CARUSO
Labriola’s voice seemed to reach through the phone line and slap his face.
“Yeah?”
“I talked to Morty Dodge about the meeting you want with this guy he works for.”
“And?”
“He says his guy needs information.”
“About what?”
“Sara. Things about her.”
“What things?”
“For example, what she did for a living or-”
“She didn’t do a fucking thing.”
“Yeah, okay, but like, where she might have gone. Stuff to get the guy started, that’s what he means.”
To Caruso’s surprise, Labriola did not protest. “I got an idea who knows that shit.”
“Good,” Caruso said. “I’ll pass on whatever you find out.”
“ You’ll pass it on? What about me? What about the meeting?”
“That’s a problem, having a meeting.”
“Why is it a problem, Vinnie?”
“Because the guy, he won’t do it.”
“I’m laying out thirty grand and this fucker won’t meet with me?”
“He never shows.”
Caruso could hear the Old Man breathing raggedly, like the snorting of a bull. He waited for him to speak, and when he didn’t, added, “But Morty’ll meet with you. I told him if it was okay you could hook up at Columbus Circle, two-thirty.”
“But he’s nothing but a gofer,” the Old Man barked. “I don’t deal with no fucking gofers.”
“He’s a little more than that,” Caruso protested. “I mean, the guy trusts him is what I’m saying.”
“So he’s like a sidecar?”
“Sidekick. Yeah, something like that. But more. Loyal. A loyal friend.”
“A loyal friend. You know what a loyal friend is, Vinnie? He’s the other guy you toss into the fucking hole.”
A small, aching laugh broke from Caruso. “That’s good, Mr. Labriola. That’s a good one.”
“I want you to find out who this fucking guy is, Vinnie. I don’t have no ghosts working for me, you understand?”
“The guy, you want me to… what?”
“What I fucking said just now,” the Old Man screamed. “Who is he? I want to know.”
“Yes, sir,” Caruso said weakly.
“So, look, here’s what we do. You set up that fucking meet. Say to this sidecar shithead, sure I’ll have a meet. Then we meet, and we talk, and we shake hands like a couple of asshole buddies, see what I mean? Then I go my way, and the sidecar goes his. And you follow the little shithead all the way to this fucking guy he works for.”
“Yes, sir,” Caruso breathed.
“Understood, Vinnie?”
“I understand,” Caruso said, looking about the cramped office from which he ran the Old Man’s loan-sharking business.
“Okay, so, two-thirty,” the Old Man snapped.
“Yes, sir,” Caruso said, adding the time to a head already full of numbers, loans, payments, due dates, not one of which he had ever written down.
SARA
The Waverly theater was still in the same location, and Eighth Street had the same feel to it, and their familiarity brought small parts of her former life back to her. These parts were nothing she could put her finger on exactly, only the sense that she’d packed up her youth and now she could unpack at least a little of it. Maybe that was why she’d come back to the city. Because it was the closet where she’d first secreted herself, the hole she’d burrowed into, creating an identity to go with her new name.
For a moment she peered at the coffee shop across the street, watching silently as the patrons came and went. If they only knew, she thought. She felt the ghostly grip of Sheriff Caulfield’s hand on her bare shoulder, then other hands, no less ghostly but also no less palpable, the flesh of grasping fingers pressing into her flesh, sour breath in her face, the smell of drunken sweat, a man pushing her into the corn or down a narrow corridor, upright or weaving, dressed as a cop or barely dressed at all. With each memory she felt her own panic rise like a frenzied animal, trapped and panting, clawing its way out.
To keep it in, she raced to the corner, bought a paper, took it to the coffee shop and turned to the classifieds. The first order of business was to find a job, and so she looked for one among the long columns. As she searched, the paucity of her skills, how little she had to offer, grew ever more distressingly apparent. Finally, one job caught her eye. Receptionist. No experience necessary. She could answer a phone, she thought. She could take a message. She knew that thousands of others could do the same, but she hoped that somehow she’d come through the door at just the right moment, and this hope suggested to her just how depleted she was. Her only resource was now little more than a baseless grab for luck.
DELLA
She’d seen the man several times before, been introduced, shaken his hand, but even now his dark eyes seemed so lethal she could easily imagine a deadly acid spewing from them, turning human beings into mounds of glistening flesh.
“Good morning, Mr. Labriola,” she said quietly.
A smile labored to form on Labriola’s mouth, then gave up and curled into a frown. “Mind if I come in?”
Della stepped back and watched as he came into the foyer. He was not a large man, but there was something about him that seemed both huge and dangerous, like a boulder rolling toward you, grim and unstoppable. You either got out of its way, or it crushed you like a bug.
“You seen Tony?” His close-cropped white hair glimmered in the light. “He been over here?”
“No,” Della said.
“Too embarrassed,” Labriola said. “Okay, well, to make a long story short, that wife of his, she dumped him.”
“Oh,” Della said weakly.
“You ain’t heard about it?”
She felt like a deer caught in the crosshairs of a telescopic sight. “Well, I…”
Labriola’s bushy gray eyebrows arched menacingly. “You talked to her?”
So this is the moment, Della thought, this is the moment when the ground suddenly shifts and you find yourself teetering on the edge of a cliff. Her lips parted, but nothing came out, and in that instant of hesitation she saw Labriola’s face turn grim and stony.
“You don’t want to keep nothing to yourself,” he said. “ ’Cause I’m gonna find her, no matter what it takes.”
She heard Nicky cry, and the sound of his needful voice was like a spur gouging at her side. “She called me,” she said, her voice little above a whisper. “The day she… left.”
“Where was she when she called?” Labriola asked.
Nicky was crying loudly now, an insanely demanding scream. “I have to-”
Labriola grabbed her arm and squeezed. “Where was she?”
“I don’t know,” Della answered. “She wouldn’t tell me.”
“What time did she call?”
“I don’t know for sure. Late.”
“And she was already where she was headed?”
“I guess she was. It was tough to hear her.”
“Why?”
Della suddenly realized that she’d given out just that little morsel of information Sara had feared she might. “I don’t know.”
“You said it was hard to hear her.”
“Yeah,” Della said hesitantly.
“Traffic?”
“Maybe that was it,” Della said softly.
“She in the city?”
“I don’t know.” Nicky’s cries were like a screeching bird in her brain. “I need to change my son’s-”