Peril

CARUSO

The phone shook him from his sleep, the Old Man’s voice like a fist around his throat.

“This guy, the deadbeat, he knows people, right? People who find people.”

“He’s connected to some guy who does that,” Caruso told him.

“Okay, here it is. He gets this guy to do a job for me, I’ll let go what he owes me.”

“The guy usually gets thirty,” Caruso said cautiously. “The bill to you is just fifteen.”

“What are you saying, Vinnie?”

“That Morty’s guy, he maybe won’t do it for fifteen.”

“Okay, so I pay the shithead thirty, and he keeps fifteen and gives the other guy fifteen.”

“He shorts him?” Caruso said.

“Yeah, he fucking shorts him, Vinnie,” Labriola bawled. “Or we break his fucking thumbs.”

“Okay,” Caruso said quickly. “Maybe he’ll do that.”

“Like he’s got a fucking choice?” The Old Man’s laugh was brutal.

“I mean… he will,” Caruso added hastily. “What’s the job?”

“Find that bitch married my son. She took off this morning. He ain’t heard a word since then.”

Caruso nodded briskly, as if the Old Man were in the room with him, feeling the way he’d tried to make Mortimer feel a few hours before, like a cringing worm.

“Tony ain’t to know nothing about this, you understand?” Labriola added. “You just find that bitch and let me know.”

“Yes, sir,” Caruso said quickly.

“So make the deal with this little shit owes me fifteen grand,” Labriola said. “Then get back to me.”

“Yes, sir,” Caruso repeated in what had become the litany of his life. He hung up, paused briefly, then picked up the phone and dialed one of the scores of numbers he had stored in the hard drive of his mind, this one under the heading “Deadbeats,” the mental file to which he’d but recently added Morty’s name.