Peril

by Thomas H. Cook

  One fact loomed over all others—she was a woman on the run. In her mind she saw Labriola’s face as it had swept up to her in the corridor, his voice slurred and drunken, You giving Tony what he needs?

  She’d pushed him away, headed toward the den, but he’d grabbed her and jerked her around, You know what I say, right?

  Again she’d pushed him away, this time harder, so that he’d stumbled backward, a curiously surprised look on his face, his eyes gleaming with a strange, mocking admiration, You got some fight in you, Sara.

  But did she really, she wondered now, did she really have any fight left in her?

  She rose, walked to the back of the room, then returned to the window and sat down again, her gaze on the street. For a moment all the mistakes she’d made fell upon her in a heavy rain of self-accusation. She’d been driven from her home by Caulfield, driven from New York by her own need to be taken care of, then driven from Long Island by the certainty that if she stayed there, she would be destroyed one way or another.

  But what life had she wanted? she asked herself now. The answer was obvious and absurd. She had wanted the Big Happy Ending, the one where she wound up a Big Name Singer, but also a wife and mother, a perfect life.

  She glanced about the cramped little room where that long pursuit had finally landed her. She considered how little she had, how reduced her prospects, and these bleak considerations led her to decide that she would meet Abe at the restaurant, sing a few songs at the bar, because, when you looked at the way things were, what did she have to lose?

  Nothing, she thought. So if on one of the Village streets below, tonight or on some other night, the little man in the black hat came up behind her and put a bullet in her head, so be it, since no matter how you added it up, that Big Happy Ending was well beyond her now.

  MORTIMER

  Shit, Mortimer thought. He’d blown it, and he knew he’d blown it. He’d burned his cover, clued Abe in to the fact that he knew something, and worse, tipped him off in such a way that made him hang on to that fucking gun.

  Okay, so, what now? Mortimer labored to put two and two together. Abe had the gun. Caruso was set to show up at the bar. Caruso might try to strong-arm the woman. If he did, Abe would try to stop him.

  For a moment Mortimer saw guns blazing, glass shattering, bullets tearing into wood and upholstery . . . or worse.

  The only way to go at it now, he decided, was to screw the deal, and the key to that had to be Stark.

  He whirled around and rushed down the street, his short, stocky legs pumping frantically, until he stopped at Stark’s door, rang the buzzer, waited, heard no response, then rang a second time.

  The door opened and Stark faced him squarely.

  “I need to talk to you,” Mortimer said.

  Stark stood before him like a high stone wall.

  “I know you’ve got a guy in there,” Mortimer told him.

  “What do you want, Mortimer?”

  “You think I put that guy on you,” Mortimer said. “But I didn’t. I made a bad deal. I ain’t saying I didn’t do nothing bad. But I didn’t put that guy on you.”

  “Who did?”

  Mortimer knew that the moment had arrived when he could no longer lie to Stark. The deal was blown, every goddamn bit of it. “The woman you’re looking for, her name is Sara Labriola. It’s her father-in-law that’s looking for her, a guy named Leo Labriola. Not some friend of mine, like I told you. The guy you got in there, he works for Labriola’s son. He don’t mean to harm the woman, which I know is what you’re thinking.”

  A low moan broke the deathly silence. It came from down the corridor, a soft wail behind the black curtain.

  “Get him out of here,” Stark said. He opened the door and stepped into the apartment. “Get him out of here now. Then come back.”

  Mortimer did as he was told, moving quickly down the corridor, past the curtain, and into a room where he found a man bound to a chair.

  “Just a second,” Mortimer said as he loosened the plastic cuffs.

  “Who are you?” the man asked weakly.

  Mortimer gathered up the man’s clothes and helped him dress. “I’m getting you out of here now,” he said.

  The man looked at him blearily.

  “You got a car?” Mortimer asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll walk you to it.”

  The man shook his head. “I don’t think I can—”

  Mortimer placed his hand firmly on the man’s back and urged him forward. “Walk, goddammit!”

  They walked outside, then like a sober friend escorting a drunk one, they staggered to the parking lot where the man had left his car.

  “Keys,” Mortimer said.

  The man sunk his hands into the pockets of his trousers and rummaged around until he found them.

  “Get in,” Mortimer said as he unlocked the door and yanked it open.

  The man slumped down behind the wheel. “What’s . . . what’s—”

  “Everybody’s fine,” Mortimer assured him.

  The man looked at him doubtfully.

  “Everybody’s fine,” Mortimer repeated. He grasped the man’s shoulder with affectionate respect. “You done good,” he said quietly. “I seen guys break, but you done good.”

  The man nodded heavily. “You’re sure . . . everybody’s . . .”

  Mortimer nodded. “Go home,” he said, then watched as the man pulled himself into the car, hit the ignition, and headed north up the avenue. At the far corner the car took a right, moving east now, toward the river. One problem down, he thought, but plenty more to go.

  ABE

  He couldn’t believe he’d actually done it, drawn Mortimer’s gun from the desk and dropped it into his jacket pocket. He wasn’t even sure why he’d done it, save that something in Mortimer’s manner had alarmed him. Normally, he would have called the cops, but in this case, what would he have told them? Hey, fellas, there’s this woman I like and we’re going out to dinner tonight, so, would you mind sending a couple of guys in flak jackets and packing Uzis over to this little bistro on Bleecker?

  The other option would have been to leave the gun in the desk, but at the fatal moment, as he’d stood thinking it all through, he’d suddenly seen Samantha, her eyes filled with terror, a guy coming toward her, and known absolutely that if he allowed her to be taken from him in such a way, two things would happen. First, he would never see her again. Second, he would never look at his own face in the mirror without disgust. It was one thing to live in fear of losing money or a friend, of losing your health or losing your youth. One way or another, you would lose all those things anyway. But while you lived, you could not fear yourself, fear that you were nothing.

  He reached the restaurant and went inside. He’d picked the place carefully, a small French restaurant just off Grove Street. It had lace curtains on the windows, and the square tables were placed at sufficient distance from each other to encourage quiet talk. That was, in fact, exactly what the restaurant guide had said, that it was a place where a man and a woman could actually hear each other talk. The lighting was soft, with candles on each table that gave off such a sweet romantic glow that as he waited at the table in the back, Abe wondered if, perhaps, the room was too romantic. After a few moments of deliberation, he decided that it definitely was, but that it didn’t matter because he’d already signaled his state of mind by putting on crisp new trousers, a white shirt, tie, jacket, all of which made him feel not just dressed but costumed.

  And so he stood up, stripped off his jacket, and hung it loosely over the back of his chair. Then he unknotted his tie and rolled it up and stuffed it in his jacket pocket. The final touch was rolling his sleeves up to the elbow. There, he thought, what you see is what you get.

  A waiter approached. He was dressed in pressed black trousers and a short white jacket. “May I get you a drink, sir?”

  “No,” Abe told him. “I’m waiting for someone.”

  She arrived a few minut
es later, wearing a black cocktail dress that looked new. She’d added a string of pearls, too, and black pumps. Her hair fell in a dark wave to her shoulders. As she moved toward him, shifting among the tables, he thought that in all likelihood he would never breathe again.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said as she swept up to him.

  “You’re not late.”

  She glanced about a little nervously, like a woman who hadn’t been alone with a man in a long time. “It’s very nice,” she said as she sat down. “Is it a favorite spot?”

  “I picked it from a book.”

  “Really? Why this place in particular?”

  “The book said no bugs.”

  She laughed, and her laughter loosened something in him, a little knot of jumpiness and self-doubt.

  He hazarded a smile. “New dress?”

  She smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle with a quick sweep of her hand. “I thought it would be good for tonight.”

  “It looks great,” Abe told her.

  “The pearls are fake,” Sara said.

  “But the face is yours, right?”

  She laughed again, and again something loosened slightly inside him.

  The waiter appeared. “Cocktails?”

  “What’ll you have?” Abe asked.

  “Vodka gimlet,” she said.

  “Okay, the lady’ll have a vodka gimlet,” Abe told the waiter. “I’ll have straight rye.”

  They talked idly until the drinks came, and watching her, listening to her, Abe felt himself falling and falling and knew no way to break his fall.

  He lifted the glass the waiter had just set down. “So, what do we drink to?” he asked.

  She lifted the gimlet, and he expected her to toast the new job or New York or, worst of all, “our friendship,” but she said simply, “To happy endings,” and touched the rim of her glass to his.

  CARUSO

  Labriola’s Lincoln rested like a huge blue coffin in the driveway of the house. Sitting in his car, Caruso could see the front window, the Old Man pacing back and forth behind it, usually with a can of beer in his fist. He wore a white sleeveless T-shirt, his huge, muscular arms fully exposed. He seemed to shake the house as he moved, and Caruso could not imagine how awesome his physical presence must have been to Tony, and how different from the feeling of utter vacancy Caruso had experienced after his father left, the empty chair at the kitchen table, the car missing, along with the money his mother kept in a shoebox in the closet, everything gone with the old man around that distant corner, the whole idea of Dad.

  Briefly he replayed the conversation he’d had with Tony, all that stuff about maybe the Old Man wanting to be stopped, wanting Caruso himself to stop him, the whole thing some kind of bizarre test. He’d let himself believe the whole fucking story for just long enough to say yes to Tony, agree to meet him here, have yet another talk with the Old Man. But now he doubted every word of it. Now it all sounded like bullshit. The Old Man didn’t want to be stopped. The Old Man wanted . . . What did he want anyway? Sara Labriola dead, that’s what. But why? That was harder to figure out. What good would whacking Sara do? No good, Caruso reasoned, no good at all, to anybody. But maybe that was the point, Caruso thought, that it being good for something had nothing to do with it. The Old Man wanted it, that’s all. He wanted Sara dead. He hated her fucking guts and he wanted her dead. But why? Caruso wondered again briefly, then dismissed the thought. It didn’t matter why. The Old Man wanted her dead. End of story.

  Caruso glanced in the rearview mirror. At any moment Tony’s car would pull up behind him, the headlights momentarily illuminating the dark interior where Caruso waited, smoking nervously, now convinced that it was all a bad idea, that he should never have agreed to meet him here. For what good would it do, after all? Labriola had told him what he had to do, given him the assignment he’d waited for all his life. He could feel the heaviness of the thirty-eight, cold and stonelike in his trousers pocket. He drew it out, threw open the cylinder, and stared at the single bullet Labriola had given him and which he’d dutifully inserted. One shot, that was all he had. He knew that this was part of the test, Labriola’s way of making certain that he placed the barrel directly at the back of Sara’s head before he fired. There could be no second attempt, no way to make it good if you fucked up the shot.

  But what about all the things that could go wrong? Caruso asked himself. A person could suddenly shift right or left just as you pulled the trigger. A person could stumble and fall right in front of you and you’d be standing there like a complete asshole, the goddamn pistol in your hand and the person already on the ground. Standing there . . . with one lousy shot to do the job.

  Tony’s words sounded in his mind. He’s not right, you know. He’s not right in the head. He decided that Tony had a point. The Old Man’s insistence on his having only one bullet in his piece, the way he’d carved that ugly word on its casing, all of that added up to a nuttiness that even Tony couldn’t guess. Okay, Caruso thought, so, yeah, Labriola has a screw loose, but that was no reason to be nutty yourself. And whacking somebody with only one bullet in your piece is as nutty as a guy could get. Fuck it, he thought, no way. Besides, how would Labriola know if he had just the one bullet or if he brought a fucking rocket launcher, as long as the job was done. With this conclusion, he leaned over, flipped open the glove compartment, grabbed five cartridges, loaded the pistol, then tucked it into the waistband of his trousers.

  Tony arrived seven minutes later. From the rearview mirror Caruso watched as he got out of his car, walked over, and tapped at the window.

  Caruso rolled it down, and a thick wave of smoke billowed out and up and was instantly torn apart by a sudden gust of wind.

  “Thanks again, Vinnie,” Tony said.

  Caruso looked at him sternly. “I’ll tell you something, Tony, you better talk to him good, because, you ask me, he ain’t in no mood to change his mind on this thing.”

  “He hasn’t told you, has he?” Tony asked.

  “Told me what?”

  “Told you what that guy he hired is supposed to do once he finds Sara.”

  “No,” Caruso said. The tight wad of steel nestled against his back seemed to move suddenly, shift and stir like an animal in its earthen hole. “No, he ain’t told me nothing about that.”

  Tony appeared to believe him, though Caruso could not imagine why, since he’d lied and lied about this thing. And not just this thing either. He had lied and lied period. It was his way of life.

  “So, anyway,” Tony said. “Thanks.”

  Tony’s voice was completely different than Caruso had ever heard it. He seemed sad and broken and trapped like a rat, like a guy who’d lost the most important thing he had and could find no way to get it back. It was his wife he’d lost, of course, and for a moment Caruso wondered what it must be like to be that close to someone, want them to stay with you that deeply. Then he thought of his father . . . and he knew what Tony was going through. He wanted Sara back because nothing would ever be the same if she didn’t show up again. But so what, he thought, now hardening himself for the job he’d have to do if Tony didn’t get the Old Man to call it off. So what? He’d wanted his father to come back the same way Tony wanted this bitch wife of his to come back. But had he? Fuck, no. Same way with this wife of Tony’s. Just wanting somebody to come back didn’t mean they’d do it. And you were a sap if you thought it would. Tony was a sap, Caruso decided, and Mr. Labriola was right in despising the little prick.

  He felt the pistol rustle again, jerked open the door, and got out of the car.

  “Let’s get this shit over with,” he said sharply.

  They passed through the gate, mounted the stairs, and stood silently together after Tony rapped at the door.

  Standing in the darkness of Labriola’s porch, Caruso felt the pistol against his backbone. It seemed rough as bricks, and as the seconds passed, it grew cold and weighty, heavier than the moon and stars, a vast, motionless planet, grim and unlighted
, and he yearned for the moment when the job was finished and he could toss it over the Verrazano Bridge and be done with it.

  The porch light flicked on, and frozen in its harsh light, Caruso felt utterly exposed, as if he’d already been nabbed by the cops and hauled in for a lineup, eyes watching him from behind the glare, picking him out, sealing his fate. He could almost hear the whispers of the witnesses who’d seen him do it. Yeah, that’s him. I know because of that little mustache. Caruso glanced toward the door, caught his translucent image in the glass. Before the hit, that fucking mustache had to go.

  Labriola opened the door, glanced back and forth from Tony to Caruso, his eyes cold and merciless, as if he couldn’t decide which of them he detested most.

  “What the fuck is this?” he asked.

  “I need to talk to you, Dad,” Tony said.

  Labriola’s eyes slithered over to Caruso. “What the fuck is this, Vinnie?”

  “I just come along for the ride,” Caruso said. “It ain’t nothing to do with me.”

  “I need to talk to you,” Tony insisted.

  “Make it fast,” Labriola snorted contemptuously, then strode back into the house.

  Caruso followed Tony into the living room. It was cluttered and dingy, the tables and chairs piled with pizza boxes and white containers of half-eaten Chinese food. Beer cans and liquor bottles lay scattered along the length of the sofa, along with stacks of newspapers and magazines.

  “Jesus,” Tony said.

  “I don’t have a wife to clean up for me,” Labriola said sharply. “But then, you don’t either, do you, Tony?” He laughed mockingly.

  Tony’s body stiffened. “We have to talk, Dad.”

  “So you already said.” Labriola rubbed his hands together. “A real heart-to-heart. Father and son. I can’t wait.” His eyes narrowed. “Okay, let’s have it.”

  “I want to talk to you about Sara,” Tony said grimly.

  Labriola waved his hand and slumped down on the sofa. “I thought we settled that.”

  “I know you’re still looking for her,” Tony said.

  “You don’t know shit.”