Peril

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.

Sara stood in place until he reached the far corner, then disappeared around it. She wanted to believe that the man was only a Village oddity, a sad figure in his dark suit, but not in the least connected to her or Labriola, just a strange little man, nothing more.

Yes, she told herself, believe that.

She continued on down the street, trying to get the little man in the rumpled hat out of her mind, but his face kept returning to her, superimposed over other faces, Caulfield, Labriola, men she’d fled, men bent on harming her.

At the end of the block she stopped and glanced back down the street, half expecting to see the man in the rumpled hat lurching behind her, or quickly dodging behind a tree to conceal himself.

But she saw no sign of him, no indication that he’d been anything but a sad-faced man who’d commented upon the flowers in the florist’s window. And yet she could not get his image out of her mind, the feeling that he had purposely approached her, as if to get a better look, then lumbered away to call whoever had hired him to find her.

She looked down the street once more, then left and right along the side streets, then up ahead. Again she saw no sign of the man who’d approached her. But again she could not rid her mind of the dark suspicion that she had been found.

CARUSO

Labriola’s voice exploded through the phone. “Get over here!”

“You mean—”

“Right now!”

“Okay, sure, I’ll—”

Click.

The phone felt like something stiff and dead in his hand.

Shit, Caruso thought, fuck.

He rushed to the car, Labriola’s voice still scraping across his mind, harsh and demanding as always but with something different in it this time, a voice that seemed on fire.

The old neighborhood held its usual familiarity, mostly stubby brick buildings from before the war. He remembered playing stickball on these same streets, remembered the day his father had gone out for beer at that little deli right there, remembered watching him from that window, the one on the fourth floor, watching as he walked past the little store, checking his wallet as he turned the corner. He’d watched it for a long time after that, but his father had never come back around it again. What had he been? Four years old. And yet it was the one image that returned to him most often, his father, tall and lanky and always smiling and throwing him in the air, this man who seemed to hold eternity in his grasp, turning the corner as he thumbed the bills in his old brown wallet, head down, counting, with not so much as a quick glance back toward the little boy who watched him so adoringly from the fourth-floor window.

If the guy had just hung around, Caruso thought now, then everything might have been different. He’d have had a father and wouldn’t have had to hit the streets at thirteen, become a bagboy for Mr. Labriola, collecting his winnings, making his payoffs, greasing the palms he wanted greased, making the loans he okayed, chasing deadbeats, slapping them around a little when they didn’t pay—all of it done with a loyalty he couldn’t bring himself to question.

He swung onto Flatbush Avenue, Labriola’s voice screaming in his ear at what seemed an even greater volume than on the phone, a voice so loud and raging that by the time Caruso brought the car to a halt behind the dark blue Lincoln, he could have sworn Labriola had actually cracked his skull and was stomping on his brain.

Labriola jerked the door open as Caruso reached the bottom of the stairs.

“Get in here,” he shrieked, then turned briskly and stormed back inside.

The interior of the house swam in a murky light and had a dank smell, like brackish water. Labriola stood, naked from the waist up, at the center of the living room, his body so massive, so terribly there, everything around him seemed blurred and out of focus.

Caruso stopped at the French doors that divided the room from the adjoining corridor and stood like a dog, awaiting some command.

“What the fuck did you tell Tony?” Labriola demanded.

“Me?” Caruso asked weakly.

“Who else I’m talking to, Vinnie?”

“I didn’t tell him nothing.”

“You didn’t tell him nothing?”

“No.”

“You didn’t tell him nothing, Vinnie?”

“Nothing, I swear.”

“I’m gonna ask you one more time. What the fuck did you tell Tony?”

Caruso swallowed hard. “You mean about—”

“The bitch!” Labriola screamed. “You told Tony I had somebody hunting down that fucking bitch wife of his, right?”

Caruso shook his head. “No.”

Labriola stared at him grimly, then abruptly turned to face the window, his hands behind his back, fingers entwined, the muscles of his arms and shoulders rippling wildly, as if small creatures were scurrying for cover beneath his skin.