Peril

A sudden spike of memory pierced his mind. It was sharp and uncomfortable, and it vividly reminded him of that moment years before when he’d told Lockridge he hadn’t been able to find Marisol, then realized that Lockridge already knew better. There’d been a look on Lockridge’s face at that instant, a sense of victory, that for all Stark’s caution and intelligence, he had been outwitted, and that the terrible cost of his failure would fall entirely upon Marisol.

TONY

Tony stepped back as the truck pulled away, loaded with the daily delivery of bluefish, cod, and grouper, and suddenly imagined Sara locked in such a van, bound at the ankles and the wrists, kidnapped. This possibility circled briefly in his mind, gathering hooks as it circled, becoming more painful until it finally burst from his mouth.

“Maybe she got snatched,” he said. “Not for ransom. But for revenge.”

Eddie stripped off a pair of thick rubber gloves. “Who would hate you that much, Tony? To do something like that.”

“Maybe it wasn’t me he was doing it to.”

Eddie looked at him quizzically.

“You know how it is with my father,” Tony explained. “You know the people he deals with.”

“Did you ask him if maybe it could be something like that?”

“No, he’d blow up if I asked him that.” Tony turned and headed back toward his office, Eddie trudging along beside him. “I think he’s got somebody looking for her.”

“Why do you think that, Tony?”

“Because when I told him about how Sara was missing, he started in on how I couldn’t just let her go, how I had to find her and bring her back and all that shit. Then he gets up and makes a call.” Tony stopped and peered out over the marina, where scores of spinnakers rocked gently in the breeze. “I think he put some guy on it. One of his guys. You know the type. Suppose this fucking guy does find her, Eddie? What then?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie admitted. “But look, Tony, I mean, who knows, maybe she’ll come back on her own. I mean, it could be all she wants is a little break.”

“A break?”

“From . . . stuff.”

“Me?”

“Everything,” Eddie said. “My aunt Edna needed a break. She ran off to Atlantic City, stayed two weeks, then come back. With three hundred dollars in nickels. She poured ’em out on the kitchen table. Right there, in front of my uncle. Told him to buy himself a new suit. That was the end of it. She never went nowhere after that.”

“I don’t think Sara went to Atlantic City,” Tony said despondently.

“But maybe somewhere just to get away,” Eddie said.

“Without telling anybody?”

“Without telling you,” Eddie offered cautiously. “ ’Cause she just wanted to, you know, be alone.”

“So who would she have told?”

“Maybe nobody,” Eddie answered. “Or maybe a friend. Somebody she talked to.”

“Della,” Tony answered. “She lives across the street. They go shopping sometimes, her and Della.”

“Then maybe Sara said something, you know? You should talk to that woman, Tony. That Della woman.”

Tony pondered Eddie’s suggestion, looking for a way to speak to Della DeLuria without actually revealing that Sara had left him, found no way to do it, then said, “Yeah, okay.”

Inside his office, safe from view, Tony stared at the picture of himself and Sara that he’d placed on his desk nine years before. It showed the happy couple on the steps of St. Mary’s, Sara in a flowing white dress, Tony in a black tuxedo, his father alone and off to the right, as if in bitter surmise of his new daughter-in-law.

He never liked her, Tony thought, remembering the evening a week before when he’d come home late to find the Old Man slumped in the living room, looking sullen. Sara had come in briefly, and his father had glared at her hatefully, then gotten to his feet and left with nothing beyond a mumbled That bitch don’t know her place, Tony.

He picked up the photograph and concentrated on Sara’s face. Even on her wedding day there’d been a curious sadness in her eyes, a distance he couldn’t bridge. Had it been that distance that had first attracted him, he wondered, the way she seemed to distrust love, life, everything? If so, he should have been wary of her, he told himself. But instead, that very distance had formed part of what he’d fallen for when he’d fallen for her. And he had fallen for her. That much was sure. He could see that even now, in the picture, the two of them on the church steps, rice flying in all directions. At that moment she had been the indisputable love of his life. The love of my life that day, he thought, then with a sudden aching clarity realized that she still was.

CARUSO

Labriola’s voice seemed to reach through the phone line and slap his face.

“Yeah?”

“I talked to Morty Dodge about the meeting you want with this guy he works for.”

“And?”

“He says his guy needs information.”

“About what?”

“Sara. Things about her.”

“What things?”

“For example, what she did for a living or—”

“She didn’t do a fucking thing.”

“Yeah, okay, but like, where she might have gone. Stuff to get the guy started, that’s what he means.”

To Caruso’s surprise, Labriola did not protest. “I got an idea who knows that shit.”

“Good,” Caruso said. “I’ll pass on whatever you find out.”

“You’ll pass it on? What about me? What about the meeting?”

“That’s a problem, having a meeting.”

“Why is it a problem, Vinnie?”

“Because the guy, he won’t do it.”

“I’m laying out thirty grand and this fucker won’t meet with me?”

“He never shows.”

Caruso could hear the Old Man breathing raggedly, like the snorting of a bull. He waited for him to speak, and when he didn’t, added, “But Morty’ll meet with you. I told him if it was okay you could hook up at Columbus Circle, two-thirty.”

“But he’s nothing but a gofer,” the Old Man barked. “I don’t deal with no fucking gofers.”

“He’s a little more than that,” Caruso protested. “I mean, the guy trusts him is what I’m saying.”

“So he’s like a sidecar?”

“Sidekick. Yeah, something like that. But more. Loyal. A loyal friend.”

“A loyal friend. You know what a loyal friend is, Vinnie? He’s the other guy you toss into the fucking hole.”

A small, aching laugh broke from Caruso. “That’s good, Mr. Labriola. That’s a good one.”

“I want you to find out who this fucking guy is, Vinnie. I don’t have no ghosts working for me, you understand?”

“The guy, you want me to . . . what?”

“What I fucking said just now,” the Old Man screamed. “Who is he? I want to know.”

“Yes, sir,” Caruso said weakly.

“So, look, here’s what we do. You set up that fucking meet. Say to this sidecar shithead, sure I’ll have a meet. Then we meet, and we talk, and we shake hands like a couple of asshole buddies, see what I mean? Then I go my way, and the sidecar goes his. And you follow the little shithead all the way to this fucking guy he works for.”

“Yes, sir,” Caruso breathed.

“Understood, Vinnie?”