City on Fire (Danny Ryan, #1)(32)

Bobby Bangs is behind the bar, making fresh pots of coffee. Jimmy Mac is already there, watching the door. He takes Danny by the elbow and says, “They want you in back.”

“Yeah?”

“What they said.”

Danny opens the door to the back room. They’re gathered at the usual booth—John, Pat, and Bernie.

He don’t see Liam.

“Thanks for coming, Danny,” Pat says. He walks over, puts his arm around Danny and walks him to the booth.

Now, Danny thinks, I get a seat at the table.

Now.

John nods to him. A gesture of respect, acknowledgment. Danny thinks he looks suddenly old, and maybe he is, because it’s clearly Pat who’s running the meeting.

“You want something to fortify that cup?” Pat asks Danny.

“No, I’m okay.”

“All right,” Pat says. “Here it is and it’s not good . . .”

Brian Young, Howie Moran, Kenny Meagher, all dead. Young and Moran shot from long range—single bullets to the head or heart. Meagher gunned down at close range coming out of an after-hours club.

No wonder John looks like an old man now.

Danny ain’t feeling so young himself. Brian and Kenny—both friends, guys he went to school with or knew from the neighborhood. Parties, pickup hockey games, weddings.

Now it will be wakes and funerals.

“They must have been planning this for a long time,” Pat is saying. “They knew habits, cars . . .”

Pat says, “It was Sal Antonucci.”

“For the close stuff, maybe,” Danny says. “The others? Long range? That ain’t anyone on Sal’s crew, even Peter and Paul’s. They brought someone in.”

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Pat asks.

“Steve Giordo?”

Steve “the Sniper” Giordo supposedly got his nickname because he’d been a marksman in the army, but Danny thinks it was more from the fact that a sniper rifle is his weapon of choice.

Giordo is out of Hartford and takes jobs for both Boston and New York. Bad news on a couple of fronts—Giordo is very good, and Boston and New York would have to have given their nods for him to do a job in Providence.

It’s a grim situation—Boston and New York backing the Morettis, Sal Antonucci and Steve Giordo out in front, and three of the guys who might have matched up against them are already dead.

It was well planned, Danny thinks.

So was Peter’s move to try to take the Ryan faction out of the lineup. Even while he was talking to me, his soldiers were out killing people. Planned, timed, and coordinated—nothing he could have done in the space of time since the “peace” meeting. The Morettis were going to move anyway, use the peace to lull us to sleep, and then hit us.

Liam just jumped first.

And gave them the excuse.

Now Peter gets what he always wanted and he gets to be the aggrieved party, the injured innocent.

“Okay,” Pat says. “We’re down but we’re not out. If we can get to Sal and Giordo, we’re still in this thing.”

Like it’s a hockey game, Danny thinks.

Bernie Hughes speaks up. Blows on his cup of tea and says, “Sal is one thing, sooner or later he’ll pop his head up and we can take it off. Giordo’s another. The man never surfaces except to kill, and that, briefly. He’s a world-class professional and we don’t have anyone to match him.”

“How about Ned Egan?” John asks Danny. “Would your dad give us the loan of him?”

“Ned likes close-in work,” Danny says. “Ned is your man for walking up to someone and popping him in the chest, but he’s no sniper.”

They all know he’s right.

“I’ll do it,” Pat says.

Danny sees John flinch.

“You’re out of your weight class,” Bernie says quickly.

Which Danny knows is code for John isn’t risking one of his own kids but can’t say it himself.

Pat ain’t having it, though. Pat is a freaking hero, a stand-up guy, plus he feels guilty it’s his brother caused all this and is hiding out while other people bleed for what he did.

Pat thinks he has to redeem the family honor.

And he’ll die doing it.

So Danny says, “Let me take a crack at it.”

Awkward silence, which Pat finally breaks by throwing his arm around Danny’s shoulder and saying, “Danny, I’m grateful, believe me. But you’re no killer.”

Danny Ryan is good with his hands, but he’s never done the job on anyone, never mind a stone killer like Steve Giordo.

“I’ll get in close,” Danny says.

“You won’t get close,” Pat answers. “None of us will.”

“I know how,” Danny says.

Everyone in the room just looks at him.

“I know how,” Danny repeats.





Sixteen


It’s freezing on the beach.

Freakin’ October and already cold. Wind blowing out of the north, the whitecaps look like the beards of sad old men.

Even in his heavy peacoat, Danny shivers and stamps his feet, waiting for Peter Moretti to show up. Finally, a car pulls into the parking lot and Danny sees O’Neill and Viola get out, check to make sure that Danny is alone.