But what life had she wanted? she asked herself now. The answer was obvious and absurd. She had wanted the Big Happy Ending, the one where she wound up a Big Name Singer, but also a wife and mother, a perfect life.
She glanced about the cramped little room where that long pursuit had finally landed her. She considered how little she had, how reduced her prospects, and these bleak considerations led her to decide that she would meet Abe at the restaurant, sing a few songs at the bar, because, when you looked at the way things were, what did she have to lose?
Nothing, she thought. So if on one of the Village streets below, tonight or on some other night, the little man in the black hat came up behind her and put a bullet in her head, so be it, since no matter how you added it up, that Big Happy Ending was well beyond her now.
MORTIMER
Shit, Mortimer thought. He’d blown it, and he knew he’d blown it. He’d burned his cover, clued Abe in to the fact that he knew something, and worse, tipped him off in such a way that made him hang on to that fucking gun.
Okay, so, what now? Mortimer labored to put two and two together. Abe had the gun. Caruso was set to show up at the bar. Caruso might try to strong-arm the woman. If he did, Abe would try to stop him.
For a moment Mortimer saw guns blazing, glass shattering, bullets tearing into wood and upholstery… or worse.
The only way to go at it now, he decided, was to screw the deal, and the key to that had to be Stark.
He whirled around and rushed down the street, his short, stocky legs pumping frantically, until he stopped at Stark’s door, rang the buzzer, waited, heard no response, then rang a second time.
The door opened and Stark faced him squarely.
“I need to talk to you,” Mortimer said.
Stark stood before him like a high stone wall.
“I know you’ve got a guy in there,” Mortimer told him.
“What do you want, Mortimer?”
“You think I put that guy on you,” Mortimer said. “But I didn’t. I made a bad deal. I ain’t saying I didn’t do nothing bad. But I didn’t put that guy on you.”
“Who did?”
Mortimer knew that the moment had arrived when he could no longer lie to Stark. The deal was blown, every goddamn bit of it. “The woman you’re looking for, her name is Sara Labriola. It’s her father-in-law that’s looking for her, a guy named Leo Labriola. Not some friend of mine, like I told you. The guy you got in there, he works for Labriola’s son. He don’t mean to harm the woman, which I know is what you’re thinking.”
A low moan broke the deathly silence. It came from down the corridor, a soft wail behind the black curtain.
“Get him out of here,” Stark said. He opened the door and stepped into the apartment. “Get him out of here now. Then come back.”
Mortimer did as he was told, moving quickly down the corridor, past the curtain, and into a room where he found a man bound to a chair.
“Just a second,” Mortimer said as he loosened the plastic cuffs.
“Who are you?” the man asked weakly.
Mortimer gathered up the man’s clothes and helped him dress. “I’m getting you out of here now,” he said.
The man looked at him blearily.
“You got a car?” Mortimer asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll walk you to it.”
The man shook his head. “I don’t think I can-”
Mortimer placed his hand firmly on the man’s back and urged him forward. “Walk, goddammit!”
They walked outside, then like a sober friend escorting a drunk one, they staggered to the parking lot where the man had left his car.
“Keys,” Mortimer said.
The man sunk his hands into the pockets of his trousers and rummaged around until he found them.
“Get in,” Mortimer said as he unlocked the door and yanked it open.
The man slumped down behind the wheel. “What’s… what’s-”
“Everybody’s fine,” Mortimer assured him.
The man looked at him doubtfully.
“Everybody’s fine,” Mortimer repeated. He grasped the man’s shoulder with affectionate respect. “You done good,” he said quietly. “I seen guys break, but you done good.”
The man nodded heavily. “You’re sure… everybody’s…”
Mortimer nodded. “Go home,” he said, then watched as the man pulled himself into the car, hit the ignition, and headed north up the avenue. At the far corner the car took a right, moving east now, toward the river. One problem down, he thought, but plenty more to go.
ABE
He couldn’t believe he’d actually done it, drawn Mortimer’s gun from the desk and dropped it into his jacket pocket. He wasn’t even sure why he’d done it, save that something in Mortimer’s manner had alarmed him. Normally, he would have called the cops, but in this case, what would he have told them? Hey, fellas, there’s this woman I like and we’re going out to dinner tonight, so, would you mind sending a couple of guys in flak jackets and packing Uzis over to this little bistro on Bleecker?
The other option would have been to leave the gun in the desk, but at the fatal moment, as he’d stood thinking it all through, he’d suddenly seen Samantha, her eyes filled with terror, a guy coming toward her, and known absolutely that if he allowed her to be taken from him in such a way, two things would happen. First, he would never see her again. Second, he would never look at his own face in the mirror without disgust. It was one thing to live in fear of losing money or a friend, of losing your health or losing your youth. One way or another, you would lose all those things anyway. But while you lived, you could not fear yourself, fear that you were nothing.
He reached the restaurant and went inside. He’d picked the place carefully, a small French restaurant just off Grove Street. It had lace curtains on the windows, and the square tables were placed at sufficient distance from each other to encourage quiet talk. That was, in fact, exactly what the restaurant guide had said, that it was a place where a man and a woman could actually hear each other talk. The lighting was soft, with candles on each table that gave off such a sweet romantic glow that as he waited at the table in the back, Abe wondered if, perhaps, the room was too romantic. After a few moments of deliberation, he decided that it definitely was, but that it didn’t matter because he’d already signaled his state of mind by putting on crisp new trousers, a white shirt, tie, jacket, all of which made him feel not just dressed but costumed.
And so he stood up, stripped off his jacket, and hung it loosely over the back of his chair. Then he unknotted his tie and rolled it up and stuffed it in his jacket pocket. The final touch was rolling his sleeves up to the elbow. There, he thought, what you see is what you get.
A waiter approached. He was dressed in pressed black trousers and a short white jacket. “May I get you a drink, sir?”
“No,” Abe told him. “I’m waiting for someone.”
She arrived a few minutes later, wearing a black cocktail dress that looked new. She’d added a string of pearls, too, and black pumps. Her hair fell in a dark wave to her shoulders. As she moved toward him, shifting among the tables, he thought that in all likelihood he would never breathe again.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said as she swept up to him.
“You’re not late.”
She glanced about a little nervously, like a woman who hadn’t been alone with a man in a long time. “It’s very nice,” she said as she sat down. “Is it a favorite spot?”
“I picked it from a book.”
“Really? Why this place in particular?”