Lullaby Town

by Robert Crais

  I nodded. "A couple of hundred times."

  Peter made a big deal out of sighing. Disappointed that he wasn't going to see his kid. "Shit."

  Karen said, "I'll tell him this evening, Peter, and that way he has the night to get used to the idea and maybe even excited about meeting you. Then you can meet him tomorrow. You can come to the house. If it goes well, the two of you might go to dinner. You could take him to Dasher's in Brunly. It's his favorite."

  "All right. Sure." Peter was starting to nod, thinking that it sounded pretty good.

  Karen said, "One thing."

  "What?"

  She looked at Dani, then at Nick and T.J. "It would be less threatening if it were just the two of you."

  "Me and Dani?"

  "You and Toby."

  Dani shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Peter leaned back and looked uncertain. "I never go anywhere without the guys. What if I get mobbed?"

  Karen flattened her hands on the table. "You're not going to get mobbed in my home, believe me."

  Peter looked at me, even more uncertain. I nodded. He made a little shrug and then he looked back at Karen. "Okay. That sounds fine. That sounds like you've got it all figured out."

  She gave him the flat, cool, vee-pee eyes. "I do. I've been figuring it out for the past ten years, so I'm good at it."

  Peter nodded again. "Okay. If that's the way you want to play it. We can check in here. It'll be fine." This wasn't Peter Alan Nelsen. The real Peter Alan Nelsen had stayed in the city and this was Mr. Reasonable, Peter Alan Nelsen's alter ego. Sure. That was it.

  The waitress went through a little swinging door they have behind the bar and came back with a fat guy and a skinny black guy with a marcel. She pointed at Peter. Karen watched them for a moment, then said something under her breath and stood. She looked tired again, the way she had the night before when we were going through the bank records and Toby had come out. She said, "Thank you for meeting me here instead of coming to the bank, Peter. And thanks for waiting to see Toby. If we continue to cooperate, I know this all will work out to the good."

  Peter looked surprised when she stood, and he took her forearm. "Hey, where you going?"

  Karen stiffened as if someone had thrown a switch and she didn't look tired anymore. She looked hard and bright and she stared at his hand without moving.

  Peter said, "What?"

  Karen's eyes flicked up from the hand to Peter's left eye and held there. Locked on.

  Peter gave embarrassed and let go her forearm. "Sorry."

  Karen nodded once, giving him okay, then gathered her purse. "I have work."

  "That's it? We don't see each other for ten years, and you have work? I've got a lot to tell you. I'll bet you've got questions."

  Karen shook her head and smiled at me. "Do you see?"

  Peter said, "What's the smile?"

  Karen held her purse with both hands and let out a deep breath and looked at him. She said, "Peter, I'm not the same person you knew. I'm not a little bubblehead who wants to be an actress and is impressed when you talk about image density and emotional composition. I'm also not impressed by your success. I don't want your money."

  "Hey, who said you did?" Defensive.

  "Because I'm not the same, I won't respond to you the way I used to. If I had never seen you again, it would've been fine. But you're Toby's father, and Toby has a right to meet you and know you and judge for himself. I'll work to that end, but don't expect anything more."

  Peter made a big deal out of spreading his hands. "I don't understand this hostility."

  "Think about it."

  He said, "Hey, I'm not looking to get you into the sack. We were married, for Christ's sake. That should mean something. We have a son."

  She stared down at him, her face without thought or consideration. "No, we don't," she said. "I do."

  She brushed past me and walked across the bar and out the door.

  Peter stared after her, his face sort of pinched and confused, and then he shook his head. "I can't believe it. She didn't look happy to see me."

  "She wasn't."

  He looked at me. "Maybe you were right. Maybe I should play this a little easier." He was nodding to himself. "You've seen this a lot. You know about this."

  "Sure."

  "Okay, you were right. Peter Alan Nelsen can admit when he was wrong and you were right."

  I spread my hands.

  He suddenly leaned forward and looked hopeful again. "This didn't go too badly between me and Karen, did it? Not for a first meeting?"

  I shook my head. "No," I said. "It went great. She could've shot you."

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  Pike and I had an early dinner, then went back to our rooms for a fun-filled evening of TV news and East Coast sports. Peter and Dani and Nick and T.J. took three adjoining rooms on the opposite side of the Ho Jo, but didn't join us for the dinner or for the sports. They left in both of the limousines. Taking advantage of the night life, no doubt.

  Word of Peter's presence spread, and a news crew from a local television station came out and poked around. A tall thin woman was the on-camera talent. You could tell because she walked fast and every place she went, a short pudgy guy with a minicam followed. Seeking the truth. A few minutes after they got there, a carload of high-school kids cruised by, too. Running down rumors. The tall thin woman interviewed the high-school kids. Truth is where you find it. After that, everybody left. Not much news to be had sitting around a Ho Jo.

  The next morning Karen Lloyd phoned me at seven-fifteen. Joe Pike was already gone. She said, "I've spoken with Toby. Tell Peter to be at my home at four o'clock this afternoon." Her voice sounded tired and strained, as if she hadn't gotten much sleep.

  "How'd it go?"

  "How do you think?" She hung up.

  I called Peter Nelsen's room. On the fourth ring Dani answered. I told her about being at Karen Lloyd's at four. She said that she would tell Peter and then she asked if I would like to have breakfast with them. I said that I had things to do, but that I appreciated the offer. There was a little pause and then she said that it might go better this afternoon if I was at Karen's with them. I told her that I would be. She thanked me. She thanked people a lot. I hung up, showered, dressed, ate a short stack of Howard Johnson pancakes and two poached eggs, then drove back to the city to seek out Angelette Silver.

  Your Secret Garden was a small shop on 122nd Street

  between a shoe-repair place and a Rexall Drug Store, along the eastern edge of Morningside Heights, just above the West Side.

  As you go north through the West Side, climbing through the nineties and passing into the hundreds, white faces give way to Hispanic and black, and by the time I got to 110th, I was the only white guy around. I kept thinking of Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer, but no one was dancing down the streets singing When you're a Jet. I guess they didn't think much of George Chakiris.

  A little bell rang when I went into the flower shop. Your Secret Garden was cool and humid and alive with the sights and smells of flowers and greenery and planting soil and soft classical music from tiny Bose speakers hanging from the ceiling. In the front of the shop there were cans of fresh flowers sitting on risers and a refrigerated cooler with glass doors showing ready-made floral arrangements. There was a little counter about halfway back with a workspace behind it where a black man and a black woman maybe in her sixties were building a flower arrangement. The black man was maybe five-eight, with the long arms and ropey neck of a guy who could've fought welterweight. An FTD sign sat on the counter.

  In the front of the shop a slender black woman in her late twenties was arranging baby's breath in a can filled with daisies. She was wearing green pants and a light blue smock like orderlies wear. When the little bell rang, the man and the older woman in the back and the slender woman with the daisies glanced up at me and stared. The man gave me hard eyes for a time, then went back to working on his arrangement. Wouldn't see many white guys in here.
/>
  The slender woman came over and smiled. "May I help you?" She was pretty except for a two-inch scar splitting the left side of her upper lip and two smaller scars cutting the brow above her left eye. They weren't old scars. A little name tag on her smock read Sarah.

  I said, "Hello, Angelette. My name is Elvis Cole. I need to talk to you about Charlie DeLuca."

  Her smile fell away faster than a sinking heart. She glanced at the man behind the counter, then back at me. The man was staring at us. He couldn't hear, but he knew something wasn't right. She said, "You the police?"

  I said, "Charlie DeLuca's holding a woman I know. She wants out, and I'm trying to find a way to make him let go."

  She glanced again at the man behind the counter and made her voice low. The man stepped away from the flowers he was working with and wiped his hands on a gray cloth. She said, "We don't talk about that. If you not the police, you better get out of here."

  "You were with Charlie, weren't you?"

  Looking at the floor now. "I was with a lot of men. William was in Dannemora and I had three kids to feed."

  "Sure. It must've been tough."

  She looked up, angry. "William been out nine months and he's stayin' out. We both out. We got a man let us run this place."

  I nodded. The shop was a nice shop. Clean and fresh. Not like Dannemora. Not like walking the streets. I said, "Charlie hurt your eye?"

  "That's no never mind."

  "You know a guy named Richie?"

  "I don't know nobody."

  William put his hands down on the cash register and gave me the jailhouse stare. The older woman came up behind him and put a hand on his right forearm that he didn't seem to feel. They couldn't hear us, but they knew what we were talking about. Funny, how that works. I said, "My friend has a child, too, Angelette. She's got a life that she doesn't want to lose, just like you don't want to lose this life."

  William pushed past the older woman and came out from behind the counter carrying a two-foot length of galvanized pipe. Even with the smock you could see the strong forearms and the hard shoulders. Dannemora weight room. "You better get on out of here, man. She ain't on the street no more and she ain't goin' back. She don't want nothin' to do with you."

  "I just want to talk to her."

  "You ain't gonna be talkin' to nobody with this pipe upside your head."

  I took out the Dan Wesson and cocked it and pointed it at him. I didn't like coming into their lives and I didn't like pulling the gun. But I didn't like what was happening to Karen Lloyd, either. I said, "That's her choice, William. Not yours."

  The older woman made a low moaning sound and began to wring the gray cloth, rocking herself back and forth.

  I said, "Five minutes and I'm gone, Angelette. I won't bother you again."

  William stepped closer. Guess you been to Dannemora, you're not so impressed by the gun. "I ain't saying it twice, Mister Man. There ain't no Angelette here. There ain't no bad things here."

  Angelette looked up at me for a time, then nodded once to herself, like maybe she'd seen something she could live with or couldn't live without. "You got deliveries to make, William. Why don't you get to'm."

  William's eyes got wider and he pointed the pipe at me. "He ain't nothin' here. He ain't the police. You ain't got to talk to him."

  She was looking at him steadily, and when she spoke, her voice was soft. "He's trying to help his lady, William. What you gonna do, hit him with that pipe? You get violated, then what? You be back in Dannemora, where I'm gonna be then, makin' more dirty movies?"

  "Don't you say that."

  "Workin' those streets again?"

  "Don't you say that." He blinked hard twice, then looked down at her as if it had taken a physical effort to move his eyes from me to her.

  She said, "Make your deliveries, William, When you get back, he'll be gone and everything gonna be just like it was before. Please, William."

  The older woman said, "You better listen to her, William. You do like she say, now." The older woman was still back behind the counter, looking scared and wringing the gray cloth and rocking.

  William stared down at Angelette for a little longer, then the jail yard eyes softened and he turned and walked back behind the counter and through the little work area and out the back door.

  Angelette watched him until he was gone, then took a deep breath and let it out, as if with his leaving some inner tension within her had been removed. "It hurts him that I had to do what I did while he was away. It shames him."

  "He loves you very much."

  "Maybe." She took another deep breath, then looked at me. "My name is not Angelette. Angelette a street name."

  "Okay."

  "My name is Sarah Lewis."

  "Sarah. That's nice. Nicer than Angelette."

  She crossed her arms and made a sharp little laugh that was somehow hard and pained. "Stop talkin' trash and tell me what you want."

  "I think Charlie DeLuca's up to something that he doesn't want the rest of the family to know about. If I can find out what it is, I can make him let go of my friend."

  "I ain't seen Charlie DeLuca since before William got out. That must be five, almost six months ago."

  "How'd you meet him?"

  "On the street. That's the way he likes to do it, with the street girls. He see somethin' he likes in a dirty movie, then him and his bodyguards come up here and he gets some of it."

  "He always up here with the bodyguards?"

  She laughed. "Man, he don't take a pee without them bodyguards. Got this one creepy guy, all tall and white and skinny, look like a goddamn vampire." Good old Ric.

  "You hear the bodyguards say anything?"

  She shook her head. "No. They stay down in the car while we up in the room. You know."

  I said, "A guy named Richie might know something. I think he supplies Charlie with the movies."

  She thought for a second, then shook her head. "I don't know no Richie."

  "Did Charlie ever talk business with you?"

  "Not the kind of business you talkin' about." The older woman was working with the flowers, carefully turned away.

  "He ever complain about anything to you, like what a crummy day it was, like how a big deal went bad?"

  "Look, I know what you want, but it wasn't like that. Charlie takes a liking to a girl, he comes around a lot and he spends big, but he don't stay around too long. He never stayed with a girl longer than three weeks. He likes to hurt and you complain one time too much and then he beats the hell out of you and moves on."

  "He never said anything about what he does?"

  "No."

  I said, "You know any of his other ladies?"

  "Just to see. You know, out on the street, walkin' around. We'd be on the corner, we'd talk about him." She brushed at her mouth, past the big scar. "It's pretty easy to tell who he been with."

  "You know who he's with, now?"

  Her eyes flashed hot. "How I know that? You think we stay in touch? You think Mr. Charlie send me love letters?"

  "It's important, Sarah. Could you find out?"

  She crossed her arms again and stared at me, maybe thinking she'd had enough of this, but then maybe thinking she'd come this far. She uncrossed the arms and went behind the little counter and used the phone. While she spoke, the older woman sneaked glances at me between a spray of lilacs.

  Sarah Lewis put down the phone, then came back and said, "He seeing some gal named Gloria Uribe. She lives over on 136th, up above a bar called Clyde's."

  "Thanks, Sarah. I appreciate the help."

  "Won't do no good, you talkin' with her, though. She'll be too scared to say anything, even if she knows more than me. Any girl with Charlie is that way." Sarah brushed at the lip again, as if it itched. It was a bad scar, the kind that comes from a deep cut. When Charlie hit her, he had hit her hard, and probably more than once.

  I went to the door.

  "You really think you gonna find a way to put the hurt on Char
lie DeLuca?"

  "Yeah," I said. "I do."

  She squinted at me from the hurt eye, then made one of the nods to herself again and opened the door. "All right. You find a way to hurt him, you hurt him a little bit extra. You hurt him for Angelette Silver, you hear?"

  The older woman had stopped pretending to work and was staring at me. I nodded at her, then looked back at Sarah Lewis.

  "I was planning to."

  The older woman smiled and turned away, and I left.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  Clyde's was a knothole of a bar in the bottom of a four-story building that was mostly fire escapes and clotheslines. Three or four women in tiny red dresses and rabbit coats sat listlessly at the bar while a couple of guys in long coats leaned against a Pontiac out front laughing about something. One of the guys had a gap in his teeth like Mike Tyson.

  I put the Taurus across the street in a bus stop, then walked back. The two guys kept laughing but watched me come. There were no more white guys up here than there were down on 122nd Street

  . If I were them, I'd probably watch me, too.

  I went into a little open stairwell next to Clyde's and found the apartment-house mailboxes. G. Uribe was on box 304

  .

  The guy with Mike Tyson's teeth looked in at me and said, "Say, man, who you lookin' for?"

  "Gloria Uribe. She around?"

  "Naw, she workin'. She better be, she know what's good for her."

  "You her business manager?"

  "Naw, man, she Haitian or Cuban or somedamnthing like that. They got their own people to take care of'm. I got somethin' on the fourth floor just as good, though. No waitin'."

  "No, thanks," I said. "My heart belongs to Gloria."

  He said, "Shee-it, you the poe-lice, all right." His buddy laughed and they knocked fists.

  I gave him the okay we both know I'm a cop face. "What's your name, homeboy?"

  "Luther."

  "Luther, make a friend on the force. Gloria do a good business?"

  "Fair to middlin'."

  "White guys?"

  Luther nodded and winked at his friend. "You sniffin' 'round 'bout that gangster with the big car. You from Organized Crime?"