Headstone City (17 page)

She handed him the key to her apartment. For a second he thought she was telling him to keep it, stop over whenever he liked. Then he realized this was a throwback to more courteous times. When a man escorted a lady to her house, opened the door for her, ushered her inside. Is that how her drug dealer husband had gotten her? Lighting her cigarette for her, handing her a towel after she got done dancing the pole?

The apartment's design was totally retro. Jesus. What they would've called mod thirty years ago, right down to the shag rugs and the sunken living room. Silver shiny furniture and geometric shapes on the walls. Dane started flashing on his childhood, seeing his dad with a big mustache, flared collars.

Glory said, “I bought it furnished, so don't blame me if the place makes you want to put on lemon-striped bell bottoms and grow muttonchops.”

“It certainly takes me back.”

“Whenever I walk in, it's like somebody's got AM radio on. I start humming ‘Billy Don't Be a Hero.' Or ‘Seasons in the Sun.'”

“‘The Night Chicago Died.'”

“Yeah, that one too.”

He said, “No wonder your doorman thinks you only like seventies music. Aren't you a little young to have caught these hits the first time around?”

“I used to play my mother's old forty-fives. With the little plastic thing in the middle so they'd fit on the record player. You want something to drink?”

“A beer if you have it.”

“There's a fridge full of imported stuff, but I don't drink it. Mexican okay?”

“Sure.”

He checked around the place, the record in his brain stuck on the fuckin'
Nananas
from “The Night Chicago Died.” Goddamn song.

Over in the corner of the living room there was this weird device, sort of like a swing. All these rubber cords and this freaky leather seat. He looked at her and she said, “It's a love swing.”

He tried not to miss a beat but had already paused for too long. Nodding, he just said, “Oh.”

He'd heard of things like this but had never seen one before. Not even in a bedroom, much less right out in somebody's living room. He pushed at it and the love swing jangled and clanked. He wasn't sure who was supposed to sit in it or how the deed was to be done. But it seemed if you used the thing wrong, you could hurt yourself pretty bad.

It would be worth it though, as he imagined her climbing in there and hitting him with her action hero line.
I'm gonna rock your world, baby!

He tried to figure out what the swing there in the open was telling men who came into her place. That she was wild and knew how to please? Or be pleased? Or that she didn't give a damn what anybody thought of her sexual habits? Or was it part of the furnishings left behind? Fuck, gross.

He let himself imagine what Maria Monticelli's living room looked like, and if she'd ever been in one of those devices. Strapped, tied, swaying by chains. After about three seconds his brain started to hurt.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No.”

“You look a little sick.”

“Do I?”

Dane's scars began to heat. He tried to keep his hands at his sides but couldn't. He rubbed at the back of his head. Sweat coursed down the side of his face, and a sudden wave of nausea passed through him.

He looked toward the doorway and saw a flickering image of Vinny standing there with his mouth moving. Staring at Dane but talking to himself. Wearing a gray Armani suit but no bulge beneath the jacket, so he hadn't come packed.

Dane took a step toward him as Vinny faded in and out, solidifying for a second, then dissolving from the scene. Finally, he was gone.

Glory Bishop came over and handed Dane a beer. “Jesus, don't worry, I'm not going to make you get in the swing. Not if you hate it that much.”

“Thanks.”

Dane thought he knew what had happened. This situation was one of the three tracks that Vinny had been able to step into, wander around in for a few minutes before returning to where he started. Vinny had stepped into it for a few seconds—meeting with Dane here in Glory Bishop's apartment—then rejected the reality. The same as he'd done in Chooch's that day. Facing Dane down but then vanishing, moving into some different track.

So, Dane thought, he'd waited long enough to actually make Vinny impatient. Look at that.

Enough with this shadow dancing around each other. Tomorrow he was going to have to visit his old buddy and get the ball rolling.

But right now, as he sipped the Mexican beer and Glory Bishop came into his arms again, licking at his neck, he looked up at the ceiling to see what kind of supports that weird swing had. Maybe he'd try it out after all.

FOURTEEN

T
here was a new Monticelli crew member Dane didn't know standing at the door of Chooch's. Big kid, maybe twenty-one, with a flinty glare he practiced on everyone who passed him in the street. He probably gave it to his parish priest, trying to get the Jesuit altar boys to tremble during Mass.

He had to start things off right. He stepped inside the place, noting the few goombas who were already drunk at the bar. Three in the afternoon and these guys could barely keep their faces out of the ashtrays.

The mob was a young man's organization. The old dons and their original crews, if they'd survived into their sixties, usually wound up hitting the skids and living worse than folks on social security. They lived large while they could, but over the years they slowly shrank inside their ratty sweaters until they disappeared.

The kid pressed his meaty hand to Dane's chest. There it was again, the hand, like that would be enough to stop anybody who wanted to get past.

This thug barely moved his lips when he spoke, hissing so he'd sound tougher. He said, “Listen, bud, we don't open to the public till eight tonight, so—” and Dane punched him in the gut. Even if a guy had six-pack abs, he'd still fold if he hadn't tightened up. The kid doubled over and Dane brought his elbow around and cracked him in the chin.

It felt better than when he'd fought in the showers, somehow more natural to do this sort of shit in Brooklyn.

Dane drew his .38, pressed it into the kid's nostril, and told him, “You've probably heard about me. My name's Johnny Danetello.”

The thug coughed blood and said, “Who?”

Now that just pissed Dane off. He turned the gun around and smacked the kid between the eyes with the butt, let him drop, and walked farther inside.

He spotted Vinny in the back at the VIP table, drinking with most of the main players left in the Monticelli clan: Georgie Delmare,
the consiglier
; Joe Fresco, the hitter; and Big Tommy Bartone, the last of the real capos.

Vinny hadn't bothered to look up yet, letting the moment drag out a touch longer. That was okay. Everybody needed a little drama in their lives, hoping to milk every drop of cool out of the scene that they could.

Georgie Delmare was pure poise. The Don's former right-hand man had been inherited by Vinny. An attorney who managed to make everything look legal when the feds and the IRS came knocking. Sharp in business and always clearheaded. Pint-sized and soft, with bland eyes and a rugged complexion like he'd taken a lot of knocks when he was a kid.

Delmare said, “John, was that show of force really necessary?”

“Ask a skinhead named Sig about being excessive, Georgie. He charbroiled himself in my cell but he still didn't get the job done.”

Delmare had heard the story. His face crumpled and he slid back uncomfortably. Even he knew the Montis were going off track.

Joey Fresco's hands were under the table and Dane knew he'd be holding a gun in one and the butterfly knife in the other. He was a real edgy bastard who used to boost cars around the Heights. Drive them down to Atlantic City for the weekend, then bring them back and leave them right where he'd stolen them, in people's driveways with a full tank of gas. He liked to consider himself a gentleman bandit, eccentric but also personable. Except sometimes the cars would have a body locked in the trunk, some charred corpse with its face blowtorched off or a bullet in each eye. That sort of thing tended to ruin his cavalier image.

Big Tommy used to be Don Pietro's number one capo, in charge of all the dirty work. He ran the legbreakers and the shooters, and clearly enjoyed his work. Tommy had a smug smile and overconfident eyes that danced with a kind of mischievous light. He was stocky and his jacket bulged with hardware. His leather holsters creaked and rasped when he moved. His ferret face was drawn into a perpetual sneer. Dane was still a little surprised that nobody had put a hit on Tommy just for the way he looked. Always grinning and arrogant as hell, ready to toss his wine on someone's shirt.

“You're brash as hell, Johnny,” Big Tommy said. “I could've used you back in the day. But right now, you should probably move out of here before something happens and we gotta do a lot of cleanup. Drag you in back and spend all night at the sausage grinder. So back away now.”

“Sure, Big, in just a minute.”

Dane still had his .38 out but kept it low against his leg, not pointing it at anybody. He stared at Vinny and waited, wondering what it was that Vinny had been saying to him last night in Glory Bishop's apartment.

“I think you should stop this thing now,” Dane told him. “Before it goes any further.”

“That right?” Vinny's fake eye looked like it might be giving Dane the
malocchio,
the evil gaze, but with emerald hints of chagrin mixed in. “It's only got a little ways left to go.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yeah,” Vinny said. “You will be too, soon. Don't you feel any different than you did a few weeks back? I knew all we had to do was wait and you'd step up. You're looking healthier. Happier.”

Big Tommy had been inching his left hand under his jacket, where he kept his knife upside down in a holster. You had to give it to a few of these crews, they had some style left.

Dane put the barrel of his .38 in the wiseguy's ear and said, “How about if we just remain respected adversaries, eh, Big?”

Tommy's hand strayed another half inch under his arm. Dane sighed, still not too bothered by it, but wishing he and Vinny could just go and slug this out someplace alone.

“You listening, Big?”

“Sure, Johnny.”

Vinny wiped his lips with the cloth napkin and finally glanced straight into Dane's face. You always got the feeling the fake eye knew a little more about you than it should.

He nodded to the crew, the slightest tilt of his chin. They moved off from the table, settling in close by, Joey with his gun out, the barrel angled toward Dane's belly. If it was going to happen, they wanted to keep him alive and make it last for a good long while.

Dane reached across the table, took Vinny's glass of wine, and drank the remainder of it. He asked, “Hollywood, huh? You want to produce, direct, or star?”

“You had to come back. You had to show up here. I understand. We'll get through it all eventually. Enjoy your happiness, don't feel embarrassed by it.”

“What?”

“Really, you need to stop hurting yourself.” The words coming out of him as if rehearsed for months. “What is it that pushes you down onto the blade, eh? All this inner conflict? You even got an answer?”

Dane stared at him, trying to find something to say.

“Don't worry about it.”

It was good to know that Vinny, for all the rest of their troubles, could still read Dane well. When you needed a friend, you went back to the guy who knew you best, even if he wanted to kill you.

“You know what happened to Angie wasn't my fault.”

Vinny's voice took on a different tone, like he had fallen into a deep well and couldn't climb out. “She was fifteen. You take her to Bed-Stuy and sit outside with your thumb up your ass, and you're surprised by my reaction?”

“Not really,” Dane admitted.

“Then we know where we stand. I know if you ever gave a shit about anybody or anything, maybe even yourself, she wouldn't have died in the back of your cab. You couldn't have saved her, but it wouldn't be on your shoulders.”

“You're as complacent as I am,” Dane said. “Or you would've done it by now. You send half-assed cons after me for two years, then you let me walk around for weeks after I get out of the stir?”