Headstone City

TWENTY-THREE

Look at this.

The boy with the sick brain leaning over in the corner and hiding his face, but holding his arm out to Dane like he wanted to be hugged.

The kid had tears on his cheeks and dried blood clotting the sutures thatching his shaved head. His hospital jammies were open. Bedsores spotted his back, covered with a thick salve that was stinking up the place.

Below him, crouched but staring wide-eyed, Dane's mother had her forehead pressed to the boy's leg, closer to him now than she'd ever been to her own son.

Well, all right, some things you have to get used to. Dark circles rimmed her eyes and her lips were thick with yellow froth. Dane almost fell over backwards but managed to stay on his feet.

She raised her chin and her mouth moved. He got a very strong sense that she did not wish him to approach. That would disturb the moment, the dynamics of this new bond they'd made in death. Him, his ma, and the ill child.

Dane wondered, thinking if he mapped his scars and those of the boy, how they'd line up. If they would connect and continue into a larger diagram, some kind of chart showing the measured slopes and ranges of their shared pain.

Stick them up close to each other, pressed cheek to cheek, temple to temple, and you could read the jagged routes of this brotherhood of head wounds.

He could feel his ma, struggling but feeble, trying to speak and growing frustrated with her lack of voice. She crept aside, head low as if she couldn't lift it. He looked at her hand where he'd rubbed his thumb over her flesh for hours, unable to stop, ill with that endless rhythm, and saw he'd left an impression there like a burn. Perhaps it was a sign of his love.

Dane let himself relax, pressing his envy as far to the side as he could. Maybe it would be enough, but it didn't seem possible anymore.

This new son of his mother continued to weep, shaking his head, still reaching out for something more. A family of deceased might not be enough for a lonely kid. Or for anyone. A tic in his cheek started up and quickly crawled across his face.

Ma, seated on the floor now with her knees drawn up, peered at him with misery and resentment. Dane wondered where the anger had come from, since she'd shown so little of it in life. Did the dead keep count of your mistakes? Did they catalog your sins? Indexed and cross-referenced, numbered in order of greatest transgressions. There, feel the heft of your faults and failures and crimes.

His mommy, what had he ever done to make her give him the eye like that?

The kid's muscles slowly loosened as he sank down to sit beside Ma. The thrum of Dane's pulse grew steadily more distant. The boy with the sick brain took a step forward. Ma opened her mouth to speak.

“Come on by, Daniel Ezekiel,” Dane said, and shut the cell phone.

Glory Bishop was working with the feds. She'd probably helped them to corner her own husband and throw the net over him.

He turned around and she was sitting there naked, holding a Beretta Jaguar.22 loosely in her hand. All these people and their teeny guns they could hide anywhere. She must've had the gun clipped under the couch or stuffed between the cushions.

“You really think you need that roscoe with me?” he asked.

It made her grin with a little warmth, but not much. “No.”

“You got something you want to tell me?”

“I'd like for you to put your.38 over on the table there.”

“I didn't bring it with me.”

For a second it looked like Glory might want to check his pile of clothes, forgetting that she'd taken them off him in the first place. “Was it really necessary to send him the whole show?”

“I didn't. You fell asleep for a while.”

“C'mon.”

“For a couple of minutes, Johnny. You've done it before, you just don't realize it. You talk in your sleep.”

And Cogan thought he might say something interesting. “So you're partnered with the feds. To do what exactly?”

“Deal with the Monticelli drugs filtering into Hollywood.”

Jesus, back to that. “To help your husband get off easy?”

“I don't give a damn about that bastard. He lied and he used me. I'm trying to keep myself out of trouble and keep hold of some assets.”

“How much trafficking money we talking about?”

“About two hundred grand a year.”

When you broke it down that was less than twenty g's a month and hardly seemed worth the effort on anybody's part. More cash was changing hands on the corner of South Third and Hughes during the week, a block and a half from the 90th Precinct.

More likely this was really about the gunrunning coming up from south of the border. One of the serious revolutionary countries where the poppy fields took up half the nation. Guns, drugs, feds, and rebellion. It was the fed part that had fouled the equation. If Cogan had been CIA, then a banana republic government takeover would've been the first thing Dane had thought of. Well, maybe.

Glory Bishop was much sharper in some ways than he'd given her credit for, and a lot more naive too. This next scene was going to be a pretty ugly one.

He sat and tried not to glare at her, but he couldn't help feeling a touch betrayed. Somehow he'd grown to care enough about her to form expectations. She wrapped the kimono around herself and Dane asked, “You mind if I get dressed?”

“No, of course not.”

Who would think that such a small thing as a.22 could ruin the mood? When events calmed down, he might have to ponder this one a little longer. But as it was, he'd barely zipped up his fly when Cogan walked in.

“Does that doorman give you dirty looks too?” Dane asked, continuing to dress.

“Naw, I'm on the lease.”

“You the one that put up that goddamn swing?”

Glory had said the apartment didn't come from drug money. Couldn't fault her for telling the truth, when she did. So the place wasn't really bugged. Not technically. But Glory was in contact with Cogan, both of them keeping their eyes on Dane. But for what purpose?

“So it's not about the drugs. Or the movies. It's the guns.”

“Yep,” Cogan told him, no longer grinning. His hair combed. Everything in the open now. Two buddies who finally had all the bullshit out of the way and could lay it on the table.

Glory Bishop said, “Guns? What guns?” Feisty, but with a little girl air about her. Cogan came over and plucked the Beretta out of her hand, more daddy than boss or lover. “What are you two talking about?”

Dane finished dressing and sat on the other end of the couch from where he and Glory had gotten their final groove on. “Only in relation to a revolution.”

“Tha's right.”

“Which country?”

“Some Central America shithole I have a hard time pronouncin'.”

Glory just kept standing there. “What the hell are you both talking about?” Not even all that flustered. She'd always known something else was going on, and like Dane, she'd just gone with the flow, hoping everything would be revealed in the end.

“Start a war or stop one?” Dane asked.

“Tell you the truth, son, I'm not sure. That's for the fellas well above me. I'm just doing my job.”

“I thought that sort of thing was the CIA's turf.”

“It mostly is, but I suspect the Bureau is expanding. Interagency cooperation and like that.”

“Oh holy shit,” Glory said, cinching the kimono tighter around her waist, looking on the floor for her panties now, talking rapidly. “You motherfucker, Cogan, you rotten motherfucker. Jesus, when my husband was on trial, the things you said. All those threats you made… so determined to ruin my life, you fucker. You said you'd-”

“I said a lot of things, darlin', every one of them true. I needed your help, and I did what I had to do to get it.”

“Motherfucker!”

“Why'd this guy take a fall in the first place?” Dane asked.

“He wasn't ambitious enough,” Cogan explained. “He got sloppy. He wanted out of the deal, but we needed him. His company, the way the cash was cleaned, the way the weapons came on up out of Southern California. His contacts, the distribution, everything. But he kept trying to shut it down and pull out.”

“He wanted to go clean and you wouldn't let him.”

Noting the judgmental tone but ignoring it, Cogan said, “I told him to just keep on playin' ball, but he had to buck me. What makes a man do that, thwart his own government? He was a damn fool, and a traitor to boot, if you want to put a point on it. I figured Glory would step up when he went down.”

“Rotten motherfucker!”

“So what do you want from me?” Dane asked.

“I want you to convince your friend Vincenzo Monticelli to help out his sister's career even more.”

It started snapping into place then. “You want a new front man. Vinny Monticelli to take over where this guy left off. Grease the production company's wheels, that it? Smuggle the drugs and guns, keep putting the clean money into the business, make a few movies, put Maria on the screen, overthrow some pissant country.”

“Tha's right.”

“Man, did you go the long way around the block. Vinny wants me dead. So what makes you think I'll have any pull with them about where the family money goes?”

“Let's just say I got a hunch he'll listen to you. Some folks been declarin' that he's crazy. If so, I figure you might be the only one to talk any sense to him.”

“Why?”

“You're kinda crazy too.” Cogan showed his big teeth, almost getting podunk again, but not quite. The real smile this time, shining through. “I had a feelin' about you right from the start. You haven't exactly been lying low, son. Throwing down in Choochie's, going to visit the old Don right in his house. You've been shaking up that family like a hornet's nest. Sharpening the blade, getting the crew back into action. Kicking their asses into shape. You got spirit! Figured they'd take you on as a capo, then you'd have Vinny's ear again.”

“Figured you'd put me to use.”

“Just so.”

Dane thought Special Agent Daniel Ezekiel Cogan might be out of his tree as well. The Right Reverend Matthew Colepepper probably had the right idea putting Cogan's mother in the asylum, but he shouldn't have stopped there. “You don't understand us Mediterranean types at all.”

“Naw, probably not too well.”

Glory drifted back toward Dane. “I'm sorry. I didn't know this rat fuck was playing me. I thought I was protecting myself.”

“You were. It's okay,” Dane told her. He thought about that day at the movie premiere, how she'd told him she was only attending as a favor to a friend. Cute, look at that, she'd told the truth again. Making contact with Dane under Cogan's orders. All because of Vinny, and nobody had even met with him yet.

Yeah, it was all pretty insane. Now that the mob was going legit, the feds wanted them to get back to the dirty dealing. The guy who wanted to go clean, they tossed his ass in the can.

“Why didn't you just ask Vinny yourself?” Dane asked.

“I didn't want to get that close to the situation, y'understand. Now, JoJo Tormino, he and I had been doing some talkin'. He was a bit sweet on Maria.”

“He wanted to marry her, but he got iced before he could pop the question.”

“I know it, and it was a damn sad thing to hear. Didn't figure him to go out the way he did. He was always cautious when meeting with me. Never took me to that bakery before, though, would've been nice if he had. He always wanted to meet in those there little strip mall coffee shops out on Long Island. He'd wear sunglasses, nervous as could be. That boy was headed for a heart attack.”

Dane could imagine it, seeing JoJo and Cogan discussing the future of Maria Monticelli's acting career. Getting Vinny to invest in Glory's husband's production company. JoJo getting his ticket punched because he wanted the love of his life to get into movies and say dialogue like Augh. Yeee. No please, I'll do anything you want. Wah. Maria running away from Zypho, the monster with penislike tentacles trying to impregnate the all-female crew as they flew around the galaxy.

Dane frowned at both of them and felt a shard of hysterical laughter trying to shove itself up his throat. He swallowed twice to keep it down but he knew there was a sick smile on his face. “Even if I could get anybody in the Monti family to invest more of their time, effort, and money into drugs and the company… even if I could get them to launder the dirty cash and run out more guns… why the fuck would I want to? What do I get out of it?”

“Because it's what Maria Monticelli wants,” Cogan said. “To be on the screen. And you love her.”

There it was. The leverage that Cogan had been holding back.

Maria.

First JoJo. Now Dane. Everybody out of their head in love with her. Easily manipulated.

“How do you know that?” he asked.

“Vinny told my husband,” Glory Bishop said, sounding embarrassed. “He always talked about you while they were doing business, while you were in prison. How you were the one his sister should be with. How you were the only one who really cared about his sister.”

“He did?”

Cogan said, “I told you I had a feeling about you. That you were going to be his right-hand man. You're his best friend. All the other problems you've been having with the family, that's all the work of Roberto.” Saying it right this time, not Robert-oh.

“So, you think because I love Maria, I'll talk to Vinny and get him to do more drug trafficking with the Hollywood bigwigs, in which case more money and weapons will filter down to some South American shithole where a revolution is going on and the US government wants control?”

“Central America. Exactly.”

“Okay,” Dane said easily. “I'll do it.”

“Now, that there's the way to talk, son!”

“Don't!” Glory shouted. “Johnny, are you nuts? After hearing this bastard's lies and seeing how he works?”

“Now, don't be like that, darlin'.”

Dane and Glory stared at each other from across the glass table. A chasm had opened between them in only a few minutes and he knew there would never be any way for him to get back to the other side. Not that either of them would want to cross it anyway. Her eyes met his and there was a flicker of sorrow there, but not all that much, considering. They'd both had some fun and learned a few more things about the world worth knowing. All in all, it hadn't been a waste of time.

Cogan moved to embrace Glory, and she stood there allowing his hands on her. Angry, even disgusted with him, but they were still comfortable together. Her husband had gone away, what, nearly six months ago. Long enough for Cogan and Glory Bishop to forge one of those unhealthy bonds that could never be broken, no matter what happened. Just like the one between Dane and Vinny.

Dane said, “But I want you to do something for me.”

Cogan tipped his jaw to the side, giving a wary smile. Like he'd known this was coming, the price he had to pay, and just hoped it wouldn't be too much. “And what's that?”

“I need a name.”

“What name?”

Dane told him and Cogan spent less than fifteen minutes on Glory's cell phone getting the information.

Dane went to the window. He parted the curtains and saw two guys beating a police officer in an alley with his own nightstick. The cop scrambled on all fours trying to fight back, but they started kicking him until he rolled himself into a ball, face to the brick. Dane turned back to Glory Bishop and Cogan and saw they were holding on to each other again. He left them there for good.