Peril

Caruso said nothing, and in that brief silence Tony wondered if he’d actually struck a chord. “Maybe this whole thing with Sara is some kind of test,” he continued. “Of you, Vinnie.”

“Me?”

“To see if you can really be trusted,” Tony said. “Not just to do the muscle work. But for your judgment, you know, for your . . . brains!”

“To see if I’d stop him, you mean.”

“Right.”

Caruso said nothing, but Tony could almost hear his mind working the problem, reaching a decision.

“So, will you help me here, Vinnie?”

“I don’t know, Tony,” Caruso said softly. “If he thinks I . . .”

“You don’t want to see Sara hurt, do you?” Tony asked. “Or my father?” He heard Caruso release a weary sigh. “Please, Vinnie, let’s try one more time to end this thing.”

The silence that followed seemed to last forever.

Then, “Yeah, okay,” Caruso said.

SARA

She sat at the table by the window and wondered what she should do, whether she should meet Abe at the restaurant or call now, cancel everything, not just dinner, but her songs at the bar, say thank you but good-bye, and disappear from his life.

She knew that the man in the rumpled black hat had unnerved her. But she also knew that even if the man had not suddenly appeared, she would have been attacked by the very fears that paralyzed her now.

One fact loomed over all others—she was a woman on the run. In her mind she saw Labriola’s face as it had swept up to her in the corridor, his voice slurred and drunken, You giving Tony what he needs?

She’d pushed him away, headed toward the den, but he’d grabbed her and jerked her around, You know what I say, right?

Again she’d pushed him away, this time harder, so that he’d stumbled backward, a curiously surprised look on his face, his eyes gleaming with a strange, mocking admiration, You got some fight in you, Sara.

But did she really, she wondered now, did she really have any fight left in her?

She rose, walked to the back of the room, then returned to the window and sat down again, her gaze on the street. For a moment all the mistakes she’d made fell upon her in a heavy rain of self-accusation. She’d been driven from her home by Caulfield, driven from New York by her own need to be taken care of, then driven from Long Island by the certainty that if she stayed there, she would be destroyed one way or another.

But what life had she wanted? she asked herself now. The answer was obvious and absurd. She had wanted the Big Happy Ending, the one where she wound up a Big Name Singer, but also a wife and mother, a perfect life.

She glanced about the cramped little room where that long pursuit had finally landed her. She considered how little she had, how reduced her prospects, and these bleak considerations led her to decide that she would meet Abe at the restaurant, sing a few songs at the bar, because, when you looked at the way things were, what did she have to lose?

Nothing, she thought. So if on one of the Village streets below, tonight or on some other night, the little man in the black hat came up behind her and put a bullet in her head, so be it, since no matter how you added it up, that Big Happy Ending was well beyond her now.

MORTIMER

Shit, Mortimer thought. He’d blown it, and he knew he’d blown it. He’d burned his cover, clued Abe in to the fact that he knew something, and worse, tipped him off in such a way that made him hang on to that fucking gun.

Okay, so, what now? Mortimer labored to put two and two together. Abe had the gun. Caruso was set to show up at the bar. Caruso might try to strong-arm the woman. If he did, Abe would try to stop him.

For a moment Mortimer saw guns blazing, glass shattering, bullets tearing into wood and upholstery . . . or worse.

The only way to go at it now, he decided, was to screw the deal, and the key to that had to be Stark.

He whirled around and rushed down the street, his short, stocky legs pumping frantically, until he stopped at Stark’s door, rang the buzzer, waited, heard no response, then rang a second time.

The door opened and Stark faced him squarely.

“I need to talk to you,” Mortimer said.

Stark stood before him like a high stone wall.

“I know you’ve got a guy in there,” Mortimer told him.

“What do you want, Mortimer?”

“You think I put that guy on you,” Mortimer said. “But I didn’t. I made a bad deal. I ain’t saying I didn’t do nothing bad. But I didn’t put that guy on you.”

“Who did?”

Mortimer knew that the moment had arrived when he could no longer lie to Stark. The deal was blown, every goddamn bit of it. “The woman you’re looking for, her name is Sara Labriola. It’s her father-in-law that’s looking for her, a guy named Leo Labriola. Not some friend of mine, like I told you. The guy you got in there, he works for Labriola’s son. He don’t mean to harm the woman, which I know is what you’re thinking.”

A low moan broke the deathly silence. It came from down the corridor, a soft wail behind the black curtain.

“Get him out of here,” Stark said. He opened the door and stepped into the apartment. “Get him out of here now. Then come back.”

Mortimer did as he was told, moving quickly down the corridor, past the curtain, and into a room where he found a man bound to a chair.

“Just a second,” Mortimer said as he loosened the plastic cuffs.

“Who are you?” the man asked weakly.

Mortimer gathered up the man’s clothes and helped him dress. “I’m getting you out of here now,” he said.

The man looked at him blearily.

“You got a car?” Mortimer asked.

“Yeah.”

“I’ll walk you to it.”

The man shook his head. “I don’t think I can—”

Mortimer placed his hand firmly on the man’s back and urged him forward. “Walk, goddammit!”

They walked outside, then like a sober friend escorting a drunk one, they staggered to the parking lot where the man had left his car.

“Keys,” Mortimer said.

The man sunk his hands into the pockets of his trousers and rummaged around until he found them.

“Get in,” Mortimer said as he unlocked the door and yanked it open.

The man slumped down behind the wheel. “What’s . . . what’s—”

“Everybody’s fine,” Mortimer assured him.

The man looked at him doubtfully.

“Everybody’s fine,” Mortimer repeated. He grasped the man’s shoulder with affectionate respect. “You done good,” he said quietly. “I seen guys break, but you done good.”

The man nodded heavily. “You’re sure . . . everybody’s . . .”

Mortimer nodded. “Go home,” he said, then watched as the man pulled himself into the car, hit the ignition, and headed north up the avenue. At the far corner the car took a right, moving east now, toward the river. One problem down, he thought, but plenty more to go.