Lullaby Town

Pike sighed and looked away.

Richie said, 'Charlie sells the information to the Jamaicans. The Jamaicans hijack our stuff and sell it and then they give Charlie a piece.'

'Is this DeLuca family, Richie, or is this just Charlie? If it's family, we're talking war.' War. Mario Puzo, eat your heart out.

'I don't know, but I think it's just Charlie. Charlie's the guy turned me. He came to me and said he'd cut me in and I could have all the smack I wanted. It was Charlie's idea. You gotta tell Tommy that.'

'Sure.'

'I don't never see anyone else.'

'So Charlie is violating the agreement the DeLuca family made with the Gamboza family. He's in business with the Jamaicans to steal from another family and Sal doesn't know.'

'No. Sal doesn't know. Jesus Christ, Sal would have a fit. Tommy should know that. Sal, that old gumbah.'

I looked at Pike and Pike looked at me. Pike said, 'What do we do with him?'

Richie said, 'Hey, I come clean. You said I come clean, Tommy said you should let me off.'

Pike said, 'He tells Charlie we know, it's over.'

Richie said, 'Hey, I won't tell Charlie nothing. I swear to Christ.' He was crying again.

I looked into Pike's flat dimensionless glasses and saw little reflections of myself. Pike waited. I turned back to Richie and pulled him close again. 'Here's what you're going to do. You're going to walk out of this alley and go to the Port Authority bus terminal and you are going to take a bus to Miami. You will not speak with Charlie DeLuca or the Jamaicans or anyone else about this, do you understand?'

'Yes.'

'If you do, Tommy Gamboza swears that he will find out. If you do, the entire Gamboza family will seek you out no matter where you might hide, and we will kill you. Do you understand?'

'Yes.'

'Get out of here.'

He ran out of the alley, knocking into a garbage can, then bouncing off a wall, then disappearing around the corner and into the street.

Pike said, ''Seek you out? ''

'Too dramatic?'

Pike frowned.

Everybody's a critic.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

Karen Lloyd gave me confused. 'He's stealing from other criminals?'

'Yes.'

'How can you go to the police with that?' She was leaning against the front edge of her desk at the bank with her arms crossed. Pike and I were sitting in the two chairs opposite. It seemed colder in Chelam than it had in New York, but maybe that was because it was later and the damp clouds and the cold air pushing down from Canada had gained greater purchase over the woods and the fields and the small clean buildings.

I said, 'We won't go to the police. We'll go to Charlie. He isn't just stealing money and hiding it from his father and the other capos in his own family, he's stealing from another family in direct violation of a treaty that the DeLucas made with the other families.' I gave her what Rollie George had given me, how the families had divided up territory and crime, and how nobody much liked it but everybody had been living with it. 'Until now.'

She nodded, seeing it as a banker would see it, IBM and Xerox negotiating a market arrangement. 'All right. He's violating a trade agreement.'

'Yeah. Only he's got more to worry about than the Securities and Exchange Commission. If the Gambozas found out that Charlie DeLuca was stealing from them in collaboration with the Jamaicans, they'd kill him and they'd probably try to kill Sal, too.'

Karen blinked at Pike, then at me. 'Does Sal know?'

'Probably not, but it doesn't matter. If he doesn't know, it makes things cleaner because we only have to deal with Charlie. If Sal's in on it, then we have to deal with him, too. A little more complicated, but the outcome is the same.'

She wet her lips, getting anxious with it, thinking it through and seeing the potential, but unwilling to commit until all the i's were dotted and the t's crossed. She shook her head. 'Even if he goes along, we'll still know. Charlie's going to think that. He's going to think that the only way to keep himself safe is to kill us.'

I said, 'He'll think about it, but we'll set things up so that he can't. We'll bring in Rollie George. We'll make sure that other people know what we know, and we'll prove it to Charlie so that he knows it, too. If he kills us, he gets screwed. Do you see?'

She wet her lips again and made a very small nod, still thinking it through. 'We go to Charlie, we say that he has to let go of me or we tell the Gambozas.'

'Yes.'

'We tell him that people we trust know, too, so that if anything happens to us, the Gambozas will still be told.'

'Yes. If we die, he dies. We make this deal, it's a deal we honor forever. We can't change our minds. Do you see?'

She nodded again, stronger. 'Of course. When are you going to do this?'

'I'll call Rollie this evening and maybe drive down to the city to talk with him. He knows people in publishing and on the cops we can trust. We'll have to get together with them and set up what we know and how to prove it to Charlie. It'll take a couple of days.'

'And then we do it.'

'Yep. We do it.'

She wet the lips again and looked at Pike, then me. 'What if it doesn't work?'

'If it doesn't work, we go to the Gambozas and you go in to the cops for witness protection. It isn't what you want, but it's the best hand we've got.'

She made a hissing sound and her eyes sort of fluttered for a moment, but then she nodded. 'Yes. I believe it's the best we can hope for, too.' She went around behind her desk and sat with her fingers laced in front of her, very much like she did the first time I came into her office. Businesslike. 'I've thought about what you said last night. I've decided that you're right. It would be best for everyone if Toby went back to California with Peter until this is resolved.'

'Okay.'

'Peter can take Toby as soon as possible. I'd like him to be in California before we meet with Charlie.'

'All right. I'll stop by the motel and set it up.'

She nodded tightly. 'Thank you. I'll tell Toby when I see him after school.'

Pike and I drove to the Howard Johnson's looking for Peter, but the limo was gone. We went in to the front desk and asked if they knew when Mr. Nelsen would be back. They said they didn't, but that his friends were in the bar and that they might know. We went into the bar.

Nick and T.J. were sitting at a little round table, drinking Heinekens and eating hamburgers. Nick said, 'Hey, look, it's Mike Hammer and his sidekick, Tonto.'

T.J. laughed with his mouth full.

I said, 'Where's Peter?'

Nick said, 'Peter said you're canceled, pal, so he's taking care of business himself. We don't need you anymore.'

I said, 'What do you mean, Peter's taking care of business?'