Headstone City by Tom Piccirilli Read Free Book Online Page B

Headstone City. It seemed to be the only way he could move through the neighborhood, this direction, every time.
    Staring up at brownstones carved with the faces of the seven deadly sins. Before he'd joined the army he used to see himself in lust. Afterward, more like envy.
    Now it was the hang of sloth's relaxed face that reminded him of his own features, the nearly grinning mouth, the semidazed eyes.
    He had to do something about that too. His list was getting longer. He had to get moving.
    It felt right being back behind a wheel, the thrum of the engine working through his chest. A union of precision between reflex and skill and tuned machinery. As always, he thought about taking it up onto the highway. Imagining the open miles of parkways leading to the Verrazano Bridge, Staten Island, and from there to Jersey and the rest of the world.
    But if he got rolling he might never stop. The urge to run was powerful but futile, and it was always there.
    Coming around the far edge of Wisewood, he turned the corner, passed the gates, and parked in front of his grandmother's house.
    Soon, he hoped, he'd be able to visit his mother and father again. At least on foot. But it wouldn't be for a while yet, and he'd probably never be able to drive it. He was a neurotic bastard, just like Pepe had said. The pattern was too powerful, always drawing him the same way through the neighborhood. No matter how many times he tried it, he always passed up their graves, then had to lie about it later to whoever might ask.
    The heady aroma of fresh-cooked pasta swept over him on the front stoop, and he walked in without knocking. He was home, and with the place came another embedded pattern he would never emerge from.
    “That you?” Grandma Lucia yelled from the kitchen.
    “It's me.”
    Like if it wasn't him somebody else could just say, It's me, and that would be all right too.
    She plodded out into the living room, carrying seventy-eight years of brass and reliability. Thick and stoop-shouldered, but with large, powerful arms that had spent sixteen-hour days toiling in post-WWII sweatshops down in lower Manhattan, scrubbing factory floors. She'd buried her father, her husband, and her son—all police officers who'd died in the line of duty before they hit thirty—and she just kept struggling forward year after year despite the assaults of the world.
    Her presence drew up against him as inflexible as a natural force of the earth, like a thunderstorm. She'd dyed her hair pink and he couldn't stop looking at it. Holy Christ.
    “Where the hell's the
cannoli
!” she shouted.
    Eyes wide, feeling that tickle of anxiety he always got when Grandma Lucia used that voice. It was about the only thing that could really get to him anymore. “I forgot.”
    “You get so many calls in prison you can't remember me talking to you?”
    Mother Mary, that hair, it was searing his retina. “It's been a busy day.”
    “Fine, they were for you anyway.” She pulled the drapes back and stared at the Buick. “That an '87?”
    “Yeah.”
    “It's garbage. You got it from Morales, didn't you.”
    “Yeah.”
    “What'd you pay?”
    “It's kind of a loaner, but he wanted a grand for it.” Saying it with a quiver of shame, knowing Pepe was his only friend, but the guy had still tried to rob him. “I'm working at Olympic again.”
    “You got ripped off. He probably gave you the shit Long Island run too. Didn't you learn anything in the slam?”
    He thought about it. “No.”
    “Come sit down in the dining room, I made ravioli.”
    There wouldn't be any small talk. There never had been in the Danetello household. You said your piece, told your story, made your point, then shut the hell up. The silence tended to throw visitors off, especially around the holidays. They'd come in and nobody would be talking, and they'd think the family had been fighting.
    Instead, there'd been a precision of conversation. Clipped and sharp, but usually funny. Brutal in the way it