“Well what?” the barkeep asked.
“I thought you was gonna tell me where she is, my son’s wife,” the Old Man told him.
“I am,” the barkeep replied casually. Then his eyes froze. “For a price,” he added.
“A price?” the Old Man barked. “You ain’t getting a dime out of me.”
The barkeep shrugged. “I don’t want money.”
“What you want, then?” Labriola asked.
The barkeep looked at Mortimer, then back toward Labriola. “One of those big balls you got,” he said.
Shit, Caruso thought, seeing the slaughter once again, everybody dead, the Old Man standing in the lightly waving reeds of the Meadowlands, sipping whiskey from a bottle as Caruso hauled one body after another from the back of his blue Lincoln Town Car.
Labriola sat back slightly, lifted the gun from the table, and aimed it directly at the barkeep’s head. “You’re one dumb kike,” he said.
Suddenly, Tony leaned forward. “Let’s go, Dad,” he pleaded.
“Go?” Labriola yelped.
“I don’t want to talk to her, Dad.”
Labriola shook his head. “What a pussy you are, Tony.”
“Dad, please, you can’t.”
Labriola whirled around. “Can’t what, Tony?” he asked icily. “What, you giving the orders now? Telling me what I can’t do?” He looked at Caruso. “What do you think, Vinnie, you think maybe I should show this little fuck who’s the boss?” He glanced at each man in turn, his lips curled down in a sneer. “Teach all of you who’s the fucking boss.” He shot his gaze over to Caruso. “Gimme your gun, Vinnie,” he said. His hand shook violently, like a ragged cloth in a tearing wind. “Gimme your fucking gun!” he screamed.
Caruso drew the thirty-eight from his waistband and handed it to Labriola.
Labriola glared at the barkeep. “Let’s start with you, Mr.-Morgenstern.” He spun the chamber. “There’s only one bullet in this fucking thing. You got the balls to pull the trigger?”
“Dad, stop it,” Tony said.
Labriola spun around and cracked the pistol against the side of Tony’s head. “You sound like that bitch wife of yours, Tony.”
Tony lurched backward, his hands to his head, blood seeping through the closed fingers.
Labriola laughed. “Stop it! Stop it!” he repeated in a high, female plea. “That’s all she ever said.”
Tony drew his hands from his head and glared at Labriola. “What are you talking about?”
“Stop it! Stop it!” Labriola whined in the same mocking tone. “Like she thought she was boss.” His eyes gleamed madly. “Like she didn’t know my rule.”
Tony stared at him darkly. “What rule?”
A leering grin formed on Labriola’s lips. “You fuck my son, you fuck me,” he said.
Caruso felt his lips part wordlessly, a terrible vision in his mind, the Old Man, drunk and raging, thudding down a narrow corridor toward Sara Labriola.
“What did you do to her?” Tony asked.
A swirl of notions spun through Caruso’s mind, the Old Man’s stark command that Tony was not to speak to Sara, the word he’d scraped on the shell casing of a thirty-eight, Cunt.
“What did you do to Sara?” Tony demanded. He started to rise but Labriola pressed the barrel of the thirty-eight against his forehead and drew him back down to his seat. “You’re a pussy, Tony,” he sneered. “I’d have done better at a nigger orphanage.” He turned to face the others, the cold look in their eyes, how fully they abhorred him. For a moment he seemed to see himself as they did, a vision that appalled him, so he turned away and settled his gaze on Caruso. “Should I show ’em who’s boss, Vinnie?” he asked quietly.
Caruso thought of the chambered rounds, the dark cathedral where they lay, a fully loaded gun, then of Sara Labriola on her back, helpless, the Old Man pressing down upon her, laying down his rule. You fuck my son, you fuck me.
“Vinnie, should I show ’em who’s boss?” Labriola repeated.
Caruso felt something deep inside tear lose, something sharp and corroded, a long embedded hook. “Yeah,” he whispered, “show ’em, Mr. Labriola.”
Labriola placed the barrel against the side of his head. “I’ll show you who’s the fucking boss,” he sneered.
“Stop it,” Tony cried.
Caruso stared at Tony evenly. “Let him,” he said coolly.
Tony seemed to study him for a moment, concentrated, intent, like a man trying to decipher a secret code.
“Let him,” Caruso repeated.
Tony looked at Labriola, the pistol poised at his head, then back to Caruso, their eyes fixed in cold collusion.
“Let him,” Caruso said a final time.
Labriola peered back and forth from Caruso to Tony, his face now locked in a curious suspicion. “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t,” he taunted.
Tony glanced at Caruso, then turned toward his father. “I didn’t think you had the balls,” he said mockingly.
Labriola’s lips jerked downward in hideous contempt. “Just watch and see, pussy boy,” he said.
The pistol trembled at Labriola’s temple, but still he didn’t fire, and in that interval Caruso saw the barkeep’s hand drop over the side, and shook his head silently, a gesture he knew was full of warning but also of assurance, a gesture that said only, Wait. Then he looked at each man in turn, Stark and Mortimer, relaying the same message.
Finally he leveled his gaze squarely upon Leo Labriola. “Show ’em,” he said.
A dry cackle burst from the Old Man’s lips. “Fucking A,” he cried.
SIX
MORTIMER
As he closed in on his apartment, Mortimer felt a wholly foreign joy wash over him, and he thought it must be the feeling a magician gets when he reaches into the black hole and the rabbit’s there, by God, just like it’s supposed to be, and he pulls it out, and the people can’t believe it, and all he hears in the vast dark room is the thrilling burst of their applause.
So much had gone wrong lately, he recalled, so much fear and dread, the deadly threat that still hung over him but which he’d come to live with, accept as part of his experience, a dark music forever playing in his mind.
But that was the point, wasn’t it? he thought as he entered the elevator and glided up to where he knew he’d find Dottie snoring in front of the television, wrapped in a thick terrycloth housecoat, looking like nothing so much as a huge ball of thick pink twine, just to look the whole thing in the face, shrug it off, and go on.
STARK
Clearly she could not have been more surprised to see him.
“Hello, Kiko.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked him stiffly.
“May I come in?” he asked.
She opened the door silently and he passed her and stood in the small, elegantly appointed living room.
“Did you forget something?” Kiko asked coldly. “Let me guess. Cuff links? Tie clip?”
Stark shook his head.
“So, what, then?” Kiko demanded.
He turned toward her slowly. “A guy pulled a gun on me,” he said.
She couldn’t suppress a brittle laugh.
“No, I mean it.”
“A guy pulled a gun on you?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, fine, so a guy pulled a gun on you.”
“I thought he was going to do it.”
“Kill you?”
Stark nodded. “I’d always thought I wouldn’t care.”
“But you did?”
“Yes. Because at that moment I thought about you.”
She released another short laugh. “Okay, I’ll spring for it. What, Stark, did you think about me?”
He started to answer, but she lifted her hand to silence him.
“No, no. Let me guess. It was my hair, right?”
He shook his head.
“Legs? Tits? Ass? You have to admit, it’s a great ass.”
“No one thing, Kiko.”
“Okay, what? And this better be good.”
The answer came to him so quickly, he knew that it was true.
“That I would miss you,” he said.
Her eyes glistened. “So, you want a drink?” she asked.