Peril (24 page)

Why?

The answer came with such force and certainty that the word itself escaped Mortimer's mouth and hung in the late-morning air like a strand of Marisol's coal-black hair.

Lockridge.

TONY

He couldn't stop thinking about Sara, about the fact that if something really had happened to Eddie, then she was in more danger than he could possibly have imagined. Before now he'd feared that one of his father's goons might strong-arm her. It might stop at intimidation, or it might involve grabbing her arm and giving it a painful squeeze. All of that would be wrong, he knew, and none of it would ultimately work. You didn't keep a wife that way. Well, some people did. His cousin Donny kept Carla that way. And, of course, his father had ruled with the same iron fist. But he did not want to be his father, or have a wife who lived with him the way his mother had lived with the Old Man, cringing, terrified, reduced to shadow, a mere reflection of her dread. He wanted Sara the way she was when he'd first met her. He wanted the young woman who'd stood alone before an old piano and sung her heart out. Her courage astonished him suddenly, the sheer grit she'd had to have just to do what she'd done that night. He had taken that brave young woman, so perfect, and chipped away at that perfection, coaxing her to the suburbs, reducing her to baby factory—or at least trying to—and then, when no babies came, he'd rubbed her face in this failure, as if she were the one who'd done everything wrong, she the one who'd ruined
his
life.

He went to his car and drove away, leaving his employees to fend for themselves. Suddenly it didn't matter if they came in late, lay down on the job, misplaced some form, or sent a load of fish to the wrong restaurant. He'd run the business the way he'd run his marriage, under the sword of his father's instruction.
You have to show the people who work for you that you've got the muscle,
his old man had told him.
You have to show that woman who's boss.

And so he'd done that, Tony thought. For sixteen years he'd worn the pants, laid down the law, gotten his way. And now he'd reached the end of the way he'd gotten, the barren crossroads of his life.

He drove aimlessly along Sunset Highway, all the way to Montauk Point, where he stood on the beach and watched the waves tumble one after another onto the vacant shore.

It was noon by the time he returned home. He hadn't intended to go there. There were bars and diners where he could have sat through the afternoon, the night, even the early-morning hours. And yet, here he was, staring at the empty house, the gray, cheerless windows, imagining the bedroom where she'd never sleep again. But dire as that reality was, it was not nearly so dark as what might yet happen to Sara. He knew that she'd wanted only to leave him. She'd taken not a dime of his money. She'd left the Ford Explorer in the driveway. What else could her message have been but that she wanted nothing of him and nothing of his. She had wanted only to be rid of him and had probably never guessed that anyone else might be looking for her. Certainly she would not have dreamed that the Old Man would have hired some thug and set him loose like a dog in the woods.

Something moved behind his car. He twisted to the rear and peered through the back window, where he saw Della coming toward him.

“Hi, Della,” Tony said as he got out of the car.

A thin smile labored to hold its place on her lips, then expired. “I need to talk to you, Tony.”

“You want to come inside?”

She shook her head.

“Okay,” Tony said. “What's on your mind?”

DELLA

She knew exactly what was on her mind, but the words were a problem. How do you tell a man that his father is a crazy old bastard, completely out of control and dangerous and who, at that very moment, was scaring the living hell out of her?

“Have you heard from Sara?” Tony asked.

She'd not expected the sudden change in his voice, the way the tone went from a question to a plea. But it was the question itself that caught her off guard. She'd come to tell him that his father had confronted her, and later her mother, and that these confrontations had really frightened her and so she'd decided that he needed to know about them. That was as far as she'd intended to go. Certainly, she'd had no expectation of admitting that Sara had called her, even hinted at where she was and what she was doing. But Tony had asked her outright, and so she knew that the moment had come—the moment of truth, they called it in the movies—when you had to confront the full and awesome nature of your peril or live a coward all your life.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I have, Tony.”

His eyes caught fire, and she saw in that instant the depth of his love and the torment of its loss. “Is she okay?” he asked softly.

“Yeah,” Della answered. “She's fine.”

She expected a volley of questions to follow, hard and blunt, raining down upon her like a hail of bullets. But instead, Tony shrank back against the car, folded his arms, and let his head droop forward for a moment. “Good,” he said.

“I don't know where she is,” Della said. “Just that she's okay.”

Tony drew himself up and settled his gaze on the empty street. “That's all that matters.”

She had never heard a man say a more wholly selfless thing. She'd thought he was like his father, filled with the Old Man's seething violence, but now he seemed merely broken, and in his brokenness curiously baffled, like a man who'd been badly beaten in some bar brawl and was struggling to understand how the argument began.

“You and Mike,” he said. “You're happy?”

“Yeah.”

“That's good.” He started to speak, then stopped, and in that awkward gesture Della saw the young man Sara had first met, so vulnerable and uncertain, seeking love, infinitely kind.

“The thing is,” he began, then stopped, glanced once again into the night, then back to Della. “Before you know it, things get out of hand.”

“They do, Tony.”

“And the years go by, you know?”

“They do, yeah.”

He gazed at his shoes, kicked lightly at the cement pavement. “So, that's how it goes.” He studied the deserted yard. His face grew somber. “You think she might come back, Della? On her own, I mean.”

She shook her head.

“No, I don't either,” Tony said. “So, what now? You got any ideas?”

“Just one thing, Tony,” Della said. “You gotta be careful about your father.”

“My father?”

“He's scary, you know?” The rest burst from her in a torrent. “The thing is, I told my mother about him coming over. I know that before I told you he didn't come, but he did. And, Tony, he was really scary, and so I told my mother about it and she went to see him 'cause it turns out they knew each other in high school, and so she figured she could put in a word for me.”

“A word about what?” Tony asked.

“Like, leave me alone. That kind of word. Because, the thing is, he grabbed me. When he came over that time. And so my mother went over to tell him to, you know, leave me alone, but she didn't get anywhere with that because he was the same way to her. You know, like real threatening.”

“He threatened your mother?”

“He scared her,” Della said. “And she came back and she told me to just stay out of it because he—your father—he was . . . dangerous.”

“Dangerous,” Tony repeated softly.

“Yeah, Tony. So that's why she said I should stay out of it.”

Tony's gaze was oddly admiring. “Why didn't you?”

“I couldn't do it,” Della answered. “Because . . . if he'd hurt me, and then my mother, well, I had to think what he might do to Sara, you know?”

Tony looked like a man who'd long expected terrible news but was only now getting the full report of just how terrible it was. “Thank you,” he said quietly, then reached out and touched her arm. “Thank you, Della.”

TONY

He'd been waiting for almost half an hour when his father's dark blue Lincoln turned into the driveway. The Old Man drove the car himself now, the days when he'd been chauffeured around by some gorilla long gone. Tony knew that even in the old days his father had never been very high in the criminal pecking order. He'd carried himself like a big shot, though, smoked expensive cigars and dressed in fancy double-breasted suits, and hired muscle he didn't need, usually some has-been boxer who chauffeured him from one crummy shylocking operation to the next. But now the great Leo Labriola was alone behind the wheel, a big, blustering man still, but one without backup.

“What are you doing here?” the Old Man said as he pulled himself out of the car. He was wearing flannel trousers and a floral shirt. In such attire he looked as if he should pass the autumn of his life playing pinochle in a retirement community in Florida instead of hiring some goon to track down a woman.

“What?” Labriola snapped. “What you looking at?”

“Nothing,” Tony said with a shrug.

“You curious?”

“What?”

“You curious where I been?”

“No.”

“With Belle,” Labriola said, his eyes daring Tony to say a word about it. “She blew me.”

“Jesus,” Tony said disgustedly.

“You don't like it?” the Old Man barked.

Tony shrugged again. What did it matter what he liked or didn't like about his father's life? Belle Adriani had been the Old Man's mistress for as long as Tony could remember, a bleached-blond club dancer with long fire-engine-red fingernails and a perpetual pout. Labriola had picked her up when she was twenty and had kept her as his personal sex slave ever since. Once he and his mother had run into them at a local street fair. His mother put her hand on Tony's arm, led him in the opposite direction, and never uttered a word about it.

“Belle does what I tell her.” The Old Man laughed. “Not like that fucking hayseed you married.”

“We need to talk,” Tony said.

Labriola scowled, then elbowed past Tony and headed up the cement walkway that led to the house. When he reached the front steps, he turned toward his son. “Okay, so? Talk.”

“It's about Sara,” Tony said.

The Old Man waved his hand. “That's being taken care of.”

“How is it being taken care of?”

“I told you I'd find her.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“What difference does it make how I do it as long as it gets done?”

“You know anything about Eddie?”

“You mean that mick works for you? What about him?”

“He's missing.”

Labriola laughed. “So what? Jesus, some fucking mick works for you goes missing and you think I know something about it? What's the matter with you, Tony? What I got to do with this guy?”

“I need to know who's looking for Sara,” Tony said.

Labriola glared at him. “You don't need to know nothing I don't want to tell you.”

“Who's looking for Sara?” Tony demanded.

“What's that got to do with this fucking mick?”

Tony started to answer, then stopped. If he told the truth, Caruso's head was on the block.

“I want you to stop looking for Sara,” he said instead.

Labriola squinted, as if against an unexpected flash of light. “You what? You want me to stop looking for that—”

“Don't call her names,” Tony blurted out.

“What, you a tough guy all of a sudden?”

“I mean it,” Tony said firmly. “Don't call her names.”

“You're still pussy-whipped, Tony. She's still got you by the balls.”

“Stop looking for her,” Tony said.

Labriola's face had become a smirking mask. “What, you think you can find her? You couldn't find your own dick, Tony. And what if you did find her? You gonna beg her to . . .” He studied his son's face for a moment, as if trying to read the mind behind it. Then he shrugged. “Okay,” he said lightly. “Okay, fine, Tony. You find her.” He grinned malevolently. “Good luck,” he said, then turned and trudged up the stairs, his great arms pumping massively, as if warming up for some final title fight, the great belt in contention now, the championship of the world.

FIVE

Someone to Watch Over Me

MORTIMER

He took his usual place at the dark end of the bar, and it struck him unpleasantly that he had always tended toward shadowy corners. Like a bug, he thought.

Jake stepped over and poured a drink. “You look like shit, Morty.” He gave the bar a quick wipe, then slid over a bowl of beer nuts. “Like shit,” he repeated like some doctor who was making sure his professional observation had not gone unnoted.

“Yeah,” Mortimer said. He knocked back the round. “Where's Abe?”

“Back in his office,” Jake said.

“I hear he's got a girlfriend,” Mortimer said, allowing himself the small pleasure that Abe had shared this intimacy. But that was what best friends did, wasn't it, share things they didn't share with other guys? It was the only thing that gave relief, he decided, the warmth of friendship, all that trust. “He told me about her,” he added as if displaying a medal he'd won for good service.

“She's probably gonna work here,” Jake said absently.

“Doing what?”

“Singer, I guess.”

“No shit,” Mortimer said.

Jake indicated Mortimer's empty glass. “Another?”

“Why not?”

Jake poured the drink and Mortimer took a quick sip. “Is she any good, Abe's girl?” he asked.

“She ain't bad. Coming in later tonight, Abe says. Gonna do a couple numbers.”

Mortimer rolled the glass between his hands and watched the amber liquid slosh back and forth. He could feel the weight of the pistol in his jacket pocket. He knew it wasn't much to offer, just a way for Abe to defend himself if some tough guy showed up and started throwing his weight around. You wave a gun in a guy's face, and he cools down right away, starts figuring the odds, decides the guy holding the piece is one serious bastard, and that the lady in question is by no means worth taking a bullet for.

And as for the piece, Mortimer thought, hell, he didn't need it anyway. He wasn't going to shoot anybody at this late date, and if somebody wanted to shoot him, so what? They'd shave off a few weeks at the most. And bad weeks at that. Hospital. Dottie fretting. Fuck it, Mortimer thought, now feeling oddly urgent about getting the gun to Abe before it was too late, doing just one good thing while he still could.

He slid off the stool. “So Abe's in back?” he said hastily.

“Yeah,” Jake said dully. “Probably mooning over the broad.”

Mortimer didn't like Jake's attitude, but what could you do with a guy like Jake, a dry kernel of a man, probably without a friend in the world. At least, Mortimer concluded, nobody could say that about
him.
Suddenly the pistol was like a gold watch after a long career, the physical proof that he had not lived in vain. After all, how many guys in New York City actually had an unregistered piece he could give to a friend? Not many, Mortimer told himself. You had to have lived a certain way to have an unregistered piece at your disposal. Thinking that, Mortimer abruptly decided that perhaps his life had always been headed for this moment, when he'd have a piece he could pass on, and touching it now, as he made his way toward the back of the bar, it felt like the one sweet fruit of a long, dry season.

“Hey, Abe,” he said as he stepped into the office.

Abe sat behind the desk, papers spread over it.

“So, how you doing?” Mortimer asked.

“Okay,” Abe said. He looked surprised to see him. “And you?”

“Good,” Mortimer answered, amazed that it was the truth, that he actually felt okay despite the fact that the dark eddies of his last conversation with Stark continued to drift through his mind. But again, what was the worse Stark could do? Fire him? So what. Shoot him? Same answer. The good news about reaching the end of the line was that there just wasn't all that much anyone could do to you.

Okay, so nobody could really do anything
to
you, Mortimer concluded, but you could still do something
for
somebody. On the bounce of that notion, he stepped forward with a springiness that surprised him, took the pistol from his pocket, and placed it on the desk. “This is for you.”

Abe looked at the gun as if it were a coiled rattler.

“You said you could use a gun,” Mortimer reminded him. “So there it is.”

Abe stared at the gun. “Morty . . . I didn't really . . .”

“My gift to you,” Mortimer said. “In case that fucking guy tries to muscle in on your girl.”

“Morty, I don't want a—”

“I wouldn't give it to nobody else, Abe,” Mortimer said quietly.

“Yeah, but—” Suddenly Abe stopped, and Mortimer noticed a curious softening in his gaze, as if something had just come to him, a different take on things.

“Yeah, okay,” Abe said quietly. “Thanks.” He gingerly reached for the pistol, like a guy picking up a scorpion, and put it in the top drawer of his desk. “Thanks again,” he said with a quick smile. “You're a . . . a good friend, Morty.”

Mortimer smiled brightly and sat down opposite Abe's desk. “So, tell me about this woman, Abe. You didn't tell me much last time.”

“She's nice,” Abe said.

Mortimer waited for more, but when Abe kept the rest of it to himself, he said, “So, tell me about her.”

Abe shrugged.

Mortimer smiled. Abe was playing it close to the vest, but he could see that his friend wanted to spill it all, that he just needed a little encouragement. “Jake says she's a singer.”

“Yeah,” Abe said, adding nothing else.

“Jake says you're going to hire her,” Mortimer coaxed.

“If she'll take the job,” Abe said.

“Why wouldn't she?”

“She's got a few problems,” Abe answered with a slight shrug.

“Like what?”

“Left her husband,” Abe said hesitantly.

“Plenty women do that,” Mortimer said in a worldly tone.

“Yeah, but it wasn't a clean break.”

“How so?” Mortimer asked, happy that the conversation was going so smoothly now.

“She's sort of on the run,” Abe said darkly.

“So the husband's after her,” Mortimer said.

“That's what you'd think, right?” Abe answered. “But not in this case.”

Mortimer smiled. Now he was getting to the true heart of it, to those little intimacies friends shared. “So, who she running from?” he asked.

“Her father-in-law,” Abe said. “She's pretty scared of him.”

Mortimer watched Abe silently for a moment, a dark possibility suddenly sputtering to life. No way, he thought, no fucking way. Then he considered the fact that life had always managed to twist around and bite him in the ass. Take Cajun Spice, for example. What were the odds that fucking soap bar would surge ahead at the last minute, beat Lady Be Good, empty the coffers once again, leaving Dottie in the lurch?

“So, when did she show up?” he asked tentatively. “This woman.”

“Couple days ago,” Abe said. “She was staying at some hotel in Brooklyn, but I set her up in Lucille's old place. I figured it'd be safer for her, you know?”

Mortimer's eyes fled to the wall calendar that hung to his right. “Lucille's old place,” he whispered almost to himself. “Jane Street, right? I heard her say that once. Over a Chinese laundry.”

Abe nodded. “Place was paid up to the end of the month.”

“Jane Street,” Mortimer repeated softly.

Abe looked at him quizzically. “You okay, Morty?”

Mortimer nodded heavily, the full weight of what he'd feared now falling upon him. “This guy she's running from. The father-in-law. She say who he was?”

“No,” Abe answered. “She wants to keep me out of it.”

Mortimer drew in a slow breath as he figured the odds that Abe's girl was the one Leo Labriola was looking for. “Yeah, well, maybe you should do that, Abe,” he said cautiously. “I mean, it ain't your business, right?”

Abe looked surprised by the advice. “Of course it's my business.”

“Yeah, but a guy like that, dangerous . . .”

Abe gave a theatrical wink. “So what if he's dangerous? Thanks to you, I got a gun, remember?”

Mortimer suddenly felt a slicing pain in his belly.

“Morty?” Abe said. “You look a little—”

“I'm fine,” Mortimer said quickly. He waited for the throbbing to pass, then got to his feet.

“You sure you're okay?” Abe asked.

“Fine,” he repeated as he turned toward the door. Fucked again, he thought.

SARA

She'd decided on “Someone to Watch Over Me” as her final number, accompanying herself on Lucille's piano as she rehearsed it by fingering the melody line, then sounding the appropriate chord. She couldn't get the easy flow of Abe's accompaniment that way, but she could at least make sure her voice hit the notes. The fact that it had hit them, each and every one of them, gave her a measure of confidence that she could pull it off. After all, she didn't have to do that much, she told herself, just stand in front of a few people, pretend she was an amateur, see what happened.

She considered running through the songs again but decided not to. What if she didn't do them as well this time, maybe missed a few notes. That would bring her down, make her less confident than she was at the moment. Besides, a singer could overrehearse. She'd learned that from the old singers she'd known the first time she'd come to New York. You could overrehearse and lose your energy, the fresh face of your act, get every detail of the routine so thoroughly nailed down that it left no room for you to let go, soar, spontaneously take the song to some new, surprising place.

She glanced at the clock. It was three-thirty. Normally, she'd have had to start dinner now, along with finishing up whatever small chores she'd started during the day.

She recalled how she'd made work for herself in the past, creating little jobs to fill her hours. Other wives used alcohol or the occasional affair, but she'd relied on a host of small projects to keep busy. She'd wash the Explorer or clean the pool or hose down the area around it. Tony would have been willing to hire someone to do such things, or even do them himself, but she'd never brought them up. She needed such petty tasks to keep her sane. They were what she did instead of drink or meet a guy at the local motel. For the rest, she'd relied on Della, the talks they'd had as they strolled the neighborhood streets or sat in Della's kitchen, sipping coffee in the afternoon. It was the only thing she missed, a friend she could talk to.

She picked up the phone and dialed the number.

DELLA

She jumped when the phone rang, and in that instant recognized how deeply it had sunk, the sense of dread that had settled upon her since talking to Tony. If it were Sara, she decided, she would tell her everything, warn her that the Old Man was looking for her, do whatever she had to do to protect her from him.

“Hello.”

“Hi, babe.”

The sound of Mike's voice, so firm and familiar, filled her with joy, and she wanted only to know that he was safe and happy and would always, always, come home to her.

“Mike,” she blurted out desperately, “are you okay?”

“What?”

She realized Mike had heard the frenzy in her voice.

“What's the matter, Della?”

“Nothing, sweetheart. I was just thinking about you, that's all.”

“Thinking about me?”

“Wondering how you were.”

He laughed. “I'm fine.”

“You'd tell me, right, if anything was wrong?”

“Of course I would. Della?”

“Yes.”

“Anything wrong on your end?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Everything's perfect.”

“Because you sound a little . . .”

“Mike?”

“Yeah?”

“Could we go out for pizza tonight? All of us?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Good.”

“You're sure everything's okay?”

She thought of what she'd done, how she'd talked to Tony, and how she'd tell Sara everything, too, if Sara called. She'd done her duty while at the same time trying to keep Mike and her children safe. A wave of high achievement washed over her, the sense of having looked danger in the eye, maybe even stared it down.

“Everything's perfect,” she said quietly. “It really is.”

SARA

The line was still busy. She returned the phone to its cradle, glanced toward the window, and reveled in the clear midafternoon air beyond it. She thought of going out, then the dread swept down around her, the fear he might be waiting for her out there, the Old Man or whoever he'd sent to do his work.

But it was a fear she had to put behind her, she decided, and so she lifted her head as if on the shoulder of a bold resolve and headed for the door.

Once outside, she turned right and walked to the corner, where she stopped, peered into the window of a florist shop, and thought of the roses Abe had brought to the apartment, a gesture so sweet, she thought now, that she'd felt herself crumble a little, some of the day's panic fall away.

“Nice flowers.”

She jumped, then turned to face a small man in a worn suit, his features so dark and gloomy, his voice so oddly cold, she knew absolutely that he was Labriola's man.

“Nice flowers,” he repeated.

She felt her body stiffen. “Yes.”

“You like flowers?”

She stepped back slightly, her attention entirely focused on the man who peered back at her from beneath the broad brim of a rumpled black hat, his face strikingly melancholy.

“Yes,” she told him. “Yes, I do.”

A thin smile glimmered on the man's face briefly, then vanished. “Well, have a nice day,” he said.

“Yes, you too,” Sara answered.

The man touched the brim of his hat, then turned and headed in the opposite direction down the street, one shoulder lower than the other, as if bearing an invisible weight.