“So, anyway, like I said. I see you give Morty the envelope and you pull away, and so I follow him and he starts walking downtown.”
Labriola kept his eyes on the road as he steered the Lincoln off the Henry Hudson Parkway and headed east along the Cross Bronx Expressway.
What, Caruso wondered, could he possibly be thinking? One thing he knew, that whatever it was, it wasn’t good. In the few days since Tony’s wife had disappeared, a strange darkness had settled over Labriola. It was like a stain that seemed to sink ever deeper into his mind. It was thick and black, and it kept him grimly focused on finding her to the exclusion of other, more important matters, like who’d paid him recently, or what should be done about Toby Carnucci, who should maybe be slapped around a little, the fucking deadbeat.
“So, anyway, when Morty gets to Twelfth Street, he swings east,” Caruso went on. “He makes it almost to Fifth, then he stops at this fucking bar.”
Caruso had gone over all of this once before, but Labriola seemed to want to hear it all again, as if he were hunting for something, or pondering secret calculations.
“Like I said, the place is called McPherson’s,” Caruso added. “So, anyway, I go to the window and look in. Morty don’t see me, but I see him clear as day. He’s talking to this fucking guy at the bar, who turns out to be the piano player, but like I find out later, also owns the place.”
“Owns the place,” Labriola muttered.
“Owns the place, right,” Caruso said. “So, okay, like I said, I figure this is maybe Morty’s hangout, you know, that maybe he’s a regular, so I wait and he has a couple of drinks and I don’t see he ever pays a nickel, and him and the other guy are talking away, and then they stop, and Morty gets up and heads for the door. So I run across the street ’cause I don’t want this fuck should see me watching him, and he comes out and the same guy is with him. And right there on the street, Morty gives this guy the envelope, which I figure is the same envelope you give him when he had that meet with you.”
“You seen him pass the envelope to this other fucking guy?” Labriola blurted out with a sudden leaping virulence. “With your own eyes, you seen it?”
“With my own eyes.”
Labriola glanced out the window and surveyed the neighborhood the expressway had destroyed. “You ever live in Tremont?”
“No,” Caruso answered.
“That fucking Jew tore it down,” Labriola said bitterly.
“Jew?”
“That fucking Moses.” Labriola continued to stare wistfully out the window. “It was like Arthur Avenue still is. A real neighborhood. But that fucking Jew tore it down to build this piece of shit.”
“What piece of shit?”
“This ugly fucking road is what.”
“Oh.”
Labriola’s face contorted. “Somebody should have put a bullet in that fucking kike.”
Caruso said nothing. Since he had nothing to add to this latest outburst, his only choice was to wait it out, just sit tight and let Labriola chew on whatever he was chewing on until he swallowed it.
“That’s when I moved to Brooklyn,” Labriola said. “That’s when I knew the Bronx was finished.” He shook his head disconsolately. “Tremont,” he said mournfully. “Tremont was beautiful in them days, but that fucking Jew tore it all down.” He suddenly turned from the window and leveled his gaze on Caruso. “A bullet in his head, that’s what he needed.”
Caruso stared at Labriola, utterly baffled by the Old Man’s sudden interest in his old neighborhood, but heartened that he was thinking in such terms, moving perhaps toward the Big Assignment, maybe to whack Toby Carnucci, the stupid bastard, or better yet Batman, the arrogant fuck, if the guy with the book really was Batman, which he still didn’t know for sure but was beginning not to care, since whacking the guy with the book would feel great whether he was Batman or not.
“Sometimes a bullet is all that can do the job,” Labriola said. “Am I right, Vinnie?”
Caruso smiled broadly. “You’re dead right, Mr. Labriola.” He saw that his answer pleased the Old Man, and so he added, “You ask me, a bullet in the head is too fucking good for some people.”
“Too fucking good, Vinnie,” Labriola repeated.
Caruso cautiously returned to the matter at hand. “So, anyway, I figured I knew who Batman was, you know?”
“Batman?”
“The guy Morty works for. That’s what I call him.”
“Why you call him that, Vinnie?”
“ ’Cause he’s all mysterious and shit.”
“Oh.”
Caruso waited for Labriola to add his own comment, but the Old Man said nothing.
“Anyway,” Caruso began again, “anyway, at first I figure Batman must be the guy at the bar, on account he give the envelope to him, you know? But then, Morty don’t go straight home after meeting this guy. He goes to Chelsea. Meets another guy. And not only that, he gives something to this guy too. An envelope.”
Labriola looked at Caruso intently. “You see my problem here, don’t you, Vinnie?”
Caruso blinked.
“You only know one place where that guy works.”
“What guy?”
“That fucking piano player you’re talking about.”
Caruso stared at Labriola without expression.
“Work. That ain’t a good place. It’s the same like I only know where a guy lives. If I want to pop some fuckhead, and I only know where he lives, then I got to pop him with maybe Mrs. Fuckhead sitting there, maybe with a couple little pint-sized fuckheads running around.”
Caruso nodded. “So you-”
“What?” Labriola snapped.
“So, you’ve decided to pop this guy?” Caruso asked.
Labriola glared at Caruso. “Did I say that, Vinnie?”
“Well, no… but.”
“But nothing,” Labriola barked. “Put your hands out, Vinnie.”
“Huh?”
“Put your hands out, Vinnie. Far as you can.”
Caruso did as he was told.
“Wiggle your fingers.”
Caruso did.
“That’s how far you look ahead, Vinnie. Just as far as your fucking fingers. But me, I got to look ahead. Like to what I do if this fuck fucks me.”
Caruso started to draw back his hands. “How would he-”
“Keep your hands out there.”
Caruso straightened his arms.
“Wiggle your fingers, Vinnie.”
Caruso wiggled his fingers.
“You’re gonna keep your hands out there like that until you start seeing farther than your fucking fingers. Now, that question you asked me. What was it?”
“I can’t see how he’d fuck you,” Caruso answered cautiously, since he was not at all sure that this was the question Labriola had in mind.
“You can’t see it ’cause you ain’t looking no farther than your fingers.”
Caruso looked at his fingers.
“Here’s how. He don’t do the job. What I do then, Vinnie?”
Caruso hazarded a wild guess. “Well, you… could make him give you your money back.”
“Money?” Labriola bawled. “A guy don’t do a job for me, I don’t want his fucking money. I want him, Vinnie.”
Caruso nodded briskly. “Sure. Right.” He cautiously lowered his hands. “I see what you mean.”
“So what can you tell me about this guy besides where he works?”
“Which guy?”
“The one you told me about. The one in the bar. What else you know about him?”
Caruso remained silent.
“What else you know, Vinnie?” Labriola repeated. “About the guy at the bar or that other guy who maybe is… what’d you call it… Spider-Man?”
“Batman.”
“Yeah, him. What else you know?”
“Well… nothing.”
“That’s right. Nothing. Which is bad, ’cause I need to know about both these assholes,” Labriola said darkly. “You understand, Vinnie? Where they go. Who they see. All that shit.”
“Yes, sir,” Caruso said lamely. “I’ll find out about them.”
“Make sure you do, because whichever one of these fucks is supposed to find that bitch, if he don’t do it, you got to pop him, Vinnie.”
Caruso felt a surge of excitement. “Pop him, right,” he repeated. “I would have to pop him. And I would too. Whatever you say, Mr. Labriola.”
Labriola seemed not to hear him. Instead, he again focused his gaze on the ravaged neighborhood of his youth, staring at the buildings that lay alongside the expressway as if they weren’t really standing, save as the ruins of some long-forgotten war.
For a time, Caruso watched as Labriola continued to stare out the window. Then he drew his gaze away and stared straight ahead, down a road whose twists and turns had wonderfully delivered him into the Old Man’s trust.