Headstone City

by Tom Piccirilli

  Dane had just gotten back into his cab and started to pull away from the Hall when Angelina Monticelli threw open the door and got in back.

  “You need one of those pine-fresh deodorizers in here,” she told him. “Doesn't this atrocious smell give you a headache?”

  “I kind of like it.”

  “That's because it gets you high. So little oxygen getting to your brain. Death by sinus attack.”

  Fifteen years old and seething with hip attitude. She hardly ever smiled but there was always a glint of superiority in her gray eyes. He knew she could verbally outmaneuver him with ease. It scared him a touch but also made him admire her.

  She'd dressed down today, wearing an oversized black sweater and midnight-blue jeans, no makeup, her dark hair falling straight back over her ears, showing the slightest curl of bangs up front.

  He heaved a sigh out like throwing a rock. “Angie, what're you doing?”

  “What do you think I'm doing? I need a cab. You're a cab driver. You know simple economics, yes? The law of supply and demand?”

  “Shouldn't you be in school?”

  “Just drive.”

  “I'm on break.”

  “You're always on break, Johnny, you sit around here for hours. How do you make a buck?”

  “I don't need much,” he admitted.

  “That means you're gonna live with your grandmother forever? Don't you know what they say about you, a grown man living with his grandma? Even if she does make the best ziti. She brought some to the St. Mary's book sale last month. Bishop Dilorenzo couldn't tear himself away, the cheese hanging off his face. He was a pig, it was disgusting to see, but kinda fun too. Why don't you get married?”

  It was the kind of conversation he was easily led into and had to consciously avoid. “Don't you have school?” he repeated. “How do you learn things like the law of supply and demand if you don't go to class?”

  “It's almost four. Don't you own a watch?”

  “Yeah. It's at home in a box with my tie clips and cuff links. Where are you headed?”

  “I'll tell you when we get there, soldier boy.”

  “I need to call it in to the dispatcher.”

  “This one is off the books. Come on, what do you care? I can see how much you fret about following the rules and bringing in as much money to Olympic as you can. Besides, you don't need to worry, it's not like they'll fire you.” Saying it with an edge, like she had something to do with the boss not firing him, by way of her being part of the family. He checked the rearview and she fluttered her eyes at him.

  One of those girls that, when she's little, she's cute, bright, and funny, and makes you wish she's your own younger sister. But then, when she hit thirteen or so, you grew acutely aware of her sex appeal. The angle of the jaw, the shape of those legs, and suddenly your whole cerebral cortex got rewired.

  You found yourself vying for her time, grinning a lot, then smacking yourself in the forehead going, What the fuck are you thinking?

  “Come on,” she said. “It's important and I'm running late. Cut through the plaza, make a left.”

  “You don't want to give me the address?”

  “I don't know it, but I've been there before.” Taking out a compact and checking herself in it, making kissy faces until she was sure her lipstick was okay.

  He'd known her all her life but just started seeing her in that new light two years ago. As her transformation into adulthood continued he knew he had to watch himself, stop sweating so much around her. It wasn't totally his fault. It was chemical. She was becoming what he desired, just as her sister Maria had before her.

  The shape of her nose, the pouty lips, and the brash knowledge in her gaze that made him want to ask her, Hey, what are you thinking? Angie had the right curves, and they were getting better every month.

  Ignoring him just enough to get him irritated. He supposed that made it worse because he liked to be cut down. His own streak of masochism going pretty deep. The army psychiatrist used to ask him if Mom or Dad used to smack him around as a kid. If his mother would hit him upside the head and then yank him to her bosom. If she used to take bubble baths while he was sitting on the toilet. All kinds of shit, that shrink had a goddamn dirty mind. No matter how many times Dane told him no, the doc would just nod and ask the question again in a different way.

  Knowing his flaws didn't help him most of the time. The indifference could lead him to do stupid things.

  He wanted to ask Angie about her sister, see how Maria was doing. If she was still going out to the clubs every weekend, if she had anybody serious in her life.

  Angelina reached forward and touched the back of his neck, fingering his scars. “These the ones you got when you and my brother went through the windshield?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jesus Christ, there's metal!” She knocked twice on the plate. “I didn't know you could actually feel it, with it sticking right out like that. Man, that's freaky! I thought safety glass was supposed to keep people from getting cut this bad.”

  “It wasn't so much that as rolling thirty feet down the street.”

  It made her smile for a second, seeing the humor of two guys bouncing down the road after doing something as foolish as trying to ram a roadblock. But then the image must've cleared up for her, seeing the blood and their bodies skittering into the gutter, and she looked away.

  “How'd it happen?” she asked. “I mean, I know some of it, but I never heard the whole thing.”

  “Why would you want to hear about any of that? It happened while you were still in the crib.”

  “I'm curious.”

  Dane told her almost everything, leaving out the part about the girls in the sand, but without really knowing why. Like she'd think less of him because of that? And did he really care?

  Sometimes it seemed like nothing mattered at all, then a minute later it was like everything did. Every moment of your past, every inch of your body.

  “You going to tell me where we're going?”

  She gave him a few more directions, leading him along Fulton Street through Bedford-Stuyvesant.

  “Almost there, make the next left, pull over to the right, middle of the block.”

  Playing with his hair, she traced the scars down the back of his neck, probing as far as she could go beneath his collar. It started to excite him, the way she did it, as if she had a perfect right.

  “What is this?” he asked her.

  “Don't you know?”

  “You out of your mind? Quit it. I'm practically an older brother to you—”

  “Is that what you tell yourself?” Flicking her nails now, digging in too hard, trying to make him howl. “Why is it you never break the rules, soldier boy?”

  It took Dane back some. You could say a lot of shit about him, but he never got the impression that he followed anybody's rules. If he did, he wouldn't be a third-rate hack driver living with his grandma.

  He found the place she wanted halfway up the block. A four-story apartment building with a red awning over the door and flower boxes filled with petunias hanging from the bars on the windows of the first floor. The front door, stairs, and railings had all been recently painted. A sign read Welcome to Our Block Association. Please Help Us Keep It Clean, Quiet, and Safe. Next door was a vacant lot with an abandoned car in the corner where some kids were playing house, the hood up and no engine inside.

  She hopped out and said, “I'll be back in a minute.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Seeing a friend.”

  “You want me to go with you?”

  “No. Don't get all overprotective now, big brother. I wouldn't want you to strain yourself trying to climb out of the fuckin' cab. Since you don't have a watch, just count by Mississippis. If I'm not back by the time you get to five thousand, you might consider looking for me.”

  “Which friend is it?”

  “No one you know.”

  “Let me come with you.”

  “H
ang tight, soldier boy.”

  She ran up the front stairs, hitting each one hard and fast like a little kid, bop bop bop bop, and walking in without pushing the buzzer.

  Dane sat there thinking about his options again. Grandma Lucia had told him there was an opening at the bingo parlor, calling out the numbers on the Ping-Pong balls. It about tied with being a cop or a Monti goon.

  The radio screeched. The dispatcher wanted to know where the hell Dane was. Pepe tried to buffer the boss, yelling at Dane in Spanish that was supposed to sound like Italian. Lightening up the moment with some of the other drivers pitching in, laughing and being wiseasses. Dane shut it off. Maybe he should go back in the army, argue with the shrinks some more.

  After five minutes he realized why he'd been dumb enough to let her go inside alone. It was the petunias. They'd thrown him off. Even more than the fresh paint and the sign. Here they were in Bed-Stuy, poverty-stricken, segregated. Abandoned buildings right around the block, the whole place fallen to shit, and he'd just let her walk in.

  Dane threw open the door and moved around the back end of the cab. He started for the building and then he saw Angie walk out onto the stoop. Sort of smiling like she was happy to see him, but stumbling down the steps.

  Her face crumpled then as she tried to hold back tears and failed. A dapple of blood smeared her chin. He launched himself and caught her in his arms as she pitched forward.

  “I screwed up,” she whimpered.

  “I knew I should've gone with you,” he hissed. “Fucking hell. What is it?”

  Eyelids fluttering, she coughed violently, bringing up black phlegm. Her breathing went ragged and her chest heaved violently. She grinned at him, and her teeth were red.

  “Bad stuff.”

  “Ah, goddamn it, Angie.” Those goddamn petunias. “What stuff? What did you take?”

  He felt immensely stupid, trapped where he stood, uncertain whether he should head back inside the house and call an ambulance, or throw her in the cab. He wanted to kill someone.

  Bed-Stuy, he didn't think an ambulance would even come out this way, no matter how many coffee shops you put up the road.

  Hauling her to the cab, he was surprised at how light she was. All those muscles and curves, and she didn't break ninety. She really was only a kid.

  Before putting her in the backseat he hugged her tightly. He slammed the door, jumped in, gunned it, and held his fist on the horn so the noise tore up the block. So everybody inside that building would know he was screaming through his machine and he'd be back. Someone would pay.

  “Angelina, don't fall asleep. Sit up.” Weird that he could shriek through the cab horn, but his voice was almost lethargic. “Tell me what you took.”

  “. . . fake . . .”

  “What?” He turned his ear to her lips. “Angie, what was that?”

  “Flake.”

  All his life on the street but he'd never so much as smoked a joint. Just something he never got into. Here she's saying flake and all he can think of are breakfast cereals.

  “The fuck's that? Why are you doing that kind of shit? Hold on.”

  “Doesn't hurt. I'm swimming.” Letting out a giggle that made the back of his neck tingle worse than when her nails were brushing against him. “It's too . . . late.”

  “Like hell.”

  She slid down so he couldn't see her in the rearview anymore. “It's nice.”

  “Talk to me, Angie.”

  “You love me?”

  That got him stomping the pedal even harder, swinging through traffic as it thickened around them. “Yeah, of course.”

  “I mean . . . me.”

  “You.”

  “Not just 'cause I . . . look like Maria.”

  “You, Angie.”

  “She thinks you're . . . funny . . . but not tough enough—”

  He grimaced and clenched his jaws until it felt like his fillings were about to buckle. “I knew I should've gone inside with you.”

  Smiling, the foam smearing her face. “You love me.”

  He'd been working the lights pretty good, catching them as they turned green, but Brooklyn always had to do what it could to make you go insane. As he wheeled to the top of a rise, an ocean of brake lights in front of him, all the signals as far as he could see all went red at once. The cars piled up while he tried to make it out of this shithole neighborhood, still unsure of where he was going.

  He spotted a traffic cop getting up from a bus stop bench on the corner and stepping into the middle of the street, grimacing at drivers that passed too close to him. The light changed and he held his hand up, stopping everybody dead.

  Dane let go with a grunt, wheeled around the Honda Civic in front of him, and drove out to look the cop in his eye.

  The cop ignored Dane out there in the intersection, two inches away. Horns blared. He just put his hand out, blowing his whistle, and started gesturing for the cross traffic to proceed.

  “I need a hospital,” Dane said, knowing he should wail to get the guy's attention. But he couldn't let it out.

  “What? You got a pregnant lady in there with you?”

  “A girl who's sick.”

  “All you hacks, every one of you's got pregnant women in back during rush hour. Today alone there musta been twenty of 'em. I couldn't spit across the street without hitting a lady who was preggers.”

  Dane reached out, took hold of the cop's tie. “You prick, point me to the hospital.”

  “Hey, you want me to run you in? You accosting a police officer? You know what you could get for that?”

  Like he was a cat burglar. Like this was a bank heist, instead of a guy trying to save a young girl's life. But this fucking stugots traffic cop has to puff out his chest.

  The cop was about thirty, with a sour face and the pale outline of a mustache he'd recently shaved off. Full of impatience and annoyance, not one of those guys you see dancing and singing the traffic along, blowing their whistles to some funny tune. This one must have been recently busted down for doing something serious. They put him out in the middle of the street so they could see where he was all the time.

  “Back this up and get out of the intersection, buddy! Now!”

  Yeah, he was new all right, and trying to change the course of the world because he was pissed off at his commanding officer. As if anybody ever backed up in New York, for any reason.

  “Tell me,” Dane said. “Which way?”

  “Three blocks up, two right. If you don't know Bedford-Stuyvesant, the hell are you doing driving through here? Are you from the Heights?” Stepping out in front of the cab, shaking his head. “You people from the Heights act like you own the whole goddamn city. Hold on a second.”

  Dane gunned it. The cop actually pulled a face and stepped forward, sticking his hand out again. One of those types who think the badge somehow makes them invincible. He still looked cranky and in control up until the instant he was lying up on the hood of the cab, spread over the windshield.

  Dane drove two blocks like that and the cop finally fell off at the entrance to the hospital parking lot. A couple of attendants came running down the sidewalk to help him.

  Engine shrieking, Dane drove up to the emergency room and almost plowed into the electric doors, his fist on the horn.

  He glanced back at Angie and saw she was blue, foam coursing down her chin, her throat three sizes larger than normal. Blood leaking out of her nose.

  The cops nabbed him for vehicular assault. The traffic cop had a broken collarbone and a fractured pelvis. During the trial he still wore a sour expression of impatience, pointing at Dane with his shoulder in a cast, screaming in a high, girlish voice.

  Angie lasted almost a day and a half after going into anaphylactic shock from a speedball mix of heroin and flake cocaine. It had been slightly diluted with lactose and enhanced with amphetamine, ephedrine, and caffeine. Sort of a delicacy on the street, Dane found out, but she'd been fatally allergic to the ephedrine.

  Twelve h
ours later, while he was still in lockup, his best friend Vinny Monticelli put a contract out on him.

  TWELVE

  On the night Ma died, the boy with the sick brain told him how much he loved Dane's mother, how wonderful she was, how beautiful she was there in the bed, her skin yellow, the machines forcing air into her lungs. Heaving her against the pillows like a careless lover.

  The kid had sutures all across his head, bone showing through on one side. Jagged raw red scars crosshatching his frontal lobe. Pieces of his skull had been removed and replaced with plastic and steel. He walked like he had five angry people inside grappling for control. Dane followed him around the room where his mom was dying and he was walking the same way.

  Dane was seventeen and didn't know his mother well at all. She'd been ill for years and had spent most of her time in the back room, waiting to die. Their conversations consisted of lists and catalogues of delirium.

  What did you do today? Today I went to math class, gym, went down to the pier with Maria, stole another car, and played stickball in Venucci's parking lot. What did you do today? Today I dreamed an angel with golden wings as shiny as coins sat with me on the end of the bed. In its hand was a burning sword. I watched the television for a while, but it wasn't on. I bled in the toilet. Go out and play.

  He came home from a weekend in Atlantic City, where he'd stayed with Vinny in one of the Don's hotels, and found her on the bathroom floor. Eyes shadowed and skin turning a delicate shade of blue. Dad in his grave only a few months, Grandma at bingo. Dane drove her over to the hospital, stunned by how quickly they set her up in ICU.

  They allowed him to stay with her while the symphony of mechanical discord spiked his skull. Red lights snapped on and glowed like eyes of furious judgment. You could go crazy in this room waiting for your mother to die.

  He learned more about his mom from the ill kid, who spoke as if he'd known her all his life. He'd spent much of his youth in the hospital, where they tore at his skull and pulled out pieces and jammed transistors in. Other people lived between his ears. He understood how to read the medical charts. What each machine's purpose was. The kid had strange eyes, one staring straight ahead, the other never quite settled, always jumping.