Robert Crais - Lullaby Town

She nodded, thinking about that but not believing it. "I want you to watch out for him. Will you do that? Will you and Mr. Pike stay with us until this is over?"

"Yes."

She turned away from the window and looked at the door to the living room. "I'm going to have to tell all of this."

"I don't see any way around it."

She closed her eyes and looked tired. "Christ," she said, "that's going to be worse than dealing with Charlie."

Ileft Karen Lloyd in the kitchen and went back out into the living room. Toby had come back and was sitting on the couch with Peter. Pike was gone. Outside, probably. Peter said, "You want to come visit me in California?"

"Sure."

"Hey, you come out," Peter said, "I'll make the studio send their jet. They got this jet, it does nothing but fly jerks to places they don't need to go. The studios are scared shitless of me. I got a house in Malibu on the beach. Johnny Carson lives a couple doors down. So does Steven Spielberg and Sly Stallone and Tom Hanks. We can hang out. Won't that be great?"

"Uh-huh." Maybe meaning Spielberg and Stallone, maybe meaning the jet. Dani was smiling and nodding at how wonderful it would all be. Every boy's adventure come true.

Outside, I could see Pike on the driveway, palms together over his head, standing on one leg. Tree pose. Seeking focus and balance and escape from chaos. Peter said, "What's your favorite car?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, what's your favorite car? You see TV, you see cars driving around, you look at magazines. You gotta have a favorite car."

"I kinda like red cars." He had never thought about it.

Peter spread his hands and beamed. "Hey, you come out, we'll get a red car to drive around. How about that?"

Toby made a face like his father was speaking Venusian. "You'll buy a car because I'm there?"

"Sure. You're my son. We'll buy a fuckin' helicopter, you want."

Toby sort of giggled, maybe for the helicopter, but more likely because Peter had used the F word.

Peter said, "Dani, go get the thing."

Dani grinned and went out to the limo and came back with a couple of good-sized boxes. Peter said, "Open'm up, champ." Champ. Just like Ward Cleaver talking to the Beave.

Toby opened them. The boxes contained a top-of-the-line JVC professional videotape camera, a turbo-charged videotape player and electronic editor, some blank tapes, and copies of all of Peter Alan Nelsen's movies. I figured the setup would retail out at about thirteen grand, excluding the movies. Toby said, "Wow."

Peter patted him on the leg. "Now you can make your own movies. Just like your old man."

"Will you show me how?"

"Bet your ass." Peter leaned forward and ruffled his hair. "You're Peter Alan Nelsen's kid, and things are going to be different from now on. Your life is going to undergo enormous improvement."

What a thing to say to a twelve-year-old.

Peter said, "Whatever you want, it's yours. Anything you wanna do, we'll do it. I'm thinking about buying a couple of motorcycles so we can go riding together. Would you like that?"

"Yeah!"

When Karen came out of the kitchen, Toby said, "Look at what Peter gave me."

Karen didn't like it much. "It looks expensive."

Toby said, "We're gonna get motorcycles. We're gonna go riding together."

Karen didn't like that at all. "Motorcycles are dangerous, Peter. Toby is too young."

Peter said, "I'll get'm a trail bike. We won't ride on the street. We'll ride in the woods."

Karen's jaw clenched and her eyes went hard. 'That's not the point. Toby lives here. Toby lives a certain way and too many expensive gifts will distort his values."

I said, "Tobe. Peter and your mom have to talk. Why don't you go outside for a little bit"

Peter said, "The boy and I were just getting to know one another."

Karen said, "I know, but this is important You can get to know each other after."

Toby went out the front door and pretty soon there was the thump thump thump of the ball on the drive. Karen looked at Dani. "Could we have some privacy?"

Dani flushed and said that she'd keep Toby company and went out.

Peter said, "What?"

Karen sat on the couch and tucked her skirt under and stared at the man she had married when she was seventeen years old and lived with for fourteen months. Then she took a sharp, quick breath and told him about her involvement with the mafia. No preamble.

Outside, the deepening twilight was purple and chill and punctuated by the bounce of the ball and an occasional laugh or word. I could see Dani and Toby and most of the drive, but not the hoop. Someone would shoot the ball and the ball would arc up, but then it would be gone, passing from my line of sight. It didn't matter. You could tell if they made it or not by their faces and the sounds they made and by how the ball rebounded. If someone ran to one side or the other, the ball had caromed off the side of the hoop. If someone ran fast straight ahead, they had lofted an air ball and it was rolling into the garage. If the ball gently came back to them or they trotted forward to the hoop, they had made a basket. You didn't see the event, you saw the results of the event. I had read a book on modern astronomy which had said that both Neptune and Pluto were predicted long before they had ever been seen because of peculiarities in the orbits of the other outer planets. It made me think that planets weren't so very different from people. Seeing what happened around them was enough to tell you where they were and what they were.

When Karen Lloyd was finished, Peter looked at me and said, "Is this for real?"

"Yep."

He stood up and gave impatient. "No. I mean, is this really real? This guy who was here, Charlie, he's a criminal, he's in the mafia ?"

I said, "It's really real, Peter." Something only someone in show business would have to hear. "The DeLucas are one of the largest mafia families in New York. I've talked to Charlie about letting Karen out of the setup, but he's said no."

Peter made a big deal out of looking around the room before he looked back at Karen. He was grinning, like this wasn't really real after all, like maybe we were clowning around. "You're in the mafia."

"No. I'm not in the mafia. I'm involved with the mafia." Her voice was edged. The edge hadn't been there a few minutes ago.

"Does the boy know?"

The jaw knotted again. "Stop calling him 'the boy.' He has a name."

"Jesus Christ, all right. Toby. Does Toby know?" Now Peter was giving us irritated.

"No. This is illegal, Peter. What I'm doing is against the law. You don't tell a child something like that"

I said, "This is why I didn't call. We were trying to get this straightened out before I brought you in."

Peter said, "Jesus Christ."

"If Karen goes to the police, she'll have to cut a deal with the states and the feds. She can do that, and her testimony will put Charlie and probably Sal away, but then she'd have to go into witness protection."

Karen said, "We'd have to change our names. We'd have to move and go into hiding. I won't do that to Toby or to me."

Peter said, "But the guy's here threatening our kid."

I said, "Charlie did what he did today to get a message across. He won't do anything else if Karen makes the pickups that he tells her to make and continues to launder the money."

Karen said, "I've asked Elvis and Mr. Pike to move in here until this is over."

Peter blinked at me. Surprised. "I didn't know you were staying here."

"I wasn't staying here. I'm going to stay here now ."

Peter frowned, thinking about it and not liking it. "How long is this going to take?"

I told them about Gloria Uribe and the Jamaican named Santiago, and that maybe Charlie was going to meet with Santiago sometime tomorrow.