killed. Then I’m chasing all over TJ. Now I gotta cover for a deserter. And there was a murder you forgot to tell me about?”
    “Murder?”
    “Yeah.”
    “George,” he muttered. “I ain’t told you about George.” Hickey stared him down until the kid put a hand over his eyes. “Them guys are lying, sure. Wendy ain’t killed nobody.”
    “What guys?”
    “At the Paris Club. They said she killed that George, but it ain’t so. Heck, you seen her. She never could.”
    “Who’s George?”
    “The rat that brang her down there, like I told you.”
    Hickey stood thinking, got out his pipe and chewed on the stem.
    “You go down there?” the kid asked.
    “Yeah. I tried to talk, offered to pay, but no dice. Maybe we’ll grab her.”
    “You will, Pop? For real?”
    “I’ll think on it,” Hickey said.
    The kid’s eyes dropped slowly and closed. In a few seconds his stiff body gave up and rested. And Hickey walked out, smoking, rubbing his temples, wishing he’d laid off the mescal.
    He stood at his post and went through the motions but mostly let Boyle take care of business, with his hand out. A few times each night somebody would slip Boyle a favor. Between the