Lullaby Town

naturally went down easy after a hard day of dealing with women who hung on to their lies as if the lies were living things. I had most of the rest of it.

The bartender said, 'I was a kid, I wanted to go out there. I used to think about it all the time, palm trees and people roller-skating at the beach and cruising down the freeways in a convertible.' The knife went through another lime. Thunk. 'Sometimes things just sort of get away from you.' Thunk. She stopped cutting and looked at me. 'You want a piece of lime in your beer?'

'No, thanks.'

'I heard people in California put lime in their beer.'

'No.'

She looked disappointed.

I left a two dollar tip and went next door into the restaurant. Two guys in plaid flannel L.L. Bean shirts and bright orange hunter's caps sat at a Formica counter, holding heavy white coffee mugs in coarse hands. A chalk board that said Today's Special: Homemade meat loaf sat on a little easel on the counter across from a row of booths. Farther back, there were tables and chairs for people with a greater sense of formality. I sat in a booth by the windows with a delightful view of the parking lot.

A short woman in a black waitress outfit brought a menu and a glass of ice water, and asked whether or not I'd care for a drink before dinner. The first Rolling Rock had been so good I told her that I'd have a second. Without lime. She wrote on a little pad and said, 'We have a special tonight. It's the meat loaf. It's very nice.' She was in her sixties.

I handed back the menu without looking at it. 'Then that's what I'll have.'

She gave me an approving smile and went away. I felt the warmth of her smile and was glad that someone approved of me. Karen Shipley probably didn't. You have me confused with someone else. Not much you could do with that. A stranger walks in off the street and tells you that everything you've worked for was about to change. Who you gonna call? Gumshoebusters?

The waitress came back with the beer. An older couple strolled in and took a table in the dining room. Formal. A single guy in a gray business suit came in carrying the New York Times and sat at the counter, well away from the two guys in the orange hunting caps. He opened his Times to the real estate section. I drank the Rolling Rock and marveled at how good Karen and the boy and the Rotary awards had looked together, and wondered if that would continue with Peter on the scene. With Peter around, maybe their lives would disintegrate and Karen would fall into prostitution and Toby would end up running with a dope fiend vampire motorcycle gang and the Rotary would take back their awards. It happens all the time with Hollywood families.

The waitress brought the meat loaf on a heavy white plate like the kind they used in cafeterias in the forties. The slice of meat loaf was wide and thick and weighed almost a pound. There was a large portion of creamed potatoes and about a million green peas, and a thick brown gravy had been ladled over the meat loaf and the potatoes. Nurture food. It smelled wonderful. She said, 'Can I get you anything else?'

'Tabasco sauce and another Rolling Rock.'

She brought the Rock and the Tabasco. I applied both liberally. Tabasco is great for clearing the sinus and putting the ruination of lives into perspective. So is the Rolling Rock. The meat loaf was excellent.

What's wrong with this picture? Peter Alan Nelsen was a celebrity, and the profits from his pictures were subject to stories in Newsweek and Time. Karen would read those stories and know that her ex-husband, the father of her child, was worth millions. Many people, perhaps most, would go after a piece of that, yet she hadn't. Either for herself or for the boy. Interesting. Maybe Peter wasn't the boy's father. Maybe Peter had done such hateful things to Karen that this was her way of punishing him and he deserved it. Maybe Karen was a nut case.

At five minutes before seven a tall guy with a nose like a chayote squash came in and looked around. He was wearing a bright turquoise shirt with a squash-blossom string tie and black slacks and a black duster. The black slacks were a half inch too short and the pointy black shoes were cut a half inch too low, so you ended up seeing a lot of black socks with little red triangles. He looked at me and the guy with the Times and the couple in the back and then he left. Probably looking for the disco.

I worked on the meat loaf and the potatoes and the peas and a growing depression. There were questions, and the questions bothered me, but I hadn't been hired to answer questions or even to get Karen Shipley to admit that she was Karen Shipley. I had been hired to find her whereabouts and I had done that. The rest was up to Peter Alan Nelsen. So what if Karen Shipley didn't like it, and so what if I didn't like it. They don't pay me to like it.

I ordered two more of the Rolling Rock to bring back to my room. A couple more Rock and I'd probably like it just fine.

Out in the parking lot the guy in the string tie met a white Thunderbird and said something to the driver. They talked for a minute, then the guy in the string tie got in on the passenger's side and the Thunderbird crept away around the side of the motel.

The waitress brought the beer in a little brown paper bag and the check and a single peppermint. I signed for the check and went out through the lobby. My room was on the ground floor, off the parking lot on the west side of the motel, halfway down a two-story row of rooms and just past a little alcove with an ice machine and a Pepsi machine and a stair leading up to the second floor. The Taurus was parked outside my room and a green Polara station wagon was parked closer up on the street side of the lot. A Peterbilt eighteen-wheeler took up most of the far end of the parking lot, looking like a supertanker in dry dock. No white Thunderbird.

When I got to the stairwell, the guy in the string tie and another guy stepped out. Guess they put the Thunderbird on the other side.

The guy with the string tie said, 'Hey, Joey, you think this is the guy?'

Joey was shorter and wider than me with a round cannonball head and caviar zits and a thick fleshy body that made him look sort of like an overgrown Pillsbury dough boy. He was wearing a blue Navy pea coat open over two layers of flannel shirts. The shirttails hung out. He said, 'Yeah, this is him. Looks like a fuck from out of town who don't belong around here. Like he needs a little help to find his way home.' He was maybe twenty-six, but he looked younger. He also looked mean.

The guy with the string tie nodded and made a sort of snickering sound. The snickering sound was a nose whistle. 'Fuckin' A, Let's get him on his way.'

I said, 'Are you guys for real, or is this going to be on America's Funniest Home Videos?' They sounded like Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall. Brooklyn or the Bronx or Queens, but I couldn't tell which. New Yorkers all sound alike.

The guy with the string tie took out a piece of pipe maybe ten inches long and Joey took a half-step forward. Joey said, 'We got a message for you, Mickey Mouse. Pack your fuckin' mouse ears and go back to Disneyland.'

I blinked at them. 'Did Karen Lloyd put you guys on me?'

The string tie waved the pipe so I could see it better. 'You don't ask questions, fuck face. You just do what we say.' He was breathing hard and the nose whistle was loud. Even Joey looked.

I said, 'That's some nose whistle. Is it natural or did you have to stick something up in there?'

Joey said, 'This fuck thinks we're kidding.'

Johnny Style swung the pipe from somewhere out around the North Atlantic.

I stepped to the inside and hit him in the forehead with the two bottles of Rolling Rock. The broken glass cut through the bag and beer sprayed back along my arm and across the wall and the sidewalk. Johnny Style said, 'Uh,' and dropped the pipe and fell backward over a curb stone. Joey sort of waddled forward, throwing a lot of overhand rights and lefts without much in the way of control, trying to do it the way he'd done it in schoolyards and on playgrounds for most of his life.

I sideslipped and hit him twice in the face and once in the neck and drove a straight kick from the tae kwon do into his solar plexus. He stopped swinging and made a sort of coughing sound and stepped back. Surprised.

I said, 'What's this got to do with Karen Lloyd?'

Joey made the coughing sound again, then something hard hit me behind my right ear and I went down. Third guy in the Thunderbird. I kicked up and punched, but I don't think I hit him. My eyes weren't working too well and