Peril

CARUSO

Caruso heard the soft click as Tony Labriola returned the phone to its cradle. He had lied and lied, but the strange part was that he wasn’t sure why he’d lied, save that in the world he knew, the truth was never a good idea.

Fuck, he thought as he hung up the phone. Then he posed the question starkly, Where the hell is Eddie Sullivan? When no answer immediately presented itself, he rose and walked out of the cramped office he maintained in the basement of the Caldwell Hotel, past the usual losers, who hung like old coats in the corridor, and into the brisk autumn air.

The spitting rain that had drenched the city the night before had finally relented, but the cloudless blue sky gave Caruso no relief. Instead, he sensed that far away a little bulletlike particle had suddenly assumed a trajectory that would inevitably send it crashing directly between his eyes. Eddie Sullivan was missing, and he could be missing only because something had happened to him, something really bad.

But what?

Caruso stared into the empty blue and considered possibilities that were as far beyond him as the infinite spaces that dwarfed him from above.

Labriola.

That was the obvious answer. Somehow, the Old Man had gotten wind that Eddie was working for Tony, and so, to flex his muscle, show that pussy-whipped son of his that he meant business, he’d done something-snatched, beaten up, murdered, any or all of the above? — poor, stupid Eddie Sullivan.

This was certainly possible, Caruso reasoned, because Labriola was really lathered up about something, and when he was that way, he was capable of anything. But if you added reason to the brew, even the small amount that battled to maintain itself within whatever storm was currently blowing in Labriola’s mind, then doing something bad to Eddie made no real sense.

Caruso leaned against the side of the building and ticked off the reasons why it was pointless to hurt Eddie Sullivan.

First off, you didn’t need to. A stiff warning would be enough. At most, a slap, a punch in the stomach. Eddie would have inevitably reported such crude disciplinary action to Tony, and in response Tony would have immediately pulled Eddie out of the game.

Second, why should Mr. Labriola give a shit what Eddie did? Eddie was just a guy who worked for Tony. Why should Labriola worry if Eddie trailed Batman until he found Tony’s wife? As long as she was found, it didn’t matter who found her, right? Okay, so forget Labriola. Chances were he had nothing to do with whatever had happened to Eddie Sullivan.

Which left Batman.

The more Caruso considered the matter, the more it seemed to him that if Eddie had come to harm, it was Batman who’d done it to him. He was a secretive guy, after all. Morty Dodge had made that clear. A guy so secretive he’d refused to meet Labriola. He won’t show. Those were Morty’s words. Now, Eddie Sullivan was no pro at tailing a guy, so suppose he burned his cover, which he probably did. What would a secretive, probably nutty guy like Batman do in a situation like that? The answer, given Morty’s sinister mutterings, was that he might do anything. Which meant that Eddie Sullivan might very well be dead.

The more Caruso pondered this explanation, the more it hardened in his mind. At first, it was a distinct possibility. Seconds later it was a definite probability. Before a minute passed, Eddie Sullivan was without doubt sleeping with the fishes.

This was a serious conclusion, and now Caruso’s mind shifted to its equally grave implications. Within a few days he had gone from a guy hiring another guy to find a broad to a guy who’d hired a guy who’d killed a second guy who was trailing the guy who was trailing the broad. Caruso’s mind dipped and whirled as he tried to nail down what, from a legal standpoint, he had done.

One thing was sure. His ass was in a crack, and the guy who’d put it there was Batman. The question was how to get back out of it. The answer seemed obvious, and the beauty was that he longed to do it anyway. The answer was to whack Batman, the murdering, psychotic bastard.

For a moment he imagined doing just that. He saw the silver-haired figure strolling down a midnight street, that fancy book in his hand, feeling all smart and safe and above everybody else, completely unaware of the figure who’d fallen in behind him, a little guy with a pencil-thin mustache who now moved closer and closer, pulling his neat little thirty-eight from his trouser pocket, waiting for just the right position to do a gorgeous job.

Then, BAM!

Caruso smiled with satisfaction as the rest of the film unspooled in delicious slow motion. Batman falling forward, knees buckling, that fancy book of his sliding across the gritty sidewalk and tumbling into the gutter wash, Batman now facedown, eyes open, staring, astonished that he’d actually been whacked, the snooty bastard, that his brains and his secrecy and having Morty Dodge as his personal gofer hadn’t protected him from that little cylinder of lead Caruso had sent hurtling into the back of his fucking head.

There was only one word for it, Caruso thought as the movie came to its glittering end. Beautiful.