Lullaby Town (1992) (25 page)

"Unh-hunh."

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 andl aughed. 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 Celicaa nd 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.

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."

"Un-hunh. 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 WKELrTV 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."

I said, "Would you like me to get it?"

Karen shook her head and went to the door. "No, thank you. This is my house, and my problem."

The doorbell rang just as Karen opened the door. The tall, thin woman tried to step in past Karen, but Karen wouldn't get out of the way. The tall woman gave a nice local-news on-camera smile and put out her hand. Karen didn't take it. "Hello, Ms. Lloyd. Janice Watkins, WKEL-TV. I do local color and human interest, and I was fascinated when I heard that Peter Alan Nelsen, the filmmaker, is your husband. "Janice Watkins seemed neither to mind nor notice that Karen hadn't taken her hand. Probably used to it.

Karen said, 'You've made some sort of mistake. I'm not married."

The smile didn't falter. "Ex-husband, then. I know how that is, I've got two." She chuckled. Establishing rapport.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Watkins. I don't know what you're talking about."

A corner of the smile gave way. "Peter Alan Nelsen and his entourage are staying at the Howard Johnson's."

Toby craned around the bucket of chicken, trying to see. Pike pushed the bucket out of his way.

The thin woman said, "You've been seen with him. So has your son. Everyone is saying that Toby Lloyd is Mr. Nelsen's child and that Mr. Nelsen has journeyed across the country to find him." Journeyed. She was working up the human-interest angle, all right.

"I've never been married to Peter Alan Nelsen and I don't know what you're talking about."

The smile faltered. "You weren't?"

"No."

"Is Peter Alan Nelsen the boy's father?"

"No."

Janice Watkins blinked. She tried to peek past Karen to see if Peter Alan Nelsen was lurking inside. I waved at her.

Karen Lloyd said, "You've interrupted our meal. Do you mind?"

Janice Watkins narrowed her eyes. "Ms. Lloyd, I have this information on very good authority."

Karen Lloyd leaned toward Janice Watkins. "Ms. Watkins, chew a used rubber." Then she slammed the door.

Toby was staring at his plate when Karen came back to the table. His face was red and her face was tight and pale. When she picked up a piece of original recipe, her hand trembled and she put it back down.

Toby said, "Why did you tell'm he wasn't my dad?"

Karen lifted the piece of chicken again and this time took a small bite. She didn't answer. After a while Toby got up, took his plate into the kitchen, then went down the hall to his room.

Karen Lloyd put down her chicken and said, "Shit."

At seven-fifty that evening the doorbell rang again and this time when Karen answered, Peter Alan Nelsen came in without Nick or T. J. or Dani. He said, "I've been thinking about this and I've got a way to make everybody happy." Toby must've seen the limo, because he came out of his room.

Karen stiffened as if someone had injected her with Super Glue and said, "He can't keep that thing." First words out of her mouth.

Peter started to say something, but then he didn't. Showing restraint. "I'm not a dope. I know I'm here at a bad time. You're trying to straighten out this thing with the DeLuca people, and you've got me here, and you've gotta be worried about Toby. Lemme lighten the loadf or you. How about I take Tobe back to L. A. with me until you guys get this worked out?"

Toby said, "Yeah!"

Peter looked from Karen to me and then back to Karen. He spread his hands. Toby'll be safe, and I'll be out of your hair, and you can take care of what you need to take care of. When it's done, you can give me a call and Toby and I will come back and we can work out our family situation."

Toby was giving it the ear-to-ear. "Great! Can I meet Sylvester Stallone?"

Peter said, "Sure."

Karen said, "No."

Peter frowned. "No, he can't meet Sylvester Stallone, or no, he can't go to L. A.?"

Karen went back to one of the wing chairs and sat down. Her knees were together and so were her hands. "He has school. He has basketball."

I said, "It might make things easier."

Peter said, "Jesus Christ, Karen, it won't kill him to miss a few days of school."