grips, and it's because Tommy Jr.'s gotta take a class on French Renaissance poetry.”
“You're from the neighborhood, Johnny, you know how it is.”
True enough, and maybe that explained everything, and maybe it didn't and never actually would. Dane stared into Big Tommy Bartone's face and remembered how, when he was a kid, he used to see this man strutting down the sidewalk in front of Chooch's with a beautiful woman on his arm, heading for a Lincoln Continental, and think how much he wanted to be like him.
“Where is everybody?” Tommy asked, his eyes weaving left and right. “We been here for fifteen minutes and I ain't seen anybody.”
“Not even the sick kids?” Dane asked.
“Who?”
“Forget it. They're busy. Now, tell me about Vinny's movie plans.”
Tommy wet his lips. “I don't know much about that.”
Dane pressed the barrel harder into Tommy's nose, really working it into his nostril. “Does it always have to be the hard way, Big? Tell me what you do know so we can both go home.”
“Vinny wanted to get back into the drug business, cutting deals with some shithead out in Hollywood.”
“Yeah. Glory Bishop's husband. You know the dink's name?”
“No.”
It was starting to get to Dane, not knowing the guy's name. “And you all just went along with it? After working so long to get out of the drug trade, get everything legit so the feds would get the fuck off your backs?”
“It was a way to get all the way out.”
Dane repeated the line out loud and it still made no sense. “Explain that, would you?”
“If we had to pick up the drug trade a little so we could have the cash flow to invest in some production companies in Hollywood, it seemed like the wise choice. Delmare agreed. We don't need to score all that much coke for these California types, and the cash is easily laundered. It was an okay business proposition. Do a little of the old business so we could invest in a new legitimate one. After a while, we drop the drugs and we're totally set up on the West Coast with new friends, new opportunities.”
“Except the guy, Glory's husband, was already being watched by the feds.”
“They were all over him. I ain't never seen anything like it before, the way they were on him. The idiot was bringing the stuff up from Central America on his own, and the people he was working with were paying off by transporting guns. Down there, they have revolutions like we have garbage strikes. I don't think the feds even cared about the stuff, it was about the weapon shipments in and out of the country.”
Dane's scars began to heat.
The nausea rolled up through his belly and almost made him gag, but he swallowed the sickness down. Icy sweat slithered across his scalp, and his skull started to burn. He tightened the muscles in his legs to control the trembling. He jammed the gun harder into Tommy's face so he'd turn away.
Behind them in the alcove, Dane saw the flickering image of Vinny standing there pulling a cigarette from the pack. He held it out in Dane's direction like he wanted a light. Vinny looked only half-formed, like a child's inaccurate drawing. He moved his mouth carefully so Dane could read his lips.
Dane frowned, hoping Vinny would step forward into this particular reality, but he only stood there dissipating, strand by strand, one line after another erased until he was gone.
Games, always with the games. Dane's head cleared. He waved Tommy off with the.38 and said, “I gotta worry about you and a fuckin' drive-by now? Like the
“No. That's not what I want.”
“Good. Now go back home and tell them you missed, but it's no problem. Johnny Danetello will be visiting soon.”
“I can't tell them that.”
“Say whatever you want, Big, but if you come at me again, I'm going to have to kill you, okay? We clear on that one point, you and me?”
Big Tommy Bartone, who used to be Don Pietro's number one capo, the heaviest hitter, in charge of the dirty work and the shooters, with eyes that used to dance with a kind of insanely happy light whenever blood was spilled, looked at Dane with a thousand-yard stare and nodded.
It made Dane a little sad, seeing that nod, wondering where all the old-time good guys and bad guys had gone.
Tommy started off down the hall, stopped, and turned back. “There's something else.”
“What's that?” Dane asked.
“I don't think Vinny's really mad at you at all. I just think he's out of his fuckin' mind.”
NINETEEN
The pink hair like neon fire.
With little grace but full of commitment, Grandma Lucia plodded along, those powerful arms swinging at her sides, the pocketbook really jumping. As if she were heading off to face the village elders who'd forced her to deny the Virgin Mary. How it must still bother her even after seventy years, those wide hands balled into fists. You knew where you stood in the mortal chain when you saw that old woman walking toward the cemetery where your parents were buried. Seeing her like that, you realized how weak you really were down where it counted most.
The brisk wind heaved through town, seeking your broken bones, cooling the metal in your head, the fractures in your skull that would never heal, where your thoughts would always seep.
Grandma stood framed in the front gate of Wisewood, waiting like she was going to catch a bus. Dane pulled up, rolled the window down, and she told him, “Go park the car at the house, we're going to visit your parents.”
“Grandma-”
“Come on, let's go.”
“Why walk?” he asked.
“It's important.”
Maybe it was, he couldn't tell anymore. Besides, he wasn't sure he could drive through the cemetery, and try to buck his pattern around town. “Why?”
“There are things that have to be done.”
“Oh Christ,” he said. He drove down the block and parked the GN in the driveway and jogged back to her. He was tired as hell from working all morning on the limo's dented back bumper.
She stood set like marble. When he got close enough her hand flashed out and grabbed his arm, as if she feared he might run away.
You could forget you were in a cemetery when you walked through Wisewood. The park landscaping made it seem like a retreat where you'd come to read poetry, make chicks, dream about the faces of your children. You became a part of history there, connected to the past of Outlook Park, Meadow Slope, and Headstone City. You became one with the dead, and through you they met the world you helped create.
They walked the rutted paths they knew so well, no different than going to the bakery or the butcher shop. Instead of passing your neighbors on the street, you wandered by the weathered, eroded faces of granite seraphim and martyrs.
Dane felt himself drifting back to his childhood, the pull always there. Grandma Lucia had to pull him closer so he didn't run into the peaked headstones and jagged tree trunks. They stepped together over a gnarled clutch of wildflowers growing defiantly along the curb.
Johnny Danetello, he's waiting for his death to find him.
The swords of the archangels were painted fiery red in your catechism books, but it didn't burn like that pink hair.
