Robert Crais - Lullaby Town

I said, "Mind if I use your phone?"

I called Rollie George and told him where I was and what had happened. While I told him, the doc crossed his arms and listened and absently stroked his beard. When I hung up, he said, "Think I should maybe go take a look?"

I shook my head. "It won't do any good."

He looked at Peter. "You look familiar."

"I've got one of those faces."

We left the doctor, dropped Toby with May Erdich, and drove back to the little airfield. The snow had stopped falling but not before a gentle skin of white had been pulled over the road and the airplanes and the bodies in the field. Joe Pike and I unshipped the tarps from the two Pawnees' engine cowlings and covered Charlie DeLuca and the three guys who'd died with him and then we sat in the LeBaron to wait.

A couple of Connecticut state cars got there first, followed by a plain blue sedan with somebody from the Connecticut AG's office. They came in the right way, without the sirens or the lights, and I liked them for it. The guy from the AG's office walked over to us and asked who we were. I told him my name and Joe's, but I didn't mention Karen or Peter, and he didn't ask. He said that he had been told something about bodies at another location. I told him how to get to the pumpkin field and that there were two bodies on either side of the field in the woods. He nodded and went back to the uniform cops, and then he and a car full of the uniforms drove away to take a look. Twenty minutes later a tan car with an FBI emblem on the side door and a white Ford from the New York State Attorney General's office pulled in just ahead of a gray Cadillac limousine. Two guys got out of the FBI car, and a bald guy and two women got out of the N.Y. car. Rollie George and his dog got out of the limo. The law student was driving. Everybody except the bald man smiled when they saw Rollie and shook his hand and told him it was good to see him. Nothing like palling around with a big-time novelist at a murder scene.

Karen said, "Shouldn't we be out there with them?"

"No. We sit and wait and see what they say."

They went as a group to the spot between the two airplanes and lifted the tarpaulin and looked at what was under it. Maxie sniffed at Charlie's body and lifted his leg and Rollie had to pull the dog away. One of the women laughed. They stood over the bodies for a long time, sometimes glancing back to the car, but mostly not. Everybody seemed in agreement with what they were talking about except the bald guy. You could see it in his face. He made sharp gestures and once he pointed at our car. They talked some more, and then Rollie George walked over to us and bent down by the driver's side window. He gave Karen the sort of reassuring smile your grandfather might give, and if he recognized Peter, he didn't say anything. He leaned close to me and said, "Can we have the bad cop?"

I said, "Yes. If my people don't get named and don't have to testify."

He nodded. "It looks like there's more than one officer involved. It looks like there might be several with Kennedy security who took part."

I nodded back at him. "I sort of figured that"

Rollie smiled at Karen again and then he and Max walked back to the little group around Charlie DeLuca's body. There was more talk and the bald guy liked it even less and made more of the sharp gestures until one of the women he had ridden out with said, "Oh, shut the fuck up, Morton."

The feds and the people from the two AG offices came to the car for Pike and me and walked us around the site asking us questions. Most of the questions were about Charlie DeLuca and the Jamaicans and the cop I had followed to the Queens precinct house. I didn't mention Charlie DeLuca's secret account, or that he was doing something that Sal didn't know about, or the Gambozas. The Jamaicans probably didn't know whose dope they were stealing and neither, probably, did the cop. If they did, and if they told, that was between the DeLucas and them. You do what you can.

When the AG people were finished with their questions, they brought us back to the car. None of them looked at Karen Lloyd or Peter Alan Nelsen, or spoke to them. It was as if they weren't there. One of the women and one of the feds went with a couple of Staties to the pumpkin field. They weren't gone long. After they got back, there was more talk and then Roland George came back to us. He said, "I think we've done about all we can do here. You can go now."

Karen Lloyd said, "Is that all?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You don't need to question us? You aren't going to take us in?"

Peter said, "Karen."

Rollie George smiled and walked away.

Karen looked at me. "They're keeping us out of this? Even with people dead?"

"Yes. Start the car and let's get out of here."

We drove to Karen Lloyd's house in silence and parked in the drive beneath the basketball hoop until Peter had his story straight. The people from the AG's office were going to release Dani's body to him with no questions asked, but he would need to know what to tell Nick and T.J. and the press. Peter Alan Nelsen's bodyguard had been murdered and there would be questions. He was going to have to lie, and he was going to have to maintain the lie for the rest of his life. He said, "I can do it."

Karen said, "You'd better."

He frowned at her and then he got out of the LeBaron and got into his limo and drove away. Karen watched him go. "Do you think he can?"

I nodded. "Yes. He's learned a lot."

"I hope." She let out a sigh. "I hate this. I hate it that once you let someone into your life, they're part of your life forever."

I said, "Part, maybe, but not all. You're still you. You're vice-president of the bank. You're twice president of the PTA. You're a Rotarian and a member of the Library Committee. Maybe, without having gone through what you went through with Peter, you wouldn't be any of those things. Maybe you would be less."

She turned and looked at me, and then she leaned across and kissed me, and then she turned in the seat and kissed Joe Pike. She said, "I'll do what's best for Toby. I've always been able to do that. What happens now with the DeLucas?"

I looked out the window at the house and the basketball hoop and Toby's bike leaning against the garage wall. Then I looked back at her. "I don't know. Sal and Charlie aren't running the family anymore. They'll have a new boss."

She made her lips into a little rosebud and then she nodded slowly. "Do you think he'll try to make me keep doing this?"

Pike leaned close to her and patted her arm. "Go live your life. You let us worry about that."

Karen Lloyd took a deep breath, let it out, and got out of the car.

Pike and I collected our things, said our good-byes, and drove down to the city where we took a fourteenth-floor room at the Park Lane Hotel on East 59th Street. It was a nice room with a view of Central Park.

We took turns in the shower, then dressed and walked to the Museum of Modern Art on 53rd. They call it MoMA for short, which is dumb, but they had Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night , which is anything but. Score one for New York. I had always wanted to see it, and now sat for the better part of an hour staring into its depths and textures. Pike said, "I know how he felt."

"They say he was mad."

Pike shrugged.

We walked up to West 7lst Street and had an early dinner at Victor's Café 52. Cuban food, which rivaled and in some ways surpassed the excellent fare found at the Versailles on Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles. I had the chicken steak and black beans. Pike had the white bean soup and fried plantains. We both had beer. Score two.

It was still light when we finished, so we walked across the three long blocks of Central Park, past the lake and Bethesda Fountain and something that called itself the Boathouse Café. The café was closed. People were jogging and riding bikes and a couple of kids were flying a model airplane. No one seemed about to do crime, but the mounted police were in high profile. After the sun went down, it might be different. I asked Pike, "Are you afraid?"