Headstone City

ONE

They came after Dane in the showers while he had soap in his eyes.

It was pretty much how he'd expected the hit to go down during his first six months in the can, but by the end of the first year he'd dropped his guard and started to grow a little comfortable. You'd think it was impossible, getting used to a place like this, but it had slowly crept over him until now he nearly enjoyed the joint. The crazy sounds in the middle of the night, the constant action, and the consoling security of having bars and walls on every side.

He'd gotten some of his edge back after the fire, but it hadn't lasted long enough. The Monticelli family held Dane in such low regard that they'd contracted outside their usual channels and hired one of the Aryans.

A guy called Sig, who whistled old Broadway show tunes only Dane recognized. Usually from South Pacific, Fiorello, and Oh, Kay! It got your foot tapping. Sig had Joseph Mengele's profile branded into his chest. He used matches to singe away his body hair, the black char marks crossthatching his body. This Sig, he was a masochistic pyro who'd hooked up with the skinheads because you could get away with searing yourself to pieces with them. In the name of racial purification.

Dane was in his cell reading when Sig walked down the D-Block aisle holding a little plastic bottle of gasoline he'd filched from the workshop. Unable to contain himself, Sig let out a squeal of wild joy and Dane looked up to see a liquid arc flashing through the air. He rolled over and yanked his mattress on top of him just as Sig tossed a lit match, his eyes full of love and awe. The cell burst into flames and Dane squeezed himself behind the toilet, pressed his face into the bowl to soak his hair, and used his hands to cup water and splash himself down.

This Sig though, he had some issues. He cherished the fire so much that, standing there, he grew jealous of Dane being in the middle of the flames. Tugging at his crotch, he stepped into the cell, spritzing gasoline from his bottle left and right. It was a good thing the mental institutions were even more overpacked than the prisons, or maybe the Monti family wouldn't have wound up with such a schiz.

The flames bucked and toppled over Sig. He flailed, spun, and took a running leap off the second floor D-Block tier.

Dane sat with toilet water dripping down his face while he tried to take in the whole moronic situation. The bulls worked fast with their extinguishers. When they found him he was laughing on the shitter, thinking about how Vinny would react to the news when it got back to him.

It had been funny more than anything, so he grew complacent again. He kept waiting for the family to pay off a pro who would do the job right. There were at least five guys on D-Block that Dane would never be able to take on his best day. But instead of doing him in, they let him read his books, play chess with the old-timers, and even spotted him when he worked the heavy weights in the gym.

Dane had grown especially sloppy these last few weeks, with his grandmother and the dead girl always on his mind. He should've known the hit would happen today, since it was their last chance to make a play while he was still on the inside.

But he'd been worried about getting presentable and smelling fresh for when he saw Grandma Lucia this afternoon. He thought about her slapping him in the back of the head, telling him that just because he was in prison didn't mean he couldn't still look nice.

Dane thumbed the suds off his face and tried to clear his vision as they came at him from the front, standing shoulder to shoulder. They weren't pros. They had the jitters, hands trembling as they held out poorly sharpened shanks.

Mako stood about five-one and suffered from short-guy syndrome. Always getting into everybody's face and tackling the biggest cons just to show them he wasn't afraid. He loved to scrap but never went in for anything much heavier than that. Put a weapon in his hand, and he didn't know what the hell to do with it. Even now he held the shank wrong, high and aimed back toward his own belly, so it would be easy to twist his wrist and get him to fall onto the blade. He looked like he was going to either scream or cry, and Dane felt a sudden wash of pity for him.

Kremitz was an insurance investigator who'd sign off on almost any suspicious claim so long as he got a kickback from it. He'd done all right for himself for a couple of years but finally got nabbed in a sting run by the fire marshal. Kremitz was muscular but gangly, with an ambiguous temperament. He'd used a shiv on his Aryan cellmate a while back but only after being sodomized for about a year. He was known as a wild card on the block. You never knew which way Kremitz might jump.

Dane had never gotten used to being naked in front of other men. Not in the high school showers, not in the army, and especially not here in the slam. And now he had to stare down these two with his crank hanging out.

They gaped at his scars, the way they wove up and twisted around to the back of his neck. Dane could brush his hair to hide most of the metal plates securing his skull, but under the showerhead they came up polished and gleaming. The shiv started to dance in Mako's hand.

“How'd they get to you two?” Dane asked, genuinely curious.

“The same way they get everybody,” Kremitz said. “They want something done, they put the pressure on until it's done. Me, they reeled me in through my brother. He owes twelve grand to their book. Likes to think he's going to get off the docks by winning on college basketball. He used to get out from under by jacking a few crates, but this time, he gets caught. The other longshoremen kick the shit out of him because he hasn't given anybody a taste. He's got no other way to pay off. So it falls to me to save his worthless neck.”

“Sorry to cause you trouble.”

“It's not your fault. Just bad luck all around. Except for my brother. He's just an asshole.”

Turning to Mako, though, Dane could see the little guy had no excuse except he was scared.

Water swirled madly down the drains. A shadow moved at the front of the showers, where someone was standing guard to keep others out. At least one bull would've been paid off, possibly more.

Dane touched the scars and felt some of the tension leave him. There was power in your own history, in the stupid traumas you'd endured.

“I ain't got nothin' against you,” Mako said.

Kremitz agreed. “Me neither. Really.”

“I know it,” Dane said. He just kept shaking his head, thinking how ridiculous it would be to buy it now, only a couple hours from being on the street again. “I'll be out of here this afternoon. When I'm gone, the heat'll be off you.”

“Lis-listen-” Mako had to cough the quiver out of his throat. “The Monticelli family won't forget us if we foul this up.”

“Yeah, they will.” It was true. This wasn't Vinny's serious play anyhow. It was him having fun, breaking balls, keeping Dane on his toes.

“Those bunch of goomba pricks don't forget nothin' about nobody,” Mako whined, shuffling his feet so they squeaked. “If they did, they'd have let you ride out of here.”

“It's a different situation.”

“And I'm supposed to trust what you say? That they'll fade back?”

“Yeah.”

“I get told I got a visitor. First visitor I've had my entire nickel in the joint. My pa don't come, my old lady, not even my kid, the little bastard. This visitor's a big guy in an Armani suit, one eyebrow, hands like he goes around slugging brick walls for fun.”

That'd be Roberto Monticelli. It took Dane back some, wondering why Berto had come himself instead of one of the family capos or lieutenants.

“Guy tells me I do this to you or I get it done to me. Goes into all this bullshit about blowtorches and meat grinders, how he's gonna mail me to six cities all over New Jersey. Except with him, I know it's not bullshit.”

Dane couldn't really help but argue the point. “Most of it is.”

“It's the part that's not that worries me.”

“Maybe I can help.”

“The hell you gonna do that?” Mako groused. Thinking about Berto had gotten him all wired up, given him the shakes. The point of the shiv danced against his T-shirt. “Even if you get out the front gate, you'll be dead before you hit the corner.”

“Don't believe it.”

“We got no choice.”

Kremitz started to steel himself. Jaws clenched, leaning forward on his toes, he was jazzing himself up to attack.

Dane had been a pretty poor soldier overall, but he'd liked the hand-to-hand combat training. His drill instructor would use him all the time as a practice dummy, flipping Dane over his hip and throwing him down in the dirt. Kicking his feet out from under him over and over. The DI would demonstrate how to drive the knife in, how to keep the blade from getting stuck in bone.

Without fully realizing it, Dane had absorbed a lot, and would pull the moves when he got drunk, beating on the loudmouthed Irish officers who called him a greasy guinea. But he never got used to the stockade the way he did the slam, and he couldn't figure out why.

Mako and Kremitz weren't going to be too tough so long as he didn't slip on the wet tile. They didn't know how to work as a team, standing too far away from each other. They swept out clumsily with their shanks and both of them tightened up, lurching, wanting to end it fast. Faces growing more grim, but with a hint of pleading in their eyes.

The drill instructor would call Dane and another guy over, tell them to charge at him. He had this one routine where he'd maneuver past Dane, grab hold of him by the elbows, and use his body like a shield to block the other soldier's attack. Dane would be standing there like a bag of potatoes, getting the crap beat out of him while the DI let out a brash chuckle.

Dane had never tried the move and decided this might be a good time. He dodged past Kremitz, hooked him by the elbows, and swung him around into Mako's face. Mako let out a grunt of surprise and jumped back, under the steaming force of the shower. Dane kneed Kremitz in the thigh from behind, brought him low, and shoved. The sound track from a Stooges short couldn't have made it any more perfect. Kremitz and Mako clunked heads and dropped their shivs, slid to all fours in the soapy water.

Dane couldn't help himself and let out a chuckle of his own. He hated the sound of it, but there it was. You were nothing but an amalgam of your influences. He grabbed one of the shivs and stabbed both men in their upper legs, in the thick meat of the muscle where it wouldn't do a lot of damage. He twisted the blades just enough to make the wounds look especially ugly. Mako and Kremitz both started to scream, and Dane said, “I'm doing you a favor, so shut the hell up.”

While they writhed on the shower floor Dane ducked back under the showerhead and rinsed off the rest of the soap. Blood swirled near his feet. When he was finished he toweled off and got dressed, listening to them groan through their teeth trying to swallow down the pain. They rolled and squirmed across the tiles.

“Sheezus shheee-it!” Kremitz hissed. “Y-you crippled us!”

Moaning, Mako stuck his face in the drain, blowing bubbles as he gripped his leg to hold in the blood.

“You're both going to be fine. Say that you got into a fight with each other.”

“Jeezus!”

“You'll be in the infirmary for three or four weeks. You're not hurt bad but they'll want to keep an eye on you for infection. After that, the bulls will toss you into solitary for at least another month. By the end of your run, I'll either be dead or this shit with the Monticelli family will be cleared up.”

“You sure… about that, Johnny?” Mako whimpered.

“Even if I'm not, you're better off than I would've been, right?” Dane let out a slow smile. A part of him wanted Mako to end it now. Cut their throats, finish it the right way. You don't injure the enemy, you eradicate him. His fingers twitched. A small, sharp fury nearly broke free from the center of his chest, but as he felt himself about to take a step forward, it receded. He almost wished it hadn't gone. “Don't fuckin' complain.”

Mako grabbed him by the ankle and squeezed once, as a sign of thanks. Dane combed his hair back, checked himself in the mirror to make certain his grandmother wouldn't give him a rough time.

He walked out past the guards on the Monti payroll, gave them a grin and a little salute. He felt good, stronger than he had earlier in the day, more settled. He'd been half wondering if he'd had a death wish, and the answer seemed to be no. Still, it was the kind of thing you couldn't be a hundred percent sure about.

When he got back to his cell, the girl he'd killed, Angelina Monticelli, was sitting on his cot.

“Oh Christ,” he said, his scars suddenly burning.

She wavered for a moment, fading and reappearing, then vanished, leaving an old man sitting where she'd been-Aaron Fielding, a neighborhood grocer and fish seller buried a couple of rows from her in Wisewood cemetery. The guy was always smiling and letting the kids steal cheap candy bars from the wire racks at the front of the store. He'd let out this heavy, booming laugh whenever something hit him just right.

But old man Fielding had a wild and desperate look to him, colorless eyes flitting all over the place, hinges of his jaws pulsing. He raised a hand to Dane in a gesture of pleading. “Johnny, I need-”

“I can't talk to you right now, Mr. Fielding,” Dane said, his voice hard, flat. “Later.”

His gray face filled with terror. There was none of the joy and peace the nuns taught you about when you were a kid, what you hoped for when you hit the other side. “Please!”

“No.”

“Just for a little while.”

“No, Mr. Fielding.”

“A minute. Only one moment more!”

“No!”

Angie snapped back into focus. She let out a soft laugh, like it was funny the shit she had to go through to talk to Dane. Or what he had to do to bring her in.

She said, “Berto says they're going to let you go home and visit your grandmother first, then they'll clip you on your second or third week out.”

“I guess he's not as eager as I thought he was.”

“He wants to build up tension, make it spectacular.”

“He doesn't have the imagination or style for that.”

“I know, but it's what he tells his crew.”

“Does the Don agree with all this?”

“No, but Daddy doesn't really stand up to Roberto anymore. He's old and in a lot of pain.”

“What about Vinny?”

“He's waiting for you.”

Fifteen years old when she'd bought it two years ago, but still appearing so full of life, with that overwhelming hipness of youth. She was dressed the way she was the day she OD'd: oversized black sweater and blue jeans, no makeup, her dark hair falling straight back over her ears, the slightest curl of bangs up front.

Heat flooded his stomach and got his skin dancing. He started breathing heavily, and when his breath reached her she closed her eyes and lifted her face to meet it. Her bangs stirred and wafted. She smiled and he swallowed thickly, again and again.

Jesus. He realized he still wanted her. What the hell did that say about you, when you were aroused by the dead? Or was it only because she looked so much like her older sister, Maria?

“Angie-”

“You don't have to be embarrassed with me, Johnny.”

“I'm not.”

“There's no shame in it. You keep me sane in hell.”

It made him chew his lips, hearing that. He sat on the floor across from his bunk, staring at her. If only he'd driven faster, or hadn't run over the cop.

But why stop there? If you're going to go back, go farther. If he hadn't given in and agreed to take her to Bed-Stuy in the first place. She'd talked circles around him until he'd cracked. It hadn't been difficult. If only he'd cared a little more and been a lot smarter. He shouldn't have been so pathetic, but that's what the familiar streets had done to him. What he'd allowed them to do. What they were still doing, even in prison.

“Will you visit me in Headstone City?” she asked.

“I don't think so. It's best if I'm not seen there.”

“You live there.”

“I mean at your grave.”

“Nobody visits. They act like they miss me so much, but nobody takes the time to say a prayer or bring a shitty plastic flower.”

“I'm sorry, Angie.”

“Johnny, I need you.”

Something began to soften in his belly then, and he felt himself going with it. A weakness that had always been there but was broadening, intensifying. Maybe he was about to cut loose with a sob. Twenty minutes ago he was almost ready to cut throats, and now this fragility and brittleness. He wanted to ask her if she held him responsible the way her family did. It was a question he'd never asked her before. She didn't appear to want to make him feel guilty, didn't try to get her claws into him, the way she had in life.

Dane heard the bull coming for him, turned to watch as the guard stepped up to the cell door. “Danetello. Let's go.”

He stood and the guard escorted him down the tier, through the gen pop, across the courtyard, and back into the visitation quad, where all the new cons first set foot in the can. The warden was nowhere to be seen. They handed him a ream of paperwork, but nothing for him to sign. The clothes he came in with had been pressed and folded into a pile that lay on the counter. He reached for them, and another guard said, “Hold it.”

“What's the matter?”

“You've got a phone call, if you want it.”

“Why wouldn't I want it?”

“Most cons who get this close to the outside on the day of their release don't turn around and go answer the phone.”

Dane figured it was his Grandma Lucia, jonesing for sugar. He went back and took the call. His grandmother said, “Stop off at the bakery and get some cannoli and biscotti, will you, Johnny? And don't let the girl put you off. She's dead, that one. She doesn't know what she's talking about.”

TWO

This town, it took your blood and replaced it with cement, asphalt, and pigeon shit. You became a part of it as much as the steel and iron, all the bone meal sprinkled into its cornerstones. No matter who you were, you got hard.

Brooklyn, New York.

Fourth largest city in the United States, cradle of roughnecks and Nobel Laureates, center of America's most diversified gathering of angry cultures.

You knew it, and it knew you. Every dark corner, edge to edge. Handball and knock-hockey in Highland Park. Nights sleeping in a tent under Stoney Bridge out near the reservoirs. Stickball on Schenck Avenue, the street tar on top of the old cobblestones getting soft in the August sun. You could lift it with a spoon. Watching a parade curbside on Flatbush Ave. Playing pinball and having an egg cream at Louie's candy store. A shot of syrup, a dollop of milk, and a steady stream of seltzer. The foam would rise to the rim of the glass but never overflow.

Louie wearing a black merchant marine wool cap, even in the summer, never taking any shit off the kids. Once, Roberto Monticelli walked in and, because his voice had changed and he'd grown a few inches that year, tried to get protection money out of Louie. Kept making vague threats about arson, using a big word like “accelerant” and asking, Hey, anybody smell smoke? Louie smacked him in the mouth, took him outside, pried up a manhole cover with a tire iron, and threw Berto down into the sewer. About the funniest thing Dane had ever seen in his life.

The Don never came after Louie for retribution. You didn't fuck with the corner candy stores. They meant too much to the neighborhood.

A century ago Headstone City had been known as Meadow Slope, one of the richest areas in Brooklyn. Industrial-age barons, moguls, and merchants pursued their brazen luxuries in the new era of abundance. They'd ride their carriages from Manhattan to Outlook Park and attend masquerade balls thrown along the Mile, where the wealthy built their extravagant Victorian mansions. You could see it if you put your mind to it. The fashionable elite strolling the vast gardens and embracing the celebrated performers of the day.

Politicians and businessmen wanted a hub for cultural pursuits, where the masters of fine art could lord it over the laborers who greased their axles or fetched their tea. Local entrepreneurs constructed Grand Outlook Hall, an Italian Renaissance gallery. Five lavish stories and 150,000 square feet, a shrine to the arts that became the jewel of the Meadow Slope community. Back in the day it was considered the equal in beauty to the Academy of Music, Botanic Garden, and Grand Army Plaza.

The marble corridors, rich oak and mahogany paneling, ballrooms, opera house, chandeliers, and terrace nurseries brought the rich and prominent flocking. They'd come in their top hats and tails, ladies dressed in Parisian gowns, to hear the star entertainers.

During prohibition, opera connoisseur Al Capone frequented the Hall and had his own balcony seat in the ballroom. One of Al's cronies from Chicago, guy with the stupid name Peachy Fichi, tried to whack him in the loge, but Al hid behind one of the brass statues until he could get his pistol out and return fire. You could still see the bullet holes in the garlands of gold-leaf molding. Neither Al nor Peachy could shoot worth a shit. After reloading three times each, they both ran for it.

The bus let Dane off at the corner in front of the Grand Hall. The mid-October wind braced him, leaves skittering against his ankles. He allowed two teenage couples coming out of the parking lot to precede him onto the street. Guys in tuxes and the girls in silk dresses and mink stoles. Dane asked, “Who's on tonight?”

“Kathryn Mondiviaggi,” one of the kids said, his bow tie just a little askew. His cheeks sprouted crimson from the chill. “In the revival of La Traviata.”

“I heard Sophia Campescio sing it on her last tour, about twenty years ago,” Dane told them.

“Really?”

“Michael Finelli played Alfredo Germont.”

“Oh, he's so handsome,” the kid's date said, moving closer and speaking with a hushed tone, as if to a conspirator. This was how the real fans talked about opera, in close, like it was somehow gossip. She had a smile that caught Dane low and almost made him flinch. Her hair flowed back and forth, reaching for him. “Even more so now, with the white patches in his beard. Truly debonair.”

“He was still new on the scene back then, before he'd made any movies.”

“I saw Venice in the Morning seven times.”

“He threw a rose to my grandmother in the fourth row. She rushed the stage and nearly tackled him.”

“I would've too. Did she save the flower?”

“Yeah. It's pressed in the front of her Bible, where the family history is filled out. All the vaccinations my father had back in the fifties, stuff like that.”

The guys turned a deaf ear, put off by the intrusion. Dane understood, so he watched them escort their girls off without another word. You never knew who might be moving in on you, even in the opera house parking lot. Dane called out, “Have a good night!” He grinned, turned, and began to walk home.

The neighborhood had been going to hell on the inside track for the last four decades and looked like it'd just about gotten there. Even the graffiti lacked style, none of that old, cool flair of the seventies. Now it was just a lot of fuck you's and Freddy + Boopsie on the brickwork. Kids didn't know what to do with themselves, no creative expression at all. More bars on the windows, but the small lawns still perfectly manicured and just as many people in the street, walking store to store. The old Italian ladies in black heading to the cemetery.

Wisewood cemetery had been inspired by Central Park landscaping, laid out in the middle of Meadow Slope. It was meant to be a retreat where visitors could ponder death, guilt, and redemption.

Trunks of stunted oak broke the hilly terrain. Rutted paths channeled through the area, cutting around knolls. The afternoon sun glazed the battered, blunt faces of granite saints and martyrs. Tombstones-rounded, sharp, or opulent-jutted at odd angles. Some less than six inches from each other.

There were miles of the dead. Sixty thousand supposedly in Wisewood, his mother and father among them, but Christ only knew how many more had been dumped in the ravines and sumps bordering the highway. Or like they did it in Naples, four to a casket when nobody was looking.

There was a church within three blocks' walk in any direction. The rich and fashionable would wander the paths and picnic, playing charades on the vast lawns while funerals were being held just a few feet away. The cemetery's most prominent feature was its Gothic-style front gates. They stood wide and inviting just down the block from Grandma Lucia's place.

Dane had been to four wakes before he was nine years old. No one would ever tell him how anybody died, just that they'd had an accident. It scared the hell out of him, thinking that all these people were croaking from falling off ladders, running with scissors, slipping on the stairs.

It brought him together with strangers in an obscure, shared grief. Funeral processions moved through town every weekend with a fierce and forbidding commitment.

One night he'd gone out to Wildwood with his first girl and made a mad, quiet love to her on a sheet of marble tomb. When they were finished she had the name of a dead guy pressed into her back and an ugly bruise from a bas-relief cherub.

Dane stood in the middle of the street, staring off to the north, where the Monticelli mansion could be seen at the top of the rise, the waves in the bay breaking gently in the horizon. The surrounding woodlands of Outlook Park seemed to clutch at the skyline.

He walked around the corner and down three blocks to Chooch's Lounge. He hung back against a nearby stoop, watching the door.

Lit a cigarette and thought, by the end of this smoke, I ought to just do it.

There was a reason why the big mob families were fading fast. They weren't as sharp as they used to be, not as careful anymore. In the old days, the bosses lived in their little houses and watered their tomato gardens and hid their big cash offshore or under their mattresses. Now their grandkids drove Mercedes and flashed black diamonds and didn't even bother to come up with a cover story for where the money was being filtered in from. A twenty-five-year-old in a Jag wearing suede and silk, partying at the fanciest clubs in New York, telling people he bussed tables in his uncle's pizza parlor for a living. No calm, no cool, and no code.

The Monticellis weren't quite as sloppy as some of the others, but Vinny and Berto had cut their crews too much slack. It used to be if you spent too much out in the open, the capo would take you for a drive and stick a knitting needle in the back of your head. Then go and gather up the wife's mink stole, the Caddy, the $1,200 Italian shoes, and burn it all out in the pine barrens. The families had a quiet class and knew how to keep it under wraps.

Nowadays, the goombas were mostly fat and slow, but they could still play pretty rough when it came down to it. You had an edge if you moved fast and didn't pick their pockets. So long as money wasn't involved, they all had to sit back, hold meetings, and have discussions on what should be done. The organizations gathering together in drunken cabals down in Atlantic City.

Then the bosses talking to the capos, and the captains to the crews. Then more dinners and gatherings and councils to figure out who would do whatever had to be done. Maybe the verve had drained out of the process because so much of it was legal on paper now, all stock market reports and swanky coffee shop investments.

Dane saw how it would go down.

He'd walk into Chooch's and they'd give him the slow turn, the slick smiles, until he got up closer. The muscle would lumber to their feet, try to straight-arm him. He'd buck past and tight expressions of worry would cross their heavy faces and crinkle their bloated features. Now they'd have to move faster, reaching inside their jackets and going for their pea shooters and popguns.

He'd known them all for most of his life. In Brooklyn, your neighbors were as much your family as your own blood. The fact that they'd had his father killed only brought them all closer together.

By the time Dane hit the table they'd have two or three pistols in his face. Vinny would hold out his graceful hands, the thin alabaster fingers patting the air like the symphony conductor his mother always wanted him to be. He used to practice violin when they were kids, Dane riding his bike to the estate and calling up on the guardhouse phone. Vinny standing there in the high window with a look of superiority on his face. Seeing all the things that would be coming to him one day when he wouldn't have to play the fucking violin anymore.

Back then, Dane didn't fully understand their differences, though his dad had tried to warn him.

So he'd be at the table and Vinny would pat the air, his head angled but with that patronizing grin, as if prepared to listen to the excited musings of a child. The glass eye fixed and rigid, the fake teeth not very white so they'd look more real.

Dane would have the chance for a beautiful uppercut if he wanted to take it. Lift Vinny right up out of his seat, snap him four feet into the air, and maybe even break his neck. In the excitement he might even be able to run, but then the whole mess would just keep following him around forever anyway.

It would leave him only the chance to get off a wiseass insult or two. Vinny would smile, then chuckle and cock his head again, this time the other way. Like he was listening to the whispers of angels, then he'd let out his hyena laugh.

Vinny wouldn't say much, just something innocuous and meaningless. “Welcome back, how you been?” Three or four thugs would grab Dane's arms and pull him away, rough him up a little before shoving him against a parked car. You couldn't toss people in the gutter anymore, there was too much traffic.

This little meeting, it would hold them both until later, when one of them would have to die.

So Dane decided to walk in, just to see if he could rush things along, get the ball rolling. For two years in the can he'd been pretty calm, but now it seemed like he just didn't want to wait anymore. It could be fun.

THREE

Dane had taken a step toward the front door, feeling the possibility of his own murder about to come down, when Phil Guerra, his father's old partner, drove up in a sky-blue Cadillac.

“Oh man, beautiful.”

Dane took a step back and nodded his approval. The car had been waxed to perfection, radiant and gleaming. He could see his reflection in what they called the Magic-Mirror acrylic lacquer finish. Looking really uptight and more than a little lost.

It was a sin to be that uncool around a '59 Caddy.

Sixty-two hundred Series. The dream car and pinnacle of success for every man in Headstone City around Phil's age. And their sons and grandsons.

Outrageous rocket tail fins and jet pod taillights. The grille was a glittering partition of chrome. Dane checked and saw there was even a dummy grille across the lower rear deck. The parking and turn signal lights were paired at the outer ends of the massive front bumper. The rear bumper had huge, chrome outer pods with recessed backup lights. It got his pulse thrumming just to see the car in such cherry shape.

Phil lowered the driver-seat window, leaned over, and asked, “You like it?”

“Oh yeah. I know it's what you've always wanted.”

“Me and everybody else. My old man had one of these, right off the line. Same color. I was thirteen and he never let me drive it. Not once, the prick. But he'd make me wash it twice a week after school until I had soapsuds coming out of my ass.”

“Looks like retirement's been good to you.”

Grinning now, posturing a touch. Phil had a self-satisfied smile that just kept going and going until you could see all the way down the back of his throat. “You ought to get something for your thirty years besides a gold watch.” Some acute bitterness there, but not like the cops who'd really gone to the wall. “Putting your life up against it every day, in the street with the garbage. I would've been better off in sanitation with the rest of the mooks.”

Dane's father had been proud of his badge, never bitched once, and had died on the job. So Dane didn't have much sympathy for Phil. “You get a full pension, insurance, and benefits. Then you take a security position in a warehouse someplace, sleep on the job, and draw another check.”

“Why don't you get in, Johnny? Before some wiseguy decides to shoo you off the sidewalk.”

Dane thought about it. Maybe he should take care of this first. When you had accounts to square going all the way back to your childhood, it was tough to prioritize. They all threaded together and snarled into the same web. There'd be time enough for the showdown after he'd cleared up a few other matters. He took another look at the front door of Chooch's, imagining blood on the ceiling. He grinned at Phil and climbed in. “Sure.”

Fifteen years ago, when he was seventeen, he could've stolen and sold this car for maybe twenty grand cash. Now, he couldn't even guess what it might run.

“You know why the Caddy has such ludicrous fins?” Phil asked.

“Yeah.”

“You do?” Like he was afraid if he said some kind of bullshit now he'd get called on it.

Dane looked at him. “Yeah. The designers were fascinated with rockets and space missions. Before man walked on the moon, but they knew it was coming soon. You take a look at the rear, it resembles the exhaust ports of a jet, right? Even when it's sitting in your driveway, it's still cruising. Cadillac was going head-to-head with Chrysler at the time. They put a rush schedule to get the 1959 draft completed. The entire lineup flaunted visibility. Spaciousness. You can see all four corners with this windshield.”

“I like how it curves.”

“Nice. They did a good job refitting it.” Dane ran his hand over the seat. “You got burned on the fabric though.”

Phil froze, the proud smile going rictus. “What?”

“The interior isn't original.”

“You fuckin' with me, Johnny?”

“No.” Dane felt good, showing off. A couple hundred hours stealing cars and working in chop shops came in handy for conversations like this. “You've got the metallic fabric used on the Fleetwood Sixty Special. It trapped the hairs of women's mink coats so the manufacturer switched it out. Weird that your restorer would put this in.” Stroking it, enjoying the feel, like petting the back of a sleeping woman's head. “Same period… even more rare, really, when you get down to it. But not the high-class stuff.” Dane tried to think which mob garages might've had the old Fleetwood fabric tucked away for fifty years.

Phil turned, expressionless, but seething beneath the false composure. He didn't mind being ripped off half as much as being alerted to the fact.

Guerra. The name meant “war” in Italian, and Phil liked that. It gave him an extra measure of poise, especially when he was a cop. He said his name-the word-like he practiced it, putting everything he had into it.

Voice firm and smooth as a character actor in some noir movie from the thirties. Phil had porked up about fifty pounds since he'd retired, but he'd been working on everything else. A pretty good rug with the right amount of silver in it, a nice tan from spending half the week in an ultraviolet booth. Stylish clothes, expensive leather shoes. He was pushing sixty but looked ten years younger. The extra weight hit him mostly in the face, filling out his cheeks and making him look jolly and generous.

Phil drove badly. Way too fast, riding bumpers all around town. He circled Wisewood and sped under the highway. He barely slowed for the stop signs and always gunned it during yellow lights.

Years ago he'd had the moves to back up his breakneck driving, but with age the man's reflexes had slowed considerably. Dane remembered Phil and his wife Mabel taking Dane and his parents out on long drives across Jersey and Pennsylvania, to the Poconos. Upstate to Albany to see the Capitol Building. Mom would be in the backseat petrified as Phil gunned it across bridges, swinging through lazy small-town traffic and nearly clipping cattle that had wandered onto the road. Mabel would scrunch down and pour herself a gin and tonic from the Thermos she always brought along. Dad occasionally laughing, watching, always with too much on his mind. Dane would sit on his mother's lap and giggle like crazy, shouting, “Go faster, Uncle Philly! Go faster!”

He could remember, very clearly, but without being able to feel it anymore, just how much he used to love Phil Guerra.

“Who picked you up?”

“Nobody,” Dane said. “I took the bus.”

“That's terrible. That's just awful. I'm sorry about that, Johnny. If I'd known you were gonna do that, I would've come by. It must be awfully hard walking back into the world and not seeing a friendly face the minute you step outside.”

Actually, it was a lot tougher never seeing a friendly face on the inside, but Dane didn't want to cloud the issue. “It's all right. The ride was fine. Two other guys I knew from the joint were being released the same time, and they had their whole families on board. It was like a tour bus. Wives and mothers, their sisters, kids. One guy, he's thirty-seven and has three grandchildren.”

“Gotta be a spic then.”

Dane took out a cigarette while Phil eyed him, trying to hide his anxiety. The thought of ashes falling onto the fabric, even if it wasn't original, put a crazed gleam in his eye.

“Don't light that.”

“I won't.”

“So was he a spic or a nigger?”

Sometimes you had to let the old-school bigotry go by, and sometimes you didn't. Dane said, “His name's D'Abruzzi. Stefano D'Abruzzi. His kids brought a laptop with them, playing DVDs on it. I watched the first half of one of the Harry Potter movies. Pretty good for a kid's flick. Anyway, Stefano's father's got a restaurant on the Upper West Side.”

“Oh yeah? Let me think. D'Abruzzi's, that's right. I ate there a few times. They had to order their tiramisu and torrone from the Jewish bakery down the block. What proud Sicilian is gonna do that, I ask?”

“The grandfather was from Naples.”

“That explains it then.”

Phil had already pulled Dane's trigger and made a harsh association, so now he had to ride his hate out. It was usually like this when you talked to the old-world Italians in the neighborhood. The old cops, the old-school mob guys. You couldn't get away from it. Their attitude was ingrained. No way to ingratiate or back down, you just had to shoulder past. Dane nodded passively, like he did whenever the bulls started to pull this sort of crap. Trying to start a race war because they were bored.

Phil's brow unfurrowed. He knew he was getting off track and didn't have a lot of time to make whatever play he was going for. “Hey, don't light that.”

“I won't.”

“You see Grandma Lucia yet?”

“No.”

“She's gonna be worried. You should've gone straight there to say hello.”

“I talked to her before I left the prison. She wants me to get her some cannoli and biscotti.”

“Go to La Famiglia.”

“I will.”

“They still know how to bake. Their amaretti are the best.”

Were they really talking about cookies?

But then Phil Guerra, patting the side of his silver rug, finally managed to get around to it. “You shouldn't be hanging around this part of the neighborhood, Johnny.”

“That right?” Like you could be in the neighborhood without being in every part of it at the same time. When you were back, you were in all the way.

“It's not the safest place for you.”

“Think it's safer than the can?”

“Maybe not.”

Phil took the next turn so wide that they wound up in oncoming traffic, tires squealing. He let out a wild guffaw and swerved back into his lane, tapping the curb. Dane shifted uneasily.

“What, you scared?”

“No.”

“You look edgy.”

“I always do.”

It still got to him, after all these years. He hated being in a car with anybody else driving, no matter who it was or how good they were behind the wheel. Dane was a driver. He always wanted to be in charge of the machine.

Rummaging through the glove compartment, he came up with a pair of thick glasses in dark plastic frames. He figured they'd be there, the man too vain to use them. “You sure you don't need these for driving, Phil?”

“Ah, them optometrists, whatta they know?”

“That you can't see?”

“I see fine.”

Dane put the glasses back, imagining how tough it must be on Phil's wife, Mabel, living with him now that he was retired, refusing to think of himself as any different than when he was twenty-five. She probably had gin bottles stashed all over the house, in the toilet tank, behind the insulation in the attic, in back of the cabinet under the kitchen sink. One of these days she'd grab the drain opener instead and that would be the end of her consoling, sneaky sipping.

Now the guy was getting a little crazy. Phil nearly sideswiped a bus making a tight left turn from the opposite lane. Dane fidgeted again, knowing this was a weakness he couldn't hide, and it had taken the man all of five minutes to find it out.

“Well, at least you've got a hard head,” Phil said. He let out a slow, low, counterfeit laugh that went on for too long. He tapped the inside of the windshield… one, two, three… then reached over and did the same to Dane's forehead… one, two, three. Phil even grabbed him by the neck so he could lay his fingers on the scars and check if they were still there.

Knocking at the metal doors of his skull.

On the day Dane and Vinny stole their third car, they went joyriding down to the Jersey Shore. They spent the day swimming, lying out on the sand, and moving the car around to different parking lots whenever a police cruiser came by. They met a couple of girls, freshmen in college, who spent equal parts of the afternoon snubbing them and aggressively flirting with them. By sunset they lay wrapped in their beach towels in the dunes, drunk and mostly naked. As with all the worst troubles in his life, Dane missed his chance at an easy escape by only a few seconds.

Vinny spoiled the night by putting on his pants, taking out his wallet, and offering the girls money. Not even much at that. He was still a little steamed about his girl initially rebuffing him, even though she'd eventually hauled his ashes. He could carry a grudge to the bottom of hell.

Pissed off and humiliated, the girls threw their beer cans at Vinny's chest, gave him the finger, and fled. Dane actually had to grab him by the arm to keep him from giving chase, like he was going to smack them around, make them take the cash. He was just starting to show the Monticelli temper, the resentments that he'd never shake.

By the time Dane and Vinny finished another six-pack and got back to the car, they were buzzing pretty good. Dane took it slow out of the parking lot, driving carefully, but suddenly the exit was blocked by two screeching cop cars.

Instead of pillow talk or discussing the violin, Vinny had told his girl all about boosting the car. Showing off, starting to swing his weight around, mentioning the Don. After he'd embarrassed her, she'd gone up to the boardwalk and called the nearest precinct.

Dane said, “Uyh,” shook his head, and tried to assess the situation. He saw an escape route clear and distinct in his mind. He could stand on the gas, cross a couple of rows of parked cars, slip around a streetlight, and jump the curb. It came down to about thirty seconds' worth of real action. If he could get a fifth of a mile head start, he knew he could lose the cops, dump the ride, and pick up another. But only if he could get that fifth of a mile.

He turned to Vinny to ask him what he wanted to do, but Vinny was already hissing under his breath about the girl, laughing to himself and sneering. Saying how he was going to kill her, stick a filleting blade in her kidney. Dane had never seen Vinny like that before, nearly fucking foaming.

The longer they sat around the worse it would be, so Dane threw the car into drive, ready to turn the wheel and try to make the curb. With a crazed, grating screech of eagerness Vinny screamed at him to bust through the roadblock instead. It was the kind of nutty crap that would never work. Making a death run at the cops would only get them aggravated assault, attempted vehicular murder.

High beams filled the stolen car and another siren blasted behind them. Megaphone voices snarling and ordering them out, onto the ground, facedown. Interlace your fingers and put your hands behind your head.

So, it was over before it had started. Dane went to shut off the engine and Vinny let out a yelp of joyous rage. Maybe he was happy, thinking he wouldn't have to play the violin in the joint.

He sort of dived up against Dane, giggling madhatter-style, like it was all a bad joke that would somehow end pleasantly. Suddenly he was trying to wrestle himself into the driver's seat, shoving Dane up against the door, jamming his leg across Dane's, and stomping the gas pedal. Vinny had a death grip on the wheel that Dane couldn't break.

They hit the blocking cruisers going about fifty and they both went headfirst through the windshield.

Dane had been lucky. Just one bad gash along his front hairline that took forty stitches, all the other trauma happening in back of his head, where nobody could see so long as he grew his hair long. A couple small metal plates to reinforce his cracked skull, about a hundred staples holding his brains in. Nothing that would show until he started to go bald in another eight or ten years.

Vinny hadn't been quite as fortunate. He'd landed face-first against the curb, shattering his nose and taking out most of his teeth. Crushed one cheek, burst his right eye, and caused a long dent in his brow. It was almost deep enough that you could fit your pinky in it and your finger would be flush with the rest of his face.

The court took more pity on them for that. The Monti attorneys were slick and got both of them off with probation.

“I just don't want to see you wind up like your dad,” Phil Guerra was saying.

Dane frowned, and asked, “How so?”

“You know. Dead before your time.”

That tickled Dane so much that he had to suppress a chuckle, leaving it under his tongue. Jesus, Phil sure could push a point home.

“You ready to visit your grandma?”

“Drop me off at La Famiglia. I still need to get her some pastry.” The bakery was two blocks away from Chooch's. They'd circled the neighborhood and were pretty much back where they'd started.

“Sure.” Phil let him out on the corner and shook his hand. “Give Lucia my love. Good luck, Johnny.”

“Thanks.”

“Give me a call if you ever need anything. I mean that. Anything at all.”

“I will.”

“And don't steal my car!” he shouted, letting out the sham laughter again. Dane sort of chuckled with him, thinking he just might have to boost the Caddy before this was all over.

Then he smiled and let his cigarette hang loose from the corner of his mouth, knowing that when he hit that pose, he looked exactly like his father.

Phil stuck his index finger out, cocked his thumb like it was a gun, and pretended to shoot Dane. Jesus, if these guys were always this subtle with their stupid threats, it was a wonder that anybody ever got bumped. Dane let his smile widen, showing teeth, squinting, the way Dad used to do when he was on the edge, ready to take somebody down.

Dane stood there and watched his father's partner drive away, knowing with real certainty for the first time that it was Uncle Philly who'd shot John Danetello Sr. in the head with his own service pistol.