Peril

“Well what?” the barkeep asked.

“I thought you was gonna tell me where she is, my son’s wife,” the Old Man told him.

“I am,” the barkeep replied casually. Then his eyes froze. “For a price,” he added.

“A price?” the Old Man barked. “You ain’t getting a dime out of me.”

The barkeep shrugged. “I don’t want money.”

“What you want, then?” Labriola asked.

The barkeep looked at Mortimer, then back toward Labriola. “One of those big balls you got,” he said.

Shit, Caruso thought, seeing the slaughter once again, everybody dead, the Old Man standing in the lightly waving reeds of the Meadowlands, sipping whiskey from a bottle as Caruso hauled one body after another from the back of his blue Lincoln Town Car.

Labriola sat back slightly, lifted the gun from the table, and aimed it directly at the barkeep’s head. “You’re one dumb kike,” he said.

Suddenly, Tony leaned forward. “Let’s go, Dad,” he pleaded.

“Go?” Labriola yelped.

“I don’t want to talk to her, Dad.”

Labriola shook his head. “What a pussy you are, Tony.”

“Dad, please, you can’t.”

Labriola whirled around. “Can’t what, Tony?” he asked icily. “What, you giving the orders now? Telling me what I can’t do?” He looked at Caruso. “What do you think, Vinnie, you think maybe I should show this little fuck who’s the boss?” He glanced at each man in turn, his lips curled down in a sneer. “Teach all of you who’s the fucking boss.” He shot his gaze over to Caruso. “Gimme your gun, Vinnie,” he said. His hand shook violently, like a ragged cloth in a tearing wind. “Gimme your fucking gun!” he screamed.

Caruso drew the thirty-eight from his waistband and handed it to Labriola.

Labriola glared at the barkeep. “Let’s start with you, Mr.—Morgenstern.” He spun the chamber. “There’s only one bullet in this fucking thing. You got the balls to pull the trigger?”

“Dad, stop it,” Tony said.

Labriola spun around and cracked the pistol against the side of Tony’s head. “You sound like that bitch wife of yours, Tony.”

Tony lurched backward, his hands to his head, blood seeping through the closed fingers.

Labriola laughed. “Stop it! Stop it!” he repeated in a high, female plea. “That’s all she ever said.”

Tony drew his hands from his head and glared at Labriola. “What are you talking about?”

“Stop it! Stop it!” Labriola whined in the same mocking tone. “Like she thought she was boss.” His eyes gleamed madly. “Like she didn’t know my rule.”

Tony stared at him darkly. “What rule?”

A leering grin formed on Labriola’s lips. “You fuck my son, you fuck me,” he said.

Caruso felt his lips part wordlessly, a terrible vision in his mind, the Old Man, drunk and raging, thudding down a narrow corridor toward Sara Labriola.

“What did you do to her?” Tony asked.

A swirl of notions spun through Caruso’s mind, the Old Man’s stark command that Tony was not to speak to Sara, the word he’d scraped on the shell casing of a thirty-eight, Cunt.

“What did you do to Sara?” Tony demanded. He started to rise but Labriola pressed the barrel of the thirty-eight against his forehead and drew him back down to his seat. “You’re a pussy, Tony,” he sneered. “I’d have done better at a nigger orphanage.” He turned to face the others, the cold look in their eyes, how fully they abhorred him. For a moment he seemed to see himself as they did, a vision that appalled him, so he turned away and settled his gaze on Caruso. “Should I show ’em who’s boss, Vinnie?” he asked quietly.

Caruso thought of the chambered rounds, the dark cathedral where they lay, a fully loaded gun, then of Sara Labriola on her back, helpless, the Old Man pressing down upon her, laying down his rule. You fuck my son, you fuck me.

“Vinnie, should I show ’em who’s boss?” Labriola repeated.

Caruso felt something deep inside tear lose, something sharp and corroded, a long embedded hook. “Yeah,” he whispered, “show ’em, Mr. Labriola.”

Labriola placed the barrel against the side of his head. “I’ll show you who’s the fucking boss,” he sneered.

“Stop it,” Tony cried.

Caruso stared at Tony evenly. “Let him,” he said coolly.

Tony seemed to study him for a moment, concentrated, intent, like a man trying to decipher a secret code.

“Let him,” Caruso repeated.

Tony looked at Labriola, the pistol poised at his head, then back to Caruso, their eyes fixed in cold collusion.

“Let him,” Caruso said a final time.

Labriola peered back and forth from Caruso to Tony, his face now locked in a curious suspicion. “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t,” he taunted.

Tony glanced at Caruso, then turned toward his father. “I didn’t think you had the balls,” he said mockingly.

Labriola’s lips jerked downward in hideous contempt. “Just watch and see, pussy boy,” he said.