Headstone City Read Online Free PDF Page B

a gun, and pretended to shoot Dane. Jesus, if these guys were always this subtle with their stupid threats, it was a wonder that anybody ever got bumped. Dane let his smile widen, showing teeth, squinting, the way Dad used to do when he was on the edge, ready to take somebody down.
    Dane stood there and watched his father's partner drive away, knowing with real certainty for the first time that it was Uncle Philly who'd shot John Danetello Sr. in the head with his own service pistol.

 
    FOUR
     
    T he impatient death angel, circling overhead, having waited long enough for another chance.
    So here we go.
    Dane walked around the block to Chooch's and stepped inside. The place was empty, which took him back a little. There were always a couple of muscle boys around and a familiar face or two at the back tables, even this early in the day. Nobody at the bar, not even a bartender.
    The lights were on though. He cocked an ear, listening for noise in the back rooms, but there was nothing.
    Dane moved farther into Chooch's, remembering the first couple times he'd been here with Vinny when they weren't even in their teens. Big Tommy Bartone setting up a couple of shots for them, thinking it was funny to let them drink themselves sick, dragging them both out in the alley to puke. Tommy laughing his ass off while they turned a deeper green and stumbled home.
    Dane's scars began to burn, his skull abruptly pounding. He saw a slight blur of motion in the mirror and turned. Vinny was behind him, moving across the room to an empty table. He sat and stared at Dane expectantly, waiting like bait in the center of an ambush. His graceful hands folded easily in front of him. The glass eye pinning Dane, just a little off. It had a few flecks of green in it that the real one didn't have. He'd filled in the hairless section of his scarred eyebrow with an eyebrow pencil.
    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. Even staring at the man who, out of everybody in the world, still knew you the best.
    “It's good to see you,” Vinny said, and he sounded like he meant it. “Let's put this meeting off for a different day, all right?”
    “Any time in particular?”
    “Yeah, a rainy afternoon out in Wisewood. There'll be a hot-air balloon outside St. Mary's. I'll let you know when.”
    “If that's a threat, it's a little cryptic.” Dane wanted to sit across from Vinny, lean across the table, and meet his eyes up close, but there were no other chairs around. There was always something that fucked up your big dramatic moment. “You want a guy's knees to tremble, you ought to be clear about it.”
    “I'm telling you the truth, Johnny. I always do.”
    “Your truth has a way of changing,” Dane said.
    “That's not my fault. I just try to make the choices from the three I've got.”
    “Is that all you have, Vinny? Still?”
    “Yeah.”
    Dane glanced around. “Why's the bar empty?”
    “I knew you were coming, so I gave everybody the day off and told my crew to stay away.”
    “I didn't think you ever closed up Chooch's.”
    “It's only for a little while.”
    No anger showing through, no upset or anything else. Vinny looked almost bored, maybe with a touch of regret, like he knew what was coming and had heard it many times before. Dane expected him to get a little hot, squeezing more juice out of the scene, but he only shrugged. Maybe both of them were hoping the other would just pack up and move away.
    Vinny had taken something extra away from the accident too, the way Dane had done. A new kind of burden laid across their backs.
    Three years after the crash Vinny became a lieutenant for his father, Don Pietro. It wasn't the usual way of things to have a blood relative of the big boss being a capo so early on, but it's what Vinny wanted, and the Don tried to play into everybody's strengths.
    Vinny's first serious job had been to whack a guy