Peril

her mind, she saw Caulfield standing above her, zipping up his pants, telling her to keep her mouth shut. She’d known instantly that she would do it, let him just walk away, back to his car, and after that go home to the little shack she lived in with her father, hoping somehow she could put it all behind her.

She’d almost done it too, she thought now, almost gotten clear of it. She’d come to New York, landed enough work to keep a roof over her head, married Tony, moved to Long Island, where, despite the little nagging problems and disappointments that plagued any life, she’d almost made a go of it.

In her mind she heard the heavy thud again, a beast closing in upon her from behind.

Almost, she thought, but not quite.

ABE

He knew only that her name was Samantha, that she lived in a Brooklyn hotel, and that from the moment she’d begun to sing he’d felt the old, forgotten stirring, felt again what a song can be, along with something more, something extra, a small, barely detectable charge.

He looked over to where Jake stood at the bar, slicing a lime. “That singer who came in last night, how old you think she is?” he asked.

“Thirties,” Jake said.

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.” In his mind he saw her standing by the piano, heard her voice again. “She sings older though.”

“You wish she was older,” Susanne piped in with a laugh. “You wish she was older but still looked like a chick.”

“Chick?” Abe asked. “I thought that was sexist, that word.”

“No, just sexy,” Susanne returned. “At least for old guys.”

“Upbeat would be good,” Jake said absently. “Lucille was always singing those downers.”

“Lucille was a torch singer,” Abe reminded him.

Jake dropped the slices into a white dish. “Used to sing ‘Fly Me to the Moon,’ remember? Like it was bullshit. Like nobody could do that for nobody else.” He shook his head. “Fucking depressing, the way she sung it.” The knife suddenly stopped. “So, you’re going to hire this broad?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, sure you are,” Susanne said with a laugh. “I could see she was getting to you.”

Getting to you? Abe asked himself. Was that the small charge he’d felt as the woman sang?

A sudden agitation seized him, the sense of something broken loose and rolling about inside him.

Getting to you.

He walked out of the bar and stood on the street and tried to forget that a woman named Samantha had come into the place the night before, sung a song, and somehow shaken something loose.

Getting to you.

If that were true, he had to stop it, and so, at that instant, he decided not to call her, just let her find a gig somewhere else and leave his life alone. That would be the safest thing, he thought, just to leave things where they were, Jake slicing limes and Susanne straightening tables and Jorge in the back, stacking cases of beer, and himself standing alone on the street or sitting at the piano, his fingers resting without movement on the ever-yellowing keys.

CARUSO

“So, anyway, like I said. I see you give Morty the envelope and you pull away, and so I follow him and he starts walking downtown.”

Labriola kept his eyes on the road as he steered the Lincoln off the Henry Hudson Parkway and headed east along the Cross Bronx Expressway.

What, Caruso wondered, could he possibly be thinking? One thing he knew, that whatever it was, it wasn’t good. In the few days since Tony’s wife had disappeared, a strange darkness had settled over Labriola. It was like a stain that seemed to sink ever deeper into his mind. It was thick and black, and it kept him grimly focused on finding her to the exclusion of other, more important matters, like who’d paid him recently, or what should be done about Toby Carnucci, who should maybe be slapped around a little, the fucking deadbeat.

“So, anyway, when Morty gets to Twelfth Street, he swings east,” Caruso went on. “He makes it almost to Fifth, then he stops at this fucking bar.”

Caruso had gone over all of this once before, but Labriola seemed to want to hear it all again, as if he were hunting for something, or pondering secret calculations.

“Like I said, the place is called McPherson’s,” Caruso added. “So, anyway, I go to the window and look in. Morty don’t see me, but I see him clear as day. He’s talking to this fucking guy at the bar, who turns out to be the piano player, but like I find out later, also owns the place.”

“Owns the place,” Labriola muttered.

“Owns the place, right,” Caruso said. “So, okay, like I said, I figure this is maybe Morty’s hangout, you know, that maybe he’s a regular, so I wait and he has a couple of drinks and I don’t see he ever pays a nickel, and him and the other guy are talking away, and then they stop, and Morty gets up and heads for the door. So I run across the street ’cause I don’t want this fuck should see me watching him, and he comes out and the same guy is with him. And right there on the street, Morty gives this guy the envelope, which I figure is the same envelope you give him when he had that meet with you.”

“You seen him pass the envelope to this other fucking guy?” Labriola blurted out with a sudden leaping virulence. “With your own eyes, you seen it?”

“With my own eyes.”

Labriola glanced out the window and surveyed the neighborhood the expressway had destroyed. “You ever live in Tremont?”

“No,” Caruso answered.

“That fucking Jew tore it down,” Labriola said bitterly.

“Jew?”

“That fucking Moses.” Labriola continued to stare wistfully out the window. “It was like Arthur Avenue still is. A real neighborhood. But that fucking Jew tore it down to build this piece of shit.”

“What piece of shit?”

“This ugly fucking road is what.”

“Oh.”

Labriola’s face contorted. “Somebody should have put a bullet in that fucking kike.”

Caruso said nothing. Since he had nothing to add to this latest outburst, his only choice was to wait it out, just sit tight and let Labriola chew on whatever he was chewing on until he swallowed it.

“That’s when I moved to Brooklyn,” Labriola said. “That’s when I knew the Bronx was finished.” He shook his head disconsolately. “Tremont,” he said mournfully. “Tremont was beautiful in them days, but that fucking Jew tore it all down.” He suddenly turned from the window and leveled his gaze on Caruso. “A bullet in his head, that’s what he needed.”

Caruso stared at Labriola, utterly baffled by the Old Man’s sudden interest in his old neighborhood, but heartened that he was thinking in such terms, moving perhaps toward the Big Assignment, maybe to whack Toby Carnucci, the stupid bastard, or better yet Batman, the arrogant fuck, if the guy with the book really was Batman, which he still didn’t know for sure but was beginning not to care, since whacking the guy with the book would feel great whether he was Batman or not.

“Sometimes a bullet is all that can do the job,” Labriola said. “Am I right, Vinnie?”

Caruso smiled broadly. “You’re dead right, Mr. Labriola.” He saw that his answer pleased the Old Man, and so he added, “You ask me, a bullet in the head is too fucking good for some people.”

“Too fucking good, Vinnie,” Labriola repeated.

Caruso cautiously returned to the matter at hand. “So, anyway, I figured I knew who Batman was, you know?”

“Batman?”

“The guy Morty works for. That’s what I call him.”