City on Fire (Danny Ryan, #1)(47)

Which is very interesting, Danny thinks. Maybe Pasco’s decided it was a mistake to give Peter the top job. Maybe he’s looking around. If that’s the case, there might be a possibility of making a favorable peace.

What he doesn’t get in the papers Jimmy Mac fills him in on. Jimmy comes up about once a week, brings him all the inside news. Now he watches Danny take his first tentative steps.

He hands Danny his cane and they go down to the little cafeteria.

“Sal Antonucci and Peter are at odds,” Jimmy says, then tells him about the shit that followed the Solly Weiss job. “Sal says he’s going to sit this one out.”

Shit, Danny thinks, that’s big fucking news. Maybe they can do better than Sal just taking a knee, maybe get Sal in the game on their side. The offer would be simple—Hey, Sal, if you decide to go up against the Morettis, we’ll back you.

Danny thinks a few moves ahead: Sal’s nowhere near as smart as Peter Moretti, never mind Chris Palumbo. If Sal took the throne from the Morettis, he’d be easy to manipulate. Especially if we’re the ones who helped him take the big chair.

“Where does Chris come down on it, I wonder?” Danny muses.

“Chris will go with the winner,” Jimmy says. “But the word we’re getting is that Sal’s wicked pissed with Chris for taking Peter’s side on this thing.”

“Pissed enough to do something about it?”

“What are you thinking?”

What Danny’s thinking is that Chris is Peter’s brains. Without him, it would be just a matter of time before the Morettis do something fatally stupid.

Danny says, “Get word to Sal that if he decides to go for the corner office, we’ll back him. If he takes the crown on Monday, we make peace on Tuesday.”

“He killed three of our friends, Danny.”

“I know,” Danny says, but he also knows that at the end of the day you don’t make peace with your friends, you make peace with your enemies.

Let the dead bury the dead.

“Shouldn’t we run this past John or Pat first?” Jimmy asks.

Yeah, probably, Danny thinks. But he also thinks he wants to be the one to make a difference, maybe get taken seriously. “Let’s wait and see how it goes first, then we’ll bring them in.”

Jimmy asks, “How do we get to Sal?”

“Tony Romano,” Danny says. Him and Sal are joined at the fucking hip. If Sal is interested, great; if not, no real harm done—neither the Murphys nor Sal would lose face.

“And if Sal says no?” Jimmy asks.

Danny’s ahead of it. “We work it the other way. We make the approach to Chris. Maybe’s he’s tired of cleaning up the Morettis’ messes. Maybe he wants to be the number one guy.”

Jimmy grins.

“What?” Danny asks.

“When did you start thinking like a boss?”

“I got no ambitions,” Danny says, “except we all survive this thing.”



Sal Antonucci pulls his pants up, zips his fly and buckles his belt. Sits back down on the bed to put his shoes on.

Tony’s still naked. Just lies there on top of the bed, his body stretched out, no shame or nothing.

He’s a beautiful fucking man, Sal thinks.

“By the way,” Tony says. “Jimmy Mac came to see me.”

“‘By the way’?” Sal says. “That’s kind of big for ‘by the way.’ Why didn’t you tell me this right off?”

Tony grins. “I had other things on my mind. Bigger things.”

“What did he want?”

“You,” Tony says.

Sal smiles down at him. “I’m taken.”

“I know,” Tony says, clasping his hand and then letting go. “He wanted me to sound you out.”

“About what?”

“Hitching your cart to the Murphys.”

Sal bends down to tie his laces. “No shit? What did he say?”

“Just that Danny Ryan would be open to talking.”

Sal runs it through. Ryan speaks for the Murphys. It doesn’t take a fucking genius to figure out their move—I join in alliance against the Morettis, we put Peter and Paul at the bottom of the Narragansett Bay, I take over, and it’s back to business the way it used to be.

But holy fuck—whacking the Morettis?

You’d have to get the nod from Boston and New York.

Never mind the old man down in Florida. Christ, would Pasco give his okay? Peter really jerked his chain on the Solly Weiss thing, but Conti and Bouchard picked up the tab for that. Still . . .

“What do you think?” he asks Tony.

Tony says, “I think it’s worth checking out.”

So do I, Sal thinks. He finishes lacing his shoes and sits back up. Lot of spade work to be done, though, a lot of pipe to be laid. And even that’s dangerous—someone will have to approach Pasco, sound him out, and even just doing that could get them all killed, Pasco don’t like what he’s hearing.

But if he does, Pasco takes care of Boston and New York.

“You’re the balance of power now,” Tony says. “The Murphys are coming to you, Peter will have to come back to you, sooner or later. It’s really a matter of taking the best offer.”