Headstone City (23 page)

They walked the rutted paths they knew so well, no different than going to the bakery or the butcher shop. Instead of passing your neighbors on the street, you wandered by the weathered, eroded faces of granite seraphim and martyrs.

Dane felt himself drifting back to his childhood, the pull always there. Grandma Lucia had to pull him closer so he didn't run into the peaked headstones and jagged tree trunks. They stepped together over a gnarled clutch of wildflowers growing defiantly along the curb.

Johnny Danetello, he's waiting for his death to find him.

The swords of the archangels were painted fiery red in your catechism books, but it didn't burn like that pink hair.

“That dead one, she still bothering you?” his grandmother asked.

“Not so much lately. You still dreaming of her?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, the pocketbook swinging, catching Dane painfully in the ribs. “The other one.”

“JoJo?”

“I only wish.”

“So which, then?”

“The one who's buried nearby her . . . what's his name, the Jewish fishmonger?”

“Aaron Fielding.”

“So pushy, how he fights his way in.”

“Do you know why?”

“Not yet. I don't like him doing that. Where's it say I have to put up with that? I refuse to listen. He wants my attention, he can go about it by showing some manners. This is how it's done? They want you to notice, so they just bully right in?”

Next time, Dane thought, I'll make sure I make the time for him. These dead, they'll take you right down with them if you turn a deaf ear.

The smooth thrum of a finely tuned engine made them both look to the narrow roadway. Grandma swung her chin and let out a prim grunt of dissatisfaction.

Phil Guerra's '59 sky-blue Caddy drew up beside them. The Magic-Mirror acrylic lacquer finish blazed in the sunlight and almost managed to snap Dane's attention from his grandmother's hair.

“It looks like a rocketship with those
pazzo
fins on it,” Grandma said.

“It's supposed to.”

“You men, every one of you likes this thing, but I say it's ugly. You ever decide to boost cars again, you should start with that one.”

“I think I just might,” Dane told her.

“Ah,
Jesu,
when's he going to get rid of that rug? Like something you keep at the front door to wipe your feet on.”

Phil parked up ahead, near Dane's parents' graves, and waited while Dane and Grandma walked the rest of the way down the path. Phil opened the door and got out, wearing aviator glasses, his caps too white in the middle of that artificially tanned face. He acted like he was leaning back against the car, but Dane noticed he wasn't really touching it. Looking cool but afraid to mar the shine.

“This one's wife,” Grandma whispered. “She always smells like gin and she cheats at bingo.”

When Dane was a kid he used to go to the bingo parlor with her all the time. The biggest payout was something like $25. “How the hell do you cheat at bingo?”

“She tries her best. Yells out ‘Bingo!' and half the time the numbers don't check out. She disrupts the game. She's always talking, gossiping, bothering the other players. Butting into everyone's business, looking at their boards. It's a mental assault, what that woman does. A psychological tactic.”

Jesus, Dane thought, these old ladies take their shit very seriously.

He stood close to her, feeling the stolid weight of seventy-eight years of firmness and consistency. She took his hand and squeezed it. The fact that her father, husband, and son had all died in the line of duty seemed a fact of duration. As if her endurance drew murderers to try their hand against her blood. The death of cops hovered around her, the way it did around Phil Guerra, the man who'd killed Dane's dad.

Under her breath she said, “When you start moving you don't stop until it's finished. You can do it. Understand me?”

“What?”

Look at how much you're still a little boy. Walking and holding your grandmother's hand, feeling small in the eyes of Uncle Philly.

Dane had a moment where he thought maybe he'd missed out on the anniversary of one of his parents' deaths. Or maybe forgotten a birthday. Was visiting their graves so important today? Dane looked at his grandma and she was smiling with a false geniality. She said, “Nice to see you, Phil.”

“I stop by when I can, Lucia. It's good to remember.”

“Yes, it is.”

“My own mama taught me that.”

“A kind and decent woman,” Grandma said.

“I visit her and my dad when I can. Some of the rest of the family.” He sniffed. “Cold today.”

“It'll be a bad winter.”

“That's why me and Mabel are going to Florida. I'm getting out. We've been here too long.”

Dane looked into his grandmother's face, wondering if this was why she'd brought him here. To listen to this one little fact about Phil leaving. Telling him in her way that the clock was ticking. You have to take him out soon if you're going to do it. Before he finally escapes.

You'd think you'd have fewer questions the older you got, but it only seemed like you wound up with more. One leading into another.

They stood there and prayed in front of his parents' graves, his grandmother muttering in Italian. While Dane had his eyes closed, Phil put his arms around him. Drew him in close, pressed his cheek to Dane's the way the Mafiosi in the fifties would kiss somebody right before they punched his ticket.

“I miss them,” Phil whispered.

A wedge of hate snapped loose inside Dane's body and lodged in the back of his head. He thought of how easy it might be to reach over and grab your partner's gun, hold it up to his temple, and pull the trigger. No brawling, no real force necessary. One swift motion and all the brains go out the other side, you don't even get any blood on your slacks.

You stared at the graves and the graves stared back.

“I'll drive you both home,” Phil said, showing those teeth.

Dane thought his grandmother would shrug off the offer, but she said, “
Grazie, va bene.
This wind, my arthritis is acting up.”

So now Dane had to watch his grandmother clambering into a '59 Caddy, squeezing herself into the back because she'd never sit in the death seat. Whenever Dane drove her someplace, she'd perch directly behind him, talking in his ear the entire time.

But this was different. She relaxed and stared out the window while Phil Guerra drove up through Wisewood and out the gates, making a wide left for the Danetello house without slowing down or looking both ways. They cut off an oncoming Miata and the blaring horn made Phil giggle.

Halfway up the block, he pulled to the curb in front of the house and put his hand on Dane's leg, gripping pretty hard. Dane got the point and didn't get out of the car. Grandma must've seen the move. She shoved the seat forward and crushed Dane against the dash while she climbed out. He grunted, staring into the dust that had gathered there and thinking, Christ, it's never easy.

“I'm going to talk to Johnny a little longer,” Phil said.

“You sure you don't want to come in for coffee and
biscotti
?”

“I wish I could, Lucia, but I need to get home soon.”

“Say hello to the wife for me.”

“I'll do that.”

“Always nice to see her at bingo!”

Phil drew away from the curb without checking his mirror and nearly took out a Chinese delivery kid on a bicycle. The kid screamed and almost flopped off the bike but managed to keep from going down.

Phil looked over and stared through the yellow lenses of the aviator glasses. The hell kind of statement was he trying to make wearing those things? “It true that you and Big Tommy Bartone had a shoot-out in a hospital in Bed-Stuy?”

“No,” Dane said.

Phil was connected and had the story down. Big Tommy wouldn't have lied about the specifics, not even to save his ass. He'd play it up that Dane had spent time in the army, knew all kinds of Special Forces moves. He had a reputation firm enough to bear up under the brunt of that, and it would make the rest of the crew that much more reluctant to deal with Dane.

“It's not true? That's all anybody's been talking about in Headstone City the last couple days. You're saying it's a bunch of lies?”

“It wasn't a shoot-out. I got the drop on him and let him go.”

“That was stupid! He'll just come at you twice as hard next time.”

“I think we reached a general understanding.”

“Which was?”

Dane still didn't know where Phil fit into it all. Sometimes you had to make yourself extremely clear so nobody misunderstood your position on a particular issue. “That I'd kill him if he took another run at me.”

Phil cut loose with a jolly laugh, genuinely tickled. It almost made Dane smile. He hadn't heard the man's honest laughter in years. Phil touched him on the knee. “You think that'll scare him off?”

“It doesn't matter. If he tries again, I'll clip him.”

“And anybody else who makes a run at you?”

“Yeah, and anybody else.”

“You've got a dangerous view of the world, Johnny. I don't know how you've survived this long. Acting like everything is a joke. A silly game.”

He probably did, Dane knew, but it was the only way to make it through the day.

They circled the area, and Phil drove past his own house, like he might be checking to see if his wife was on the front step making a nasty face. Waiting for him, expecting him home to clean out the garage. He circled Wisewood and drove under the highway, jamming the brakes to avoid hitting other cars, cruising through intersections just as the lights turned red. Talk about dangerous.

“You shouldn't be hanging around this part of the neighborhood, Johnny.”

“You already told me that.”

“It's not the safest place for you.”

“You said that too.”

“Did I?”

“Yeah. Relax yourself about it. Nobody's going to get the drop on me.” Dane thought that maybe Phil had fallen back into his cop role, reading his script to the punks on the street. He seemed a little lost, unsure of where he was supposed to be now. No longer a cop, no longer a real player. Sitting comfortably in the pocket of the Don, but only because he was a neighborhood boy and was content to play fetch.

Phil took the next turn so sharply they wound up bumping over the curb. Dane reached into the glove compartment and pulled out Phil's thick glasses. “How about you take off those aviators and put these on now.”

“I see fine.”

“Really, you might at least consider it. You don't have to wear them all the time. Maybe just now and again, you know? On cloudy days. At night.”

“I don't need them.”

Dane put the glasses back, waiting for whatever was going to happen next.

Phil started to screw around some more. He honked the horn and waved at people on the street. They stared at him in terror. Dane tried hard not to fidget but all he wanted to do was grab hold of the wheel, show him how to really groove with a '59 Caddy.

“I've got some money I could give you,” Phil said. “It might help you to make a fresh start. So you can get away from here.”

“Where'd you get the money?”

“I earned it on the job. It's not much. Maybe five grand. But enough for you to have a stake and move to a new city. Somewhere warm.”

Dane still couldn't come to a decision on where Phil stood. The man was actually much more perplexing than he should be. Was Phil trying to get rid of him because he realized Dane knew what had really happened to his father? Or because he had orders from the Montis to make a show of friendship?

“Just think about it,” Phil told him, and pulled up in front of Grandma's house again.

Dane looked at him and asked, “Where were you that night, Phil? When my mother died.”

Phil scowled, his lips tugged back in a near pout. “What do you mean?”

Some guys could play dumb with a real tact and delicacy, and then others, they just looked at you, frowning, trying to make it seem like your question made no sense.

“I phoned you from the hospital. I called the precinct, remember? You were supposed to come by at the end of your shift, but you never showed up.”

It didn't really matter, but Dane couldn't control his need to confront the man and hear some kind of answer. It should all be secondary to hearing him admit to killing Dad, but he'd always known his priorities were fucked.

“You accusing me of something?” Phil asked, his eyes appearing jaundiced behind those lenses.

“I'm asking a question.”

“Well, I don't like it.”

“I didn't think you would.”

“You got something to say, you just say it.”

“I already did. I want to know where you were that night.”

“Who the hell do you think you are? Asking me that! In my car! In my Cadillac while I'm driving. After I just been to the graves of your parents! And you're asking me that? You got something to say to me? You accusing me of something? This I want to hear! This I really want to hear!”