Peril

“Good night.”

She watched as the policeman moved on down the Promenade, waiting for him to turn around, head back toward her, the way Sheriff Caulfield had on that distant afternoon, down a dusty country road, moving slowly and without fear, superior to his prey. She felt his hand on her shoulder, drawing her from the car, confused, frightened, a teenage girl in a car with a broken taillight, eased out into the crystalline air. Just do what I tell you and you’ll be on your way.

But this time the policeman didn’t turn back toward her, and once he was out of view, she returned her gaze to the Manhattan skyline, avoiding the empty space where the Towers had once stood. They’d been like her, she thought, just standing there in the open, weaponless and vulnerable.

The memory of a sweet, liquored breath swept into her face, and suddenly she heard the wind in the corn, saw herself glancing back to where both taillights remained intact. But . . . Sheriff . . . my light isn’t broken, then saw him step over to the back of her car, take out his pistol, and shatter the left taillight, sending little shards of blood-red plastic onto the dusty road. Now it is.

The memory of that moment filled her with a burning ire, the way she’d promised herself that she would never let it happen again. Next time, Kill him, the voice had whispered, and she had vowed, I will.

TWO

Blame It on My Youth

ABE

“So what are you gonna do, Abe?” Jake lifted a glass, examined it for spots.

Abe looked up from yet another pile of bills. “Do?”

“You know, about Lucille. You gonna replace her?”

“Yeah,” Abe said.

That Lucille was dead still seemed unreal to him. He’d seen her body hauled away and yet he expected her to walk through the door at the usual hour, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth.

“ ‘Blame It on My Youth,’ ” he said. “Lucille didn’t sing that until she was forty-six, remember?”

Jake swiped the counter with a white cloth. “Made it seem like only old broads could sing that song.”

“Yeah,” Abe said. Then, because he could find nothing else to do, he walked to the piano, placed his fingers on the old familiar keys. “What do you want to hear?” he called.

“That peppy one she liked. I mean, when she wasn’t in a mood.”

Abe knew the one Jake meant, and so began a bright, up-tempo version of “Your Feet’s Too Big.”

When he finished, he returned to the bar. Susanne had come in by then, another book by one of what she called “the great minds” under her arm. She was a philosophy major at NYU and peppered her drink deliveries with pithy little aphorisms from her latest readings. Abe had heard scores of them during the few months Susanne had worked for him, but the only one that had stuck came from some Greek whose name he couldn’t remember. Courage in a man, this Greek had said, was simply this, to endure silently whatever heaven sends.

He thought of Mavis, then of Lucille, and finally of that fucking cat, Pookie, the one he’d found dead on the kitchen floor three weeks after Mavis’ abrupt departure. No, he thought, that Greek got it wrong. Courage was to endure silently whatever heaven takes away.

“So, what about Lucille?” Jake asked. “You gonna put an ad in Variety, something like that?”

Abe shook his head. “Nah,” he said.

If he put an ad in Variety, he knew a thousand kids would show up, all of them scooping the notes or singing through their noses, girls with tattoos and neon hair, with pierced tongues and ears and God knows what else under their blouses or below their belts.

“How about an open mike?” he said. “We did that when Lucille left for a year. Just put a sign in the window that says Open Mike and see who drops in.”

Jake shrugged. “You’ll get that woman who makes all her clothes out of carpet remnants, remember her?”

Abe laughed. “Or the one who only sang songs with animals in the titles.”

“But changed the titles. ‘Sweet Doggie Brown,’ for Christ’s sake.”

“ ‘My Funny Butterfly.’ ”

“Jesus, what a nutbag.”

“But not as bad as the one dressed in red rubber,” Abe said. “Changed the titles too, remember. ‘I’ll Be Peeing You.’ ”

They were both laughing now, and in their laughter Abe caught a glimpse of what life had been before Mavis fled. “Yeah,” he said, the laughter trailing off now. “Open mike is the way to go.”

MORTIMER

Mortimer rolled the coffee cup in his hand and tried to keep the pain in his belly from showing in his eyes. Only three days had passed since he’d taken the deal, and here Caruso was making changes.

“This is how Mr. Labriola sees it,” Caruso said. “Since he’s paying the bill, he’s got a right to check out the guy who’s doing the job. The guy himself, I mean. Directly.”

“No way,” Mortimer told him.

They were sitting in a coffee shop at Port Authority, the morning commuters rushing by in noisy waves, the city in full morning frenzy. Nobody smelling the roses, Mortimer thought, though he’d never stopped to smell them either. Did anyone?

Caruso sipped a hazelnut blend from a paper cup. “That could be a deal breaker, you know, if the guy won’t show.”

“He won’t show,” Mortimer said flatly. “There ain’t no give in this. He won’t show . . . period.”

Caruso looked offended. “So who does he think he is, fucking Batman?”

“He won’t show,” Mortimer repeated.

“You won’t even talk to him?”

“There wouldn’t be no point in talking to him, Vinnie,” Mortimer said emphatically. “The deal don’t include no meeting. He don’t meet with nobody. My guy ain’t never done that, and he ain’t gonna start now.”

Caruso leaned forward. “I just give you fifteen grand, remember?”

Mortimer remembered all too well. He could feel the envelope in his jacket pocket. The only thing, it didn’t feel like bills, all silent and crinkly. It felt like thirty pieces of silver, loud and jangling, rattling through his soul.

“You gonna give a dime of that money to Batman?” Caruso asked him.

Mortimer shrugged.

“That’s what I figured,” Caruso said. “You’re shorting him. Batman, I mean. What if he found out you was doing that, Morty?”

“He ain’t gonna find out.”

“What I’m saying is we got to have some trust here. Between us, I mean. I know you’re shorting your guy and—” Caruso stopped, looking somewhat baffled, like a man who’d started following a thought, then lost it on the way. “Trust, that’s what I’m saying. You can trust me. So your guy should show if I tell you he should show.”

Mortimer took a sip of coffee, tried to act firm, businesslike, beyond intimidation. “Look, Vinnie, if Labriola wants to have a look at me, fine. But that’s where it stops.”

Caruso regarded Mortimer warily. “You know, I’ve been thinking maybe it stops with you, period. I’ve been thinking maybe Batman is you, Morty. That maybe you’re going to grab the whole thirty grand.” He took another sip of coffee. “So is there another guy or not?”

“There is,” Mortimer said. “But what his cut is, that’s between me and him.”

Caruso shrugged. “Look, if you want to cheat your guy, so what? It’s no skin off my nose who gets what in this deal, long as you come up with this fucking broad Mr. Labriola is all lathered up about. But remember this: Labriola don’t like getting fucked.” He waited for that to sink in, then added, “The Old Man gets real pissed a guy tries to screw him. And on this deal, he’s really steaming to get the job done. Otherwise why would he be paying