Peril

He felt the wet towel cover his face, the silver-haired man behind him now, tightening it so that the wet drew in against his mouth and nose. He sucked at the cloth and tasted warm, salty water, sucked again, and felt the air constrict so that he could get only half a breath. He jerked his head right and left, but with each movement the cloth only tightened until half a breath became little more than a fruitless sucking at the wet, thick cloth. The pain began in his chest and seized upward like a sharp tool raked across the tender inner folds of his throat. His vocal cords throbbed and his tongue caught fire and the raw meat of his flesh hissed and boiled until his body suddenly convulsed and he felt the pulpy inside of himself like a gorge in his throat, rising like lava into the red cavern of his mouth, filled now, and spewing, but still locked inside by the suffocating cloth.

Then he felt the cloth go limp and drop from his face and the steaming vomit that filled his mouth spewed out and dripped in a warm, sticky stream down his naked chest and over his bare, trembling legs.

“Who are you working for?”

Tony’s name leaped like a flame in his brain and rose like a boil on his flesh and shook like a tattered shroud in the retching gasp of his breath, but still he did not speak.

MORTIMER

He sat in the diner and played it over and over again in his mind, the way she’d come down the stairs, glancing both ways, like a frightened bird. Even so, he hadn’t been sure until he’d stepped right up to her, gotten a good look, compared it with the picture he’d seen, and made the positive ID.

Sara Labriola.

Abe’s girl.

Abe . . . His best friend.

Mortimer shook his head. So what now? he wondered. What could he do about this broad who’d run out on her husband, which, goddammit, she shouldn’t have done, because now she’d landed Abe in this same river of shit everybody else seemed in one way or another to be drowning in.

“Jesus Christ,” Mortimer muttered under his breath, “of all people, Abe.”

So, okay, at least one thing was clear in this fucking mess, Mortimer decided, he had to get Abe out of it. The woman was trouble, big trouble, and as long as she was around, Abe was in trouble too. But how could he get Abe away from her? Especially since, if he were any judge of such things, Abe was already ass-over-teacup in love with this broad. No way would he just walk away from her, and if Caruso or Labriola tried anything . . . He stopped, now seeing the pistol he’d given Abe in none other than Abe’s hand, aimed at Labriola or Caruso or maybe the two of them, his finger pulling down on the trigger. Holy shit, Mortimer steamed, they’d blow Abe’s head off if he pulled that fucking gun on them.

Okay, Mortimer thought desperately, okay, think, for Christ’s sake! Find a way out of this!

As he considered the situation, it seemed to him that Labriola was the real problem, the only guy in the whole deal that gave a good goddamn if this broad came back or didn’t come back. So the thing to do was get the Old Man to let go of this thing. He had to stop looking for this woman, because if he found her and came after her, Abe would try to stop him . . . with that fucking gun!

Mortimer tried to calm the storm within his brain. Caruso, he thought, Caruso was the only way to get to Labriola. But what could he offer Caruso that might persuade him to go back to Labriola, make him call the whole thing off? The guy, he decided, the guy Stark had probably nabbed off the street and now had behind that goddamn black curtain. Caruso clearly had a thing for that guy. Not sexual. Nothing like that. Jesus Christ, no! But a thing for him like a guy can have for another guy. Like friendship, that sort of thing. The kind of thing he, Mortimer, had for Abe, a need to make things okay. So, okay, maybe he could trade the guy for the woman, get Caruso to call Labriola off the woman if he, Mortimer, agreed to get the guy Caruso was looking for away from Stark, hand him over to Caruso safe and sound. It would be tit for tat: Caruso gets his friend and Abe gets his girl. Not bad if Caruso could just convince Labriola to give up on this thing, or maybe just that the woman had simply vanished, no way to find her. Dead end, so to speak, so the Old Man should just forget about it.

Mortimer thought it through again, decided it was worth a chance, grabbed his cell phone, and dialed the number.

Caruso answered immediately.

“That guy you told me about,” Mortimer said, “the one missing. Friend of yours. I think my guy may have him.”

He’d expected to hear a little jerk of relief or excitement in Caruso’s voice, but all that came back was a flat monotone. “What makes you think so?”

“I went over to his place . . . Batman’s,” Mortimer continued. “And there was this curtain pulled across the hallway. A black curtain. Thick. I think your friend may be back there somewhere.”