Naked Moon (25 page)

A vision of what might have been, maybe, his brain dizzy from loss of blood, lack of oxygen.

As he leaned there, staring into the glass, he almost believed it was possible. They had killed the wrong woman
after all, down in Ensenada. All he had to do was pass through that glass. All he had to do was exchange his body for Dominick Greene's. Swap identities with the corpse in the tunnel.

Then he would find Marilyn…. But, no … there was no going back … even if it was not too late, and he could pry her away from David Lake …

They would follow.

There was only one way to keep her safe.

In the reflection, he saw the gash in his neck, and he poked his finger inside, feeling the cut.
I am not dead,
he told himself, though in truth, he did not have any other explanation for the way he felt just now. As if he were passing through that glass. As if he were down in that maze, pulling Greene by his arms, yanking him through the underground sewers, through the winemaker's tunnels, up toward his father's garage. The others would be coming soon, he knew that: the Federal agents and the bullyboys, the local cops and the Wus—and the only question was which of them would come first, and how many. They would not come gently, he knew that, too, and when they were done with him, there would be nothing left. They would seize it all, the family property: the house on Fresno, and his cousin's place and the business down at the wharf. They would let all the property sit empty for a while, letting the taxes run up, compounding penalties, and when there was no equity there, not a nickel for anyone to claim but the government, they'd sell it at auction to the highest bidder, with his family's junk still inside.

Dante stood in his father's house, in the basement. He had made it home. He did not have much time now.

After he was gone, all this stuff—these boxes of paper and bags of crockery and the tapestries and the unwanted furniture and his father's old clothes—would end up in the scavenger truck. The real estate agents wouldn't want it around. The new owners, someday, would drink coffee here and eat risotto and panini in commemoration of the people whom they imagined to have lived here, but the fact of the matter was, before any of that could happen, all that old stuff, with its musty smell, had to be gone first, removed from the house.

Dante reached inside the box containing the wedding ring his father had worn, given to him by his mother those many years ago. The old Italians—Pesci, Marinetti, Gino and Stella, Julia Besozi and all the rest—they all looked on in approval.
Into the tunnel.
Greene's corpse gave him the rictus smile.

Dante slid the ring on his finger.

He picked up the can of gasoline. It was a big can, and there was more gas in the big container under the bench. He dumped the gas on the boxes, on the clothes. He soaked it all good.
That's right, burn it all.
There was a furnace in the corner, with an electronic ignition, controlled by a thermostat upstairs. When you adjusted the thermostat, there was a lag of a couple minutes. Then the burner would ignite.

He took the other can and splashed gasoline all over the front room. All over the sofa and the RCA. His father's chair. Over the drapes and the counters.

He checked the pilot to the stove. Turned on the thermostat.

He climbed into the attic, a lurching, clumsy figure, hunched under the rafters, pouring the last of the gasoline. His mother's things now, the picture albums, endless photographs. Birth certificates and baptismal records, a wedding menu from the Fior d'Italia, a dance card issued by the Knights of Columbus, old 45s, Holy Communion cards and a ribbon he himself had won throwing javelin at an event sponsored by the Saints Peter and Paul Church.

He found at the last minute a list of passage, names of families who'd made the voyage, their names, the villages, compiled by the defunct newspaper,
L'Italia,
in the days before World War II. He touched the gash in his throat … too deep for him to be alive … in the moment of death, you wander the streets of your childhood … you suffer what you have lost….
I am not dead….
There was one way to keep them from following Marilyn. If he himself were forever beyond their reach, there would be no reason. They could not punish him by going after her.

Downstairs, the heater engaged.

He'd heard it engage, just like that, thousands of times.

Where had it started?

In the hold of those ships … lonely men, holding shovels …

There was a lull.

Marilyn.

A slight whooshing, as of a breeze through an open window. A bell rang somewhere. Then came the explosion, the
sound of which carried out to the Bay, or so they said later. All of North Beach in flames, the whole city. Himself at the center, in the incendiary light.

The tunnel opened ahead.

S
everal days later, when Leanora Chin got out of the hospital, the block still smoldered. The fire crew had struggled with the hydrant on Fresno, but in the end had to run the hoses in six different directions, over the hill and back around, in an effort to tap into the broken water main. Meantime the adjacent building went up, and the flames leaped to the wood-frame apartments on the corner.

The fire had spread across Grant and up Telegraph as well. Under control now, supposedly, though early morning, at dusk, the infrared cameras—in the news copters overhead—showed pockets that still burned.

The scene had a feeling of unreality. Chin had been wheeled out after the shoot-out, red lights spinning, paramedics calling ahead for blood. She'd been shot, her elbow shattered, and her body sliced by the falling glass. She had taken shards in the neck, and in the chest, and the blood ran
down her white blouse and soaked her skirt. She'd had the feeling then as if nothing were real, as if she herself were being imagined—
I do not exist
—and remembered herself as a little girl, inside one of the temples in Chinatown, a vast temple, humming with emptiness, in the middle of that emptiness, an old monk whispering, but later, she wondered if the memory were true.

We are figures in a dream. The dreamer, too. You have no control.

She stood on Fresno Street now, with her arms in a sling.

She was dressed in blue.

She wasn't healed, the wounds seeped beneath their pads, but she had wanted to be here when they pulled the body. It took a while. The house had fallen in on itself, and the forensic team had to dig through the charred rafters.

Last night, still in the hospital, she'd gotten a visit from the Feds, filling in the gaps, but the information they'd given her, the report to be filed, she knew certain aspects weren't true.

No matter, the news was full of it: examining the link between the man inside the house and the shoot-out in the alley, and the fire consuming the neighborhood.

TRAGEDY ROCKS ITALIAN NORTH BEACH,
the paper said.

The story of the private detective gone mad. His rage triggered by some family ugliness, perhaps, or the fact that his fiancée had gone off with another man. Killing his cousin, his business partner. Invading the Wu Benevolent Association. Then, cornered by the police, there'd been a
shoot-out in Chinatown. According to the news reports, two tourists had been caught in the cross fire, and a policeman slain as well.

A bizarre killing streak that had spiraled out of control, then ending when the man burned himself alive in the family home.

The truth of the matter was more illusory. Chin knew the story didn't check. The dead couple in the alley, they were not tourists—of this, she was positive—but she'd been given instructions: Say nothing. Meanwhile, the news was all over the television. A time line of the killings, maps with special insets, interviews with old-timers, the parish priest, a psychologist who specialized in understanding such rampages. And tales, too, of the fire burning while voters went to the polls.

An election-day circus. The city gone out of control.

The stories had not helped Gennae Rossi, the neighborhood girl, but the votes that might have gone to her, they did not go to Lee either.

On the front page, in the midst of it all, the incumbent stood, sleeves rolled, helping at the fire line. Everything changed, but nothing at all. He, too, Chin knew, was financed by the Wus. They spread their money to every candidate, taking no chances.

The forensics team found the bones. The fire had burned the body beyond recognition, but the dentals were intact. The body was the right size, and there was a ring, on the wedding finger, fused to the bone.

Angelo had been in touch with the Feds before the shoot-out; she knew that now. Angelo had learned that Dante was going to be there, in that old hotel, and positioned himself for the arrest. Angelo had arranged it on his own, telling her nothing. She'd found out at the last minute that Angelo was there, staking out the scene, planning the arrest. Something was wrong about it, she'd thought: how he'd waited, how there was no one stationed at the alley around back. So she'd gone herself, moving through the dream-dark street, under the yellow neon, up the steps of the adjoining hotel. Peering down into the darkened shaft. Nothing at first, just the Sterno flashing, odd shadows against the brick. A voice, her own, calling down into that darkness. Then came the exchange of fire, the exploding glass.

The Feds had sent their own forensics people, and they were moving in now, taking over the remains. Chin shouldered her way in.

“We'll do the analysis,” the man said.

“It's my case.”

“No,” the man said. “He's ours.”

The breeze stirred. Barricades had been placed at the street, but there weren't enough personnel, and the press tumbled through and gawkers as well, and up the street an anonymous old man, rummaging the embers, had started to weep. Some chimes turned in the wind, and an aria echoed from a radio, somewhere, full of static, and there was a noise, too, she thought, like water slapping at the side of a boat. It was dusk, and the sounds of barkers carried up from Broad-way.
Chin took a last look at the figure spread on the blue cloth, and was tempted to remove the ring from the man's finger. She clenched her empty hand, then headed into Chinatown. The streets were filled with ash.