Robert Crais - Lullaby Town

An hour and ten minutes later Charlie came out and got into the Town Car, and he and Ric drove to the Figaro Social Club, members only . Ric went in with him this time, instead of staying in the car. Shoot a little pool, drink a little espresso, hang out with the other wiseguys. They still hadn't cleaned the front door.

Neither Charlie nor Ric came or went for the next two hours and twenty-five minutes. A couple of old men hobbled in and another old man hobbled away, and strong younger men with broad backs and sturdy necks drifted in and out, but Charlie never moved. Probably weren't a lot of command decisions to be made at a meat plant, anyway.

At ten of four Pike said, "Maybe it's a pass."

At four Pike said, "We can forget the Jamaican connection."

At six minutes after four Pike said, "You wanna check on this Santiago guy, anyway?"

At eleven minutes after four Charlie DeLuca came out and got into the black Town Car, and Pike said, "He's alone."

I looked at Pike and gave him Groucho Marx eyebrows.

Charlie pulled away from the curb and went up Bowery to Fourteenth, then across to Eighth and uptown past the theater district and the porno parlors and the street hustlers and a guy carrying a placard that said TRAVIS BICKLE WAS RIGHTEOUS. Heading north. Maybe north to Morningside Heights and Gloria Uribe and a guy named Santiago, but maybe not. He could always turn off to New Jersey.

This time of day the streets were crowded with cars and yellow cabs, and the cars and the cabs accelerated and swerved and stopped without regard to lanes or reason. Yellow cabs roared past the pedestrians who lined the street corners, some speeding up the closer they came to the warm bodies, others veering sharply across traffic, passing within inches of other cabs and cars, and nobody bothered to slow down. Everyone drove as if they were in Beirut, but that made it easy to follow him. In the chaos that was the approaching rush hour, we were just another random particle.

Pike loosened his.357 in its holster.

We stayed north on Eighth for a long time and then Charlie turned off Broadway onto Eighty-eighth and then over to Amsterdam, and suddenly we weren't going toward Morningside Heights and Gloria Uribe anymore. Pike said, "Change of plans."

"Uh-huh."

Charlie DeLuca pulled to the curb in a No Parking zone on Amsterdam Avenue. A young guy maybe thirty with a rat face and pimples and two sweatshirts came out of a doorway carrying a white, legal-sized envelope and got into the Lincoln. The Lincoln pulled away and we followed. Less than two blocks up Amsterdam the Lincoln again pulled to the curb and the pizza-faced guy got out. He closed the door as soon as he was out and walked away without looking back. He didn't have the envelope. The Lincoln started up Amsterdam again.

Pike said, "Let me have the kid."

I jerked the Taurus to the curb and Pike was out of the door before the Taurus stopped moving. I gunned it back into traffic and stayed with Charlie up Amsterdam into Morningside Heights and finally to Clyde's Bar. Well, well.

Luther and his friend had shown up and were leaning against their Pontiac. Luther didn't look happy. I drove around the block four times before I found a place to park and then I went back to see Luther. Luther smiled nastily when he saw me and said, "Figure I be seeing you again. The Godfather roll up around five minutes ago. He upstairs now."

"I know. How about Santiago?"

Luther nodded, slow, maybe remembering the ice pick. "Yeah. He up there, too. So's the woman."

"What's Santiago wearing?"

"Camel hair coat. Hat with a little pink feather in the band. Boots with these real skinny heels."

"Great, Luther. Thanks."

Luther gave me the slow nod, considering. "You really a cop?"

"Luther," I said, "I am the right hand of God."

Luther nodded again, and the nasty smile came back. "If you plannin' on smitin' the sinners, I be glad to help." He pushed back his long coat and showed me a little Rossi.32 snub-nose stuck in his pants. He remembered the ice pick, all right.

"Strictly surveillance this time around. Any smiting will have to come later."

Luther shrugged and closed his coat. "I be here."

I went back across to the Taurus. Six minutes after I got settled Charlie and a tall black man in a hat with a pink feather and a camel overcoat came down and got into the Lincoln. When they passed Luther and his buddy, the tall black man said something to Luther and laughed. Ice-pick joke. Luther slid his right hand under his coat and watched the tall black man with sleepy eyes until he was in the Lincoln. It was going to take more than an ice pick the next time.

I followed the Lincoln down to 135th Street, then east across the island to Second, then straight down Second to the Queensboro Bridge and across the bridge into Queens.

We worked our way down off the bridge into an area of row houses and basketball courts and four- and five-story residential buildings. The sidewalks were crowded and most of the faces were black or brown, but not all of them, and many of the signs were in Spanish. The Lincoln pulled to the curb outside of a little coffee shop named Raldo's Soul Kitchen, and Charlie and the tall black guy went inside.

I looped around the block and parked in front of a barbershop, then walked back to Raldo's and looked in through the window. Charlie and the tall black guy were sitting at a booth with a shorter black guy and another white guy. The white guy looked sort of working class and the black guy looked like a fashion-row closeout with small eyes. Charlie handed the white envelope he had gotten from the guy on Amsterdam to Santiago, and Santiago handed it to the other black guy. Chain of command. I went back to the Taurus and waited.

Sixteen minutes later Charlie DeLuca and the two black guys and the other white guy came out of Raldo's and walked to a green Jaguar Sovereign parked up the block. The black guy with the small eyes opened the trunk and took out two brown-paper grocery bags and gave one of the bags to Charlie and the other to the working-class white guy. Charlie's bag was bigger and looked like it weighed more. As soon as they had the bags, the white guy went to a brown Toyota Celica and Charlie came back to his Lincoln and the two black guys got into the Jaguar. Nobody shook hands and nobody said so long, but everybody looked happy. Also, everybody went in different directions.

Portrait of the detective in crisis. Stay with Charlie or go after the black guys or the guy in the Toyota? Staying with the black guys would be hardest, and if they made me so soon after their meeting with Charlie, they'd tell him, and he might get scared and stop whatever he was doing. I went with the white guy in the Toyota.

We drove north to the Long Island Expressway, then east to 678 and then south through the heart of Queens to an exit that said Jamaica Avenue. Two blocks east of the Jamaica Avenue exit, the brown Toyota turned into a little parking lot next to a bright, modern cast-cement building with a sign that said BOROUGH OF QUEENS POLICE.

He parked in an empty spot next to a Volkswagen bug and got out with the brown-paper bag. He opened the Toyota's trunk, tossed in the bag, then took out a cop's blue-on-blue NYPD uniform and a gray gym bag. He closed the trunk, then carried the uniform and the gym bag into the station house.

I sat in the Taurus in the Borough of Queens Police parking lot for a very long while until a couple of cops with thirty years on the job gave me the bad eye, and only then did I drive away.

Amazing what you learn if you just wait and watch.

Icalled Rollie George from a pay phone outside a Korean market and gave him the license numbers off the cop's Toyota and the Jaguar Sovereign. I told him that one of the black guys might be known as Santiago, and I asked him to get me anything on them that he could.