Lullaby Town Part 19

Karen gave me the flat eyes. "You see?"

The room felt smaller with them in it and the ceiling no longer felt high and peaked. Peter looked around like he was thinking of buying the place, and Dani stood to the side, sort of out of the way, one hand holding the other.

Karen said, "Would either of you care for something? I have soft drinks and beer and I made iced tea." The corners of her mouth were tight.

Dani said, "No, thank you."

Peter said, "I'll take a brewski. You got a Bud?"

Karen went into the kitchen without saying anything.

Peter winked at me and smiled. "She's doing okay, isn't she? If you'd known her back in L.A., you'd never believe it."

I said, "Peter. Go easy on that."

He looked confused. "What?"

Karen came back with a bottle of St. Pauli Girl and a gla.s.s and a napkin on a Dansk tray. Peter took the bottle but not the gla.s.s. "You know I never use a gla.s.s."

Karen said, "I forgot."

"Sure."

Karen offered Dani a seat on the couch, then took one of the wingback chairs. I sat at the dining-room table with Joe Pike. Peter had some of the beer and went over to the mantel and looked at the pictures. It was five minutes to four and we were having just a fine ole time.

Peter said, "Guess it was too much to hope you'd have a couple shots of me up here."

Karen made her lips into a small hard rosebud.

"You know, for the boy."

She looked out the window, then checked her watch.

Peter crossed the living room and sat on the other wing chair. He spread his legs under the coffee table and held the beer without drinking it. He said, "I'm not trying to create a problem for you."

Karen said, "Of course."

"I just want to know my son."

"He should be here anytime."

Peter nodded and drank some of the beer and didn't say anything. Karen stared out of the window. Dani stared at the floor. Pike sat immobile, safely hidden behind the dark gla.s.ses. Maybe if I asked he would loan the gla.s.ses to me and I could pretend I wasn't here, either. I made a little face at him to see if he was looking, but he didn't react, so maybe he wasn't. Of course, he might be pretending that he wasn't. You never know with Pike.

At ten minutes after four Peter said, "I thought the kid was supposed to be here at four."

Karen leaned forward a fraction of an inch. "Don't call him 'the kid.' His name is Toby."

Peter spread his hands and nodded and stared off into s.p.a.ce some more.

At fourteen minutes after four Karen's orange and white cat came out of the hall, walked across the living room, and sniffed at Peter. Peter reached down to pet it, then thought better of it and drew back his hand. Guess the scratches hadn't healed from before.

At twenty-two minutes after four Karen looked at her watch, then at the Early American clock, then frowned. Toby should've been home.

At twenty-eight minutes after four Peter put his hands on his knees and stood up and said, "What the h.e.l.l is this? Is the boy coming or not?"

Karen stood up with him and her nostrils were tight. "He's having a hard time, Peter. He was nervous about meeting you. He didn't sleep well and he's scared."

"What'd you tell him about me, that I eat rat t.u.r.ds?"

Karen made a hissing sound and went into the kitchen and picked up the phone. "I'll call the school."

Peter walked around in a little circle, then sat down again. Dani put a hand on his shoulder.

Six minutes later Karen came out, worried. "They said he left forty-five minutes ago."

I said, "How long is the ride from school?"

"No more than ten minutes."

Peter said, "Jesus Christ, you think he ran away?"

Karen got her purse and her keys from the hutch in the dining room and went to the front door without saying anything. I got up with her, looking at Pike. "I'll go with her. You hang here."

Pike nodded, the black lenses moving just enough to catch the light.

Peter said, "Hey, I'll come, too."

Karen said, "No," and when Peter started to get up, Pike gently pushed him back down. "Not this time."

Peter said, "Hey," and tried to get up again, but Pike kept him in the chair, standing so close that Peter couldn't get the leverage to rise. Peter said, "What in h.e.l.l you doing?"

Dani stood and took a step forward, but I shook my head once and she stopped. Pike leaned down close to Peter, Pike's face maybe six inches from his, letting Peter stare into the gla.s.ses, and said, "It's better if she goes without you." Pike's voice was soft and even.

Peter squinted into the dark and stopped trying to get up. "Sure."

Karen was already climbing into the LeBaron when I got out the front door. Her back was stiff and her jaw was tight and she overcranked the engine, grinding the starter gears.

We drove to the school and circled the campus twice and then went into town and back out to the school. We took a shortcut that Karen thought Toby might've taken, but he wasn't there, either. We drove for over an hour and we saw no sign of him until we were heading back toward her house on a part of the road that was between two wide, flat fields overgrown with a heavy wild rye that was dying from the cold.

I said, "Stop the car."

She said, "What?"

When the car was stopped, I got out and walked off the road to Toby Lloyd's red Schwinn mountain bike. Its rear wheel was broken and its frame was crushed and the handlebars were bent backward and together so that the handgrips were touching and it looked the way a bike looks when it's been run over by a car.

I researched for Toby Lloyd in the high gra.s.s around the bike, but I couldn't find him.

Charlie DeLuca had finally made contact.

Twenty-six.

Karen Lloyd got out of her car and ran to the edge of the field. When she saw the bike, her eyes got wide and she put her hands on the sides of her head and she yelled, "Toby?" first scared and then angry, like maybe this was a bad joke and he would jump out and yell boo. She pushed past me into the rye and the timothy and the pumpkin vines, screaming her son's name and running one way and then another. "Toby?"

I caught her and held her and she said let go and tried to pull away. I said, "He's not there. They wouldn't hurt him. They want you on their side and they know that if they hurt him they'll lose you."

"I want to find him."

"We'll find him. We'll go back to the house and wait for Charlie to call."

"Oh my G.o.d. What am I going to do?" She was breathing hard, as if her subjective reality had suddenly been hypered on to a higher plane. "How could they do this? How could they know?"

"There's only one school here. They probably hung around until Toby started for home and then they picked him up."

"But his bike."

"I don't know."

"Did they just run over him?"

"No."

"My G.o.d. What did they do to him?" She turned and ran back to the car and I followed.

Five minutes later we knew.

Charlie DeLuca's black Lincoln Town Car was sitting in Karen's drive behind the limo. Ric was in the pa.s.senger's side with the window down and country-and-western music on the stereo. Reba McEntire. He still had the black Ray Bans and the black spiked hair and the deathly white skin. A brand-new red Schwinn mountain bike was leaning against the garage, the price tag still on the handlebars. Karen said, "Oh, thank G.o.d."

Ric peeled himself out of the Town Car as we parked. He was wearing a triple-layered black leather English jacket with an acne of metal studs. When the jacket pulled open you could see something stainless-steel and shining under his left arm. The ten. "Let's go inside."

Karen said, "Is my boy all right?"

"Let's go inside. Charlie's waiting."

Karen ran toward the door, and Ric and I followed.

Peter and Dani and Toby Lloyd and Charlie DeLuca were sitting in the living room, Peter and Charlie in the two wingback chairs and Dani and Toby on the couch.

Charlie DeLuca was laughing at something that Peter was saying, and they were each holding a bottle of St Pauli Girl. Toby was sitting on the edge of the couch, hands between his knees, staring at Peter with a kind of nervous curiosity. Joe Pike was standing against the wall by the fireplace, arms crossed and weight on one foot. When Ric came in, Pike put his weight on both feet but didn't uncross his arms. Charlie DeLuca smiled at us like he was everybody's favorite uncle and said, "Here they are, now."

Karen went directly to Toby and gripped his upper arms and looked him in the eyes hard enough to read something written on the inside of his skull. "Are you all right?"

"Sure, Mom."

"Did anyone hurt you? Or threaten you?"

The boy was looking confused and embarra.s.sed. "What do you mean?"

Ric nodded at Pike, took off his Ray Bans, and rubbed at his eyes. Guess one pair of dark gla.s.ses in the room was enough.

Charlie smiled at me. "You're still here, hunh? I figured for sure you'd be back ridin' Dumbo, knew what's good for you."

I gave him a little hand shrug. "Maybe we didn't understand each other."

Peter was smiling, like he had a joke. "You're not going to believe why Toby's late, Karen. Go ahead, Charlie, tell her. Listen to this." Go ahead, Charlie Go ahead, Charlie. Old friends.

Charlie settled back in the wing chair. "I backed over his bike at school. Can you imagine that? I felt so terrible that I waited around until he came out so I could buy him a new one. Hey, a bike is like a horse, right? You're a kid, your bike is your best friend. I felt like such a dufus." Dufus. Putting on the show for Peter, and Peter eating it up.

Karen stared at Charlie as he said it and then she looked back at her son. "You went with this man to buy the new bike?"

"Well, yeah. Sure." Talking fast and knowing that he was in trouble. "We went to Quisenberry's. He said he wanted to pay for a new bike and he asked where they sold them in town and I showed him."

Karen looked from Toby to Charlie and then back to Toby, then she slapped him so hard that it sounded like a .22 pistol fired indoors. "Don't you ever go away with a stranger again!"

Toby's head snapped to the side and Dani gasped and Peter said, "Hey! What'd you do that for?"

Karen said, "Shut the f.u.c.k up." Her face was white now, almost as white as Ric's, and she was trembling.

Toby looked scared. "He knew you, Mom. I thought it'd be okay."

Charlie said, "Tobe, I'm afraid your mom's upset and she's got a right to be. It's my fault." Good old Uncle Charlie. He looked back at Karen, and he didn't look so much like Uncle Charlie anymore. "All of this never would've happened if I hadn't come all the way here from the city for a meeting, and you know what? I'm stood up. I'm left hanging. I need this, right? To be insulted like this?"

Peter nodded, in perfect agreement with his new friend Charlie. "Hey, I get a clown working on a picture does that, I set him straight."

Charlie smiled. "That's right, Pete. Sometimes you just gotta set people straight."

Peter nodded again and shot a wink at his son.

Karen said, "Toby. Go to your room and close the door."

Toby's face darkened, but he went out. When he was gone, Karen turned to Charlie and said, "You b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Peter gave surprised. "Jesus Christ, Karen, the guy's apologized fifteen times. Toby's okay."

She didn't look at Peter. Her eyes stayed with Charlie and her chest rose and fell and the skin at the corners of her mouth turned a sort of purple color under the makeup.

Charlie said, "Believe me, I know how she feels. You warn kids about strangers, but kids are still kids, right? They make mistakes. I know how I would feel if anything happened. You wouldn't want anything to happen, would you, Karen?" Giving it to her slow.

Karen shook her head. "No. I wouldn't want anything to happen."

I said, "We get the drift."

Ric said, "No one asked you."