Lullaby Town Page 12

  Tudi looked at his hand, maybe wondering where his gun had gone. "The guy japped me."

  Pike stepped back and lowered the gun.

  I gave Tudi the tsk-tsk. "First Joey the Potato, now you. Charlie's gonna love it."

  Tudi's face was red and angry. He looked at his empty hand again like maybe he had made a mistake the first time, like maybe if he looked again, it wouldn't be empty and he could shoot Pike and me and he wouldn't have to tell Charlie that he'd been japped by a guy who came out of nowhere. Only when he looked, the hand was still empty. He looked back at Pike, then grunted and charged, head down. Pike's right knee snapped up hard, and Tudi popped over as if he'd been jerked backward by a leash. He hit the ground flat on his back with a loud slapping sound and that was the end of it.

  "Dumb," I said. "This man has the market cornered on dumb."

  Ric smiled some more. "He thinks he's good. All these guys, they think they're good."

  Pike was back to looking at Ric. "How about you?"

  Ric reached down with the emaciated white scarecrow arm and picked up Tudi and lifted him over his shoulder like a bag of dirty laundry. Tudi had to go two-thirty-five, at least. It was a long way to lift two-thirty-five. "We'll talk again," he said.

  Pike nodded, then opened Tudi's gun, shook out the bullets, and dropped the gun into a steel garbage drum. We walked away, me leading and Pike walking backward, keeping an eye on Ric until we got to the street, then we moved against the traffic down toward Broome, trying to blend in with the natives.

  I said, "How'd you find me?"

  "Went by Rollie's when I got in and dropped off my stuff. He said you'd be here. He said you were going to go one-on-one with the mafia." He shook his head, unimpressed. "The mafia."

  "What they lack in skill, they make up for in numbers. Except for Ric. Ric is maybe pretty good."

  Pike shrugged, still giving it unimpressed. You want to impress Pike, you've got to use the neutron bomb.

  We picked up a cab at the corner of Mott and Broome. The cabbie was an older guy with a bald, misshapen head and a lot of ear hair. He said, "Where to?"

  I told him an intersection near Rollie's. "You know where that is?"

  He flipped down the flag on the meter. "Hey, I'm driving the Big Apple thirty-five years."

  We went west on Broome.

  The cabbie said, "You guys here on business?"

  "Yeah."

  "You from California?"

  I said, "We're from Queens."

  The cabbie laughed. "Yeah, right. I got you made for somewhere out west, L.A. or maybe San Diego." So much for blending with the natives.

  We picked up Pike's things and the Taurus from the parking garage across from Roland George's building, and worked our way out of the city and then north through the countryside to Connecticut and Chelam. While we drove I told Pike about Peter Alan Nelsen and Karen Lloyd and their son, and Karen's involvement with the DeLuca family. Pike sat in the passenger seat and never once moved or spoke or acknowledged what I was saying. As if he weren't even in the car. Maybe he wasn't. You hang around Pike enough, you begin to believe in out-of-body experience.

  Twenty minutes after four we pulled off the highway into the Ho Jo, and I used the phone in my room to call Karen Lloyd at the bank. She said, "Charlie called." Her voice was low, as if Joyce Steuben might be outside the door, listening.

  "I thought he might."

  "He was livid. He told me I shouldn't have brought you in."

  I said, "It's not anything we didn't expect, but we had to try. Did you print out a record of the transactions for me?"

  "Yes. I have them here."

  "Okay. I need to see them."

  "Don't come to the bank." There was a pause, as if she had to think through the variables and find the best one. "Come to the house, say at seven-thirty. We'll be finished with dinner then and Toby will be doing his homework. Is that all right?"

  "Fine."

  There was another pause and then she said, "Thank you for trying."

  "Don't mention it."

  I put down the phone and looked at Pike. "We'll go out to her place at seven-thirty."

  Pike nodded, then went out to the lobby and checked in, taking one of the rooms adjoining mine. I stood in the door and watched him bring in an olive-green Marine Corps duffel bag and a long metal gun case that looked like something for a Vox guitar. Anyone saw it, they'd think Pike played bass for Lou Reed. After he was settled he came back into my room and we looked at each other. It was four-forty-five. He said, "Anything around here to do until seven?"

  "Nope."

  "Any good places to eat?"

  I shook my head.

  Pike looked out of my window down onto the parking lot and crossed his arms. "Well," he said. "We didn't have it this good in Southeast Asia."

  Nothing like support from your friends.

  At five o'clock we went down to the bar and drank beer, then enjoyed an early dinner in the restaurant. I had a very nice chicken-fried steak. Pike had lentil soup and a large mixed vegetable salad and four slices of whole-wheat toast and a thick wedge of Jarlsberg cheese. Vegetarian.

  The female bartender who was thinking about moving to California came in from the bar and kidded around with us until two older couples in heavy coats and loud shirts walked in and then she had to go back to the bar. The two older couples didn't eat. They just drank.

  After a while we bought four beers to go and took them back to my room and watched the local New York news. The weather forecast said that the skies would continue to clear for the next few days, but that then another front would move down from Canada bringing cold and snow. The sports report was fine, but the hard news stories were mostly about subways and city strikes and local personalities and things indigenous to New York. They seemed alien and sort of empty.

  Midway through the newscast, a male anchor with a lantern jaw and a rough-hewn face and squinty eyes reported a federal study that concluded that the L.A. basin had the dirtiest air in the country. He grinned when he said it. The black female co-anchor grinned, too, and reported a corollary story that Angelenos drive more than urbanites in any other major American city. The jut-jawed anchor grinned even harder and said that maybe Los Angeles wouldn't have such a bad smog problem if they put in a subway to the beach. That got a big laugh from everybody. Especially the weatherman.

  Joe Pike said, "Assholes."

  I turned off the television.

  It was ten minutes before six.

  We sat and stared, neither of us saying much, and then Joe Pike went into his room. After a while I heard his water running. I took off my clothes and did a little yoga, stretching to warm myself, then working through the cobra, and the locust, and the wheel pose, but I couldn't concentrate. I tried doing push-ups and sit-ups instead, but with no better luck. I kept losing count. After a while I got off the floor and called the local news station in New York and told a young woman that I wanted to speak to the jut-jawed anchor. When the young woman asked me why, I said that I wanted to call him a prick. She wouldn't put me through.

  Pike stayed in his room and I stayed in mine, and at twenty minutes after seven we went down to the Taurus and drove to Karen Lloyd's.

  Tough guys like me never miss home.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The air was crisp and cold and the sky was a velvety black as we parked in Karen Lloyd's drive and walked up to the door. I rang the bell and Karen Lloyd answered. When she saw Joe Pike, she said, "Oh."

  I said, "Karen Lloyd, this is Joe Pike. Joe, this is Karen Lloyd. Joe is my partner. He owns the agency with me." Dark, and he still wore the glasses.

  Pike said that he was pleased to meet her. Karen looked uneasy but she said hello. Another person invading her life.

  The three of us went into the dining room. There was a 9 X 12 manila envelope on the table and a glass of white wine next to it. Most of the wine was gone. I said, "Where's Toby?"

  "In his room, doing homework. I told him tha
t people were coming and that I had work to do. He has his radio on. He won't be able to hear us."

  "All right."

  Karen picked up the 9x12, handed it to me, then picked up the wineglass. "This is what I had in the computer."

  "Okay."

  Pike and I took off our jackets. When Pike took off his jacket, Karen leaned forward and made a little sound like ssss.

  Pike had two bright red arrows tattooed on the outside of each deltoid when he was in Vietnam. They pointed forward, and looked like the kind of red arrows you see on jet intakes or rocket nozzles or other dangerous things. With the jacket off and Pike in a sweatshirt with no sleeves, you could see the tattoos as clearly as if neon tubes had been laid beneath his skin. Karen looked away, not wanting him to catch her staring. People do that.

  The orange and white cat came in from the hall, walked over to Pike, and rubbed against his ankles. Pike bent down and held his fingers out. The cat began to buzz. Karen said, "Do you like cats, Mr. Pike?"

  Pike nodded.

  She said, "His name is Tigger."

  Pike nodded once, then stood and walked into the kitchen. Karen said, "Excuse me, the bathroom isn't that way."

  Pike went through the door without looking back.

  I said, "He isn't looking for the bath. He's looking for how someone might get into your home, or get out, and for where they might hide while they are within it."

  She blinked at me.

  "It's one of his more colorful habits."

  The back door opened and Pike went outside. Karen went to the window and tried to look out at him, but she couldn't see out of the light and into the darkness. No one ever can. "What a strange man."

  "Perhaps, but he is someone that you want on your side. He will never lie to you, and he will give you every piece of himself."

  She looked doubtful. "Has he been your partner for a long time?"

  "Yes. Since I bought the agency. We bought it together."

  She looked out of the window again. Worried. "What if he scares Toby? What if one of the neighbors sees him and calls the police? Then we'll have to explain."

  "No one will see him and no one will hear him. You ever see a ninja movie? That's Pike."

  She squinted out the window some more, then came back to the table and picked up her glass. "How can he see at night while he's wearing those sunglasses?"

  I gave her a little shrug. There are some things even the great and wonderful Oz does not know.

  In a little while Pike came back and we went through the records. Karen got more wine.

  There were two hundred fourteen entries made into eight different First Chelam account numbers, all of which were immediately transferred into two accounts in Barbados. The records were spread over six pages of computer printout, showing single-spaced rows of numbers without meaning, dates to the far left, account numbers to their right, amounts to the right of that, destination accounts on the far right, with dates going back four years and eleven months. I would read the sheets, then pass them to Pike, and he would read them. Karen watched us and drank the wine. It was sort of like reading a phone book with phone numbers but without names.

  I said, "Let's start with the most recent deposit and you can walk us through every transaction."

  "God, they're all the same."

  "You told me that most of the deposits come through Harry, but some of them come through Charlie."

  "That's right."

  "Then they're not all the same. There are Harry deposits and there are Charlie deposits."

  She nodded and said, "All right. What are you looking for?"

  "I don't know. All we can do is dig into what we have and see if something presents itself."

  "Oh."

  "Most of the time, in what we do, there are no clear or ready avenues. Detectives look for clues, and clues tell you what's going on and what to do about it. Do you see?"

  "Of course." She didn't look convinced. I think she was trying to relate it to banking.

  "I'll need a pad and a pencil."

  She got up and went down the little hall and came back with a yellow legal pad and a Paper Mate Sharpwriter pencil. She also got more wine. She seemed tired, but I didn't think it was just the booze. Her hip brushed the jamb when she came back through the door. I said, "Let's start with the transaction I saw in Brunly. Tell us how it was arranged and who arranged it, and how you were told to do what you did and as much as you know about where the money came from and where the money went. Don't leave anything out. Things that you take for granted we don't know anything about. We'll do that one, and then we'll walk through every transaction for as far back as you can remember."

  She nodded gamely, and we began.

  We went through as much of each transaction as she could remember, starting with the latest and working backward. She remembered more than she thought she would because a lot of what had happened was repetitious. Most of the answers were the same. Charlie's secretary at the meat plant would set the meetings just as she would for Charlie and any other business associate. At the meetings, Charlie would tell Karen which of the eight First Chelam accounts the money should go into and into which of the two Barbados accounts it should be transferred. There were no receipts given and no statements mailed and nothing to prove that someone named Charlie DeLuca was either putting cash into the First Chelam Bank or moving money from one account to another. Karen assumed that someone in Barbados checked to make sure that the right amount of money was being fed into the accounts, but she wasn't sure.

  Somewhere in the middle of it, Toby came into the hall and looked at us with big eyes. "Mom?"

  I said, "Hi, Tobe." Mr. Bright and Cheery.

  Karen put down her wine and gave him the Barbara Billingsley smile and went over to him. "Hey, pal, you get the homework done?" She'd had three or four glasses of wine by then, but she was doing okay.

  "Uh-huh."

  "You know Mr. Cole? And this is Mr. Pike, his associate."

  Toby smiled uneasily, knowing that something wasn't right, that his mom didn't get sauced and have late-night meetings with guys sporting tattoos and sunglasses to talk over wrap-around financing and short-term mortgage envelopes. He looked nervous. "You okay?"

  She ran a hand through his hair and looked sad. "Sport, it's been a helluva day. Why don't you get ready for bed?"

  He glanced at Pike and me, then he gave his mom a kiss and went back down the hall. Karen watched him go and then she turned and trudged back to the table and Barbara Billingsley was gone. Karen Lloyd's face was older.

  I said, "You want to knock off until tomorrow?" She shook her head. "No. Let's get this done." Two hours and eleven minutes later we had filled the legal pad with two columns. HARRY had been written above one column and CHARLIE had been written above the other, with deposit dates on the left of the columns and amounts in the middle and destination accounts on the right. There were seven different account numbers under the HARRY column, but only one account number under the CHARLIE column. All of the HARRY accounts were transferred to the same Barbados destination. The CHARLIE account went to the other Barbados location. There were one hundred eighty-one entries under the HARRY account and thirty-three entries under the CHARLIE, with all of the HARRY deposits coming every Thursday, as regular as the sunset. The HARRY deposits were from $107,000 to $628,000, and they were spread more or less equally among the seven accounts. The CHARLIE deposits were different. They started about twenty-eight months ago, and sometimes they would be made twice in one week and other times there would be eight or nine weeks between them. Irregular. The first couple of years the deposits were relatively small, with nothing over $9,800. A little less than five months ago the deposits went from four figures to five, with a high of $68,000. All of the deposits since then had been large, but still much smaller than any of the HARRY deposits.

  We stared at our numbers and our chart, and Pike said, "You see it?"

  Karen said, "What?"

  I turned the yellow pa
d around so it would be easier for her. "Harry brings money, and Charlie brings money, but only Charlie tells you where to put the money."

  She nodded. "Yes."

  "Look at it. Every time Harry brings money, it goes into one of seven accounts, but it never goes in the eighth. Every time Charlie brings money, it goes in the eighth and never into any of the other seven."

  She frowned and brought the pad closer. The frown made her look more strained, but now there was maybe a little hope. ''I've never thought about it, but I guess that's right. Do you think this means something?"

  I made a little shrug. "I don't know. I'm looking at things in a certain way and they're adding up, but maybe they add up in other ways, too. Maybe the Harry accounts are DeLuca family accounts, and the Charlie account is a personal account. Maybe the money Charlie gives you is the piece that Sal cuts for him, and maybe it's bigger than the piece Sal cuts for the other capos, so Charlie and Sal don't want anyone else to know to keep peace in the family."

  Pike grunted. "Or maybe not. Maybe it means something that we can use."

  Karen looked from me to Pike and then back to me. The hope you could see in her faded. She said. "It seems iffy."

  "It is iffy. If you want certainty, go to the cops. There's witness protection."

  Her face set, then she got up and went to the hearth. The cat followed her with his eyes. "We've been through that."

  "It's still an option."

  "No. It is not. It is not an option for me." Her frown deepened and she stared at the mantel. The pictures of her and Toby were there. She chewed her upper lip, then looked back at me. "Charlie's secretary called back this evening. She said I'm supposed to meet Charlie tomorrow. I told her no. I said that I'm not going to do it." That's why the drinking.

  Pike said, "Bad move."

  Her nostrils tightened and she looked at him. "What do you know?"

  I said, "He's right. Charlie's already pissed, and we shouldn't make it worse. Pike and I will be there, and we won't let him hurt you."

  She pulled herself erect and stepped away from the hearth and gave me the sort of eyes she must've given herself ten years ago when she'd decided to change her life. Hard, focused, don't-get-in-my-way eyes. "No. It's not about being scared. It's about not wanting it in my life anymore. I've got Peter coming back. I've got you in my home. I'm not going to pick up his money. I'm not going to take any more deposits from Harry. I've made up my mind. Do you understand?"