Peril

CARUSO

Labriola’s voice exploded through the phone. “Get over here!”

“You mean-”

“Right now!”

“Okay, sure, I’ll-”

Click.

The phone felt like something stiff and dead in his hand.

Shit, Caruso thought, fuck.

He rushed to the car, Labriola’s voice still scraping across his mind, harsh and demanding as always but with something different in it this time, a voice that seemed on fire.

The old neighborhood held its usual familiarity, mostly stubby brick buildings from before the war. He remembered playing stickball on these same streets, remembered the day his father had gone out for beer at that little deli right there, remembered watching him from that window, the one on the fourth floor, watching as he walked past the little store, checking his wallet as he turned the corner. He’d watched it for a long time after that, but his father had never come back around it again. What had he been? Four years old. And yet it was the one image that returned to him most often, his father, tall and lanky and always smiling and throwing him in the air, this man who seemed to hold eternity in his grasp, turning the corner as he thumbed the bills in his old brown wallet, head down, counting, with not so much as a quick glance back toward the little boy who watched him so adoringly from the fourth-floor window.

If the guy had just hung around, Caruso thought now, then everything might have been different. He’d have had a father and wouldn’t have had to hit the streets at thirteen, become a bagboy for Mr. Labriola, collecting his winnings, making his payoffs, greasing the palms he wanted greased, making the loans he okayed, chasing deadbeats, slapping them around a little when they didn’t pay-all of it done with a loyalty he couldn’t bring himself to question.

He swung onto Flatbush Avenue, Labriola’s voice screaming in his ear at what seemed an even greater volume than on the phone, a voice so loud and raging that by the time Caruso brought the car to a halt behind the dark blue Lincoln, he could have sworn Labriola had actually cracked his skull and was stomping on his brain.

Labriola jerked the door open as Caruso reached the bottom of the stairs.

“Get in here,” he shrieked, then turned briskly and stormed back inside.

The interior of the house swam in a murky light and had a dank smell, like brackish water. Labriola stood, naked from the waist up, at the center of the living room, his body so massive, so terribly there, everything around him seemed blurred and out of focus.

Caruso stopped at the French doors that divided the room from the adjoining corridor and stood like a dog, awaiting some command.

“What the fuck did you tell Tony?” Labriola demanded.

“Me?” Caruso asked weakly.

“Who else I’m talking to, Vinnie?”

“I didn’t tell him nothing.”

“You didn’t tell him nothing?”

“No.”

“You didn’t tell him nothing, Vinnie?”

“Nothing, I swear.”

“I’m gonna ask you one more time. What the fuck did you tell Tony?”

Caruso swallowed hard. “You mean about-”

“The bitch!” Labriola screamed. “You told Tony I had somebody hunting down that fucking bitch wife of his, right?”

Caruso shook his head. “No.”

Labriola stared at him grimly, then abruptly turned to face the window, his hands behind his back, fingers entwined, the muscles of his arms and shoulders rippling wildly, as if small creatures were scurrying for cover beneath his skin.

After a moment he faced Caruso again, his eyes red-rimmed and furious, a rage that looked drunken, and thus all the more terrifying for being sober. Then suddenly the frenzied twitching stopped, as if some invisible ointment had been applied to his flaming skin.

“Okay,” he said with a dismissive shrug.

Caruso stared at Labriola without comprehension, feeling like someone who’d been hurled forward at breakneck speed, then suddenly stopped.

“I said okay,” Labriola told him.

Caruso blinked rapidly. “Okay like… everything’s okay?”

The rage flared again. “No, fuckhead,” Labriola yelled. “Okay like get the fuck out of here.”

Caruso glanced down and saw that Labriola’s gigantic hands were balled into fists. They hung at the ends of his arms like weighted boxing gloves, illegal in the ring, the ones that hit like thunder and sent showers of blood and sweat splattering onto the mat.

“What you waiting for, Vinnie?” Labriola fumed. “You waiting maybe I should kick your fucking ass?” He stepped forward like a man out of a cloud of smoke. “What?” he screamed.

Caruso felt his stomach coil in dread, and yet he didn’t move. Something had changed, and he knew it. Something in the way things had always been, the way he’d assumed they’d always be between himself and Mr. Labriola, the way the Old Man had always let him in on whatever was gnawing at him.

“I was just wondering,” Caruso began hesitantly. “About Tony’s wife.”

Labriola took a second measured step toward him. “What was you wondering, Vinnie?” he asked sharply.

“Just about-”

Suddenly Labriola lunged forward, his body lurching across the room, huge and bearish. His great, hairy paw seized Caruso by the throat and hurled him back through the French doors and into the wall behind them.

“What’s your fucking job, Vinnie?” Labriola screamed. “What’s your fucking job in this thing, huh? With this bitch?”

Labriola’s face was only inches away, and Caruso had to tilt his head backward to bring the Old Man’s glittering eyes into focus. A wafting sourness came from Labriola’s mouth, a sickening combination of beer and whiskey, which suggested that Labriola had simply slugged down whatever his hand grasped, seeking only the bleariness of alcohol.

“Well, you gonna answer me?” the Old Man demanded.

“Find her,” Caruso said weakly. “I’m supposed to find her.”

“What else?” Labriola stepped back, yanked Caruso forward, then hurled him back against the wall again. “What else?” he shrieked.

Caruso’s mind searched frantically for an answer but came up empty. “I don’t know,” he whispered.

Again Labriola jerked Caruso forward and again plunged him backward against the wall. “What else, Vinnie?”

“Nothing,” Caruso sputtered. “You ain’t told me nothing else.”

Labriola released him, stepped back, then lightly slapped his face. “That right, Vinnie?” he taunted. “Nothing else?”

Labriola’s eyes looked different than Caruso had ever seen them. They gleamed hotly, red and leaping, like torches at the entrance of a dank, steamy cave.

“You ain’t got to do nothing else?” Labriola asked.

It was not a question, and Caruso knew it. It was a demand for absolute commitment.

“Whatever you say,” Caruso whispered.

“That’s right, whatever I say,” Labriola snarled. “And you know what I say, Vinnie? I say, ‘Take care of it.’ ”

“It?” Caruso asked.

“Who you think?” Labriola asked darkly.

Caruso tried to get his bearings, arrange his thoughts. “Right,” he said tentatively, buying time. “Take care of… it.”

Labriola whirled around, marched to the small table beside the sofa, yanked open the drawer, plucked out a single bullet, and carved something onto its metal casing with a small pocketknife.

“Put out your hand,” he told Caruso.

“I don’t know if this is-”

“Put out your hand,” Labriola commanded.

Caruso did as he was told, then felt the cold weight of a single thirty-eight cartridge drop into his open palm.

“Look at it,” Labriola said.

“Mr. Labriola, I don’t think I-”

“Look at it!” Labriola screamed.

Caruso glanced at the cartridge, saw that Labriola had scraped the word “cunt” on the casing. He felt his lips open in dreadful understanding, the Big Assignment now suddenly his, but not the kind he’d ever expected or wanted, a bullet in the head of some fucking deadbeat or screwup. He looked at the cartridge, the jagged letters. Cunt. The word screamed in his mind. Sara Labriola.

“You got a thirty-eight, right?” the Old Man asked.

“Yes,” Caruso said in a voice that barely reached a whisper. He could feel his knees begin to buckle, and he knew he had to get control of himself, shore up the crumbling walls, put the initial shock behind him, then take the fatal step. “A thirty-eight.” He closed his fingers around the shell. “Right.”

“You don’t put nothing in it but that one bullet,” Labriola said. “You put in more than one shot, it means you ain’t sure you can do it in one shot. You don’t do that, Vinnie. You make sure you do it in one shot. Like a pro.”

“Like a pro,” Caruso repeated softly, his mind still whirling with the job he’d just been given, some part of it still not sinking in.. that it was Sara.

“You got a problem, Vinnie?”

Caruso felt his whole body as something immovably heavy. “What?”

“You got a problem with the job?”

With enormous effort Vinnie managed to shake his head. “No,” he answered quietly.

“Good, ’cause when it’s done, you bring the empty casing back to me, understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Caruso said softly.

“That’s like her head, Vinnie. That’s like you bring me back that cunt’s fucking head.”

“Yes, sir,” Caruso repeated.

Labriola placed his hands on either side of Caruso’s neck, drew his head forward, and kissed him on both sides of his face.

Caruso felt the rough dry lips and scratchy stubble, smelled the odd, revolting sweet and sourness of the Old Man’s breath.

“You’re like a son to me, Vinnie,” Labriola whispered.

Caruso curled his fingers tightly around the cartridge, squeezing out all hope of refusal. “A son,” he said.