“Yeah, me too.”
TWENTY-FIVE
The podiatrist's house stood so far out on Begoyan Street that you could see it from three blocks away. The front door had been painted a fierce turquoise, and there was a large wooden foot hanging from a pole on a pair of chains at curbside. The name DR. STANLEY WEINTRAUB arced along the heel in black-framed block letters. Classy.
Maria's sister Carmella had married young and gotten as far away from the Monticellis as she could: about two miles across Flatbush Avenue. Dane knew it was a whole different world here. You might as well be in Antarctica if you had to take a subway to get good pasta fagliogli.
But you couldn't really run from Don Monti, not even if you were his illegitimate daughter. You could only hope that family wasn't keeping an eye on you every minute of the day.
Like Angie had told Dane, they were watching the house.
Roberto Monticelli was out front in a sleeveless T-shirt, holding a cigar in his huge hand. He stood about six-four, heavily muscled but with a little spare tire around the middle and a double chin he'd never get rid of. He pretty much had only one eyebrow and didn't seem bothered by it. He kept his hair short but well moussed so that it appeared curly as razor wire.
He had surrounded himself with an atmosphere of self-importance, marred only by his extreme and total uncool. He wore a leather holster on his belt at the small of his back, housing a.44 Magnum. The barrel was so long that it hung out the bottom of the holster and made it look like Berto had a pipe sticking up his ass.
Dane used to be terrified of him-if you so much as said good morning to Maria in the school hallways, Roberto would stab you in the eye with a pencil.
It was sort of rough trying to visualize Berto under the bridge with transsexual hookers. Once you started bending your imagination in that direction, it just wouldn't stop. It made you wonder how long Berto's lifestyle had been curving like this. Since high school? Teenage son of a mob boss feeling up the tits of Bernadette, sucking her tongue, saying yeah baby baby, only to grab hold of Bernie's tool. Was it a turn-on right then or did he have to work it out for himself, struggling with his shame? Yeah, probably killed the first one out of revulsion, but the interest was implanted. He dumps the strangled body of Bernie but keeps seeing that swinging dick in his dreams. Gets him nauseous and aroused at the same time. No wonder he was always in such a bad fucking mood. Did he have one girlfriend he kept returning to, waiting for him beneath the bridge? How much was the standard rate for around-the-world with somebody you could do twice as much with? Like there weren't enough questions to make you crazy.
Seated in the Caddy, Dane scanned the area, looking for more members of the crew. Nobody else seemed to be around.
Dane knew what he was going to do now even though it was bound to cause a lot of problems all around. What the fuck.
Pocketing his keys and the.38, he slid from the car. Berto had seen the Cadillac go by, but showed no interest. It was a common sight to him.
Dane made sure he made some noise and slammed the door hard, stepping heavily across the street, kicking loose asphalt. He walked up with his arms loose at his sides, hands open. Roberto didn't quite recognize him and puffed intently on his cigar, blowing smoke in a thick cloud as if it somehow made him groovy, like one of the Old Mafiosi sitting around in their tomato gardens.
Dane moved up the flagstone walk and realized there wasn't any way to be hip with what he had to say, so he just let it out. “Berto, I want to talk to Maria. She here?”
Roberto fell back a step with a shocked expression, and for a second he looked like he might be having a heart attack. His features fell in and contorted and went a nice shade of blue, then purple, and then the immense, lunatic Sicilian rage was on him. “The fuck you say my sister's name!”
“Man, you have really got some serious hangups about Maria. But that's okay, you aren't the only one.”
It was kind of fun watching Roberto turn so many colors at once, the veins standing out in his temples, writhing and throbbing and clogging up along the contours of his neck. Dane was trying to stay focused and not let himself dwell on the fact that Berto had sent the hitters to off him in the can. “It's you. Soldier boy.”
Dane sighed and figured, all right. “Yeah, okay, it's me, the soldier boy.”
“And you strut right up to me? To my sister's house?”
“It wasn't much of a strut.”
“After what you did?”
“You got a hangup about Angie too, don't you? Okay, I'm starting to see the picture now, why you've done the things you have.”
It was easy to keep Berto off-balance, the guy puffing away like a maniac, making himself sick on the cigar. Dane tried not to think of what Freud might've had to say about the demonstration. “You know how much is on your head?”
“I've been out of the joint for three weeks. I walked up to your brother and his crew in Chooch's. I walked into your father's house. Except for one lame ass try by Big Tommy Bartone, nobody's done much to collect on your bounty. How much you offering anyway?”
Berto took another serious puff, sucked too much into his lungs, and had to suppress a cough. “Five grand!”
“You embarrass yourself,” Dane said.
“Get out of my goddamn sight before I put two in your skull right now, you disrespectful prick! Your time is coming! I ought to kill you on general principle!”
There it was again. The threat but not the follow-through. What kind of wiseguy only stands there talking to the guy he's put a bounty on, when he's got a fucking Magnum hooked to his belt? Jesus. You'd think he'd be wailing Angelina's name, throwing his arms up to heaven. But no, just the same schoolyard bully shit he used to pull during recess.
“Really, can't we skip the goomba drama?” Dane asked. “Your boys screwed up on taking me out in the slam. Big Tommy messed up at the hospital. A few more of your muscle boys flubbed the hit on JoJo Tormino. I mean, really, three against one and he still manages to ice them all? That's just fucking sad. He's dead but so are they, if you care about cost-effectiveness and such.”
“You son of a bitch. I don't care, so long as the job got done.”
“Why did you come to the prison?”
“I want you dead.”
“Sure. But why go yourself? Why didn't you just let Vinny send a lieutenant?”
Still flexing and puffing, getting his veins in those big hands to stick out but never making the move. “He wouldn't. He wouldn't pay anybody to hit you, so I did. You deserve to be chopped into dog food.” His face burned with emotion. Whatever was going on, Berto Monticelli wasn't going to talk about it. “I'm gonna cut your liver out with a cleaver and-”
“Yeah, yeah. I need to speak to Maria. She around?”
“Vaffanculo!”
Okay, so maybe he should've handled it differently, more diplomatically, but JoJo had tapped him and this was the only way it was going to be.
Roberto's lips started to crawl over his face. Dane recognized the expression from back in the hallways. It was his way of grinning. He went for his Magnum, trying to jerk it out fast but unable to tug it free from the holster. The forward sight on the barrel was hung up on the leather and, as he fought to draw, yanking harder, it looked more and more like a puppy's tail twitching back and forth. Dane figured that Berto had never pulled a gun while looking a guy in the eye, so he had no clue how to do it.
The mood kept shifting but things weren't quite totally tense yet. Dane could do a few things here. Go for the throat, work the inner thigh, even knee Berto in the crotch if it came down to that. Dane's father had taught him how to disarm a perp, toss him down, and twist him up. Maybe that was the way to go. He thought it was about time to try a few moves, but the weight of the ring in his pocket felt heavier than before, his promise to JoJo so loud in his mind. That wearisome indifference was back and dulling him. He took a few seconds to sigh, scratch his head, and let loose with an “Uyh.”