Chapter Five

DANTE

The pale, ash skinned man lying on the gurney before Dante was not his father, was not Raymond Bianchi. This man had hazel eyes that were wide open, ugly feet, and a small chest. He must have been in an accident the way his body was broken, the way the bones in his feet were shattered like a China doll's. One of his ankles was twisted, and his arms were scratched badly, his fingers bloody, as though he had been clawing at something. Perhaps, the something which had inevitably lead to his death. In the greenish brown of his eyes, there was crimson, and by the expression of wide-eyed shock that they held, by the peeling back of his lips, you could tell that his death had been sudden, that it had surprised even him.

Dante did not care for the man, did not care to find out how he had died. The body that he was there to identify had a face like his, a face that he had seen crinkle with a smile a few days ago, a face that he had seen repeatedly all his life. 

He was at a passage in the morgue, awaiting the attendant who was to take him to his father, when he noticed the corpse at the edge of the corridor, laying there like a forgotten monument. 

This place, he thought, this morgue, it smelt like death and embalmment, like dirty feet and cheap air freshener, like old mould.

The attendant appeared out of an adjoining door, carrying a tab, and beckoned to him. 'This way, sir.' He said. 

He let the morgue attendant lead him down the corridor. There were no other bodies laid out in the open, and the ones that they encountered were covered up with white sheets from head to toe, head to toe, giving them the appearance of phantoms and ghouls he had seen on TV or heard about in ghost stories. It was, altogether, an eerie place.

'Are you directly related to the deceased?' The woman at the front desk had asked him when he arrived at the morgue and stated his mission.

The deceased. The deceased. The deceased. The word, it sounded very wrong to his ears. How had the night taken such a disastrous turn of events so quickly?

Dante ground his teeth together—a bad habit he had never really tried to quit—and then nodded at the woman. He said, 'I am his son.' and a pitying look flashed across the woman's face, softening her hard features. He stopped himself short of grimacing. Pity. It was, to him, always a very hateful thing.

Outside the morgue, snow had began to form snowdrifts, covering the hard ground in fluffy, immaculate white. Pristine. Puritan. Ghostly. It made sense that the news of death was accompanied by snow.

The attendant led him down a couple of corridors and into a room. It held the freezer, an enormous body preservative that worked just like a refrigerator. Sliding a hand into his pocket, the man retrieved a key. He unlocked one of the chambers and pulled out a trolley from the freezer.  'Here, he is.' The man said. He was watching Dante closely. He could feel the man's eyes boring holes into him. But again he did not care.

In the morgue's desolate parking lot, outside in the snow, there were two jeeps full of RWDs, all his father's former followers, all very irritated. It was as though he was more of a father to them than he had been to Dante. Dante resented them for it, and if they were not acting as security detail for him at the time, he would have sent them off. But they were the least of his problems, because before him on the metal trolley, lay Raymond, his father. Even though he had expected it, even though he had prepared himself for the grisly sight of his father's corpse, he was not prepared what he saw.

For a man who wielded so much power, caused so much trouble for the state, Raymond Bianchi looked simple. Especially now that he was in his birthday suit. In the harsh glare of the fluorescent, Dante could point out the holes in his chest. They were small open wounds, raw and red around their entry points. They looked almost harmless. They were six in all. Five rounds in his chest, one in the face, just above the silvery slope of his left eyebrow. 

Shoot him in the chest so he never breathes again, Dante once heard a hardened RWD tell a neophyte, then once in the head, so that fool never thinks again. 

He ground his teeth. His eyes watered painfully. They had killed his father like a common street thug, like a corner boy: in the chest and in the head.

'It is him,' he told the attendant when he finally found his voice. 'It is my father.' It hurt to speak.

The man nodded and proceeded to scribble on the board he carried in his hand. Dante continue to stare at the prone form of his father, disbelievingly. At least, they had had the good sense to close his eyes. In death, bullet holes and all, the man carried with him an aura of placidity that he had never held in life. For that, Dante was nearly thankful. But it was a difficulty thing to be grateful through a haze of melancholia. His jaw hurt from grinding his teeth; the muscles in his head hurt.

'Six others where picked at the scene,' the attendant glanced at him. 'Your dad was the seventh, uh, victim. They seemed to be associates of his. Would you mind assisting us identifying some of them?'

Dante was already shaking his head and backing away, backing out of the room and into the corridor. He had come for his father and his father alone. He would not allow himself be dragged into any of the gang's troubles. Not yet. Not ever, hopefully. Not after he found he found the one who had done this.

'I can not help you. I am sorry.' Dante apologized. He walked and walked and walked until he was at the front desk, until he was at the double doors, and until he was outside the building, standing in the snow fall, the cold breeze on his face, his breathe bloodying the air. 

He walked towards the small convoy of cars in the parking lot, got to first car in the procession and slipped into it. Andre was seated there in the driver's seat in the darkness, smoking a cigar. The man's nicotine addiction was worrisome, bordering on frightening. He treated cigarette smoke like oxygen, like a thing that he could not do without. If the inscription at the back of every pack of Marlboro's all smokers are liable to die young held any shred of truth, then Dante could bet Andre would not see his fortieth birthday, considering the pace at which he was going. 

He said, 'Put that thing out the window, Andre.' There was a long pause, and a very small moment of hesitation. Then the blonde-haired man did as he said. He wound down the window at the passengers side of the car and flicked the still smoking blunt out of the vehicle. Frigid air seeped into the car, but Andre closed the window quickly before it could saturate the space.

'How did it go?' Andre asked. There was caution in his voice, the sort of fearful caution that a man would apply while backed into a corner by a lion in the wild. 

Good, Dante thought. Let him he worried.

'I did not go on a date, Andre.' He fired back at the man. 'I just saw my father's body, man. How the hell do you think?'  

Andre glanced at the roof of the car, at the windshield, at the flakes of white falling outside. Everywhere but at Dante. 'I am sorry, Dante.' He said softly.  

Andre was the only one out of the eight men at the stash house who survived to tell the story. When he called Dante, he was bleeding from a bullet wound, and now, a clean bandage was wrapped around his bicep, making his coat bulge from underneath. Andre was one of his father's most trusted men. Granted, he was dubious and, on some certain occasions, had shown he was capable of unnerving cruelty, he was one of the best they had. Quite difficult to outwit. Which perhaps, was why and how he had managed to survive.

'Do you want me to take you to back home?' Andre asked, his hand in true ignition.

'No.' Dante said. Not yet. He did not want to return to his oversize penthouse, or to the mansion his family had once filled, had lived in. A place that was now so empty it was exhausting. Even the house staff seemed to sense it, the forlornness in the building. Every footfall was his father's,every time a chair was moved, it made the plaintive sounds that chairs used to male when his father slumped onto them at the end of a work fag. Every bird tweeter was his mother's laughter. 

No. He did not want to go back home. There was no home. There was a hotness rising inside him that defied the cold New York winter. Somebody had done this. Somebody had taken his father away from him. Raymond Bianchi may not have been the very picture of peacefulness and communal living when he drew breathe, but he never hurt any person who did not go out of their way to step on his foot. Who would do such a thing?

It is all a game, Dante, his dead father whispered in his ear. There are no regulations in this street life. No rules. Just hungry men and ambitious women. There are no rules, my boy. No rules.

He kept hearing his father in his eyes since the night he got shot in the stash house. 

Five bullets to the chest, the old man whispered, one to the head. That's how you put a man down. That is how you silence a soldier.

Dante shook his head, trying to dislodge the thoughts. They would not go. They stayed with him. Morning after morning. Night after night. Day after day. There was no escaping them. Inside of him, there was tempest, there was a small insanity. Dante glanced at the man in the drivers seat.

'Tell me how he died, Andre,' He said, deadly quiet. His voice was a wisp in the night. 

Andre glanced at him, then out of the car, at the other jeep beside theirs, waiting, idling in the snow. 'I am going to need another cigar to get through that story.' He said. 'It is a long one. We may be here for a while.'

Dante nodded his assent, and Andre reached into his coat pocket, drew his ever handy box of Marlboro's out and selected a light with careful, almost reverent fingers. He offered Dante a cigar, too. A thin, long wrap of white and untimely death. Dante shook his head. Andre shrugged, lit his and took a hit. He puffed smoke like it was the best feeling in the world, and the car was filled once again with aroma of nicotine and slowly burning fire.

He turned to Dante, with a slightly gratified look on his face. 'So,' he said. 'What is it you want to know?'

Five bullets to the chest, one to the head. There are no regulations in this street life. No rules. Just hungry men and ambitious women. There are no rules, my boy. No rules.

Vengeance is not a feeling, an emotion. It is something that is done, a kind of reappraisal justice. But at that moment, what Dante felt in his chest—a feeling as though he had a sediment of hot white iron buried just above his rib cage—he could not describe it as anything other than vengeance. And in the days to come, he still would not be able to come up with a better description. 

'Tell me everything, Andre.' he said.' Everything.'

The night was long and cold, but so was the tale. And eventually, so would his heart. But at least this time he had not forgotten his mittens.