Headstone City Read Online Free

legal on paper now, all stock market reports and swanky coffee shop investments.
    Dane saw how it would go down.
    He'd walk into Chooch's and they'd give him the slow turn, the slick smiles, until he got up closer. The muscle would lumber to their feet, try to straight-arm him. He'd buck past and tight expressions of worry would cross their heavy faces and crinkle their bloated features. Now they'd have to move faster, reaching inside their jackets and going for their pea shooters and popguns.
    He'd known them all for most of his life. In Brooklyn, your neighbors were as much your family as your own blood. The fact that they'd had his father killed only brought them all closer together.
    By the time Dane hit the table they'd have two or three pistols in his face. Vinny would hold out his graceful hands, the thin alabaster fingers patting the air like the symphony conductor his mother always wanted him to be. He used to practice violin when they were kids, Dane riding his bike to the estate and calling up on the guardhouse phone. Vinny standing there in the high window with a look of superiority on his face. Seeing all the things that would be coming to him one day when he wouldn't have to play the fucking violin anymore.
    Back then, Dane didn't fully understand their differences, though his dad had tried to warn him.
    So he'd be at the table and Vinny would pat the air, his head angled but with that patronizing grin, as if prepared to listen to the excited musings of a child. The glass eye fixed and rigid, the fake teeth not very white so they'd look more real.
    Dane would have the chance for a beautiful uppercut if he wanted to take it. Lift Vinny right up out of his seat, snap him four feet into the air, and maybe even break his neck. In the excitement he might even be able to run, but then the whole mess would just keep following him around forever anyway.
    It would leave him only the chance to get off a wiseass insult or two. Vinny would smile, then chuckle and cock his head again, this time the other way. Like he was listening to the whispers of angels, then he'd let out his hyena laugh.
    Vinny wouldn't say much, just something innocuous and meaningless. “Welcome back, how you been?” Three or four thugs would grab Dane's arms and pull him away, rough him up a little before shoving him against a parked car. You couldn't toss people in the gutter anymore, there was too much traffic.
    This little meeting, it would hold them both until later, when one of them would have to die.
    So Dane decided to walk in, just to see if he could rush things along, get the ball rolling. For two years in the can he'd been pretty calm, but now it seemed like he just didn't want to wait anymore. It could be fun.

 
    THREE
     
    D ane had taken a step toward the front door, feeling the possibility of his own murder about to come down, when Phil Guerra, his father's old partner, drove up in a sky-blue Cadillac.
    “Oh man, beautiful.”
    Dane took a step back and nodded his approval. The car had been waxed to perfection, radiant and gleaming. He could see his reflection in what they called the Magic-Mirror acrylic lacquer finish. Looking really uptight and more than a little lost.
    It was a sin to be that uncool around a '59 Caddy.
    Sixty-two hundred Series. The dream car and pinnacle of success for every man in Headstone City around Phil's age. And their sons and grandsons.
    Outrageous rocket tail fins and jet pod taillights. The grille was a glittering partition of chrome. Dane checked and saw there was even a dummy grille across the lower rear deck. The parking and turn signal lights were paired at the outer ends of the massive front bumper. The rear bumper had huge, chrome outer pods with recessed backup lights. It got his pulse thrumming just to see the car in such cherry shape.
    Phil lowered the driver-seat window, leaned over, and asked, “You like it?”
    “Oh yeah. I know it's what you've always wanted.”
    “Me and everybody else.