Shallow Graves

she’ll smile on me.“
    If I’d seen the game of Guts coming, maybe I would have thought it through, would have seen through it. Instead, when Tommy Danucci suddenly leveled at my chest, barked “One,“ and pulled the trigger, I reached for the gun in front of me. When he said “Two,“ and pulled it again, the snap/ching of the hammer on an empty chamber made me level the heavy old piece on him. When “Three“ produced flash and bang from his muzzle and a thump at my lapel, I reflexively fired three times, the way I’d been taught in the Army. The chrome andiron jumped in my hand and roared in that room, far louder than the report from his weapon.
    The impact of my slugs lifted Danucci up and back, into and displacing the throne chair but not knocking it over. He drew in a huge breath, and I was to him as his lungs let it out. Behind me, feet thundered on the stairs toward the mahogany front door.
    Tommy the Temper looked up at me and fingered the little bum mark on my lapel, the blood burbling through the holes in his shirt. “Before Primo gets in here... how’s about you put a real bullet in my gun... so I don’t look like such a jerk, eh?“
    I didn’t have anything smart to say back to him. Not that he could have heard it if I did.

- 29 -

    There was no New Age music floating through the Lincoln as we rode south on Route 3.
    After he came through the mahogany door, Zuppone had kept a Beretta automatic pointed at me in Tommy Danucci’s dining room as he made six or seven telephone calls in rapid succession. We waited about five minutes after the last one before three street soldiers in varying sizes and uniforms arrived. Primo spent a full minute kneeling before the body of Tommy Danucci in the throne chair. Then he checked both of the old chromed pistols. I could see three more live rounds drop from the gun Danucci had given me, one more blank from the one he’d fired.
    Zuppone shook his head, as if to clear it, then made another telephone call, not seeming to care about, me overhearing it. Finally, Primo left a soldier named Bootsy with Danucci’s body in the dining room. One of the other two carried the rosewood case, with both pistols and the necklace, down the stairs to the car. The third soldier kept something in his coat pocket aimed at me, the only words spoken being “Give me a reason.“
    At the Lincoln, Zuppone got behind the wheel, turning with his Beretta on me as I was shoved into the back seat, passenger’s side. Then the guy with the rosewood case got in the front passenger’s side, putting the case between his shoes. I was told to lie on the floor of the backseat while my guard got into the backseat behind Primo and pressed the business end of his drawn weapon behind my left ear. I stayed there all the way to Joseph Danucci’s house.

    Zuppone left the two soldiers at the car in the driveway. He marched me in through the kitchen again, the rosewood case under one arm. Claudette Danucci was coming halfway down the hall to meet us as Primo pushed me past her and into the den.
    Joseph Danucci sat in his desk chair like a heroin addict badly into the second day off the needle. Vincent Dani stood when I came into the room. Zuppone tried to close the door behind us, but Claudette managed to wedge her way into the room.
    Her husband got up, his voice a rasp going against the grain. “Claudette, stay out of this.“
    “No.“
    “Goddammit, this is family business!“
    “And I am family.“
    Claudette sat down on the edge of one of the leather chairs, folding her hands deliberately in her lap.
    Joseph Danucci seethed, blinking in a ragged cadence. Then he seemed to remember me.
    “I get a telephone call from Primo, I don’t believe what I hear.“
    “I heard his side of it. What he said was true.“
    Danucci sent the words out one at a time, dictating to a slow scribe. “You killed my father.“
    “I did.“
    The color shot upward through his face, every vein throbbing. “And you got the gall to admit it? Before his sons?“
    “I want you to hear it. All of it.“
    “Oh, we’re gonna hear it, all right. And then we’re gonna hear you make some other kinds of noises.“
    “I want you to hear it because I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder the rest of my life.“
    “Won’t be so long you should worry about it.“
    I said, “Can Primo open the case, show you what’s in it?“
    Danucci noticed the object under Zuppone’s arm for the first time. “My