Peril

“Time is money.”

“Well, you should think of this, Morty,” Caruso said. “If Mr. Labriola is a minute late, you wait for him. And if he’s an hour late, you wait for him. You fucking stand here and starve to death, but you wait for him, Morty, because if you don’t . . .” Caruso’s eyes suddenly took on a look of animal fright. “There he is.” He nodded toward a Lincoln Town Car as it drew up to the curb. “Okay, go.”

Labriola was behind the wheel, and as Mortimer drew himself into the passenger seat, he felt something change in the quality of the light.

“So you’re the sidecar,” Labriola said.

Mortimer looked at him quizzically.

“The gofer.”

Mortimer nodded as the car pulled away. “Mortimer Dodge,” he said.

“I know your fucking name,” Labriola snapped. “I also know you owe me fifteen grand. Fifteen fucking grand but don’t want to do certain things I want you to do. For example, won’t bring this guy who’s working for me so I can get a look.”

“I would if I could,” Mortimer said.

“I like to look a guy in the eye,” Labriola muttered darkly. “I like him to know what he’s fucking dealing with when he’s dealing with me. You know why? ’Cause once he gets a look at me, he don’t have no fucking doubts about where I stand.”

Mortimer remained mute. It seemed the only safe response to a man like Labriola. You didn’t talk. You listened.

“So when I hear this guy won’t show, I figure, okay, I’ll take a look at the guy who’s setting this thing up. Which is you. So, okay, now I’m having a look, and what I see is a guy in a cheap suit, with dirty shoes don’t look like they been shined in ten years, and he’s got a look on his face like he just poked the boss’s wife. In other words, I don’t like what I see. So, what you got to do is tell me what I’m seeing ain’t quite right. So, go ahead, do that.”

Mortimer thought fast. “You remember Gotti? The way he liked being noticed? Fancy suits. Silk ties. Big talk. Shooting off fireworks when the mayor told him not to. Well, he got noticed. But me, I don’t want to be noticed like that. And that’s good for me. And it’s good for my guy. And it’s good for you too, Mr. Labriola. Because it means that when my guy finds this woman, she won’t even know she’s been found. No noise. No flash. He just sees her. He don’t sit down. He don’t chat. He don’t take no notice. He just finds her, and then he tells me, and then I tell you.” He shrugged. “After that . . .”

“It’s my business,” Labriola said.

Mortimer nodded.

Labriola stared at him for a moment, then a loud laugh broke from him, and he grabbed Mortimer’s left knee and squeezed. “Okay,” he said, all boisterous good cheer now. “Okay, we’ll do this thing.” He grabbed the wheel tightly and gave it a jerk to the right. “So, where you want I let you off?”

“Where you picked me up is fine.”

The car made an abrupt turn, cruised south on Twelfth Avenue, then swung east, Labriola silent, staring straight ahead, until the car came to a halt at Columbus Circle.

Labriola drew an envelope from his jacket pocket. “Here’s that information your guy wanted.”

Mortimer took the envelope.

“Stay in touch,” Labriola said in a tone of grim authority.

Mortimer nodded, then opened the door and stepped out of the car. He could still feel the tremor in his fingers as it pulled away.

CARUSO

From behind the Columbus monument, he watched as Mortimer stepped out of Labriola’s car, a manila envelope in his hand. The car pulled away, and for a time Mortimer remained in place, the envelope dangling from his hand, looking curiously lost, like a guy who’d suddenly found himself in a foreign city. Then he seemed to come back to himself, glanced about, pocketed the envelope, and began walking south down Broadway until he stopped abruptly as if he’d heard something coming toward him from behind.

Caruso darted into a shop and stood, peering through the window as Mortimer cocked his head left and right like a guy listening to an argument in his brain. Fucking weirdo, Caruso thought, fucking creepy, this guy. He waited until Mortimer moved on down Broadway, then returned to the street, following at a somewhat greater distance now, his eyes peeled for the crooked shape of Mortimer’s black hat.

Where the fuck is he going? Caruso asked himself, already tired now, which only suggested that he was no better off than Morty Dodge when it came to staying in shape. He’d thought of exercise, of eating better, both of which he’d considered before. He’d actually bought a stationary bike at one point, then watched helplessly as it became the world’s most expensive clothes rack. He was thirty-six but looked at least five years older, a fact that wasn’t lost on the women he tried to pick up. He knew that they looked at his paunch, his thinning hair, the circles beneath his eyes, and thought to themselves, This guy is fucked. And why shouldn’t they think that? he wondered now. Here he was, a thirty-six-year-old guy, following this weird bastard who was probably going to lead him to yet another weirdo. The worst part was that while he and Mortimer both had to answer to Labriola, Batman didn’t because the Old Man had no idea who he was. But that would change soon, Caruso thought with sudden gleeful satisfaction, as if he’d just found a way to get even with this mystery man he had never met and yet envied for his freedom, and thus wanted to bring down. He smiled. Maybe Mr. Labriola would feel the same way. Maybe he’d think that this fucking guy, this Batman-arrogant asshole, needed to be taught a lesson. Caruso indulged himself in that fantasy, imagining the Old Man’s hand on his shoulder, giving him the Big Assignment. He could even feel Labriola’s lips at his ear, whispering the honored instruction, the one only the most trusted men ever received, Whack Batman.

STARK

Stark sat down behind the mahogany desk and reviewed the few details Mortimer had given him when they’d first discussed the job, trying to divine which of them were true.

The facts themselves were spare.

A woman had left her husband.

She’d done so only three days before.

She’d left from Montauk, Long Island, and gone to an as-yet-unknown place.

She had not taken her own car.

Mortimer had offered nothing beyond these scant details save that his “friend” did not wish to reveal himself but promised to supply considerably more information about his wife, at least as far as where she might have gone and by what means she’d gone there.

In itself, his client’s reluctance to identify himself was not unusual. In such situations people on the other end of the arrangement were often jealous of their privacy. He’d worked for politicians, high-profile businessmen, actors, and musicians. No one was safe from the eternal tendency to fuck up. That was one of the things Stark had learned over the years, that rich, famous, and even quite intelligent people could suddenly find themselves neck deep in trouble. Their personal relationships abruptly spun out of control because they’d screwed the wrong person or trusted some grifter who’d promised five bucks for every nickel they invested. Human life went forward on a sputtering wave of such mindless improvisation. On some otherwise normal day a line drive went foul. A man met a woman, took her to bed, awoke to find a psycho in his arms. Or he let a stranger buy him a drink, talked a little about money, turned over half a million to a thief. There were a thousand ways for a life to go disastrously awry. And when it did you looked for a way out that didn’t blow what was left of you to smithereens. You found someone who could make the necessary correction, have some face time with the face you wanted to wipe out of your life. Oftentimes, the job reduced to simply that, a single eye-to-eye confrontation, one Stark always ended with a standard chilling statement, This is over . . . as of right now. Whatever you thought you were going to get, you’re not going to get it. From this moment on, you only start to lose. How much you lose is up to you.

He’d delivered these words scores of times, to distraught mistresses and wily con men and well-heeled drug dealers, and the look in his eye and the tone in his voice had rarely failed to do the trick. No matter how venal or