Peril (13 page)

He grabbed his beer and strolled to the back of the bar.

Piano Man had just come to the end of a song, so it seemed to Caruso that it was a perfect time to chat him up.

“You worked here a long time?” he asked.

“Seems like forever,” the man answered.

Caruso took a quick sip of beer, then glanced about the nearly empty bar. “Slow night.”

“It's early,” the man said. “We get a better crowd at night.”

“So, you got entertainment.” Caruso nodded toward the piano. “I seen the sign outside. Abe Morgenstern at the piano.”

Piano Man shrugged. “I just like to keep from getting too rusty. We used to have a singer.”

“This all you do, piano?” Caruso lit a cigarette.

“No, I own the place,” Piano Man answered.

“Own the place, no shit,” Caruso said. He smiled. “My father had a small business,” he lied. “A bakery. Lived right over it. All night he could smell the work he'd done that day. Never got away from it. It eats you alive, a small business.”

“It takes up a lot of time, that's for sure,” Piano Man agreed.

“So, you're like my dad, you live upstairs?”

“No,” Piano Man answered. “I got a place over on Grove Street.”

Caruso smiled cheerfully. He couldn't tell if Piano Man was lying, but he hoped he was. He loved being lied to because it confirmed a truth he needed for his work, the fact that people were scum, so whatever you did to them, they fucking deserved it.

But that wasn't the point at the moment, Caruso realized. The point was to nail the guy down, get something for Labriola to chew on. “So, I was wondering,” he began. “If I was looking to get a place in this part of town, would Grove Street be good?”

“Yeah, sure,” Piano Man said.

“What kind of rent would I be looking at?”

“A bundle.”

“Like how much?”

“Depends on how big. You got a family?”

The fact that he didn't have a family stung Caruso briefly, like admitting to another guy that he couldn't get it up. “No,” he answered quietly.

“So a studio, that would be enough?”

“A studio, yeah.”

“I would guess a couple grand at least.”

“A month?” Caruso gasped, momentarily taken in by his own ruse, the absurd notion that he was looking for a place in the city. He wasn't, of course, and he told himself that immediately. Still, the fact that he couldn't afford to live in Manhattan even if he wanted to made him feel like a guy who would always come up short, have a car, an apartment, a girl that was a couple notches down from the ones he really wanted. But this was a point uncomfortable to pursue, and so he returned to the issue at hand. “So the bar, it makes you a good living, I guess.”

Piano Man shook his head. “No, I barely scrape by.”

Caruso smiled delightedly. If this were really Batman, then he was lying through his teeth. Because Batman probably had plenty of dough. The trouble was that Piano Man didn't look like he had a nickel. He wore a faded shirt and flannel pants and talked about how he was just scraping by, and if Piano Man was Batman, then all of that was bullshit. The problem was that the pose was solid. Piano Man actually looked like a down-at-the-heel guy. He talked like one too. Simple. Direct. He gave nothing away. Put it all together, Caruso reasoned, and it was the secret of his success. If it were all a disguise, no amount of small talk could cut through it. The guy was good. A real pro. Caruso realized that he could stand around and yap all night and not get through the mask.

“Well,” he said, “I better get going.” He downed the last of the beer and stared Piano-Man-Maybe-Batman right in the eye. “Take care of yourself,” he said.

“You too.”

Caruso headed for the door, but before going through it, looked back. Piano Man was making his way toward the front of the bar, his expression curiously vacant, his thoughts obviously somewhere else.
On the woman maybe,
Caruso thought,
the one he's tracking down.

SARA

She'd not noticed the place before, but now she saw that it was McPherson's. Years earlier she'd heard a singer there, a pretty good one, she recalled. The sign in the window said “Singer wanted. Open mike.”

She knew what that meant, every would-be Broadway ingénue in New York would take a turn. They would be young and bright and full of great expectations.

Even so, she walked across the street and peered through the window, expecting to see the latest arrival from Georgia or Minnesota singing her heart out, trying to make an impression on some potbellied agent or well-heeled producer, or perhaps just singing for herself, honing her skills, along with trying to keep hope alive. But the mike stood alone before the old piano, the man at the keys looking down for the most part, absently studying his fingers as if trying to remember what they were for.

She knew that if she were like Della, believed that the Great Something Out There inevitably provided for the lost sheep, the fallen sparrow, she would stride into the little bar, introduce herself, step up to the mike, belt a great number, get a full-time job on the strength of that one performance, and turn her life into grist for some inspirational film.

But Sara believed none of that. Instead, she believed in the raw play of chance, in opportunities as easily missed as seized, the wheel's random turning. In long walks at the mall, she had argued her position with Della, knowing all the while that no matter how sound her arguments, how proven by the facts, Della would hold to the golden chord of her claim that nothing in the universe was truly accidental, that she had met Mike not by chance at a movie theater but because through past millennia their souls had converged. The meeting at the movie theater, where Della had dropped her change and Mike had picked it up, was merely part of the Plan, the way you achieved the Big Happy Ending.

Through the bar's hazy window, Sara stared at the vacant mike and the battered old piano and guessed that the bar was barely making ends meet. This was not necessarily bad news, however. For it could be argued that what the bar really needed was a singer to revive it, a voice that drew people in, made them hang around a little longer than they might have otherwise, linger for the final set, maybe even still be there when the barman sounded last call.

Last call.

She heard the wind in the corn, felt her body pushed into the enveloping green, Sheriff Caulfield behind her, telling her she had to play along, keep her mouth shut, which she might as well do anyway, since he ran things in Cumberland County, and who would listen to a white-trash tenant farmer's daughter?

And so she'd played along and kept her mouth shut, and the thing was done, and she'd pulled herself from the ground and staggered back toward her car, the voice screaming in her ear,
Kill him! Kill him now,
a voice she'd managed to silence only by promising absolutely and forever that it would never happen again.

She closed her eyes and tried to squeeze all that had happened after that from her mind. When she opened them again, the sign shone dully before her.

Singer wanted. Open mike.

Last chance, she thought, though she wasn't sure it was even that. Still, it was a job, if she could get it, and at least there'd be no more searching the paper and going on interviews and sitting silently while they looked at her from across their polished desks.

Okay, she decided, why not, and on the wave of that decision walked to the door.

THREE

Mean to Me

TONY

Tony snapped the cell phone closed and looked at Eddie. “He won't tell me a thing,” he said.

They had been driving aimlessly for an hour, through a string of Long Island towns, Tony talking to his father, trying to get some idea of who he'd put on Sara. “He just says he'll find her, and when he does it's up to me.”

“Up to you?” Eddie asked.

“What I want to do about it.”

“So, what you want to do, Tony?”

“I don't know,” Tony admitted. “Talk to her, I guess.”

They rode in silence for a time, before Eddie said, “So, what will you talk to her about, Tony?”

“I don't know.” Tony pulled down the visor to shield his eyes from the bright midmorning sun. “There's something eating at him,” he said. “My father.” He considered his father's gruff, angry tone, the spiking rage he seemed to feel at the mention of Sara's name. “Maybe I should just tell him to pull this guy off, you know.”

“She could come back any minute,” Eddie said consolingly. “Like that aunt of mine.”

Tony stared out at the dull suburban landscape. “She never liked it here,” he said. He tightened his grip on the wheel and shook his head. “I don't know what I want anymore, Eddie. I mean, what's the good of her coming back if she can't be happy?” He thought a moment, then shrugged. “But I don't think she was ever happy. Except maybe right at the beginning, before—”

“Before what?”

“Before the Old Man started coming over all the time. Always beefing about this or that.”

Eddie nodded silently.

“I don't want him to find her,” Tony continued. “Him, or some guy he's got looking. It would scare her, you know? Some goon coming up to her, telling her she's gotta come with him, maybe grabbing her arm, pushing her into a car.” A scene from his boyhood sliced through his brain, his mother on her knees in the kitchen, holding a bloody cloth to her mouth. A terrible dread seized him, and he suddenly steered the car off the main road and brought it to a halt on a secluded beach. “I got to find her before this goon does,” he said emphatically. He studied the empty expanse of the sea briefly, then turned to Eddie. “I figure it's Vinnie Caruso that's looking for her. Who else would my father use for something like this?”

Eddie nodded heavily. “Yeah, it's probably Vinnie.”

Tony studied Eddie's doughy features a moment, then said, “You go back a while, right? You and Caruso? I noticed it. When he shows up at the marina, he always says hello to you.”

“We go back, yeah. High school.”

“You were friends?”

“We hung out together,” Eddie said. “Weekends, you know? Over at Buddy's Grill, with other guys that didn't have no dates.”

Tony tried to imagine Eddie and Caruso in Buddy's Grill on a listless Saturday night, both of them losers, no girls in sight, staring at each other over chili dogs and Cokes, two guys without prospects, two of life's innocent bystanders, dodging stray bullets, getting hit or not, but always and forever within the line of fire.

“Vinnie wasn't a bad guy back then,” Eddie added. “But he got picked on. Stuart Brock used to beat him up.”

Tony guessed what Eddie had left out. “Until you made him stop, right?”

Eddie nodded silently.

“So Caruso owes you,” Tony said.

Eddie looked at Tony without comprehension.

“He owes you a favor,” Tony explained.

“I guess.”

“Do you think he'd be willing to tell you if he found Sara? Before he told my father, I mean.”

“I don't know, Tony. Vinnie's real tight with your father.”

“But it wouldn't hurt to ask him, right? At least I'd find out if he's the guy my father has looking for her.”

“No, it wouldn't hurt to ask,” Eddie said.

Tony touched Eddie's shoulder. “I won't forget this, Eddie.” He hit the ignition. “Believe me, I won't forget.”

On the way to the marina Tony once again surveyed the world around him. There were good schools and playgrounds, soccer fields and tennis courts. The little malls hummed with shoppers. It wasn't for Sara, but it was not so terrible a place, he thought. The argument he'd made that they should live here rather than the city seemed valid enough even now. So the problem wasn't that he'd gotten it wrong about Long Island, he decided. The problem was that he'd gotten it wrong about Sara, never gauged how isolated she would feel, how bored. But there was more than that, he realized. Some part of her had always been withheld from him, buried deep, something inside of her he couldn't reach. He wondered if all women had this little room they wouldn't unlock for you. Maybe even Della DeLuria had a room like that, one Mike couldn't enter but sometimes thought about, wanted to know what Della kept in there.

At a traffic light, a shiny Ford Explorer pulled up beside him. The woman behind the wheel was about Sara's age, with close-cropped brown hair. She held loosely to the wheel, a thick bracelet on her wrist, a small diamond winking from her finger. There were two kids in the back, but the woman seemed hardly to notice their frantic scuffling or the maddening noise they made. Her eyes were fixed on the road ahead, and she seemed determined to make it to the next light, then the next, until the day had passed, and she was at home again, in her bed, nestled beside her sleeping husband, her eyes open in the motionless dark.

He had to admit that even now he had no idea what thoughts came to Sara when she lay in the ebony silence of their bedroom. Her flight was all the evidence he needed that she must have been desperately unhappy. Years before, his cousin Donny had told him women were always unhappy, and that the only way a man could be happy was not to care. That was what he'd tried to do, he decided now, he'd tried not to care that Sara was bored, lonely, or that he'd broken the promise he'd made that once his business was off the ground they'd move to the city. For a time she'd made the case for returning to New York, but his father had supplied the reasons he'd given her for not doing it (Manhattan was far from his business. Long Island was better for the kids that would be coming along), though to the old man there'd never been any point in giving Sara a reason for anything since it was the man who was supposed to decide where his family lived. He could hear his father's relentless call to arms,
Be a man, for Christ's sake!
And so he'd done that. He'd been a man. And now he was a man alone.

“I'll do it,” he blurted out suddenly.

Eddie looked at him quizzically.

“I'll do it,” Tony repeated. “Move to the city, if that's what she wants. That's what I'll tell her if I get to her first.” He stared at Eddie desperately. “But I got to get to her first. Help me, Eddie. Talk to Caruso.”

Eddie seemed to see the depth of his desperation. “Okay, Tony,” he said. “Okay.”

Tony turned his gaze westward and considered the limitless expanse that presented itself to him, his country from sea to shining sea, the vast landscape into which Sara had disappeared, his mind now focused exclusively on one question:
Where could she be?

SARA

She sat at the window, the skyline of the city so close she could almost touch it. It was the phone that seemed far away and deadly silent. Perhaps she'd get a call, perhaps she wouldn't. The guy had said he liked her singing and taken her number, but an odd look had come into his eye when she'd told him that she was living in a hotel. Maybe at that moment he'd figured her for trouble, a woman at loose ends, a drunk, maybe, or worse—anyway, undependable.

She tried to put the bar and the open mike out of her mind, along with whatever hope she'd briefly harbored that she might actually get the job. She couldn't even be sure that she'd sung all that well. It didn't matter anyway, because the guy who owned the place had no doubt noticed how jittery she was, the way her eyes darted around like a frightened little bird. Who would want a singer like that, nervous, strung out, probably on the run?

On the run.

She recalled her first days in New York, how she'd waited by the window as she did now. The only difference was that now someone could show up suddenly, Labriola in his big blue Lincoln, pounding on her door, kicking it open, dragging her down the stairs and through the lobby while the little bellhop looked on, aghast, but ready to take the fifty Labriola slipped him, along with the icy command,
Keep your fucking mouth shut.

She had no doubt that the bellhop would do precisely that. After all, it was what she'd done years before. In her mind, she saw Caulfield standing above her, zipping up his pants, telling her to keep her mouth shut. She'd known instantly that she would do it, let him just walk away, back to his car, and after that go home to the little shack she lived in with her father, hoping somehow she could put it all behind her.

She'd almost done it too, she thought now, almost gotten clear of it. She'd come to New York, landed enough work to keep a roof over her head, married Tony, moved to Long Island, where, despite the little nagging problems and disappointments that plagued any life, she'd almost made a go of it.

In her mind she heard the heavy thud again, a beast closing in upon her from behind.

Almost,
she thought,
but not quite.

ABE

He knew only that her name was Samantha, that she lived in a Brooklyn hotel, and that from the moment she'd begun to sing he'd felt the old, forgotten stirring, felt again what a song can be, along with something more, something extra, a small, barely detectable charge.

He looked over to where Jake stood at the bar, slicing a lime. “That singer who came in last night, how old you think she is?” he asked.

“Thirties,” Jake said.

“Yeah, that's what I was thinking.” In his mind he saw her standing by the piano, heard her voice again. “She sings older though.”

“You wish she was older,” Susanne piped in with a laugh. “You wish she was older but still looked like a chick.”

“Chick?” Abe asked. “I thought that was sexist, that word.”

“No, just sexy,” Susanne returned. “At least for old guys.”

“Upbeat would be good,” Jake said absently. “Lucille was always singing those downers.”

“Lucille was a torch singer,” Abe reminded him.

Jake dropped the slices into a white dish. “Used to sing ‘Fly Me to the Moon,' remember? Like it was bullshit. Like nobody could do that for nobody else.” He shook his head. “Fucking depressing, the way she sung it.” The knife suddenly stopped. “So, you're going to hire this broad?”

“I don't know.”

“Oh, sure you are,” Susanne said with a laugh. “I could see she was getting to you.”

Getting to you?
Abe asked himself. Was that the small charge he'd felt as the woman sang?

A sudden agitation seized him, the sense of something broken loose and rolling about inside him.

Getting to you.

He walked out of the bar and stood on the street and tried to forget that a woman named Samantha had come into the place the night before, sung a song, and somehow shaken something loose.

Getting to you.

If that were true, he had to stop it, and so, at that instant, he decided not to call her, just let her find a gig somewhere else and leave his life alone. That would be the safest thing, he thought, just to leave things where they were, Jake slicing limes and Susanne straightening tables and Jorge in the back, stacking cases of beer, and himself standing alone on the street or sitting at the piano, his fingers resting without movement on the ever-yellowing keys.

CARUSO

“So, anyway, like I said. I see you give Morty the envelope and you pull away, and so I follow him and he starts walking downtown.”

Labriola kept his eyes on the road as he steered the Lincoln off the Henry Hudson Parkway and headed east along the Cross Bronx Expressway.

What, Caruso wondered, could he possibly be thinking? One thing he knew, that whatever it was, it wasn't good. In the few days since Tony's wife had disappeared, a strange darkness had settled over Labriola. It was like a stain that seemed to sink ever deeper into his mind. It was thick and black, and it kept him grimly focused on finding her to the exclusion of other, more important matters, like who'd paid him recently, or what should be done about Toby Carnucci, who should maybe be slapped around a little, the fucking deadbeat.

“So, anyway, when Morty gets to Twelfth Street, he swings east,” Caruso went on. “He makes it almost to Fifth, then he stops at this fucking bar.”

Caruso had gone over all of this once before, but Labriola seemed to want to hear it all again, as if he were hunting for something, or pondering secret calculations.

“Like I said, the place is called McPherson's,” Caruso added. “So, anyway, I go to the window and look in. Morty don't see me, but I see him clear as day. He's talking to this fucking guy at the bar, who turns out to be the piano player, but like I find out later, also owns the place.”

“Owns the place,” Labriola muttered.

“Owns the place, right,” Caruso said. “So, okay, like I said, I figure this is maybe Morty's hangout, you know, that maybe he's a regular, so I wait and he has a couple of drinks and I don't see he ever pays a nickel, and him and the other guy are talking away, and then they stop, and Morty gets up and heads for the door. So I run across the street 'cause I don't want this fuck should see me watching him, and he comes out and the same guy is with him. And right there on the street, Morty gives this guy the envelope, which I figure is the same envelope you give him when he had that meet with you.”

“You seen him pass the envelope to this other fucking guy?” Labriola blurted out with a sudden leaping virulence. “With your own eyes, you seen it?”