Free Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 01 by The Loud Adios Page A

“A sap name of Metzger woke me up an hour ago. Said to give Señor Hickey this message. ‘Leave me alone and go to hell,’ I think he said. The guy’s a mumbler.”
    Something had got Metzger squirming, Hickey thought. The German could’ve woke from his stupor just long enough to panic and do something ignorant like call Hickey and give him orders. Unlikely, though. Neither did it sound like a trick to lure Hickey back down there. All Metzger had to do was invite him.
    After a drink or two, and a look around, he’d pay the fellow another visit.
    There were about thirty strip clubs in the two paved miles of Avenida Revolución. Between the curio and tailor shops. Beside the feed and tack store. In the cellar of a jewelry shop where you might find stolen diamonds you read about last week in the San Diego Tribune . Most of the clubs were dark, smelly joints. A few looked like pool halls or cafés; they had big windows from which the younger whores could wave at passersby. It wasn’t the kind of street where gentle folks went strolling. Except on business, folks like the del Montes kept to Las Lomas. From where Hickey stood on Revolución, you could look over an open mercado and see the Lomas—the hot springs, mansions, and thoroughbred ranches, the race track with its palm trees high above everything.
    At 4th and Revolución, Hickey stepped into the Climax Bar, ordered a shot of mescal. A half-dozen sailors slouched over a table near the stage where a leggy, orange-haired woman performed a belly dance with her back turned. Hickey didn’t question the sailors. They looked too drunk to tell a white girl from a green, three-headed Martian. He gulped the mescal and showed a handbill to the bartender, who waited for a tip and said she might be at La Caverna, two blocks up the street.
    The Cavern was at the bottom of a flight of crumbling steps. As you stepped down, the passage narrowed. The door looked like a small hole. The floor was caked with an inch of red dirt. You could see cracks in the walls where mud had poured in. The room was all underground, dark, clammy, and stinking of mold. The only drinkers were a few broken old whores who waved sadly at Hickey and motioned for him to come near. A short, skinny one with woolen hair climbed onto the little stage in the corner. To a scratchy honky-tonk melody, she started wiggling stiffly, pulling off her clothes. Her belly was a patchwork of bruises.
    The bartender only shook his head at the handbill. Hickey ordered drinks for several whores. They dragged him to a booth and gathered around. One nibbled his ear. Another squeezed his thigh. When the music stopped, the skinny one who’d been dancing came off the stage, plucked the hat off Hickey’s head and set it on her mop of thick hair. She kissed his bald place. Her pointed nipple kept brushing his shoulder.
    “ Tu estas muerto ,” she whispered. “Dead man.”
    He questioned her with a stare, got a grin for an answer. So he passed around the handbill. The women studied it, gave him sour looks, made scornful clucking noises, and the oldest of them said, “You want a little white girl, cabrón, why you coming to Mexico?”
    Hickey stood up just as Tito appeared in the doorway, and suddenly the dancer started yelling. She called Tito a queer, motherfucking goat. The cabbie only hissed. As Hickey followed him out of there, she yelled something after them. On the sidewalk, Tito grumbled. “ Puta loca .”
    “Friend of yours?”
    “One time, she was. But I got to tell you, hombre, we better look out. That one’s a sister of El Mofeto, and her brother don’t like us both.”
    Hickey didn’t mention she’d called him a dead man. But he felt a touch lightheaded. In the air he caught a whiff of something that smelled like doom. Maybe he needed a different medicine, besides mescal. They crossed the street to a grille with sidewalk tables and both ordered tacos al carbón. Up and down the block, gringo soldiers and sailors