“I don’t know, but I think it’s just Charlie. Charlie’s the guy turned me. He came to me and said he’d cut me in and I could have all the smack I wanted. It was Charlie’s idea. You gotta tell Tommy that.”

“Sure.”

“I don’t never see anyone else.”

“So Charlie is violating the agreement the DeLuca family made with the Gamboza family. He’s in business with the Jamaicans to steal from another family and Sal doesn’t know.”

“No. Sal doesn’t know. Jesus Christ, Sal would have a fit. Tommy should know that. Sal, that old gumbah.”

I looked at Pike and Pike looked at me. Pike said, “What do we do with him?”

Richie said, “Hey, I come clean. You said I come clean, Tommy said you should let me off.”

Pike said, “He tells Charlie we know, it’s over.”

Richie said, “Hey, I won’t tell Charlie nothing. I swear to Christ” He was crying again.

I looked into Pike’s flat dimensionless glasses and saw little reflections of myself. Pike waited. I turned back to Richie and pulled him close again. “Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to walk out of this alley and go to the Port Authority bus terminal and you are going to take a bus to Miami. You will not speak with Charlie DeLuca or the Jamaicans or anyone else about this, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“If you do, Tommy Gamboza swears that he will find out. If you do, the entire Gamboza family will seek you out no matter where you might hide, and we will kill you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Get out of here.”

He ran out of the alley, knocking into a garbage can, then bouncing off a wall, then disappearing around the corner and into the street.

Pike said, “ ‘Seek you out’?”

“Too dramatic?”

Pike frowned.

Everybody’s a critic.

Chapter Thirty-two

Thirty-two

Karen Lloyd gave me confused. “He’s stealing from other criminals?”

“Yes.”

“How can you go to the police with that?” She was leaning against the front edge of her desk at the bank with her arms crossed. Pike and I were sitting in the two chairs opposite. It seemed colder in Chelam than it had in New York, but maybe that was because it was later and the damp clouds and the cold air pushing down from Canada had gained greater purchase over the woods and the fields and the small clean buildings.