Robert Crais - Lullaby Town

"Just to see. You know, out on the street, walkin' around. We'd be on the corner, we'd talk about him." She brushed at her mouth, past the big scar. "It's pretty easy to tell who he been with."

"You know who he's with, now?"

Her eyes flashed hot. "How I know that? You think we stay in touch? You think Mr. Charlie send me love letters?"

"It's important, Sarah. Could you find out?"

She crossed her arms again and stared at me, maybe thinking she'd had enough of this, but then maybe thinking she'd come this far. She uncrossed the arms and went behind the little counter and used the phone. While she spoke, the older woman sneaked glances at me between a spray of lilacs.

Sarah Lewis put down the phone, then came back and said, "He seeing some gal named Gloria Uribe. She lives over on 136th, up above a bar called Clyde's."

"Thanks, Sarah. I appreciate the help."

"Won't do no good, you talkin' with her, though. She'll be too scared to say anything, even if she knows more than me. Any girl with Charlie is that way." Sarah brushed at the lip again, as if it itched. It was a bad scar, the kind that comes from a deep cut. When Charlie hit her, he had hit her hard, and probably more than once.

I went to the door.

"You really think you gonna find a way to put the hurt on Charlie DeLuca?"

"Yeah," I said. "I do."

She squinted at me from the hurt eye, then made one of the nods to herself again and opened the door. "All right. You find a way to hurt him, you hurt him a little bit extra. You hurt him for Angelette Silver, you hear?"

The older woman had stopped pretending to work and was staring at me. I nodded at her, then looked back at Sarah Lewis.

"I was planning to."

The older woman smiled and turned away, and I left.

C lyde's was a knothole of a bar in the bottom of a four-story building that was mostly fire escapes and clotheslines. Three or four women in tiny red dresses and rabbit coats sat listlessly at the bar while a couple of guys in long coats leaned against a Pontiac out front laughing about something. One of the guys had a gap in his teeth like Mike Tyson.

I put the Taurus across the street in a bus stop, then walked back. The two guys kept laughing but watched me come. There were no more white guys up here than there were down on 122nd Street. If I were them, I'd probably watch me, too.

I went into a little open stairwell next to Clyde's and found the apartment-house mailboxes. G. Uribe was on box 304.

The guy with Mike Tyson's teeth looked in at me and said, "Say, man, who you lookin' for?"

"Gloria Uribe. She around?"

"Naw, she workin'. She better be, she know what's good for her."

"You her business manager?"

"Naw, man, she Haitian or Cuban or somedamnthing like that. They got their own people to take care of'm. I got somethin' on the fourth floor just as good, though. No waitin'."

"No, thanks," I said. "My heart belongs to Gloria."

He said, "Shee-it, you the poe-lice, all right." His buddy laughed and they knocked fists.

I gave him the okay we both know I'm a cop face. "What's your name, homeboy?"

"Luther."

"Luther, make a friend on the force. Gloria do a good business?"

"Fair to middlin'."

"White guys?"

Luther nodded and winked at his friend. "You sniffin' 'round 'bout that gangster with the big car. You from Organized Crime?"

"Maybe." Maybe. Did Eliot Ness say maybe? "Tell me about the big car. He here often?"

"Two, three times a week."

"There any pattern to when he comes around?"

Luther gave me pained. "Man, all these questions grinding my brain, you know?"

"Uh-huh."

I dug out a twenty and passed it to him. He didn't look impressed. "Tha's pretty thin pickin's."

"It's the budget crunch, Luther."

"I hear that." He made the twenty disappear. "He came around twice last week. On Tuesday, then again Friday. Usually a Friday." He looked at his friend and the friend nodded.

I said, "What do the bodyguards do while he's with Gloria?"

"Shee-it, he ain't had his posse around in three months."

I looked at him. "He's been seeing Gloria Uribe for three months?"

"Hell, he been coming around longer than that." Luther squinted at his friend again. "What, four, five months now?"

The friend nodded, uh-huh.

Luther looked back at me.

I said, "He's been seeing Gloria Uribe for maybe five months, and when he comes, he comes alone?"

Luther frowned and gave me the heavy-eyelid treatment. "How many times I gotta say it, a lousy twenty bucks."

Luther's friend yawned and stared at something down the street.

I thought about it. In my business, you look for things that are out of the ordinary because out of the ordinary things usually mean clues. Sarah Lewis had said that Charlie DeLuca never stayed with a woman for longer than three weeks and that he never went anywhere without bodyguards. Of course, that was a long time ago and maybe Charlie had changed his ways. Maybe Charlie and Gloria were in love and all the getting together without bodyguards was to discuss wedding plans. Then again, maybe not.

I said, "Luther, Gloria just a streetwalker, or does she do outcall?"

"She walkin' when times are hard. Things looking better, she be strictly outcall. You can tell when she outcall, 'cause her nose in the air."

Luther's friend laughed like hell.

A white Caddie DeVille pulled to the curb and a slender, mocha-colored young woman in a tight dress and black-and-white cowboy boots got out. The Caddie's driver was an Asian guy in his fifties. She said something to him, then glanced at Luther and went into Clyde's. Luther frowned after her. "I got business to tend to."

"Thanks for the help, Luther. I appreciate it."

"Just don't say nuthin' round that wop gangster. I don't wanna wind up on no pizza."

"Sure, Luther. Count on it."

Luther and his buddy disappeared into Clyde's.

I walked up the two flights to the third floor and down a short hall to 304 and knocked. No answer. Somewhere at the other end of the hall a baby was crying, and somewhere else a rapper was banging out a gangster line. Ice-T. Drama . No sounds came from within Gloria Uribe's apartment. I knocked again, then took out the wires I keep in my wallet and let myself in.

Gloria Uribe had a one-bedroom with a bath and a tiny kitchenette. The walls were discolored and paint was peeling from the ceiling, but it wasn't an unclean place. A tattersall sofa with a beaded slipcover sat opposite a Victorian china cabinet that had been polished a deep, purple mahogany. The kitchenette and the bath were neat and clean, and the bedroom was a spotless vision in pink: pink satin comforter, pink Princess telephone, pink lace pillows, pink walls and ceiling. She had even found a pink clock-radio, which sat next to the bed on a nightstand. The nightstand was brown.

I wanted to find her trick book. Streetwalkers don't keep them because they don't have regular customers, but call girls do. They use the book to keep track of their appointments and such details of their trade as client preference and past fees. If I found Gloria's trick book, I would know when Charlie DeLuca was with her and when he wasn't and what they did when they were together. I might even learn what was going on.

I started with the nightstand, then looked behind and beneath the bed and between the mattress and the box springs. I found two boxes of Softique tissues, one open, the other not, and a box of Trojan prophylactics, ribbed. I went through her vanity and a small chest of drawers with a forest of little knickknacks on top. Bottom drawer of the chest, there were a black snakeskin whip, a black vinyl body harness, two pairs of police-issue handcuffs, and a black rubber mask with a couple of little holes that I guess you were supposed to breathe through. Nice.