“What then?”
“What do you do?”
“To the broad, you mean?”
“Tony’s wife, yeah. Supposing you find her and she don’t want to . . .”
Caruso laughed. “Suppose I ain’t actually the guy looking is what you should be supposing.”
“You ain’t looking for her?”
“No,” Vinnie said. “Not me personal.”
“Who is?”
Vinnie laughed. “I ain’t sure myself. All I know is this. Mr. Labriola had me pay a guy to find Tony’s wife. So I did.”
“You paid a guy?”
“Paid him plenty.”
“What guy you pay, Vinnie?”
“A guy ain’t connected to Mr. Labriola or me or Tony or nobody else you ever heard of.” Caruso laughed. “Mr. Labriola mulled over some guys. Burt Marx, remember him? I told the Old Man, I said, ‘Burt Marx? That fucking guy couldn’t find a chink in Chinatown.’ ”
“So who’s looking? Who’s the guy?”
Vinnie suddenly glanced about nervously. “You think I can tell you that, Eddie?”
“Vinnie, you remember that night when we come up on each other there at the hotel?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“And we talked awhile, right, you and me? And then I got up to leave and you said, ‘So, Eddie, how you doing?’ Remember that?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, so, this is how I’m doing. I need to know who this guy is, Vinnie. The one looking for Tony’s wife.”
“What’s it to you?”
“It ain’t for me,” Eddie answered. “It’s for Tony.”
“What does he care who’s looking, long as she turns up?”
“He wants to know what’s going on, that’s all. It’s his wife, you know, so he wants to know.”
Caruso downed the last of his scotch. “Okay, suppose I give you this guy. What then?”
“I’ll keep an eye on him, that’s all.”
“Just you?”
“Yeah.”
Caruso laughed. “You can’t watch a guy twenty-four hours a day.”
“As much as I can, then. When he turns in, I’ll turn in.”
Caruso considered this for a moment, then said, “You know what Mr. Labriola would do to me, don’t you, Eddie?”
Eddie nodded.
“You get any idea the guy’s maybe getting suspicious, maybe catching on to you, you got to back off, you understand? And I mean fast, Eddie. You don’t look back. You just back off and he don’t see you no more.”
“Okay.”
Caruso plucked a cigar from his jacket. “ ’Cause let me tell you something, this guy, he’ll drop the deal he gets wind of something. And you know what would happen if this guy dropped the deal he has with Mr. Labriola?” He lowered his voice to a desperate whisper. “I’d have to whack him, that’s what.”
“You?”
Caruso lit the cigar and waved out the match expansively. “Who else would Mr. Labriola trust with a job like that?”
Eddie gave no answer.
“So we’re clear on this?” Caruso asked.
“Yeah.”
Caruso rose and motioned Eddie to follow him outside. They walked to Caruso’s car and got in. “Okay, Eddie, here’s the deal.” In the car’s shadowy interior, Caruso’s eyes gleamed eerily. “There are two guys could be looking for Tony’s wife. I ain’t sure which one. There’s a guy runs a bar on Twelfth Street in Manhattan. Morgenstern. It could be him, but I don’t think so. The other guy lives in Chelsea, 445 West 19 Street. Right off Ninth Avenue. You pick.”
“The bar guy, you don’t think it’s him looking for Sara?”
“My guess, no.”
“Okay.” Eddie offered his hand. “I’ll keep an eye on the other one.”
“Up to you,” Caruso said with a light shrug.
“Yeah, okay, the other one. Chelsea.”
“Good enough,” Caruso said. “I only seen the guy once. Fifties, I’d say. White hair. Tall. Thin.” He grasped Eddie’s hand. “One thing, though,” he added. “Whatever you find out about this fuck, you gotta let me know.”
“Yeah, sure,” Eddie said. He drew his hand back, but Caruso held on to it.
“I mean it, Eddie,” Caruso warned. “This is business, and you tell me you’re going to keep me posted, you gotta do it.” He released Eddie’s hand. “You don’t, then favors, friendship, that’s all in the shitcan now.”
SARA
She sat across from him in a booth at the back and listened as he detailed the terms. The basic salary was decent, and she’d get a piece of the music charge, and even better, a piece of the bar, which she knew was more than fair. They never liked to give a piece of the bar, and she couldn’t remember ever having been offered it until now. But here this guy was, giving her a piece of the bar, and yet, as she listened, the cold, hard truth kept pressing against her mind, the fact that she simply couldn’t do it, couldn’t take the offer, the whole thing was impossible.
“So, what do you think?” he asked.
She had to tell him and she knew it. She had to tell him right now that she’d made a big mistake, that she couldn’t possibly take the job, this great deal he was handing her. She had to tell him that she’d been taken in by her own pathetic fantasy of being a singer again, even stupidly blurted out her old stage name, and that now she was sorry, really sorry, that she’d wasted his time.
“Samantha?”
Okay, she thought, I’ll do that. I’ll tell him that Samantha Damonte is a phony name, that I’m married and on the run, and that the only job I could possibly take would be one I could hide behind, a job in the back or in the basement.
“Does it sound fair?” Abe asked.
“Fair?” she asked weakly.
“Is there something else you want?”
She shook her head at how crazy she’d been to let herself get caught up in this fantasy that she could return to a singing career, erase Tony and his father, take any kind of job other than one she could crawl into and pull over her head like a thick blanket. A singer? Ridiculous. Even in a little bar like Abe’s, the singer’s name and photograph would be taped on the window or the door, her face for the whole world to see.
“I mean, we could . . . negotiate a few things,” Abe said.
She imagined Vinnie Caruso or some other of Labriola’s thugs seeing her picture, reporting what he’d seen to the Old Man. She could see Labriola’s smile, feel the wrath sweep over him, his desperate need to find her. She knew that he would stop at nothing to accomplish this, and on that thought she realized that she had now put this guy in danger just because she’d come into his place, sang a song, and been offered a job she couldn’t possibly take. The stark nature of her circumstances swept over her in a shivering wave, the terrible truth that she was not only in danger herself, but like some Long Island version of Typhoid Mary, infected everyone she touched.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She could feel his gaze like a hand, pressing her back to the wall. “Yeah, sure.”
“So, what do you think? Sound good, the deal?”
