Peril

CARUSO

He felt smart, and he loved it when he felt smart. He’d always wanted to feel smart more than he’d wanted to feel anything else. More than he’d ever wanted to be good-looking or tough. You could be tall, dark, handsome, but none of that lasted very long. And in the end, nobody really admired a guy just for his looks. You admired a guy who was tough, could take a trimming, give back what he got, but only if he weren’t a dope at the same time. A moron with guts was mostly just a moron. But a guy with brains, that was a guy everybody admired. He’d heard somewhere that when a dolphin met a shark eye-to-eye in the ocean, it was the shark that blinked. That was what brains did for a guy, he thought, made the idiots give way.

A soaring wave of self-esteem swept over him, and on the crest of that wave he picked up the phone, dialed the number, smiling pleasantly until Labriola answered.

“I got it done,” Caruso told him.

“Why you talk to me like a dope, Vinnie?” Labriola barked. “Huh? Why you do that?”

Caruso felt the hot-air balloon deflate. “Well, I…”

“I answer the fucking phone, right? And you don’t say who it is I’m talking to. You don’t say what it is you’re talking about. So answer me this, Vinnie. How do I know I’m not talking to some fucking cop, huh?”

“I thought you’d-”

“What?” Labriola snapped.

“Recognize my voice,” Caruso said lamely.

“Your voice?” Labriola cackled. “Like you’re Marilyn Monroe, or something? Why would I recognize your voice, Vinnie?”

“Well, I mean, we talk a lot and so-”

“Forget it, Vinnie,” Labriola interrupted irritably. “What’s on your mind?”

Now Caruso hardly knew what to say, all his cleverness gathering like a pool of urine at his feet. Not smart, he told himself, not smart at all.

“Vinnie!” Labriola yelped.

Caruso shuddered. “Uh… I just wanted you to know that I’m doing it.”

“Vinnie, you think I got all fucking day to pull shit out of you? What the fuck you talking about?”

“Them guys,” Vinnie answered, working to control the lacerating contempt Labriola made him feel for himself. “I got…”

“What guys?”

“The ones could be looking,” Caruso answered. “For Tony’s wife.”

“What about them?”

“I’m keeping an eye on them. Like you asked me.”

“So?”

“I just… well… I…”

“I told you to keep an eye on them, didn’t I?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So, why wouldn’t you be doing it?”

“I just-”

“You just nothing, Vinnie,” Labriola said. “You just woke me up for fucking nothing.”

Caruso’s head drooped forward. “Sorry,” he muttered.

Labriola’s voice sawed into him. “The next time you call me, you better have something I want to hear.”

“Yeah, I’ll…”

A click at the other end, and the phone went dead.

Caruso held the cold black receiver in his hand. It felt as dark and thick and lifeless as the inside of his skull, a dense, unlighted thing that only fooled him when it seemed to spark.