City on Fire (Danny Ryan, #1)(52)

That old saying, “If it was raining soup, the Irish would run outside with forks.”

Pretty much what happens now.

Danny would think about it in years to come. The “what if” of it. What if Tony had his own car with him. What if Danny could have persuaded Pat to sit down with Sal.

But none of that happened.

God’s way of fucking with you.



The Providence cops pick Danny up.

Put him in the back seat of their unmarked car. Viola slides in beside him and asks, “What do you know about the car bombing?”

“Nothing.”

“Same old Danny Ryan,” O’Neill says from the driver’s seat. “He never knows nothing. I suppose you don’t know nothing about those two guys gunned down in their car the other day, either. The De Salvo brothers?”

I only know they tried to kill me first, Danny thinks. He doesn’t answer.

“Tony Romano burned to death,” Viola says to Danny. He’s angry. “You fucking donkeys did that.”

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“You burn to death in the chair, too,” Viola says. “Did you know that? I’d like to put you there. I’d flip the fucking switch myself.”

“We done here?”

“For now,” Viola says.

Danny opens the door and gets out.



Pasco calls.

Danny is surprised when the phone rings and he hears the old man’s voice. “Jesus Christ, Danny, what the hell is going on up there?”

“I dunno, Pasco.”

“We can’t be having this shit,” Pasco says. “Cars blowing up? You know what kind of heat this is going to bring down? There’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

Danny knows.

Someone getting whacked is one thing—the public almost expects it. But car bombs? Where innocent people could get hurt? That’s another story—that’s Northern Irish shit and the public isn’t going to put up with it.

“I don’t want to know who did it,” Pasco says.

Everyone knows who did it, Danny thinks.

“You know how Sal is going to react to this?” Pasco asks. “He’s going to go crazy, and we can’t have that. We have to keep this thing contained.”

Yeah, how’s that gonna happen? Danny wonders.

Pasco tells him.

“What I want you to do,” Pasco says, “is I want you to go to Sal and tell him that you and the Murphys had nothing to do with it.”

“He ain’t gonna believe that.”

“Lie through your ass,” Pasco says. “Make him believe you.”

“He’s more likely to shoot me.”

“Are you afraid, Danny?” Pasco asks.

Goddamn right I am, Danny thinks. You know Sal. When he gets in a killing frame of mind, whoever is in front of him gets killed. I don’t want that to be me.

“You’re the only one on your side of this thing that can make the approach,” Pasco says. “Sal respects you.”

“He hates me.”

“But he respects you,” Pasco says. “I’m expecting Marty Ryan’s son to do this.”

So that’s that—what Pasco Ferri expects, Pasco Ferri gets. So Danny drives down to Narragansett, parks down the block and across the street from Sal’s house and waits. Word is that Sal’s been holed up grieving, but he has to emerge sooner or later.

The fog comes in first.

When a heavy mist blows in off the ocean here it can arrive in a hurry. One second, it’s a clear dusk; the next, it’s a silver blanket thrown over everything. The temperature drops as suddenly, so it’s cold and thick when Danny sees Sal come out of the house, carrying something under his arm.

Danny gives him some space, then gets out of the car and follows him three blocks down to the ocean.

A seawall runs above Narragansett Beach for most of its length. A sidewalk runs along the wall, popular in the summer but deserted now in the cold and fog, except for Sal.

He’s walking in the opposite direction from the Towers, the remnants of a casino that stood here in the 1880s, when the town was a thriving resort for the rich people coming up from New York.

The two towers, each with a shingled conical peak, stand on either side of Ocean Road; an arched walkway with a central cupola spans the road. On a clear night the Towers are iconic, but now Danny can barely see them through the fog.

He follows Sal, who seems oblivious.

Danny doubts it. Sal knows he has a target on his back, knows he dodged a close call with the car bomb. One hand is around the package, the other is in his jacket pocket, and Danny has to assume it’s clutching a gun.

Sal keeps walking in the direction of Monahan’s, a clam shack, closed for the season, that sits on the base of what used to be the Narragansett Pier.

Danny feels the pistol he has in his jacket pocket, closes the distance, and calls out. “Sal!”

Sal stops, turns around and peers through the fog. “Ryan?”

Danny raises his hands. “I come in peace, Sal!”

“Fuck you, peace!”

“I just want to talk!”

“Get away from me,” Sal says, “before I put one in your head.”

“It wasn’t us, Sal,” Danny says. “I swear to God we had nothing to—”