Lullaby Town

by Robert Crais

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  Pike and I picked up our pace, running on either side of the road, our breath great white plumes in the snowy air. We ran hard until we drew close, then we throttled back, trading speed for quiet as we moved up to the hangar. The shadow shapes we had seen when we came out of the woods were gone.

  Charlie's Town Car was parked at a skew outside the corrugated-metal hangar, already collecting little pockets of snow on the windward side. The two Pawnees were on the field side of the hangar, and, before them, a couple of rusted water mules used for aviation gasoline and pesticides. Somewhere upwind, Karen Lloyd yelled and there was a single sharp pop, pistol, but the wind and the snow carried away the sound.

  Pike said, "They'll be in the hangar or in the fields behind the planes."

  We went to the hangar, looped around the corner, and saw them through a dust-streaked window built into a door. Karen Lloyd was on her knees, crying, and Charlie DeLuca was holding Toby by the hair, pointing a Browning .380 automatic at his right temple. Toby was crying, too. He was probably crying because he was scared, but he might've been crying because a fat guy was hitting Peter Alan Nelsen in the face and knocking him down. He would hit Peter and knock him down, and Peter would get up and go after him again. The fat guy was thick through the middle and the hips and the shoulders and the back, sort of like an overstuffed sausage, but it was hard fat. There wouldn't be a lot of stamina, but there was plenty of mean. Peter kept trying to get to Charlie, but the fat guy kept beating him up. Karen was yelling something about doing whatever Charlie wanted if only he'd stop. It was hard to hear them through the glass.

  I touched Pike's shoulder and pointed past them to the big sliding doors at the back of the hangar. The doors were open.

  Pike nodded, and we slipped under the window and took one step toward the field when the two other guys who'd been with Charlie DeLuca came around the corner. One of them was tall and the other wasn't. The shorter one had a dead cigar in his mouth and what looked like a .32 revolver in his right hand. The taller one was grousing about the cold, and neither of them knew we were there until they saw us. Joe Pike hit the shorter guy with an outside spin kick that sounded like it broke his neck. The taller guy said, "Hey," and fired what was maybe a Rossi .38 into the ground, and I shot him high in the chest. Blood squirted out in a little geyser, and he looked down at it and then started pressing on the blood, trying to make it stay where it was. Then he fell over.

  Inside, there were the sounds of fast movement and Karen screamed something and there was the peculiar high shriek that only young children can make. Someone started shooting and bullets slammed through the side of the hangar, well wide of us, and then the shooting stopped.

  We looked in through either side of the window in time to see Charlie drag Toby through the hangar doors. Karen followed them. Peter was lying on his side and the fat guy kicked him twice, then took a blue revolver from under his jacket. He pulled Peter's head back and put the revolver into Peter's mouth. Pike shot him in the top of the left shoulder with a load of number four. The fat guy fell backward and Pike shot him again.

  We ran back between the two Pawnee crop dusters just as Charlie came around the hangar with one arm locked around Toby Lloyd's neck, looking for us. The Browning .380 was pressed under Toby's ear. Charlie's face was bright red and there were veins standing out on his forehead. He was checking the roofline. Batman and Robin always come down from the roof. He screamed, "You're mine, you sonofabitch. I'm gonna cut out your fuckin' guts and fry'm in a pan!"

  Karen came around the corner behind them, tears washing her face, her hands tight and clawed. She wanted to run to Toby, but she was scared if she did the nut with the gun would kill him. She yelled, "Toby!"

  Charlie DeLuca dug his pistol so deep under Toby's jaw that Toby shrieked again and wet his pants. Charlie yelled, "I'm gonna kill him, you chickenshit motherfuckers, you don't come out here. I'm gonna blow his fuckin' eyes out."

  I glanced at Pike. Pike's flat black lenses were locked on Charlie DeLuca, the shotgun resting easy along the Pawnee's metal wing strut. Pike's a better shot than me. Maybe the best I've ever seen. I said, "He's going to do it. He's going to kill the boy."

  "Yes."

  I gave him the .357 and took the shotgun. "Can you make the shot?"

  Karen screamed, "Help him, please. Somebody help!"

  Pike said, "I can make the shot, but not with his gun on the boy that way. He could jerk when he dies."

  Karen screamed, "Toby!"

  Peter stumbled out of the hangar and said, "Let go my kid, you fat fuck!" There were cuts over both eyes and his nose was broken and his lips were split. There was so much blood on his face that he looked like he was wearing makeup. "I'm Peter Alan Nelsen, and I will kick your fat fucking ass!"

  Karen screamed, "Peter! No!"

  Charlie DeLuca smiled and swung the Browning toward Peter and said, "Kick this." Then he fired once.

  Peter fell down, and Karen and Toby screamed, and I stepped out from behind the Pawnee and yelled, "Charlie!"

  Charlie DeLuca swung the .380 back toward me, pulled the trigger, and something tugged at the top of my shoulder. Then I felt something solid wash past me from behind and there was a loud noise and the back of Charlie DeLuca's head blew out like a big rig tire filled with red paint. Pike's Python. Charlie was dead before he started to fall.

  Toby kicked away from what was left of Charlie DeLuca and ran to Peter, yelling, "Daddy! Daddy!"

  Blood was spilling from the top of Peter's left thigh, but he made it to his knees and dragged himself over to Charlie DeLuca and started punching the body. If Peter could get up, I figured I should get up, too. I did okay at it, but my ears were ringing and my shirt felt wet. I looked down and opened my jacket and saw that my shirt was turning black from the top down. Then Pike was there, peeling back the shirt. "Doesn't look bad. Caught it across the top of the trapezius."

  "Sure."

  Pike went over to Peter, took off his belt, and wrapped it tight around Peter's leg. Then he came back to me and used his sweatshirt as a compress on my shoulder. I burned where the bullet had torn through the muscle and there was a tingling feeling, but it could've been worse. Peter blinked at his leg and at Charlie DeLuca and then he grinned at me. "We got the bastard. We got him."

  "Yes," I said. "We did."

  He began to laugh. "It's over."

  Karen was laughing then, too. Nervous and scared and letting off the tension by laughing. "Yes," she said. "God, yes."

  Karen came over and hugged me. Toby helped Peter to his feet and they came over and hugged me, too.

  Some days, I guess you're more huggable than others.

  CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

  We left the bodies at the airport and went into town to see Chelam's only doctor, a young guy with a beard and glasses name of Hocksley. Karen Lloyd drove.

  The doc was good about it. He practiced out of his home just four houses down from May Erdich's place, the kind of guy who wanted to know his patients and bring babies into the world and watch them grow. Idealistic. You know the type. When he cut off my shirt and Peter's pants, he whistled and said, "Man, I haven't seen anything like this since I left the Bronx General ER."

  "Hunting accident."

  "Sure."

  He swabbed us down and cleaned us out, then put in a couple of stitches and gave us each two injections, something clear to fight infection and something white to fight tetanus. He also gave us some orange pills for the pain. He said, "Don't suppose I should call the police about this."

  I said, "Mind if I use your phone?"

  I called Rollie George and told him where I was and what had happened. While I told him, the doc crossed his arms and listened and absently stroked his beard. When I hung up, he said, "Think I should maybe go take a look?"

  I shook my head. "It won't do any good."

  He looked at Peter. "You look familiar."

  "I've got one of those faces."

&nb
sp; We left the doctor, dropped Toby with May Erdich, and drove back to the little airfield. The snow had stopped falling but not before a gentle skin of white had been pulled over the road and the airplanes and the bodies in the field. Joe Pike and I unshipped the tarps from the two Pawnees' engine cowlings and covered Charlie DeLuca and the three guys who'd died with him and then we sat in the LeBaron to wait.

  A couple of Connecticut state cars got there first, followed by a plain blue sedan with somebody from the Connecticut AG's office. They came in the right way, without the sirens or the lights, and I liked them for it. The guy from the AG's office walked over to us and asked who we were. I told him my name and Joe's, but I didn't mention Karen or Peter, and he didn't ask. He said that he had been told something about bodies at another location. I told him how to get to the pumpkin field and that there were two bodies on either side of the field in the woods. He nodded and went back to the uniform cops, and then he and a car full of the uniforms drove away to take a look. Twenty minutes later a tan car with an FBI emblem on the side door and a white Ford from the New York State Attorney General's office pulled in just ahead of a gray Cadillac limousine. Two guys got out of the FBI car, and a bald guy and two women got out of the N.Y. car. Rollie George and his dog got out of the limo. The law student was driving. Everybody except the bald man smiled when they saw Rollie and shook his hand and told him it was good to see him. Nothing like palling around with a big-time novelist at a murder scene.

  Karen said, "Shouldn't we be out there with them?"

  "No. We sit and wait and see what they say."

  They went as a group to the spot between the two airplanes and lifted the tarpaulin and looked at what was under it. Maxie sniffed at Charlie's body and lifted his leg and Rollie had to pull the dog away. One of the women laughed. They stood over the bodies for a long time, sometimes glancing back to the car, but mostly not. Everybody seemed in agreement with what they were talking about except the bald guy. You could see it in his face. He made sharp gestures and once he pointed at our car. They talked some more, and then Rollie George walked over to us and bent down by the driver's side window. He gave Karen the sort of reassuring smile your grandfather might give, and if he recognized Peter, he didn't say anything. He leaned close to me and said, "Can we have the bad cop?"

  I said, "Yes. If my people don't get named and don't have to testify."

  He nodded. "It looks like there's more than one officer involved. It looks like there might be several with Kennedy security who took part."

  I nodded back at him. "I sort of figured that"

  Rollie smiled at Karen again and then he and Max walked back to the little group around Charlie DeLuca's body. There was more talk and the bald guy liked it even less and made more of the sharp gestures until one of the women he had ridden out with said, "Oh, shut the fuck up, Morton."

  The feds and the people from the two AG offices came to the car for Pike and me and walked us around the site asking us questions. Most of the questions were about Charlie DeLuca and the Jamaicans and the cop I had followed to the Queens precinct house. I didn't mention Charlie DeLuca's secret account, or that he was doing something that Sal didn't know about, or the Gambozas. The Jamaicans probably didn't know whose dope they were stealing and neither, probably, did the cop. If they did, and if they told, that was between the DeLucas and them. You do what you can.

  When the AG people were finished with their questions, they brought us back to the car. None of them looked at Karen Lloyd or Peter Alan Nelsen, or spoke to them. It was as if they weren't there. One of the women and one of the feds went with a couple of Staties to the pumpkin field. They weren't gone long. After they got back, there was more talk and then Roland George came back to us. He said, "I think we've done about all we can do here. You can go now."

  Karen Lloyd said, "Is that all?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "You don't need to question us? You aren't going to take us in?"

  Peter said, "Karen."

  Rollie George smiled and walked away.

  Karen looked at me. "They're keeping us out of this? Even with people dead?"

  "Yes. Start the car and let's get out of here."

  We drove to Karen Lloyd's house in silence and parked in the drive beneath the basketball hoop until Peter had his story straight. The people from the AG's office were going to release Dani's body to him with no questions asked, but he would need to know what to tell Nick and T.J. and the press. Peter Alan Nelsen's bodyguard had been murdered and there would be questions. He was going to have to lie, and he was going to have to maintain the lie for the rest of his life. He said, "I can do it."

  Karen said, "You'd better."

  He frowned at her and then he got out of the LeBaron and got into his limo and drove away. Karen watched him go. "Do you think he can?"

  I nodded. "Yes. He's learned a lot."

  "I hope." She let out a sigh. "I hate this. I hate it that once you let someone into your life, they're part of your life forever."

  I said, "Part, maybe, but not all. You're still you. You're vice-president of the bank. You're twice president of the PTA. You're a Rotarian and a member of the Library Committee. Maybe, without having gone through what you went through with Peter, you wouldn't be any of those things. Maybe you would be less."

  She turned and looked at me, and then she leaned across and kissed me, and then she turned in the seat and kissed Joe Pike. She said, "I'll do what's best for Toby. I've always been able to do that. What happens now with the DeLucas?"

  I looked out the window at the house and the basketball hoop and Toby's bike leaning against the garage wall. Then I looked back at her. "I don't know. Sal and Charlie aren't running the family anymore. They'll have a new boss."

  She made her lips into a little rosebud and then she nodded slowly. "Do you think he'll try to make me keep doing this?"

  Pike leaned close to her and patted her arm. "Go live your life. You let us worry about that."

  Karen Lloyd took a deep breath, let it out, and got out of the car.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Pike and I collected our things, said our good-byes, and drove down to the city where we took a fourteenth-floor room at the Park Lane Hotel on East 59th Street

  . It was a nice room with a view of Central Park.

  We took turns in the shower, then dressed and walked to the Museum of Modern Art on 53rd. They call it MoMA for short, which is dumb, but they had Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night, which is anything but. Score one for New York. I had always wanted to see it, and now sat for the better part of an hour staring into its depths and textures. Pike said, "I know how he felt."

  "They say he was mad."

  Pike shrugged.

  We walked up to West 7lst Street and had an early dinner at Victor's Café 52. Cuban food, which rivaled and in some ways surpassed the excellent fare found at the Versailles on Venice Boulevard

  in Los Angeles. I had the chicken steak and black beans. Pike had the white bean soup and fried plantains. We both had beer. Score two.

  It was still light when we finished, so we walked across the three long blocks of Central Park, past the lake and Bethesda Fountain and something that called itself the Boathouse Café. The café was closed. People were jogging and riding bikes and a couple of kids were flying a model airplane. No one seemed about to do crime, but the mounted police were in high profile. After the sun went down, it might be different. I asked Pike, "Are you afraid?"

  He shook his head.

  "Would you be afraid at midnight if we were alone?"

  He walked a moment. "I have the capacity for great violence."

  I nodded. So did I. But I thought that I might still be afraid.

  Pike slipped his hands into the pockets of his parka and we walked past a smaller pond where an older man and a couple of young girls were sailing a model sailboat. A man and a woman decked out in serious biking apparel were standing with a tandem bike, watching them. We stopped and watched them, too
, and I wondered how deeply into winter the pond could venture before it would freeze. The brisk fall wind carried the boat well across the pond. Pike said, "Elvis?"

  "Yeah?"

  "I remember being afraid. I was very young."

  We watched the old man and the girls and the boat, and then we left the park and walked down to the brownstones that used to belong to Sal DeLuca. There were no limos at the curb or thugs hanging around the stoop. There was a black bow on the door.

  Joe stayed on the corner at Fifth Avenue

  and I went up to the door and rang the bell once. In a little bit Freddie opened the door and looked out at me. His face was flat and without expression. "Yeah?"

  "You hear about Charlie?"

  "We heard."

  "I'm at the Park Lane."

  "Swell. Have a party."

  "Tell Vito. Tell Angie. I'll be there until this is squared away."

  Freddie gave me the patented tough-guy sneer. "We got no business with you."

  "That's where you're wrong. Tell Vito and Angie. The Park Lane."

  The next morning there was a three-inch article on page six of The New York Times. It reported that a prostitute named Gloria Uribe and a man believed to be her pimp, one Jesus Santiago, were found shot to death in a warehouse in lower Manhattan. Authorities had no leads as to the circumstances of their deaths. In a separate article on page eighteen a Jamaican national and known drug dealer named Urethro Mubata was found murdered in the front seat of his late-model Jaguar Sovereign in Queens. His throat was cut so deeply that the head was almost separated from the body. Police speculated his death to be the result of a drug deal gone sour. The New York Post reported that Richard Sealy, a drug addict, had been found dead in a Port Authority men's room with multiple fractures of the head, neck, both arms, and left leg. Guess junkies don't rate the Times.

  Loose ends were being tied.

  Two days later, in the afternoon, I was walking down Central Park West across from the Hayden Planetarium when a blue Cadillac Eldorado pulled up beside me. Pike was maybe forty yards back and across the street. Vito DeLuca opened the door and looked out at me. "Get in."