Headstone City Read Online Free Page B

Stylish clothes, expensive leather shoes. He was pushing sixty but looked ten years younger. The extra weight hit him mostly in the face, filling out his cheeks and making him look jolly and generous.
    Phil drove badly. Way too fast, riding bumpers all around town. He circled Wisewood and sped under the highway. He barely slowed for the stop signs and always gunned it during yellow lights.
    Years ago he'd had the moves to back up his breakneck driving, but with age the man's reflexes had slowed considerably. Dane remembered Phil and his wife Mabel taking Dane and his parents out on long drives across Jersey and Pennsylvania, to the Poconos. Upstate to Albany to see the Capitol Building. Mom would be in the backseat petrified as Phil gunned it across bridges, swinging through lazy small-town traffic and nearly clipping cattle that had wandered onto the road. Mabel would scrunch down and pour herself a gin and tonic from the Thermos she always brought along. Dad occasionally laughing, watching, always with too much on his mind. Dane would sit on his mother's lap and giggle like crazy, shouting, “Go faster, Uncle Philly! Go faster!”
    He could remember, very clearly, but without being able to feel it anymore, just how much he used to love Phil Guerra.
    “Who picked you up?”
    “Nobody,” Dane said. “I took the bus.”
    “That's terrible. That's just awful. I'm sorry about that, Johnny. If I'd known you were gonna do that, I would've come by. It must be awfully hard walking back into the world and not seeing a friendly face the minute you step outside.”
    Actually, it was a lot tougher never seeing a friendly face on the inside, but Dane didn't want to cloud the issue. “It's all right. The ride was fine. Two other guys I knew from the joint were being released the same time, and they had their whole families on board. It was like a tour bus. Wives and mothers, their sisters, kids. One guy, he's thirty-seven and has three grandchildren.”
    “Gotta be a spic then.”
    Dane took out a cigarette while Phil eyed him, trying to hide his anxiety. The thought of ashes falling onto the fabric, even if it wasn't original, put a crazed gleam in his eye.
    “Don't light that.”
    “I won't.”
    “So was he a spic or a nigger?”
    Sometimes you had to let the old-school bigotry go by, and sometimes you didn't. Dane said, “His name's D'Abruzzi. Stefano D'Abruzzi. His kids brought a laptop with them, playing DVDs on it. I watched the first half of one of the Harry Potter movies. Pretty good for a kid's flick. Anyway, Stefano's father's got a restaurant on the Upper West Side.”
    “Oh yeah? Let me think.
D'Abruzzi's,
that's right. I ate there a few times. They had to order their
tiramisu
and
torrone
from the Jewish bakery down the block. What proud Sicilian is gonna do that, I ask?”
    “The grandfather was from Naples.”
    “That explains it then.”
    Phil had already pulled Dane's trigger and made a harsh association, so now he had to ride his hate out. It was usually like this when you talked to the old-world Italians in the neighborhood. The old cops, the old-school mob guys. You couldn't get away from it. Their attitude was ingrained. No way to ingratiate or back down, you just had to shoulder past. Dane nodded passively, like he did whenever the bulls started to pull this sort of crap. Trying to start a race war because they were bored.
    Phil's brow unfurrowed. He knew he was getting off track and didn't have a lot of time to make whatever play he was going for. “Hey, don't light that.”
    “I won't.”
    “You see Grandma Lucia yet?”
    “No.”
    “She's gonna be worried. You should've gone straight there to say hello.”
    “I talked to her before I left the prison. She wants me to get her some
cannoli
and
biscotti.
”
    “Go to
La Famiglia.
”
    “I will.”
    “They still know how to bake. Their
amaretti
are the best.”
    Were they really talking about cookies?
    But then Phil Guerra, patting the side of his