Peril

TONY

After the sixth ring he hung up, irritated that it was ten-thirty in the morning, for Christ’s sake, and Sara wasn’t home. He’d been calling her every half hour since seven-thirty but gotten no answer. So where had she gone so early? She had no relatives to visit. No kids to take to school or walk to the bus stop. He glanced out the office window, noted the flurry of activity, men packing fish in ice, loading crates of sea bass and bluefish that would soon be served in restaurants throughout the East Coast. In the distance, Eddie Sullivan was hosing out a truck. Seven feet away Joey Fanucci slumped against a fishing boat, smoking a cigarette, the lazy bastard, who he wouldn’t have hired on a bet if he weren’t a cousin and the Old Man hadn’t insisted that “family is family.”

He jerked open the window. “Hey, Joey. What the fuck? You got nothing to do?”

Joey tossed his cigarette into the churning water and disappeared into the warehouse.

He can hide in there, Tony thought, he can get behind a stack of shipping crates and beat his meat all fucking day. He slammed the window closed, snapped up the phone, dialed home. When no one answered, the dreadful unease flared, the corrosive feeling that something was wrong in the tidy little house he’d left only a few hours before.

He was still nursing that disturbing idea when his father burst through the door.

“Why you keep that fucking mick on the payroll, Tony? He’s dumber than shit.”

“He’s a nice guy,” Tony said.

“So what?” Labriola demanded. He strode to a chair in front of Tony’s desk, plopped down in it, and spread his long, thick legs out across the floor. “So what are you telling me, that you’re so rich you can keep some lazy mick on welfare forever?”

“He’s not lazy, Dad,” Tony said. He grabbed a pencil from a cup that bristled with them and rolled it nervously between his fingers.

Labriola eyed the pencil, then said, “What you so jumpy about?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? I don’t think so, Tony. You got something on your mind, spit it out.”

“Nothing,” Tony repeated.

Labriola laughed. “That wife of yours, she’s probably not giving you any.”

Tony slid the pencil back into the cup.

“You want to get even with her, I could have Belle fix you up.”

Tony shook his head. “Stop it.”

Labriola laughed again. “I told Belle I wanted her to make that thing with sole your mother used to make. You remember, with tomatoes, garlic, capers.”

“I remember.”

“So, you got sole?”

“Yeah.”

Labriola pulled himself to his feet. “The mick can gimme it?”

“His name is Eddie.”

Labriola walked to the door, then looked at Tony. “Don’t let that wife of yours fuck with you, Tony.”

“I won’t,” Tony assured him.

“Good,” Labriola said curtly. “Because they try to get between us, these fucking broads.”

“Between us?”

“Guys. Set one against the other. Father and son.”

“Sara would never do that.”

Labriola laughed and waved his hand. “Yeah, sure, you know all about women, kid.” He turned and headed out the door.

Tony watched as the Old Man slammed down the stairs and strode out across the marina, waving to Eddie with one of his get-the-hell-over-here-asshole gestures, like Eddie was his slave. He knew he should have insisted on defending Sara, but he’d been frozen by his father’s mocking laughter, a laughter that had become even more hard lately, tinged with an edgy craziness, as if the Old Man were unraveling in some way, growing more violent, something in him going haywire.

Tony shrugged helplessly. What could you do with such a man? Nothing, he decided as always. Nothing but stay out of his way.