How would he have taken to retirement? Would he have phoned Dane in the joint? Could a cop like that come and see his own son? The myth of his old man would always be too great for Dane to comprehend fully. That wreck of a spectre sitting in the center of the bed, his pulse leaking, those eyes unfamiliar.
“I knew you never should've come back to the neighborhood,” Phil said. “I still have that money waiting for you, if you want it.”
“No thanks.”
“I told you and I told you that it wasn't the safest place for you!”
“What can I say?”
Dane didn't feel the need to bring up the fact that it was obviously safer for him than it had been for Berto Monti or Joey Fresco or JoJo Tormino.
“Why'd you do it?” Phil asked. “Snuff Roberto Monticelli?”
There wasn't much point in denying culpability anymore. “He wanted it that way.”
“They won't rest now. That crew.”
“They're all slow, lazy, and stupid.”
“They have money and numbers.”
“That's not enough,” Dane told him. It was obvious, but hardly anybody saw it. He turned, wondering if Phil might make a move, try to take Dane down himself and get in good with the boss. But the 9mm didn't come up into sight again.
Uncle Philly, sitting there, was just an old man, with his hair slipping down farther over his left ear. None of the brass or fire anymore, not even the usual, natural belligerence. The guy's shoulders so slack it looked like he might slump over and go to sleep with his head resting on Dane's arm.
They parked in the same spot where Dad's crusier had been found, the man inside, his temple leaking endless dreams. Five police cars were out in front of Grandma Lucia's house down the block, but they hadn't barricaded the street and no cops approached the Caddy. What shitty police work.
“Why did you kill my father?” Dane asked.
Phil's lackluster expression seemed more beaten down than anything, like this was only another wearying subject. “What the hell is this now?”
“I want to know.”
“Johnny-”
“Was it because he found out you were in the Montis' pocket? Is that why you did it?”
“Found out?” A dismal, steady titter almost worked up into a chuckle. “He always knew that. So what? You think your dad was clean? Hey, he didn't take as much as most guys, but he took his share. We all did.”
“Like you said, you ought to get something out of twenty-five years besides a gold watch.”
“Yeah. But… Johnny, you been thinking I killed your old man? Since when?”
“What do you think?”
“Since it happened? That been on your mind all this time? Ah, Christ, kid, what put this pazzo idea in your head?”
So easy to just grab the pistol, put it to Uncle Philly's temple, and pull the trigger. Put Dad's soul to rest and keep him off the bed. A son has obligations he can never neglect, no matter the cost. Any resolution was better than none. Dane's chest started to hitch, his hands tight on the steering wheel like a second-rate driver.
You couldn't get away with saying this was an accident. That this was somehow self-defense.
Here, you're going to mess up this exquisite '59 Caddy with viscera and fluids.
You're about to willingly become the thing you hate most.
“You poor twisted kid,” Phil said, and Dane's scars began to burn.
The flickering image of Vinny appeared all around the Cadillac, wearing a black Armani suit and an open leather overcoat. In several spots at once-holding a cigarette, hands in his pockets, clutching a gun. It was just beginning to rain, but Vinny was already drenched like he'd been in the storm for hours. Dissolving and solidifying, finally, into one figure, he stood there outside of the passenger door, grasping a.38.
Dane reached into his jacket pocket for his own gun and it wasn't there anymore.
Vinny had it. In some other track he'd gotten into the car, wrestled with Dane, and managed to grab hold of the pistol.
Now he was out there, pointing it into the Caddy. Grinning with those dentures. The fake eye with emerald flecks watching. Another boy with a sick brain.
TWENTY-EIGHT
You wait so long for the moment to come, imagining what it'll be like and how you'll feel about it, and when it finally arrives you feel nothing.
Staring at the man who, out of everybody in the world, still knew you the best.
Teeth bearing down on the tip of his tongue, Dane let out a soft, loose growl.
Vinny fucked around for another minute, aiming the barrel first at Dane's face, then at Phil's, then back again. Letting out a soft hiss of empty laughter every so often, like it was a game he'd played so often it had driven him crazy with boredom.
With an easy glide, Phil's right hand started to work down into his lap, reaching for the 9mm.
“Don't,” Dane told him.
The water dripping down his face, funneling through the dent across his brow, Vinny let the wind flap his overcoat open behind him, trailing in the breeze whistling through the cemetery gates. He motioned for Phil to roll down the window, then looked inside and told Dane, “He killed your old man.”
“I'm not so sure anymore.”
“It's true. If you want, I'll help you bury him. We could drive down to the Jersey Shore. Or we could do it right here, inside. No one will ever find him.”
Phil started to protest several times, but he fudged his words. He wasn't so much scared as he was doing his best to play the situation right, but he just didn't know how. “Look-look, Vincenzo, this, this here, it's-look… I'm… I'm not-”
“Tell him that you killed his father, Phil.”
“No.”
“Do it. Make it right after all these years.”
“I didn't shoot my partner,” Phil said flatly, staring straight ahead through the windshield, so if Vinny did pull the trigger, he'd have to shoot Phil in the temple. Dane looked over and saw that he was telling the truth. Phil Guerra hadn't killed Sgt. John Danetello.
“Let him go,” Dane said.
“You certain about that?” Vinny cut loose with another hollow giggle, only a dim echo of real emotion.
“Yeah.” Dane turned to Phil and said, “I'm gonna keep the Caddy for a little while longer, Uncle Philly. You'll get it back soon though, I promise. Now take a walk.”
Phil climbed out. With more emotion than Dane thought possible, the man said, “You two have had this coming for a while. Good luck on settling it.”
This was the kind of thing that Cogan enjoyed about Brooklyn. Only here could you point a gun at somebody and nearly bury him in somebody else's plot, only to have him wishing you well two minutes later.
“Shut up, you dirty rat bastard prick,” Vinny snarled as Phil backed down the street. The wind took his toupee and hurled it into the street. Vinny laughed and cocked his chin at Dane, still not climbing in. “He really did put one in your dad's head, you know.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. If he hadn't, he'd go run over to those cops in front of your house and call them down here. But look what he's doing.” Vinny craned his neck and let out a merciless laugh. “He's ducking and pretending not to see them.”
“Maybe he just wants us to finish it without anybody else getting between us.”
“There's always somebody in the middle.”
Even now. There was someone else there, in the backseat. Dane couldn't stop sweating, his hair almost as wet as Vinny's. He hoped it wasn't his father, appearing just to tell him what a foul-up Dane was, letting a killer go free.
He checked the rearview. It took a while but he eventually recognized her from the night of the accident. It was the girl Vinny had laid down in the Jersey dunes, who'd been pissed that he'd offered her cash afterward. The one who'd called the cops.
She said, “Kill him. He murdered me. After he got out of the hospital, he came back and found me and stuck a knife in my back. Eleven times. He took his time. He dumped me behind the same dune where he fucked me. Kill him.”