City on Fire (Danny Ryan, #1)(49)

“And you do what for me?”

“Things go south,” Jardine says, “the Bureau steps up, goes to bat for you. In court, in judge’s chambers, in the DA’s office. We take care of our own. If we were to hear about a threat to you, we’d give you the word, you’re not there when the event is supposed to go off.”

That’s what you really want, Danny thinks. You want a snitch in play on the streets. You made the program offer to keep my mother’s fuckbuddies happy, but you’d really rather have me out there as long as I’m useful. Soon as I’m not, fuck me. The FBI uses snitches like Kleenex. Jerks off on them, tosses them away. If a snitch gets whacked, it’s like Oops, next.

“Don’t answer now,” Jardine says. “Think about it.”

“Think about go fucking yourself.”

“That’s not the answer to your problems, Danny.”

The fuck you know, Danny thinks, about my problems?

Madeleine’s waiting for him in the lobby. “You have a family to think about.”

“You should talk.”

“I’m here now.”

“Yeah, now.” Twenty-seven years too late. “Where will you be tomorrow?”

“That isn’t the question, Danny,” she says. “The question is where will you be tomorrow? Where will Terri be? Where will your child be?”

“They’ll be with me.”

She tries a different tack. “You could have a life somewhere.”

“I have a life here.”

“What life?” she asks. “You’re a shift boss on the docks and a collector for the Murphys, and you would be a murderer except that you screwed it up. If we’re being honest here, that’s what you are.”

“At least I’m not a whore,” Danny says. He sees the hurt in her eyes, sees that he hit his target, but can’t help adding, “If we’re being, you know, honest here.”

“I’ve done the best I could with the cards I was dealt,” Madeleine says.

It sounds practiced to him, like a line she’s told herself a thousand times, waking up beside men she didn’t love. And I could say the same thing, Danny thinks. I’ve done the best I could with the cards you handed me.

“So this is what you want?” she asks incredulously. “You want to stay in Dogtown?”

“It’s where you left me.”

Where you left me.

“If you want me to go away, I’ll go away.” She walks past him to the door, then turns around. “But don’t hurt your family because you hate me.”



He’s back at Residence Inn, half-asleep a couple of hours later when he hears Terri come in, set some bags on the counter, and walk into the bedroom.

“How was rehab?” she asked.

“Good. I walked.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Danny says. “Your husband’s a two-year-old.”

She looks down at him and says, “I don’t think a two-year-old has that.”

“I must have been dreaming.”

“It better have been about me,” she says, unzipping his fly.

“Oh yeah, it was.”

“Yeah?” she asks. “Was I doing this to you?”

“Jesus, Terri.”

“Or this?”

Her mouth is warm and wet, her tongue flicks, he knows he ain’t gonna last long. Sensing this, she stops and starts to straddle him.

“Can you do this?” he asks. “I don’t want to hurt you or the baby.”

“It would feel good,” she says. “But will it hurt you?”

“You’re not that heavy.”

“Are you kidding? I’m a whale.”

“I don’t know if I can—”

“I’ll do the work.”

Terri moves on him with surprising grace, rocks back and forth, closes her eyes and takes her pleasure. It’s been a long time; he struggles to hold back, but when he hears her come, feels her grip him, he lets go.

She rolls off him carefully, lies on her back and falls asleep.

Danny don’t. Usually he does but he has too much on his mind—a potential deal with Sal—or maybe Chris—and an end to the war. Then there’s Jardine’s offer—or offers, plural. Become a rat, go into the program, or become a snitch, an informant.

He listens to Terri breathe and for the first time really considers it.

Maybe I do owe that to her, to the baby in her belly.

A fresh start somewhere, a legit job.

She’d be torn, because it would mean turning on her family, but on the other hand she’d be relieved to be safe.

But could I do it?

I could flip on John, but on Pat?

He chews on it, and somehow it all gets mixed in with his mother’s abandonment of him and his dad; it becomes all about Dogtown and loyalty and all that shit and it just goes sideways, like a boat drifting into the rocks.





Twenty-Three


Peter Moretti has to eat serious rations of shit.

He knows he’s starting to lose the war and has to make moves to turn things around.

Painful, humiliating moves.

First he had to give Solly Weiss his stones back, and the old prick was so sanctimonious about it Peter would have liked to shoot him in the face. But he had to go, hat in hand, apologize, and hand over the stones. Not before he had to take that necklace off his gumar’s neck, which didn’t exactly make her horny for him.