Lullaby Town (1992) (24 page)

Outside, the deepening twilight was purple and chill and punctuated by die bounce of the ball and an occasional laugh or word. I could see Dani and Toby and most of the drive, but not the hoop. Someone would shoot the ball and the ball would arc up, but then it would be gone, passing from my line of sight. It didn't matter. You could tell if they made it or not by their faces and the sounds they made and by how the ball rebounded. If someone ran to one side or the other, the ball had caromed off the side of the hoop. If someone ran fast straight ahead, they had lofted an air ball and it was rolling into the garage. If the ball gently came back to them or they trotted forward to the hoop, they had made a basket. You didn't see the event, you saw the results of the event. I had read a book on modern astronomy which had said that both Neptune and Pluto were predicted long before they had ever been seen because of peculiarities in the orbits of the other outer planets. It made me think that planets weren't so very different from people. Seeing what happened around them was enough to tell you where they were and what they were.

When Karen Lloyd was finished, Peter looked at me and said, "Is this for real?"

"Yep."

He stood up and gave impatient. "No. I mean, is this really real? This guy who was here, Charlie, he's a criminal, he's in the mafia?"

I said, "It's really real, Peter." Something only someone in show business would have to hear. 'The DeLucasa re one of the largest mafia families in New York. I've talked to Charlie about letting Karen out of the setup, but he's said no."

Peter made a big deal out of looking around the room before he looked back at Karen. He was grinning, like this wasn't really real after all, like maybe we were clowning around. "You're in the mafia."

"No. I'm not in the mafia. I'm involved with the mafia." Her voice was edged. The edge hadn't been there a few minutes ago.

"Does the boy know?"

The jaw knotted again. "Stop calling him'the boy.' He has a name."

"Jesus Christ, all right. Toby. Does Toby know?" Now Peter was giving us irritated.

"No. This is illegal, Peter. What I'm doing is against the law. You don't tell a child something like that"

I said, "This is why I didn't call. We were trying to get this straightened out before I brought you in."

Peter said, "Jesus Christ."

"If Karen goes to the police, she'll have to cut a deal with the states and the feds. She can do that, and her testimony will put Charlie and probably Sal away, but then she'd have to go into witness protection."

Karen said, "We'd have to change our names. We'd have to move and go into hiding. I won't do that to Toby or to me."

Peter said, "But the guy's here threatening our kid."

I said, "Charlie did what he did today to get a message across. He won't do anything else if Karen makes the pickups that he tells her to make and continues to launder the money."

Karen said, "I've asked Elvis and Mr. Pike to move in here until this is over."

Peter blinked at me. Surprised. "I didn't know you were staying here."

"I wasn't staying here. I'm going to stay here now."

Peter frowned, thinking about it and not liking it. "How long is this going to take?"

I told them about Gloria Uribe and the Jamaican named Santiago, and that maybe Charlie was going to meet with Santiago sometime tomorrow.

Peter was shaking his head. "You're gonna follow him around and hope you see a connection? Christ, that could take years."

"It's what we can do."

Peter went to the window. Outside, Toby passed the ball to Dani, who shot and missed. She laughed when she missed and said something that I couldn't understand. Peter said, "All right. If that's the way things are, that's the way things are. I'll take care of it." He was looking sort of pleased with himself.

Karen said, "What do you mean, you'll take care of it?"

Peter made a little no-big-deal gesture with his right hand. "I'll talk to the guy. I'll pass a little cash and smooth him out. I'll take care of you, Karen."

The skin beneath Karen's right eye began to jump. "You'll take care of me." Her voice was soft.

"Sure. We don't need all this running around and following."

I said, "Peter, this isn't some mid-level union fixer looking for a payoff."

"I know what this guy is." Annoyed.

I said, "No, you don't. This guy is a professional nut case who made his bones when he was sixteen years old by killing a man. This guy is not going to do what you want because you're from Hollywood. He's capo of the largest crew in the DeLuca family, and one day he'sg oing to be boss of all the other capos. If he wants to pal around with people from Hollywood, he'll buy a studio."

Peter leaned toward me, giving me the Bonnie Brewster treatment. "And I'm telling you I can smooth this guy out. I come three thousand miles and find out the mafia got my family, I know what to do. I'm Peter Alan Nelsen."

Karen leaned toward him. "We're not your family."

Peter's face went red and he blinked behind the thick glasses. "Hey, I'm just trying to help. I'm just trying to take care of the boy. All this following around and waiting, something could happen. Someone could get hurt."

Karen said, "Elvis knows how to do this. If you come barging in, you'll mess it up."

Peter rolled his eyes and made a big deal out of waving his hands. "That's right, that's right. I don't know anything." He looked at me, and then he looked at Karen, and then he shook his head. Mr. Incredulous. "You got no idea how lucky you are. There must be four hundred million women out there wish they had been married to me. You oughta wake up and take advantage."

Karen's face went very white and a small dimple appeared below the corners of her mouth, and she said, "You arrogant sonofabitch. Get out of my home." You could hear her breathe.

Peter slammed out of the door. Outside, the ball stopped bouncing and the voices grew hushed.

Neither of us said anyd++ng for a time, and then Karen went to the window and looked out. She lifted her hands and looked at them and said, "My God, I'm shaking."

I nodded.

She put one hand in the other and held them down, looking again at whatever was on the other side of the glass. "I guess I'll have to let him own me a little while longer, won't I?" I didn't know if she was talking about Peter or Charlie, but maybe it didn't matter.

"Yes," I said. "I guess you will."

She nodded. "Okay. If that's what it takes, I can do that."

"You're doing fine."

"I'm surviving."

"Sometimes that's enough."

"No," she said. "It used to be. But it isn't anymore."

Karen Lloyd put out blankets and pillows and towels for Pike and me in a little spare room that she used as a home office. There was a couch and a desk in the little room, and just enough floor space for one of us on the couch and one of us on the floor. Pike said he'd take the floor.

We drove back to the Ho Jo, got our things, and checked out. The waitress who had always wanted to visit California was in the lobby when we paid. She said that she hoped she would see us again soon. I said anything was possible. By the time we got back to Karen Lloyd's, Peter and Dani were gone, Toby was in his room, and Karen had gone to bed. Twenty minutes after seven. Guess it had been a rough day all the way around.

At nine-forty-two the next morning Pike and I cruised past Clyde's Bar on 136th Street, Pike's head moving slightly to check out the fire escape, the alley, the street, the people. Luther and his buddy weren't around, and neither was their Pontiac, but maybe sixty or seventy thousand black people were on their way to work or school or doctor's appointments or the market. Pike said, "Be tough to maintain a low profile around here."

"Maybe we could do the stakeout in blackface."

Pike's mouth twitched.

I felt as obvious now as I had before, but neither was the first time I had felt that way. The first time had been in 1976, not long after I had left the Army, walking with a man named Cleon Tyner in Watts. It was a feeling that everyone was staring at me, even though I could see that they were not. When I told Cleon, he said, now you know what it's like to be black. Cleon Tyner had died in Beverly Hills ten years later, shot to death by an Eskimo.

I said, "Gloria Uribe is on the third floor, 304, up two flights of stairs, on the east side of the building."

"What time is Santiago coming?"

"Four."

"Let me out."

I pulled to the curb, let him out, and drove around the block. My third time around, Pike came out from the alley and slipped into the car. He said, "Maintenance entrance in the back next to an old coal chute, but no way up to the third unless you come through the lobby. You can get up the fire escape in the alley, but a guy coming here for business wouldn't use it Thirty-foot drop to the roof from the next building."

"So anyone who comes or goes is going to come or go through the lobby."

Pike nodded. "We try to hang around here all day, everyone on this street is going to know it. So will the woman."

I turned south on Fifth and dropped down Central Park toward the Village. "We can pick up Charlie. If Charlie doesn'tcome, it doesn'tmatter if Santiago shows up or not."

Pike grunted and settled back in the seat. "Let's doit"

I pulled to the curb by a pay phone, called information, and got the numbers for the Figaro Social Club and the Lucerno Meat Company. I called the social club first and asked if Charlie DeLuca was there. A guy with a voice like a rusty gate said no. I called the meat plant and said, "Charlie's office, please." A woman came on and I told her that my name was Mike Waldrone and that Charlie's dad Sal had said that I should call and could I speak to him. She told me that he was on the other line and asked if I wanted to hold. I said no thanks, hung up, and went back to the car. "Meat plant," I said. . "Piece of cake."

Twenty-eight minutes later we parked the Taurus just off Grand around the corner from the meat plant, walked back to a fruit shop with a little juice bar in the window, ordered a couple of papaya smoothies, and sat down to watch for Charlie DeLuca. Elvis and Joe go hunting in the city.

Econoline vans and eight-wheel delivery trucks came and went and guys in stained smocks loaded and unloaded packages of meat. At nineteen minutes after ten Ric the Vampire came down the sidewalk carrying a little white bag and took it into the meat plant. Danish, no doubt. At eleven-fifty-one Charlie and Ric came out and got into the black Town Car. Charlie was wearing a three-thousand-dollar Johnson Ivers topcoat andc limbed into the front seat. Pike and I hustled back to the Taurus and followed them northwest up across the Village to a little cafe two doors down from Foul Play Bookstore on Abingdon Square. Charlie went into the restaurant and Ric stayed in the car. In the cafe, Charlie met three other men, also in Johnson Ivers topcoats, and sat in the window where they laughed and talked and read racing forms. Power lunch, no doubt Who will we rob today? Who will we kill?

An hour and ten minutes later Charlie came out and got into the Town Car, and he and Ric drove to the Figaro Social Club, members only. Ric went in with him this time, instead of staying in the car. Shoot a little pool, drink a little espresso, hang out with the other wiseguys. They still hadn't cleaned the front door.

Neither Charlie nor Ric came or went for the next two hours and twenty-five minutes. A couple of old men hobbled in and another old man hobbled away, and strong younger men with broad backs and sturdy necks drifted in and out, but Charlie never moved. Probably weren't a lot of command decisions to be made at a meat plant, anyway.

At ten of four Pike said, "Maybe it's a pass."

At four Pike said, "We can forget the Jamaican connection."

At six minutes after four Pike said, "You wanna check on this Santiago guy, anyway?"

At eleven minutes after four Charlie DeLuca came out and got into the black Town Car, and Pike said, "He's alone."

I looked at Pike and gave him Groucho Marx eyebrows.

Charlie pulled away from the curb and went up Bowery to Fourteenth, then across to Eighth and uptown past the theater district and the porno parlors and thes treet hustlers and a guy carrying a placard that said TRAVIS BICKLE WAS RIGHTEOUS. Heading north. Maybe north to Morningside Heights and Gloria Uribe and a guy named Santiago, but maybe not. He could always turn off to New Jersey.

This time of day the streets were crowded with cars and yellow cabs, and the cars and the cabs accelerated and swerved and stopped without regard to lanes or reason. Yellow cabs roared past the pedestrians who lined the street corners, some speeding up the closer they came to the warm bodies, others veering sharply across traffic, passing within inches of other cabs and cars, and nobody bothered to slow down. Everyone drove as if they were in Beirut, but that made it easy to follow him. In the chaos that was the approaching rush hour, we were just another random particle.

Pike loosened his .357 in its holster.

We stayed north on Eighth for a long time and then Charlie turned off Broadway onto Eighty-eighth and then over to Amsterdam, and suddenly we weren't going toward Morningside Heights and Gloria Uribe anymore. Pike said, "Change of plans."