Lullaby Town Page 18

  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's going 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 Donnie 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 anything 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."

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  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't come, it doesn't matter if Santiago shows up or not."

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

  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 and climbed into the front seat. Pike and I hustled back to the Taurus and followed them northwest up across the Village to a little café 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 Charl
ie 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 the street 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."

  "Uh-huh."

  Charlie DeLuca pulled to the curb in a No Parking zone on Amsterdam Avenue

  . A young guy maybe thirty with a rat face and pimples and two sweatshirts came out of a doorway carrying a white, legal-sized envelope and got into the Lincoln. The Lincoln pulled away and we followed. Less than two blocks up Amsterdam the Lincoln again pulled to the curb and the pizza-faced guy got out. He closed the door as soon as he was out and walked away without looking back. He didn't have the envelope. The Lincoln started up Amsterdam again.

  Pike said, "Let me have the kid."

  I jerked the Taurus to the curb and Pike was out of the door before the Taurus stopped moving. I gunned it back into traffic and stayed with Charlie up Amsterdam into Morningside Heights and finally to Clyde's Bar. Well, well.

  Luther and his friend had shown up and were leaning against their Pontiac. Luther didn't look happy. I drove around the block four times before I found a place to park and then I went back to see Luther. Luther smiled nastily when he saw me and said, "Figure I be seeing you again. The Godfather roll up around five minutes ago. He upstairs now."

  "I know. How about Santiago?"

  Luther nodded, slow, maybe remembering the ice pick. "Yeah. He up there, too. So's the woman."

  "What's Santiago wearing?"

  "Camel hair coat. Hat with a little pink feather in the band. Boots with these real skinny heels."

  "Great, Luther. Thanks."

  Luther gave me the slow nod, considering. "You really a cop?"

  "Luther," I said, "I am the right hand of God."

  Luther nodded again, and the nasty smile came back. "If you plannin' on smitin' the sinners, I be glad to help." He pushed back his long coat and showed me a little Rossi .32 snub-nose stuck in his pants. He remembered the ice pick, all right.

  "Strictly surveillance this time around. Any smiting will have to come later."

  Luther shrugged and closed his coat. "I be here."

  I went back across to the Taurus. Six minutes after I got settled Charlie and a tall black man in a hat with a pink feather and a camel overcoat came down and got into the Lincoln. When they passed Luther and his buddy, the tall black man said something to Luther and laughed. Ice-pick joke. Luther slid his right hand under his coat and watched the tall black man with sleepy eyes until he was in the Lincoln. It was going to take more than an ice pick the next time.

  I followed the Lincoln down to 135th Street

  , then east across the island to Second, then straight down Second to the Queensboro Bridge and across the bridge into Queens.

  We worked our way down off the bridge into an area of row houses and basketball courts and four- and five-story residential buildings. The sidewalks were crowded and most of the faces were black or brown, but not all of them, and many of the signs were in Spanish. The Lincoln pulled to the curb outside of a little coffee shop named Raldo's Soul Kitchen, and Charlie and the tall black guy went inside.

  I looped around the block and parked in front of a barbershop, then walked back to Raldo's and looked in through the window. Charlie and the tall black guy were sitting at a booth with a shorter black guy and another white guy. The white guy looked sort of working class and the black guy looked like a fashion-row closeout with small eyes. Charlie handed the white envelope he had gotten from the guy on Amsterdam to Santiago, and Santiago handed it to the other black guy. Chain of command. I went back to the Taurus and waited.

  Sixteen minutes later Charlie DeLuca and the two black guys and the other white guy came out of Raldo's and walked to a green Jaguar Sovereign parked up the block. The black guy with the small eyes opened the trunk and took out two brown-paper grocery bags and gave one of the bags to Charlie and the other to the working-class white guy. Charlie's bag was bigger and looked like it weighed more. As soon as they had the bags, the white guy went to a brown Toyota Celica and Charlie came back to his Lincoln and the two black guys got into the Jaguar. Nobody shook hands and nobody said so long, but everybody looked happy. Also, everybody went in different directions.

  Portrait of the detective in crisis. Stay with Charlie or go after the black guys or the guy in the Toyota? Staying with the black guys would be hardest, and if they made me so soon after their meeting with Charlie, they'd tell him, and he might get scared and stop whatever he was doing. I went with the white guy in the Toyota.

  We drove north to the Long Island Expressway, then east to 678 and then south through the heart of Queens to an exit that said Jamaica Avenue

  . Two blocks east of the Jamaica Avenue

  exit, the brown Toyota turned into a little parking lot next to a bright, modern cast-cement building with a sign that said BOROUGH OF QUEENS POLICE.

  He parked in an empty spot next to a Volkswagen bug and got out with the brown-paper bag. He opened the Toyota's trunk, tossed in the bag, then took out a cop's blue-on-blue NYPD uniform and a gray gym bag. He closed the trunk, then carried the uniform and the gym bag into the station house.

  I sat in the Taurus in the Borough of Queens Police parking lot for a very long while until a couple of cops with thirty years on the job gave me the bad eye, and only then did I drive away.

  Amazing what you learn if you just wait and watch.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  I called Rollie George from a pay phone outside a Korean market and gave him the license numbers off the cop's Toyota and the Jaguar Sovereign. I told him that one of the black guys might be known as Santiago, and I asked him to get me anything on them that he could.

  Rollie grunted. "I don't like we got a cop in this. Maybe he's undercover."

  "Maybe."

  "Yeah." He didn't say anything for a minute, but there was a lot of breathing. "You know, Elvis, I haven't asked who you're working for."

  "I know."

  After a while Rollie said, "Okay. I'll run these and get back to you."

  Thanks, Rollie."

  He hung up without saying good-bye.

  By the time I got back to Karen Lloyd's, the sun was settling comfortably in the trees to the west and the arctic air had made its predicted move down from Canada, dropping the temperature and clouding the skies.

  Joe Pike was sitting in one of the wing chairs with the cat in his lap and Karen Lloyd was making noise in her kitchen. I had the car, but Pike beat me back. One of life's imponderables. I said, "You made good time."

  "I followed the kid with the pimples to an apartment building on Broadway and 96th Street

  . Name on the post drop was Richard Sealy."

  "Aha. Richie."

  "Uh-huh. I called Rollie a little bit after you. He'll run a make."

  There was more noise from the
kitchen. Heavy glass tumblers set hard on a counter. "You been here long?"

  "Long enough."

  More noise. Drawers slamming shut. I looked toward the noise, but Pike didn't. "Everything okay?"

  "Nope." Pike's mouth twitched.

  Karen Lloyd came out of the kitchen with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Her mouth was narrow and tight, and she took short, quick steps. She said, "We're having the Colonel. I want you to come here and look at this." She put the Colonel on the table and went back through the kitchen toward the garage. I looked back at Pike. "You get it like this, too?"

  Pike's mouth twitched again.

  I went back through the kitchen. Karen was standing in the laundry room at the door to the garage with her arms crossed. The door to the garage was open. "Look at what that bastard did."

  I thought she meant Charlie DeLuca, but she didn't. A gleaming new blue and white Yamaha snowmobile was parked next to her LeBaron. "It's going back. I told Peter about the gifts. I thought we had it straight, but this is what I find waiting for me when I got home with Toby." No questions about the mafia. No Did you discover what's going on? No Did you find out where he gets the money? No Are we going to get out of this alive'?

  I said, "That louse."

  She turned red. "It's not an appropriate gift. Toby's too young."

  "Sure."

  "It's dangerous. Can't you see that?"

  "It's not as dangerous as motorcycles, and I don't think it'll skew your son's values if he gets a nice gift from his father."

  She shut the door on the garage. "I wouldn't think that you'd understand."

  Karen went back into the kitchen and put out the rest of the things she had brought from the Colonel and then she called Toby to the table. He came out sulky and silent. She asked him what he would like to drink and he said nothing. She asked him if he wanted rolls and the cole slaw and he said no. She asked him if he wanted a breast or a thigh and he said he didn't care. Sore about the snowmobile, I guess. Pike made himself a cheese sandwich and ate as if he were alone.

  We were most of the way through the chicken when the white van that said WKEL-TV turned into the drive and the tall, thin woman got out. The weenie with the minicam got out with her. When Karen saw them coming through the big front window, she said, "Oh, Jesus Christ."