City on Fire (Danny Ryan, #1)(26)

It’s old, built in 1878—the central section is gray stone with a tin cupola, the newer side buildings are red brick, a high fence topped with coils of barbed wire surrounds the complex.

When Danny was in elementary school, they used to take the kids on field trips to the ACI to scare the shit out of them, but it usually backfired because a lot of the kids in Danny’s school used the occasion to visit relatives.

Now the Moretti brothers sit across a table from their father in the visiting room at the ACI. Jacky Moretti’s hair is still thick but it’s gone white in the joint. He’s still a strong man, though, neck like a bull’s, big sloping shoulders. No one is going to mess with him in here, even if he wasn’t connected.

Most people in there could tell you Jacky Moretti stories.

How he was all of nineteen when he first got wet, on a two-bit booster who didn’t want to pay his street tax. How he did his first stretch on a grand theft auto and didn’t give up no one—not his partners, not the chop shop, not nobody. How he got made by taking out two guys from New Haven who thought eastern Connecticut should belong to them and not Pasco Ferri.

Or how about the degenerate gambler who thought Jacky was an asshole he didn’t have to pay, and Jacky ripped him out of the lobby of the jai alai fronton in Newport, took him out into the parking lot, opened his car door, and asked him which hand he used to take out his wallet.

“What?” the terrified guy asked.

“When you go to buy a jai alai ticket, which hand do you use to take out your wallet?”

“My right.”

Jacky made him stick his right hand into the car door and then kicked it shut. Then, with the guy’s hand still in the door, he drove the car around the parking lot.

After that, Jacky was an up-and-comer, a meat-eater, an earner who got his own crew, put more money on the street, did bank jobs and truck hijackings.

But mostly they tell the story about Jacky and Rocky Ferraro.

Pasco had put out a ban on selling or using heroin because it brought down so much heat from the feds. Rocky Ferraro, one of Jacky’s crew, ignored it on both counts, first selling to the moolies in South Providence and then starting to use his own product.

It was a problem, and Jacky said he’d take care of it.

He and one of his guys picked Rocky up one night to go to a Reds hockey game, except they never made it there. Jacky pulled over, then pulled his gun, stuck it in Rocky’s mouth, and pulled the trigger several times.

What made the story extraordinary was that Rocky was Jacky’s half brother.

Which made the next Thanksgiving dinner, well, awkward.

And also apparently really offended both the judge and the jury when—six years later—Jacky’s guy flipped and put him in the jackpot for the murder.

“He embarrassed the family,” Jacky said at his sentencing hearing.

“So you killed your own brother,” the judge said.

“Half brother,” Jacky said. “What, maybe I should have only half killed him?”

The judge maxed him out.

Even then Jacky had a chance to save himself. The feds offered him the complete package—immunity, the program, the whole nine yards—to go rat on Pasco Ferri, but Jacky told them they could line up and suck his dick. So now a series of punks perform that service for him as he resides in the North Wing of the old stone house, plays cards, and cooks pasta for the guys on Sundays.

Now the guard stands far off and keeps his back turned. Ain’t supposed to, but there’s no CO in Rhode Island dumb enough to crowd the Morettis on visiting day. The guards have to live in the state, they have brothers and cousins out there, and a very nice contribution gets made every year into the widows and orphans fund.

Jacky sucks on his cigarette. He’s got emphysema, but he knows he ain’t ever coming out of this place anyway, so what the fuck. He looks at Paulie. “You ain’t the only guy ever got dumped. Sack up, get a new girl, move on.”

“They’re rubbing it in our faces,” Peter says. “It’s deliberate disrespect.”

“What does Pasco say?” Jacky asks.

“Fuck Pasco,” Paulie says.

“You’ll have a hard time repeating that with dirt in your mouth,” says Jacky. There are things you don’t say. There are things you don’t even think.

They sit quiet for a few seconds.

“It should be you,” Peter says. “On top.”

Jacky smiles. “I’m in here, Pasco is out there, that’s the way it breaks sometimes. What, you want me to talk to him?”

“Yes,” Paulie says.

“No,” Jacky answers. “He’s the boss, he’s made his ruling, that’s it.”

“He wants us to sit down with the Irish,” Paulie says.

“Then sit down,” Jacky says. “You’re on the goal line, don’t cough the ball up. Pasco retires to Florida, then you do what you want. String the Murphys up by their skinny Irish dicks; Pasco’s more concerned about his pinochle hand, bocce ball, whatever. But you go against him now, he has you clipped, and I give my blessing.”

“On your own sons,” Peter says, apparently forgetting his father’s history.

“You have love for your family,” Jacky says, “and you have love for this thing. They’re two different loves. But, yes, your love for this thing comes first.”