Lullaby Town

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Clyde's was a knothole of a bar in the bottom of a four-story building that was mostly fire escapes and clotheslines. Three or four women in tiny red dresses and rabbit coats sat listlessly at the bar while a couple of guys in long coats leaned against a Pontiac out front laughing about something. One of the guys had a gap in his teeth like Mike Tyson.

I put the Taurus across the street in a bus stop, then walked back. The two guys kept laughing but watched me come. There were no more white guys up here than there were down on 122nd Street. If I were them, I'd probably watch me, too.

I went into a little open stairwell next to Clyde's and found the apartment-house mailboxes. G. Uribe was on box 304.

The guy with Mike Tyson's teeth looked in at me and said, "Say, man, who you lookin' for?"

"Gloria Uribe. She around?"

"Naw, she workin'. She better be, she know what's good for her."

"You her business manager?"

"Naw, man, she Haitian or Cuban or somedamnthing like that. They got their own people to take care of'm. I got somethin' on the fourth floor just as good, though. No waitin'."

"No, thanks," I said. "My heart belongs to Gloria."

He said, "Shee-it, you the poe-lice, all right." His buddy laughed and they knocked fists.

I gave him the okay we both know I'm a cop face. "What's your name, homeboy?"

"Luther."

"Luther, make a friend on the force. Gloria do a good business?"

"Fair to middlin'."

"White guys?"

Luther nodded and winked at his friend. "You sniffin' 'round 'bout that gangster with the big car. You from Organized Crime?"

"Maybe." Maybe. Did Eliot Ness say maybe? "Tell me about the big car. He here often?"

"Two, three times a week."

"There any pattern to when he comes around?"

Luther gave me pained. "Man, all these questions grinding my brain, you know?"

"Uh-huh."

I dug out a twenty and passed it to him. He didn't look impressed. "Tha's pretty thin pickin's."

"It's the budget crunch, Luther."

"I hear that." He made the twenty disappear. "He came around twice last week. On Tuesday, then again Friday. Usually a Friday." He looked at his friend and the friend nodded.

I said, "What do the bodyguards do while he's with Gloria?"

"Shee-it, he ain't had his posse around in three months."

I looked at him. "He's been seeing Gloria Uribe for three months?"

"Hell, he been coming around longer than that." Luther squinted at his friend again. "What, four, five months now?"

The friend nodded, uh-huh.

Luther looked back at me.

I said, "He's been seeing Gloria Uribe for maybe five months, and when he comes, he comes alone?"

Luther frowned and gave me the heavy-eyelid treatment. "How many times I gotta say it, a lousy twenty bucks."

Luther's friend yawned and stared at something down the street.

I thought about it. In my business, you look for things that are out of the ordinary because out of the ordinary things usually mean clues. Sarah Lewis had said that Charlie DeLuca never stayed with a woman for longer than three weeks and that he never went anywhere without bodyguards. Of course, that was a long time ago and maybe Charlie had changed his ways. Maybe Charlie and Gloria were in love and all the getting together without bodyguards was to discuss wedding plans. Then again, maybe not.

I said, "Luther, Gloria just a streetwalker, or does she do outcall?"

"She walkin' when times are hard. Things looking better, she be strictly outcall. You can tell when she outcall, 'cause her nose in the air."

Luther's friend laughed like hell.

A white Caddie DeVille pulled to the curb and a slender, mocha-colored young woman in a tight dress and black-and-white cowboy boots got out. The Caddie's driver was an Asian guy in his fifties. She said something to him, then glanced at Luther and went into Clyde's. Luther frowned after her. "I got business to tend to."

"Thanks for the help, Luther. I appreciate it."

"Just don't say nuthin' round that wop gangster. I don't wanna wind up on no pizza."

"Sure, Luther. Count on it."

Luther and his buddy disappeared into Clyde's.

I walked up the two flights to the third floor and down a short hall to 304 and knocked. No answer. Somewhere at the other end of the hall a baby was crying, and somewhere else a rapper was banging out a gangster line. Ice-T. Drama. No sounds came from within Gloria Uribe's apartment. I knocked again, then took out the wires I keep in my wallet and let myself in.

Gloria Uribe had a one-bedroom with a bath and a tiny kitchenette. The walls were discolored and paint was peeling from the ceiling, but it wasn't an unclean place. A tattersall sofa with a beaded slipcover sat opposite a Victorian china cabinet that had been polished a deep, purple mahogany. The kitchenette and the bath were neat and clean, and the bedroom was a spotless vision in pink: pink satin comforter, pink Princess telephone, pink lace pillows, pink walls and ceiling. She had even found a pink clock-radio, which sat next to the bed on a nightstand. The nightstand was brown.

I wanted to find her trick book. Streetwalkers don't keep them because they don't have regular customers, but call girls do. They use the book to keep track of their appointments and such details of their trade as client preference and past fees. If I found Gloria's trick book, I would know when Charlie DeLuca was with her and when he wasn't and what they did when they were together. I might even learn what was going on.

I started with the nightstand, then looked behind and beneath the bed and between the mattress and the box springs. I found two boxes of Softique tissues, one open, the other not, and a box of Trojan prophylactics, ribbed. I went through her vanity and a small chest of drawers with a forest of little knickknacks on top. Bottom drawer of the chest, there were a black snakeskin whip, a black vinyl body harness, two pairs of police-issue handcuffs, and a black rubber mask with a couple of little holes that I guess you were supposed to breathe through. Nice.

I looked through the rest of her bedroom and her closet and then I went into her bathroom. The trick book was wrapped in a freezer-strength Baggie and taped to the underside of her lavatory, along with a little vial of crack cocaine. It had taken me exactly eight minutes and forty seconds to find it. Cops probably do it in less.

I took the book out into the living room, sat on the couch, and looked through it. There were entries dating back ten months to the beginning of the year, and sure enough, exactly five months and one week ago, there was the first mention of Charlie DeLuca. He had seen Gloria on three consecutive days the first week they had met, then five times the following week. The notes were mostly abbreviations, but the abbreviations were obvious. I read them and tried to feel detached and professional, but all I managed was smarmy and embarrassed. None of the notes related to Charlie's business or to anything Charlie might've said about his business.

I looked through every day of every week up until the present and noticed that starting in the fifth week, whenever Charlie's name appeared, another name appeared, too. Santiago.

Hmm.

I flipped back to the beginning of the book again and this time went through looking for Santiago. His first mention was during that fifth week, with Charlie. Maybe Charlie had brought him along. I kept looking. Sometimes Gloria wrote the full name, sometimes she just wrote S. For the next few weeks, every time there was an S, there was also Charlie's name, but after that sometimes there was just the S. Luther had said that Charlie had been around last Tuesday and Friday, but there was no mention of him on those days in the book, just Santiago. Maybe Charlie didn't come around to see Gloria anymore and maybe that's why she didn't list him. Maybe he came to see Santiago.

Hmm, again.

Santiago was penciled in for tomorrow at four-thirty in the afternoon. A Friday. Hmm. Charlie wasn't scheduled, but that was okay. Neither was I.

I closed the trick book, put it back in its plastic bag, then retaped it beneath the lavatory in Gloria Uribe's bathroom and let myself out. When I got down to the street, Luther and his friend were back leaning against the Pontiac. Luther grinned when he saw me, flashing more of the Mike Tyson teeth. I said, "Luther, you know a guy named Santiago, comes around here sometime?"

Luther stopped grinning and shook his head. "I don't want no part of that." He pushed off the Pontiac and walked past me into Clyde's.

I looked after him, and then I looked at Luther's friend. Luther's friend shrugged.

I said, "What was that all about?"

Luther's friend said, "Santiago's her pimp. Few years ago, when she come here, Luther try to get her in his stable and Luther and Santiago have a thing. Santiago 'bout kill Luther. Stick him with an ice pick."

"Oh." Great. "He run any other girls around here?"

"Nah. He been moving up. He some kind of Jamaican gangster now, and he doin' real well. Drives a nice car, wears a fine cut of clothes. I think Luther feelin' jealous."

"Huh."

Luther's friend pushed off the Pontiac. "I better see about Luther. You don't see about him when he get like this, he sulks."

"Right. Thanks for the help."

Luther's friend went into Clyde's.

It was two-forty-five. Still plenty of time to get back to Karen's by four.

I took my time walking back to the Taurus, remembering what Roland George had told me about the Italian mafia hating the Jamaicans and the Cubans and the Asians. Maybe I was on to something. Maybe this was a clue. Maybe if I could ferret out its true and hidden meaning, Karen Lloyd and Toby Lloyd and Peter Alan Nelsen could all live happily ever after. Just like in a movie.

For all of the drive back to Chelam, I wondered what Charlie DeLuca might be doing with a Jamaican gangster named Santiago. All I had to do was find out what.