Mortimer nodded heavily, the full weight of what he’d feared now falling upon him. “This guy she’s running from. The father-in-law. She say who he was?”
“No,” Abe answered. “She wants to keep me out of it.”
Mortimer drew in a slow breath as he figured the odds that Abe’s girl was the one Leo Labriola was looking for. “Yeah, well, maybe you should do that, Abe,” he said cautiously. “I mean, it ain’t your business, right?”
Abe looked surprised by the advice. “Of course it’s my business.”
“Yeah, but a guy like that, dangerous…”
Abe gave a theatrical wink. “So what if he’s dangerous? Thanks to you, I got a gun, remember?”
Mortimer suddenly felt a slicing pain in his belly.
“Morty?” Abe said. “You look a little-”
“I’m fine,” Mortimer said quickly. He waited for the throbbing to pass, then got to his feet.
“You sure you’re okay?” Abe asked.
“Fine,” he repeated as he turned toward the door. Fucked again, he thought.
SARA
She’d decided on “Someone to Watch Over Me” as her final number, accompanying herself on Lucille’s piano as she rehearsed it by fingering the melody line, then sounding the appropriate chord. She couldn’t get the easy flow of Abe’s accompaniment that way, but she could at least make sure her voice hit the notes. The fact that it had hit them, each and every one of them, gave her a measure of confidence that she could pull it off. After all, she didn’t have to do that much, she told herself, just stand in front of a few people, pretend she was an amateur, see what happened.
She considered running through the songs again but decided not to. What if she didn’t do them as well this time, maybe missed a few notes. That would bring her down, make her less confident than she was at the moment. Besides, a singer could overrehearse. She’d learned that from the old singers she’d known the first time she’d come to New York. You could overrehearse and lose your energy, the fresh face of your act, get every detail of the routine so thoroughly nailed down that it left no room for you to let go, soar, spontaneously take the song to some new, surprising place.
She glanced at the clock. It was three-thirty. Normally, she’d have had to start dinner now, along with finishing up whatever small chores she’d started during the day.
She recalled how she’d made work for herself in the past, creating little jobs to fill her hours. Other wives used alcohol or the occasional affair, but she’d relied on a host of small projects to keep busy. She’d wash the Explorer or clean the pool or hose down the area around it. Tony would have been willing to hire someone to do such things, or even do them himself, but she’d never brought them up. She needed such petty tasks to keep her sane. They were what she did instead of drink or meet a guy at the local motel. For the rest, she’d relied on Della, the talks they’d had as they strolled the neighborhood streets or sat in Della’s kitchen, sipping coffee in the afternoon. It was the only thing she missed, a friend she could talk to.
She picked up the phone and dialed the number.
DELLA
She jumped when the phone rang, and in that instant recognized how deeply it had sunk, the sense of dread that had settled upon her since talking to Tony. If it were Sara, she decided, she would tell her everything, warn her that the Old Man was looking for her, do whatever she had to do to protect her from him.
“Hello.”
“Hi, babe.”
The sound of Mike’s voice, so firm and familiar, filled her with joy, and she wanted only to know that he was safe and happy and would always, always, come home to her.
“Mike,” she blurted out desperately, “are you okay?”
“What?”
She realized Mike had heard the frenzy in her voice.
“What’s the matter, Della?”
“Nothing, sweetheart. I was just thinking about you, that’s all.”
“Thinking about me?”
“Wondering how you were.”
He laughed. “I’m fine.”
“You’d tell me, right, if anything was wrong?”
“Of course I would. Della?”
“Yes.”
“Anything wrong on your end?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Everything’s perfect.”
“Because you sound a little…”
“Mike?”
“Yeah?”
“Could we go out for pizza tonight? All of us?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Good.”
“You’re sure everything’s okay?”
She thought of what she’d done, how she’d talked to Tony, and how she’d tell Sara everything, too, if Sara called. She’d done her duty while at the same time trying to keep Mike and her children safe. A wave of high achievement washed over her, the sense of having looked danger in the eye, maybe even stared it down.
“Everything’s perfect,” she said quietly. “It really is.”
SARA
The line was still busy. She returned the phone to its cradle, glanced toward the window, and reveled in the clear midafternoon air beyond it. She thought of going out, then the dread swept down around her, the fear he might be waiting for her out there, the Old Man or whoever he’d sent to do his work.
But it was a fear she had to put behind her, she decided, and so she lifted her head as if on the shoulder of a bold resolve and headed for the door.
Once outside, she turned right and walked to the corner, where she stopped, peered into the window of a florist shop, and thought of the roses Abe had brought to the apartment, a gesture so sweet, she thought now, that she’d felt herself crumble a little, some of the day’s panic fall away.
“Nice flowers.”
She jumped, then turned to face a small man in a worn suit, his features so dark and gloomy, his voice so oddly cold, she knew absolutely that he was Labriola’s man.
“Nice flowers,” he repeated.
She felt her body stiffen. “Yes.”
“You like flowers?”
She stepped back slightly, her attention entirely focused on the man who peered back at her from beneath the broad brim of a rumpled black hat, his face strikingly melancholy.
“Yes,” she told him. “Yes, I do.”
A thin smile glimmered on the man’s face briefly, then vanished. “Well, have a nice day,” he said.
“Yes, you too,” Sara answered.
The man touched the brim of his hat, then turned and headed in the opposite direction down the street, one shoulder lower than the other, as if bearing an invisible weight.
Sara stood in place until he reached the far corner, then disappeared around it. She wanted to believe that the man was only a Village oddity, a sad figure in his dark suit, but not in the least connected to her or Labriola, just a strange little man, nothing more.
Yes, she told herself, believe that.
She continued on down the street, trying to get the little man in the rumpled hat out of her mind, but his face kept returning to her, superimposed over other faces, Caulfield, Labriola, men she’d fled, men bent on harming her.
At the end of the block she stopped and glanced back down the street, half expecting to see the man in the rumpled hat lurching behind her, or quickly dodging behind a tree to conceal himself.
But she saw no sign of him, no indication that he’d been anything but a sad-faced man who’d commented upon the flowers in the florist’s window. And yet she could not get his image out of her mind, the feeling that he had purposely approached her, as if to get a better look, then lumbered away to call whoever had hired him to find her.
She looked down the street once more, then left and right along the side streets, then up ahead. Again she saw no sign of the man who’d approached her. But again she could not rid her mind of the dark suspicion that she had been found.
CARUSO
Labriola’s voice exploded through the phone. “Get over here!”