Peril

by Thomas H. Cook

  “You seen him pass the envelope to this other fucking guy?” Labriola blurted out with a sudden leaping virulence. “With your own eyes, you seen it?”

  “With my own eyes.”

  Labriola glanced out the window and surveyed the neighborhood the expressway had destroyed. “You ever live in Tremont?”

  “No,” Caruso answered.

  “That fucking Jew tore it down,” Labriola said bitterly.

  “Jew?”

  “That fucking Moses.” Labriola continued to stare wistfully out the window. “It was like Arthur Avenue still is. A real neighborhood. But that fucking Jew tore it down to build this piece of shit.”

  “What piece of shit?”

  “This ugly fucking road is what.”

  “Oh.”

  Labriola’s face contorted. “Somebody should have put a bullet in that fucking kike.”

  Caruso said nothing. Since he had nothing to add to this latest outburst, his only choice was to wait it out, just sit tight and let Labriola chew on whatever he was chewing on until he swallowed it.

  “That’s when I moved to Brooklyn,” Labriola said. “That’s when I knew the Bronx was finished.” He shook his head disconsolately. “Tremont,” he said mournfully. “Tremont was beautiful in them days, but that fucking Jew tore it all down.” He suddenly turned from the window and leveled his gaze on Caruso. “A bullet in his head, that’s what he needed.”

  Caruso stared at Labriola, utterly baffled by the Old Man’s sudden interest in his old neighborhood, but heartened that he was thinking in such terms, moving perhaps toward the Big Assignment, maybe to whack Toby Carnucci, the stupid bastard, or better yet Batman, the arrogant fuck, if the guy with the book really was Batman, which he still didn’t know for sure but was beginning not to care, since whacking the guy with the book would feel great whether he was Batman or not.

  “Sometimes a bullet is all that can do the job,” Labriola said. “Am I right, Vinnie?”

  Caruso smiled broadly. “You’re dead right, Mr. Labriola.” He saw that his answer pleased the Old Man, and so he added, “You ask me, a bullet in the head is too fucking good for some people.”

  “Too fucking good, Vinnie,” Labriola repeated.

  Caruso cautiously returned to the matter at hand. “So, anyway, I figured I knew who Batman was, you know?”

  “Batman?”

  “The guy Morty works for. That’s what I call him.”

  “Why you call him that, Vinnie?”

  “ ’Cause he’s all mysterious and shit.”

  “Oh.”

  Caruso waited for Labriola to add his own comment, but the Old Man said nothing.

  “Anyway,” Caruso began again, “anyway, at first I figure Batman must be the guy at the bar, on account he give the envelope to him, you know? But then, Morty don’t go straight home after meeting this guy. He goes to Chelsea. Meets another guy. And not only that, he gives something to this guy too. An envelope.”

  Labriola looked at Caruso intently. “You see my problem here, don’t you, Vinnie?”

  Caruso blinked.

  “You only know one place where that guy works.”

  “What guy?”

  “That fucking piano player you’re talking about.”

  Caruso stared at Labriola without expression.

  “Work. That ain’t a good place. It’s the same like I only know where a guy lives. If I want to pop some fuckhead, and I only know where he lives, then I got to pop him with maybe Mrs. Fuckhead sitting there, maybe with a couple little pint-sized fuckheads running around.”

  Caruso nodded. “So you—”

  “What?” Labriola snapped.

  “So, you’ve decided to pop this guy?” Caruso asked.

  Labriola glared at Caruso. “Did I say that, Vinnie?”

  “Well, no . . . but.”

  “But nothing,” Labriola barked. “Put your hands out, Vinnie.”

  “Huh?”

  “Put your hands out, Vinnie. Far as you can.”

  Caruso did as he was told.

  “Wiggle your fingers.”

  Caruso did.

  “That’s how far you look ahead, Vinnie. Just as far as your fucking fingers. But me, I got to look ahead. Like to what I do if this fuck fucks me.”

  Caruso started to draw back his hands. “How would he—”

  “Keep your hands out there.”

  Caruso straightened his arms.

  “Wiggle your fingers, Vinnie.”

  Caruso wiggled his fingers.

  “You’re gonna keep your hands out there like that until you start seeing farther than your fucking fingers. Now, that question you asked me. What was it?”

  “I can’t see how he’d fuck you,” Caruso answered cautiously, since he was not at all sure that this was the question Labriola had in mind.

  “You can’t see it ’cause you ain’t looking no farther than your fingers.”

  Caruso looked at his fingers.

  “Here’s how. He don’t do the job. What I do then, Vinnie?”

  Caruso hazarded a wild guess. “Well, you . . . could make him give you your money back.”

  “Money?” Labriola bawled. “A guy don’t do a job for me, I don’t want his fucking money. I want him, Vinnie.”

  Caruso nodded briskly. “Sure. Right.” He cautiously lowered his hands. “I see what you mean.”

  “So what can you tell me about this guy besides where he works?”

  “Which guy?”

  “The one you told me about. The one in the bar. What else you know about him?”

  Caruso remained silent.

  “What else you know, Vinnie?” Labriola repeated. “About the guy at the bar or that other guy who maybe is . . . what’d you call it . . . Spider-Man?”

  “Batman.”

  “Yeah, him. What else you know?”

  “Well . . . nothing.”

  “That’s right. Nothing. Which is bad, ’cause I need to know about both these assholes,” Labriola said darkly. “You understand, Vinnie? Where they go. Who they see. All that shit.”

  “Yes, sir,” Caruso said lamely. “I’ll find out about them.”

  “Make sure you do, because whichever one of these fucks is supposed to find that bitch, if he don’t do it, you got to pop him, Vinnie.”

  Caruso felt a surge of excitement. “Pop him, right,” he repeated. “I would have to pop him. And I would too. Whatever you say, Mr. Labriola.”

  Labriola seemed not to hear him. Instead, he again focused his gaze on the ravaged neighborhood of his youth, staring at the buildings that lay alongside the expressway as if they weren’t really standing, save as the ruins of some long-forgotten war.

  For a time, Caruso watched as Labriola continued to stare out the window. Then he drew his gaze away and stared straight ahead, down a road whose twists and turns had wonderfully delivered him into the Old Man’s trust.

  STARK

  The material Mortimer had brought lay strewn across the desk. It could hardly have been more useless. Nothing but a picture of a woman in her mid-thirties and a random assortment of more or less incoherent observations, all of them scrawled on legal-size yellow pages in a disjointed handwriting whose legibility strained Stark’s eyes and strengthened his suspicions that there was something in this deal that didn’t quite add up.

  As to facts, Stark learned only that the missing Sara was originally from the South, had come to NYC as a young woman, worked as a nightclub singer, met and married the anonymous husband, and “done nothing” since then. She had no children according to this information, no living relatives, and no resources since she’d taken nothing from her husband’s bank accounts.

  As to where Sara might have gone, the notes offered no assistance. She had left her car in the driveway, but there was no indication as to whether another party had picked her up, or, if such were the case, who that individual (friend, lover, taxi driver?) might be. She’d also left most of her clothes and all of her jewelry, includin
g both wedding and engagement rings, which indicated that she either had limited means or that she expected her needs to be met by someone other than herself.

  The more Stark reviewed the notes, the more useless they seemed. But it was not just the uselessness that bothered him. There was a disturbing look to the notes. The handwriting was an angry scrawl, the angles sharp, the words disjointed. Even on the page they seemed to sputter madly.

  He reached for the phone.

  “It’s me,” he said when Mortimer answered. “The notes you got from your friend are useless.”

  “He’s a little . . . he ain’t . . . open with everything.”

  “He’s very angry.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve seen this before, Mortimer.”

  “I know you have.”

  Mortimer’s answer seemed clipped, as if he were hurrying away, on the run himself in some way, seeking someplace to hide no less desperately than the missing woman.

  “I think we need to talk,” Stark said. He waited for Mortimer to offer something that could quell his growing misgivings. Then he said, “My house. Three-thirty.”

  “Okay,” Mortimer said weakly.

  Stark hung up the phone, returned the notes to the plain manila envelope, and placed the envelope in the top drawer of his desk. He could feel something evil stir around him. It coiled in the fractured handwriting of the notes.

  He closed the drawer, walked to the window, parted the thick curtains, and looked out at the street. Years before he’d done the same from his hotel window in Madrid and seen Lockridge standing by a lamppost, smoking, with one hand sunk deep into the right pocket of his black leather jacket, his freckled fingers no doubt caressing the blade he would later use on Marisol.

  MORTIMER

  Mortimer stared disconsolately at the television. The Yankees were losing, but he didn’t care. He had no money on the game, but that wouldn’t have mattered anyway. He had bigger fish to fry than a Yankee win, even if he stood to gain a few bucks in the deal. He had bigger fish to fry. A dreadful sense that Stark had caught on to something, the dark edges of the deal.

  “You gonna be home for dinner tonight, Morty?”

  He glanced across the room to where Dottie stood, draped in a sleeveless floral housedress, leaning on one flabby arm, her pendulous breasts, as Mortimer saw them, all but touching the floor.

  “I don’t know for sure,” he said.

  Mortimer returned his attention to the game and tried to put everything else out of his mind, all the thoughts that were rolling around inside his head, banging against his skull like stones. He didn’t want to think about Stark, or what Stark might be thinking, or how what Stark was thinking could affect him. He wanted to think about a horse that won, a bet that netted him a bundle. But his horses had always lost, and he’d netted nothing, and this dreary conclusion turned his thoughts to death.

  He was going to die very soon, and he knew that this was a big deal, and yet he seemed unable to focus on it. He was going to die soon and he didn’t have a nickel of life insurance or a nickel in savings, and in fact was in hock to the Prince of Darkness for fifteen grand, and even this seemed little more than a small bump in the road. The problem was that he kept thinking about his life rather than his death. How small and drab a thing it had been. How little he’d gotten out of it. Within a few months it would be over, and yet what exactly was this life that would soon end? What had it amounted to? Nothing, Mortimer concluded, absolutely nothing. But that conclusion did not bring his speculation to an end. Instead, the problem only got larger. If he was nothing, then why was he nothing? That was the one question he wanted answered. How had he come to this bleak place, and was there any way he could escape it, however briefly, before the final curtain fell?

  “You can’t give me no idea?” Dottie demanded.

  “No.”

  Dottie jerked her hand from the doorjamb, clearly irritated. “How about you give me some idea, Morty,” she said. “So I know to make dinner or not make dinner, you know?”

  “Don’t make dinner,” Mortimer told her. He knew she was glaring at him, but he didn’t care. Bigger fish to fry, he thought, than a pissed-off wife.

  He rose, walked to the door, and yanked his jacket from the wall rack beside it. By then Dottie had swept up behind him in a flutter of garish colors, menacing as a huge, angry parrot.

  “Where you going?” she demanded.

  “Out.” A sudden pain streaked across his stomach. “Shit.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” Dottie said, though with neither sympathy nor concern, his pain just another source of irritation.

  He was amazed at how unnerved it made him, this single stinging cramp. “Fucking gas,” Mortimer answered. He placed his hand on his stomach and squeezed. “I gotta go.” He started to open the door, but Dottie closed it.

  “You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, Morty?” she asked.

  “Tell you what?”

  “If something was wrong.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Wrong, I mean, with us?”

  Wrong with us? Mortimer couldn’t imagine such a question. Nothing had ever been right with them. Their marriage had been a long slide down a muddy chute, love and passion only things they saw in movies, people rushing toward each other through woods or on the beach. For as long as he could remember, Dottie had been dull and overweight, like himself, and when he thought of them together, he thought of comic figures, people in commercials. Human jokes.

  “You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?” Dottie insisted. “If something was wrong?”

  She looked at him silently, waiting for his answer, and he saw that he’d lied to her so often, she expected only lies, and even thought of them as kindnesses.

  “There’s nothing wrong, Dottie,” he growled as he stepped out into the corridor.

  “Okay,” Dottie said with a shrug, then softly closed the door.

  And so, seconds later, he was standing on Eighty-sixth Street, the usual crowds rolling up and down the busy thoroughfare, but utterly alone in their midst. He had always been alone, he knew. Movies talked about guys who stood alone, and it was supposed to be a good thing, but when you got hit by cancer, or got some other really awful news, when death or something almost as bad stared you in the face, you yearned for someone to share the dark tidings, maybe feel a little bad for you. They didn’t need to lend you money or overdo the pity. You just needed to know that it was bad news for them too.

  He thought of the one person in the world who’d probably feel that way. It wasn’t Dottie. And it wasn’t Stark It was Abe who’d looked sad when he’d told him about the cancer, looked sad and poured him a round on the house and then said he could drink for free until he died.

  What a guy, Mortimer thought to himself with a surge of true devotion to Abe Morgenstern, my best friend.

  DELLA

  The phone rang. Della picked it up.

  “I just wanted to let you know I’m still okay,” Sara told her.

  Della thought of Leo Labriola, felt again the hard grip of his fingers on her wrist, the bite of the pen, and knew that her friend was not in the least okay. She could warn her, but what would be the consequences of that? What if the Old Man found out about it? There was Nicky to think about. And her daughter. And Mike. You save one person, you put another in danger. Because there seemed no way to act rightly, she said only, “That’s good, Sara.” She added nothing else, because the important thing was to get off the line as quickly as possible, learn as little as possible about where Sara was or what she was doing. That way, if Labriola really used muscle, she’d at least have a weapon against him, the fact that he could squeeze and squeeze and she still wouldn’t know any more about Sara than she already knew, and so there’d be nothing he could get out of her.

  “Have you seen Tony?” Sara asked.

  Labriola’s warning sounded in Della’s mind, If she calls, don’t tell her nothing.

  “Listen, Sara,
Nicky’s sick. He had a fever this morning, and I got this appointment, so . . .”

  “Sure,” Sara said. “Sure, Della.”

  “I’m sorry to rush off like this but, you know . . .”

  “I understand,” Sara said. “Take it easy, Della.”

  The click of the phone swept over Della in a deep, relieving wave. But then the wave receded, and the relief turned to accusation. Her friend was being hunted by a vicious old bastard who’d stop at nothing, and she, Della, could do nothing to warn her. She had mentioned Labriola’s visit to no one, not even Mike, and she’d lied to Tony, though at least he’d figured that out and so knew without a doubt what his father was up to. None of that removed the stain of her cowardice, however, the fact that she’d not only betrayed her friend but that she was at this very moment being drawn deeper into that betrayal.

  “Who called?” Mike asked as he came into the kitchen.

  Della stepped over to the sink, began rinsing the dishes. “Just one of those calls. Somebody selling something.”

  “What this time?”

  Della thought fast. “Insurance.”

  “Insurance?” Mike said doubtfully. “I didn’t think insurance companies did any telemarketing.”

  “I guess some of them do,” Della said weakly.

  “I thought you might have a secret admirer.” Mike drew her into his arms.

  She laughed. “You’d know it if I did.”

  His eyes drifted away, and she knew that he was staring at the wifeless home across the cul-de-sac. “Well, it took Tony by surprise, didn’t it?”

  She abruptly drew herself from his arms. “Sara didn’t have a . . . she wasn’t doing anything like that.” She turned back to the sink. “I mean, some other guy.”

  “How do you know that, Della?”

  She picked up a plate, began moving a yellow sponge over its floral surface. “I just know, that’s all.”