After a moment he faced Caruso again, his eyes red-rimmed and furious, a rage that looked drunken, and thus all the more terrifying for being sober. Then suddenly the frenzied twitching stopped, as if some invisible ointment had been applied to his flaming skin.
“Okay,” he said with a dismissive shrug.
Caruso stared at Labriola without comprehension, feeling like someone who’d been hurled forward at breakneck speed, then suddenly stopped.
“I said okay,” Labriola told him.
Caruso blinked rapidly. “Okay like . . . everything’s okay?”
The rage flared again. “No, fuckhead,” Labriola yelled. “Okay like get the fuck out of here.”
Caruso glanced down and saw that Labriola’s gigantic hands were balled into fists. They hung at the ends of his arms like weighted boxing gloves, illegal in the ring, the ones that hit like thunder and sent showers of blood and sweat splattering onto the mat.
“What you waiting for, Vinnie?” Labriola fumed. “You waiting maybe I should kick your fucking ass?” He stepped forward like a man out of a cloud of smoke. “What?” he screamed.
Caruso felt his stomach coil in dread, and yet he didn’t move. Something had changed, and he knew it. Something in the way things had always been, the way he’d assumed they’d always be between himself and Mr. Labriola, the way the Old Man had always let him in on whatever was gnawing at him.
“I was just wondering,” Caruso began hesitantly. “About Tony’s wife.”
Labriola took a second measured step toward him. “What was you wondering, Vinnie?” he asked sharply.
“Just about—”
Suddenly Labriola lunged forward, his body lurching across the room, huge and bearish. His great, hairy paw seized Caruso by the throat and hurled him back through the French doors and into the wall behind them.
“What’s your fucking job, Vinnie?” Labriola screamed. “What’s your fucking job in this thing, huh? With this bitch?”
Labriola’s face was only inches away, and Caruso had to tilt his head backward to bring the Old Man’s glittering eyes into focus. A wafting sourness came from Labriola’s mouth, a sickening combination of beer and whiskey, which suggested that Labriola had simply slugged down whatever his hand grasped, seeking only the bleariness of alcohol.
“Well, you gonna answer me?” the Old Man demanded.
“Find her,” Caruso said weakly. “I’m supposed to find her.”
“What else?” Labriola stepped back, yanked Caruso forward, then hurled him back against the wall again. “What else?” he shrieked.
Caruso’s mind searched frantically for an answer but came up empty. “I don’t know,” he whispered.
Again Labriola jerked Caruso forward and again plunged him backward against the wall. “What else, Vinnie?”
“Nothing,” Caruso sputtered. “You ain’t told me nothing else.”
Labriola released him, stepped back, then lightly slapped his face. “That right, Vinnie?” he taunted. “Nothing else?”
Labriola’s eyes looked different than Caruso had ever seen them. They gleamed hotly, red and leaping, like torches at the entrance of a dank, steamy cave.
“You ain’t got to do nothing else?” Labriola asked.
It was not a question, and Caruso knew it. It was a demand for absolute commitment.
“Whatever you say,” Caruso whispered.
“That’s right, whatever I say,” Labriola snarled. “And you know what I say, Vinnie? I say, ‘Take care of it.’ ”
“It?” Caruso asked.
“Who you think?” Labriola asked darkly.
Caruso tried to get his bearings, arrange his thoughts. “Right,” he said tentatively, buying time. “Take care of . . . it.”
Labriola whirled around, marched to the small table beside the sofa, yanked open the drawer, plucked out a single bullet, and carved something onto its metal casing with a small pocketknife.
“Put out your hand,” he told Caruso.
“I don’t know if this is—”
“Put out your hand,” Labriola commanded.
Caruso did as he was told, then felt the cold weight of a single thirty-eight cartridge drop into his open palm.
“Look at it,” Labriola said.
“Mr. Labriola, I don’t think I—”
“Look at it!” Labriola screamed.
Caruso glanced at the cartridge, saw that Labriola had scraped the word “cunt” on the casing. He felt his lips open in dreadful understanding, the Big Assignment now suddenly his, but not the kind he’d ever expected or wanted, a bullet in the head of some fucking deadbeat or screwup. He looked at the cartridge, the jagged letters. Cunt. The word screamed in his mind. Sara Labriola.
“You got a thirty-eight, right?” the Old Man asked.
“Yes,” Caruso said in a voice that barely reached a whisper. He could feel his knees begin to buckle, and he knew he had to get control of himself, shore up the crumbling walls, put the initial shock behind him, then take the fatal step. “A thirty-eight.” He closed his fingers around the shell. “Right.”
“You don’t put nothing in it but that one bullet,” Labriola said. “You put in more than one shot, it means you ain’t sure you can do it in one shot. You don’t do that, Vinnie. You make sure you do it in one shot. Like a pro.”
“Like a pro,” Caruso repeated softly, his mind still whirling with the job he’d just been given, some part of it still not sinking in . . . that it was Sara.
“You got a problem, Vinnie?”
Caruso felt his whole body as something immovably heavy. “What?”
“You got a problem with the job?”
With enormous effort Vinnie managed to shake his head. “No,” he answered quietly.
“Good, ’cause when it’s done, you bring the empty casing back to me, understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Caruso said softly.
“That’s like her head, Vinnie. That’s like you bring me back that cunt’s fucking head.”
“Yes, sir,” Caruso repeated.
Labriola placed his hands on either side of Caruso’s neck, drew his head forward, and kissed him on both sides of his face.
Caruso felt the rough dry lips and scratchy stubble, smelled the odd, revolting sweet and sourness of the Old Man’s breath.
“You’re like a son to me, Vinnie,” Labriola whispered.
Caruso curled his fingers tightly around the cartridge, squeezing out all hope of refusal. “A son,” he said.
STARK
As he ran the water over the towel, he thought of Marisol. Where was she now? he wondered, and the range of possible answers paraded through his mind. He saw her as mere earth, as ash, as smoke, then in wasted but recognizable remains, and finally, at the end of a long series of progressively more vivid mental photographs, he saw her waiting in some other world, dazzlingly beautiful as she lifted her arms toward him. He remembered the joyful relief that had broken over her face as he told her that it was over, that he’d confronted the man who sought her, forced him to relent, and so knew absolutely that she was safe.
But Lockridge had not relented. Instead, he had gone back to Henderson and reported everything Stark had told him, then listened to the grim instruction and steeled himself to obey it, All right, we do it tonight.
The towel was soaked with water, and as he walked toward the man tied to the chair, Stark heard its heavy drip splatter against the concrete floor. It was a method he’d used only once before, and it had worked quickly. Only one application and Lockridge had given him Henderson’s name, then pleaded with Stark to let him live.
“Who sent you?” he asked as he stepped over to the man in the chair.
The man began to shake despite the fact that he was clearly trying to control it, a futile effort Stark could see in the white-knuckled grip of the hands to the metal arms of the chair.
“I want his name.”
The man was shaking so fiercely, the metal chair rattled with his convulsions, and
Stark marveled at the way the human body reacted to terror. The jerking head, the legs racked in violent spasms, the clawing fingers, all of it orchestrated by small, childlike whimpers.
He placed his hand on the naked shoulder, and the man jerked away as if a red-hot iron had been pressed against his skin.
“Are you Mortimer’s friend?” Stark demanded. “Or do you just work for Mortimer’s friend?”
He took the picture Mortimer had brought in the packet from his “friend” and held it before the man in the chair.
“You see this woman? Who’s looking for her?”
EDDIE
Who’s looking for her?
He heard the question but had no way to answer it. Mortimer? Was that a real person or someone the silver-haired man had made up?
“Who are you working for?” the man asked.
So far the man had not actually hurt him, but he knew that he was going to because the darkness and the fear and the long hours of being strapped to a chair hadn’t worked, and so the next step had to be taken.
The next step would be pain.
Suddenly he felt his body as something other than himself, the cage that held his soul. It was his body that would betray him, his body that would recoil at whatever was done to it and finally force him to say the name the voice demanded.
“Who are you working for?”
He wanted to answer, but he knew that it would do no good. It would be like answering his father when his father was drunk; it would only inflame him, egg him on to something worse than just yelling.
“Who are you working for?”
The name wailed like a siren in his mind, loud and jangling and demanding to burst from his lips.
Tony.
Just one name and it would be over. One way or the other it would be over.
Tony.
He wanted to say it. His body wanted him to say it. But what would happen then? He didn’t know. Nor did he know who the silver-haired man worked for, or what, exactly, he was after. He knew only that he wouldn’t tell him anything, and that by this silence he would protect Tony, and maybe Sara too.
He felt the wet towel cover his face, the silver-haired man behind him now, tightening it so that the wet drew in against his mouth and nose. He sucked at the cloth and tasted warm, salty water, sucked again, and felt the air constrict so that he could get only half a breath. He jerked his head right and left, but with each movement the cloth only tightened until half a breath became little more than a fruitless sucking at the wet, thick cloth. The pain began in his chest and seized upward like a sharp tool raked across the tender inner folds of his throat. His vocal cords throbbed and his tongue caught fire and the raw meat of his flesh hissed and boiled until his body suddenly convulsed and he felt the pulpy inside of himself like a gorge in his throat, rising like lava into the red cavern of his mouth, filled now, and spewing, but still locked inside by the suffocating cloth.
Then he felt the cloth go limp and drop from his face and the steaming vomit that filled his mouth spewed out and dripped in a warm, sticky stream down his naked chest and over his bare, trembling legs.
“Who are you working for?”
Tony’s name leaped like a flame in his brain and rose like a boil on his flesh and shook like a tattered shroud in the retching gasp of his breath, but still he did not speak.
MORTIMER
He sat in the diner and played it over and over again in his mind, the way she’d come down the stairs, glancing both ways, like a frightened bird. Even so, he hadn’t been sure until he’d stepped right up to her, gotten a good look, compared it with the picture he’d seen, and made the positive ID.
Sara Labriola.
Abe’s girl.
Abe . . . His best friend.
Mortimer shook his head. So what now? he wondered. What could he do about this broad who’d run out on her husband, which, goddammit, she shouldn’t have done, because now she’d landed Abe in this same river of shit everybody else seemed in one way or another to be drowning in.
“Jesus Christ,” Mortimer muttered under his breath, “of all people, Abe.”
So, okay, at least one thing was clear in this fucking mess, Mortimer decided, he had to get Abe out of it. The woman was trouble, big trouble, and as long as she was around, Abe was in trouble too. But how could he get Abe away from her? Especially since, if he were any judge of such things, Abe was already ass-over-teacup in love with this broad. No way would he just walk away from her, and if Caruso or Labriola tried anything . . . He stopped, now seeing the pistol he’d given Abe in none other than Abe’s hand, aimed at Labriola or Caruso or maybe the two of them, his finger pulling down on the trigger. Holy shit, Mortimer steamed, they’d blow Abe’s head off if he pulled that fucking gun on them.
Okay, Mortimer thought desperately, okay, think, for Christ’s sake! Find a way out of this!
As he considered the situation, it seemed to him that Labriola was the real problem, the only guy in the whole deal that gave a good goddamn if this broad came back or didn’t come back. So the thing to do was get the Old Man to let go of this thing. He had to stop looking for this woman, because if he found her and came after her, Abe would try to stop him . . . with that fucking gun!
Mortimer tried to calm the storm within his brain. Caruso, he thought, Caruso was the only way to get to Labriola. But what could he offer Caruso that might persuade him to go back to Labriola, make him call the whole thing off? The guy, he decided, the guy Stark had probably nabbed off the street and now had behind that goddamn black curtain. Caruso clearly had a thing for that guy. Not sexual. Nothing like that. Jesus Christ, no! But a thing for him like a guy can have for another guy. Like friendship, that sort of thing. The kind of thing he, Mortimer, had for Abe, a need to make things okay. So, okay, maybe he could trade the guy for the woman, get Caruso to call Labriola off the woman if he, Mortimer, agreed to get the guy Caruso was looking for away from Stark, hand him over to Caruso safe and sound. It would be tit for tat: Caruso gets his friend and Abe gets his girl. Not bad if Caruso could just convince Labriola to give up on this thing, or maybe just that the woman had simply vanished, no way to find her. Dead end, so to speak, so the Old Man should just forget about it.
Mortimer thought it through again, decided it was worth a chance, grabbed his cell phone, and dialed the number.
Caruso answered immediately.
“That guy you told me about,” Mortimer said, “the one missing. Friend of yours. I think my guy may have him.”
He’d expected to hear a little jerk of relief or excitement in Caruso’s voice, but all that came back was a flat monotone. “What makes you think so?”
“I went over to his place . . . Batman’s,” Mortimer continued. “And there was this curtain pulled across the hallway. A black curtain. Thick. I think your friend may be back there somewhere.”
“Go on,” Caruso said, his voice still weirdly mechanical, like some human part of him had dropped away so that he was now flying on autopilot.
“Something wrong, Vinnie?” Mortimer asked.
“Get to the point, Morty,” Caruso told him.
“The point is, I figure your friend is still alive,” Mortimer said. “ ’Cause my guy, he wants to know who sent him, you know?” Again he expected Caruso to react strongly to this, but he could sense no reaction at all. It was as if Caruso had taken some kind of pill that numbed him somehow.
“It goes back to this thing that happened years ago,” Mortimer said, keeping Caruso on the hook while he looked for a way to get to his point. “Another missing woman. He found her, but somebody was following him when he found her, and the way it worked out, this woman he found, she ended up dead.” He waited for a response, but none came. “So he maybe figures the same thing here. That this woman might get hurt. He’d try to stop it, Vinnie, is what I’m saying.”
“He can’t stop nothing if he ain’t found her.”
“No, but that guy he has, this friend of yours, you’re worried about
him, right?”
“If he got nabbed, he got nabbed. Nothing I can do about it.”
Mortimer felt the door close on his first idea of getting to Caruso; then he grasped for another. “Well, if you ain’t worried about that guy, there’s another guy you should be worried about.”
“Who?”
“You, Vinnie,” Mortimer said, now desperately trying to keep one step ahead. “Because if this friend of yours breaks, he could connect you to this woman. And if she gets hurt, my guy would—”
“What happens to her is none of Batman’s business,” Caruso said sharply.
“He’s already made it his business, Vinnie,” Mortimer said emphatically. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. That woman gets hurt, there ain’t nothing he wouldn’t do. He ain’t sane when it comes to shit like this. On account of what I told you, is what I’m telling you. He ain’t . . . rational is what I mean. So, the way I figure it, we got to make sure nothing happens to that woman once I find her.”
“Once you find her?” For the first time, Mortimer heard something spark in Caruso’s tone.
“Yeah.”
“You looking for her, Morty?”
“Huh?”
“You said once I find her, not Batman. You, Morty.”
Mortimer swallowed hard. “Yeah, right.”
“What makes you think you can find her?”
“Nothing,” Mortimer said. “No reason.”
Caruso’s tone grew hard. “Bullshit.”
“What?”
“You know where she is, don’t you?”
“Vinnie . . . look . . .”
Caruso’s voice grew strangely urgent. “You know where she is, Morty.”
Mortimer knew he’d inadvertently dug a hole he couldn’t get out of, one that suddenly seemed deeper and darker than he’d guessed. “Maybe.”
“Don’t tell me maybe,” Caruso barked. “You know where she is, Morty.”
“I think I know,” Mortimer answered softly, stalling for time. “Which means that we could be out of the woods on this thing, providing.”
Peril Page 22
