ABE
He couldn’t believe he’d actually done it, drawn Mortimer’s gun from the desk and dropped it into his jacket pocket. He wasn’t even sure why he’d done it, save that something in Mortimer’s manner had alarmed him. Normally, he would have called the cops, but in this case, what would he have told them?
The other option would have been to leave the gun in the desk, but at the fatal moment, as he’d stood thinking it all through, he’d suddenly seen Samantha, her eyes filled with terror, a guy coming toward her, and known absolutely that if he allowed her to be taken from him in such a way, two things would happen. First, he would never see her again. Second, he would never look at his own face in the mirror without disgust. It was one thing to live in fear of losing money or a friend, of losing your health or losing your youth. One way or another, you would lose all those things anyway. But while you lived, you could not fear yourself, fear that you were nothing.
He reached the restaurant and went inside. He’d picked the place carefully, a small French restaurant just off Grove Street. It had lace curtains on the windows, and the square tables were placed at sufficient distance from each other to encourage quiet talk. That was, in fact, exactly what the restaurant guide had said, that it was a place where a man and a woman could actually hear each other talk. The lighting was soft, with candles on each table that gave off such a sweet romantic glow that as he waited at the table in the back, Abe wondered if, perhaps, the room was too romantic. After a few moments of deliberation, he decided that it definitely was, but that it didn’t matter because he’d already signaled his state of mind by putting on crisp new trousers, a white shirt, tie, jacket, all of which made him feel not just dressed but costumed.
And so he stood up, stripped off his jacket, and hung it loosely over the back of his chair. Then he unknotted his tie and rolled it up and stuffed it in his jacket pocket. The final touch was rolling his sleeves up to the elbow. There, he thought, what you see is what you get.
A waiter approached. He was dressed in pressed black trousers and a short white jacket. “May I get you a drink, sir?”
“No,” Abe told him. “I’m waiting for someone.”
She arrived a few minutes later, wearing a black cocktail dress that looked new. She’d added a string of pearls, too, and black pumps. Her hair fell in a dark wave to her shoulders. As she moved toward him, shifting among the tables, he thought that in all likelihood he would never breathe again.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said as she swept up to him.
“You’re not late.”
She glanced about a little nervously, like a woman who hadn’t been alone with a man in a long time. “It’s very nice,” she said as she sat down. “Is it a favorite spot?”
“I picked it from a book.”
“Really? Why this place in particular?”
“The book said no bugs.”
She laughed, and her laughter loosened something in him, a little knot of jumpiness and self-doubt.
He hazarded a smile. “New dress?”
She smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle with a quick sweep of her hand. “I thought it would be good for tonight.”
“It looks great,” Abe told her.
“The pearls are fake,” Sara said.
“But the face is yours, right?”
She laughed again, and again something loosened slightly inside him.
The waiter appeared. “Cocktails?”
“What’ll you have?” Abe asked.
“Vodka gimlet,” she said.
“Okay, the lady’ll have a vodka gimlet,” Abe told the waiter. “I’ll have straight rye.”
They talked idly until the drinks came, and watching her, listening to her, Abe felt himself falling and falling and knew no way to break his fall.
He lifted the glass the waiter had just set down. “So, what do we drink to?” he asked.
She lifted the gimlet, and he expected her to toast the new job or New York or, worst of all, “our friendship,” but she said simply, “To happy endings,” and touched the rim of her glass to his.
CARUSO
Labriola’s Lincoln rested like a huge blue coffin in the driveway of the house. Sitting in his car, Caruso could see the front window, the Old Man pacing back and forth behind it, usually with a can of beer in his fist. He wore a white sleeveless T-shirt, his huge, muscular arms fully exposed. He seemed to shake the house as he moved, and Caruso could not imagine how awesome his physical presence must have been to Tony, and how different from the feeling of utter vacancy Caruso had experienced after his father left, the empty chair at the kitchen table, the car missing, along with the money his mother kept in a shoebox in the closet, everything gone with the old man around that distant corner, the whole idea of Dad.
Briefly he replayed the conversation he’d had with Tony, all that stuff about maybe the Old Man wanting to be stopped, wanting Caruso himself to stop him, the whole thing some kind of bizarre test. He’d let himself believe the whole fucking story for just long enough to say yes to Tony, agree to meet him here, have yet another talk with the Old Man. But now he doubted every word of it. Now it all sounded like bullshit. The Old Man didn’t want to be stopped. The Old Man wanted . . . What did he want anyway? Sara Labriola dead, that’s what. But why? That was harder to figure out. What good would whacking Sara do? No good, Caruso reasoned, no good at all, to anybody. But maybe that was the point, Caruso thought, that it being good for something had nothing to do with it. The Old Man wanted it, that’s all. He wanted Sara dead. He hated her fucking guts and he wanted her dead. But why? Caruso wondered again briefly, then dismissed the thought. It didn’t matter why. The Old Man wanted her dead. End of story.
Caruso glanced in the rearview mirror. At any moment Tony’s car would pull up behind him, the headlights momentarily illuminating the dark interior where Caruso waited, smoking nervously, now convinced that it was all a bad idea, that he should never have agreed to meet him here. For what good would it do, after all? Labriola had told him what he had to do, given him the assignment he’d waited for all his life. He could feel the heaviness of the thirty-eight, cold and stonelike in his trousers pocket. He drew it out, threw open the cylinder, and stared at the single bullet Labriola had given him and which he’d dutifully inserted. One shot, that was all he had. He knew that this was part of the test, Labriola’s way of making certain that he placed the barrel directly at the back of Sara’s head before he fired. There could be no second attempt, no way to make it good if you fucked up the shot.
But what about all the things that could go wrong? Caruso asked himself. A person could suddenly shift right or left just as you pulled the trigger. A person could stumble and fall right in front of you and you’d be standing there like a complete asshole, the goddamn pistol in your hand and the person already on the ground. Standing there . . . with one lousy shot to do the job.
Tony’s words sounded in his mind.
Tony arrived seven minutes later. From the rearview mirror Caruso watched as he got out of his car, walked over, and tapped at the window.
Caruso rolled it down, and a thick wave of smoke billowed out and up and was instantly torn apart by a sudden gust of wind.
“Thanks again, Vinnie,” Tony said.
Caruso looked at him sternly. “I’ll tell you something, Tony, you better talk to him good, because, you ask me,
