Robert Crais - Lullaby Town

A little bell rang when I went into the flower shop. Your Secret Garden was cool and humid and alive with the sights and smells of flowers and greenery and planting soil and soft classical music from tiny Bose speakers hanging from the ceiling. In the front of the shop there were cans of fresh flowers sitting on risers and a refrigerated cooler with glass doors showing ready-made floral arrangements. There was a little counter about halfway back with a workspace behind it where a black man and a black woman maybe in her sixties were building a flower arrangement. The black man was maybe five-eight, with the long arms and ropey neck of a guy who could've fought welterweight. An FTD sign sat on the counter.

In the front of the shop a slender black woman in her late twenties was arranging baby's breath in a can filled with daisies. She was wearing green pants and a light blue smock like orderlies wear. When the little bell rang, the man and the older woman in the back and the slender woman with the daisies glanced up at me and stared. The man gave me hard eyes for a time, then went back to working on his arrangement. Wouldn't see many white guys in here.

The slender woman came over and smiled. "May I help you?" She was pretty except for a two-inch scar splitting the left side of her upper lip and two smaller scars cutting the brow above her left eye. They weren't old scars. A little name tag on her smock read Sarah .

I said, "Hello, Angelette. My name is Elvis Cole. I need to talk to you about Charlie DeLuca."

Her smile fell away faster than a sinking heart. She glanced at the man behind the counter, then back at me. The man was staring at us. He couldn't hear, but he knew something wasn't right. She said, "You the police?"

I said, "Charlie DeLuca's holding a woman I know. She wants out, and I'm trying to find a way to make him let go."

She glanced again at the man behind the counter and made her voice low. The man stepped away from the flowers he was working with and wiped his hands on a gray cloth. She said, "We don't talk about that. If you not the police, you better get out of here."

"You were with Charlie, weren't you?"

Looking at the floor now. "I was with a lot of men. William was in Dannemora and I had three kids to feed."

"Sure. It must've been tough."

She looked up, angry. "William been out nine months and he's stayin' out. We both out. We got a man let us run this place."

I nodded. The shop was a nice shop. Clean and fresh. Not like Dannemora. Not like walking the streets. I said, "Charlie hurt your eye?"

"That's no never mind."

"You know a guy named Richie?"

"I don't know nobody."

William put his hands down on the cash register and gave me the jailhouse stare. The older woman came up behind him and put a hand on his right forearm that he didn't seem to feel. They couldn't hear us, but they knew what we were talking about. Funny, how that works. I said, "My friend has a child, too, Angelette. She's got a life that she doesn't want to lose, just like you don't want to lose this life."

William pushed past the older woman and came out from behind the counter carrying a two-foot length of galvanized pipe. Even with the smock you could see the strong forearms and the hard shoulders. Dannemora weight room. "You better get on out of here, man. She ain't on the street no more and she ain't goin' back. She don't want nothin' to do with you."

"I just want to talk to her."

"You ain't gonna be talkin' to nobody with this pipe upside your head."

I took out the Dan Wesson and cocked it and pointed it at him. I didn't like coming into their lives and I didn't like pulling the gun. But I didn't like what was happening to Karen Lloyd, either. I said, "That's her choice, William. Not yours."

The older woman made a low moaning sound and began to wring the gray cloth, rocking herself back and forth.

I said, "Five minutes and I'm gone, Angelette. I won't bother you again."

William stepped closer. Guess you been to Dannemora, you're not so impressed by the gun. "I ain't saying it twice, Mister Man. There ain't no Angelette here. There ain't no bad things here."

Angelette looked up at me for a time, then nodded once to herself, like maybe she'd seen something she could live with or couldn't live without. "You got deliveries to make, William. Why don't you get to'm."

William's eyes got wider and he pointed the pipe at me. "He ain't nothin' here. He ain't the police. You ain't got to talk to him."

She was looking at him steadily, and when she spoke, her voice was soft. "He's trying to help his lady, William. What you gonna do, hit him with that pipe? You get violated, then what? You be back in Dannemora, where I'm gonna be then, makin' more dirty movies?"

"Don't you say that."

"Workin' those streets again?"

"Don't you say that." He blinked hard twice, then looked down at her as if it had taken a physical effort to move his eyes from me to her.

She said, "Make your deliveries, William, When you get back, he'll be gone and everything gonna be just like it was before. Please, William."

The older woman said, "You better listen to her, William. You do like she say, now." The older woman was still back behind the counter, looking scared and wringing the gray cloth and rocking.

William stared down at Angelette for a little longer, then the jail yard eyes softened and he turned and walked back behind the counter and through the little work area and out the back door.

Angelette watched him until he was gone, then took a deep breath and let it out, as if with his leaving some inner tension within her had been removed. "It hurts him that I had to do what I did while he was away. It shames him."

"He loves you very much."

"Maybe." She took another deep breath, then looked at me. "My name is not Angelette. Angelette a street name."

"Okay."

"My name is Sarah Lewis."

"Sarah. That's nice. Nicer than Angelette."

She crossed her arms and made a sharp little laugh that was somehow hard and pained. "Stop talkin' trash and tell me what you want."

"I think Charlie DeLuca's up to something that he doesn't want the rest of the family to know about. If I can find out what it is, I can make him let go of my friend."

"I ain't seen Charlie DeLuca since before William got out. That must be five, almost six months ago."

"How'd you meet him?"

"On the street. That's the way he likes to do it, with the street girls. He see somethin' he likes in a dirty movie, then him and his bodyguards come up here and he gets some of it."

"He always up here with the bodyguards?"

She laughed. "Man, he don't take a pee without them bodyguards. Got this one creepy guy, all tall and white and skinny, look like a goddamn vampire." Good old Ric.

"You hear the bodyguards say anything?"

She shook her head. "No. They stay down in the car while we up in the room. You know."

I said, "A guy named Richie might know something. I think he supplies Charlie with the movies."

She thought for a second, then shook her head. "I don't know no Richie."

"Did Charlie ever talk business with you?"

"Not the kind of business you talkin' about." The older woman was working with the flowers, carefully turned away.

"He ever complain about anything to you, like what a crummy day it was, like how a big deal went bad?"

"Look, I know what you want, but it wasn't like that. Charlie takes a liking to a girl, he comes around a lot and he spends big, but he don't stay around too long. He never stayed with a girl longer than three weeks. He likes to hurt and you complain one time too much and then he beats the hell out of you and moves on."

"He never said anything about what he does?"

"No."

I said, "You know any of his other ladies?"