Tom Piccirilli - Headstone City

“Man, you have really got some serious hangups about Maria. But that's okay, you aren't the only one.”

It was kind of fun watching Roberto turn so many colors at once, the veins standing out in his temples, writhing and throbbing and clogging up along the contours of his neck. Dane was trying to stay focused and not let himself dwell on the fact that Berto had sent the hitters to off him in the can. “It's you. Soldier boy.”

Dane sighed and figured, all right. “Yeah, okay, it's me, the soldier boy.”

“And you strut right up to me? To my sister's house?”

“It wasn't much of a strut.”

“After what you did?”

“You got a hangup about Angie too, don't you? Okay, I'm starting to see the picture now, why you've done the things you have.”

It was easy to keep Berto off-balance, the guy puffing away like a maniac, making himself sick on the cigar. Dane tried not to think of what Freud might've had to say about the demonstration. “You know how much is on your head?”

“I've been out of the joint for three weeks. I walked up to your brother and his crew in Chooch's. I walked into your father's house. Except for one lame ass try by Big Tommy Bartone, nobody's done much to collect on your bounty. How much you offering anyway?”

Berto took another serious puff, sucked too much into his lungs, and had to suppress a cough. “Five grand!”

“You embarrass yourself,” Dane said.

“Get out of my goddamn sight before I put two in your skull right now, you disrespectful prick! Your time is coming! I ought to kill you on general principle!”

There it was again. The threat but not the follow-through. What kind of wiseguy only stands there talking to the guy he's put a bounty on, when he's got a fucking Magnum hooked to his belt? Jesus. You'd think he'd be wailing Angelina's name, throwing his arms up to heaven. But no, just the same schoolyard bully shit he used to pull during recess.

“Really, can't we skip the goomba drama?” Dane asked. “Your boys screwed up on taking me out in the slam. Big Tommy messed up at the hospital. A few more of your muscle boys flubbed the hit on JoJo Tormino. I mean, really, three against one and he still manages to ice them all? That's just fucking sad. He's dead but so are they, if you care about cost-effectiveness and such.”

“You son of a bitch. I don't care, so long as the job got done.”

“Why did you come to the prison?”

“I want you dead.”

“Sure. But why go yourself? Why didn't you just let Vinny send a lieutenant?”

Still flexing and puffing, getting his veins in those big hands to stick out but never making the move. “He wouldn't. He wouldn't pay anybody to hit you, so I did. You deserve to be chopped into dog food.” His face burned with emotion. Whatever was going on, Berto Monticelli wasn't going to talk about it. “I'm gonna cut your liver out with a cleaver and-”

“Yeah, yeah. I need to speak to Maria. She around?”

“Vaffanculo!”

Okay, so maybe he should've handled it differently, more diplomatically, but JoJo had tapped him and this was the only way it was going to be.

Roberto's lips started to crawl over his face. Dane recognized the expression from back in the hallways. It was his way of grinning. He went for his Magnum, trying to jerk it out fast but unable to tug it free from the holster. The forward sight on the barrel was hung up on the leather and, as he fought to draw, yanking harder, it looked more and more like a puppy's tail twitching back and forth. Dane figured that Berto had never pulled a gun while looking a guy in the eye, so he had no clue how to do it.

The mood kept shifting but things weren't quite totally tense yet. Dane could do a few things here. Go for the throat, work the inner thigh, even knee Berto in the crotch if it came down to that. Dane's father had taught him how to disarm a perp, toss him down, and twist him up. Maybe that was the way to go. He thought it was about time to try a few moves, but the weight of the ring in his pocket felt heavier than before, his promise to JoJo so loud in his mind. That wearisome indifference was back and dulling him. He took a few seconds to sigh, scratch his head, and let loose with an “Uyh.”

Finally, with a grunt of satisfaction, Roberto Monticelli got his pistol loose from the small of his back. His face bloomed with an ecstasy so ideal that he nearly glowed with happiness.

He cried out, “You're dead, you strunzo !” and started to bring the.44 around.

Dane slugged Roberto Monticelli on the point of his chin and knocked him back into the fervently turquoise front door.

Simple, sure, but the gun had barely cleared the holster and Berto hit the middle six panels of the door hard. A crack appeared in the wood. It vibrated roughly enough that the brass knocker clapped a couple times. A sweet scent of lilacs floated in from somebody else's yard. The big foot on the lawn appeared to be angry-ready to kick a lot of ass-in the slashing sunlight.

With a viciously slick grin twisting his mouth, the butchery so clear in Berto's eyes that they were black with hatred, his tongue lolled good-naturedly in his mouth until the Magnum went off behind him.

It blasted fragments of his spine into, and out through, his own heart. A burst of blood and gristle shot across the flagstone stoop.

Dane stood there staring, thinking, Un-fuckin'-believable.

There it is. I just crossed the final line. I'll never be able to get back to the other side again.

The door opened and he looked into the horrified faces of Carmella Monticelli, her podiatrist husband, and some fat broad in baby-blue orthopedic sneakers.

Dane blinked and found his voice, said, “It was an accident. Kind of. I'm sorry. Is Maria here?”

Nearly as beautiful as her sister, but lacking the nameless extra quality that sent the lightning down into his soul, Carmella's lips worked silently. She kept gawking at her dead brother on her front step, bits and pieces of his major organs having blown out onto the lawn.

“Where is she?” Dane asked.

“Vinny took her home a couple hours ago,” Carmella whispered, just as the podiatrist threw up on his welcome mat, and the fat lady started hopping around on her bad feet, shrieking.

It rattled him a touch. Dane quickly pulled away from the curb and drove back to Grandma Lucia's house. This was a turn of events that some people might describe as pretty bad. Seriously fucked, even.

But there was something else going on, and his scars began to warm. He checked around for Vinny but didn't see him anywhere. Dane clicked on the radio, waiting for the music to change to the voices of the dead, berating him, reviling him. It didn't happen. He said, “JoJo? Angie?” Struggling to remember his father's face. “Dad?”

All that blood, the guy's heart practically exploding out his chest and wobbling through the air, but not a drop on Dane. He sat behind the wheel fingering the ring, suddenly realizing just how small the rock was when you got down to it. All these wiseguys, tripping over themselves with new scams and enterprises, but what the hell did they do with their cash?

He lit a cigarette and got onto the highway, staring at the cracked, discolored, cement wall surrounding the cemetery. The shadows of the extravagant gravestones flashed out across the lanes. Cold patches warning you of what was coming. He took the exit and drove through Outlook Park and into Headstone City.

There was still only the one pattern he could move in through the neighborhood, this direction, with the faces of the deadly seven sins glaring down at him from the sides of the brownstones. They seemed to be having a deep dialogue.

Could you ever be forgiven for what you've done?