Lullaby Town (1992) (13 page)

"They never do."

"I came out to Chelam and met with the woman who used to be the manager here and she hired me as a teller. I rented a little house. I started taking night classes at the college in Brunly. I didn't see Charlie again for months."

"Then he needed a favor."

She gave me the eyes.

I said, "It would've been Charlie's father, Sal. He would've said that he was in a bind with a couple of business partners and he needed a place to put some money and could you open an account for him that no one would know about and maybe transfer the money out of the country without reporting it to the IRS."

She shook her head and made the kind of smile you make when you feel stupid and used. "Is it so obvious?"

I made a little shrug. "You weren't thinking in terms of crime. You were helping a friend. It's the way they do it."

"He had gotten me the job. He had been so nice." She uncrossed the arms and walked back across the room to the hearth. Embarrassed again and angry because of it. The orange and white cat stretched, then sat up and stared at her. 'Toby was in nursery, I was in school, I was studying for the real estate exam, Iliad a life. It was months before I heard from Sal again, and when he called I was surprised. I didn't think there would be a second time. The third time it was Charlie, and then the calls were every few weeks, and then every week, and then there it was. The New York Times runs an article on organized crime and they feature the DeLuca family. That's how I found out. I'm laundering money for the mafia. I'm taking the cash profits they're making from prostitution and gambling and whatever else they do and I'm cleaning it for them. I called Charlie. I said I can't do this anymore and Charlie comes to the bank and he says that I will keep doing it for as long as they want because I'm a stick of furniture and then he locks the door to my office and takes out his penis, and I thought, oh God, he's going to rape me, he's going to use me to show me what I am, but he doesn't. He urinates on the carpet and he says, you see, this is what I can do, and then he left."

She was trembling as she said it. The cat hopped down from the couch, walked over to her, and rubbed against her ankles. I don't think she felt it I said, "If you want out, go to the cops. You're in with Charlie and Sal. That's worth something. You could cut a deal."

She shook her head again and walked back to the window and looked at the boy. The cat followed her. He wasn't as big as the cat who lives with me, or as scarred, but he was okay. "No. Going to the police means witness protection. We'd have to give up everything we have."

"Looks like you're giving up a lot right now."

Her eyes hardened and an edge came to her voice. "All I had when I left Los Angeles was my son and a lot of bad memories. I wanted a job with a future. I wanted an education. I wanted to work and see thew ork pay dividends and be a worthwhile person. I am. I have a good home. I do a good job with my boy. He's not on drugs and he does all right in school. Witness protection means we change our name and our life and start over. I won't do that. I've already started over and I've built the thing I wanted to build and I don't want to lose it. I've come a long way from stupidville."

"Far enough to make it worth being owned by the mob?"

The eyes went back to the boy and turned red again. "I don't know what I can do, but I'll find a way out. It's been eight years, but I will find a way out I promise you." She wasn't saying it to me. She was saying it to the boy.

I looked around the house. I looked at the cat. I looked at the boy bouncing the ball. It was a good house, well put together and warm and filled with the things that a family home should be filled with. It couldn't have been easy. Peter, do I havta? I said, "I know what you can do."

She made a tired little laugh and looked back at me. "What shit. You're here, and Peter's here, and any chance I might've had to get away from these people is gone. There isn't anything else I can do."

"Sure there is. You can hire me to get you out of this mess."

We were sitting on the Early American furniture across from the fireplace, me on the couch, Karen on one of the wingback chairs, drinking white wine from glasses that were simple and without adornment. The cat had left the room. She said, 'They give me money, and I transfer it out of the country without reporting it to the Treasury Department. Any deposit over $10,000 we're supposed to file a form with the Treasury Department, but I don't That's what it's all about, taking in the money and not reporting it. I put the money into an account, then transfer it to a bank in Barbados. In, then out. It doesn't seem like much, does it?"

I said, "Who gives you the money?" I was looking for a way out for her. I didn't know what that wouldb e, but maybe if I heard enough, something would present itself. It's the scattershot approach to the detective business.

"Either Charlie or a man named Harry. It's usually Harry, but sometimes it's Charlie."

"Who's Harry?"

"Just this guy. He works for Charlie and he's usually the one who brings the money."

Outside, the sun was dropping down and the sky was taking on a deep blue cast, but there was maybe a half hour of good light left. Toby was still working the ball. "I'm surprised you see Charlie. The top guys like Charlie and Sal always stay away from stuff like this. They use guys like Harry. Something goes wrong, Harry takes the fall. That's what he's paid for."

She sipped some of the wine, then set down the glass as if the wine had lost its taste. "This is common to you, isn't it? You deal with things like this all the time."

"Not exactly like this, but close enough. People look for ways to trap themselves and they usually find what they look for. I see people at their extremes."

"Are you good at what you do?"

"Not bad."

"I'm surprised you found me. I took great care to hide myself. I erased my maiden name from all my credit records. I took the name Lloyd from a billboard."

"You left a trail a mile wide."

She picked up the wine again and had some, as if she needed the wine to help her talk about these things. "I want you to know that what I've built, I've built without their help and without their money. I didn't use Peter's help and I didn't use theirs."

"All right."

"Three days after I made the first transfer, a man came to the bank and gave me an envelope containing one thousand dollars. I called Sal and told him to take the money back, but he wouldn't. He told me that friends have to take care of one another, that kind of thing. He was sweet and charming, and it was a thousand dollars, so I let myself get talked into keeping it. That first time, after I got used to the idea, it was even sort of exciting. Do you see?"

I nodded.

"But after more calls, and more money, it wasn't. I knew it was wrong and I was scared, and finally they said, okay, if you don't want to get paid, we won't pay you. But they had already paid me a total of sixty-five hundred dollars, and I had spent it." She got up and went back down the hall again and came back with a 5x7 manila envelope. She opened it and shook out a small stack of papers and handed them to me. "Over the past three years I've put forty-two hundred dollars into various charities. I didn't want to keep any of the sixty-five hundred. That's all I can do."

I looked. The receipts totaled forty-two hundred dollars. Twenty-three hundred dollars until a clean conscience. Extremes.

She said, "Does this help at all?"

"If you got caught and went to trial, or if you went to the cops, maybe. Other than that, no."

She nodded. "Oh."

"Has Charlie ever mentioned any other way he launders money?"

"No."

"How about the woman who hired you, was she in their pocket?"

"I don't think so."

"Do they own anyone else at the bank now?"

"No."

"Does anyone else at the bank know what's going on?"

"'No."

"Is there a paper record that passes between you and the DeLacas?"

"No."

Maybe the scattershot approach wasn't going to work so well. Sort of like trying to find intelligence. "How about a record of the bank transfers?"

"Not for the first few times. The first few times, I was scared and I didn't want there to be a record so I erased it from the computers. Then I got scared to not have a record and I started keeping a file."

"Okay. That's something. I'll need to see it."

She nodded. "All right. I can print out a transaction record at the bank."

I said, "Is there anything you can think of that maybe I'm missing?"

"I don't think so."

The cat came down the hall and walked across the dining room and into the kitchen. Karen Shipley Nelsen leaned toward me and clenched her hands together. "What about Peter?"

I spread my hands. "I have what we in the trade call an ethical dilemma. I've taken Peter's money to find you, and now I have. I owe him that information."

She stared at me, still clenching the hands.

"I've found people before and kept their secrets, but that won't work here. Peter wants to find his son and he has unlimited resources with which to do it. If I tell him that I couldn't find you, he will simply hire someone else and they will find you. You weren't that hard to find."

Her jaw tightened. She wasn't liking it much, but she knew that she didn't have to like it I said, "What does Toby know?"

"He doesn't know anything about the DeLuca family or how I'm involved with them. I don't want him to know."

"What does he know about Peter?"

"He knows that his father's name is Peter Nelsen, and he knows that his father left us because he didn't want a family and he didn't want to be married. We don't talk about it. He doesn't know that his father is the guy who makes movies and has articles written about him."

"You should think about telling him."

She stood up and went to the window and looked out at her son. The ball was sitting motionless on the drive and Toby was sitting against one of the birches. She said, "Tell me the truth. Do you see any way out of this?"

"Guys like the DeLucas, they won't do something out of the goodness of their hearts. If we want something, we'll have to give something."

"Like what?"

"They might let you go if we could put one of their people in your place. That way they don't lose anything. Would you walk away from the bank?"

"Yes. Yes, I'd walk away." Her face was pale when she said it.

I nodded. "Okay. That's a place to start. I'll ask around, find out about the DeLucas, see what's there that we can give them or what we can use as leverage. What you can do is get together all the information you have about the accounts and about what you know about Charlie and Sal. Don't leave anything out. Even if it seems small or silly or beside the point."

"Okay."

"I'll go to Charlie and give him a little push and see what happens. Charlie won't like it, but there isn't any other way. Is that all right with you?"

She nodded.

"Maybe I can get you away from the DeLucas before we bring Peter in. If they're away and you're not a part of them anymore, it might work."

She nodded again.

"If it works, Peter doesn't have to know about the DeLucas and they don't have to know about Peter."

She was looking hopeful. "That's what I want."

"But it may not work out that way. It may get messy and you have to be ready for that, too. Focus on DeLuca. DeLuca is who is important. Not Peter. Do you understand?"

"Of course."

"We'll take it a step at a time."

She nodded some more, then we stood up and went to the door. When we got there, she said, "How much?"

I looked at her.

"How much do you want for this?"

"Fifty billion dollars."

She stared at me and then she nodded and made a little smile. 'Thank you, Mr. Cole."

"Don't mention it. We're a full-service agency."

I called Joe Pike at seven-thirty that night, L. A. time. "It's me. I'm in New York on this thing, and it's heating up. Looks like the mafia is involved."

"Rollie George."

"You got his number?"

Pike gave me a phone number. "Where are you staying?"

I told him.

"Wait ten, then call Rollie. Try to survive until I get there."

He hung up. That Pike. Some partner, huh?

Fifteen minutes later I called the number and a deep male voice said, "I've got an apartment on Barrow Street in the Village, just east of Seventh. You need a place to stay, it's yours." Roland George.

"How ya doin, Rollie?"

"Can't complain. My friend Joe Pike says you want to know some things about your classic, all-American-style mafia." He dragged out mafia into three long syllables. Street black.

"The DeLuca family."

"Figured it might be the Gambinos, you being the guy who burned Rudy when he was out on the coast." Nobody in the rest of the world refers to Los Angeles as "the coast." Only New Yorkers.