Three guys but nobody moving up on him, no one spreading out any covering fire. The rattle of a glass caught Dane's attention.
Son of a bitch.
One of them was actually in the candy dish.
Sometimes you had just enough guts and technique to get you where you were going. He thought of Maria, his promises met and those unkept, and he spun into the doorway and aimed at the nearest hitter, easing back on the trigger of the .38.
It took Joey's lieutenant in the thigh and whipped him around so that he faced the opposite direction. Dane didn't even get an impression of what the bastard looked like, of who he was, this man he was killing. He fired twice more and nailed the guy both times between the shoulder blades, a splash of blood soaring against the plastic-covered couch pillows.
Look at this, look at where I am now.
And it's only going to get easier.
Dane had screwed up, the scene was too large in his mind. He'd lost his cover, jumped out too far, and had nowhere to hide. No choice but to continue leaping forward to the end. He fired twice more at the other hitter and missed both times, and he only had one bullet left. He was saving it for Joey, who was chewing on Grandma's black licorice, the .357 held too low. The thug was closer, already aiming his .45 at Dane's chest.
The pesto funghi had started to smoke, filling the room with a sharp odor of overcooked sauce that still managed to make Dane's stomach growl.
This was bad. His hand flashed out and caught the thug by the wrist, pulling him forward so the barrel of the .45 actually passed over his ribs. The guy wasn't fast enough to pull the trigger in time, and nowhere near light enough on his feet to stay balanced.
You had to count your good fortunes when they occurred. The hitter threw his arms out like a little kid walking on ice, sliding on Grandma Lucia's plastic runner protecting the carpet. After thirty years of walking on that goddamn thing, Dane was finally happy it was there.
He brought the .38 up, pressed it to the prick's cheekbone, said, “This isn't about you,” and shot him through the head.
Joey spit out his licorice.
He wasn't as good with guns as he used to be. He'd grown lazy as he'd been promoted up the family chain, and he wound up putting too much faith in the men around him. Joey held his .357 out in front of him but had too tight a grip on it, the way second-rate drivers would grip a steering wheel in a high-speed pursuit. The gun angled slightly downward. Joey was used to his snub-nosed .22, and the weight of the Magnum was throwing him off a hair.
Ten feet separated them. Dane aimed the empty .38 at Joey's heart. He just might be able to bluff his way out here, if he had enough slickness to get by. Joey Fresco probably hadn't counted the shots. He was getting older, more insecure, not keeping his mind on the business at hand. His suit jacket had stuffed shoulder pads to lend him some extra size, but they appeared as stiff as a French general's epaulets.
“With a Magnum, I can miss you and still punch a hole through your chest,” Joey said.
“Drop it. I'm trained. I can put out your eye from a thousand yards.”
“Yeah, they teach you that in the army?” Joey asked. “Special Forces? No wonder you handled those two so easy. Am I right?”
“Yeah.”
“You do any assassination stuff?”
“All the time.”
“Down in Nicaragua?”
It was becoming fairly apparent that the men of the Monticelli clan were about as upright and stable as the Tower of Pisa.
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, gr
abbed 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.
TWENTY-SEVEN
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?”
“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 so
n? 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.”
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