Peril

“So, you got sole?”

“Yeah.”

Labriola pulled himself to his feet. “The mick can gimme it?”

“His name is Eddie.”

Labriola walked to the door, then looked at Tony. “Don’t let that wife of yours fuck with you, Tony.”

“I won’t,” Tony assured him.

“Good,” Labriola said curtly. “Because they try to get between us, these fucking broads.”

“Between us?”

“Guys. Set one against the other. Father and son.”

“Sara would never do that.”

Labriola laughed and waved his hand. “Yeah, sure, you know all about women, kid.” He turned and headed out the door.

Tony watched as the Old Man slammed down the stairs and strode out across the marina, waving to Eddie with one of his get-the-hell-over-here-asshole gestures, like Eddie was his slave. He knew he should have insisted on defending Sara, but he’d been frozen by his father’s mocking laughter, a laughter that had become even more hard lately, tinged with an edgy craziness, as if the Old Man were unraveling in some way, growing more violent, something in him going haywire.

Tony shrugged helplessly. What could you do with such a man? Nothing, he decided as always. Nothing but stay out of his way.

MORTIMER

Brandenberg handed him the envelope. “Tell your man he did a good job.”

Mortimer tucked the envelope into the inside pocket of his jacket.

They were sitting in the lounge of the St. Regis Hotel, a place whose sumptuous decor made Mortimer feel poor and ragged. Glancing about, he wished he’d met Brandenberg in the park, where there were guys digging soda cans and scrapes of food out of the garbage. Instead, he had only the plush carpet and the thick, luxurious curtains and the well-dressed gentleman at the table to the right, some actor he vaguely recognized, though he couldn’t recall the name.

Brandenberg sipped his brandy, then said, “You want a drink?”

Mortimer shook his head. “You need anything else? Some other job?”

Brandenberg considered Mortimer’s questions for a few seconds, then said, “Not for myself. But I have an associate. A businessman from Saudi—”

“No.” Mortimer shook his head. “Two types he don’t work for. Foreigners is one of them.”

“And the other?”

“Mob guys.”

“I see.” Brandenberg took another sip. “And why does he draw this line?”

“He got fucked. Years ago, but he don’t forget.”

“So you screen his clients?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, then it could be kept strictly between us. I mean, as regards this associate of mine. Which is strictly a business matter, by the way. A question of internal security. Nothing . . . messy. And as far as payment is concerned, the money could come through me. So in a situation like that, how would your man know if—”

“It ain’t his job to know,” Mortimer interrupted.

“Fine,” Brandenberg said in the crisp, cold tone of a man unaccustomed to being refused. “I suppose I admire your . . . honesty,” he added grudgingly. He brought his finger to his lips, and the polished nail gave off a glint of light.

To be dolled up like that, Mortimer thought, to be all elegant and refined that way, what would that feel like? “So, I guess we’re done,” he said.

“It would appear so.”

“Okay,” Mortimer said, and on that word got to his feet and made his way out into the cheerless light.

On the street he sucked in a quick breath, felt a searing ache in his abdomen, and remembered that he was dying. He’d been close to death only once before, that day in the war when they’d come under attack from all directions. He’d felt the ground tremble, the whizzing bullets, the heat from the burning hutches, and finally the shell that had torn into his side. If it hadn’t been for Stark, he’d have died right then, he thought, and suddenly the prospect of that earlier death appealed to him as few things ever had. To die abruptly, without waiting. To die owing nothing. To die young and stupid and before you’d fucked yourself over and fucked other people over, and married the first woman who’d have you, and accumulated nothing but a string of useless days. Before you’d learned just how goddamn worthless the future was. That, Mortimer decided, was a good death, and the only regret he felt as he turned and headed down the street was that he’d managed to escape it.

SARA

The bus cruised along Sunset Highway, through the clustered towns of Long Island. Within an hour she would be in New York. She had planned her future just that far, made no plans beyond her arrival, lined up no job, booked no hotel, nothing. At thirty-eight, she would return to the city exactly as she had first come to it twenty years before, with a single suitcase, no prospects, fleeing Long Island as she’d once fled the South, caught again in the same grim vise.

“Looks like we’re going to get a little rain.”

Sara glanced toward the woman who sat next to her.

“I checked the weather station before I left this morning,” the woman added. “There’s little spots of rain all up the East Coast.” She opened a brown paper bag and took out a sandwich wrapped in aluminum foil. “I don’t eat in bus stops,” she explained. “Too expensive.”

Sara said nothing. She wanted silence and distance, wanted only to get away from Tony and his father and from her own devouring rage.

Stop! she told herself fiercely. Put it out of your mind, everything before right now.

“Where you headed?” the woman beside her asked.

“North,” Sara said, her voice oddly stiff and inflectionless, as if it came from stone.

The woman took the sandwich out of the foil. It was egg and bacon. She took a large bite and chewed with her mouth open. “Me too. Change for Boston when I get to the city. I got a daughter in Boston. I’m staying with her for a few days.”

Sara listened as the woman prattled on and on, a low drone in Sara’s mind as she detailed the route her daughter Lynn had taken through life, where she’d gone to school, the two guys she’d married, the jobs she’d had. The dragonback of Manhattan was visible before the tale wound to its end.

“I think Lynn’s pretty settled now,” the woman concluded.

Settled.

Sara saw a field of summer corn, felt a sweetly sickening breath in her face. She should have known at that instant that nothing would ever be settled after that because from then on, even when alone, she would hear nothing but the heavy tread of something from behind, and then the frantic scampering of prey.

ABE

He jiggled the key until it opened. It hadn’t turned smoothly in years. Like everything else, Abe thought, cranky and erratic, determined to thwart the smooth flow of things.

He switched on the light, closed the door, locked it. The clock over the bar read eleven-fifteen. Jake would arrive at noon, and the daily routine would begin in earnest, setting up the bar, checking the supplies, cleaning, polishing, paying bills. Jorge would show up twenty minutes later, mop the place, break down the boxes, gather up the garbage, all the drudge work of keeping the joint relatively clean. Susanne Albert, the college girl who’d worked in the place for only a couple of months, would come in an hour before opening, do the few things Jake hadn’t finished, then sit in the back booth, reading some book about Hindu philosophy. And last, Lucille, the bar’s only entertainment, a sixty-one-year-old former Broadway chorus singer who’d been at the bar for as long as Abe could