Peril (17 page)

SARA

She sat across from him in a booth at the back and listened as he detailed the terms. The basic salary was decent, and she'd get a piece of the music charge, and even better, a piece of the bar, which she knew was more than fair. They never liked to give a piece of the bar, and she couldn't remember ever having been offered it until now. But here this guy was, giving her a piece of the bar, and yet, as she listened, the cold, hard truth kept pressing against her mind, the fact that she simply couldn't do it, couldn't take the offer, the whole thing was impossible.

“So, what do you think?” he asked.

She had to tell him and she knew it. She had to tell him right now that she'd made a big mistake, that she couldn't possibly take the job, this great deal he was handing her. She had to tell him that she'd been taken in by her own pathetic fantasy of being a singer again, even stupidly blurted out her old stage name, and that now she was sorry, really sorry, that she'd wasted his time.

“Samantha?”

Okay, she thought, I'll do that. I'll tell him that Samantha Damonte is a phony name, that I'm married and on the run, and that the only job I could possibly take would be one I could hide behind, a job in the back or in the basement.

“Does it sound fair?” Abe asked.

“Fair?” she asked weakly.

“Is there something else you want?”

She shook her head at how crazy she'd been to let herself get caught up in this fantasy that she could return to a singing career, erase Tony and his father, take any kind of job other than one she could crawl into and pull over her head like a thick blanket. A singer? Ridiculous. Even in a little bar like Abe's, the singer's name and photograph would be taped on the window or the door, her face for the whole world to see.

“I mean, we could . . . negotiate a few things,” Abe said.

She imagined Vinnie Caruso or some other of Labriola's thugs seeing her picture, reporting what he'd seen to the Old Man. She could see Labriola's smile, feel the wrath sweep over him, his desperate need to find her. She knew that he would stop at nothing to accomplish this, and on that thought she realized that she had now put this guy in danger just because she'd come into his place, sang a song, and been offered a job she couldn't possibly take. The stark nature of her circumstances swept over her in a shivering wave, the terrible truth that she was not only in danger herself, but like some Long Island version of Typhoid Mary, infected everyone she touched.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She could feel his gaze like a hand, pressing her back to the wall. “Yeah, sure.”

“So, what do you think? Sound good, the deal?”

It sounded better than anything she could have imagined, but she knew no way to accept it. “It's a very good deal,” she said quietly.

“So?”

She shook her head. “I can't.”

He looked at her quizzically. “Can't what?”

“Take the job.”

He leaned forward, his eyes very intent. “Why not?”

She began gathering her things. “I can't.” She felt her own sudden frenzy, the desperate clawing of her fingers as she reached for her purse.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Hide,” she answered before she could stop herself.

“From who, what?”

She was on her feet, turning, the door of the bar before her now like an escape hatch.

“For how long?” he asked.

She looked at him, the word chilling her spirits with its fatality. “Forever,” she said.

DELLA

Her mother poured the coffee, then sat down. “So, how's Mike?”

“Fine,” Della said. She wiped a scattering of crumbs from Nicky's mouth.

Mrs. DaRocca smiled. “They all like graham crackers. You liked them. Your brother.”

Della nodded crisply. “You heard from Chuck?”

“Not in a couple weeks,” Mrs. DaRocca said. “He's got a new girlfriend. When he has a new girlfriend, he forgets to call.”

Della thought of her kid brother, remembered his tendency to mischief, the way she'd always tried to pull him out of whatever trouble he got himself into. She wished he were home now rather than on some army base out west, and so unable to help her, or even give advice. Unnecessarily, she brushed again at Nicky's mouth, then glanced at her mother, recognized the look in her eyes.

“You and Mike having trouble,” the old woman said.

It was not a question, but a declaration, and for a moment Della thought it might be easier if it were true. Married trouble stared you in the face. There were ways to deal with it. A priest. A counselor. With married trouble, there was a line of defense, a method for dealing, maybe even a solution somewhere down the road.

“Another woman?” her mother asked.

“No, Ma,” Della said. “Nothing like that.”

“Money?”

“No, Ma,” Della repeated. She started to draw Nicky into her lap.

“Leave him where he is,” Mrs. DaRocca snapped.

Della obeyed instantly, like a little girl.

“Look me in the eye and tell me nothing's wrong,” the old woman demanded.

Della knew she couldn't do that.

“It's not you, is it? You're not cheating on Mike?”

“No!” Della cried indignantly. “Ma!”

The old woman leaned forward. “So what is it, Della?”

There was no escaping her, and Della knew it. Her only hope was to come up with a story her mother would believe. “It's my neighbor,” she began, making it up as she went along. “His wife left him. He came over. He thought I might know where she went.”

“Do you?”

“No.”

“So, how come you're upset about this?”

She shrugged, thought fast. “I don't know. You just get to thinking, you know, about . . . things.”

“What things you thinking about, Della? This ain't got nothing to do with you, so what things you thinking about?”

She was like a crab, Della thought, her mother. Once she grabbed on to something, she never let go. “You know, how a person can live with a person and maybe not know . . . anything. That's the way it is with this guy.”

“What guy?”

“My neighbor. He didn't have any idea she was going to leave him.”

“Like he's the first,” Mrs. DaRocca said with a laugh.

“Anyway, it makes you think.”

The old woman waved her hand. “It makes you think because you're a worrier, Della. Always worrying about something.”

“Yeah, okay,” Della said, hoping to drop the subject.

But this only made her mother more intent. “Mike, he comes home every night, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you, you make dinner. You see everything's clean. The other stuff, you know, private. That's okay too, right?”

“Yeah, Ma, it's fine.”

The old woman looked at her sternly. “So stop worrying about that neighbor of yours. It ain't your problem.”

“Right,” Della said. She saw Sara in the city, trying to start over, unaware of the mad dog that was hot on her trail, a vicious old dog that was tracking her relentlessly but one she could not tell Sara about for fear that it would turn on her as well. “Right,” she repeated. “Not my problem.”

And yet if that were true, she wondered, then what was this pain she felt and which seemed to grow larger by the minute. She felt nothing but that deepening distress for a moment, then glanced up and saw that her mother's eyes were bearing down with the old relentlessness she remembered from her girlhood, questions fired like rockets toward her ever-crumbling defenses,
That boy treating you good? You letting that guy touch you? You pregnant?

“Mike raise his hand to you?” the old woman asked sharply.

“No!” Della shot back. “You know Mike. He wouldn't—”

“Della,” her mother said, cutting her off. “I look at you, and I see scared. Something's scaring you.” She planted her fleshy arms on the table and leaned forward. “Now, what's scaring you?”

There was no point in lying to her, Della realized. For nearly forty years, the old lady had seen through her like a sheet of cellophane. “I don't know what to do, Ma.”

Her mother's scowl was dark and fearsome. Even sitting, even completely still, she looked as if she were strapping on a gun.

“You tell me right now, Della,” she commanded. “And don't leave nothing out.”

Della hesitated briefly, then said, “It's Leo Labriola.”

Her mother looked at her as if she'd just blurted out the ingredients of a secret recipe. “How you know him?”

“My neighbor. Labriola's his father.”

“What's that got to do with you?”

“His wife ran off, like I said, and Mr. Labriola is looking for her. He came to my house. He wanted to know if I knew anything about Sara, that's my neighbor, Tony's wife, the one that ran off, who Labriola is looking for. And he . . . threatened me, Labriola did.”

Her mother's face seemed to gray and flush at the same time, like firelight on a stone. “He done what?” she asked.

“He threatened me,” Della repeated. “Grabbed my arm. Right there.” She rubbed her arm softly. “He scared me, Ma.” Her face was wreathed in shame. “And I didn't tell Sara about it. That he was looking for her, I mean. But more than that. The way he's looking, you know?”

“What way?”

“Like . . . mean. I didn't tell Sara about that.”

“How could you tell her? You talked to her?”

“Yeah.”

“You know where she is?”

Della nodded. “But not exactly.”

“What do you mean, not exactly?”

“She always talked about the city. I figure that's where she went.”

Mrs. DaRocca offered a surprisingly bright smile. “I'll straighten this out, Della,” she said.

“What?” Della asked unbelievingly.

“I'll straighten it out,” Mrs. DaRocca repeated. She patted her daughter's arm. “Stop worrying about it.”

And Della, to her vast surprise, did exactly that.

CARUSO

He felt smart, and he loved it when he felt smart. He'd always wanted to feel smart more than he'd wanted to feel anything else. More than he'd ever wanted to be good-looking or tough. You could be tall, dark, handsome, but none of that lasted very long. And in the end, nobody really admired a guy just for his looks. You admired a guy who was tough, could take a trimming, give back what he got, but only if he weren't a dope at the same time. A moron with guts was mostly just a moron. But a guy with brains, that was a guy everybody admired. He'd heard somewhere that when a dolphin met a shark eye-to-eye in the ocean, it was the shark that blinked. That was what brains did for a guy, he thought, made the idiots give way.

A soaring wave of self-esteem swept over him, and on the crest of that wave he picked up the phone, dialed the number, smiling pleasantly until Labriola answered.

“I got it done,” Caruso told him.

“Why you talk to me like a dope, Vinnie?” Labriola barked. “Huh? Why you do that?”

Caruso felt the hot-air balloon deflate. “Well, I . . .”

“I answer the fucking phone, right? And you don't say who it is I'm talking to. You don't say what it is you're talking about. So answer me this, Vinnie. How do I know I'm not talking to some fucking cop, huh?”

“I thought you'd—”

“What?” Labriola snapped.

“Recognize my voice,” Caruso said lamely.

“Your voice?” Labriola cackled. “Like you're Marilyn Monroe, or something? Why would I recognize your voice, Vinnie?”

“Well, I mean, we talk a lot and so—”

“Forget it, Vinnie,” Labriola interrupted irritably. “What's on your mind?”

Now Caruso hardly knew what to say, all his cleverness gathering like a pool of urine at his feet. Not smart, he told himself, not smart at all.

“Vinnie!” Labriola yelped.

Caruso shuddered. “Uh . . . I just wanted you to know that I'm doing it.”

“Vinnie, you think I got all fucking day to pull shit out of you? What the fuck you talking about?”

“Them guys,” Vinnie answered, working to control the lacerating contempt Labriola made him feel for himself. “I got . . .”

“What guys?”

“The ones could be looking,” Caruso answered. “For Tony's wife.”

“What about them?”

“I'm keeping an eye on them. Like you asked me.”

“So?”

“I just . . . well . . . I . . .”

“I told you to keep an eye on them, didn't I?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So, why wouldn't you be doing it?”

“I just—”

“You just nothing, Vinnie,” Labriola said. “You just woke me up for fucking nothing.”

Caruso's head drooped forward. “Sorry,” he muttered.

Labriola's voice sawed into him. “The next time you call me, you better have something I want to hear.”

“Yeah, I'll . . .”

A click at the other end, and the phone went dead.

Caruso held the cold black receiver in his hand. It felt as dark and thick and lifeless as the inside of his skull, a dense, unlighted thing that only fooled him when it seemed to spark.

ABE

The super swung open the door and waved Abe into the room. “You caught me just in time,” he said. “I was gonna call the Salvation Army to come get the rest of this stuff.”

Days before, Abe had gone through Lucille's meager possessions, selecting a few mementos, leaving the rest for the super to dispose of in any way he wanted. Now he was relieved to see that the piano remained, along with a scarred kitchen table and a second table Lucille had used as a desk. “You said she was paid up till the end of the month, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I have this woman who—”

“Gotcha,” the super said with a leering grin.