Robert Crais - Lullaby Town

There were shouts in another part of the house and the sound of men running and then someone was banging on the door. Freddie came in first.

Sal was as calm as if he had taken out the trash. "Freddie, get a couple of those big plastic bags and take care of this."

Freddie swallowed and stumbled backward out of the room.

Sal looked down at his son and then looked at me, his eyes empty and bottomless. "Good enough?"

I nodded.

"Okay, you got what you want. Now I get what I want. The Gambozas must never know. What we speak of here stays here, buried forever. Will you bury this? Will you keep my kid safe?" Sal and Karen Lloyd, each worried about their children.

I nodded again. "We bury it. We keep everyone safe."

Vito said, "We got loose ends, Sal. Other people know."

Sal said, "We'll take care of the loose ends, Vito." He looked back at me. "You want anything else?"

"No."

"Then it's a done deal. Get the fuck out of my sight."

Iwalked out of Sal DeLuca's brownstone to a fine powder of snow on the streets and the sidewalks and the cars parked at the curb. The air was cold and the Manhattan skyline to the east was clear and pink in anticipation of the rising sun. To the west and the north, though, the clouds were still heavy and dense and promising more snow. The drunk was gone, but the little cardboard house remained, quiet and white in the early morning light. Cars belched fog-breath out on Fifth and 62nd, and men and women in heavy coats walked fast along the sidewalks, leaving gray trails. Somewhere there was music playing, but I didn't hear the notes clearly and couldn't make out the song. I slipped a twenty-dollar bill into the little cardboard house and went back to the Taurus.

I drove across Central Park, then up through the city and the Bronx and Yonkers and White Plains. I drove slowly and listened to a pretty good classic rock station that played a lot of John Fogerty and CCR. Run Through the Jungle . Nothing like a little Creedence Clearwater Revival at six in the morning after spending the night with the Godfather. Four miles above White Plains, I pulled into a rest stop overlooking a lake and started to shake. I shook for what seemed like hours but was probably only a couple of minutes. I let the motor run and the Taurus's heater pump on high, but I wasn't shaking from the cold.

A tan and white RV was parked broadside to the view, and had probably been there all night. A man and a woman in their sixties came out with coffee cups and went to the rail, looking out at the lake. They watched the lake for a while and sipped the coffee and held hands. When they turned and came back to the RV, the woman gave me a friendly smile. The license plate on their little mobile house said Utah .

At a quarter to ten I parked on the street in front of May Erdich's house. Toby and Joe Pike were standing in brown leaves and snow, tossing a beat-up Wilson football, and Peter was sitting on May's front step, watching them. Peter looked cold.

Karen Lloyd came out of the front door as I went up the walk.

I said, "It's over."

She shook her head, like maybe I was lying. "You got Charlie to go along?" Pike and Toby stopped throwing the ball. Toby ran over to stand by his mother.

"Sal. Charlie doesn't have anything to do with it anymore. It's Sal, and Sal says you're out of it. Charlie will do whatever Sal says."

She gripped one hand with the other. "I can stay at the bank?"

"Yes."

"No more Charlie? No more deposits?"

"It's over, Karen."

Peter smiled and crossed his arms but stayed on the front step.

Karen came down the steps and hugged me and then she hugged Pike. She started crying, holding us tight and digging her fingers into our shoulders as if only by holding us here could it be real. When she did it, Peter looked at his feet.

Karen let go and stepped back, smiling and crying and thanking us. She said, "Can we go back to the house?"

"Sure. Any time you want."

Peter looked up and said, "Karen, I'm glad. I couldn't be happier."

Karen smiled at him, then looked at her son. "Tobe. Let's get our things. Let's say bye to May."

They went into the house together. Inside, there was movement and warmth and the pounding footsteps of Toby running down a long hall.

Peter uncrossed his arms and pushed away from the top step. He said, "I've gotta get Dani. I want to bring her home and take care of her."

I nodded. "The police will have questions. We'll have to figure out what to tell them."

He made a little shrug. "I'll tell them the truth. She died saving my life because I'm a jerk."

Pike said, "You can't."

Peter looked at him.

I said, "I gave my word to Sal that we wouldn't let what Charlie was doing get out to the Gambozas. You tell the cops or People magazine or anyone else you know how Dani died, the Gambozas or someone who works for them will put it together. When they do, the deal with Sal will be over. He'll come for you."

"I don't care about me."

"He'll come for Karen and Toby."

Peter pursed his lips and looked at the ground. He didn't like it, but he was learning to live with things that he didn't like. He said, "It makes me feel like I'm cheating her."

"You are, but it's all we can do. Do you understand?"

He pursed his lips some more, but he nodded. The front door opened and Toby brought out his overnighter, put it on the porch, then went back inside and closed the door. Peter watched him. "They think I'm full of shit."

I didn't say anything.

"I'm thinking I've gotta get back to L.A. I've got the picture going into production soon. There's no point in me staying around."

I stared at the house for a while. My back hurt and my neck was stiff and I wanted to go to bed. "You shouldn't have come back here expecting them to think of you as husband and father. You could've earned that, perhaps, but you didn't think in terms of earning. You thought it was your right. You demand what you want and you get it, usually, and that makes you think that you can get whatever you demand."

"I didn't come out here wanting to fuck it up."

"I know."

"I wanted this to work out. I wanted them to be a part of my life. There are empty places."

"Maybe the way to look at it is that you should've worked to be a part of their lives and hoped to fill the empty places they have."

Peter pressed his lips together and looked at the ground, like maybe there was something interesting there. Elm leaves, dried and brittle in the cold. "Shit. I've gotta go."

He walked across the leaf-strewn yard and got into the limo and drove away. There was still a little snow on the windshield when he left.

Pike and I waited at the Taurus until Karen and Toby came out. Karen was smiling and said, "I feel like a celebration. Would you like to have a late breakfast? On me, of course."

"Whatever you want."

We went to the Chelam diner and sat in a booth and had eggs and sausage and pumpkin pancakes and home-fried potatoes, but it wasn't much of a celebration. There was a curious letdown feeling between us, as if there were unresolved business still at hand. When Toby was finished, he got up and played a video game. Space Command . A guy with a ray gun trying to kill thousands of little bugs, Karen watched him uneasily.

I said, "At loose ends?"

She nodded. "Does it show?"

I said, "There's a lot to think about. There's still Peter in your life."

She nodded again. "It's that, but it's more than that, too. It's as if a very large object has moved across the sky, but only we've seen it. These other people here in the diner, Joyce Steuben at the bank, no one else in town has seen it."

I nodded. It's always like that.