Peril

CARUSO

He stood obediently behind Stark and Tony, guarding them from the back, while Mortimer and Labriola stepped inside the bar. Over their shoulders he could see the barkeep moving toward them.

“I can’t serve you, Morty,” the barkeep said when he reached them.

“We have to talk,” Mortimer said gravely.

Before the barkeep could answer, Labriola said, “You got a table for-what we got here? — four of us… plus you… so that means a table for five, right?”

The barkeep looked at Mortimer uncomprehendingly.

“Just do it,” Mortimer told him

“Yeah, just do it,” Labriola said coldly.

The barkeep didn’t move. “I think you’d better go,” he said.

Labriola laughed harshly. “Go? You don’t even know me, and you’re telling me to get out? That ain’t very nice.” He drew the pistol from his jacket pocket. “Like I said, fuckhead, table for five.”

The barkeep didn’t move, and Caruso thought it would all end at that instant, Labriola blasting the barkeep first, knocking him backward and over the nearest table, then turning to the others, dropping them where they stood, Stark and Mortimer, both of them staggering backward under a hail of bullets, geysers of blood shooting from their chests, all of it a scenario Caruso knew he was helpless to stop, the Old Man’s rage now at full throttle, hurling everyone toward disaster.

Then, suddenly, Mortimer’s voice broke the silence. “Abe,” he said quietly, “please.”

The barkeep nodded softly, then turned and headed toward the back of the bar, walking slowly, like a man to his execution.

“Okay, let’s go,” Caruso said. He turned around and jerked Stark and Tony forward, then walked behind them, at Labriola’s side, until they reached the back of the room, where they gathered around a wooden table.

“Sit,” Labriola ordered. He wiped his mouth with his fist. “And hurry up about it.”

Caruso lowered himself into a chair off to the side and watched as the barkeep, Tony, Stark, and Mortimer took their seats around the table. He could feel the air heating up around him, a hundred desperate voices in his head, a babble of notions, all of them aimed at escape, until the futility of it all silenced them and he felt himself sink into that silence, cold and wordless, as if already dead.

“Got a regular powwow here, don’t we, Vinnie?” Labriola asked as he plopped heavily into a chair.

Caruso nodded stiffly, his neck locked in the tension of the atmosphere, every bone aching.

Labriola placed the pistol on its side, laid his hand over it, and stared at the barkeep. “Okay, here’s the deal. My son here, his wife left him, and he don’t want to do nothing about it. But the way I see it, this woman fucked my son when she left him. And so she fucked me too. Only that was a mistake, ’cause I ain’t like Tony.” His smile was a sliver of ice. “So, can you help me out here, Mr.-”

“Morgenstern,” the barkeep said.

“Yeah, right,” Labriola said. “My point being, this woman, my son’s wife, she should have had a little talk with her husband before she run out on him. ’Cause it ain’t respectful, running off like that, without a word. Now, my son, he’d let her get away with it, because he ain’t got the balls to do nothing about it.”

“But you have,” the barkeep said suddenly.

“You goddamn right I have,” Labriola said. “Big fucking balls, asshole.”

Caruso saw the barkeep’s hand drift toward the end of the table and remembered those fingers at the piano keys. That was what he must be imagining at the moment, he thought, the fact that he was in danger of never doing that again, that one wrong word or movement, and those same fingers would never dance around the keys again. But so what, Caruso decided, shoring himself up for whatever lay ahead, loading the whole bunch of them into a car crusher if that’s what the Old Man had in mind.

Labriola was talking again when Caruso returned his attention to him.

“Now, you know where she is, right, my son’s wife?” Labriola said. “I mean, she works for you, so you know where she is.” He lifted his hand like a flat stone to reveal the pistol coiled beneath it. “And I’m sure you don’t mind telling me where she is, right?”

The barkeep’s hands reached the curved edge of the table and stopped. “No, I don’t mind,” he said almost cheerily.

Caruso could hardly believe his ears. Here he was, ready to put a bullet in the fuck, and the barkeep was saving him the trouble, caving in even without the Old Man popping him one. He glanced to his right, saw Labriola grin, and grinned with him.

“Good,” Labriola said.

Caruso turned back to the barkeep, who was sitting silently, staring at Labriola.

“Well?” Labriola blurted out after a moment.

“Well what?” the barkeep asked.

“I thought you was gonna tell me where she is, my son’s wife,” the Old Man told him.

“I am,” the barkeep replied casually. Then his eyes froze. “For a price,” he added.

“A price?” the Old Man barked. “You ain’t getting a dime out of me.”

The barkeep shrugged. “I don’t want money.”

“What you want, then?” Labriola asked.

The barkeep looked at Mortimer, then back toward Labriola. “One of those big balls you got,” he said.

Shit, Caruso thought, seeing the slaughter once again, everybody dead, the Old Man standing in the lightly waving reeds of the Meadowlands, sipping whiskey from a bottle as Caruso hauled one body after another from the back of his blue Lincoln Town Car.

Labriola sat back slightly, lifted the gun from the table, and aimed it directly at the barkeep’s head. “You’re one dumb kike,” he said.

Suddenly, Tony leaned forward. “Let’s go, Dad,” he pleaded.

“Go?” Labriola yelped.

“I don’t want to talk to her, Dad.”

Labriola shook his head. “What a pussy you are, Tony.”

“Dad, please, you can’t.”

Labriola whirled around. “Can’t what, Tony?” he asked icily. “What, you giving the orders now? Telling me what I can’t do?” He looked at Caruso. “What do you think, Vinnie, you think maybe I should show this little fuck who’s the boss?” He glanced at each man in turn, his lips curled down in a sneer. “Teach all of you who’s the fucking boss.” He shot his gaze over to Caruso. “Gimme your gun, Vinnie,” he said. His hand shook violently, like a ragged cloth in a tearing wind. “Gimme your fucking gun!” he screamed.

Caruso drew the thirty-eight from his waistband and handed it to Labriola.

Labriola glared at the barkeep. “Let’s start with you, Mr.-Morgenstern.” He spun the chamber. “There’s only one bullet in this fucking thing. You got the balls to pull the trigger?”

“Dad, stop it,” Tony said.

Labriola spun around and cracked the pistol against the side of Tony’s head. “You sound like that bitch wife of yours, Tony.”

Tony lurched backward, his hands to his head, blood seeping through the closed fingers.

Labriola laughed. “Stop it! Stop it!” he repeated in a high, female plea. “That’s all she ever said.”

Tony drew his hands from his head and glared at Labriola. “What are you talking about?”

“Stop it! Stop it!” Labriola whined in the same mocking tone. “Like she thought she was boss.” His eyes gleamed madly. “Like she didn’t know my rule.”

Tony stared at him darkly. “What rule?”

A leering grin formed on Labriola’s lips. “You fuck my son, you fuck me,” he said.

Caruso felt his lips part wordlessly, a terrible vision in his mind, the Old Man, drunk and raging, thudding down a narrow corridor toward Sara Labriola.

“What did you do to her?” Tony asked.

A swirl of notions spun through Caruso’s mind, the Old Man’s stark command that Tony was not to speak to Sara, the word he’d scraped on the shell casing of a thirty-eight, Cunt.

“What did you do to Sara?” Tony demanded. He started to rise but Labriola pressed the barrel of the thirty-eight against his forehead and drew him back down to his seat. “You’re a pussy, Tony,” he sneered. “I’d have done better at a nigger orphanage.” He turned to face the others, the cold look in their eyes, how fully they abhorred him. For a moment he seemed to see himself as they did, a vision that appalled him, so he turned away and settled his gaze on Caruso. “Should I show ’em who’s boss, Vinnie?” he asked quietly.

Caruso thought of the chambered rounds, the dark cathedral where they lay, a fully loaded gun, then of Sara Labriola on her back, helpless, the Old Man pressing down upon her, laying down his rule. You fuck my son, you fuck me.

“Vinnie, should I show ’em who’s boss?” Labriola repeated.

Caruso felt something deep inside tear lose, something sharp and corroded, a long embedded hook. “Yeah,” he whispered, “show ’em, Mr. Labriola.”

Labriola placed the barrel against the side of his head. “I’ll show you who’s the fucking boss,” he sneered.

“Stop it,” Tony cried.

Caruso stared at Tony evenly. “Let him,” he said coolly.

Tony seemed to study him for a moment, concentrated, intent, like a man trying to decipher a secret code.

“Let him,” Caruso repeated.

Tony looked at Labriola, the pistol poised at his head, then back to Caruso, their eyes fixed in cold collusion.

“Let him,” Caruso said a final time.

Labriola peered back and forth from Caruso to Tony, his face now locked in a curious suspicion. “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t,” he taunted.

Tony glanced at Caruso, then turned toward his father. “I didn’t think you had the balls,” he said mockingly.

Labriola’s lips jerked downward in hideous contempt. “Just watch and see, pussy boy,” he said.

The pistol trembled at Labriola’s temple, but still he didn’t fire, and in that interval Caruso saw the barkeep’s hand drop over the side, and shook his head silently, a gesture he knew was full of warning but also of assurance, a gesture that said only, Wait. Then he looked at each man in turn, Stark and Mortimer, relaying the same message.

Finally he leveled his gaze squarely upon Leo Labriola. “Show ’em,” he said.

A dry cackle burst from the Old Man’s lips. “Fucking A,” he cried.