“He hasn't done a thing for her yet.”
“So where is she?”
Angie smiled, like she knew what was coming next. “At our sister Carmella's house out on Begoyan Street. She's married to a podiatrist.”
Dane didn't know Carmella all that well. She was older, the daughter of the Don's longtime goomar, a girlfriend he started hanging around with back in the late fifties. She didn't have much to do with the family, and Dane had only met her a couple of times at Monticelli functions a long time ago.
“Why's she there?”
“Berto is keeping watch over her.”
“For what?”
“He thinks the Ventimiglia family might be taking a run at her.”
Dane tried to track it but couldn't. With a touch of frustration he realized he still didn't see things the way the goombas did. After all these years it should be second nature, understanding their impractical moves, but he just couldn't ever get it into focus. “Why would they do that?”
“Because of JoJo Tormino.”
“The Ventis think he died because of her?”
“Well, he did, pretty much.”
“But she had nothing to do with it. The Ventimiglias work like that? Send a crew against a family member in payback? They've got to know JoJo loved her, right? So now they're gonna whack her?”
“They're the only rough family left,” Angie said, her lips just under his ear. The Caddy veered a little over the double yellow and Dane had to yank it back. “I always hated those guys. Vito Grimaldi was constantly trying to paw me whenever there was some kind of get-together. Barbecues. Baptisms. Even at funerals.”
“He a capo?”
“Yeah.”
JoJo still had his bullet holes: the left elbow, left thigh, jagged melted graze along his jaw, and high in the chest. The sucking wound above his heart hissed and gurgled. How long could a dead man bleed? It got worrisome, having JoJo back there just watching, waiting, his spiritual peace all hinged on Dane facing a woman he'd wanted his entire life.
If only you could throw a corpse out of the car. It would make life so much easier.
“By the way,” Angie said. “What did Mr. Fielding want with you? He no longer cries in his grave.”
Dane told her, “He had a confession to make.”
“Oh,” she said. So beautiful, so much like Maria, that Dane had to rub his palms along his pant legs to dry them. “Oh, I know what that's like.”
“Yeah, me too.”
TWENTY-FIVE
The podiatrist's house stood so far out on Begoyan Street that you could see it from three blocks away. The front door had been painted a fierce turquoise, and there was a large wooden foot hanging from a pole on a pair of chains at curbside. The name DR. STANLEY WEINTRAUB arced along the heel in black-framed block letters. Classy.
Maria's sister Carmella had married young and gotten as far away from the Monticellis as she could: about two miles across Flatbush Avenue. Dane knew it was a whole different world here. You might as well be in Antarctica if you had to take a subway to get good pasta fagliogli.
But you couldn't really run from Don Monti, not even if you were his illegitimate daughter. You could only hope that family wasn't keeping an eye on you every minute of the day.
Like Angie had told Dane, they were watching the house.
Roberto Monticelli was out front in a sleeveless T-shirt, holding a cigar in his huge hand. He stood about six-four, heavily muscled but with a little spare tire around the middle and a double chin he'd never get rid of. He pretty much had only one eyebrow and didn't seem bothered by it. He kept his hair short but well moussed so that it appeared curly as razor wire.
He had surrounded himself with an atmosphere of self-importance, marred only by his extreme and total uncool. He wore a leather holster on his belt at the small of his back, housing a .44 Magnum. The barrel was so long that it hung out the bottom of the holster and made it look like Berto had a pipe sticking up his ass.
Dane used to be terrified of him—if you so much as said good morning to Maria in the school hallways, Roberto would stab you in the eye with a pencil.
It was sort of rough trying to visualize Berto under the bridge with transsexual hookers. Once you started bending your imagination in that direction, it just wouldn't stop. It made you wonder how long Berto's lifestyle had been curving like this. Since high school? Teenage son of a mob boss feeling up the tits of Bernadette, sucking her tongue, saying yeah baby baby, only to grab hold of Bernie's tool. Was it a turn-on right then or did he have to work it out for himself, struggling with his shame? Yeah, probably killed the first one out of revulsion, but the interest was implanted. He dumps the strangled body of Bernie but keeps seeing that swinging dick in his dreams. Gets him nauseous and aroused at the same time. No wonder he was always in such a bad fucking mood. Did he have one girlfriend he kept returning to, waiting for him beneath the bridge? How much was the standard rate for around-the-world with somebody you could do twice as much with? Like there weren't enough questions to make you crazy.
Seated in the Caddy, Dane scanned the area, looking for more members of the crew. Nobody else seemed to be around.
Dane knew what he was going to do now even though it was bound to cause a lot of problems all around. What the fuck.
Pocketing his keys and the .38, he slid from the car. Berto had seen the Cadillac go by, but showed no interest. It was a common sight to him.
Dane made sure he made some noise and slammed the door hard, stepping heavily across the street, kicking loose asphalt. He walked up with his arms loose at his sides, hands open. Roberto didn't quite recognize him and puffed intently on his cigar, blowing smoke in a thick cloud as if it somehow made him groovy, like one of the Old Mafiosi sitting around in their tomato gardens.
Dane moved up the flagstone walk and realized there wasn't any way to be hip with what he had to say, so he just let it out. “Berto, I want to talk to Maria. She here?”
Roberto fell back a step with a shocked expression, and for a second he looked like he might be having a heart attack. His features fell in and contorted and went a nice shade of blue, then purple, and then the immense, lunatic Sicilian rage was on him. “The fuck you say my sister's name!”
“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.
TWENTY-SIX
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?
His mother said nothing. His father didn't run out in front of the grille. The Caddy hummed as he went along, the decades of power and beauty working into Dane's chest. He made a turn and rolled through the cemetery, taking precise curves, never hitting the brake, smoothly swinging past the leaning gravestones trying to make a grab as he went by. He drove out through the gates and parked in front of his grandmother's house.
Were you supposed to have done it? Did they want you to do it? Had they been waiting for you to take the step?
Dane had the storm door open, sticking his key in the lock, when the screech of tires drew his attention back to the street. A smudge of black motion coming from the driveway. They'd found him already.
Dane dove inside as Joe Fresco called out with an amiable, “Hey, hold up!”
Uh-huh. Dane slammed the door shut, threw the dead bolt, and drew the well-oiled .38 from his jacket pocket.
Who was in charge of matters now? Vinny or the Don? Or were some of the boys starting to cut loose?
The Monticelli mob liked to send their crews in teams of three. It was a stupid ploy. They were already getting in each other's way as they came up across the lawn. Joey seemed to be running this part of the show, with a bit too much composure. It would've been easier to take him out if he was raving, like back at the Monti mansion.
But Joey had it together now. He'd be tougher to drop. Dane tried not to think about what the inside of a trunk might feel like while you were waiting for somebody to fire up a blowtorch.
Grandma Lucia plodded out from the kitchen. She'd spent the morning dyeing her hair again. Christ, he had to turn away. “Why do you do that to yourself?” he asked.
Her presence pressed against him like the turbulent massing of a hurricane. “Where the hell's the cannoli!”
“Look, I got a situation here—” He rushed to her, took her elbow, and led her out of the living room and back into the kitchen.
“You piss somebody off?” she asked.
“You could say that.”
“Who?”
“I accidentally killed Roberto Monticelli.”
; She let out a long-suffering sigh that went, “Uyh—” Really sounding deeply irritated, it was a talent she had. In all these years he hadn't quite gotten it down right.
She smacked him in the back of the head with fingers like iron. “Stunad! What'd you do? Run him over, the way you drive?”
He pushed her toward the cellar. “Go wait for me.”
“I've got pesto funghi on the stove.”
“Leave it, we'll have it later.”
“Don't talk to them. Those Monticellis like to talk.” She opened the cellar door and left it open, the basement steps creaking as she moved into darkness.
“Just keep your hot pink head down.”
“It's magenta, I told ya!”
Joey and his thugs forced themselves against the front door, shouldering the dead bolt. All three of them were at it, nobody coming around to the back of the house to cut off an escape. He heard them shouting, Joey still trying to sound smooth and natural, a pal come around to watch a ball game. “Hey, Danetello, c'mon, I just want to chat. Have a sit-down.”
So it was going to be like that.
“Yeah, about what?” Dane yelled.
“About our conversation the other day.”
“Which one specifically?”
“From the other day!”
“Oh, when I punched you in the throat a couple times?”
“Yeah!”
The hitters fired several shots, sort of playing around, shooting up the door, having a good time. Dane had to admit it felt like the ending of some movie where nobody gave a shit anymore, they all just go rushing headlong into hell. The door burst open.
Joey and his boys were in the living room now, chattering like they were sitting around a bar waiting for somebody to buy them a beer. Joey called out, “Hey there. How about if we just relax and have a nice discussion. Defuse this situation before it gets any worse. How's that? How'd that be?”
“Sure,” Dane said, and they opened up on the sound of his voice, firing into the other side of the wall. Splinters and chunks of plaster spewed all over the kitchen as he squatted lower behind the refrigerator. Joey Fresco was back to using his .357. Grandma was right, they liked to get you talking.
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