Read Online Headstone City by Tom Piccirilli - Free Book Online Page B

the warden's mansion again. He checked the rearview and nodded to Howards. “Thanks for your help.”
    “Am I going to remember any of this? On a conscious level?”
    “No, you'll pass most of it off as a dream.”
    “I highly doubt that.”
    “We'll see.”
    The warden began to make his way back up the walkway, outside of the car without opening the door, gait unnatural and his ass cheeks clenched. Scared that his neighbors might be watching.
    Dane let out a chuckle and Howards's shoulders tensed. Like he might turn around and say something else, but he vanished before hitting the pool of light surrounding front door.
    Mostly a wasted trip, but he had nothing better to do. Dane started to pull away from the curb when a blur of motion caught his eye.
    Coming straight for him, running across the lawn, was Aaron Fielding, the dead grocer.
    The old man appeared as despondent as when he'd shown up in Dane's cell. Holding his arms out and waving them, his mouth moving but no sound coming out.
    “Ah, shit.”
    Like Dane didn't have enough troubles already. Now he had to get into the middle of this, whatever it was.
    Fielding had almost reached him when the guy started to dissipate, becoming dim and ashen, evaporating step by step until, only a few feet away, he dissolved into the fog.
    “Okay,” Dane said. “I get it. There's something important you want help with. I'm sorry I didn't listen before. Come back and tell me.”
    Dane waited there another five minutes, hoping Angie or Fielding would return. Or anybody else who wanted to come and talk with him. But no one did.
    All this, and some prick named Cogan skirting around in the shadows too.

 
    EIGHT
     
    S taring down at his grandmother's list, written in her crimped script, Dane walked into the La Famiglia Bakery and asked the girl behind the counter for ten anisette-almond
biscotti,
a half pound of
pignoli
cookies, three
sfogliatelle,
and six
cannoli.
The girl let out a small chirp of anguish, turned pale as pork belly, and stared at him, her bottom lip trembling so badly it looked like it might flap away.
    He didn't want to do it, but he did it anyway. He spun and checked out the scene behind him. It was bad. He rubbed at his forehead, and went, “Uyh.”
    A three-man crew had made a move against JoJo Tormino. Two were dead, and the third held his quivering hands over his shredded belly, spurting blood and other colorful fluids between his fingers. The hitter whimpered, “Jesus Christ, get me to a doctor . . . I'll pay you anything, give you whatever you want.
Please.
”
    Dane turned away. JoJo had troubles of his own. He'd been shot four times: the left elbow, the left thigh, a graze along his jaw, and the one that really counted taking him high in his upper chest. Small caliber, maybe .22s, so the gunfire didn't bother anybody out on the street. Anything bigger than that and he'd already be dead.
    Still, JoJo was dying fast although he appeared to be calm, sitting at a little table with a folded newspaper in front of him, holding tightly to an empty cup of coffee with one hand, his .32 in the other.
    “I know you?” JoJo asked.
    Dane nodded. “I'm from the neighborhood. My father was a cop. Sergeant Johnny Danetello.”
    “Lucia's grandson.”
    That stopped him. You didn't expect your grandma's first name to fall out of the mouth of a dying mobster. “You know my family? My grandmother?”
    “You're the one who had all the troubles over Angelina.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Johnny. Used to pal with Vinny Monticelli when you were teenagers, right? You're the soldier boy, uh?” Blood seeped around the edges of JoJo's mouth. “Been in the army?”
    Dane was starting to get interested. “That's right.”
    “And in the joint.”
    “I just got out.”
    “Sit with me for a while.”
    In twenty-five years, Dane might've said five words in passing to JoJo, who was a low-level lieutenant in the Ventimiglia family. They looked into each other's eyes and it seemed to