“You already told me that.”
“It's not the safest place for you.”
“You said that too.”
“Did I?”
“Yeah. Relax yourself about it. Nobody's going to get the drop on me.” Dane thought that maybe Phil had fallen back into his cop role, reading his script to the punks on the street. He seemed a little lost, unsure of where he was supposed to be now. No longer a cop, no longer a real player. Sitting comfortably in the pocket of the Don, but only because he was a neighborhood boy and was content to play fetch.
Phil took the next turn so sharply they wound up bumping over the curb. Dane reached into the glove compartment and pulled out Phil's thick glasses. “How about you take off those aviators and put these on now.”
“I see fine.”
“Really, you might at least consider it. You don't have to wear them all the time. Maybe just now and again, you know? On cloudy days. At night.”
“I don't need them.”
Dane put the glasses back, waiting for whatever was going to happen next.
Phil started to screw around some more. He honked the horn and waved at people on the street. They stared at him in terror. Dane tried hard not to fidget but all he wanted to do was grab hold of the wheel, show him how to really groove with a '59 Caddy.
“I've got some money I could give you,” Phil said. “It might help you to make a fresh start. So you can get away from here.”
“Where'd you get the money?”
“I earned it on the job. It's not much. Maybe five grand. But enough for you to have a stake and move to a new city. Somewhere warm.”
Dane still couldn't come to a decision on where Phil stood. The man was actually much more perplexing than he should be. Was Phil trying to get rid of him because he realized Dane knew what had really happened to his father? Or because he had orders from the Montis to make a show of friendship?
“Just think about it,” Phil told him, and pulled up in front of Grandma's house again.
Dane looked at him and asked, “Where were you that night, Phil? When my mother died.”
Phil scowled, his lips tugged back in a near pout. “What do you mean?”
Some guys could play dumb with a real tact and delicacy, and then others, they just looked at you, frowning, trying to make it seem like your question made no sense.
“I phoned you from the hospital. I called the precinct, remember? You were supposed to come by at the end of your shift, but you never showed up.”
It didn't really matter, but Dane couldn't control his need to confront the man and hear some kind of answer. It should all be secondary to hearing him admit to killing Dad, but he'd always known his priorities were fucked.
“You accusing me of something?” Phil asked, his eyes appearing jaundiced behind those lenses.
“I'm asking a question.”
“Well, I don't like it.”
“I didn't think you would.”
“You got something to say, you just say it.”
“I already did. I want to know where you were that night.”
“Who the hell do you think you are? Asking me that! In my car! In my Cadillac while I'm driving. After I just been to the graves of your parents! And you're asking me that? You got something to say to me? You accusing me of something? This I want to hear! This I really want to hear!”
“It should be easy to answer, don't you think? It's not like you could forget a night like that, right? Or could you?”
“You got some nerve, Johnny! You got some goddamn frickin'-”
“I've got nerve, we both know that. What I don't have is an answer. You want to give me one?”
“Get out of my car.”
“Can I still have the money? Five g's. Maybe I'll invest it.”
“Get out of my car, you strunzo prick!”
“Sure,” Dane said, and slid out of the Caddy. He smiled and let his cigarette hang loose from the corner of his mouth, hitting his father's pose.
Phil Guerra knew he'd messed up, showing heat like that. He sat looking at the dash for a minute, calming down. Then he held his index finger out, cocked his thumb like it was a gun, pretended to shoot Dane again, the same way he had the other day. Sometimes it felt like you were onstage all the time, in a very old play, hitting your mark and saying lines you'd said a thousand times before.
Dane walked inside and went to the kitchen junk drawer, grabbed a screwdriver and needle-nose pliers. Grandma was at the counter cooking ziti. She said, “You two have a good talk?”
He turned back for the door. “No.”
“Where you going?”
“To make a point.”
“Be home by six.”
“I might be late.”
“Six!”
The breeze could bring you back in time the way nothing else could. The smells in the chill air, the scent of impending rain. He tucked his chin against his chest and huddled against the wind. He walked with a fast stride over to the Guerra house.
Phil had parked the Cadillac in the garage but hadn't locked the door. Dane opened it, got in the car, used the tools, and got it started. He pulled out of the driveway slowly and waited in the street, his foot on the brake pedal, until he saw the front door open. Then he stomped the gas until the smoke of burning rubber rose up around car windows, cut loose on the brake, and peeled the fuck out.
He was feeling good, back behind the wheel, the horsepower working up into his chest to fortify his heart.
When you start moving you don't stop until it's finished.
He was moving again, finally. He drove over to the Monticelli mansion like the Caddy was leading the way. It was time to talk to the Don.
TWENTY
The forsaken understood the tactics of cruelty.
A pressure at Dane's side grew worse block after block until he thought maybe Phil had gotten a shot off and winged him. It came from the pocket where he carried the diamond ring he was supposed to give to Maria Monticelli. The pain intensified until he looked over and saw JoJo Tormino there beside him, his finger pressed into Dane's pocket.
“Give me a break, JoJo,” Dane said. “I'll get to it. I've got a lot on my mind right now. Go visit my grandmother, I think she's got a thing for you.”
But JoJo didn't buy that and shoved even harder. With love in his eyes and a tormented grimace, and all the regrets that a man with an unfinished mission might have, even under the mud, he stuck it to Dane.
They didn't turn over in their graves. They stood up and came after you, and they prodded you in your softest places.
JoJo opened his mouth as if to say something and suddenly Angelina was there, wearing a wild smile. She said, “Wow, you two really went at it in that swing! You deserve to have some fun, don't be ashamed of it.”
“I'm not.”
“You are, and you shouldn't be.”
It was like living in a sideshow, where they watched your every move. You stared at them and they stared at you, gasping at the things you did.
The old ache revisited itself on him, his chest feeling huge and hollow, like he'd been embalmed, side by side in the morgue trays with all the rest of them. The mansion on the hill loomed above him, the sound of the heavy waves roaring in the bay.
“You still haven't come by to visit me,” she said. “But that's all right, you've been having fun. I'm glad.”
“It hasn't all been fun.”
“No, but you've been doing okay so far. And I can see you're enjoying yourself now.”
You really couldn't ask for more than that. Not from a girl you'd driven to the people who killed her.
“Your mother-” Angie slid closer, trying to curl across his lap.
“That's right. You said she had something to tell me. What is it?”
Now, the dead playing coy, she nibbled her bottom lip and let out a soft purr, the kind of sound he'd never heard her make when she was alive.
“You don't really want to know, Johnny.”
“You're probably right.”
“Are you going to kill my father?”