Headstone City

SEVEN

With the night came a heavy, abiding fog rising off Long Island Sound.

The kind that seemed intent on action, wanting to chase Dane down. Throbbing as it coiled against his tires, calling him along the expressway mile by mile. He could race into the heaving clouds and hide his crimes, hunt for the ambitions he'd set aside until no one was looking. This was the living darkness that matched what was locked inside his rib cage.

Swirling gray threads swallowed the headlights, laid across the road to snare his front end. The nimbus of twin beacons looked like burning souls wandering lost in purgatory, side by side down the road. Maybe him and Vinny, after they'd finally done each other in.

Dane drove over to the warden's house out in Glen Cove, right on the north shore. He wheeled past million-dollar estates that compelled men of meager salaries into jealous rages and flipped them over the big edge.

All you had to do was stare up at the third-floor windows, look at the wide expanse of lawn and trees in the yards, the three-car garages, to know why there were guys guzzling whiskey in the local hole in the wall. Their bitterness crawling over them like heat rash, a loaded shotgun in the trunk. It had nothing to do with women or champagne or even money. It was a balance of power.

Some Wall Street whiz with capped teeth changing the fate of the economy, and you over there with your finger on the trigger.

The warden's place was huge. One of those new, moderate mansions built to look like some Georgian manor. Maples trimmed so the branches dangled like willows or cypress. Big columns out front, an old-fashioned lantern hanging way above the front door and lighting it the way curators lit Renaissance art in museums.

Being in charge of ten thousand social and moral rejects had its upside. You couldn't feel pity for a guy who had to work behind bars all day long if he got to come home to this.

Pulling up at the curb, Dane tuned the radio into a fifties station and sat back. It was his father's music, which rooted him to his blood. His own life might be adrift, but still he was connected to the foundation of his forebears, going back in a line through the years. You had to take what you could get, even if it was only a dead man's stability.

Propping his fist under his chin, Dane stared at the windshield and remembered what it was like to become one with the glass, and the pain. Advancing through one and into the depths of the other. His scars pulsed. The metal plates warmed.

Music filled the car and swelled within him, pressing out everything else. His thoughts began to slowly pour away as he settled further into the seat.

It took a while, but eventually the voices on the radio acquired a different tone and began speaking in languages Dane didn't understand. The music faded until it became nothing but static intermittently broken by distant cries and appeals. Mournful, occasionally frantic.

Dane shut it off and turned to look through the passenger window, knowing what he would see.

The warden-Robinson Howards III-naked in the hot-burning light high above his doorstep, coming straight for the car. Skin glistening pale and mottled pink. His gait awkward, like he couldn't get his arms and legs moving together, head lolling. He got in the backseat, reached to close the door but it was already shut. Dane snapped on the interior light and leaned over so the warden could see his face.

“John Danetello,” Howards said, accepting the situation without question. Then his features contorted, the confusion setting in. “What are you doing here? How did you find my home?”

“Everybody knows where you live, warden.”

“What?”

It was true. The leader of the Aryan Brotherhood had hired a sleazy private eye a year or so ago to track Howards and a few of the guards. Insinuating that the brotherhood was going to knock off a few bulls and the warden himself in a cutthroat show of power. It didn't matter, because the Nazi Lowriders punked out and never did make a move. They spread the home addresses around, hoping the Mexican Mafia or the Black Guerrilla Family would do the deed and they could still take credit for it.

Dane knew the area pretty well. Some of the Monti associates lived nearby. Years ago, Vinny used to take him out there for big family parties. Vinny would go off to a cabana and screw around with some mob accountant's daughter while Dane sat poolside, wearing sunglasses, maids bringing him pink drinks with lots of fruit in them. He'd watch a hundred people he didn't know swimming, playing croquet in the four-acre backyards, and talking tax shelters.

Afterward, Vinny would come out with the girl looking a little rattled, and he'd give Dane a wink and grab the foofy drink out of his hand and go, “The fuck is this? Melon balls with tequila? Hey, you're gonna get burned without any sunscreen on, man. You want her to rub you down?” The girl smiling but a touch scared, Vinny's glass-eyed gaze pinning her to a lawn chair. Her sweaty, mussed hair sticking to the side of her face.

Howards looked down at himself in the back of the Buick, noticing his shriveled pecker but not feeling the cold. “Why am I here?” he asked.

“I wanted to talk with you,” Dane said, and pulled away from the curb. He drove slowly along the roads closest to the water.

“Make an appointment. Have I been hypnotized?”

“No.”

“Drugged?”

“No, warden. We're on a night ride together.”

“What does that mean?”

“Relax and find out.”

Dane couldn't get into it too quickly because the warden never allowed anybody else to speak. He'd have to blather on for a while and, after he wore down a little, he'd act like he'd been giving the other guy a chance to talk the whole time, and say, “Well?”

Stroking his slight trace of beard stubble, Howards stared out at the fog undulating across the Sound, swarming around the car. “It's dark. And I find myself sitting in the back of a GM with you. And I'm most certainly naked. This is quite literally the stuff of nightmares.” It struck him as funny and he let go with a confused smile. “I'm occasionally plagued by dreams of being gang-raped by prisoners.”

“Put your mind at rest about that,” Dane said.

“Are you going to kill me, Mr. Danetello?”

“No.”

It was the “Mister” that always got to Dane. The guy saying it more like he was a high school principal trying to shake up a kid caught in the hall without a pass. Dane hated and enjoyed it at the same time, in about equal parts, but he wasn't sure why.

“You're not really here, warden.”

“I'm not?”

“No. You're still at home in your bed.”

“How ridiculous. Your psychiatric examination results showed you were a borderline schizophrenic, but I never saw any evidence of that until now.”

It actually annoyed Dane, hearing that sort of shit about the psych tests. The cons who talked to the doctors usually fooled them into an early parole, saying how they were cured, they just wanted to give something positive back to society. Then on the morning of their release they went and took out a whole family with a meat cleaver. They go right back into the can and the doctors start flipping through their files trying to figure out where they went wrong.

“Do you remember getting into the car?” Dane asked.

“Yes.”

“How'd you do it?”

“What a foolish question.”

“Then answer it.”

“I-” Howards said, and fear reared up in his eyes. The warden did a good job at keeping control and not losing his cool. Dane had found him hard but fair. A bit too stuffy for his own good but not often judgmental. He was a little street ignorant and so he was more honest than other men in similar positions of power. Because he didn't have quite so much on the ball, he was somehow easier to deal with.

“How?” Dane repeated.

“I never opened the door, did I? I simply… entered.” Still reasoning his way through it, voice calm but lifeless. “I feel rather disconnected, which is not an altogether unpleasant experience.”

If he didn't feel that way, he'd be screaming his ass off, halfway out of his head, knowing his soul was separated from his sleeping body. “Glad you're enjoying yourself.”

“I didn't say that. Is this what the New Age metaphysicians would call my astral self?”

“Call it what you like,” Dane told him.

“What do you call it?”

“I don't put a name to it.”

“You often avoid questions put directly to you. The prison psychiatrists noted that in your files as well.”

Dane tried not to sigh and failed.

Sort of funny, the way the warden started staring at his hand, like he thought it might become transparent. Bringing it up to his eye, looking at the palm and inspecting the other side, touching his fingers together. What would those fuckin' doctors tell him now?

Howards bent forward and said, “How odd and unique, to be born with this gift.”

“It's not unique and I wasn't born with it. At least I don't think I was.” He still wasn't sure. Maybe the burden was always there, like with his grandmother, and the crash just made it heavier, stronger. Who knew, maybe Vinny was right, and they'd both been dead since the accident.

“Someone else has it?”

Dane found himself measuring his words. “Similar anyway.”

“Who?”

“Vinny Monticelli.”

“Ah, I see. I've heard strange stories about him. How he believes he has visions and the gift of prophecy. So it's true, then? My God, how awful that'd be.”

“He doesn't seem to mind.”

“And you?”

“I get along,” Dane said.

“How did you both acquire such facilities?”

“We went through a windshield together,” Dane told him.

Looping over to the parkway, heading down to the beach. When he was a kid his parents used to take him out there to go swimming, the waters a lot cleaner than the sludge over at Coney. They'd build sand castles and his father would make sounds like the seagulls, his voice echoing among the dunes.

Almost nervous now, thinking about it all a little more, the warden asked, “What happens if I wake up?”

“I don't know.”

“Might I die?”

“I suppose it's a possibility.”

“Oh, this is terrible. You don't understand what Edna's snoring is like. I must wake up twenty times a night. I suggest you get me back soon.”

“In a minute. I need answers first. What have you heard about the Monticellis' action lately?”

“What makes you think I'll tell you the truth?”

“You don't have any choice.”

“Oh my.”

Howards thought about it and appeared to consider his options at the moment. Deciding whether he should say anything more to an ex-con released only this very morning. Sitting in the backseat of a Buick trying to stare through his hand. Scared that his wife's nasal drip might inadvertently kill him. But Dane meant what he said. Nobody on the night ride could lie to him.

“Almost nothing,” the warden said, wagging his unwieldy head, looking out both windows, hoping they were on their way back to his house. “You must know that their business operations are almost completely legitimate at this point.”

“More or less. But our problems aren't business, they're personal. And they still had some reach into your prison. They put a hit on me this morning while a couple of your boys looked the other way.”

It rattled Howards and got him refocused. “The incident with Mako and Kremitz? In the showers?”

“Yeah.”

“They said they'd attacked each other because of pilfered cigarettes.”

“They're trying to save their skins. The Monticellis still have enough muscle to cause trouble. I'm just not sure why they'd bother going about it like that.”

“Give me the names of the offending officers and I'll look into the matter.”

Dane told him, just to nettle the bulls a little. The charges would never stick, but maybe it would shake them up. Word would get back to the family.

“If what you say is true, Mr. Danetello, then I'll make sure these men are properly dealt with.”

“Okay. Anything else you know that might help me?”

“The FBI did inquire about you. There was some discussion on whether you'd be willing to wear a wire for them.”

“What? If the family is so legit now, then why would the feds care enough to wire somebody? What are they after?”

“Almost completely legitimate, I said. I assumed they wanted information about past activities, unsolved murders, that sort of thing.”

“When was this?”

“After the fire in your cell.”

“So why didn't they approach me?”

“I only dealt with a single agent. A man by the name of Cogan. He read through your case file and seemed to feel that contacting you was either unnecessary or could wait indefinitely.”

That sounded like a fed all right. Plays it close to his vest, even in front of Howards. Makes some kind of a show about getting Dane to wire up, then just lets it drop. Something was stirring in the Monti camp.

Dane drew up in front of the warden's mansion again. He checked the rearview and nodded to Howards. “Thanks for your help.”

“Am I going to remember any of this? On a conscious level?”

“No, you'll pass most of it off as a dream.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“We'll see.”

The warden began to make his way back up the walkway, outside of the car without opening the door, gait unnatural and his ass cheeks clenched. Scared that his neighbors might be watching.

Dane let out a chuckle and Howards's shoulders tensed. Like he might turn around and say something else, but he vanished before hitting the pool of light surrounding front door.

Mostly a wasted trip, but he had nothing better to do. Dane started to pull away from the curb when a blur of motion caught his eye.

Coming straight for him, running across the lawn, was Aaron Fielding, the dead grocer.

The old man appeared as despondent as when he'd shown up in Dane's cell. Holding his arms out and waving them, his mouth moving but no sound coming out.

“Ah, shit.”

Like Dane didn't have enough troubles already. Now he had to get into the middle of this, whatever it was.

Fielding had almost reached him when the guy started to dissipate, becoming dim and ashen, evaporating step by step until, only a few feet away, he dissolved into the fog.

“Okay,” Dane said. “I get it. There's something important you want help with. I'm sorry I didn't listen before. Come back and tell me.”

Dane waited there another five minutes, hoping Angie or Fielding would return. Or anybody else who wanted to come and talk with him. But no one did.

All this, and some prick named Cogan skirting around in the shadows too.