“Yeah, they pulled in while I was catching a smoke and just started staring me down. When that didn't work they called me spic, like I might break down and weep out of shame for my family heritage. They threaten to beat up some of the other drivers, but the guys just ignore them. Then this one here actually shoves me.” Pepe grinned telling the story, his small hands moving in the air. “It was like junior high school all over again. I think they were working their way up to stealing my lunch box or giving me noogies. What the hell happened to the real wiseguys?”
“I don't know,” Dane said. He frisked both the mooks and they weren't even carrying guns.
“Nothing?” Pepe asked.
“No. He had a pistol yesterday. Maybe they're scared of getting pulled over by the cops and found carrying.”
“Does the Don know he's hiring such pathetic examples of la cosa nostra?”
“You know, I've got a feeling he does. But he's so sick and crippled that he smokes a lot of weed to help him with the pain.”
“Really? Like any punk on the corner. That's sort of sad, ending up like that.”
“I have to agree.”
They wrestled the two legbreakers back onto their feet and helped them over to the LeSabre. Dane got the driver in and said, “Listen, tell Berto and Vinny to relax, I'm quitting Olympic. Oh no, my life is in tatters, how will I survive? The terror, the horror. Hey, watch your head now,” and carefully closed the door. Pepe tapped the roof and the car pulled out.
“I have mixed feelings about all that,” Pepe told him, still bouncing on his feet like he wanted to go another few rounds. “I kind of miss the old neighborhood, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“A man is defined by the strength of his enemies.”
Dane looked at him. “You quoting The Art of War now or what?”
“It's a line from Under Heaven's Canopy. One of those terrorists in the caves says it.”
“I fast-forwarded through a lot of that.”
“So did I the first twenty times, but then I finally let it roll.”
Dane glanced over at the limousine in the garage, the back bumper all banged out and polished up again after the fracas with Big Tommy, and he felt a twinge of regret. He'd miss working on it. “I'll quit tomorrow, okay?”
“You don't have to leave on account of those mooks. Stick around if you want. Besides, didn't you want to build a stake?”
“Like you said, what do I need money for? Besides, something's happening.”
Pepe gave him that long once-over. “What do you mean?”
“I'm not sure. Things are just coming into focus a little better.”
Pepe made the same face again, but not nosy enough to ask if Dane had any kind of a plan in mind.
“What time does Glory Bishop want to be picked up?”
“What, you need an invitation from her now? Just go. Drop the limo off tonight or early tomorrow. Maybe I'll send Fran on the Montauk run from now on. She could use a little ocean air.”
“By the way,” Dane said, “I think she's insane.”
“I've had some worries about that, but she's pretty stable most of the time. Like I told you, she's mostly a sweetheart, but she's got a fine-tuned instinct for criminal-type activity, you know? The action boiling behind the scenes.”
“But she didn't know you were out here brawling with two mob dumbasses.”
“I think she knew, she just didn't care much. She figured I could handle it.” A worried expression crossed his face. “She doesn't get rattled most of the time. Except by you. You shake her up worse than anyone.”
“Why?” Dane asked.
“She said you give her nightmares.”
“Me?”
“She told me she dreamed of your eyes before she ever met you.”
Tension tightened the muscles in Dane's back. “Jesus.”
“Hey, I'm just explaining what she said.”
Dane thought about it, wondering if Fran might have a touch of the burden herself. What Special Agent Daniel Ezekiel Cogan's blessed granny would've called special consideration under the Lord.
“I'll see you tomorrow,” Dane told him. “Sorry for the trouble.”
“No trouble at all, man, I had fun.”
Dane climbed into the limo and went the slow way to Glory Bishop's place, hoping the extra time would help him to put everything into perspective. He cruised from Flatbush Avenue to Parkside, hitting the next roundabout to Ocean Parkway, into the Prospect Expressway, merging onto the BQE, the flow of the cars around him always more consoling than being surrounded by people.
He slid into the Brooklyn Bridge traffic, another component of the burg, no different than any piece of stone or iron. Slowly he hiked from Greenwich Village to the Upper East Side, working his way through rush hour, enjoying the flux and drift.
Here he was doing nothing but killing time, even though it felt as if he didn't have that much time left.
A miserable whisper from the backseat made him look in the rearview. It was Aaron Fielding again, the grocer and fish seller, sitting back there whimpering. Dane wished he could hear the man's booming laugh just one more time, instead of all this sniveling.
Dane met the man's eyes in the mirror, and saw him raise an ashen, quivering hand, trying to clutch at Dane's shoulder. “Johnny, I need to-”
“What, Mr. Fielding? I'm listening.”
“Johnny!”
“Tell me. I'll help if I can. I promise.”
“I… I swear that I-”
What kind of confession was so important it would keep someone trapped in jail with you, in the cemetery with you, in the backseat?
“I never burned the fillet!”
The despair finally lifted clear of the old man, and Fielding threw his head back and smiled. A heavy, joyful laughter broke from him, resounding and pure, deepening and echoing beyond the confines of the car until the sound of his own deliverance carried him away.
Did you bring all your petty fears and worries with you right into the grave? Did they keep you awake during the long night of your interment? Were you compelled to confess and apologize and justify throughout the hereafter?
A weak man became a martyr in his own mind. Did you do the same thing when you were underground?
The poor bastard, spinning in his coffin because every Friday afternoon Grandma Lucia would send Dane down to Fielding's market for the same order, memorized word for word. “Gimme two portions of shrimp, two of potatoes, three fillets and don't burn them.” A small joke preying on a corpse's conscience, even way down in the box.
Whatever the answer, Dane knew one thing now. The dead didn't have a sense of humor.
He pulled up to Glory Bishop's building and Special Agent Cogan was standing outside eating a cannoli, ricotta cheese on his tie. He grinned and approached.
TWENTY-TWO
Once, back when you were still driving a cab, you saw two guys beating a police officer in an alley with his own nightstick.
The cop scrambled on all fours trying to fight back, but they started kicking him until he rolled himself into a ball, his face to the brick.
Dane gunned it to the mouth of the alley, threw the taxi into park, and hopped out with the engine still screaming. He took his civic duty seriously, most of the time. What the fuck. The cop scuttled under the front end of the cab, and the two guys turned to face Dane, the one with the nightstick raised above his head, and the other picking up the vials of crack he'd dropped.
If you stared straight ahead long enough, they'd take it as a sign of fear and attack. The guy with the nightstick charged, bringing the club down, giving a warrior's bellow, and doing this little twirly jump he'd seen some stuntman do in a movie once.
Dane caught him by the throat with one hand and broke his nose with two short chops. The nightstick started to drop and Dane grabbed it in midair. A silly macho gesture because he didn't even need it, but it was kind of a cool move. This dumbass fell to his knees, clutching his face and sobbing. The other was still rooting around in the trash on the ground, picking up his drugs. Dane kicked out and felt the hinge of the mook's jaw shatter. Teeth collapsed against each other and his tongue slithered loose as if the muscles had been cut.