Peril

“Why you call him that, Vinnie?”

“ ’Cause he’s all mysterious and shit.”

“Oh.”

Caruso waited for Labriola to add his own comment, but the Old Man said nothing.

“Anyway,” Caruso began again, “anyway, at first I figure Batman must be the guy at the bar, on account he give the envelope to him, you know? But then, Morty don’t go straight home after meeting this guy. He goes to Chelsea. Meets another guy. And not only that, he gives something to this guy too. An envelope.”

Labriola looked at Caruso intently. “You see my problem here, don’t you, Vinnie?”

Caruso blinked.

“You only know one place where that guy works.”

“What guy?”

“That fucking piano player you’re talking about.”

Caruso stared at Labriola without expression.

“Work. That ain’t a good place. It’s the same like I only know where a guy lives. If I want to pop some fuckhead, and I only know where he lives, then I got to pop him with maybe Mrs. Fuckhead sitting there, maybe with a couple little pint-sized fuckheads running around.”

Caruso nodded. “So you—”

“What?” Labriola snapped.

“So, you’ve decided to pop this guy?” Caruso asked.

Labriola glared at Caruso. “Did I say that, Vinnie?”

“Well, no . . . but.”

“But nothing,” Labriola barked. “Put your hands out, Vinnie.”

“Huh?”

“Put your hands out, Vinnie. Far as you can.”

Caruso did as he was told.

“Wiggle your fingers.”

Caruso did.

“That’s how far you look ahead, Vinnie. Just as far as your fucking fingers. But me, I got to look ahead. Like to what I do if this fuck fucks me.”

Caruso started to draw back his hands. “How would he—”

“Keep your hands out there.”

Caruso straightened his arms.

“Wiggle your fingers, Vinnie.”

Caruso wiggled his fingers.

“You’re gonna keep your hands out there like that until you start seeing farther than your fucking fingers. Now, that question you asked me. What was it?”

“I can’t see how he’d fuck you,” Caruso answered cautiously, since he was not at all sure that this was the question Labriola had in mind.

“You can’t see it ’cause you ain’t looking no farther than your fingers.”

Caruso looked at his fingers.

“Here’s how. He don’t do the job. What I do then, Vinnie?”

Caruso hazarded a wild guess. “Well, you . . . could make him give you your money back.”

“Money?” Labriola bawled. “A guy don’t do a job for me, I don’t want his fucking money. I want him, Vinnie.”

Caruso nodded briskly. “Sure. Right.” He cautiously lowered his hands. “I see what you mean.”

“So what can you tell me about this guy besides where he works?”

“Which guy?”

“The one you told me about. The one in the bar. What else you know about him?”

Caruso remained silent.

“What else you know, Vinnie?” Labriola repeated. “About the guy at the bar or that other guy who maybe is . . . what’d you call it . . . Spider-Man?”

“Batman.”

“Yeah, him. What else you know?”

“Well . . . nothing.”

“That’s right. Nothing. Which is bad, ’cause I need to know about both these assholes,” Labriola said darkly. “You understand, Vinnie? Where they go. Who they see. All that shit.”

“Yes, sir,” Caruso said lamely. “I’ll find out about them.”

“Make sure you do, because whichever one of these fucks is supposed to find that bitch, if he don’t do it, you got to pop him, Vinnie.”

Caruso felt a surge of excitement. “Pop him, right,” he repeated. “I would have to pop him. And I would too. Whatever you say, Mr. Labriola.”

Labriola seemed not to hear him. Instead, he again focused his gaze on the ravaged neighborhood of his youth, staring at the buildings that lay alongside the expressway as if they weren’t really standing, save as the ruins of some long-forgotten war.

For a time, Caruso watched as Labriola continued to stare out the window. Then he drew his gaze away and stared straight ahead, down a road whose twists and turns had wonderfully delivered him into the Old Man’s trust.

STARK

The material Mortimer had brought lay strewn across the desk. It could hardly have been more useless. Nothing but a picture of a woman in her mid-thirties and a random assortment of more or less incoherent observations, all of them scrawled on legal-size yellow pages in a disjointed handwriting whose legibility strained Stark’s eyes and strengthened his suspicions that there was something in this deal that didn’t quite add up.

As to facts, Stark learned only that the missing Sara was originally from the South, had come to NYC as a young woman, worked as a nightclub singer, met and married the anonymous husband, and “done nothing” since then. She had no children according to this information, no living relatives, and no resources since she’d taken nothing from her husband’s bank accounts.

As to where Sara might have gone, the notes offered no assistance. She had left her car in the driveway, but there was no indication as to whether another party had picked her up, or, if such were the case, who that individual (friend, lover, taxi driver?) might be. She’d also left most of her clothes and all of her jewelry, including both wedding and engagement rings, which indicated that she either had limited means or that she expected her needs to be met by someone other than herself.

The more Stark reviewed the notes, the more useless they seemed. But it was not just the uselessness that bothered him. There was a disturbing look to the notes. The handwriting was an angry scrawl, the angles sharp, the words disjointed. Even on the page they seemed to sputter madly.

He reached for the phone.

“It’s me,” he said when Mortimer answered. “The notes you got from your friend are useless.”

“He’s a little . . . he ain’t . . . open with everything.”

“He’s very angry.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve seen this before, Mortimer.”

“I know you have.”

Mortimer’s answer seemed clipped, as if he were hurrying away, on the run himself in some way, seeking someplace to hide no less desperately than the missing woman.

“I think we need to talk,” Stark said. He waited for Mortimer to offer something that could quell his growing misgivings. Then he said, “My house. Three-thirty.”

“Okay,” Mortimer said weakly.

Stark hung up the phone, returned the notes to the plain manila envelope, and placed the envelope in the top drawer of his desk. He could feel something evil stir around him. It coiled in the fractured handwriting of the