Headstone City (22 page)

A whisper to his left. He turned and listened as a child's muted voice called, “Hallo?”

The greeting barely recognizable. Taking the vague form of a word shoved through a pinhole cut through layers of scar tissue.

Dane looked down to see a girl, maybe twelve years old, touching his wrist. Tufts of coarse gray hair stuck out in odd cusps and notches across her pink scabbed head. Bandages swathed her throat and forehead, and there was hardly anything left of her face.

He couldn't tell if she'd been in a fire or if this was some kind of cancer, chewing her away an inch at a time while the doctors tore more away with their scalpels and radiation. She looked at him with one perfect eye, beautiful in its depth and full of understanding, perhaps even forgiving. The dark angles of her ruined features drew together to form an inexplicable shadow.

She used what remained of her lips to ask, “Are you real?”

It gave Dane some pause. “I'm not so sure anymore. I have my bad days. How about you?”

Something like a tongue prodded forward. She grunted a sound that could've been either yes or no and tried to give him a grin.

However frail life might be, the appearance of it was even more fragile. No matter how closely you looked, you still couldn't tell who was alive and who was dead.

He patted her head and felt the softness of bone beneath all the gauze, the thickness of the scar tissue so much like his own.

They both turned away from each other in the same instant, the girl drifting back to her room as Dane headed farther into the hospital. He came across a visitors' lounge filled with a few chairs, a worn couch, a soda machine, and a pay phone. At the end they tell you to go call any family members who might want to visit one last time. Like you ring them up while they're watching one of their yuppie sitcoms, sitting around in sweatpants, a one-year-old napping in the bassinet, and they'll come charging into the night.

Pounding footsteps resonated up the hall. Dane drew his gun and faded around the corner into the alcove, his back to the wall.

Tommy's leather holsters creaked loudly as he stormed down the corridor, too wired to play it with any tact. They were all losing their cool so easily nowadays. What the hell had happened to everybody?

Dane could feel Big's attitude approaching first, an oppressive aura of anxiety. In the army, Dane's drill instructor used to talk about how some people went out of their way to make their presence known. Without saying a word, without even an odor. But you could pick up on it if you made the effort.

With his .32 still pressed down against his leg, sort of tiptoeing like a little kid does when playing hide-and-seek, Big Tommy Bartone wandered past facing the wrong way.

Dane stuck the barrel of his gun in Tommy's ear and said, “Hey, Big, you really think this was a good idea?”

Tommy's bulk stiffened but the muscles of his face went slack, glad the game was over. Maybe everyone was just getting too old. “Ah, no.”

“You want to tell me what's up with all this Steve McQueen car chase shit? Coming after me out in the middle of the goddamn street?”

“I'm sorry about that, Johnny.”

“I just bet you are, Big. It's a nice car, you should take better care of it. You know how many people we could've hurt? I thought you wiseguys like to keep things quiet, up close and personal.”

“I do.”

“Then, really, man, following me around a hospital? You want we should shoot up a few leukemia patients? Turn the ICU into a fire zone? Come on, what the fuck?”

Tommy held the gun out, a moderate offering. He must've had three other pistols in holsters all over his body, plus the knife. “I got no clue, Johnny.”

“What's that mean? And don't move for your upside-down blade, Big. That shit might look cool but you won't clear it in time.”

“I won't go for it.” None of the smugness there anymore, all of it washed away in a kind of juvenile humiliation. “Listen, everybody, even the Don, knows what happened with Angie was an accident. We know you ain't responsible. But we got no choice, see? An order is an order.”

“Put the pistol away, Big, and keep your hands clear of the other hardware.” Tommy did it carefully, afraid to move his arms. “Now, use your head. You guys really want to be part of a crew run by somebody like that?”

“Not much we can do about it. We signed up for the long haul. We betray the Montis, and nobody else will have us anyway.”

“The Don isn't dead yet. He's old but he's not senile. Why isn't he putting his foot down about stupid moves like this one?”

“He's sick and in a lot of pain. It makes him a little loopy sometimes. He lets Berto run the show any way he likes.”

Dane hadn't expected Roberto's name to come up at all. He figured everybody was really following Vinny's orders. “And Vinny?”

“He spends a lot of time alone. He's playing the violin again, I hear it in the house every once in a while. But on all of this, he don't say much.”

Angelina had told Dane the same thing. Vinny doesn't say anything. The hell was going on? Vinny was taking a backseat while Berto ran the show? Dane couldn't see it.

“And what about Delmare? Even the old school
consigliere
goes along with this sort of crap? He's supposed to be the one with the brains. He tells the family when they're acting
pazzo.
What's going on over there?”

“His brains will be all over his breakfast plate if he doesn't go along with Berto.”

But no, that wasn't a good enough answer. It was the goomba in him talking, a natural tough guy response. “You're scared of him, Big?”

It skinned his ego, being asked a question like that. “I'm not scared of anybody.”

“Then why not put your foot down?”

“I got three kids in college.”

Dane snorted. “You wiseguys, everything you do is for your kids' education. You squeeze a guy's nuts with vise grips, and it's because Tommy Jr.'s gotta take a class on French Renaissance poetry.”

“You're from the neighborhood, Johnny, you know how it is.”

True enough, and maybe that explained everything, and maybe it didn't and never actually would. Dane stared into Big Tommy Bartone's face and remembered how, when he was a kid, he used to see this man strutting down the sidewalk in front of Chooch's with a beautiful woman on his arm, heading for a Lincoln Continental, and think how much he wanted to be like him.

“Where is everybody?” Tommy asked, his eyes weaving left and right. “We been here for fifteen minutes and I ain't seen anybody.”

“Not even the sick kids?” Dane asked.

“Who?”

“Forget it. They're busy. Now, tell me about Vinny's movie plans.”

Tommy wet his lips. “I don't know much about that.”

Dane pressed the barrel harder into Tommy's nose, really working it into his nostril. “Does it always have to be the hard way, Big? Tell me what you do know so we can both go home.”

“Vinny wanted to get back into the drug business, cutting deals with some shithead out in Hollywood.”

“Yeah. Glory Bishop's husband. You know the dink's name?”

“No.”

It was starting to get to Dane, not knowing the guy's name. “And you all just went along with it? After working so long to get out of the drug trade, get everything legit so the feds would get the fuck off your backs?”

“It was a way to get all the way out.”

Dane repeated the line out loud and it still made no sense. “Explain that, would you?”

“If we had to pick up the drug trade a little so we could have the cash flow to invest in some production companies in Hollywood, it seemed like the wise choice. Delmare agreed. We don't need to score all that much coke for these California types, and the cash is easily laundered. It was an okay business proposition. Do a little of the old business so we could invest in a new legitimate one. After a while, we drop the drugs and we're totally set up on the West Coast with new friends, new opportunities.”

“Except the guy, Glory's husband, was already being watched by the feds.”

“They were all over him. I ain't never seen anything like it before, the way they were on him. The idiot was bringing the stuff up from Central America on his own, and the people he was working with were paying off by transporting guns. Down there, they have revolutions like we have garbage strikes. I don't think the feds even cared about the stuff, it was about the weapon shipments in and out of the country.”

Dane's scars began to heat.

The nausea rolled up through his belly and almost made him gag, but he swallowed the sickness down. Icy sweat slithered across his scalp, and his skull started to burn. He tightened the muscles in his legs to control the trembling. He jammed the gun harder into Tommy's face so he'd turn away.

Behind them in the alcove, Dane saw the flickering image of Vinny standing there pulling a cigarette from the pack. He held it out in Dane's direction like he wanted a light. Vinny looked only half-formed, like a child's inaccurate drawing. He moved his mouth carefully so Dane could read his lips.
You're real, all right.

Dane frowned, hoping Vinny would step forward into this particular reality, but he only stood there dissipating, strand by strand, one line after another erased until he was gone.

Games, always with the games. Dane's head cleared. He waved Tommy off with the .38 and said, “I gotta worry about you and a fuckin' drive-by now? Like the
mulignan
gangbangers? That what the Monti crew is down to?”

“No. That's not what I want.”

“Good. Now go back home and tell them you missed, but it's no problem. Johnny Danetello will be visiting soon.”

“I can't tell them that.”

“Say whatever you want, Big, but if you come at me again, I'm going to have to kill you, okay? We clear on that one point, you and me?”

Big Tommy Bartone, who used to be Don Pietro's number one capo, the heaviest hitter, in charge of the dirty work and the shooters, with eyes that used to dance with a kind of insanely happy light whenever blood was spilled, looked at Dane with a thousand-yard stare and nodded.

It made Dane a little sad, seeing that nod, wondering where all the old-time good guys and bad guys had gone.

Tommy started off down the hall, stopped, and turned back. “There's something else.”

“What's that?” Dane asked.

“I don't think Vinny's really mad at you at all. I just think he's out of his fuckin' mind.”

NINETEEN

T
he pink hair like neon fire.

With little grace but full of commitment, Grandma Lucia plodded along, those powerful arms swinging at her sides, the pocketbook really jumping. As if she were heading off to face the village elders who'd forced her to deny the Virgin Mary. How it must still bother her even after seventy years, those wide hands balled into fists. You knew where you stood in the mortal chain when you saw that old woman walking toward the cemetery where your parents were buried. Seeing her like that, you realized how weak you really were down where it counted most.

The brisk wind heaved through town, seeking your broken bones, cooling the metal in your head, the fractures in your skull that would never heal, where your thoughts would always seep.

Grandma stood framed in the front gate of Wisewood, waiting like she was going to catch a bus. Dane pulled up, rolled the window down, and she told him, “Go park the car at the house, we're going to visit your parents.”

“Grandma—”

“Come on, let's go.”

“Why walk?” he asked.

“It's important.”

Maybe it was, he couldn't tell anymore. Besides, he wasn't sure he could drive through the cemetery, and try to buck his pattern around town. “Why?”

“There are things that have to be done.”

“Oh Christ,” he said. He drove down the block and parked the GN in the driveway and jogged back to her. He was tired as hell from working all morning on the limo's dented back bumper.

She stood set like marble. When he got close enough her hand flashed out and grabbed his arm, as if she feared he might run away.

You could forget you were in a cemetery when you walked through Wisewood. The park landscaping made it seem like a retreat where you'd come to read poetry, make chicks, dream about the faces of your children. You became a part of history there, connected to the past of Outlook Park, Meadow Slope, and Headstone City. You became one with the dead, and through you they met the world you helped create.