Headstone City

anymore.

“Sure-”

“What can you tell me about what's been going on in the Monti family since I went away? The feds have been sniffing around.”

JoJo let out a dry laugh. Wheezing harshly, at least one lung collapsing. “Heard you nearly got clipped your… last day in the joint.”

“Something's been stirring them up. What is it?”

“Dunno, but your friend Vinny… he thinks he's the new Bugsy Siegel.”

“What do you mean? He wants to start up in Vegas?”

A clot of ruby dark blood poured over JoJo's bottom lip. “You… haven't given me your word. I want… it… your oath…”

“I'll tell her,” Dane said.

JoJo reached inside the folded newspaper and pulled out an envelope stuffed with cash. He started to rise, like he wanted to die on his feet, then fell over backwards. He hit the floor hard with a crack and his death rattle lurched loose. Dane looked over at the Monti hitter on the floor and noticed he was dead too.

The baker's girl stood there gasping with tears tracking her cheeks. When Dane said, “Go get the cops,” she finally broke into motion and ran out onto the street.

Dane took the money and the diamond ring, thinking of Maria's exquisite face, and the sorrow of his life.

NINE

His myths were quiet ones without heroes, where the storms broke wide and heavy across the lawns of churches, and neighbors hid in their homes full of small tragedies.

Dane had always been too observant for his own good. He could clock the passing of time by the divorces down the block. The swelling bellies of his schoolmates. Those who went missing, one by one, down through the yearbooks. Who drowned off Fire Island, and which one died in a car crash over on the Major Deegan. And how she died on this surgeon's table, and she died on that one, and she was the first girl he ever felt up, who died a year ago from ovarian cancer.

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.”