Eddie gave no answer.
“So we’re clear on this?” Caruso asked.
“Yeah.”
Caruso rose and motioned Eddie to follow him outside. They walked to Caruso’s car and got in. “Okay, Eddie, here’s the deal.” In the car’s shadowy interior, Caruso’s eyes gleamed eerily. “There are two guys could be looking for Tony’s wife. I ain’t sure which one. There’s a guy runs a bar on Twelfth Street in Manhattan. Morgenstern. It could be him, but I don’t think so. The other guy lives in Chelsea, 445 West 19 Street. Right off Ninth Avenue. You pick.”
“The bar guy, you don’t think it’s him looking for Sara?”
“My guess, no.”
“Okay.” Eddie offered his hand. “I’ll keep an eye on the other one.”
“Up to you,” Caruso said with a light shrug.
“Yeah, okay, the other one. Chelsea.”
“Good enough,” Caruso said. “I only seen the guy once. Fifties, I’d say. White hair. Tall. Thin.” He grasped Eddie’s hand. “One thing, though,” he added. “Whatever you find out about this fuck, you gotta let me know.”
“Yeah, sure,” Eddie said. He drew his hand back, but Caruso held on to it.
“I mean it, Eddie,” Caruso warned. “This is business, and you tell me you’re going to keep me posted, you gotta do it.” He released Eddie’s hand. “You don’t, then favors, friendship, that’s all in the shitcan now.”
SARA
She sat across from him in a booth at the back and listened as he detailed the terms. The basic salary was decent, and she’d get a piece of the music charge, and even better, a piece of the bar, which she knew was more than fair. They never liked to give a piece of the bar, and she couldn’t remember ever having been offered it until now. But here this guy was, giving her a piece of the bar, and yet, as she listened, the cold, hard truth kept pressing against her mind, the fact that she simply couldn’t do it, couldn’t take the offer, the whole thing was impossible.
“So, what do you think?” he asked.
She had to tell him and she knew it. She had to tell him right now that she’d made a big mistake, that she couldn’t possibly take the job, this great deal he was handing her. She had to tell him that she’d been taken in by her own pathetic fantasy of being a singer again, even stupidly blurted out her old stage name, and that now she was sorry, really sorry, that she’d wasted his time.
“Samantha?”
Okay, she thought, I’ll do that. I’ll tell him that Samantha Damonte is a phony name, that I’m married and on the run, and that the only job I could possibly take would be one I could hide behind, a job in the back or in the basement.
“Does it sound fair?” Abe asked.
“Fair?” she asked weakly.
“Is there something else you want?”
She shook her head at how crazy she’d been to let herself get caught up in this fantasy that she could return to a singing career, erase Tony and his father, take any kind of job other than one she could crawl into and pull over her head like a thick blanket. A singer? Ridiculous. Even in a little bar like Abe’s, the singer’s name and photograph would be taped on the window or the door, her face for the whole world to see.
“I mean, we could… negotiate a few things,” Abe said.
She imagined Vinnie Caruso or some other of Labriola’s thugs seeing her picture, reporting what he’d seen to the Old Man. She could see Labriola’s smile, feel the wrath sweep over him, his desperate need to find her. She knew that he would stop at nothing to accomplish this, and on that thought she realized that she had now put this guy in danger just because she’d come into his place, sang a song, and been offered a job she couldn’t possibly take. The stark nature of her circumstances swept over her in a shivering wave, the terrible truth that she was not only in danger herself, but like some Long Island version of Typhoid Mary, infected everyone she touched.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She could feel his gaze like a hand, pressing her back to the wall. “Yeah, sure.”
“So, what do you think? Sound good, the deal?”
It sounded better than anything she could have imagined, but she knew no way to accept it. “It’s a very good deal,” she said quietly.
“So?”
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
He looked at her quizzically. “Can’t what?”
“Take the job.”
He leaned forward, his eyes very intent. “Why not?”
She began gathering her things. “I can’t.” She felt her own sudden frenzy, the desperate clawing of her fingers as she reached for her purse.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“Hide,” she answered before she could stop herself.
“From who, what?”
She was on her feet, turning, the door of the bar before her now like an escape hatch.
“For how long?” he asked.
She looked at him, the word chilling her spirits with its fatality. “Forever,” she said.
DELLA
Her mother poured the coffee, then sat down. “So, how’s Mike?”
“Fine,” Della said. She wiped a scattering of crumbs from Nicky’s mouth.
Mrs. DaRocca smiled. “They all like graham crackers. You liked them. Your brother.”
Della nodded crisply. “You heard from Chuck?”
“Not in a couple weeks,” Mrs. DaRocca said. “He’s got a new girlfriend. When he has a new girlfriend, he forgets to call.”
Della thought of her kid brother, remembered his tendency to mischief, the way she’d always tried to pull him out of whatever trouble he got himself into. She wished he were home now rather than on some army base out west, and so unable to help her, or even give advice. Unnecessarily, she brushed again at Nicky’s mouth, then glanced at her mother, recognized the look in her eyes.
“You and Mike having trouble,” the old woman said.
It was not a question, but a declaration, and for a moment Della thought it might be easier if it were true. Married trouble stared you in the face. There were ways to deal with it. A priest. A counselor. With married trouble, there was a line of defense, a method for dealing, maybe even a solution somewhere down the road.
“Another woman?” her mother asked.
“No, Ma,” Della said. “Nothing like that.”
“Money?”
“No, Ma,” Della repeated. She started to draw Nicky into her lap.
“Leave him where he is,” Mrs. DaRocca snapped.
Della obeyed instantly, like a little girl.
“Look me in the eye and tell me nothing’s wrong,” the old woman demanded.
Della knew she couldn’t do that.
“It’s not you, is it? You’re not cheating on Mike?”
“No!” Della cried indignantly. “Ma!”
The old woman leaned forward. “So what is it, Della?”
There was no escaping her, and Della knew it. Her only hope was to come up with a story her mother would believe. “It’s my neighbor,” she began, making it up as she went along. “His wife left him. He came over. He thought I might know where she went.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
“So, how come you’re upset about this?”
She shrugged, thought fast. “I don’t know. You just get to thinking, you know, about… things.”
“What things you thinking about, Della? This ain’t got nothing to do with you, so what things you thinking about?”
She was like a crab, Della thought, her mother. Once she grabbed on to something, she never let go. “You know, how a person can live with a person and maybe not know… anything. That’s the way it is with this guy.”
“What guy?”
“My neighbor. He didn’t have any idea she was going to leave him.”
“Like he’s the first,” Mrs. DaRocca said with a laugh.
“Anyway, it makes you think.”
The old woman waved her hand. “It makes you think because you’re a worrier, Della. Always worrying about something.”
“Yeah, okay,” Della said, hoping to drop the subject.
But this only made her mother more intent. “Mike, he comes home every night, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you, you make dinner. You see everything’s clean. The other stuff, you know, private. That’s okay too, right?”