The Loud Adios

By Ken Kuhlken

Private Eye Writers of America Best First Novel winner.

In 1943, Private Investigator Tom Hickey, now a military policeman assigned to the San Diego/Tijuana border, accompanies Private Clifford Rose to a Tijuana nightclub where they find his sister Wendy dancing naked on the stage. She appears so lost and innocent, Tom agrees to rescue her. Her captors, he soon discovers, are led by a German occultist and financed by the powerful del Monte family. They appear to be plotting a coup whose purpose is to give the Nazis a base from which to attack San Diego, home of the world’s largest military/industrial presence. After Tom learns he’s considered AWOL and his attempts to alert the military of the danger are treated as nonsense, he declares a war of his own.

“The story takes on an almost unbearable intensity, not in its mayhem but in its human beings and concerns.” ~ Chico California News and Reviews

“Kuhlken brings a great new character — and a fresh voice — into the mystery field.” Novelist Tony Hillerman

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publisher Hickey & McGee
• Release date: Dec 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005511722

Ken Kuhlken

Ken Kuhlken's stories have appeared in ESQUIRE and numerous other magazines, been honorably mentioned in BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, and earned a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.His novels include MIDHEAVEN, finalist for the Ernest Hemingway Award for best first fiction book, and the Hickey family mysteries: THE BIGGEST LIAR IN LOS ANGELES; THE GOOD KNOW NOTHING; THE VENUS DEAL; THE LOUD ADIOS, Private Eye Writers of America Press Best First PI Novel; THE ANGEL GANG; THE DO-RE-MI, finalist for the Shamus Best Novel Award; THE VAGABOND VIRGINS; THE VERY LEAST; and THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING.His five-book saga FOR AMERICA, is together a long, long novel and an incantation, a work of magic created to postpone the end of the world for at least a thousand years.His work in progress is a YA mystery.His WRITING AND THE SPIRIT advises artists seeking inspiration. He guides readers on a trip to the Kingdom of Heaven in READING BROTHER LAWRENCE.Also, he reads a lot, plays golf, watches and coaches baseball and softball, teaches at Perelandra College, and hangs out with his daughter when she comes home from her excellent college back east.

Book preview

AS Clifford Rose came to, the first thing he recognized was the stink, like a drainpipe running out of hell. Then he remembered.

Wendy, he screamed. This time no one answered.

The big mestizo thugs dragged him through the doorway of the Club de Paris into the fog, across the dirt sidewalk and down three high steps to the muddy street. They flipped him over, threw him facedown into the mud. The biggest one kicked him with a pointed boot in the neck. The chest. The forehead. Then the one they called Mofeto, who had sliced the gash in Clifford’s cheek, sauntered out of the club. He looked like the runt of the litter, with a sharp face, pinched mouth, starved eyes. He wore a felt hat and a baggy dark suit. His hand with the switchblade swung beside him.

Through the fog Clifford heard invisible gringos talking and whooping, uphill toward the main boulevard. Neon from across the street red-tinted the fog.

He lay curled in the mud waiting for the next blow. When he saw the runt step closer, he heaved himself up on one arm. Slobbering blood, he croaked, You give her up now, hear. I got friends. You’ll see.

The runt straightened his coat and gazed both ways again. From the side of his mouth he squawked, Oh, you got friends. Sure. We don’t want trouble. Lazily, he folded and pocketed his switchblade, reached beneath his baggy coat. Then his hand shot out, gripping a long-barreled .45 revolver. I better kill you now.

Clifford dropped and covered his head with his arms. He tried to push off with his legs but they slipped in the mud and the biggest mestizo stomped and held his ankle down while the runt bent closer until the gun barrel touched the base of Clifford’s skull. He let it rest there, then glanced up the hill.

The U.S. Marines came like a stampede. Their boots squished and sucked out of the mud and one yelled, Whee hoo! while another tried to whoop like a mariachi. They materialized out of the fog just ten feet from where Clifford lay pressing inward with all his muscles, as if he could make himself tiny as a soul. The runt drew back to a crouch while the mestizos grabbed and raised their guns. They turned on the wall of gringos. The Marines skidded to a halt. All white boys, straight out of boot camp with burr heads and no weapons except the bravado a gang and tequila guarantee. One of them snarled, Move on, greasers. His pals seconded with grunts and a volley of threats.

Beneath the biggest mestizo’s foot, Clifford started writhing. Large drops of blood ran down his face and he felt his mind trying to lift out of his body and lose itself in the fog. Holding onto life, he squirmed so frantically it looked like a seizure. Everybody turned to watch him.

A deep voice shouted from the door of the Club de Paris. The patron, a Latino in his cream-colored pin-striped suit, stepped across the sidewalk and aimed a finger at the runt. Basta, Mofeto, he commanded and whipped his arm toward the door.

The thugs slowly packed their guns away. Glaring at the Marines, they kicked mud off their boots and disappeared into the club. The Latino folded his arms and gazed disgustedly from the writhing soldier to the Marines. At last he said, You better keep that one out of Tijuana.

2

OVER both cities lay thick, drizzling clouds. No moon or stars shined through. Streetlamps stood dark. Old neon signs hung in disrepair. North of the line, even the headlamps of cars stayed unlit or dimmed by thin coats of paint on their lenses. The only lights flickered behind window shades.

From the border Tom Hickey couldn’t see either city. But he could smell Tijuana. As the wind shifted, smells changed from burning rubber to gasses; to nose-biting whiffs of chile fields; to sewage in the river; to brash’ perfumes. And though the harbor and factories of San Diego were ten and more miles north, if he listened closely, he could hear a steady noise, the low howl of wheels cutting over wet asphalt as trucks carried supplies to another day of war. It was April 1943.

Tom stood as a sentry on the U.S. Mexico border under the shelter between a lane for cars and a turnstile and passage for walkers. His mouth was set in a scornful way. The blue of his eyes held no gleam. His blond, gray-flecked hair looked more scraggly than the army allowed, and his uniform was wrinkled and missing the top shirt button. The white helmet he was supposed to wear lay on the ground beside him. His pistol holster had shifted around behind. His sleeves were rolled up almost to the white MP band.

A carload of officers who pulled to the line reeked of French perfume and whiskey. Officers didn’t come back smelling like Tijuana. They carried the scents of classy whores and gambling spots down the coast at Playa Rosarito.

The civilian border guard, Robert Boyle, alias Diamond Bob — on account of his flashy rings, two-toned sport coats, the alligator brogans he wore off duty — stood chatting with the officers. Car were stacked up behind them and horns bawled but Boyle still commiserated with the officers while they bitched about card-cheats, gravel roads, the damned Japs and their bombs that made things so spooky you had to drive lights-out. Boyle never asked what the officers were smuggling. He just made friends, gave out favors, took money. Tom leaned against a post and waited. When at last he stepped forward, the officers showed him their passes.

Tom said, Sirs, if you were approached by anyone who may have ties to a foreign government, I’ll take your report. If you copulated with a Mexican, stop at the clinic over there.

A Marine lieutenant leaned out the window, squinting to look Tom up and down. Then the car jumped forward into the darkness.

Tom flipped a mocking salute. He checked the time. 11:45. In a few minutes the next watch would show. Then he could cross the border and tromp through the mud down by the river to Coco’s Licores where he would grab a short bottle of mescal before coming back to meet Lefty for the ride in the open Jeep with dimmed lights to the MP barracks near the harbor. The border platoon could be stationed at Ream Field, only three miles from the line. But that would make sense and save money — not the military way. Or maybe they had reasons. Tom didn’t ask. He didn’t care; the war had gotten squeezed out of his mind by troubles all his own. He would drink on the ride then lie in his bunk and hallucinate. Maybe he could sleep and dream of his daughter.

The wind blew a few drunken whoops his way as a gang of sailors started over the river bridge just beyond Coco’s Licores. In a few minutes they came dimly into sight, holding each other up as they staggered alongside the road, splashing through puddles, boasting, laughing. They wore dress whites stained with mud, fruity rum drinks, and splatters of blood. Water streamed from their caps and hair down their faces. One held his arm in a sling.

Every night a few hundred military crossed the border. Most of them Tom could bust or lead to the dungeon shack to sleep it off, but he didn’t bother. He only detained the mean ones and guys so drunk they might stumble into the dark road and get crushed.

When these sailors reached the gate, Tom took a pass from the first in line, checked it, then stared into the boy’s eyes and asked, You screw anybody?

Yes, sir.

Tom aimed the boy toward the clinic shack and gave a little shove. Four other sailors passed through the gate like that. Then the last of them, a redhead with a bloody gap where his front tooth ought to be, said, No, sir. I didn’t screw anybody. I got ambushed by a Jap. He come out of this alley.

You want a Purple Heart?

No, sir. I wanta make a report ’cause there’s sure a lot of Japs down there. I bet they’re spies, sir. And there’s this bar called ‘Hell’, I hear a Kraut owns it.

Tom led the sailor partway to the office shack and told him to go in there and wait and went back to the line and let through more sailors and a few civilian shipyard workers.

He didn’t see Clifford Rose step up behind him. The kid slumped as though any second he would lose to gravity. When Tom turned, Clifford stood gawking at him. A golden-haired, handsome kid, breathing hard, his eyes full of the glazed, pained look Tom knew well, since not so long ago it appeared every time he squared off against a mirror. Before he took arms against his demons and drowned them in booze.

You made it. Swell, Tom said.

A week before, the kid had showed up mutilated, dragged by a gang of Marines. That night he looked like somebody had rolled him down a muddy street then dipped him in a vat of blood. He was so broken, Tom had walked him clear across the compound to the clinic shack before he recognized the kid as a fellow from boot camp, somebody he had liked and shot a couple games of pool with. For three days, until he heard different, he figured the kid might die.

But now he stood tall in a sport coat, slacks, and a fedora, rentals from a downtown locker room, his face only marred by a few small scabs and a Band-Aid on his cheek an inch below the right eye. Tom asked what he was doing out of uniform.

There’s some guys in TJ might not recognize me in this stuff, Clifford muttered.

Going back down, huh?

Yessir.

Hope you aren’t going the same place as last time.

Pop, reckon we could talk a little? Clifford asked.

Tom studied the kid, who looked so wretchedly sweet and innocent only a rat could send him on his way. Besides, Tom was curious about what had befallen the kid in TJ. Often somebody tripped the switch on his curiosity. From the stories he heard, Germans were pouring into Tijuana — but probably anytime a jarhead caught a word of German, a bar fight erupted and the losers claimed they’d got beaten by a dozen Nazis. Anyway, Tom might persuade the kid out of going back for more. He called over to the next gate, alerted Lefty he was going south for a bottle. Five minutes later, when the next watch arrived, Tom and the kid stepped across the border and slogged through the mud and drizzle toward Coco’s Licores.

Tom bought two half-liter bottles of mescal, gave the change to a beggar woman sitting on the curb nursing a large child, and they started back. Their feet plopped and sucked in and out of the red clay mud as they crossed the knoll along the river. The riverbed was a hundred yards across, a sandy plain cut by a stream full of algae, mosses, and the froth of sewage. The water poured like syrup through the narrow arroyo.

Along the riverbed, about five hundred Indians camped. Their fires smoldered in the drizzle. Many of them slept uncovered in the sand. Some lay beneath cardboard and scrap-wood shelters. Haunted people walked like shadows near the riverbank or squatted alone, staring at the rain.

These Indians had come from the deep south, from Zacatecas, Yucatan’s jungles, the mahogany forests of Chiapas, from drought or pestilence, hoping to work for whatever odds and ends the war left behind. But they found that after refugees from Europe waiting in Tijuana for their turn to cross the line claimed their share mighty little remained. Most of these Indians lived off handouts and garbage. Among them were the sick, the freaks, the deformed, and the unclever. Their children prowled the streets and bars begging from drunken troopers, training to be whores and thieves.

Tom motioned toward the settlement hoping the Rose kid might notice the misery and think less of hi own, whatever it was. He screwed off the bottle cap, took a long pull of mescal, and passed the bottle to Clifford, who stared across the river, keening his eyes through the dark. Beads of rain hung on his nose and round cheeks. Wisps of golden hair lay pasted to his forehead. The boy took a long gulp and coughed.

As they turned and started walking again, Tom nipped from the bottle and asked, You about to ship overseas?

Clifford nodded and looked up.

Where to?

Maybe the Solomons. But they ain’t saying.

You’re scared. Tom’s voice was strong yet modest. Sure you’re scared. Anybody who’s not, he’s just looney or stuffed full of hero dreams. Or he doesn’t give a hoot for living anymore.

Clifford stopped and squinted through the dark at the man’s face. Tom passed the bottle. The kid took it, gulped, and coughed again. Then he said, Thanks, Pop. Sure I’m scared. But not so bad. He glanced toward the river then turned back. It’s okay I call you Pop?

I don’t mind, Tom muttered sourly. He had been Pop the last three months since he was the oldest guy in boot camp and looked at least his age, thirty-eight, especially when he frowned and the lines cut deep across his high forehead.

While they turned and walked the last fifty yards to the border, Tom realized that nobody else had asked if he minded being Pop. He decided he liked this kid. Honest. No swagger or bluff about him.

They passed through the gate and turned toward the Jeep. Lefty was there and he shouted, Get the lead out, Pop. There’s dames waiting on me up in Dago. Lefty, a pretty boy, had the jaunty style and slick voice to go with his dimples and slate-black hair.

Tom climbed one step into the Jeep and got jerked back out, his arm cinched in the fierce grip of Clifford Rose. Tom wheeled around and meant to yell something just as fierce but then he noticed Clifford’s eyes.

They had swollen and whitened. I wanta show you something. Okay, Pop? His voice had cracked and he dropped Tom’s arm. Reckon you’ll go back to TJ with me?

Not on your life, Tom said. I’m tired, going to be drunk soon as I can get there. He took a swallow of mescal. Only a stooge shows up in Tijuana that way.

Clifford’s eyes closed and the skin of his face drew up tighter. There’s something I gotta do, he said, and it ain’t liable to be easy. But you and me could do it.

Do what?

Can’t tell, I gotta show you and I mean to pay. He fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a brand new fifty, and held it between them. See, I heard you was a detective. It can’t hurt to look, ain’t that right?

I'll be damned if it can’t, Tom muttered. But futilely. He wasn’t going to leave the kid to get massacred again, at least not without knowing why. He cussed under his breath. His night was sure wrecked. No quiet. No sleep or dreams. He grabbed the fifty and demanded, The thing that’s got you down, is that what you want me to see?

Clifford nodded just as Lefty fired the Jeep, raced the motor, and ordered them to get on board.

It’ll keep, Tom said. Tomorrow afternoon, before my watch, we can go down there.

I’m shipping out tomorrow.

Okay, then what’s in Tijuana won’t matter anymore.

Sure will.

Why? What’s the big deal?

The kid stared at his feet and folded his hands over his head, while Lefty roared the motor and cussed. Tom said, Aw, c’mon. He turned and waved Lefty away.

3

THEY plodded back across the line and down the road to a coffee and taco stand where the cabs always waited. At this hour, the only taxi was a ten-year-old battered Chrysler limousine painted shiny red and pink. The driver sat in the rain on the hood, munching from a sack of salted peanuts. A deep, sharp scar, diamond-shaped, ran from his right cheek down to the lip he tried to cover with a mustache but hair didn’t flourish on the scar. So his mustache was mostly on the left side, below the patch on his eye. He wore a black Texan hat, old and crumpled as if he found it smashed on the road, and a long black zoot coat.

Clifford said, Please bring us to the Paris Club.

With a grin, the cabbie leaped to the ground. You going to see La Rosa. They climbed into the limo and he kept talking. That one’s an angel, man, I swear to you, I see her lots of times. Hey, you guys want some reefer, I know where it is. Man, I know where everything is in TJ.

While Clifford sat rigidly glaring at the cabbie, Tom folded into the rear seat and tried to ignore the springs that gouged him. He sipped mescal as they bumped and lurched over the ruts and potholes across the bridge and into central Tijuana on its one paved road, Avenida Revolución.

Parts of the sidewalk looked like a dark midway where the men wandered and shouted — soldiers, sailors, dockhands, displaced Jews, skittish Japanese merchants, Bohemians, Gypsies, Chinese. Some walked holding hands with the flashiest Indian whores or argued with the big mestizo pimps. Or they staggered into the alley to piss and came out robbed, beaten or maybe handcuffed if they didn’t have money to bribe a cop who prowled on the take. Just enough light spilled out of the doorways so you could see drunks lying on the sidewalk and dark women who squatted, begging, usually with babies cradled in their arms. Children in rags stood on the corners selling gum and benzedrine. The doormen outside Club Eros and the Climax Bar grabbed at everybody, trying to show them inside. Two Marines came flying out of The Long Bar and threw curses back at the doorman.

Tom screwed open the second bottle of mescal, took a snort and passed it to Clifford then to the cabbie. He kept wondering what could be so important at the Club de Paris. Maybe the kid just wanted another poke at the guys who had thrashed him, but he guessed there was more. You could tell by the stiff slowness of the kid's every move that he was deep in pain all the way to his heart. Probably he wouldn’t talk because words can cheapen the pain — Tom knew the feeling.

You looking for pills, opium, I know where that is. The cabbie wheeled left off the paved road and crashed down a hill on muddy gravel. The limo clattered like a jackhammer but he drove relaxed with one hand and at the same time turned back and grinned. After you see La Rosa Blanca, man, you wanna chica for your own, I know where she is. You got all the goodies and shit in the world right here, man, there’s even spies and you don’t know what else, right here in TJ.

As they pulled to a stop in front of the Club de Paris, Clifford sat with hands gripping his thighs and his fierce eyes on the cabbie. Then he grabbed a pair of rimless specs out of his coat pocket, fitted them on, and tugged his hat low.

Tom stepped out of the limo. While Clifford paid the fare, Tom looked around. The club was bordered on the east by warehouses running a few blocks to the river and on the west by a lot full of high weeds and rubble. The stucco was soot-dulled blue adorned with sketched silhouettes of dancing girls.

As they neared the club entrance, Tom lay an arm around the kid's shoulders and eyed the two thugs who guarded the door. The big one welcomed them heartily while the scrawny one they called Mofeto stayed quiet with his arms folded until his hand shot out and grabbed the pistol from the holster at Tom’s side.

Tom gave a wry smile, reached into his pocket and handed the runt a quarter. Keep an eye on the gun, amigo.

He walked behind Clifford who paid the one-dollar cover charge. As they stepped inside, the stench hit. Like dead things boiled in formaldehyde blended with the smoke and vomit and spills that caked the floor and spotted the walls. The only light was a blue neon above the stage where a skinny Indian dancer gyrated. She wore high heels, dark stockings, black panties, and a top hat, and balanced herself with a cane.

The club was one large room, all wooden, high-ceilinged. Every footstep, voice, and scrape of a chair leg echoed and mixed with the music, a droning alto sax, somber and lowly, and the conga drum like a dying pulse. Of the twenty-some small, round wooden tables, half were vacant, with many of the chairs overturned and broken. Tables along the three sides of the stage were crowded by gringo troops. The Mexican Army must be on alert tonight, Tom thought. Lázaro Cárdenas — the ex-Presidente who returned as a general to tighten the border and shoreline defenses — kept his troops on a tight rein. Not one of them was here.

Some gringos sat passed out with heads on their arms. Others shot tequila, whistled and hooted. A few of them hung over the low rail of the stage and tried to goose the dancer as she passed by. She teased by wiggling close in, springing back, and smacking at them with her cane. Then she ran the cane