Tom Piccirilli: Headstone City

“I don't want anything from you.”

“É bonita. Eu quero-a. Vocé não merece uma mulher tão maravilhosa. É minha. Mãe. Mãe.”

“She's not your mother. She's beyond you now.”

“Mère. Mère.”

“She's my ma.”

“Mia madre. La mia madre!”

“She's my mom.”

Thinking about how easy it would be to snap the boy's neck, Dane waited for somebody to come save him. He waited for his ma to save him.

The kid's head came further apart, the sutures and staples pulling away.

Or maybe that was only Dane.

It was hard to tell, especially now.

Dane pulled the Caddy back up into Phil Guerra's driveway and the garage door opened. Phil stepped out holding a 9mm aimed at him.

Living up to his name. Bringing the war right out into the street to Dane, who dared to snatch the '59 dream car. Twice. The 9mm reflected in the fiery Magic-Mirror acrylic lacquer finish. The chrome grill blazed like a smelter's forge.

Phil was digging the moment. Getting a chance to stand there with his gun out, probably seeing himself in black-and-white, up on the screen with Bogie and Robert Ryan. He still moved pretty good even with the extra weight, easing out onto the driveway and making sure he was clear in case Dane tried to gun the engine and run him over.

“You don't want to ruin your spacious, curvy windshield,” Dane told him.

“Get out of my car, Johnny!”

“No. You get in.”

“I'm not kidding here, you punk!”

“I can see that, Uncle Philly. It's been a bad day all around.”

Phil leaned down and peered at Dane. The 9mm bobbed for a moment, then pointed downward. “What've you done, Johnny?”

“Climb in, I'll tell you all about it.”

“Nobody drives my car but me, damn it!”

Grinning at him pleasantly, Dane said, “Nobody but you, me, and the twenty guys that owned it before you. All the mechanics and grease monkeys and shop owners over forty-five years. You shouldn't be behind a wheel. You're going to flatten somebody someday soon, some lady pushing a carriage in a crosswalk. I'm a driver, you know that. Let me drive. Come on, Phil, just a quick one around the neighborhood, then it's all yours again. Don't be a prick like your father just because he never let you behind the wheel when you were a kid.”

That touched a nasty nerve. Phil grimaced and his eyes swirled. He'd at last gone all the way to the wall, and Dane took a weird sort of pride in that. “You got balls talking about my old man.”

“We all speak our piece eventually.”

Look at him now. His rug hung too far to one side, like he'd been sitting in the garage with his head leaned up against the workbench, waiting through the night for his car to come home.

Phil slipped up to the door and carefully maneuvered it open like it might be wired with explosives. He pointed the gun at Dane's chest and, in a lingering manner, his face crumbled. The hard veneer cracked loose and he seemed on the verge of walking away. “What's the shotgun in the backseat for?”

“Persuasion.”

Phil really had been a pretty good cop once. He was careful enough to keep the 9mm trained on Dane the entire time he was getting in.

“You been smoking in here? Jesus fuckin' Christ!”

“Sorry,” Dane said. “That was rude, I apologize.”

He meant it, and Phil understood that, his expression softening even more. It didn't take much to start a blood feud, and equally little to let it slide. The 9mm dropped into his lap, then down between his knees.

Dane drove leisurely around town, teaching Phil Guerra how it was actually done. Without all the frenzied squealing turns and near misses. The screaming pedestrians and Chinese delivery guys.

This was how you drove a '59 Cadillac.

The rocket tail fins and jet pod taillights cleaving through the asphalt ocean. Grille glittering like the eyes of every mook who'd never ride in such a luscious and exquisite car, never climb into a saddle as sweet and flawless. Massive front bumper churning aside all doubts and fears, debts and misgivings.

Phil felt it too. He visibly calmed, the corners of his mouth relaxing, and after a deep breath let out a singsong, throaty hum.

Smooth and effortlessly. Dane looked at Uncle Philly again, with the fake silver hair and the perpetual false tan. The years dug into him as a testament to resilience. The expensive leather shoes, jolly fat cheeks, thinking what his father might've looked like now if the man had lived this long.

How would he have taken to retirement? Would he have phoned Dane in the joint? Could a cop like that come and see his own son? The myth of his old man would always be too great for Dane to comprehend fully. That wreck of a spectre sitting in the center of the bed, his pulse leaking, those eyes unfamiliar.

“I knew you never should've come back to the neighborhood,” Phil said. “I still have that money waiting for you, if you want it.”

“No thanks.”

“I told you and I told you that it wasn't the safest place for you!”

“What can I say?”

Dane didn't feel the need to bring up the fact that it was obviously safer for him than it had been for Berto Monti or Joey Fresco or JoJo Tormino.

“Why'd you do it?” Phil asked. “Snuff Roberto Monticelli?”

There wasn't much point in denying culpability anymore. “He wanted it that way.”

“They won't rest now. That crew.”

“They're all slow, lazy, and stupid.”

“They have money and numbers.”

“That's not enough,” Dane told him. It was obvious, but hardly anybody saw it. He turned, wondering if Phil might make a move, try to take Dane down himself and get in good with the boss. But the 9mm didn't come up into sight again.

Uncle Philly, sitting there, was just an old man, with his hair slipping down farther over his left ear. None of the brass or fire anymore, not even the usual, natural belligerence. The guy's shoulders so slack it looked like he might slump over and go to sleep with his head resting on Dane's arm.

They parked in the same spot where Dad's crusier had been found, the man inside, his temple leaking endless dreams. Five police cars were out in front of Grandma Lucia's house down the block, but they hadn't barricaded the street and no cops approached the Caddy. What shitty police work.

“Why did you kill my father?” Dane asked.

Phil's lackluster expression seemed more beaten down than anything, like this was only another wearying subject. “What the hell is this now?”

“I want to know.”

“Johnny-”

“Was it because he found out you were in the Montis' pocket? Is that why you did it?”

“Found out?” A dismal, steady titter almost worked up into a chuckle. “He always knew that. So what? You think your dad was clean? Hey, he didn't take as much as most guys, but he took his share. We all did.”

“Like you said, you ought to get something out of twenty-five years besides a gold watch.”

“Yeah. But… Johnny, you been thinking I killed your old man? Since when?”

“What do you think?”

“Since it happened? That been on your mind all this time? Ah, Christ, kid, what put this pazzo idea in your head?”

So easy to just grab the pistol, put it to Uncle Philly's temple, and pull the trigger. Put Dad's soul to rest and keep him off the bed. A son has obligations he can never neglect, no matter the cost. Any resolution was better than none. Dane's chest started to hitch, his hands tight on the steering wheel like a second-rate driver.

You couldn't get away with saying this was an accident. That this was somehow self-defense.

Here, you're going to mess up this exquisite '59 Caddy with viscera and fluids.

You're about to willingly become the thing you hate most.