Peril полностью

He picked up the photograph and concentrated on Sara’s face. Even on her wedding day there’d been a curious sadness in her eyes, a distance he couldn’t bridge. Had it been that distance that had first attracted him, he wondered, the way she seemed to distrust love, life, everything? If so, he should have been wary of her, he told himself. But instead, that very distance had formed part of what he’d fallen for when he’d fallen for her. And he had fallen for her. That much was sure. He could see that even now, in the picture, the two of them on the church steps, rice flying in all directions. At that moment she had been the indisputable love of his life. The love of my life that day, he thought, then with a sudden aching clarity realized that she still was.

CARUSO

Labriola’s voice seemed to reach through the phone line and slap his face.

“Yeah?”

“I talked to Morty Dodge about the meeting you want with this guy he works for.”

“And?”

“He says his guy needs information.”

“About what?”

“Sara. Things about her.”

“What things?”

“For example, what she did for a living or—”

“She didn’t do a fucking thing.”

“Yeah, okay, but like, where she might have gone. Stuff to get the guy started, that’s what he means.”

To Caruso’s surprise, Labriola did not protest. “I got an idea who knows that shit.”

“Good,” Caruso said. “I’ll pass on whatever you find out.”

“You’ll pass it on? What about me? What about the meeting?”

“That’s a problem, having a meeting.”

“Why is it a problem, Vinnie?”

“Because the guy, he won’t do it.”

“I’m laying out thirty grand and this fucker won’t meet with me?”

“He never shows.”

Caruso could hear the Old Man breathing raggedly, like the snorting of a bull. He waited for him to speak, and when he didn’t, added, “But Morty’ll meet with you. I told him if it was okay you could hook up at Columbus Circle, two-thirty.”

“But he’s nothing but a gofer,” the Old Man barked. “I don’t deal with no fucking gofers.”

“He’s a little more than that,” Caruso protested. “I mean, the guy trusts him is what I’m saying.”

“So he’s like a sidecar?”

“Sidekick. Yeah, something like that. But more. Loyal. A loyal friend.”

“A loyal friend. You know what a loyal friend is, Vinnie? He’s the other guy you toss into the fucking hole.”

A small, aching laugh broke from Caruso. “That’s good, Mr. Labriola. That’s a good one.”

“I want you to find out who this fucking guy is, Vinnie. I don’t have no ghosts working for me, you understand?”

“The guy, you want me to . . . what?”

“What I fucking said just now,” the Old Man screamed. “Who is he? I want to know.”

“Yes, sir,” Caruso said weakly.

“So, look, here’s what we do. You set up that fucking meet. Say to this sidecar shithead, sure I’ll have a meet. Then we meet, and we talk, and we shake hands like a couple of asshole buddies, see what I mean? Then I go my way, and the sidecar goes his. And you follow the little shithead all the way to this fucking guy he works for.”

“Yes, sir,” Caruso breathed.

“Understood, Vinnie?”

“I understand,” Caruso said, looking about the cramped office from which he ran the Old Man’s loan-sharking business.

“Okay, so, two-thirty,” the Old Man snapped.

“Yes, sir,” Caruso said, adding the time to a head already full of numbers, loans, payments, due dates, not one of which he had ever written down.

SARA

The Waverly theater was still in the same location, and Eighth Street had the same feel to it, and their familiarity brought small parts of her former life back to her. These parts were nothing she could put her finger on exactly, only the sense that she’d packed up her youth and now she could unpack at least a little of it. Maybe that was why she’d come back to the city. Because it was the closet where she’d first secreted herself, the hole she’d burrowed into, creating an identity to go with her new name.

For a moment she peered at the coffee shop across the street, watching silently as the patrons came and went. If they only knew, she thought. She felt the ghostly grip of Sheriff Caulfield’s hand on her bare shoulder, then other hands, no less ghostly but also no less palpable, the flesh of grasping fingers pressing into her flesh, sour breath in her face, the smell of drunken sweat, a man pushing her into the corn or down a narrow corridor, upright or weaving, dressed as a cop or barely dressed at all. With each memory she felt her own panic rise like a frenzied animal, trapped and panting, clawing its way out.