Tom Piccirilli - Headstone City

“You also taught me how to shoot a gun.”

Don Pietro nodded, smiling sadly but without much emotion in his eyes. “I thought you might be a police officer like your father. Or that you would have joined our business here, at some level, perhaps even as a trusted advisor. I never believed you'd… show so little interest in either of these ways of life.”

“That was a very delicate way of telling me I'm a failure.”

“Not so. Simply that you've chosen your own way through the world. One I've never quite expected or understood.”

“You and me both.”

It made the Don chuckle under his breath. A few years back that would've been a sign that things were going to become ugly soon, but Dane just didn't get that feeling.

He wondered if the old man knew about Berto's predilections, and if they mattered to him at all. There was a time that something like that would've brought the ax down no matter who you were. If you were a made guy, if you were the big boss's son, that would only make it worse. You played around under the bridge with a pre-op tranny named Lulu, with 38D hooters and a seven inch pecker, and they'd find you floating in Sheepshead Bay with your nuts up your nose.

“What did you do in the military?”

“Wasted time mostly.”

“And so you didn't learn any skills?”

“I was too busy being pissed off most of the time.”

“Why is that, do you suppose, John?”

Smoke circled the Don, and the acrid, exotic stink hit Dane all at once. The man wasn't smoking a European cigarette after all. He was toking high-quality Colombian Gold.

“I didn't like always being told what to do.”

“All that time in the army and you left with so little.”

“I picked up a few things here and there.”

The disappointment shone in the Don's eyes. He'd been thinking that maybe Dane had been a sniper, had learned how to plant bombs. Something he could put to use. Don Pietro was the type of guy who kept lists around, everything from the bookie accounts to Cayman bank numbers to anybody who'd ever crossed him up. Or maybe that had only been back in the day. The joint seemed to be doing its job. The man looked mellow.

“Your grandmother… Lucia… I see her sometimes, walking to the bingo parlor.”

“Yes.”

“A beautiful woman. She still cooks much?”

“Yes.”

The hell was going on? Like this was a normal reunion where you play catch-up on all the silly trivia. Across the room the shooters were back to drinking coffee and eating their snacks, except for Joey Fresco, who fumed and sat hunched over, rubbing his throat.

It was time.

Dane stared the Don in the eye. “Do you hold me responsible for your daughter Angie's death?”

“Angelina, my Angelina,” Don Monti said, and the grief was a barb that kept catching his tongue. He paused, evaluating his words. “She-she was too impetuous, my Angelina. Full of life but drawn to fire. I could not control her, nor did I make enough of an effort to do so.” He drew another deep lungful. “Even her brothers were ineffective, as were the men assigned to safeguard her. I blame no one but myself for the troubles she endured. For the pain she brought to herself, and to this house.”

Dane looked at the old man, sitting there stoned and in pain, those crooked legs hanging at such odd angles. When Dane was a kid he'd feared the Don the way he'd feared his father, the way he'd feared God. With a mixture of terror and pride.

“No,” Don Pietro said, working the joint like it might be his last. “I do not hold you responsible.”

“Then why don't you call Vinny off?”

“He would never hurt you. No, never. What he does, he does for rispetto. ”

“I don't understand,” Dane said.

“You will see the truth, I think. One day soon. If you are strong and patient. I only hope you are worthy.”

Maybe the weed had been spiked with some acid. Dane checked his watch. It was almost six. “I've got to go now.”

The Don clasped his hand weakly and said, “Thank you for visiting. I enjoyed our talk.”

The old man might not be senile, but whatever had once made him the big boss was gone. It wasn't a ploy. All the edgy madness and will to violence had drained away until there was somebody sitting in the chair who Dane didn't completely recognize anymore.

As Dane moved across the room, Joey reached out and said, “You listen to me, I want to say somethin' here, no matter what, you and me, if it's the last-” and Dane chopped him in the throat again. Joey gagged and fell to his knees, and Big Tommy barked again.

Out in the rain Dane walked to Phil Guerra's stolen car and stared at how brilliant the shimmering water on the Magi-laquer appeared. As if this was a giant piece of deep blue ice brought up from a thousand feet below the Arctic cap, frozen 10 million years ago.

He got in and started the engine, easing down the drive and back into the streets of Headstone City. He reached for his cigarettes and the nausea rushed through his belly.

Here it comes, he'd been expecting it. Vinny couldn't pass up a meeting like this.

Dane's scars began to heat. He tried to beat the sickness back but that only made it worse, and he rolled down his window fast in case he had to heave. He stuck his face into the wind like a dog.

At the next light he fell back against the seat and suddenly Vinny was in the car, holding his lighter out. In some other reality he'd picked Vinny up and they were riding together, and now Vinny was imposing that track onto this world.

Dane leaned in, puffed, and took a long drag. He grinned and said, “This the rainy day you were talking about?” but by the time the smoke rose to break against the crags of Vinny's disfigured face, he was already gone.

Such fierce laughter could only come from a precipice in the ugliest corner of the abyss. A sound set in the unbreakable amber of madness, hurling itself across the room into Dane's face.

He'd just stepped into Olympic Cab & Limo after dropping off a Japanese family of six out in Montauk, and that noise hit him so brutally wrong that he almost backed out again. It was the kind of highly contagious sickness that could be carried on the breeze. You started thinking mass infection. Germ warfare.

Eager eyes on him, Fran continued laughing for another few seconds before it ended like a whip crack. “You were specially requested for a pickup tonight.”

Word had been getting around town about some of his exploits-the run through the hospital, the stolen Caddy. Fran sat there at the counter listening to the buzz across the radio, all the small, dangerous talk that circulated through Headstone City. Someone he didn't know was on there saying how Johnny Danetello wasn't long for this earth. The death pool had over five hundred bucks in it, and nobody had picked a day past November 4. They had started cutting up the boxes into morning, noon, and night.

“By who?” he asked.

“Your personality.”

“My what?”

“Your personality. Your celebrity.” Those teeth had a yellow shine to them that reminded him of gold rum.

“When?”

“Eight o'clock. Pepe wants to talk to you first.”

Her callous voice came at him in a color now, the edges of his vision lighting up from one red instant to the next. He couldn't figure out what she'd gone through in her life to make her sound like that. He stared at her for another second, speculating what it might have been, and she said, “Stop fucking looking at me like that.”

“Okay.”

“You don't charm me.”

“I realize that.”

“I don't think you do.”

“No, really, Franny, I do.”

She had her hand under the counter again, grabbing hold of the nine iron. He leaned forward, kind of daring her, wishing she'd make a go of it. Maybe all she needed was to give him one good crack across the head, then they could settle into being amiable coworkers. “I'm waiting for the day you're found floating in the surf,” she told him.