Lullaby Town

'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.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

They came up behind us in two cars, a green Dodge station wagon and the black Town Car, just as the snow began to fall.

Pike saw them first. 'Behind us. Turned out from a side road, maybe a half mile back.'

I pushed Toby's head down. 'Get on the floor. Make yourself as small as you can and wrap your arms around your head.'

I pushed Karen down on top of him.

The Town Car pulled into the left lane and the wagon stayed in the right and they came on hard. Pike reached under his jacket and took out his.357.

I pressed the LeBaron's pedal to the floor, but the Town Car inched closer and then there were gold specks flashing around it and something hit the rear of the LeBaron two times, bam bam, like rocks thrown by a kid hiding behind a tree. The right rear tire blew and Karen Lloyd made a sharp gasping sound and Toby said, 'What was that?'

The LeBaron nosed up and I swung us to the right, and then we were off the road and bouncing across an untended pumpkin field, ripping through weeds and a barbed-wire fence and a couple of white birch saplings. I gunned the engine and forced the LeBaron across the field, sideways half the time and near out of control, until the flat right rear dug into the loam maybe three hundred yards from the road and the LeBaron wouldn't go any farther. I said, 'Everybody out.'

The station wagon and the Town Car skidded to a stop on the road and doors banged open and eight men pushed out, five of them with shotguns. Charlie DeLuca had been driving the Town Car and Joey Putata was one of the guys in the wagon, but I didn't recognize anyone else. Ric was conspicuous by his absence. No one now to keep Charlie calm, no one to rub his back and say the quiet things and keep Charlie DeLuca among the land of the sane. Sal the Rock had learned that. Charlie was certifiably, stark-raving, bad-to-the-bone out of control.

I shoved the driver's side door open and fell out, then pushed my seat forward and pulled Karen and Toby out after me. Pike went out the passenger's side and the.357 boomed twice. Peter followed Pike, and then the five of us were crouched down among the pumpkins behind the LeBaron.

Two of the guys up on the road started blasting away with their shotguns, but then someone did a lot of arm waving and they stopped. Three hundred yards with shotguns was silly.

The little pumpkin field was maybe five hundred yards on a side, bordered to the east and the west and the south by thick stands of birch and elm and maple trees. Behind us to the south there was a little ramshackle feed shed that looked to be maybe a hundred years old. I squatted down next to Karen and said, 'Does anyone live around here?'

'Maybe a couple of miles that way.' She pointed southwest.

'Is there a road behind us?'

She scrunched her face, trying to think but not having an easy time of it. 'There must be. Some kind of farming road.'

Toby said, 'Yeah, there is. It's a utility road. Dirt.'

'How far?'

'Maybe a mile and a half. It's on the other side of all these fields. It comes out by this little airport where the crop dusters fly, but there won't be anyone there. They close it down in the winter.'

Pike said, 'If we can get there, maybe we can make a farmhouse.'

The snow fell harder, swirling and piling up in little white pockets on the LeBaron and on the pumpkins, thick enough in the air to make the men on the road indistinct and shadowy. Two of the shadows went off to the left and two of them went right and four of them started off the road directly for us. Classic pincer move. Probably taught that at the mafia academy.

I said, 'They're going to try to envelop us, faster guys moving out on the flank, the other guys coming slow up the middle to drive us toward them.'

Pike said, 'Uh-huh,' and opened the duffel. He took out the shotgun and a cartridge box and began filling his pockets with the shells. Twenty-five rounds in the box, but he found places for all of them.

Peter was squatting next to Karen and behind Toby. He had put an arm around Karen's shoulders without thinking about it. Or maybe he had. He said, 'Maybe we could dig in here and hold them off.'

Pike shook his head. 'Not with twenty-five rounds.'

I duck-walked to Karen and Peter and knelt close to them. Their faces were white and their eyes were squinty and drawn. 'We're going to have to split up. Pike and I will go out to the flanks. You guys move straight back across the field and try to get to the farm road. Do you understand that?'

They both said, 'Yes.'

'Stay low and run as fast as you can just like you've seen people do on television. Try to keep the car between you and the four guys coming across the field. They're coming slow because they know we have guns, so you'll have time. Work your way to the feed shed and get behind it, and then work your way to the woods using the shed as cover.'

Peter nodded and Karen said, 'Yes.'

'Don't stop until you get to people. Then call the police.'

Karen wasn't looking into my eyes. She was watching my mouth, getting every word. Hanging on by her fingernails.

Peter said, 'I don't want to run off. I want to do something.'

'You are doing something. You're helping this woman and your son get to a safe place. That's your job.'

Peter glanced down at the woman that he used to be married to and their son, and he nodded. 'Sure. Okay.'

I turned to Toby. 'Tobe, you think you can find the road through the woods?'

'Sure. You just keep going south.'

'Okay. You get to the road, which way to the airfield?'

'East.'

I looked back at Karen and then at Peter. 'Do it.'

Karen said, 'They're going to kill us, aren't they?'

'They're going to try. But Joe and I won't let them.'

Her eyes were big and darting. She held tight to Toby's arm. 'How can you stop them? There're eight of them and we're trapped here in the middle of nowhere with them.'

Pike chambered a round into his shotgun. 'No,' he said. 'They're trapped with us.'

I gave Karen a little nod and then she crabbed away, holding on to Toby's shirt with her right hand, crouched low and stumbling through the frozen weeds and the pumpkins. Peter followed close after them.

Pike said, 'How many rounds you got?'