Tom Piccirilli: Headstone City

JoJo Tormino sat in the backseat with her, staring at the side of her face like he didn't recognize her anymore. Or thought she was someone else.

Angelina leaned forward and said in Dane's ear, “Thank you.”

“Sure.”

“But you should have killed him.”

“Maybe some other time.”

“Will they really take his fingers?”

“I don't know. It might be a point of pride now, since I put the idea in their heads.”

“I hope they do.”

She climbed forward into the passenger seat, curling against him without touching. That familiar heat flooded into his guts and got him sweating, worse than usual because his heart was still hammering.

Could any woman alive ever do for him the things the dead could do? He started breathing heavily, nervous in the way that guns could never make him. Her bangs wafted again, brushing against his throat.

“You told me that my mother wanted to say something to me.”

“She does.”

“What is it?”

“How should I know?”

JoJo Tormino stared out the window. Unwilling or unable to speak. Funny how some of them had so much to say, and others so little. JoJo turned his gaze forward and caught Dane's eye in the rearview. He was going to start that whole prodding in the side thing again, Dane could tell. It was time to go give her the ring.

“Where's Maria now, Angie? In Hollywood?”

“Hell no, she's never been west of Jersey.”

“But I thought Vinny was setting up her career?”

“He hasn't done a thing for her yet.”

“So where is she?”

Angie smiled, like she knew what was coming next. “At our sister Carmella's house out on Begoyan Street. She's married to a podiatrist.”

Dane didn't know Carmella all that well. She was older, the daughter of the Don's longtime goomar, a girlfriend he started hanging around with back in the late fifties. She didn't have much to do with the family, and Dane had only met her a couple of times at Monticelli functions a long time ago.

“Why's she there?”

“Berto is keeping watch over her.”

“For what?”

“He thinks the Ventimiglia family might be taking a run at her.”

Dane tried to track it but couldn't. With a touch of frustration he realized he still didn't see things the way the goombas did. After all these years it should be second nature, understanding their impractical moves, but he just couldn't ever get it into focus. “Why would they do that?”

“Because of JoJo Tormino.”

“The Ventis think he died because of her?”

“Well, he did, pretty much.”

“But she had nothing to do with it. The Ventimiglias work like that? Send a crew against a family member in payback? They've got to know JoJo loved her, right? So now they're gonna whack her?”

“They're the only rough family left,” Angie said, her lips just under his ear. The Caddy veered a little over the double yellow and Dane had to yank it back. “I always hated those guys. Vito Grimaldi was constantly trying to paw me whenever there was some kind of get-together. Barbecues. Baptisms. Even at funerals.”

“He a capo?”

“Yeah.”

JoJo still had his bullet holes: the left elbow, left thigh, jagged melted graze along his jaw, and high in the chest. The sucking wound above his heart hissed and gurgled. How long could a dead man bleed? It got worrisome, having JoJo back there just watching, waiting, his spiritual peace all hinged on Dane facing a woman he'd wanted his entire life.

If only you could throw a corpse out of the car. It would make life so much easier.

“By the way,” Angie said. “What did Mr. Fielding want with you? He no longer cries in his grave.”

Dane told her, “He had a confession to make.”

“Oh,” she said. So beautiful, so much like Maria, that Dane had to rub his palms along his pant legs to dry them. “Oh, I know what that's like.”

“Yeah, me too.”

The podiatrist's house stood so far out on Begoyan Street that you could see it from three blocks away. The front door had been painted a fierce turquoise, and there was a large wooden foot hanging from a pole on a pair of chains at curbside. The name DR. STANLEY WEINTRAUB arced along the heel in black-framed block letters. Classy.

Maria's sister Carmella had married young and gotten as far away from the Monticellis as she could: about two miles across Flatbush Avenue. Dane knew it was a whole different world here. You might as well be in Antarctica if you had to take a subway to get good pasta fagliogli.

But you couldn't really run from Don Monti, not even if you were his illegitimate daughter. You could only hope that family wasn't keeping an eye on you every minute of the day.

Like Angie had told Dane, they were watching the house.

Roberto Monticelli was out front in a sleeveless T-shirt, holding a cigar in his huge hand. He stood about six-four, heavily muscled but with a little spare tire around the middle and a double chin he'd never get rid of. He pretty much had only one eyebrow and didn't seem bothered by it. He kept his hair short but well moussed so that it appeared curly as razor wire.

He had surrounded himself with an atmosphere of self-importance, marred only by his extreme and total uncool. He wore a leather holster on his belt at the small of his back, housing a.44 Magnum. The barrel was so long that it hung out the bottom of the holster and made it look like Berto had a pipe sticking up his ass.

Dane used to be terrified of him-if you so much as said good morning to Maria in the school hallways, Roberto would stab you in the eye with a pencil.

It was sort of rough trying to visualize Berto under the bridge with transsexual hookers. Once you started bending your imagination in that direction, it just wouldn't stop. It made you wonder how long Berto's lifestyle had been curving like this. Since high school? Teenage son of a mob boss feeling up the tits of Bernadette, sucking her tongue, saying yeah baby baby, only to grab hold of Bernie's tool. Was it a turn-on right then or did he have to work it out for himself, struggling with his shame? Yeah, probably killed the first one out of revulsion, but the interest was implanted. He dumps the strangled body of Bernie but keeps seeing that swinging dick in his dreams. Gets him nauseous and aroused at the same time. No wonder he was always in such a bad fucking mood. Did he have one girlfriend he kept returning to, waiting for him beneath the bridge? How much was the standard rate for around-the-world with somebody you could do twice as much with? Like there weren't enough questions to make you crazy.

Seated in the Caddy, Dane scanned the area, looking for more members of the crew. Nobody else seemed to be around.

Dane knew what he was going to do now even though it was bound to cause a lot of problems all around. What the fuck.

Pocketing his keys and the.38, he slid from the car. Berto had seen the Cadillac go by, but showed no interest. It was a common sight to him.

Dane made sure he made some noise and slammed the door hard, stepping heavily across the street, kicking loose asphalt. He walked up with his arms loose at his sides, hands open. Roberto didn't quite recognize him and puffed intently on his cigar, blowing smoke in a thick cloud as if it somehow made him groovy, like one of the Old Mafiosi sitting around in their tomato gardens.

Dane moved up the flagstone walk and realized there wasn't any way to be hip with what he had to say, so he just let it out. “Berto, I want to talk to Maria. She here?”

Roberto fell back a step with a shocked expression, and for a second he looked like he might be having a heart attack. His features fell in and contorted and went a nice shade of blue, then purple, and then the immense, lunatic Sicilian rage was on him. “The fuck you say my sister's name!”