Tom Piccirilli - Headstone City

Traffic grew heavier and Dane drifted a little higher on the adrenaline than he wanted to go. A hazy white light invaded the borders of his peripheral vision, cutting left and right while Tommy came on behind him. He let loose a slightly crazed chuckle. He eased in and out of lanes with perfect efficiency, the limo cutting a big enough swath for Tommy to easily follow. This was going to get bad.

So what the hell. Dane cut left and gunned it, shimmying the steering wheel a touch so the limo zagged. It was enough to make Tommy overreact and pull too far to the right, raking against a parked car and tearing off the side mirror. The brutal scrape of metal on metal made Dane grin.

He couldn't figure it out. Why the hell would Big Tommy Bartone keep coming at him, playing out a car chase, of all things? You didn't send a button man after a driver.

They roared through intersections together, and Tommy began to batter at the limo's rear bumper. He was an amateur behind a wheel but aggressive. The jolting crashes made Dane's back teeth hurt and he must've bitten his tongue because his mouth was full of blood. He let his intuitions guide him through the streets, knowing what was going on around him, where he was heading, but distanced from the moment.

So far, they'd been lucky, catching only green lights. Dane maneuvered easily from lane to lane. Making fast but careful turns as Tommy moved in tight behind him, sticking close and following Dane's lead. Even driving the limo, Dane knew he could shake Big Tommy if he really gave it a go; but he held back, sensing some clarifying appointment up ahead.

No cops yet. He still felt relatively safe. Believing he could get away without the added trouble of trying to explain the situation to the police.

Horns blared and a few shouts went up as they gunned past blocks of dilapidated buildings; Tommy chipping away at the limo's rear. It was stupid. The 'Stang's front end would buckle long before it did any real damage to the limo, but Tommy seemed a little crazed. He held the gun in his left hand and fired a couple times out the driver's window, but both shots went wild. A group of gangbangers selling drugs on the corner scattered, drawing their own weapons. Dane saw two Tec-9 submachine guns pointed his way and he stomped the gas.

Brooklyn wasn't always home after all.

Doing sixty down a side street, they passed a four-story apartment building with a red awning over the door. The flower boxes hanging from the bars of the windows on the first floor were empty. The abandoned car in the corner of the lot next door was gone.

Your conscience knew where to take you. Dane sped through the intersection where he'd run over the traffic cop.

Big Tommy hung in with him pretty good until Dane made a wide swinging right that was nearly a U-turn. Tommy's front end locked with the rear bumper of the limo for a second, and when they detached Tommy skidded into an empty bus stop bench. He dropped back and two hubcaps rolled out ahead of the 'Stang.

Dane slowed, drew into the parking lot of the hospital where Angelina Monticelli had died, and pulled up to the emergency room.

He reached into the glove compartment and grabbed his.38 from beside the envelope with the ten grand JoJo had given him. He got out, stuck the pistol in his belt, buttoned his suit jacket over it, and calmly walked in through the automatic sliding glass doors.

He waited inside for a second until he saw Big Tommy Bartone come screeching to a stop behind the limo. Tommy got out, holding his gun pressed down against his leg, looking more upset than pissed, and came jogging up the sidewalk.

So, it was going to be like that.

Dane shook his head, turned, and wandered down the corridor leading deeper into the hospital.

Nobody ever looked twice at someone else in a hospital hall. Patients could wander around the place for an hour without a nurse coming up to offer any help. He checked down the corridor and saw that the administrative station was empty.

Two Asian doctors walked out of an office. Whispering and staring down at their feet, they stepped into another room and closed the door. Dane kept moving casually, knowing Tommy would come bumbling along any second.

He looked at a sign on the wall: Pediatric Oncology Ward. The only people you were likely to find here were dying children and their parents huddled around well-made beds. The pillowcases always fresh, even when their flesh was rotting.

The corridor lights were too dim. One end of the hallway looked like it was being remodeled. Wires hung in a colorful knot from the ceiling, and below stood a wooden ladder, stained cans and tools placed on every other step. He hadn't seen a wooden ladder in years and it reminded him of his father, the man's thick hairy arms speckled with paint. Yellow caution tape had been strung across the width of the passage.

A whisper to his left. He turned and listened as a child's muted voice called, “Hallo?”

The greeting barely recognizable. Taking the vague form of a word shoved through a pinhole cut through layers of scar tissue.

Dane looked down to see a girl, maybe twelve years old, touching his wrist. Tufts of coarse gray hair stuck out in odd cusps and notches across her pink scabbed head. Bandages swathed her throat and forehead, and there was hardly anything left of her face.

He couldn't tell if she'd been in a fire or if this was some kind of cancer, chewing her away an inch at a time while the doctors tore more away with their scalpels and radiation. She looked at him with one perfect eye, beautiful in its depth and full of understanding, perhaps even forgiving. The dark angles of her ruined features drew together to form an inexplicable shadow.

She used what remained of her lips to ask, “Are you real?”

It gave Dane some pause. “I'm not so sure anymore. I have my bad days. How about you?”

Something like a tongue prodded forward. She grunted a sound that could've been either yes or no and tried to give him a grin.

However frail life might be, the appearance of it was even more fragile. No matter how closely you looked, you still couldn't tell who was alive and who was dead.

He patted her head and felt the softness of bone beneath all the gauze, the thickness of the scar tissue so much like his own.

They both turned away from each other in the same instant, the girl drifting back to her room as Dane headed farther into the hospital. He came across a visitors' lounge filled with a few chairs, a worn couch, a soda machine, and a pay phone. At the end they tell you to go call any family members who might want to visit one last time. Like you ring them up while they're watching one of their yuppie sitcoms, sitting around in sweatpants, a one-year-old napping in the bassinet, and they'll come charging into the night.

Pounding footsteps resonated up the hall. Dane drew his gun and faded around the corner into the alcove, his back to the wall.

Tommy's leather holsters creaked loudly as he stormed down the corridor, too wired to play it with any tact. They were all losing their cool so easily nowadays. What the hell had happened to everybody?

Dane could feel Big's attitude approaching first, an oppressive aura of anxiety. In the army, Dane's drill instructor used to talk about how some people went out of their way to make their presence known. Without saying a word, without even an odor. But you could pick up on it if you made the effort.

With his.32 still pressed down against his leg, sort of tiptoeing like a little kid does when playing hide-and-seek, Big Tommy Bartone wandered past facing the wrong way.

Dane stuck the barrel of his gun in Tommy's ear and said, “Hey, Big, you really think this was a good idea?”

Tommy's bulk stiffened but the muscles of his face went slack, glad the game was over. Maybe everyone was just getting too old. “Ah, no.”