City on Fire (Danny Ryan, #1)(43)

“I don’t need you to tell me what to say to my husband.”

“Of course not,” Peter says. “I overstepped. I’ll leave you alone. I’m sure Danny needs his rest.”

Madeleine follows him out of the room. “Mr. Moretti. Do you know who I am?”

Peter’s smile edges toward a smirk. “I heard.”

“Then you’ve also heard what I’m capable of,” Madeleine says. “If you hurt my son, or even try to hurt my son, I’ll put you where your father is.”

“You were right to leave Providence,” Peter says. “You should have stayed away. And you should stay out of this.”

“Perhaps your father would be more comfortable in Pelican Bay,” Madeleine says. “Twenty-three hours a day in solitary and no pretty little Puerto Rican maricóns satisfying his baser desires. If I make one call to a certain federal judge . . .”

“You know,” Peter says, “whether a whore blows a guy for a dime bag or a million dollars, she’s still a whore.”

“But she’s a whore with a million dollars,” Madeleine says. “I happen to have a lot more. Take me on, Mr. Moretti, I’ll string your balls on a necklace and wear it around town.”



A few mornings later Danny gets into a fight with Terri when he finds out that Madeleine paid their month’s rent and bought groceries.

“What am I supposed to do, Danny?” Terri asks, in tears because he yelled at her and she was so stressed out about his shooting anyway. “You’re not working and the bills still come.”

Even though he’s run out of sick days, they’re still punching him in down on the docks. But money is tight. Regardless, the thought of his mother putting food on his table makes him furious. “You do not take her fucking money, Terri.”

Terri throws up her hands and looks at him, mouth agape, like Who the hell do you think is paying for this room? Danny doesn’t have an answer—he’s aware of his hypocrisy.

All the more so when Rosen says that the best thing for Danny is six weeks at a special rehab facility up in Massachusetts. Which costs about what it sounds like. Danny’s insurance with the union is pretty good, but it ain’t private-out-of-state-facility good, it’s local-outpatient-clinic good.

“Is there that big a difference?” Danny asks him.

“The difference is a cane,” Rosen says. “The local place gets you the next thirty years on a cane, the private place gets you the next thirty without one.”

Madeleine insists on springing for the private clinic.

“Money is not my problem in life,” she tells Danny.

“No? What is your problem in life?”

“Right now, you are. You’re my son acting like my child.”

Terri tells him pretty much the same thing.

“Think about me,” she says. “Maybe I’d rather have a husband who doesn’t need to set down his cane to pick up his baby? Maybe I’d still like to get laid every once in a while—”

“Terri—”

“They’re nurses, Danny,” she says, “they’ve heard ‘laid.’ How about I’d like to take long walks on the beach with you, maybe get on a bicycle, ride around Block Island or something? Maybe I’d like to dance with you again. You don’t let your mother do this for you—for us—I’m done with you. My hand to God, pregnant and all, I’ll leave you. You can be a bitter, lonely old man like your father.”

Danny goes up to Massachusetts.





Twenty


Peter Moretti isn’t happy.

The deal he thought he had with Danny Ryan turned out to be a double-cross, so the hit on Liam Murphy ended up as a hit on Danny, which wouldn’t have been so bad considering the circumstances except that Ryan survived it and his puttana mother won’t let Peter go at him again.

Danny’s jacked up, off the board for the foreseeable future, but so is Steve Giordo, who departed with the sentiment that he ain’t gonna walk into another ambush because the Moretti brothers can’t tell one mick from another.

He has a point, Peter thinks. Worse is that New York and Hartford are less likely to lend out any of their people anymore because they don’t want to waste an asset on some outfit that gets suckered by a cheap leg-breaker like Danny Ryan.

So now Peter really isn’t happy when he’s just trying to eat breakfast at the Central Diner and Solly Weiss walks in, plops his ancient ass down across the table and starts in before Peter can even have a look at the sports page. “Peter, my store was robbed.”

Peter don’t need the newspaper to know this. It isn’t news. Two of his guys, Gino Conti and Renny Bouchard, hit Solly’s jewelry store last night and took at least a hundred thousand in diamonds and some other pieces. “That’s too bad, Solly.”

“Haven’t I always made you a deal?” Solly asks. “That necklace for your gumar . . .”

“I didn’t rob your store, Solly.” Which, Peter thinks, is technically true.

“Peter, please,” Solly says. “Do not treat me like a child. I was in business before you knew what business was.”

Solly has a few strands of white hair that remind Peter he needs to stop at Rite Aid for dental floss. He says, “You’re insured, right? You’re going to make a profit off this thing.”