Peril полностью

Mortimer sucked in a labored breath and thought how fucked up things got if you didn’t keep your eye on the ball every goddamn second. He’d begun with a simple plan to get a few bucks for Dottie, now a guy was missing, Old Man Labriola was fuming, and God only knew what else was going on that he didn’t even fucking know about. “Things are getting out of control, Vinnie.”

“Yeah.”

Mortimer sat back and tried to sort out the jumble in his mind. Finally, he said, “What do you think, Vinnie, can we get out of this deal? I mean, suppose I just told Labriola it’s over. Deal’s off. Give back the money. All the money. Every penny.”

Caruso shook his head. “That wouldn’t do no good. He wants that fucking woman is what he wants. He don’t give a shit about nothing else. He’s all lathered up, like I said.”

“What’s his beef with her?” Mortimer asked. “I don’t get it. It ain’t like she left him.”

Caruso shrugged. “All I know is, he’s gonna find her, Morty. And there ain’t nobody can stop him.”

STARK

He opened the door and the light swept over the crumpled parka, the dusty jeans, the wrinkled, grease-stained shirt, and up the bare naked feet that now trembled slightly against the white plastic bands that held them in place against the metal legs of the chair.

“Who sent you?” Stark asked.

No answer came, but Stark could hear the man’s rhythmic breathing. He lit a cigarette and blew a column of smoke into the blackness. He’d held the man all night, simply left him tied in a chair, sitting in the darkness, in his underwear, barefoot, vulnerable.

“I need a name,” Stark said.

The feet moved, but there was no other response.

“Who sent you?”

Stark waited for a reply, though he knew it would be incoherent, at most a grunt. The tape would make any more articulate response impossible.

“Are you the woman’s husband?”

The man strained against the bands that held him to the chair.

“Or do you just work for him?”

The man’s head trembled, and beneath the tape his lips fluttered briefly then grew still.

Stark stepped over and raked a single finger down the man’s jaw. “Who do you work for?”

The man made no effort to speak but only glared silently, his jaw now set and rigid, like a fighter readying for the blow.

“Did you really think you could do it?”

The man shifted his eyes to the right and stared at the room’s blank wall.

“Did you think I would lead you to a woman and then let you hurt her?”

The man drew his gaze back to Stark, staring at him intently, as if trying to see into the working of his brain. Then he closed his eyes.

EDDIE

In the darkness Eddie tried to imagine the man who stared at him from just beyond the closed lids of his eyes. He couldn’t see him, but he knew he was there, towering over him. He could hear his steady breathing. Slowly, the man himself swam out of the darkness, vaguely translucent, an afterimage in Eddie’s mind. He was tall with silver hair, and his eyes were blue, and he wore clothes that Eddie had only seen in movies and on brief trips to midtown Manhattan. He was one of those people, the ones who controlled things, and beside whom everyone else felt small.

And he was smart too. Eddie knew that much. He’d turned the tables on him, accused him of following him so he’d be there when Tony’s wife was found, be there because he was going to hurt Tony’s wife. I know this game. That’s what the man had said. I fell for it once, but never again. But none of that was true. Eddie knew that much. None of it was true because the man with the silver hair was working for Tony’s father, one of his thugs, a guy he’d hired to track Sara down.

In his mind Eddie recalled Sara as she’d appeared the last time he’d seen her. She’d seemed sweet and lovely, and she’d smiled at him and said hello but he knew that even if she’d hardly noticed him or treated him badly he’d still be holding out the way he was because it really wasn’t about Sara. It was about Tony, this guy who’d stood with him when his father died, and sent him a Christmas card, and sometimes took him out for a steak and fries. Tony, who’d visited him in the hospital when he got hurt on the job and seemed to know when he needed a hand. Tony had done all of that despite the fact that he was busy and his business was in trouble and he had worries of his own, and so it was clear to Eddie that you knew who your friends were not by their favors but by their sacrifice.

“Who sent you?”

He opened his eyes and the silver-haired man was peering at him, his face very still and menacing, like a snake poised to strike.

“Who sent you?”

The silver-haired man ripped the tape from his mouth with a fierce, violent jerk.

“Who sent you?” he repeated, now very sharply.