Peril

“I guess not,” Tony said. An aching sigh broke from him. “She sure didn’t talk to me. But then, I didn’t talk to her either.” He tried to smile. “You and Mike talk?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Just the usual stuff. Every day. The kids.”

Tony’s gaze roamed Della’s kitchen. He envied Mike this simple, contented wife, so different from his own. But that was what had drawn him to Sara in the first place, wasn’t it? The way she was so different from the girls in the neighborhood, the ones his friends had already married or were about to. “I liked her accent,” he said.

“What?”

“Her accent. Sara’s. You know, southern. The thing is, I’d be good to her if she came back.”

Something in Della’s face altered, and she suddenly unfastened herself from the door of the refrigerator and sat down at the table. “I’m really sorry about this, Tony.” She touchis hand. “Really.”

He drew his hand away, feeling like a worm now, the type of guy his father hated. Not like Donny, whose wife wouldn’t have dared leave him. Or Angelo, who’d never stop busting his chops if he didn’t get Sara back, make her keep her mouth shut, get back to the old routine and stay there.

“Yeah, thanks,” he said, and got to his feet. “I better be going.”

Della walked him to the door but stepped back quickly when he turned to say good-bye, her eyes fearful again.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Tony said, though he didn’t know in exactly what way he’d bothered her, and certainly could find no reason for her to fear him. Why would she? They had been neighbors for years, and he’d never done anything to cause her the slightest unease. He saw clammy dread in her eyes and knew that it was the same fear he’d seen in the cringing figures who stood before his father, men who’d crossed him in some way.

“Has anyone else talked to you about this?” he asked. “My father, I mean. Or somebody who works for him?”

Della shook her head. “No.”

“I have to find Sara before my father does,” he told her.

Della said nothing.

“So, if he talked to you—”

“He didn’t talk to me,” Della blurted, then stepped back from the door. “Really, Tony.”

“Okay,” Tony said.

He walked back across the cul-de-sac. By the time he entered his house he’d come to believe that Della had lied to him. It was even possible that his father already knew where Sara was. Perhaps he was already headed to some motel on the Jersey Shore, Caruso behind the wheel of the big blue Lincoln, ready to do whatever the Old Man said he had to do to bring Sara home.

MORTIMER

He saw Caruso first, a thin, taut wire of a guy, the type who seemed always to be walking point. In the war, they were the ones who’d usually bought it first. Bought it so quickly, Mortimer had come to the conclusion that there was something about them, all that fidgeting perhaps, that God just didn’t like.

“Mr. Labriola should be here in a few minutes,” Caruso said as he scurried up to him. He glanced out toward the swirling traffic. “Drives a Lincoln.”

“There’s no place to park around here,” Mortimer said.

“Oh, he won’t park,” Caruso said, “the car will drive up and you’ll get in.” He glanced about nervously. “You better have your story straight. You don’t, he could take you to some fucking car-crushing joint and nobody would ever see you again.”

“You got a hell of a boss,” Mortimer said.

Caruso’s face turned threatening. “Speaking of which, Batman didn’t change his mind, did he?”

Mortimer shook his head as a stinging pain swept across his abdomen, bending him forward slightly.

“What’s the matter?” Caruso asked.

“Nothing,” Mortimer groaned.

“You’re pretty out of shape there, Morty,” Caruso told him.

Mortimer lowered himself onto the steps at the entrance to the park. “Yeah.”

“You should get on the old treadmill. Get rid of that fucking paunch you got.”

“One fifty-four, that’s what I weighed in the army,” Mortimer told him. He could not imagine how it had happened, the physical deterioration he’d undergone since then, not only the vanished hair, the spreading belly, and drooping, worthless dick, but the lethal forces that were consuming him now, his liver going south, dragging him into the grave.

“You was in the army?” Caruso asked. “When was this?”

“Sixty-seven.”

“ ’Nam?”

Mortimer gave no answer. “So, is Labriola gonna show up, or not?”

“He’s always on the dot,” Caruso said. “Why, you got a fire to go to?”

“Time is money.”

“Well, you should think of this, Morty,” Caruso said. “If Mr. Labriola is a minute late, you wait for him. And if he’s an hour late, you wait for him. You fucking stand here and starve to death, but you wait for him, Morty, because if you don’t . . .” Caruso’s eyes suddenly took on a look of animal fright. “There he is.” He nodded toward a Lincoln Town Car as it drew up to the curb. “Okay, go.”

Labriola was behind the wheel, and as Mortimer drew himself into the passenger seat, he felt something change in the quality of the light.

“So you’re the sidecar,” Labriola said.

Mortimer looked at him quizzically.

“The gofer.”