Thomas Cook - Peril

“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.

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.

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.

He opened the trunk of the Lincoln, and the sight of Labriola curled up inside it convinced him at last that he was actually dead.

“The boat’s over there,” Tony said as he stepped up beside him.

Caruso nodded. “I guess I loved the guy,” he said quietly, his gaze still fixed on Labriola, the massive body now curiously small.

“He didn’t deserve it,” Tony said. He peered at his father a moment, then added, “You don’t deserve anything you don’t give back.” He looked at Caruso. “Did you know?”

“Know what?”

“About what he did… to Sara?”

Caruso shook his head. “No, I didn’t know about that, Tony.”

“Good,” Tony said.

They hauled the body from the trunk of the car, then across the deserted parking lot and over to Tony’s boat. After that Caruso waited while Tony went into the warehouse and retrieved two cement blocks and a length of chain.

“Okay,” Tony said. “Let’s go.”

Within minutes they were out to sea, the boat’s white wake coiling behind as they made their way across the dark water.

“Sara will probably get in touch with me at some point,” Tony said. “I’ll go from there. If she wants a divorce, I’ll give her one. If she wants to come back, I’ll take her back.”

Caruso nodded. “Whatever you say, Tony.”

A half hour later Tony killed the engine and the boat came to a halt. “Ready?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

They lifted the body and brought it over to the gunwale and eased it down again, so that Labriola looked as if he were sitting silently, head drooped forward, staring at his feet.

Caruso shrugged. “Well, we’re both orphans now.”

“Yeah.”

They heaved the body over the side of the boat, then watched as the cement blocks dragged him down, feetfirst, so that their last glimpse was of his upraised arms, fingers reaching for them.

“If he were alive, he’d really be pissed,” Tony said dryly.

A burst of laughter shot from Caruso. “Sorry,” he said, now trying to get control. “The way you said it… I didn’t mean…” Another burst hit him. “I mean, I could just imagine it, you know, him all pissed off, ‘You fucking bastard, put them fucking shells in that fucking gun…’ ”

The same seizure of laughter now hit Tony. “Did you see his face? That look he had?”

“Oh, he was pissed all right,” Caruso said, the two of them laughing together now, one burst following another in rippling waves.

“Jesus,” Caruso said when the laughter finally faded.

“Yeah.”

“So, what now?”

“We go home,” Tony said.

And so they did, Tony guiding the boat landward where, minutes later, they could see the twinkling lights of the distant shore.

He gave a final glance back toward the bar, turned off the light, and headed out onto the street. At the corner he looked left and right, noted the streets were deserted, drew the pistol from his jacket pocket, and dropped it into the sewer beneath his feet. He wouldn’t need it anymore, and what was the point of returning it to Morty?

He turned left on Sixth Avenue and headed south toward Grove Street, remembering how he’d dropped his hand into his lap, dragged his trembling fingers across his stomach and sank them into the black depths of his jacket pocket, reaching for the pistol. That was the moment when it had come clear to him that there was nothing he wouldn’t do to keep Samantha safe. It was a story he would never tell, he decided. Not to Jake or any of the regulars. And especially not to-her real name surfaced in his mind for the first time and he found that he liked the sound of it, that it gave off a sense of something warm and solid-especially not to Sara.

She sat by the window, her gaze on the deserted street below, and wondered how long it would go well at McPherson’s, how long her voice would hold out, how long before something changed.

She shook her head at how grim her own thoughts were, how all her life she’d reached for the Big Happy Ending. But when you really thought about it, the Big Happy Ending was beyond what anyone could actually expect, and it seemed to her that it was the very fear of not having it that held all other, lesser happiness in peril.