face. He made sharp gestures and once he pointed at our car. They talked some more, and then Rollie George walked over to us and bent down by the driver's side window. He gave Karen the sort of reassuring smile your grandfather might give, and if he recognized Peter, he didn't say anything. He leaned close to me and said, 'Can we have the bad cop?'
I said, 'Yes. If my people don't get named and don't have to testify.'
He nodded. 'It looks like there's more than one officer involved. It looks like there might be several with Kennedy security who took part.'
I nodded back at him. 'I sort of figured that'
Rollie smiled at Karen again and then he and Max walked back to the little group around Charlie DeLuca's body. There was more talk and the bald guy liked it even less and made more of the sharp gestures until one of the women he had ridden out with said, 'Oh, shut the fuck up, Morton.'
The feds and the people from the two AG offices came to the car for Pike and me and walked us around the site asking us questions. Most of the questions were about Charlie DeLuca and the Jamaicans and the cop I had followed to the Queens precinct house. I didn't mention Charlie DeLuca's secret account, or that he was doing something that Sal didn't know about, or the Gambozas. The Jamaicans probably didn't know whose dope they were stealing and neither, probably, did the cop. If they did, and if they told, that was between the DeLucas and them. You do what you can.
When the AG people were finished with their questions, they brought us back to the car. None of them looked at Karen Lloyd or Peter Alan Nelsen, or spoke to them. It was as if they weren't there. One of the women and one of the feds went with a couple of Staties to the pumpkin field. They weren't gone long. After they got back, there was more talk and then Roland George came back to us. He said, 'I think we've done about all we can do here. You can go now.'
Karen Lloyd said, 'Is that all?'
'Yes, ma'am.'
'You don't need to question us? You aren't going to take us in?'
Peter said, 'Karen.'
Rollie George smiled and walked away.
Karen looked at me. 'They're keeping us out of this? Even with people dead?'
'Yes. Start the car and let's get out of here.'
We drove to Karen Lloyd's house in silence and parked in the drive beneath the basketball hoop until Peter had his story straight. The people from the AG's office were going to release Dani's body to him with no questions asked, but he would need to know what to tell Nick and T.J. and the press. Peter Alan Nelsen's bodyguard had been murdered and there would be questions. He was going to have to lie, and he was going to have to maintain the lie for the rest of his life. He said, 'I can do it.'
Karen said, 'You'd better.'
He frowned at her and then he got out of the LeBaron and got into his limo and drove away. Karen watched him go. 'Do you think he can?'
I nodded. 'Yes. He's learned a lot.'
'I hope.' She let out a sigh. 'I hate this. I hate it that once you let someone into your life, they're part of your life forever.'
I said, 'Part, maybe, but not all. You're still you. You're vice-president of the bank. You're twice president of the PTA. You're a Rotarian and a member of the Library Committee. Maybe, without having gone through what you went through with Peter, you wouldn't be any of those things. Maybe you would be less.'
She turned and looked at me, and then she leaned across and kissed me, and then she turned in the seat and kissed Joe Pike. She said, 'I'll do what's best for Toby. I've always been able to do that. What happens now with the DeLucas?'
I looked out the window at the house and the basketball hoop and Toby's bike leaning against the garage wall. Then I looked back at her. 'I don't know. Sal and Charlie aren't running the family anymore. They'll have a new boss.'
She made her lips into a little rosebud and then she nodded slowly. 'Do you think he'll try to make me keep doing this?'
Pike leaned close to her and patted her arm. 'Go live your life. You let us worry about that.'
Karen Lloyd took a deep breath, let it out, and got out of the car.
CHAPTER FORTY
Pike and I collected our things, said our good-byes, and drove down to the city where we took a fourteenth-floor room at the Park Lane Hotel on East 59th Street. It was a nice room with a view of Central Park.
We took turns in the shower, then dressed and walked to the Museum of Modern Art on 53rd. They call it MoMA for short, which is dumb, but they had Vincent van Gogh's
'They say he was mad.'
Pike shrugged.
We walked up to West 7lst Street and had an early dinner at Victor's Cafe 52. Cuban food, which rivaled and in some ways surpassed the excellent fare found at the Versailles on Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles. I had the chicken steak and black beans. Pike had the white bean soup and fried plantains. We both had beer. Score two.
It was still light when we finished, so we walked across the three long blocks of Central Park, past the lake and Bethesda Fountain and something that called itself the Boathouse Cafe. The cafe was closed. People were jogging and riding bikes and a couple of kids were flying a model airplane. No one seemed about to do crime, but the mounted police were in high profile. After the sun went down, it might be different. I asked Pike, 'Are you afraid?'
He shook his head.
'Would you be afraid at midnight if we were alone?'
He walked a moment. 'I have the capacity for great violence.'
I nodded. So did I. But I thought that I might still be afraid.
Pike slipped his hands into the pockets of his parka and we walked past a smaller pond where an older man and a couple of young girls were sailing a model sailboat. A man and a woman decked out in serious biking apparel were standing with a tandem bike, watching them. We stopped and watched them, too, and I wondered how deeply into winter the pond could venture before it would freeze. The brisk fall wind carried the boat well across the pond. Pike said, 'Elvis?'
'Yeah?'
'I remember being afraid. I was very young.'
We watched the old man and the girls and the boat, and then we left the park and walked down to the brownstones that used to belong to Sal DeLuca. There were no limos at the curb or thugs hanging around the stoop. There was a black bow on the door.
Joe stayed on the corner at Fifth Avenue and I went up to the door and rang the bell once. In a little bit Freddie opened the door and looked out at me. His face was flat and without expression. 'Yeah?'
'You hear about Charlie?'
'We heard.'
'I'm at the Park Lane.'
'Swell. Have a party.'
'Tell Vito. Tell Angie. I'll be there until this is squared away.'
Freddie gave me the patented tough-guy sneer. 'We got no business with you.'
'That's where you're wrong. Tell Vito and Angie. The Park Lane.'
