Lullaby Town

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

I walked out of Sal DeLuca's brownstone to a fine powder of snow on the streets and the sidewalks and the cars parked at the curb. The air was cold and the Manhattan skyline to the east was clear and pink in anticipation of the rising sun. To the west and the north, though, the clouds were still heavy and dense and promising more snow. The drunk was gone, but the little cardboard house remained, quiet and white in the early morning light. Cars belched fog-breath out on Fifth and 62nd, and men and women in heavy coats walked fast along the sidewalks, leaving gray trails. Somewhere there was music playing, but I didn't hear the notes clearly and couldn't make out the song. I slipped a twenty-dollar bill into the little cardboard house and went back to the Taurus.

I drove across Central Park, then up through the city and the Bronx and Yonkers and White Plains. I drove slowly and listened to a pretty good classic rock station that played a lot of John Fogerty and CCR. Run Through the Jungle. Nothing like a little Creedence Clearwater Revival at six in the morning after spending the night with the Godfather. Four miles above White Plains, I pulled into a rest stop overlooking a lake and started to shake. I shook for what seemed like hours but was probably only a couple of minutes. I let the motor run and the Taurus's heater pump on high, but I wasn't shaking from the cold.

A tan and white RV was parked broadside to the view, and had probably been there all night. A man and a woman in their sixties came out with coffee cups and went to the rail, looking out at the lake. They watched the lake for a while and sipped the coffee and held hands. When they turned and came back to the RV, the woman gave me a friendly smile. The license plate on their little mobile house said Utah.

At a quarter to ten I parked on the street in front of May Erdich's house. Toby and Joe Pike were standing in brown leaves and snow, tossing a beat-up Wilson football, and Peter was sitting on May's front step, watching them. Peter looked cold.

Karen Lloyd came out of the front door as I went up the walk.

I said, "It's over."

She shook her head, like maybe I was lying. "You got Charlie to go along?" Pike and Toby stopped throwing the ball. Toby ran over to stand by his mother.

"Sal. Charlie doesn't have anything to do with it anymore. It's Sal, and Sal says you're out of it. Charlie will do whatever Sal says."

She gripped one hand with the other. "I can stay at the bank?"

"Yes."

"No more Charlie? No more deposits?"

"It's over, Karen."

Peter smiled and crossed his arms but stayed on the front step.

Karen came down the steps and hugged me and then she hugged Pike. She started crying, holding us tight and digging her fingers into our shoulders as if only by holding us here could it be real. When she did it, Peter looked at his feet.

Karen let go and stepped back, smiling and crying and thanking us. She said, "Can we go back to the house?"

"Sure. Any time you want."

Peter looked up and said, "Karen, I'm glad. I couldn't be happier."

Karen smiled at him, then looked at her son. "Tobe. Let's get our things. Let's say bye to May."

They went into the house together. Inside, there was movement and warmth and the pounding footsteps of Toby running down a long hall.

Peter uncrossed his arms and pushed away from the top step. He said, "I've gotta get Dani. I want to bring her home and take care of her."

I nodded. "The police will have questions. We'll have to figure out what to tell them."

He made a little shrug. "I'll tell them the truth. She died saving my life because I'm a jerk."

Pike said, "You can't."

Peter looked at him.

I said, "I gave my word to Sal that we wouldn't let what Charlie was doing get out to the Gambozas. You tell the cops or People magazine or anyone else you know how Dani died, the Gambozas or someone who works for them will put it together. When they do, the deal with Sal will be over. He'll come for you."

"I don't care about me."

"He'll come for Karen and Toby."

Peter pursed his lips and looked at the ground. He didn't like it, but he was learning to live with things that he didn't like. He said, "It makes me feel like I'm cheating her."

"You are, but it's all we can do. Do you understand?"

He pursed his lips some more, but he nodded. The front door opened and Toby brought out his overnighter, put it on the porch, then went back inside and closed the door. Peter watched him. "They think I'm full of shit."

I didn't say anything.

"I'm thinking I've gotta get back to L.A. I've got the picture going into production soon. There's no point in me staying around."

I stared at the house for a while. My back hurt and my neck was stiff and I wanted to go to bed. "You shouldn't have come back here expecting them to think of you as husband and father. You could've earned that, perhaps, but you didn't think in terms of earning. You thought it was your right. You demand what you want and you get it, usually, and that makes you think that you can get whatever you demand."

"I didn't come out here wanting to fuck it up."

"I know."

"I wanted this to work out. I wanted them to be a part of my life. There are empty places."

"Maybe the way to look at it is that you should've worked to be a part of their lives and hoped to fill the empty places they have."

Peter pressed his lips together and looked at the ground, like maybe there was something interesting there. Elm leaves, dried and brittle in the cold. "Shit. I've gotta go."

He walked across the leaf-strewn yard and got into the limo and drove away. There was still a little snow on the windshield when he left.

Pike and I waited at the Taurus until Karen and Toby came out. Karen was smiling and said, "I feel like a celebration. Would you like to have a late breakfast? On me, of course."

"Whatever you want."

We went to the Chelam diner and sat in a booth and had eggs and sausage and pumpkin pancakes and home-fried potatoes, but it wasn't much of a celebration. There was a curious letdown feeling between us, as if there were unresolved business still at hand. When Toby was finished, he got up and played a video game. Space Command. A guy with a ray gun trying to kill thousands of little bugs, Karen watched him uneasily.

I said, "At loose ends?"

She nodded. "Does it show?"

I said, "There's a lot to think about. There's still Peter in your life."

She nodded again. "It's that, but it's more than that, too. It's as if a very large object has moved across the sky, but only we've seen it. These other people here in the diner, Joyce Steuben at the bank, no one else in town has seen it."

I nodded. It's always like that.

She said, "I don't know what I'm going to do. I thought I did, but now I don't." She turned away from her son and looked at me. "I fought so hard to keep what I have here in Chelam and at the bank. Now that I've got it, you know what keeps coming to mind? Maybe I can get a better job closer to the city or up in Boston. Maybe I can find a better high school for Toby. Isn't that crazy?"

I made the same little shrug for Karen Lloyd that I had made for Peter Alan Nelsen. "Not crazy. It wasn't a choice you could make before. Now you're free to make any choice you want."

She sort of smiled at that and looked back at her son. "Yes, I guess I am." Then the smile became a little laugh that was light and open. It was the first time that I had heard her laugh.

After a while Joe and I went to the Taurus and Karen and Toby went to her LeBaron and the four of us drove back to her house beneath gray skies expectant with snow. We went inside and packed our things while Karen made phone calls and Toby dug around in the kitchen for something to eat. Twelve years old, and you're always hungry. When my bags were packed, I called United and booked two returns on a flight they had leaving from Kennedy at six-forty that night. When I told Pike the time, he said, "Didn't they have anything sooner?"

At twenty-four minutes after noon the black limo turned into the drive and Peter Alan Nelsen came to the door. Karen let him in. She said, "I thought you had gone back to Los Angeles."

Peter said, "I want to start over. I know that me coming here is going to create problems for you, and changes, and I want to do what I can to help you through them. I don't want you and the boy to think I'm an asshole. I want Toby to get to know me, and I want to get to know him, and I want to work out things like visitation and holidays and getting together. I want to pay child support, but only if that's okay with you. Can we talk about this stuff?"

Karen Lloyd said, "Oh, shit."

Peter said, "Please."

Karen Lloyd made a little whistle and tapped her right hand on her thigh and looked at the television. The television was not turned on.

I said, "Sounds pretty good to me."

Karen shook her head and frowned.

Peter said, "C'mon, Karen. Please."

I said, "For Christ's sake, meet him halfway."

Karen crossed her arms and the frown grew deeper. "We'll see." Give'm an inch.

The phone rang and Karen Lloyd went into the kitchen and answered it. When she was gone, Peter said, "What do you think?"

I spread my hands. "We'll see."

Karen came back and said, "It's a man named Roland George."

I left them to stare at each other and went into the kitchen. Rollie came on with a tight, clipped voice. "You heard?"

"What?"

"On the news ten minutes ago. Sal DeLuca was shot to death in his health club, four in the head, close range, sometime around ten this morning. You know anything about it?"

"I think it was Charlie. If it was, I think he'll want us next."

I hung up and went back into the living room and told Karen and Peter and Joe Pike. When I told them, Peter said, "You mean the sonofabitch is coming back here?"

"Yes."

Karen said, "I knew it couldn't be this easy. I knew it wasn't over. What are we going to do?"

"Get into town where there's people. When you and Toby are safe, Joe and I will see what we can do with Charlie."

Karen called Toby and we went quickly out the front door and into her LeBaron. I told Peter to get in the back and I told Karen that I would drive. Neither of them objected.

Toby said, "Is it those men again, Mom?"

We pulled away from her house and went down the clean new tarmac street and turned onto the main road toward Chelam. It was twenty-eight minutes after noon.

We had gone about two miles when they found us.