Headstone City

FOUR

The impatient death angel, circling overhead, having waited long enough for another chance.

So here we go.

Dane walked around the block to Chooch's and stepped inside. The place was empty, which took him back a little. There were always a couple of muscle boys around and a familiar face or two at the back tables, even this early in the day. Nobody at the bar, not even a bartender.

The lights were on though. He cocked an ear, listening for noise in the back rooms, but there was nothing.

Dane moved farther into Chooch's, remembering the first couple times he'd been here with Vinny when they weren't even in their teens. Big Tommy Bartone setting up a couple of shots for them, thinking it was funny to let them drink themselves sick, dragging them both out in the alley to puke. Tommy laughing his ass off while they turned a deeper green and stumbled home.

Dane's scars began to burn, his skull abruptly pounding. He saw a slight blur of motion in the mirror and turned. Vinny was behind him, moving across the room to an empty table. He sat and stared at Dane expectantly, waiting like bait in the center of an ambush. His graceful hands folded easily in front of him. The glass eye pinning Dane, just a little off. It had a few flecks of green in it that the real one didn't have. He'd filled in the hairless section of his scarred eyebrow with an eyebrow pencil.

You wait so long for the moment to come, imagining what it'll be like and how you'll feel about it, and when it finally arrives you feel nothing. Even staring at the man who, out of everybody in the world, still knew you the best.

“It's good to see you,” Vinny said, and he sounded like he meant it. “Let's put this meeting off for a different day, all right?”

“Any time in particular?”

“Yeah, a rainy afternoon out in Wisewood. There'll be a hot-air balloon outside St. Mary's. I'll let you know when.”

“If that's a threat, it's a little cryptic.” Dane wanted to sit across from Vinny, lean across the table, and meet his eyes up close, but there were no other chairs around. There was always something that fucked up your big dramatic moment. “You want a guy's knees to tremble, you ought to be clear about it.”

“I'm telling you the truth, Johnny. I always do.”

“Your truth has a way of changing,” Dane said.

“That's not my fault. I just try to make the choices from the three I've got.”

“Is that all you have, Vinny? Still?”

“Yeah.”

Dane glanced around. “Why's the bar empty?”

“I knew you were coming, so I gave everybody the day off and told my crew to stay away.”

“I didn't think you ever closed up Chooch's.”

“It's only for a little while.”

No anger showing through, no upset or anything else. Vinny looked almost bored, maybe with a touch of regret, like he knew what was coming and had heard it many times before. Dane expected him to get a little hot, squeezing more juice out of the scene, but he only shrugged. Maybe both of them were hoping the other would just pack up and move away.

Vinny had taken something extra away from the accident too, the way Dane had done. A new kind of burden laid across their backs.

Three years after the crash Vinny became a lieutenant for his father, Don Pietro. It wasn't the usual way of things to have a blood relative of the big boss being a capo so early on, but it's what Vinny wanted, and the Don tried to play into everybody's strengths.

Vinny's first serious job had been to whack a guy named Paulo Cruz, who ran a Colombian crew over in south Jersey. They were hijacking trucks full of casino equipment from the Monticelli hotels in Atlantic City, causing lots of heartburn for everybody.

When Dane heard that Paulo Cruz had taken two in the head, and Vinny showed up at the bar wearing a glow of distinguished confidence, Dane knew Vinny had killed his first man.

It took the Jersey mob about a week to counterattack. It wasn't a particularly well-thought-out plan, just Paulo's brother Baldo and one of his soldiers walking down 82^nd Avenue with their hands in their pockets, coming toward the bar.

Dane and Vinny were stepping up the curb together.

“This doesn't have anything to do with you, Danetello,” Baldo Cruz said, which surprised Dane. Most wiseguys didn't care who they took out, so long as they got the one they were after. Classy.

A strange sound filled the air. It took Dane a second to realize it was coming from Vinny

This wheezing cackle, like he'd been laughing for hours and could barely catch his breath now.

“The hell is so funny?” Baldo asked.

“You!” Vinny shrieked. “Thrashing around on the ground like that!”

“What the hell you talking about, man?”

“The look on your face! Like you just got a bad piece of ass. Oh Jesus Christ, and… and… you're pissing yourself!” Vinny shook with laughter like a complete maniac. The fake eye never moving, staring straight ahead.

It made Dane's scalp tighten and a chill form at the base of his spine. His scars began to heat, the knowledge spreading through him that the entire world was shifting just an inch to the left. He felt dizzy and nauseous, like everything around him was reeling. Not him spinning, but the rest of existence. The metal in his head felt like it was tearing loose.

Baldo and the Jersey shooter made their move. Dane spun up the sidewalk and tried to get behind a lamppost, scared but not all that worried. The apathy had already taken hold by then. It was a bad feeling to have at a moment like this.

But they were slow, much slower than Vinny, who drew his.32 and pointed it at Baldo's legs. He fired twice and did this little dipping, zigzag motion that looked silly as hell. Like a nine-year-old girl sort of skipping along.

The Jersey shooter had drawn a.45 and pulled the trigger, aiming for where Vinny had been an instant before. But the bullet struck the sidewalk and shards of cement exploded toward Dane. There were moments when you realized how ridiculous you looked in flight.

Vinny capped the shooter in the face and stuck his gun back in his jacket. He stared down at Baldo Cruz, thrashing in the street, pissing himself, an expression on his face like he'd just been poorly laid.

Then Vinny got a firm grip on Dane's arm and ushered him down the block and into his car without a word. They circled the neighborhood twice, Vinny grinning the whole time, proud of himself. But there was something more there. Dane asked him what was going on, and Vinny explained about the three trails of reality he occasionally saw and could slip into, fuck around with, decide upon, and even sometimes return from again. He could walk into a different version of the world in midstream, and just keep going. Dane laughed like one of them was crazy, not knowing which. Vinny laughed the same way.

Afterward they'd gone to Aqueduct to watch the races. While Dane stood around thinking about what it might be like to walk into a different reality and walk out again, Vinny lost fourteen thousand bucks.

“So why didn't you bet the winner?” Dane asked.

“I didn't see the winner. He wasn't one of the three choices.”

“The hell good is foresight then?”

“I didn't say it was good. Not always.” Smiling, the false teeth too fucking white. “Not at the track today, but pretty good on the street with Baldo, eh? How about you? You come away with anything from the accident?”

“No.”

“You're lying.”

“No.”

Dane, unsure how to say that Baldo was right there behind Vinny while he was talking about the guy, staring at Dane with dead eyes, whispering, “He hates you too, Danetello. He's going to want your head on a platter. He'll get it, someday, unless you get him first.”

Since then, Dane had been trying to figure out which of them had a greater burden. He still wasn't sure.

“Why don't you just let it go?” Dane asked.

“It's you who won't let go. You're resistant now, but that's okay. We'll get there together.”

“Where?” Dane tried to grin but he could tell it just came off sickly, his features contorting. A ripple of vertigo spread from the inside of his head outward, his vision clouding as it throbbed through him. It felt like Vinny might be toying around with his alternate tracks even now, taking Dane along with him for a step or two. “I just want to be left alone.”

“Nobody pushes you, Johnny. Whatever happens is because it's set in motion the way it's got to be. You stand or slump on your own.”

Dane figured that after all these years he was as hard and strong as Vinny. That if they were going to do this thing, they might as well do it now. Vinny wasn't packing. Hand-to-hand, Dane could kill him without half trying, if only he could make himself do it.

“Don't make me kill you.”

“I won't,” Vinny said, and let out a sort of sad smile. His lips squirming on his face. “Death is nothing anyway.”

“It's something.”

“We beat it a long time ago, when we went through the windshield. You didn't know that?”

“You pazzo fuck.” Dane spun and headed for the door, and the nausea washed through him again. He doubled over but didn't hit the floor. His metal skull rang like a church bell. Vinny was toying with reality again, changing tracks in midmotion, and somehow dragging Dane along.

“Don't forget the cannoli,” Vinny told him, patting him on the back and walking out the door.

Dane looked up and the bar was full of people. A few of the Monticelli muscle boys and a couple of familiar faces at the back tables, staring at him oddly. A brute of a bartender looking like he was about ready to jump over the bar and toss Dane out.

An orange-lipped waitress carrying a tray of screwdrivers leaned over him and said, “You okay?”

“Didn't Vinny give you the day off?”

“He never gives us the day off.” She helped him to straighten up, hand on the back of his neck, but after a second she yanked her hand away, like her fingers had been singed by his scars.