Mortimer shrugged. “He figures that she just wants to disappear, and so she’d come to the city. Disappear into the crowd.” He could tell one part of Stark’s mind was willing to accept the modest logic of this, while the other part labored to peel back his skin, peer into his brain, find the elusive something that Mortimer was holding back.
“All right,” Stark said finally. “I’ll give this friend of yours one more chance to provide something useful. One chance, Mortimer.”
“Okay,” Mortimer said.
For a moment the two men peered silently at each other, a gaze Mortimer found uncomfortable.
“This friend of yours,” Stark said, “what does he intend to do when he finds this woman?”
Mortimer had no idea, but said, “He just wants her to come back to him.”
“Are you sure that’s all he wants?”
Mortimer knew that Stark was thinking of Marisol. “He wouldn’t hurt her. He wants her back, that’s all.”
Stark’s gaze bore into him, and he knew that if his eyes rested on him in that way just a moment longer, he’d spill his guts.
“I gotta go,” he said, then turned quickly and headed for the door.
He’d just reached it, when Stark called to him.
“Mortimer, we can trust each other, can’t we?”
Mortimer turned toward Stark, saw something unexpectedly troubled in his eyes, as if he were working hard not to believe something he couldn’t stop himself from believing.
“Yeah, sure,” he answered lightly. What else, he wondered, could he say?
EDDIE
The beer was growing warm in his hands, but there was nothing to do but wait. Vinnie Caruso had never been a stickler for getting to a place on time, and Eddie had long ago accepted the fact that he came when he came. In the meantime, Eddie tried to think of the right approach, what he’d say once Vinnie had downed a couple of beers, loosened up, dropped the wise-guy routine, and returned to the kid Eddie had known years before, a nice guy, like so many others, but with lousy parents, the mother a lush, the father missing altogether. What could you do but feel sorry for a kid like that, a little guy, picked on. Eddie had saved him from a bully once, and after that Vinnie had hung close for a few years. Then they’d gone their separate ways until one night they’d met again at the Saint Lawrence Hotel, where Vinnie ran a shylocking operation from the office of an otherwise legit car service. Vinnie had ushered him into the little cubicle he used for business, and the two of them had talked for a few minutes, Vinnie propped back in his chair, his feet on the desk, puffing a cigar that was almost as long as his arm, acting the made-man routine, though all Eddie had to do was look around to know just how little-made he was, just how low on the pecking order. But it was the moment he’d started to leave, Eddie recalled now. He’d gotten up, smiling as always, started for the door, when Vinnie, still seated, had called him back,
Eddie had turned around to find the little guy staring at him intently, the cigar lowered, the old Vinnie peering at him, almost sweetly, so that Eddie knew that Vinnie was remembering how Eddie had saved him from that bully so many years before.
That was the moment, Eddie thought now, his large hands wrapped around the mug, that was the moment when he could have asked anything of Vinnie Caruso. If he’d been in debt, the money would have been there. If some guy had been giving him trouble—on the job, say, or anywhere else—that guy would have been spoken to by Vinnie or some thug Vinnie sent, and the trouble would have instantly gone away. But Eddie had only shrugged and said that he was doing fine. Then they’d shaken hands, and Vinnie had tapped the side of his head, and said his parting words,
The problem was this. Eddie didn’t like asking favors. He didn’t like doing it ever, and normally wouldn’t have done it at all. You didn’t do a guy a good turn because you expected to get something back. The priests had taught him that. If you do good to get good, they’d told him, it wasn’t really good at all. But now, as he thought about it, he hadn’t helped Vinnie Caruso all those many years before because he’d expected to get something back. So it was okay, he figured, asking Vinnie for a favor now, as long as it was just this one.
Caruso came through the door with the peculiar swagger he’d adopted over the last few years, and which Eddie thought he’d probably gotten from mob movies, especially the one where this wiry little guy talks big and screws this gorgeous blonde, and backs up everything he says with sudden bursts of annihilating violence.
“Hey, Eddie,” Vinnie said brightly as he strode up to the booth. “How they hanging?”
“I’m good,” Eddie said. “Want a beer?”