City on Fire (Danny Ryan, #1)(18)

“I swear, if he dies . . .” Pat says.

“Don’t think like that,” Danny says. They go through the usual bullshit—he’s a fighter, he’s young, he’s strong.

Terri gets there with her parents. John Murphy has seen a lot in his life, but he hasn’t seen a son die. “What the hell happened?” he asks Pat, like it’s his fault, like he should have been looking after his brother and didn’t.

Pat tells him.

“You shouldn’t let him drink,” Pat’s mother says to him. “You know that.”

The waiting room is crowded—the Murphys, Danny and Terri, Jimmy and Angie, Pat and Sheila, Cassie. It’s Sheila does most of the talking with the doctors, comes back with the reports that there’s nothing to report. Except that it’s touch-and-go.

Down at the coffee machine, Cassie says to Danny, “Don’t go all Irish on this. If you go after the Morettis, there’ll be a war, and then someone will get killed.”

Danny don’t say anything.

First things first. They have to see what happens—but if Liam dies, there’s going to be no restraining Pat.

He’ll drop the gloves.



Pasco Ferri knows that, too.

Peter Moretti is smart enough to go over first thing in the morning and tell him what happened, because the old man doesn’t like surprises and Peter doesn’t want him to get the story from the Murphys first.

Pasco ain’t happy.

Takes in the story, thinks about it for a long minute, then looks over his coffee cup and says, “Now you come for permission? No—you come for permission before you do something. If you had, I wouldn’t have given it.”

Paulie starts to say, “What Liam Murphy did—”

“You wanted to be a man,” Pasco says, “you should have gone after him one-on-one with your fists, not with three other guys and a bat. Now you just look weak.”

“Weak? I bashed his fucking head in.”

“One of my guests!” Pasco yells. “At my party! In front of my house! I should put you in the bed next to him!”

Peter says, “You’re right, Pasco. Of course. We should have waited.”

“Now we have to make this right,” Pasco says.

“Make it right how?” Peter asks.

“You’re going to pay half the medical bills.”

“Bullshit!” Paulie yells.

“Do you want to repeat that, young Paulie?” Pasco leans slightly over the table and looks at him.

Paulie drops his eyes. He knows the next word out of his mouth could put him in a landfill.

Pasco is furious. Everything we spent years putting together, keeping together, is going to fall apart over a piece of ass?! If this horny Irish fuck taps out, I’ll have to give John something, maybe even Paulie Moretti, or go to war with him. And if I do that, I might lose a whole wing of the family, hard to know how Paulie’s old man will react from inside the ACI. Hard to know which way the Antonuccis and Palumbos of the world would go. I don’t know, maybe John would settle for one of them. If I go to war against John, I’ll win. But at what cost, in blood and money?

Fuck these hotheads.

“Be grateful it’s half,” Pasco says. “And then you go to church, light a candle, and pray this kid don’t die.”



They put Liam in an ambulance and haul him up to Rhode Island Hospital in Providence because South County can’t do the surgery needed to relieve the pressure on his brain. He’s still unconscious and the doctors won’t say if he’s going to make it or not.

Liam’s ex-girlfriend Karen comes out into the waiting room and hugs Cassie. “I’m sorry . . . I can’t work on him. I’m too close.”

“I understand,” Cassie says.

“They have good people in there, though,” Karen says. “The best. I’ll keep you informed. I promise.”

She looks shook, sad, Danny thinks. Christ, she still loves him.

“Thank you.” The wives close rank. Sheila, Terri, and Angie look after Catherine Murphy, go for coffees, bring back trays of food, make the phone calls that need to be made.

Jimmy Mac takes Danny aside. “I say we hit them now.”

Danny says, “We have to wait. If Liam makes it, we’re looking at one scenario; if he doesn’t, we’re looking at another.”

“We at least owe them a beating,” Jimmy says.

“Let’s wait to see what we owe them.”

He stops talking because two men walk in and Danny lamps them as cops—detectives—right away. They walk up to Danny and one says, “Detective Carey, South Kingstown Police. Are you Daniel Ryan?”

“Yeah.”

“You found the victim?”

“He came to my door.”

“Did he tell you who did this to him?” Carey asks.

“No,” Danny says. “He passed out. He’s been unconscious since.”

“Do you have any idea who might have done this to him?”

“No,” Danny says.

“You all come down from Providence, right?” Carey asks. “Rent places in Goshen?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re friends with Pasco Ferri.”