Lullaby Town

by Robert Crais

  Lucerno's Meat Packing Plant was in a two-story redbrick industrial building between a tire wholesaler and a textile outlet, four blocks from the Manhattan Bridge. There was a drive and a large crushed-gravel parking lot on the side where Econoline vans and six-by trucks turned around and backed up to a loading dock. Five cars were parked at the far end of the lot, out of the trucks' way. The second car from the end was the black Lincoln.

  I pulled into the lot past the six-bys, whipped a snappy turn like I was trying to get out of the place, put it into reverse, backed up, and crunched the Lincoln nicely. I turned off the Taurus, got out, and made a big deal out of looking at what I had done. The Lincoln's left front headlight was popped and the chrome around it crumpled and the bumper compressed. A couple of black guys in dirty white aprons up on the loading dock were watching me. One of the black guys went into the warehouse and yelled something, and then a little guy in a white jumpsuit and a clipboard came out. I walked over and said, "I was trying to turn around and I backed into that Lincoln. Do you know who owns it?"

  The little guy came over to the edge of the dock and stood with his boot tips hanging over and looked at the cars. Lucerno's Fine Meats was embroidered on the back of his coveralls with red thread and FRANK was sewn over his left breast pocket. His face was sour and lined, like maybe he'd just checked his lunch pail and discovered that his wife had given him a roach sandwich. He said, "Jesus Christ, where'd you learnta drive? Wait here a minute." He went back into the warehouse. The two black guys finished loading a dolly of white boxes into a six-by. They took the boxes off the dolly two at a time and slid them into the six-by so hard that the boxes slammed into the truck with a heavy thud. Tenderizing the meat.

  In a little while Frank came back and said, "Forget it you’re off the hook."

  I looked at him. "What do you mean, forget it?" Best-laid plans.

  "Just what I said. You had a bad break, but we're not gonna bust your chops about it. Take off." The old smash-their-car-and-offer-to-pay-for-it routine wasn't getting me very far.

  I said, The headlight's smashed and the bumper's pretty dinged up and the frame around the light is busted. Maybe the owner should come take a look."

  "It's a company car. Forget it."

  "I don't want to forget it. I'm responsible. I oughta pay something to somebody."

  He gave me Desi looking at Lucy, the look saying, Jesus Christ, what did I marry? "I'm giving you a pass, capisce? What, are you stupid?"

  I said, "You know, that's the trouble with America today. Everybody's looking for a pass. Nobody wants to own up. Well, not me. I own up. I take what's coming to me. I pay my way." Maybe I could appeal to his national pride.

  One of the black guys adjusted his crotch and laughed. He had two gold inlays on the right side of his mouth. Frank took a deep breath, let it out, and said, "Look, I got work to do. You came in here, you busted the car, and you came looking for someone to do right by it. Great. But I'm standing here telling you that it's okay. I work here. We seen what happened and it's okay. I'm telling you that you ain't gotta pay a dime, you ain't gotta say you're sorry, you ain't gotta do dick. Okay?"

  "But you don't own the car?"

  He spread his hands and blinked. "What?"

  "And you don't own the company."

  "What?" His voice was getting higher.

  "If you don't own the car and you don't own the company, then how do I know you've got the right to tell me it's okay?"

  He shook his head and looked at the sky. "I can't fuckin' believe this."

  "Tell me who drives the car," I said. "Maybe the guy who drives the car should tell me it's okay."

  "Jumpin' Jesus fuckin' Christ with a hard-on."

  "It seems only fair."

  One of the black guys said, "Oo-ee."

  Frank threw down the clipboard and stalked back into the building. The two black guys flashed a lot of inlay work and gave each other the Spike Lee treatment. After a little while Frank came back with a large, bald man in his fifties with pop eyes and a melon head and a voice so soft that it might have come from a sick child. He told me that he was the manager and he gave me his card. It said Michael Vinicotta. Lucerno Meats. Manager. He said that if my insurance company wanted to speak with anyone, they could speak with him. He told me that he very much appreciated my concern and my consideration in trying to make sure I had done right by the owner of the car, but that restitution by me was neither sought nor needed.

  I said, "Maybe we should leave the cars where they are and call the police and get an accident report."

  He said, "Get the fuck outta here or there's gonna be more broken than a goddamned headlight."

  I went back to the Taurus and drove around the block and parked in a garage on Broome Street

  . I walked back to a pastry shop across from Lucerno's and bought a double decaf espresso and sat in the window. Maybe I should go back and pretend to be Ed McMahon and tell them that the guy who drove the Lincoln had just won the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes for a million bucks. That sounded better than the old busted-headlamp routine, but now they knew I wasn't Ed McMahon. Probably should've tried that one first.

  Most of the way through my third espresso the fat guy with the caviar skin came out of Lucerno's. Joey. He was wearing the white coveralls and insulated work boots and the same blue Navy pea coat that he had worn at the Howard Johnson's. Well, well. He wasn't the guy in the Lincoln, but he was close enough.

  I paid for the espressos and followed Joey two blocks east to a place with a big sign that said SPINA'S CLAM BAR. I watched through the front glass as he took a stool at the end of the bar and said something to the bartender. The bartender put a glass of draft beer in front of him, then set up an iced tray and started opening clams. Four other guys sat at the bar, but no one seemed to know anyone else and no one seemed particularly talkative. Another half-dozen people sat in little booths. It was the kind of place you could go in your work clothes.

  When the tray was filled with clams, the bartender put it in front of Joey and then walked away to see about the other guys. Joey was slurping a clam off its shell when I walked up behind him and said, "Say, Joey."

  Joey turned and looked at me and I thumbed him in the throat.

  His face went red and his eyes got big and he grabbed at his throat and started to cough. Most of a clam popped out and fell on the floor.

  I said, "You oughtta not eat so fast, you're going to choke."

  The bartender came down. "Is he okay?"

  I said sure. I said I knew how to do the Heimlich. A couple of the people at the other end of the bar looked over, but when they saw the bits of clam all over the place they turned away. The bartender went back to his other customers.

  Joey sort of half fell and half slid off his stool and pushed a slow right hand at me. I pushed it past with an open hand then thumbed him in the right eye. He went white this time and stumbled backward and fell over his stool into the bar and down to the floor.

  The bartender and the other four guys at the bar looked at me. I said, "Think I did the Heimlich a little too hard."

  The nearest guy said, "You want I should call an ambulance?"

  "Maybe in a bit."

  Joey was scrambling around on the floor, holding his face with one hand and trying to get up. He screamed, "You poked out my fuckin' eye! I'm gonna be blind!"

  I pulled him up and led him farther back into the bar. The bartender and the other guys were making a big deal out of not seeing it. I said, "Nah. I took it easy. Let me see."

  He let me see. I thumbed him in the other eye.

  Joey made a sort of gasping sound and grabbed at the other eye and tried to turn away but he was against the wall and there was no place to go. The eyes were red and tearing but he would be fine.

  He said, "You sonofabitch, you're supposed to be gone. We got rid of you."

  "You did a lousy job."

  He lurched forward and threw another right hand and I pushed it past just
like the first and drove a spin kick to the right side of his head. It slammed him sideways into the bar and he fell down again. The guys at the other end of the bar and a couple of people in the booths stood up. The bartender said, "Hey, I'm gonna call the cops."

  I said, "Call'm. This won't take long."

  I reached down and pulled Joey up again and sat him on the stool and dug out his wallet and looked at his driver's license. Joseph L. Putata. Jackson Heights.

  I put the wallet back in his pocket. "Okay, Joey. What's a used rubber like you got to do with Karen Lloyd?"

  One of his eyes was looking up and the other was sort of rolling around and he was blinking a lot. He shook his head, like he didn't know what I was talking about. "I dunno. Who's Karen Lloyd?" His hands were down at his sides.

  "The lady at the bank." Maybe she hadn't sent them.

  Joey's eyes started coming together and he looked scared. "Oh, shit, I told him we run you off. I said you were outta here."

  "Who? The guy in the Lincoln?"

  The bartender said, "I just called the cops."

  Joey looked from me to the bartender, then back to me. Confused along with the scared.

  I said, "Why'd the guy in the Lincoln want me to forget about Karen Lloyd?"

  "I dunno. He said you were bothering her. He said she was a friend." He looked even more scared, like talking about the guy in the Lincoln brought it out in him. "I told him you were gone."

  "Who is he?"

  "Who?"

  "The guy in the Lincoln."

  Joey looked at me like I'd just beamed down from the Enterprise. "Jesus Christ, you don't know?"

  "No."

  He looked at the other people at the bar and then he lowered his voice. He said, "We're talking about Charlie DeLuca. Sal DeLuca's kid."

  "So?"

  Joey shook his head and put on a face like he was about to wet his pants. "Sal DeLuca is the godfather, you dumb fuck. The capo de tutti capo. He's the head of the whole damned mafia."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was twenty minutes before five that afternoon when I turned down the neat, clean blacktop off the county road above Chelam and pulled into Karen Shipley's drive. The sun was most of the way down in the southwest, and would set in another hour. The LeBaron was parked in the garage.

  Toby Lloyd was pounding a basketball on the drive, hopping sideways and swiveling his head as if he were being covered by David Robinson and Magic Johnson. I parked about thirty feet back to give him room to work the ball and got out. "Hi. Remember me from the bank?"

  "Sure." He bounced the ball a couple of times, then turned and launched one toward the basket. It banged off the backboard and went through the net.

  I said, "Gotta be tough shooting in the cold. Gets your fingers stiff."

  He nodded and scooped up the rebound. "You want to see my mom?"

  "Yeah. She inside?"

  "Sure. C'mon." Elvis Cole, friend of the family, comes to call.

  He led me through the garage and a laundry room and into their kitchen. The walls and the ceilings and the floors and the appliances were still new-house bright, without the ground-in dirt that comes as the years put their wear of life on a place. A thick spaghetti sauce was simmering on top of a Jenn-Air range, a fine spray of the sauce a red shadow on the enamel. Toby yelled, "Hey, Mom, there's somebody here to see you!"

  We went out of the kitchen and through the dining room and into the living room. Karen Shipley came out of a hallway from the back of the house in a pink sweatshirt and faded blue jeans and white socks with little pompoms at the heels. She said, "What did you say, hon?" Then she saw me.

  I said, "Hi, Karen."

  There was a small part of a moment as she saw me when her eyes flickered and her breath might have caught, but then she forced a pretty good smile for the boy like everything was fine. "You're still here."

  "Uh-huh."

  More of the smile for the boy. "Tobe. Mr. Cole and I have something to discuss. Would you leave us alone for a while?"

  "Okay." Like he was used to having to be out of the way when she talked business and that was just fine with him. He charged back through the kitchen and the laundry.

  The living room was large and comfortable, with a vaulted beamed ceiling and peg-and-groove floors and Early American furniture across from a used brick fireplace with a mantel. Colonial. A white and orange cat was asleep on the couch.

  Karen Shipley said, "You're wasting your time, Mr. Cole. My name is not Karen Shipley."

  I said, "You're owned by the mob."

  She went very still, and then her left foot moved as if her balance had abruptly and without warning shifted and she had to catch herself. Her mouth opened, then closed, and she wet her lips. She did not look away from me. Outside, Toby bounced the basketball. There was a faraway electric hum from something in the kitchen and something else behind me in the living room. Clocks. She said, "That's," and then she said, "Silly."

  "Two hours after I saw you in the bank four days ago, three men came to the Howard Johnson's and told me to forget about you and get out of town. I didn't. This morning you met a man driving a black Lincoln Town Car at a secluded place off the road near Brunly. The man in the black Lincoln gave you a nylon duffel bag, then made advances on you which you refused. He struck you. The man left first and then you brought the duffel to the bank. The Lincoln Town Car is registered to the Lucerno Meat Company in lower Manhattan and was driven by a man I've identified as one Charlie DeLuca, son of Sal DeLuca, head of the DeLuca crime family. I went to the meat plant and observed one of the three men who had come to the Howard Johnson's. His name is Joseph Putata. That links Putata to Charlie DeLuca. I didn't see what was in the bag, but I'd bet it was money, and I'd bet you wash it for the DeLucas by running it through an account without reporting it to the IRS. I'd also bet that if I went to the cops with this, they'd be pleased as peaches to see me."

  Karen Shipley's eyes got red and wet, and she sat down next to the cat with her hands in her lap. She said, "Oh, damn," over and over.

  I went into the kitchen, turned off the Jenn-Air so that the sauce wouldn't burn, then drew a glass of water and brought it out to her. She sipped it.

  I said, "The three guys gave you away. Where would you get three guys like that?"

  "I'm sorry. I didn't think they would send anyone to do that. I didn't mean for them to threaten you."

  "It's okay. I've been threatened before."

  "I'm not a bad person. I don't like this."

  "I know. I saw the way it was with DeLuca."

  Karen Shipley wiped at her eyes, then got up and went to the big triple-glazed window and looked out at her son. Bounce. "What happens now?"

  "I don't know. I'm trying to figure that out."

  She looked back at me, surprised. "What do you mean? Haven't you told Peter?"

  "No."

  "And you haven't told the police?"

  "No."

  "But those men beat you up."

  I said, "I knew something was wrong and I wanted to find out what it was. Cops deal with the law. The law isn't usually concerned with right and wrong. Ofttimes, there are very large differences."

  She shook her head as if I'd spoken Esperanto.

  I said, "All you do is launder their money?"

  "Yes."

  "Ever done any other crimes for them? Drugs, murder, stolen goods?"

  Surprised again. "Of course not. What do you think I am?"

  "An employee of the mafia."

  She looked away and crossed her arms. Embarrassed. Back at the boy. Bounce, bounce. "When I met Charlie DeLuca all I knew about the mafia was Al Pacino. I was working as a waitress on Seventh Avenue in the Village and Charlie introduced me to his father and the old man said he could help me get a better job and I said sure. Nobody said anything about the mafia."

  "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, I had 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.