Headstone City

by Tom Piccirilli

  Dane hadn't hung around the bakery waiting for the cops. He expected them to find him by the end of the day, but they never came to see him. It made him wonder, were they just sloppy, or had the baker girl been too out of it to identify him? Or were the feds on to this too, and already had him under surveillance? Bugged?

  Now that he was back in Brooklyn, he didn't want to leave. It stirred too much inside him, kept his head alive with memories that made him bark laughter for no reason. It wasn't so much the going away as it was the constant coming back.

  When he was a kid, every Friday afternoon Grandma Lucia would send him down to Fielding's market for the same order. First time he did it, he was about eight. He clenched the cash tightly in his fist, walked the four blocks to the store. She'd made him recite the order about ten times before he left, and he'd let Mr. Fielding have it word for word. “Gimme two portions of shrimp, two of potatoes, three fillets and don't burn them.”

  But Mr. Fielding screwed him up and asked, “How about fish cakes?”

  “What?”

  “Your Grandma Lucia want some fresh fish cakes? I bet she does. She loves my fish cakes!”

  Dane frowned and repeated the order like he'd been drilled, feeling the squeamishness of terror filling his stomach.

  “Is she sick?”

  “No.”

  “She always orders the fish cakes, every week the past thirty years. What's this? You don't look after your poor grandmother? She's so sick she doesn't order fish cakes and you're just standing there?”

  Dane panicked, nearly let out a scream, and tore out of the store. He rushed home like he was running for his life. He told her what had happened, asking if she was all right. He thought this test had been a sign that she was on the long march to her death bed.

  She stuck her fists on her hips and her face hardened into granite. “You tell that Aaron Fielding down there that I only order the fish cakes when your Aunt Concetta is here for a visit. Me, I can't stand his fish cakes anyhow. You make sure you let him know, and he better not burn the fillets.”

  Eight years old, standing there in the foyer trembling, staring up at her, and sensing that something wasn't the way it should be. He'd wandered into somebody else's circus.

  Grandma Lucia took him by the shoulder and yanked him back down the street. When they got to the store she stomped in and started describing the awful taste of Fielding's fish cakes to the other customers, top of her lungs.

  Fielding finally threw her order on the counter and told her to take her fish and get the hell out. She tossed her money at him, grabbed the oily package, and slammed the bag into Dane's chest like she was handing off a football. He was this close to crying.

  When they got home and unwrapped the package they found three fish cakes and a note written on a napkin sitting on top of the shrimp, potatoes, and fillet. You always order the fish cakes. I never burn the fillet. Aaron.

  So driving out to the Hamptons kind of got depressing after a couple of days.

  The long ride down the Belt to the Southern State Parkway, over to Sunrise Highway, and out to where the Island started to change over to the real ritziness that dominated the east. Seeing where the celebrities lived and relaxed on the beaches. Boatyards, tennis courts, and golf courses all over the place for miles.

  He could feel himself starting to pick up speed when he hit Westhampton every day. His foot easing down on the gas pedal and a low-level anxiety working itself between his shoulders. He'd tense up and start really moving through traffic, crossing double yellows and passing on the wrong side.

  Needing to move faster, to push himself and the machine. He'd tuned the limousine himself until it hummed and whispered entreaties. His passengers would sometimes let out squeaks of annoyance but nobody ever said anything to him, and they still tipped well.

  He'd drop off the fare, drive to the Point and pay the ridiculous parking fees, then walk around by the lighthouse and head down to the shore for a few minutes.

  The ocean swelled against the stone buttresses, boulders slick with foam. He'd think about his parents on the beach. Sitting on a giant towel but the two of them squashed together on one small corner of it. His father rubbing lotion on Ma's shoulders.

  Some folks got married up there at the top of the lighthouse, staring down at the riches of the world. Looking out at the sea and knowing there were centuries of shipwrecks right offshore, still there under ninety feet of water. It made Dane feel almost lonely, and he'd hightail it back to the limo and tear out of there. Cruising past the quaint fishing villages and down into the East End tourist hot spots. The domains of the new emperors of chic.

  Now, quarter to eight in the morning, Dane walked into Olympic, and Fran told him, “You got somebody special today.” She said it with a mean air. Smiling but really putting something nasty into it. She seemed just as much on the edge as the first time Dane met her. For a while there, he thought that Pepe might've been kidding about the stress management courses, but now he was hoping it wasn't just talk.

  “The hell's that mean?” Dane asked.

  “Just what I said.”

  “You didn't say anything.”

  “A personality. A celebrity.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, you're gonna love her.” Slapping the twining curls out of her eyes again, like trying to swat a bee. He didn't know why she just didn't get a haircut.

  Pepe stepped out from the office, looking excited, and said, “That actress who's in that movie about the guy who's a government assassin and he's got to stop World War III. The blonde.”

  Off the top of his head Dane could think of about twenty movies with the same plot. He started going through actresses, trying to remember which ones were blonde. He named a couple.

  Screwing up his lips, Pepe tried to puzzle it out. “No, the one who got married to that director. He took a fall about four, five months ago, turned out he was a drug kingpin, selling mostly heroin and ecstasy. Laundered the money through his company. Something called Six-Guns Productions.”

  “You remember all of that but not her name?”

  “I got some kinda block.” It was a matter of ego now. Pepe refused to look down on the sheet. His lips moved while he tried out different titles. “Above . . . above . . . wait . . . Under Heaven? No, that's not it. I saw it a few times on late-night cable, one of those after-midnight movies 'cause she's mostly topless in it. Her and the assassin working together, she dances for the terrorists to try to distract them.” Pepe let out a slow smile that was a little spooky. “She's got these serious titties and knows how to work the room, going from guy to guy”—like he'd seen her at a bachelor party instead of TV—“swinging around on the pole. I'm telling you, she must've been an exotic dancer before she got to Hollywood.”

  It took him a minute but Dane finally remembered. Under Heaven's Canopy. Stupid title for an action flick. He'd never seen it. He thought it had come out a week or two before he went in the joint. “Glory Bishop?”

  “Yeah, that's her! Anyway, you're due there before nine-thirty so get rolling. She's over on East 61st.” Finally, Pepe grabbed the paperwork and fumbled it over. Jesus, she must've really worked the pole. It made Dane want to stop in at a movie rental place, see if any of them were open this early.

  “Any other instructions?”

  “Try not to be smirky with her, eh? And brush your hair, you're an ambassador for the company here.”

  Pepe grabbed Dane by the elbow, led him into the bathroom so he could watch him actually comb his hair, like he was prepping Dane for a blind date. Fran just stood there, smug and venomous, so sure that something bad was about to come down on Dane, and liking it.

  These two were both starting to give him the creeps.

  Dane grabbed the keys, headed for the garage, found his limo, and slid in behind the wheel. The engine growled with some real muscle.

  The morning rush was on, so Dane stayed off the main highways and slipped through Queens to hook over to the 59th Stree
t Bridge. Taxis kept blaring, mufflers off half the cars on the road, everything so loud it set his back teeth shaking. There was roadwork going on, of course, and one lane of the bottom level was closed off, but he managed to make pretty good time. He drew up to the address and spotted her in front of the building.

  Glory Bishop.

  She stood with the doorman, looking bored and a touch stifled, or maybe just burdened by renown. The doorman blew his whistle and motioned Dane to the curb, like he wouldn't have parked there anyway.

  Designer sunglasses on but they weren't very dark. She had the slightly alarmed look of a beautiful woman who'd recently slipped out of her prime and was doing everything she could to get it back. She couldn't have been more than twenty-five, but there it was anyway. Something like fear in her eyes, but—no, he decided after a second, not really. More like an oppressed wariness and hip distaste.

  The doorman danced around to the driver's window and knocked on the glass. Dane opened it and the guy leaned down with his full weight on the door. “Hey, listen up, buddy. You take good care of our Miss Bishop here. You drive careful and you don't stop off to run any of your own errands. She don't like smoke, so you don't smoke in the limo while she's in back. She likes old music, you know? From the seventies, so you put that on for her and nothing else. No news stations, she's got enough problems without having to listen to that. And don't blast the heat. You got that?”

  “Get the fuck away from me,” Dane told him, and put up the window.

  She got in back of the limo without a word, not even a nod of acknowledgment. Her titties were indeed serious. He tried to imagine her working the pole but couldn't do it. The doorman glared, his hands open and out like a cat getting ready to claw something. Dane gunned it, letting the tires squeal for a second, the way his father used to do in his cruiser.

  Sometimes passengers liked to talk, sometimes they slept. Glory Bishop stared straight ahead through those shades that didn't really conceal her eyes. He could feel her disquiet starting to affect him.

  Most of what he'd learned in the army and in the can about staying cool under pressure didn't seem to be working for him on the outside.

  He couldn't get the image of Pepe's slow, scary smile out of his mind. Every time Dane caught a glimpse of his combed hair in the rearview it bothered him.

  Down on the sheet Fran had written an address in Montauk. A one-way drop-off. Glory Bishop remained silent for over an hour, until they were on Sunrise Highway and heading past an endless array of strip malls. By then, his head was so loud with Angelina, Phil Guerra, and JoJo Tormino's dying confession of love that when Glory Bishop spoke, he nearly rocked in his seat.

  “Are you a cop?” she asked.

  He left it out there for a few seconds, then said, “That's your icebreaker?”

  “You want to answer?”

  The question didn't really surprise him. Pepe said her husband had taken a big drug fall a few months ago. The feds had probably been all over her. But why'd she wait so long to ask? “No.”

  “No, you don't want to answer, or no, you're not a cop.”

  “No, I'm not a cop.”

  “A federal agent?”

  “Wouldn't that qualify as a cop?” They were at the last light before the Brookhaven barrens, miles of tress still black and gnarled from a wildfire a few years back. Traffic was scarce out here this early in the morning, especially heading east off-season. “I mean, if you're asking because you think you're under surveillance?”

  “I don't know, maybe.” Not taking it too seriously. Like she had nothing else to talk about, so why not this. “Anyway, are you either?”

  “No.”

  “How did you know I'd be thinking that?” She sat up a little straighter. “That perhaps I was under surveillance and asking for that reason?”

  “My boss mentioned your situation. He's a fan.”

  “What you're saying is he likes my tits.”

  So it was going to be like that.

  “He did mention your rack,” Dane told her. “In passing.”

  Her chin firmed up and she waited a while before saying anything more. “I don't know if I'm paranoid or not paranoid enough. I've got to ask that of everybody I meet for the first time, that I have any contact with. If they're cops. What a way to start every conversation. The police have been tailing me for months.”

  “I thought they already put your husband away.”

  It made her half close her eyes, the ridges of her eyebrows coming down. “They think I was in it with him, like I'm one of those Colombian drug czar's wives that take over the empire when their husbands get shot.”

  “But you're not?”

  “No, I was stupid, I thought he was a good director. He was moving up to more lavish mansions even though, I found out later, his last three movies lost money. We were only married eight months when he was arrested. The lawyers start showing me this paperwork, all his tax shelters, his write-offs, the production company receipts. On paper he was in debt up to his eyes, but he's buying me four-carat chandelier necklaces and sable coats.”

  “You can't be too mad at him then.”

  “I was stupid.”

  Dane didn't know why, but he believed her. She probably wasn't quite as unaware as she made out, but diamonds and cash had a way of fouling your vision. He said, “How long's it been?”

  “Since they got him? Almost five months. They weren't satisfied just bringing him down and about twenty of his associates, from Beverly Hills to Bolivia. They think he was connected over here on the East Coast and they want to shake up the New York movie industry the way they did LA. They don't realize there's hardly any connection at all, it's two totally different worlds. Now they've got my apartment bugged.” She was getting more nervous, keeping her eyes on his in the rearview mirror. He could feel how urgently she wanted him to believe her. “They were a couple of fun years, and eight good months of marriage, but all in all I would've been better off if I'd never gone to Hollywood.”

  “And kept on dancing?” The words were out of his mouth before he realized it. He really hadn't learned much about keeping his damn mouth shut when it counted.

  “How do you know about that?”

  “My boss again. He said you've got a dance scene in one of your movies that you couldn't have faked.”

  “He's got a good eye for talent, that guy.”

  “He knows what he likes.”

  “You see the film? Under Heaven's Canopy. I do the dance because I have to keep the terrorists amused while this supersoldier killer saves the planet from nuclear war.”

  “I swear,” Dane said, “I'm gonna rent it tonight.”

  “You said your boss was a fan, but not you?”

  “I haven't had much opportunity for watching movies, the last couple of years.”

  She picked up on what he was saying. “Oh, I see.”

  “But back to the feds,” he said. “You're giving them too much credit. They must've built a solid case against your husband in order to take him down, ferret out the laundering fronts. It's been months, you say, so if they haven't brought you into it by now, why do you think they'd keep coming after you?”

  “Because I'm an actress. They think it's fun, rubbing elbows with movie people while they're trying to crack some international drug cartel. They want to bust me because it ties the film industry in with importing. Like they never realized before that where there's money, there's drugs.”

  “They realize it. They just have to pretend they don't, or they'd have no jobs.”

  “So that's why they're clinging to me.”

  Dane didn't buy it, but she seemed committed to her reasoning. “If they've already got your man, I don't see why they'd keep after you, even if it is fun for them. Rousting producers and all that. Feds walking into Silver Cup Studios and getting sitcom stars' autographs. Even that would get old quick. They would've either busted you with your husband or right afterward.”

  “That's not what my lawyers say.”


  “They're stringing you on so you keep paying them.”

  “Everybody who's supposed to help clear up the situation just keeps perpetuating it so they get paid?”

  “Exactly.”

  She thought about it for a minute, doing the math, counting up all the cost for unnecessary hours. “You might be right. But what if you're not?”

  “I don't think asking every person you meet if he's a cop is going to do you much good in the world. Be patient. Stay out of the action for a while, go back to LA and make your movies. Under Heaven's Canopy Part 2. Kick the shit out of a few more terrorists on screen. Get in a few snappy one-liners.”

  “I don't fight them. I just dance for them, you know, seduce and sort of beguile them. Except for at the end, I get to shoot a rocket launcher into the main bad guy, blow him off a bridge.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Uh-huh. My cool action hero line is, ‘I'm gonna rock your world, baby!' Then I blast him.”

  “You do a commentary track on this movie?”

  “A special extended edition is due out next year, but with my husband in the joint, I don't think they'll be asking me to participate for a while. Too much bad publicity right now. Later, who knows?”

  She'd taken off her shades and Dane could see a mischievous glint in her gaze, maybe because he was talking to her without judgment. Maybe something else they'd eventually get around to. She seemed pleased with herself, playing up to him.

  The tabloids and newspapers must be putting her through the wringer, printing her nude pictures with little black x's over the nipples, showing how degenerate she was. “If it's not cost-effective for them, the feds will have to pack up their shit and go on to the next case. If they're even watching you at all.”

  “Feds never give up,” she said, like she knew it for a fact. “I've learned that much. All they've got is time. I saw that when they kept coming after my husband, going through every piece of scrap paper, reel of film, interviewing hundreds of members on his film crews.”

  “If you're really clean, they'll eventually veer off.”

  “I'm not that clean,” she said.