I said, "Maybe we should leave the cars where they are and call the police and get an accident report."

He said, "Get the fuck outta here or there's gonna be more broken than a goddamned headlight."

I went back to the Taurus and drove around the block and parked in a garage on Broome Street. I walked back to a pastry shop across from Lucerno's and bought a double decaf espresso and sat in the window. Maybe I should go back and pretend to be Ed McMahon and tell them that the guy who drove the Lincoln had just won the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes for a million bucks. That sounded better than the old busted-headlamp routine, but now they knew I wasn't Ed McMahon. Probably should've tried that one first.

Most of the way through my third espresso the fat guy with the caviar skin came out of Lucerno's. Joey. He was wearing the white coveralls and insulated work boots and the same blue Navy pea coat that he had worn at the Howard Johnson's. Well, well. He wasn't the guy in the Lincoln, but he was close enough.

I paid for the espressos and followed Joey two blocks east to a place with a big sign that said SPINA'S CLAM BAR. I watched through the front glass as he took a stool at the end of the bar and said something to the bartender. The bartender put a glass of draft beer in front of him, then set up an iced tray and started opening clams. Four other guys sat at the bar, but no one seemed to know anyone else and no one seemed particularly talkative. Another half-dozen people sat in little booths. It was the kind of place you could go in your work clothes.

When the tray was filled with clams, the bartender put it in front of Joey and then walked away to see about the other guys. Joey was slurping a clam off its shell when I walked up behind him and said, "Say, Joey."

Joey turned and looked at me and I thumbed him in the throat.

His face went red and his eyes got big and he grabbed at his throat and started to cough. Most of a clam popped out and fell on the floor.

I said, "You oughtta not eat so fast, you're going to choke."

The bartender came down. "Is he okay?"

I said sure. I said I knew how to do the Heimlich. A couple of the people at the other end of the bar looked over, but when they saw the bits of clam all over the place they turned away. The bartender went back to his other customers.

Joey sort of half fell and half slid off his stool and pushed a slow right hand at me. I pushed it past with an open hand then thumbed him in the right eye. He went white this time and stumbled backward and fell over his stool into the bar and down to the floor.

The bartender and the other four guys at the bar looked at me. I said, "Think I did the Heimlich a little too hard."

The nearest guy said, "You want I should call an ambulance?"

"Maybe in a bit."

Joey was scrambling around on the floor, holding his face with one hand and trying to get up. He screamed, "You poked out my fuckin' eye! I'm gonna be blind!"

I pulled him up and led him farther back into the bar. The bartender and the other guys were making a big deal out of not seeing it. I said, "Nah. I took it easy. Let me see."

He let me see. I thumbed him in the other eye.

Joey made a sort of gasping sound and grabbed at the other eye and tried to turn away but he was against the wall and there was no place to go. The eyes were red and tearing but he would be fine.

He said, "You sonofabitch, you're supposed to be gone. We got rid of you."

"You did a lousy job."

He lurched forward and threw another right hand and I pushed it past just like the first and drove a spin kick to the right side of his head. It slammed him sideways into the bar and he fell down again. The guys at the other end of the bar and a couple of people in the booths stood up. The bartender said, "Hey, I'm gonna call the cops."

I said, "Call'm. This won't take long."

I reached down and pulled Joey up again and sat him on the stool and dug out his wallet and looked at his driver's license. Joseph L. Putata. Jackson Heights.

I put the wallet back in his pocket. "Okay, Joey. What's a used rubber like you got to do with Karen Lloyd?"

One of his eyes was looking up and the other was sort of rolling around and he was blinking a lot. He shook his head, like he didn't know what I was talking about. "I dunno. Who's Karen Lloyd?" His hands were down at his sides.

"The lady at the bank." Maybe she hadn't sent them.

Joey's eyes started coming together and he looked scared. "Oh, shit, I told him we run you off. I said you were outta here."

"Who? The guy in the Lincoln?"

The bartender said, "I just called the cops."

Joey looked from me to the bartender, then back to me. Confused along with the scared.

I said, "Why'd the guy in the Lincoln want me to forget about Karen Lloyd?"

"I dunno. He said you were bothering her. He said she was a friend." He looked even more scared, like talking about the guy in the Lincoln brought it out in him. "I told him you were gone."

"Who is he?"

"Who?"

"The guy in the Lincoln."

Joey looked at me like I'd just beamed down from the Enterprise. "Jesus Christ, you don't know?"

"No."

He looked at the other people at the bar and then he lowered his voice. He said, "We're talking about Charlie DeLuca. Sal DeLuca's kid."

"So?"

Joey shook his head and put on a face like he was about to wet his pants. "Sal DeLuca is the godfather, you dumb fuck. The capo de tutti capo. He's the head of the whole damned mafia."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It was twenty minutes before five that afternoon when I turned down the neat, clean blacktop off the county road above Chelam and pulled into Karen Shipley's drive. The sun was most of the way down in the southwest, and would set in another hour. The LeBaron was parked in the garage.

Toby Lloyd was pounding a basketball on the drive, hopping sideways and swiveling his head as if he were being covered by David Robinson and Magic Johnson. I parked about thirty feet back to give him room to work the ball and got out. "Hi. Remember me from the bank?"

"Sure." He bounced the ball a couple of times, then turned and launched one toward the basket. It banged off the backboard and went through the net.

I said, "Gotta be tough shooting in the cold. Gets your fingers stiff."

He nodded and scooped up the rebound. "You want to see my mom?"

"Yeah. She inside?"

"Sure. C'mon." Elvis Cole, friend of the family, comes to call.

He led me through the garage and a laundry room and into their kitchen. The walls and the ceilings and the floors and the appliances were still new-house bright, without the ground-in dirt that comes as the years put their wear of life on a place. A thick spaghetti sauce was simmering on top of a Jenn-Air range, a fine spray of the sauce a red shadow on the enamel. Toby yelled, "Hey, Mom, there's somebody here to see you!"

We went out of the kitchen and through the dining room and into the living room. Karen Shipley came out of a hallway from the back of the house in a pink sweatshirt and faded blue jeans and white socks with little pompoms at the heels. She said, "What did you say, hon?" Then she saw me.

I said, "Hi, Karen."

There was a small part of a moment as she saw me when her eyes flickered and her breath might have caught, but then she forced a pretty good smile for the boy like everything was fine. "You're still here."

"Uh-huh."

More of the smile for the boy. "Tobe. Mr. Cole and I have something to discuss. Would you leave us alone for a while?"

"Okay." Like he was used to having to be out of the way when she talked business and that was just fine with him. He charged back through the kitchen and the laundry.