Peril (23 page)

In his mind Eddie recalled Sara as she'd appeared the last time he'd seen her. She'd seemed sweet and lovely, and she'd smiled at him and said hello but he knew that even if she'd hardly noticed him or treated him badly he'd still be holding out the way he was because it really wasn't about Sara. It was about Tony, this guy who'd stood with him when his father died, and sent him a Christmas card, and sometimes took him out for a steak and fries. Tony, who'd visited him in the hospital when he got hurt on the job and seemed to know when he needed a hand. Tony had done all of that despite the fact that he was busy and his business was in trouble and he had worries of his own, and so it was clear to Eddie that you knew who your friends were not by their favors but by their sacrifice.

“Who sent you?”

He opened his eyes and the silver-haired man was peering at him, his face very still and menacing, like a snake poised to strike.

“Who sent you?”

The silver-haired man ripped the tape from his mouth with a fierce, violent jerk.

“Who sent you?” he repeated, now very sharply.

Eddie closed his eyes again and thought of Tony at his side, and it seemed to him that in the end a friend could be judged only by how much he was willing to lose. He drew a steely breath, opened his eyes, and glared defiantly at the man whose face was very near him now, and in which he saw a terrible capacity for violence. He never used bad language, but just this once it seemed okay.

“Fuck you,” he said.

ABE

He sat down behind his desk and stared at the pile of bills, the liquor stacked high in cardboard boxes, the calendar that hung from the wall like a condemned man. Nothing would change in this room, he thought, if nothing changed in his life. Someone would simply come in one day and find him curled over the desk or sprawled on the floor. That was the curtain he saw. End of Act Three.

And so he reached for the phone and dialed Lucille's old number.

“Hello.”

“Samantha, it's Abe.”

“Oh, hi.”

“Listen,” he began, then stopped and drew in a quick, uncertain breath. “Listen, about tonight. I thought maybe you should start off with something lively.”

“Okay.”

“Something to get their attention, you know. And then maybe end it with a ballad. Tug the heartstrings, you know?”

“All right.”

There was a pause, and he knew she was waiting for some final word. He considered his options for a moment, then charged ahead like a man out of the trenches.

“And one more thing,” he said. “I was thinking maybe we could have dinner before you come to the bar. You know, talk things over. Then we could go to the bar and maybe we could sit around awhile, and then, whenever you feel like it, you get up, do the songs.”

“Okay,” she said.

He gave her the name of the restaurant he'd already chosen just in case and told her to meet him there at eight. When she said fine, he hung up and sat back in his chair with a modest sense of achievement, not the thrill of winning the race, but at least the knowledge that when the starting gun fired, you came out of the gate.

DELLA

It
was
her business,
she thought,
but what could she do about it?

She sat at the table, Nicky now sleeping soundly, and smoked the first cigarette she'd had in three years. She'd bought the pack at the convenience store on the way back from her mother's house, asking for it guiltily, like a teenager hoping the orange-haired clerk behind the register wouldn't demand proof of age.

After that she'd driven directly home, put Nicky down for his afternoon nap, then wandered into the kitchen to light up. She knew why she was smoking. Nerves. She couldn't get the look on her mother's face out of her mind, the terrible, hopeless fear she'd seen in the old woman's eyes. And something else too, Leo Labriola, the way he'd grabbed her arm and written his number on her wrist. The remembered violence of that act, the nip of the pen in her flesh, now seemed more real than anything around her. He knew his business, Labriola, she thought, knew exactly how to terrorize people, make them cringe.

Labriola was capable of anything. That much was absolutely clear now. Whatever feeble hope that he was all bluff and hot air, a posturing old man who could rage and bluster with the best of them but in the end do nothing, all she'd used to convince herself that Sara wasn't really in danger, all of that was gone, and she was left only with the certain knowledge that the danger she was in was even deeper than she'd supposed. Not only would Labriola hurt her, he would enjoy doing so, and that enjoyment would itself blossom and expand, urging him to greater outrages against her. He wouldn't just kill her, Della decided, he would torture her. He would beat her up or burn her with cigarettes or pass a blowtorch up her arm or use a chain saw the way Colombian drug lords did to the people who crossed them. She'd read about these things in books and magazines, and she knew they were true, that some people were capable of indescribable cruelty, and that Leo Labriola was that kind of man.

She crushed the first cigarette into the saucer she'd commandeered for an ashtray, then lit another one and tried to find a way out of the situation that would somehow save everyone from harm. It was all she wanted, just that simple measure of getting everyone through this thing—Sara, her mother, Mike, Nicky, herself—everyone through this thing unharmed.

But how?

She considered the situation, trying to focus on a solution, a way out, but each time, the situation itself exploded into a thousand glittering shards. This flying apart happened, she thought, because she simply lacked the capacity to think. Bright people saw the world with a clarity that was beyond her. They could find a pattern, chart a road through the entangling forest. But she saw only what was directly before her. It had always been that way, she thought. It was as if her brain were a gigantic eye that could detect only the brightest colors, all subtlety and shading beyond her view. She was like a ship that sailed from island to island on a journey that moved from Big Thing to Big Thing. GET A BOYFRIEND. MARRY. HAVE KIDS.

The trip had gone remarkably smoothly, she realized, the sea always calm in a world without storms and where night never fell. But now everything was storm-tossed and she could feel a terrible blackness approaching. She remembered Sara talking about a play in which, at the end, the whole house was turned upside down, everything falling on top of everything else, and it seemed to Della that her own house might do the same thing; one wrong move and everything she loved would be annihilated.

Maybe the thing to do, she reasoned, was to rate love. Make a list of people you cared for. The one you loved the most was at number one. Next was number two. And if helping the third person on the list put the people at one and two in danger, then you just didn't do it. Number one for her, she decided, was Nicky. Number two was Denise. Then Mike. Her mother, grudgingly, made number four. Okay, she thought, if helping Sara endangered the others, then I won't help Sara. That was simple enough, wasn't it? Yes, she thought, momentarily pleased with the little mathematical scheme she'd worked out. Then, in the midst of that satisfaction, blurring the clarity of rated love, another calculation emerged. Herself. Where did she fit in the scheme she'd worked out? Who would she be—what would be left of her—if she turned away from a friend in danger, made no attempt to warn her, save her, but simply closed the door, turned out the light, and with that gesture switched off the power to her heart?

STARK

The buzzer sounded unexpectedly, and like all such surprises, it was unwelcome. He walked to the door and opened it.

“Sorry to bother you,” Mortimer said. He took off his hat but didn't leave it on the rack by the door. “You busy?”

Stark closed the door, leaving the two of them in the shadowy light of the foyer. “What is it?” he asked.

“It's about my friend,” Mortimer told him. “The one you're helping out.”

“Did he give you more information?”

Mortimer shook his head. “The thing is, he's in a bind. Complications. He's got complications.”

Stark said nothing. Instead, he worked to conceal the raging sense of betrayal he felt in the certainty that Mortimer had lied to him.

“So, that's what we need to talk about,” Mortimer said.

Stark faced him squarely in the foyer's shadows. “Talk,” he said.

MORTIMER

Talk.

That was all Stark said, and at that instant Mortimer thought,
He knows.

But he was not sure what Stark knew. Only that he knew something, and that what he knew was very bad. He could see how bad it was in Stark's pale blue eyes. Because of that, Mortimer knew that his own next words were crucial, that they had to give Stark the impression that it had all been a mistake, that whatever Stark had discovered, Mortimer had also discovered it, that they'd both been fooled, not that one had attempted to fool the other.

“I'm not sure he's playing straight with me,” Mortimer said. His fingers squeezed the hat. “My friend, I mean. What he tells me, I can't be sure it's on the up-and-up.” He watched Stark, straining to see some sign of a reaction, but the man peered at him silently, and with what now appeared a sad contempt. “About the job, I mean,” he added, trying hard not to sputter or to cringe despite the fact that he felt like a third-grade kid before a disapproving teacher. “The thing is, I ain't sure we're the only players.”

“The only players?”

“I get the feeling he might have some other guy working this thing.” Mortimer stopped and waited, but Stark continued to stare at him without expression. “You ain't seen no sign of that, right? Some other guy?”

“Why would you think your friend had a second man?” Stark asked.

“I don't know,” Mortimer answered. “Just a feeling that—” He stopped again, staring now into Stark's stony features. “Anyway,” Mortimer said quietly. “That's where I'm at in this thing.”

“Which is where, exactly?”

“Where I said. I don't think I'm getting the straight story.”

“So your friend is lying to you?”

“Well, maybe not exactly lying. Just not telling me everything.”

“There's no difference between those two,” Stark said sternly.

Mortimer saw something register darkly in Stark's face, a look he'd never seen before, that of a man who'd suddenly glimpsed another man's demise, knew the hour and the manner of his impending death. “I wish I could get you off this thing,” he said.

“It's too late for that.” Stark said it grimly.

Mortimer glanced down the darkened corridor that led to the right and noticed a black curtain hung across it.

“What's the matter?” Stark asked sharply.

“Nothing,” Mortimer answered.

“In that case,” Stark said. He opened the door and a wide swath of light passed over them, deathly pale, with swirling flecks of dust. “Unless there's something else.”

Mortimer faced Stark in the mottled light. “No. Nothing.” A grave premonition swam into his mind, the dreadful sense that he would never see Stark again. “Sorry for how this turned out,” he said.

For an instant, he thought he saw something move across Stark's face, some glimmer of affection shaded by regret. Then it passed, and Stark stepped back into the shadowy depths of his apartment, and closed the door.

Mortimer had never been so coldly dismissed, but there was nothing to be done about it. And so he walked out of the apartment and down the stairs, where he turned right, thinking that he could use a drink, maybe a little talk with his best friend, Abe. At the corner he glanced back toward Stark's apartment, recalled the black curtain that hung over the corridor, and wondered if his first suspicion could possibly be correct.

The light changed, but Mortimer remained in place. He knew he had to focus on the situation, and so, walking now, he started first with a chronological arrangement of events, recalling how Caruso had brought up the missing wife. No. It hadn't begun there. It had begun with his owing Labriola fifteen grand, and what that meant was that everything that followed was his fault. If he hadn't bet on Lady Be Good, he'd never have gotten into this position. But Lady Be Good had been a good bet. Several of the old stoopers at the track had told him so. So, when you looked at it, it was really their fault for giving him a bad tip. He shook his head, realizing that he'd done it again, gotten completely off the track.

And so he started again, this time carefully recalling the stages by which he'd gotten into this bind. Sure, it came back to owing Labriola fifteen grand, but that really didn't matter now. What mattered was that at the end of the process, everybody would be okay. Except the woman, of course, because what happened to her didn't really matter. Why should it, because when you got right down to it, it was all her fault anyway. If she hadn't taken a fucking hike, none of this shit would have happened.

Bullshit, he thought. He shook his head at the absurdity of his own conclusion. It wasn't the woman's fault at all. Like everything else, it was his fault, goddammit. Every fucking bit of it was his fault and nobody else's. He'd gotten into debt with a rotten old hood, then tried to pay off that debt by lying to Stark and cheating him, and now he had to fix it because Stark had gotten wind of something screwy in this thing, and God only knew what dark and bloody thing he'd done to the guy he'd caught following him.

Mortimer's mind raced through the grim possibilities—everything from kicking his ass to cutting his throat—but he couldn't determine the likelihood of Stark doing one thing over the other.

But the real question, Mortimer decided, was why Stark had done anything at all. What threat had he perceived in the guy he'd caught tailing him? He was just an ordinary guy, according to Caruso. And yet Stark had gone after him hammer and tongs.