Headstone City Part 4

Pepe had been a lightweight champ and still moved like he was stepping into the ring. Light, fast, and with his arms loose in case he had to snap a jab into somebody's face. He'd been born in Spanish Harlem, back when there was such a thing. When he was about thirteen his family moved to Headstone City and Pepe fell in with Dane and the other Italians of the neighborhood. He had no Puerto Rican accent anymore, and spoke with the same hand gestures that Dane used himself.

"I'm off at six. We'll go out and have a few beers and get you laid."

"I've got plans tonight," Dane said.

"What?" Drawing his chin back and peering into Dane's face, taking a good look, trying to see what could be seen. "You've been in the bucket for two years and there's something else you wanna do on your first night out?"

"It's sort of a matter of necessity."

"So's getting your pipes cleaned. Okay, so you're not in the mood for fun, you f.u.c.kin' killjoy." Pepe squared his shoulders, a sign that he was serious. "What are you after? A gun? You know I'm not your man for that."

"I already have one."

"I should've known."

"I need a job," Dane told him.

"You got to have a license first."

"I do."

That threw Pepe, made him twist around. His hands started moving all over the place. "How's that possible? You ran over a f.u.c.kin' cop!"

"Yeah, but he was only a traffic cop."

Dane's father had always told him to stay clean because the first bit of dirt he got on him would just keep growing. He'd been right. Dane had been nabbed stealing cars a couple of times in his teens, then got tagged for vehicular a.s.sault the day he b.u.mped the traffic cop while Angelina Monticelli was dying in the back of his cab.

Pepe dropped his chin, gave Dane the look he was starting to get used to. "Listen, maybe you shouldn't stay in the neighborhood for too long. For your own good."

"Did Vinny tell you not to hire me?"

"Not exactly. A guy came around who likes to talk out the corner of his mouth and clean his fingernails with a b.u.t.terfly knife."

That'd be Joey Fresco, the big hitter.

Playing with his fingernails, Pepe mimicked him pretty well. "He tells me that if I see you, I should give the Monti crew a call, it would be in my best interest. They'd consider it a favor. If I didn't, it'd be a show of disrespect. Since Puzo's book, that word hasn't had the same meaning for you guineas. So he wags the knife around for a while, sc.r.a.pes it along his throat like he's shaving. Not even doing the slit slit you're dead motion, no, this guy's too hep for that." Pepe broke out of the performance, stood there smiling again. "He didn't give me the number though. Like I'm going to walk up to the front door of the Monti mansion and knock. Ask for the hitter who shaves with a b.u.t.terfly blade."

"Okay," Dane said, and started to walk by.

"Wait a minute, I didn't say I wouldn't hire you. Jesus, you're as neurotic as Franny! You should both be in group therapy. I was only explaining the situation."

"I know, but you don't need to deal with their s.h.i.t."

"You're still too sensitive. How the h.e.l.l did you survive twenty months in the bucket, man?" Pepe thought about it, rubbing his chin, trying to figure every angle the way he always did. "How about this? I'll give you eastern Long Island, all right? The Hamptons and Montauk run."

It was a straight ride at a specified price, $99 to the end of the Island, nearly three hours one-way with no fare back. He could make five times more driving for any other cab company in the five boroughs.

"No," Dane told him.

"What?"

"The season's over. n.o.body's even going out to the Hamptons this time of year."

"They still go. Plenty of them."

"Besides, I want to stick closer."

Getting brash now, getting paternal. "You take what I give you or you can go throw fish down at Fulton's."

He knew Pepe was doing it to help him, to keep him out of the neighborhood and on the road. Like he didn't have to go home at night.

"I need to earn a living."

With the fingers again, this time ticking off each point he had to make, Pepe said, "You live with your grandmother, you got no rent. She feeds you four-course meals, you don't gotta pay for your food. You got no kids, you got no wife, you got no ex who wants alimony or child support." Now on to the left hand. "You got no habits, no vices. You don't drink, you don't throw dice, you run away from the wh.o.r.es. In fact, you run away from the nice girls too. The h.e.l.l do you need money for?"

"A stake."

"A stake? What's that mean, you want a stake? For what?"

"To get things rolling," Dane said.

"Jesus." Easing out this grumble from the back of his throat, showing dissatisfaction without actually having to pull a face. "Fran's right, you know it? I never noticed it before but you do have smirky eyes. And it's not so cute."

He was really going to have to do something about that. "When can I start?"

"You got a suit?"

It was a dumb question. Every guy in Headstone City had a black suit for funerals. "Yeah."

"Tomorrow if you want. So long as your hack license is actually up-to-date."

"It is."

"Christ, you got off easy. Except for, well . . . for the mob wanting your a.s.s and all."

There was still that. "One more thing. I need a car."

Pepe doing his cla.s.sic freeze, the head c.o.c.k, the eye roll. More like a Jewish mother than a Puerto Rican grandfather. He should be doing dinner theater. "You expect a lot."

"Anything will do."

"I got an '87 Buick GN. A junker I fixed up pretty good. It's not the most gorgeous thing on the road but it'll get you around. I can let it go for a grand."

"Take it out of my pay."

It got Pepe's chin firmed up, his lips crimped. He was having trouble holding himself back from putting it on the line. Saying that Dane might not live long enough to pay him the money.

"If I catch two in the head, you can have it back," Dane told him. "Where's the keys?"

Pepe grinned at that, his own eyes kind of smirky. It really was ugly.

"How about if we just call it a loaner for now? And don't run over any cops while you're in it, okay?"

SIX.

There are sections of your own history that you've gone through many times before. A track that's become a trench that's become a pit. You just keep going around and around, but each time you're in a little deeper. A pattern so deep-rooted that you fell into it without knowing it was happening. After you took the first step, then the next had to follow, and the next. Laid out before you the same way it had been from the beginning, no matter what.

In the mostly quiet streets off the central plaza, rows of residences towered above the memorial arch to fallen soldiers of both world wars. A broad, tree-lined parkway led straight to the granite arch. Dane drove the GN around Grand Outlook Hall and along Outlook Park, gravel walks flanking the rolling gra.s.sy hollow.

He wanted to visit his parents in Wisewood, but with the gardens dying at the approach of autumn, the scent of rotting roses and carnations eddying through the busted floor vents, he found himself pa.s.sing the entrance leading to their graves.

Instead, he took the long way around and drove the GN down the half-mile square between Outlook Park and the rest of Headstone City. It seemed to be the only way he could move through the neighborhood, this direction, every time.

Staring up at brownstones carved with the faces of the seven deadly sins. Before he'd joined the army he used to see himself in l.u.s.t. Afterward, more like envy.

Now it was the hang of sloth's relaxed face that reminded him of his own features, the nearly grinning mouth, the semidazed eyes.

He had to do something about that too. His list was getting longer. He had to get moving.

It felt right being back behind a wheel, the thrum of the engine working through his chest. A union of precision between reflex and skill and tuned machinery. As always, he thought about taking it up onto the highway. Imagining the open miles of parkways leading to the Verrazano Bridge, Staten Island, and from there to Jersey and the rest of the world.

But if he got rolling he might never stop. The urge to run was powerful but futile, and it was always there.

Coming around the far edge of Wisewood, he turned the corner, pa.s.sed the gates, and parked in front of his grandmother's house.

Soon, he hoped, he'd be able to visit his mother and father again. At least on foot. But it wouldn't be for a while yet, and he'd probably never be able to drive it. He was a neurotic b.a.s.t.a.r.d, just like Pepe had said. The pattern was too powerful, always drawing him the same way through the neighborhood. No matter how many times he tried it, he always pa.s.sed up their graves, then had to lie about it later to whoever might ask.

The heady aroma of fresh-cooked pasta swept over him on the front stoop, and he walked in without knocking. He was home, and with the place came another embedded pattern he would never emerge from.

"That you?" Grandma Lucia yelled from the kitchen.

"It's me."

Like if it wasn't him somebody else could just say, It's me, and that would be all right too.

She plodded out into the living room, carrying seventy-eight years of bra.s.s and reliability. Thick and stoop-shouldered, but with large, powerful arms that had spent sixteen-hour days toiling in post-WWII sweatshops down in lower Manhattan, scrubbing factory floors. She'd buried her father, her husband, and her son-all police officers who'd died in the line of duty before they hit thirty-and she just kept struggling forward year after year despite the a.s.saults of the world.

Her presence drew up against him as inflexible as a natural force of the earth, like a thunderstorm. She'd dyed her hair pink and he couldn't stop looking at it. Holy Christ.

"Where the h.e.l.l's the cannoli!" she shouted.

Eyes wide, feeling that tickle of anxiety he always got when Grandma Lucia used that voice. It was about the only thing that could really get to him anymore. "I forgot."

"You get so many calls in prison you can't remember me talking to you?"

Mother Mary, that hair, it was searing his retina. "It's been a busy day."

"Fine, they were for you anyway." She pulled the drapes back and stared at the Buick. "That an '87?"

"Yeah."

"It's garbage. You got it from Morales, didn't you."

"Yeah."

"What'd you pay?"

"It's kind of a loaner, but he wanted a grand for it." Saying it with a quiver of shame, knowing Pepe was his only friend, but the guy had still tried to rob him. "I'm working at Olympic again."

"You got ripped off. He probably gave you the s.h.i.t Long Island run too. Didn't you learn anything in the slam?"

He thought about it. "No."

"Come sit down in the dining room, I made ravioli."

There wouldn't be any small talk. There never had been in the Danetello household. You said your piece, told your story, made your point, then shut the h.e.l.l up. The silence tended to throw visitors off, especially around the holidays. They'd come in and n.o.body would be talking, and they'd think the family had been fighting.

Instead, there'd been a precision of conversation. Clipped and sharp, but usually funny. Brutal in the way it carved away the fat and got to the heart of matters. Little laughter when he thought about it, but that didn't mean there'd been bitterness. Or even anger, really. At least not before Ma got sick.

Dane found that there had always been a strange equilibrium between calm and violence. Or maybe it was just him.

Grandma cleared her throat, and he could tell she had subjects to broach. Things she needed to get out, but hoping he'd be the one to start.

It wasn't easy. The house already felt like it was pressing in on him. He could sense the remaining tensions of those who'd lived and died there. Mostly in stillness, but with loud, abandoned thoughts.

His father, a hard man of imperfect justice. His mother, a mere suggestion that dwelled in the house, unseen but still obvious, often coughing. His grandmother, a Sicilian witchy lady of sorts, a soothsayer who didn't soothe. It was her way. At nine, she'd seen the Virgin Mary in an olive grove outside Messina, in the shadow of Mount Etna. She told her local priest, who had burned her with sulfur for speaking with the devil's tongue. You heard about stuff like that and you understood why she loved chapels but hated churches.

Since then, she'd had dreams that gave her a glimpse through the thinnest part of the veil. They informed her of what was happening, who might be visiting Dane from the other side. She called it the burden but didn't treat it as such. It had been pa.s.sed to him like a rock. Now he had to find out how much she already knew.

Dane still couldn't stop looking at her hair, thinking, Jesus, the h.e.l.l did she do to herself?

She noticed him staring and slid a hand over the bangs, primping them. "It's magenta."

"Oh," he said. "Is that right?"

"Matches my nail polish. You look like you've got something to say."

"It just takes a little getting used to."

"You shut up."