Headstone City

EIGHTEEN

Dane was in the limo driving aimlessly, stuck at a red light on MacDonough Street in Bed-Stuy, when Big Tommy Bartone pulled up beside him and started shooting.

You had to laugh. All these men, all this firepower, and the Monti family sends its top guy to come after Dane like a carjacker. No style anymore, no finesse, and no need for real balls.

It was a good thing that Tommy hadn't popped anybody personally in about ten years. And when he did do it he'd go for the sweet spot behind the ear. Or use his knife. Him and Joey Fresco, these guys had a thing about knives like they were black ops or Green Berets.

Tommy had chosen a.32 and he didn't know how to aim from any distance. The limo passenger window had been enough to deflect the bullet, giving Dane time to duck low beneath the dashboard. Tommy didn't get out of his car. He sat there and fired three more times, hitting the top of the driver's seat and sending wads of foam flying.

Dane stomped the gas pedal and drilled through the red light. He rear-ended a tan Datsun making a left turn ahead of him, spun the wheel hard, and floored it. Tommy followed along behind.

Dane had just finished dropping off four teenagers who'd rented a suite at the Montauk Manor for off-season rates. Two nervous, young couples who spoke in whispers broken by excited giggling. He envied them their first foray into an adult world. On their own for a few days playing house together.

The girls kept blushing. The boys did their best to look unimpressed with themselves but couldn't quite pull it off. They overtipped Dane without looking him in the eye, and the kids headed up the stone walkway of the resort hotel like they were strutting out of frame at the end of a black-and-white movie.

It got him thinking about what life might've been like without the Monticelli family in his past. Vinny and his violin, the Don and Berto always staring everybody down. Maria in her silk skirts and perfumes imported from Sicily. Angie talking circles around him while he sat there being lazy and dense.

No matter how he imagined it, he figured he would've been just as full of shit madness no matter where or how he'd lived. You're drawn to the things you need, no matter how lethal they might be.

Tommy was driving a '69 cherry-red Boss 429 Mustang, with 375 horsepower and 450 lb-ft. Sounded like it needed a tune-up and a muffler job. He hadn't spent much time waxing the body either. The paint was dull with a couple of rust spots on the hood. Dane's father would've bitten his knuckles thinking of a classic like the '69 'Stang going to waste on a capo who didn't give a damn about the car.

Traffic grew heavier and Dane drifted a little higher on the adrenaline than he wanted to go. A hazy white light invaded the borders of his peripheral vision, cutting left and right while Tommy came on behind him. He let loose a slightly crazed chuckle. He eased in and out of lanes with perfect efficiency, the limo cutting a big enough swath for Tommy to easily follow. This was going to get bad.

So what the hell. Dane cut left and gunned it, shimmying the steering wheel a touch so the limo zagged. It was enough to make Tommy overreact and pull too far to the right, raking against a parked car and tearing off the side mirror. The brutal scrape of metal on metal made Dane grin.

He couldn't figure it out. Why the hell would Big Tommy Bartone keep coming at him, playing out a car chase, of all things? You didn't send a button man after a driver.

They roared through intersections together, and Tommy began to batter at the limo's rear bumper. He was an amateur behind a wheel but aggressive. The jolting crashes made Dane's back teeth hurt and he must've bitten his tongue because his mouth was full of blood. He let his intuitions guide him through the streets, knowing what was going on around him, where he was heading, but distanced from the moment.

So far, they'd been lucky, catching only green lights. Dane maneuvered easily from lane to lane. Making fast but careful turns as Tommy moved in tight behind him, sticking close and following Dane's lead. Even driving the limo, Dane knew he could shake Big Tommy if he really gave it a go; but he held back, sensing some clarifying appointment up ahead.

No cops yet. He still felt relatively safe. Believing he could get away without the added trouble of trying to explain the situation to the police.

Horns blared and a few shouts went up as they gunned past blocks of dilapidated buildings; Tommy chipping away at the limo's rear. It was stupid. The 'Stang's front end would buckle long before it did any real damage to the limo, but Tommy seemed a little crazed. He held the gun in his left hand and fired a couple times out the driver's window, but both shots went wild. A group of gangbangers selling drugs on the corner scattered, drawing their own weapons. Dane saw two Tec-9 submachine guns pointed his way and he stomped the gas.

Brooklyn wasn't always home after all.

Doing sixty down a side street, they passed a four-story apartment building with a red awning over the door. The flower boxes hanging from the bars of the windows on the first floor were empty. The abandoned car in the corner of the lot next door was gone.

Your conscience knew where to take you. Dane sped through the intersection where he'd run over the traffic cop.

Big Tommy hung in with him pretty good until Dane made a wide swinging right that was nearly a U-turn. Tommy's front end locked with the rear bumper of the limo for a second, and when they detached Tommy skidded into an empty bus stop bench. He dropped back and two hubcaps rolled out ahead of the 'Stang.

Dane slowed, drew into the parking lot of the hospital where Angelina Monticelli had died, and pulled up to the emergency room.

He reached into the glove compartment and grabbed his.38 from beside the envelope with the ten grand JoJo had given him. He got out, stuck the pistol in his belt, buttoned his suit jacket over it, and calmly walked in through the automatic sliding glass doors.

He waited inside for a second until he saw Big Tommy Bartone come screeching to a stop behind the limo. Tommy got out, holding his gun pressed down against his leg, looking more upset than pissed, and came jogging up the sidewalk.

So, it was going to be like that.

Dane shook his head, turned, and wandered down the corridor leading deeper into the hospital.

Nobody ever looked twice at someone else in a hospital hall. Patients could wander around the place for an hour without a nurse coming up to offer any help. He checked down the corridor and saw that the administrative station was empty.

Two Asian doctors walked out of an office. Whispering and staring down at their feet, they stepped into another room and closed the door. Dane kept moving casually, knowing Tommy would come bumbling along any second.

He looked at a sign on the wall: Pediatric Oncology Ward. The only people you were likely to find here were dying children and their parents huddled around well-made beds. The pillowcases always fresh, even when their flesh was rotting.

The corridor lights were too dim. One end of the hallway looked like it was being remodeled. Wires hung in a colorful knot from the ceiling, and below stood a wooden ladder, stained cans and tools placed on every other step. He hadn't seen a wooden ladder in years and it reminded him of his father, the man's thick hairy arms speckled with paint. Yellow caution tape had been strung across the width of the passage.

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.”