City on Fire (Danny Ryan, #1)(13)

“Right.”

Danny takes the beer back to Terri and says, “Cassie is here.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean, should she be?” Danny asks. “With all the drinking and everything?”

“She has to learn to deal with real life sometime,” Terri says, taking the beer from him. “Besides, no one here is going to let her drink.”

Mary Ferri is teasing Liam about not having a date for the party.

“This is a first,” she’s saying. “Usually it’s some model from New York, or an actress, always the prettiest girl . . .”

“I decided to play the field tonight,” Liam says.

“It’s a small field,” Terri kicks in. Almost everyone is married now, starting in on families. The clambakes—even among the younger generation—have taken on a decidedly domestic flavor. A little boring for Liam.

“I’ll just have to do my best,” Liam says.

“You should get married,” Mary tells him. “Forget all these models and actresses. You want me to find you a nice Italian girl?”

“You’d do that to a nice Italian girl?” Terri asks.

“My sister,” Liam says. “Thanks.”

“Liam’s a sweetie,” Mary says. “He just needs the right woman.”

“He had the right woman,” Terri says, “and he blew it.”

Danny knows she’s referring to Liam’s ex-girlfriend Karen. A trauma nurse at Rhode Island Hospital, she had it all—beauty, brains, and a good heart. They all really liked her. And she really loved Liam, but he had to fuck it up by fucking around.

Liam is Kennedy handsome—curly black hair, striking brown eyes—he’s cut a sexual swath through Rhode Island, not so easy to do in a mostly Catholic state where most girls have older brothers.

“The right woman?” Liam asks. “But you’re already taken, Mary.”

The joke is that Liam didn’t kiss the Blarney Stone—it kissed him.

Kissed him? Danny thinks. It fucking blew him.

“Listen to him . . .” Mary says, pleased. She looks at Terri and suggests, “Maybe Tina Bacco.”

“Maybe,” Terri says, and glances at Danny. They both know that Liam took Tina down to Atlantic City for a weekend and boffed her eighteen ways to Sunday. At least that’s what Tina told Terri. Liam was great in bed, a few laughs, but as a husband? Forget it.

“You’re the prettiest woman here,” Liam says to Mary. “You should leave Pasco, run away with me.”

“Make yourself useful,” Mary says, “and go ask my husband if the food is ready yet.”

“I’ll go with you,” Danny says.

They walk out onto the beach, where Pat’s helping Pasco dig the clams out from the pit, and Peter and Paulie and their crew are standing there watching them.

Sal Antonucci’s there.

Danny don’t like him.

Sal has his own crew now, doing some serious work for the Morettis. One of his guys, Tony Romano, is standing with him, grinning at Danny like an ape. Sal and Tony did time together in the joint and they’re like brothers. Spent literally years passing weights back and forth and now they’re muscle-bound guidos.

Thing of it is, Sal is a stone killer.

He’s moved up with the Morettis because he does their wet work for them. Tall, heavy-muscled, broad face like a slab of marble, blue eyes cold as a January morning, Sal smiles at Danny and asks, “How’s it hanging?”

“Down to my ankles, Sally,” Danny says, because he knows Antonucci don’t like being called Sally and for some reason Danny likes to annoy him, or maybe has to show he’s not afraid of him.

Danny looks over at Romano. “Tony.”

Tony nods.

Pretty much what Tony does, because he’s dumber than a rock. What Tony’s got going for him are his friendship with Sal, his muscles, and his looks. Thick, curly black hair, sculpted face, lithe body, he could be one of those male models hawking cologne or Calvin Klein underwear or whatever in the magazines.

“I’d do him,” Cassie told Danny once, “if he’d just bang me silly and keep his mouth shut.”

Cassie talks a big game, Danny thinks, but to his knowledge she’s never been with anyone.

Danny nods back at Tony—this is what passes as conversation with Romano—and moves on to say hello to Jimmy and Angie but then he doesn’t.

Because he sees, walking up the beach . . .

. . . that woman.

The goddess who came out of the sea.





Six


She’s with Paulie Moretti.

“I’d like you to meet my girlfriend, Pam,” Paulie says.

Who knew, Danny thinks.

Who knew that Paulie could pull a girl like this? Every guinea’s dream of a white woman. And it would have to be a freakin’ Pam. Not a Sheila, a Mary, a Theresa. A Pam.

“Nice to meet you all,” Pam says.

She’s friendly but a little reserved. Who wouldn’t be, Danny thinks, meeting this group for the first time. And not at all stuck-up, like Danny thought she’d be when he saw her coming out of the water. But she has a voice like sex, low and a little gravelly—they all feel it, even the women, and it triggers a little tremor through the group.