Tom Piccirilli: Headstone City

Dane said, “How about if you just drop the gun, Joey?”

“Hell no, you killed my boss.”

“Yeah, but it was an accident. Besides, the Don is really your boss.”

“Him and his sons. I took an oath.”

“I didn't even pull the trigger on Berto. He did it to himself.”

“I don't give a damn.”

“You should.”

Sirens blurted in the distance, too far away to do any good for the next three minutes, which were the important ones.

“I mean, I don't mind that you took that finocchio out of the game. Far as I'm concerned, he was giving us a bad name. Nobody respected our crew anymore because'a what he did down there under the bridge. It was bad for our reputation. We were planning to whack him soon anyway, so you did us a favor.”

“Then let's call it even.”

“Can't do that. There's some things a guy has to do, you know? Of course you do. Well, this is one of them, am I right?”

No arguing that particular point.

Joey let out a wild noise like a mongoose in heat and lurched forward as if he were going to stab Dane with the gun instead of shooting him. Then he stopped, grinned, and settled back, wanting to relax and enjoy the moment before it passed him up. Maybe he had counted the shots. Dane held the.38 higher, aiming at Joey Fresco's eye, hoping it would be enough to scare the stupid mook off.

Murder moved in and out of the room. Dane thought about jumping, rolling, trying some funky shit in midair to get back into the kitchen and hide, but he felt it would just look too ridiculous.

He wanted to do a lot of things, but couldn't put them in any order. Speak with his mother. Kick Cogan's ass. Make Phil Guerra confess. Look Vinny in the eye.

Shout Maria's name, fall down on his knees and let it all out in one long howl, but even that was denied him-what, he was going to live his last few seconds reenacting Tony's death scene from West Side Story ? Start calling out for Riff? Bernardo and Chino? Fuck. It's really over.

But sometimes the angel of mercy shows up in disguise. Grandma Lucia came trundling out of the kitchen with her slippers slapping the bottoms of her feet. She carried an eleven-gauge pump, holding it the right way, braced against her shoulder.

“Jesus, Grandma!” Dane shouted.

Wide-eyed, Joey shouted, “What the fuck is up with your hair, lady!”

“Shaddup!”

“Listen up, Lucia! I lived through three hits from Benny the Penny Castigliano, and I survived Catholic school. You ain't got the brass to take me out! You're kiddin' me, right?”

But no, Grandma definitely wasn't kidding. She yelled, “Va fa napole!” squeezed the trigger, and blasted Joey Fresco's ass fifteen feet across her living room.

They watched him hit the wall and knock the 3-D blessed heart picture of Jesus askew.

Go to hell, for sure.

“Goddamn,” Dane said.

She took a slow gander over the room but showed little reaction and no remorse. The photos on the shelves seemed to be in shock, Dad's smiling face a little perturbed, Mom wearing a startled grin. Grandma stood the shotgun upright beside the armoire that housed her good china and her thimble collection. She flitted into the bathroom and started spraying germ killer and potpourri room freshener.

“Why didn't you shoot?” she asked.

“I was out of rounds.”

“You need an automatic. I meant to tell you before.”

“I think you're right.”

“Is this all because of that dead girl?”

“Not really.”

“Her sister? That Maria, right?”

“Yeah, in a way.”

“I thought so. I always knew you'd been hit by the thunderbolt.” She clutched his shoulder, chucked him under the chin so he'd meet her eye. “You don't have much time. You can't stop now. You've got to finish it.”

He'd been thinking the same thing.

There was no other way out of it. They'd just keep taking runs at him until he was dead unless he took the fight to the Monticellis.

The sirens sounded to be about the same distance away. There were probably enough cops on the Don's payroll to keep them running in circles for the next half hour.

Grandma retreated back to the cellar and came up with an unopened box of.38 bullets and a handful of shotgun shells. He'd been in the basement maybe ten thousand times and had no idea where the shotgun might've been hidden.

He took the ammo and reloaded the pistol, grabbed up the shotgun, and started for the door. But something was still nagging him.

Turning at the last second, he asked, “Hey, how's everybody know your name anyway? You used to fool around with Don Monti back in the day, right?”

“Don't talk dirty. Now go and end this thing. And when I send you to the bakery from now on, you think you can just get a few cannoli and some sfogliatelle and come home again without causing so much trouble?”

“Next time,” Dane said.

Walking through ICU past the gray wasted faces of families of the dying. His mother lay in a small room surrounded by machinery that loomed over her like gods of steel.

Her kidneys had failed and she was yellow and bloated with toxins. The machines forced her frail chest to continue breathing. They surrounded her, winking, watching, livid with screens everywhere so he could witness the gradual slowing of her pulse and her steadily decreasing heartbeat.

His mother had something to tell him.

The kid with the twisted head from across the hall was lying in the bed with her, saying Mama, Mama. Crying the way Dane should be crying but couldn't. Hugging her, his sutures and busted skull bones pressed against her breast.

Dane sat and watched the jagged raw red scars across the frontal lobe moving, reaching, wanting to leap the distance and crawl against Dane's flesh, digging down into his brain. Lying up against his own scars, connecting, mating, reproducing. Crashing in the metal doors and taking over.

What did you dream, Mama?

I dreamed an angel with golden wings as shiny as coins sat with me on the end of the bed. I watched the television for a while, but it wasn't on. I bled in the toilet.

You wanted her to tell you more about the angel but her mouth was sealed with tape around the tubes that forced breath into her lungs. You understood the men who went berserk in this situation and killed their loved ones. You could stand the sound of the buzzing and dripping and clicking around them, all designed to extend pain?

Dane couldn't speak and sat rubbing his mother's hand with his thumb. The rhythm seemed to calm him for some reason, while his shadow grew beneath his feet.

The boy with the sick brain spoke with a beautiful voice, in English and other languages Dane didn't know but could, for the moment, understand.

“Why are you here?”

“Because my mother is dying.”

“Hebben u gezien de engel met gouden vleugels?”

“No, what kind of angel is it? Is it death?”

“C'est un ange signifiée pour vous.”

“Why is she seeing an angel that's come for me?”

“Parce que vous êtes béni.” The kid hissed his words, full of a promising but terrible emotion.

“It's not a blessing. This is a burden.”

“You have no idea of what real sorrow is,” the boy told him. “Her sleep can never be pure. She will always struggle, restless here and elsewhere. Weeping for you, and later in hell.”

“Fuck off, kid!”

Thumb moving back and forth on your mother's yellow, bloated flesh. The machines speaking in ancient rhymes that haven't been translated in millennia.

The boy touched your scars, matching them against his own. You're glad that he keeps on talking.

“Was wünschen Sie von mir?”