It was nearly an hour later when the man finally appeared, and despite the hazy light of early evening, Eddie had no doubt that he was the one Caruso had described the night before. He was around five ten, dressed in a black suit, and carrying a tightly wrapped umbrella. His hair was gray, and there was plenty of it, but it was the graceful way he moved down the street that pegged him for sure. This was a man who knew how to handle things, who could think his way out of a real pickle, then make all the right moves. He had that assurance, that look of being in control, or at least able to get control of any situation.
Eddie followed at a discreet distance, watching carefully as the man continued east until he reached Fifth Avenue, where he turned south and made his way to Washington Square Park.
There was something about the way he moved, never looking right or left, that gave Eddie the idea that this was a walk the man often made, perhaps routinely at this same hour every day. He decided that he would station himself opposite the building at the same time tomorrow, check if the man came out again, walked to wherever he was going. If so, then he’d have established at least a portion of the man’s routine, could predict, though not with absolute certainty, where he could be found at a particular moment. He knew that this wasn’t much, but at least it was something he could report to Tony, let him know that he was on the job.
TONY
He was on his fourth drink and nothing was getting better. If anything, he could feel his mood darkening, growing dense, with something hateful rising out of the smoky depths, the red-eyed terror of his father.
“Hey, Tony.”
He looked up from the glass and saw that she’d swung into the booth and was now sitting firmly opposite him.
“You been nursing that one for a while,” she said.
Her name was Carmen, and she worked for some guy who kept a boat in the marina, or maybe she was his girl. Anyway, she was dressed in bright colors, as always, with huge hoop rings that sparkled in the smoky light.
“You wanna buy me a drink?” she asked.
Tony straightened himself abruptly and pressed his back against the wooden booth. “Carmen, right?”
The woman laughed. “As in Miranda. That woman with the fruit basket on her head.” She laughed again. “And some opera singer too.”
Tony blinked absently. “So, what’ll you have?”
“How about a Bloody Mary?” Carmen said.
“Done.” Tony snapped his fingers and Lucky, the waiter, came trotting over. “Bloody Mary for the lady.”
“Coming up, Tony,” Lucky said, then trotted away again.
Carmen brought a long, bright-red fingernail to the corner of her right eye. “So, you out alone tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“She lets you off the leash like that, your wife?”
Tony nodded.
The bright-red fingernail made a slow crawl down the side of Carmen’s face until it came to rest at her lower lip. “Not me. If I had a handsome guy like you, I’d hold tight.”
Tony considered the options, his eyes lingering on the face before him, the dark brown eyes and black hair and slightly olive skin. Carmen wasn’t bad looking, and she would probably get a real kick out of being with him, even if for only a night. She would tell her girlfriends about it, and in the story he would be stronger and more handsome and better in bed than he really was, because Carmen Pinaldi needed to believe that the guy she was with was strong and handsome and great in the sack, because if he were less than that, then so was she. So he should just do it, he told himself, just take her back to his house or to some motel and just do it. Sara had left him, after all. So why shouldn’t he just buy Carmen another drink, chat her up for a few minutes, then whisk her away to a shadowy bedroom and huff and puff and get it done and feel the sweet revenge of having done it?
Revenge, Tony thought. That was the problem. He would do it only for revenge, a way of getting back at Sara. And because of that it would be without pleasure, and laced with pain, and during every moment of it he would be thinking of Sara.
He took a long draw on the cigarette, then crushed it in the square glass ashtray. “I better be going,” he said.
Carmen looked surprised and offended and seemed to see her face in a mirror and not like what she saw. “Oh, okay,” she said coolly.
He didn’t want to hurt her but knew he had. “Sorry,” he said quietly.
She shrugged dryly. “You gotta go, you gotta go.”