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 grass around the bike, but I couldn't find him.

Charlie DeLuca had finally made contact.

CHAPTER 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 God. 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 God. 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 passenger's side with the window down and country-and-western music on the stereo. Reba McIntyre. 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 God."

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 embarrassed. "What do you mean?"

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

Charlie smiled at me. "You're still here, huh? 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. 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 fuck 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 bastard."

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."

I said, "Did anyone ever tell you you look like Herman Munster?"

Charlie's eyes made a slow-motion move from Karen to me, then he got up from the chair and walked over. A vein pulsed in his right temple. He said, "Some guys never get it, Ric. Some guys, you tell'm and tell'm, they never get it, and they end up in trouble."

I nodded. "Some guys, trouble is a way of life."

Peter was giving confused. "What are you guys talking about?"

Charlie took another step closer. He was maybe six inches from me, red-faced and snorting, staring with eyes that were now dead and fishlike, and you could see how he got the name, Charlie the Tuna. "You got brain damage from too much sun? You wanna go over the top right now?" His voice was a sort of a hiss.

Peter said, "Hey, this doesn't need to get out of hand."

Ric said, "It's cool," and came up behind Charlie, putting a hand on either shoulder, working him just like he had worked him with Joey Putata, whispering, talking until the snorting and the pulsing had stopped. Keeping Sal DeLuca's kid in control of himself. I wondered if they paid him extra for this.