Read Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 01 for Free Online

poor, evil, or luckless folks slumped in chairs or resting on the floor. Some waited for sons or brothers to be released. Others loitered there, out of the storm. The room smelled like pestilence, as if you’d find dead people swept into the corners. Hickey stepped to the desk, gave the clerk a dollar, and asked to see the chief. Soon a fat, bleached secretary cooed, “Señor.”
    She clutched his arm and led him to the office where Chief Buscamente sat on his desk, wearing a cowboy shirt, a Stetson, and a big pistol on his hip. He was lean, smooth, all Spaniard. From the cocky lips and squinting eyes, Hickey made him as the kind of joker always wanting to help you play the fool. He gestured Hickey to a stuffed chair. Offered a cigarette.
    Hickey lit up and started talking. The chief listened intently to Hickey’s version of the story Clifford had told on the way to San Diego the night before, about this backward girl being tricked and hustled over the border, and turning up onstage at the Club de Paris. “So her brother tried to get to her, and the bouncers worked him over.”
    Buscamente dragged on his cigarette. “This is a terrible thing, you know. I think the brother is a mean one. He beats her too much. Or does something worse to her, huh? That’s what you think too, no?”
    Hickey riled, tapped his foot on the floor until it seemed he could speak without yelling. “The brother’s a good kid. I’ll give big odds he doesn’t hit ladies. It’s those caballeros at the Club de Paris who got her scared to death. Maybe on dope. Anyway, she’s a prisoner there.”
    The chief leaned back and blew smoke, nodding earnestly. “Ah, now I see what you think. You must be a smart one to figure all this out. And you are the police from someplace. And you got a badge and everything, no? And that makes it okay for you shooting this hombre last night at the Club de Paris?”
    After he cringed then recovered, Hickey took out his wallet, passed the joker his investigator’s license, slowly brought out fifty dollars and held it between them.
    But the chief dropped his hands to his sides. His face lunged forward. Hickey scowled—that way he wouldn’t blush—and put the money away. “Look, the brother needs help, so we’ll pay.”
    The chief walked to the door, put his hand on the knob, and said harshly, “How much do you pay, Señor?”
    “Say, five hundred when you bring us the girl.”
    With a hiss, Buscamente opened the door and motioned for Hickey to pass. “This brother, this good kid, maybe he don’t tell you about the murder she does. Now, you are going to stay on your side of the line. I’m giving you a big favor, see. Then you call me next week. Comprendes?”
    The cop didn’t get an answer. And when Hickey started to ask about this murder he’d accused Wendy of, with a final glower the chief said, “Ask the brother,” and slammed his door.
    Hickey left his business card with the fat secretary. “ Por el jefe ,” he said. Then he walked through the miserable crowd, out into the rain, ducked into the cab and gave Tito the address he had for Juan Metzger, southwest of TJ, between the coast road and the inland route to Playa Rosarito.
    They clattered over about ten miles of gravel road all the way around Las Lomas, through olive groves and cotton fields, past a brick foundry, an orphanage, cattle ranches, and the headquarters of Cárdenas’ army—a base of Quonset huts, corrals full of horses, dirt lots jammed with trucks, cannon, artillery, a few tanks, a biplane taxiing along the dirt runway and two others gathering dust.
    Hickey smoked his pipe, thought about the girl and murder. Sure, you couldn’t always tell from looking which guy was a killer. But he’d bet this Wendy Rose couldn’t be. There was no hardness to her, no masks. You could read all the feelings in her eyes, expressions, gestures, in the moves of her body. He thought she was the kind who’d cry about a run-over dog or from watching