Thomas Cook - Peril

Labriola whirled around, marched to the small table beside the sofa, yanked open the drawer, plucked out a single bullet, and carved something onto its metal casing with a small pocketknife.

“Put out your hand,” he told Caruso.

“I don’t know if this is-”

“Put out your hand,” Labriola commanded.

Caruso did as he was told, then felt the cold weight of a single thirty-eight cartridge drop into his open palm.

“Look at it,” Labriola said.

“Mr. Labriola, I don’t think I-”

“Look at it!” Labriola screamed.

Caruso glanced at the cartridge, saw that Labriola had scraped the word “cunt” on the casing. He felt his lips open in dreadful understanding, the Big Assignment now suddenly his, but not the kind he’d ever expected or wanted, a bullet in the head of some fucking deadbeat or screwup. He looked at the cartridge, the jagged letters. Cunt. The word screamed in his mind. Sara Labriola.

“You got a thirty-eight, right?” the Old Man asked.

“Yes,” Caruso said in a voice that barely reached a whisper. He could feel his knees begin to buckle, and he knew he had to get control of himself, shore up the crumbling walls, put the initial shock behind him, then take the fatal step. “A thirty-eight.” He closed his fingers around the shell. “Right.”

“You don’t put nothing in it but that one bullet,” Labriola said. “You put in more than one shot, it means you ain’t sure you can do it in one shot. You don’t do that, Vinnie. You make sure you do it in one shot. Like a pro.”

“Like a pro,” Caruso repeated softly, his mind still whirling with the job he’d just been given, some part of it still not sinking in.. that it was Sara.

“You got a problem, Vinnie?”

Caruso felt his whole body as something immovably heavy. “What?”

“You got a problem with the job?”

With enormous effort Vinnie managed to shake his head. “No,” he answered quietly.

“Good, ’cause when it’s done, you bring the empty casing back to me, understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Caruso said softly.

“That’s like her head, Vinnie. That’s like you bring me back that cunt’s fucking head.”

“Yes, sir,” Caruso repeated.

Labriola placed his hands on either side of Caruso’s neck, drew his head forward, and kissed him on both sides of his face.

Caruso felt the rough dry lips and scratchy stubble, smelled the odd, revolting sweet and sourness of the Old Man’s breath.

“You’re like a son to me, Vinnie,” Labriola whispered.

Caruso curled his fingers tightly around the cartridge, squeezing out all hope of refusal. “A son,” he said.

As he ran the water over the towel, he thought of Marisol. Where was she now? he wondered, and the range of possible answers paraded through his mind. He saw her as mere earth, as ash, as smoke, then in wasted but recognizable remains, and finally, at the end of a long series of progressively more vivid mental photographs, he saw her waiting in some other world, dazzlingly beautiful as she lifted her arms toward him. He remembered the joyful relief that had broken over her face as he told her that it was over, that he’d confronted the man who sought her, forced him to relent, and so knew absolutely that she was safe.

But Lockridge had not relented. Instead, he had gone back to Henderson and reported everything Stark had told him, then listened to the grim instruction and steeled himself to obey it, All right, we do it tonight.

The towel was soaked with water, and as he walked toward the man tied to the chair, Stark heard its heavy drip splatter against the concrete floor. It was a method he’d used only once before, and it had worked quickly. Only one application and Lockridge had given him Henderson’s name, then pleaded with Stark to let him live.

“Who sent you?” he asked as he stepped over to the man in the chair.

The man began to shake despite the fact that he was clearly trying to control it, a futile effort Stark could see in the white-knuckled grip of the hands to the metal arms of the chair.

“I want his name.”

The man was shaking so fiercely, the metal chair rattled with his convulsions, and Stark marveled at the way the human body reacted to terror. The jerking head, the legs racked in violent spasms, the clawing fingers, all of it orchestrated by small, childlike whimpers.

He placed his hand on the naked shoulder, and the man jerked away as if a red-hot iron had been pressed against his skin.

“Are you Mortimer’s friend?” Stark demanded. “Or do you just work for Mortimer’s friend?”

He took the picture Mortimer had brought in the packet from his “friend” and held it before the man in the chair.

“You see this woman? Who’s looking for her?”

Who’s looking for her?

He heard the question but had no way to answer it. Mortimer? Was that a real person or someone the silver-haired man had made up?

“Who are you working for?” the man asked.

So far the man had not actually hurt him, but he knew that he was going to because the darkness and the fear and the long hours of being strapped to a chair hadn’t worked, and so the next step had to be taken.

The next step would be pain.

Suddenly he felt his body as something other than himself, the cage that held his soul. It was his body that would betray him, his body that would recoil at whatever was done to it and finally force him to say the name the voice demanded.

“Who are you working for?”

He wanted to answer, but he knew that it would do no good. It would be like answering his father when his father was drunk; it would only inflame him, egg him on to something worse than just yelling.

“Who are you working for?”

The name wailed like a siren in his mind, loud and jangling and demanding to burst from his lips.

Tony.

Just one name and it would be over. One way or the other it would be over.

Tony.

He wanted to say it. His body wanted him to say it. But what would happen then? He didn’t know. Nor did he know who the silver-haired man worked for, or what, exactly, he was after. He knew only that he wouldn’t tell him anything, and that by this silence he would protect Tony, and maybe Sara too.

He felt the wet towel cover his face, the silver-haired man behind him now, tightening it so that the wet drew in against his mouth and nose. He sucked at the cloth and tasted warm, salty water, sucked again, and felt the air constrict so that he could get only half a breath. He jerked his head right and left, but with each movement the cloth only tightened until half a breath became little more than a fruitless sucking at the wet, thick cloth. The pain began in his chest and seized upward like a sharp tool raked across the tender inner folds of his throat. His vocal cords throbbed and his tongue caught fire and the raw meat of his flesh hissed and boiled until his body suddenly convulsed and he felt the pulpy inside of himself like a gorge in his throat, rising like lava into the red cavern of his mouth, filled now, and spewing, but still locked inside by the suffocating cloth.

Then he felt the cloth go limp and drop from his face and the steaming vomit that filled his mouth spewed out and dripped in a warm, sticky stream down his naked chest and over his bare, trembling legs.

“Who are you working for?”

Tony’s name leaped like a flame in his brain and rose like a boil on his flesh and shook like a tattered shroud in the retching gasp of his breath, but still he did not speak.

He sat in the diner and played it over and over again in his mind, the way she’d come down the stairs, glancing both ways, like a frightened bird. Even so, he hadn’t been sure until he’d stepped right up to her, gotten a good look, compared it with the picture he’d seen, and made the positive ID.