Peril (26 page)

“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.”

“Providing what?”

“Providing she don't come to no harm,” Mortimer said. He waited for Caruso to react but again found only silence. “So what I figure is, I'll check her out, this woman I'm thinking about, and if it's her, then maybe we could come up with some way to make sure nothing happens to her.”

“I got to see her myself,” Caruso said.

“Why?” Mortimer asked.

After a pause, Caruso said, “So I can tell Labriola you done your job. That way, you keep the money. And you and me, we make sure the woman ain't hurt, so Batman's satisfied, and everybody wins, right?”

Everybody wins.
Mortimer thought through the solution Caruso had just offered and concluded it might work. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “I guess it's okay you see it's her.”

“So, where is she?” Caruso asked.

Suddenly Mortimer felt something tighten around his brain, a leather strap going dry.

“Where is she?” Caruso repeated.

“Vinnie, you won't tell the Old Man, right?” Mortimer asked.

“No, I won't.”

“Because you do, and something happens to her, my guy'll—”

“I told you I wouldn't tell Labriola,” Caruso said sternly.

“You gimme your word on that?”

“My word.”

“Okay,” Mortimer said, then stopped, desperately trying to think the whole thing through again.

“Well?” Caruso snapped.

Mortimer started to give Caruso Lucille's address, then stopped again and drew in a deep breath. Not there, he thought, someplace public, so he could get a good look at Caruso when Caruso got a good look at Sara Labriola. “Okay, this woman that could be her, she'll be at that bar you followed me to. McPherson's. She's supposed to do a little act or something. Sometime tonight. I don't know when exactly.”

“Okay,” Caruso said.

“I'll meet you at the bar around seven,” Mortimer said. “We can wait around till she shows up.”

Caruso's response fell like a dead man's hand. “No, you don't need to be there, Morty.”

A bell went off in Mortimer's head, a warning that whatever dead end his own fucked-up life had led him to, there were now other people with their backs to the same dark wall. “What's going on, Vinnie?”

“Nothing,” Caruso said quickly. “If it's her, it's over.”

“Providing she don't get hurt,” Mortimer reminded him.

“Right,” Caruso said dryly, and on that word, hung up.

ABE

As he strolled the aisle at Macy's, hoping to find just the right shirt and tie, he suddenly felt a terrible jeopardy. Something else, too, the inevitable approach of failure, loss, ruin. But what else could he expect, suddenly getting a thing for some woman he didn't know, a married woman, a woman on the run? How could he expect a happy ending to a story that began with so many things already lined up against it? But then, he'd always chosen badly, and gotten worse, a history that had continually repeated itself, and which no doubt explained the downward pull of his mind, its assumption of unhappy ends.

For years he'd believed that his doomed take on things had begun when Mavis left him, and not just left him for anyone but for another piano player, though this time she'd chosen a guy who was
really good.

But he was no longer sure his downward cast of mind had begun with Mavis. After all, by the time she'd skipped, he'd already figured out she wasn't much of a woman.

No, it wasn't Mavis, he decided now. It was just the way life had settled over him. The words of “But Beautiful” declared that love was a heartache either way, and it seemed to Abe that he'd come to apply that notion to every aspect of life. He was like Lucille when The Weight fell upon her, only he didn't have the excuse of bad chemistry. He had created The Weight, especially when it came to women. So much so that if the woman didn't go for it right away, he just took a hike, washed his hands of the whole thing. If she had a boyfriend . . . sayonara. Who needs the competition. If she had a few issues, good-bye, toots. Back to the bills in the back room. The slightest problem, and he headed for the hills. How many chances for happiness had he lost by giving up so quickly? he wondered. Too many, that much was sure. Too many to sing that song again. And so this time, he decided, issues or no issues, he would put up a fight.

Suddenly he thought of the gun Mortimer had given him, and the gift, along with the idea behind it, struck him as curiously admirable. Here was a guy, Mortimer, who unquestioningly assumed that if you loved someone, and someone else tried to take her from you against her will or tried to hurt her in some way you . . . well . . . you blew that worthless fucker's head off is what you did. Because you had this love, and nothing was going to stop you from defending it. Not the law, not good sense, not even your fear of the consequences. If someone came for the woman you loved, you did something about it. Never mind what happened later, all the hand-wringing and second-guessing, and maybe even regret. At that moment, in that situation, you threw away the rules, because the only rule was love, and the rule of love was that no one took the one you loved from you if she didn't want to go.