Headstone City Part 3

"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 82nd 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. Cla.s.sy.

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 h.e.l.l is so funny?" Baldo asked.

"You!" Vinny shrieked. "Thras.h.i.+ng around on the ground like that!"

"What the h.e.l.l you talking about, man?"

"The look on your face! Like you just got a bad piece of a.s.s. Oh Jesus Christ, and . . . and . . . you're p.i.s.sing 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 s.h.i.+fting 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 h.e.l.l. 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, thras.h.i.+ng in the street, p.i.s.sing 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, f.u.c.k 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 h.e.l.l good is foresight then?"

"I didn't say it was good. Not always." Smiling, the false teeth too f.u.c.king 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."

"n.o.body 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 winds.h.i.+eld. You didn't know that?"

"You pazzo f.u.c.k." 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.

FIVE.

His daddy, large in Dane's mind but not in his life, took on a greater shape and made himself known again. The man, wherever he was, looking at Dane from the other side of the void and giving him a run along now pat on the a.s.s, just so he wouldn't forget there was unfinished business to be taken care of.

The past gained greater momentum, reckless in its approach but carrying him along, bringing him up to speed. If you don't fight this kind of current, it would take you wherever you had to go. He could feel himself catching up a little more, fitting back in. The trouble was making sure you didn't jump the track and completely derail.

Dane walked the mile to the Olympic Cab & Limousine Company. Looking through the window of the inner office, he saw that Pepe Morales had been promoted to manager.

Pepe was sitting at the back of the office chattering on the radio, huge pictures of his wife and kids on the large metal desk. He was telling a story that Dane had heard maybe twenty-five times, about the night when Pepe picked up the two lesbian hookers over by Sheepshead Bay and one went crazy with a straight razor on the other. The laughter grew so loud on the speakers there was feedback.

Pepe had been the only one from the neighborhood to visit Dane in the slam. You could count on him making the holidays something special even behind bars. Pepe would show up on Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Eve, bringing a bunch of gifts. Books and magazines mostly. He'd spread them around to the nine or ten buddies and relatives he had in the joint, and sometimes even brought something for the bulls. Keeping everybody in a good mood, even the guards drawing the s.h.i.+t s.h.i.+fts, who couldn't be home with their families.

Dane moved to the counter, where a harried young brunette with mussed hair fidgeted in a chair, filling out blue forms and chewing a toothpick to splinters. Without glancing up she said, "Yeah?"

"I'd like to talk to Pepe."

"He's busy."

"I'm a friend," Dane said. He grinned but she still hadn't lifted her head. Maybe he was starting to lose some of his charm.

"All his friends are locked up."

"I know, but I just got out."

"Well, isn't that just f.u.c.kin' great for the rest of society."

"It made my grandmother happy," Dane said, giving the smile all he had even though his lips were starting to get tired.

"A respectable woman."

"Yes."

"Upon whose house you bring shame."

"Actually, I bring her a lot of cannoli."

She flipped through more papers and spit the shreds of toothpick on the floor in front of Dane. "I told you, he's busy."

"So are you and you're talking to me, honeybunch."

It got her attention. She swiveled in her seat and glowered from beneath a jumble of loose curls. Bloodshot eyes, the seething tension there sharpening into instant hatred. At least she was looking at him.

"You a mouth?" she asked.

"No."

"You got something you want to say? Am I going to have trouble with your a.s.s? You think I'm putting up with that s.h.i.+t?"

Dane could never quite figure out why everybody was always so p.i.s.sed, showing disapproval over any small thing, ready to jump into a stranger's face. Everybody in the joint was much more relaxed.

"I'd just like to speak to Pepe."

"I already told you twice now, he's got work-"

It was already too late to defuse the bad atmosphere. Dane stared beyond her and tried to make eye contact with Pepe. He was up to the part in the story where one of the working gals is slas.h.i.+ng like wild, her girlfriend screaming with her cheek sliced open, blood everywhere, and while Pepe is struggling with the slasher they wind up driving off the pier. He couldn't swim and almost drowned, sucking down half the East River, shouting for somebody to save him. But this version of the tale had a happy ending, because the wh.o.r.es made up while they were giving him CPR.

She reached under the counter and got hold of something heavy, maybe a bat or a tire iron, gaze locked on Dane the whole time, getting ready to pounce.

Willing to kill him but not willing to go knock on the G.o.dd.a.m.n door. People drew very strange lines in the sand.

Pepe turned around and spotted Dane, and let out a cry of delight. He walked out of the office and stopped short, frowned, and made a pleading gesture to heaven. "Fran, put down the nine iron, will you, please?"

"No."

"C'mon!"

"I don't like this one," she said.

"Almost n.o.body does, but I'm still sending you for stress management courses. You don't even drink coffee, what's the matter with you?"

"He's got those smirky eyes."

"He thinks he's being charming."

"He's not."

Smirky eyes? Did he really do that? Dane thought he knew just what she meant, but he'd never heard it about himself before. It was the kind of thing he despised.

"Take over for a while," Pepe told her. "All right? I'm going for a fifteen-minute smoke."

Lips tugged out of whack like they were being yanked by fish hooks, Fran caterwauled, "Fifteen minutes! Like h.e.l.l! What're you smoking out there? Cubans? Be back in five, I've got enough s.h.i.+t to do around here."

"Ten."

Pepe came around the counter with his arms open. He clenched Dane around his waist and picked him off the ground. The guy still weighed under 120 but it was all sinew and muscle. After a quick twirl in the air, Pepe set him down gently and gave him a quick hug, rubbing him softly on the back the way Dane's mother used to do when he was a kid. They walked out to the back of the garage together.

The stink of grease, oil, and transmission fluid struck Dane like an old lover embracing him.

"You need to cut her hours back some," Dane said. "That one in there."

"Ah, it's her just her office personality."

"You ever get any repeat customers?"

"Franny's a sweetheart, but she's got an instinct for trouble. In this place, it comes at her from all sides, makes her a little paranoid."

"Okay."