Lullaby Town (1992) (20 page)

The waitress gave Karen the ice treatment and went over to Nick and TJ.

Peter said, 'Jesus Christ, she probably just wanted an autograph or something."

"She can get it later. I'm the vice-president and manager of the bank here, and I am a mother. I have responsibilities. I can't waste my time."

Peter looked like a little kid who'd just been told to go to bed and didn't like it.

Karen said, "I know you want to see Toby, but I'd rather you wait. He doesn't know that you're here and he doesn't know who you are or anything about you. Give me this evening to talk to him and then you can see him tomorrow."

Peter liked that even less.

Karen said, "If you come out now, you'll just scare him."

Peter shook his head. "Hell, what's he got to be scared of?"

I said, "Any child would be scared, Peter. One day he's comfortable with his life, the next a strange man walks up to him and says, hi, I'm your old man. Everything he knows changes, and everything becomes an unknown. Do you see?"

Peter frowned and sort of pooched out his lips. "Whose side are you on?"

"The kid's. I'm also on yours and Karen's."

Dani said, "You've seen this kind of thing a lot, haven't you?"

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 TJ. "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 somethingu nder 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, itw ould'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."

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 TJ. 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. Runningd own 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 litde bell rang, the man and the older woman in the back and the slender woman widi 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. Shea in'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 Dannem-ora, 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, thenl ooked down at her as if it had taken a physical effort to move his eyes from me to her.