City on Fire (Danny Ryan, #1)(53)

“Lying motherfucker!” Sal says. He takes the gun out of his pocket and points it at Danny.

Danny runs.

If this were a movie, he’d say something clever or pull his own gun and shoot it out, but it’s real life—more critically, it’s real death, and Danny takes off as fast as his hip will let him.

With a gun pointed at him, threatening to go off with ill intent, his legs feel like telephone poles, they’re that stiff and heavy, then he hears the blast and feels the rush of air whoosh past him as the bullet misses his head.

He doesn’t think the next one will miss—the killer in Sal will settle him down and he’ll take the next shot into Danny’s back—so Danny vaults the seawall, drops the five feet or so onto the rocks and almost topples on the seaweed-slick stones. But the sea gods are with him and have given him a low tide. He crouches down and presses himself against the wall.

Maybe it’s Danny’s imagination, or maybe he can really hear Sal’s footsteps stalking him. Danny feels like his pounding heart is going to give him away, but his head knows that the waves hitting rock farther out are making more noise.

Still, if Sal sees him, he’s a dead man, trapped between the ocean and the wall.

Like any Rhode Islander, Danny has spent many hours cursing the fog. Been lost in its soup out at sea fishing, terrified that the boat will run against the rocks. He’s blessed the lighthouses at Point Judith and Beavertail for cutting through the fog and leading them home. He’s been on the highway at night, or worse, on one of the small roads nearer the beach, when he had to open the window and look down to see the yellow line in order to stay on the road.

But now he blesses the damn fog pouring in from the ocean.

Crouching, hiding, he hears Sal yell, “Fuck you, Ryan! Fuck all of youse, you hear me?!”

Danny hears him. He’s not tempted to answer, though, to affirm his comprehension or shout defiance.

The ocean has saved his life; he’s not going to spurn that gift.

He waits a good half hour before he dares climb back over the wall. Peering up and down the seawall, he doesn’t see Sal.

His shoes soaked, Danny sloshes his way back to his car and drives home.



With the urn containing Tony’s ashes in his hand, Sal walks down to the jetty where the old Narragansett Pier once stood. Opens the urn and tosses the ashes into the offshore wind and then follows them.

Sal Antonucci jumps off the rocks where, every other summer, some tourist drowns because he doesn’t know better, into the swirling ocean because he wants to die.

Nobody is down there in winter, nobody sees him. The water is killing cold; the sea, hungry, reaches up and takes him. Sal struggles in the waves as he changes his mind and decides that he wants to live, but that’s now the ocean’s choice, not his.

The sea gives back only what it doesn’t want.

It throws him back and he hangs on to the slick rocks until he has the strength to pull himself up.

Decides it’s worth living to kill Pat Murphy.

Then Liam Murphy.

Then Danny Ryan.



“You gotta get out of town,” Danny tells Pat.

But Pat won’t go, even though John, his mother, even Sheila urge him to leave. Go to New Hampshire, Vermont, go down to Florida, just get out of Dogtown. But Pat, the captain of the football team, the hockey team, the basketball team—Pat the born leader—won’t go.

“Then lay low,” Danny tells him.

Keep your head down and on a swivel.

Tells him this even as he knows it won’t do any good.

Pat has a death wish now.

It’s in his blood, the Irish martyr thing. They walk to death like it’s a beautiful woman.



Pam comes to the door.

“Where’s your useless husband?” Pat asks.

“In the bedroom,” she says, jutting her chin toward the back.

Fucking Liam, Pat thinks, still hiding. Well, that’s going to come to a screeching halt.

“I know what you think of me,” Pam says.

“Do you?”

“Same thing I think about myself,” she says. “I’m a whore.”

“I never said that.”

“No, I did,” she says. “I’m a whore, I’m the bitch that caused all of this. I wish I’d never come here. I wish I’d never met him.”

That makes two of us, Pat thinks. No, that makes all of us.

“You want to come in?” she asks.

Liam walks out of the bedroom, notching his belt, his hair disheveled; he’s barefoot and he hasn’t shaved in a couple of days. Seeing his brother, he says, “To what do I owe the honor?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“These days, I pretty much have to.” Liam glances at Pam and smirks. He walks over to the kitchen counter, picks up a dirty glass, pours in two fingers of scotch and holds it up to Pat. “Sláinte.”

Pat’s in no mood. “You started all this, baby brother; it’s time you got back into the game.”

“That’s funny,” Liam says. “My dear little wifey here was just saying the same thing.”

“Sal will come back into the war now,” Pat says. “He’ll hit back for the Morettis. We could use more boots on the ground, and it would be good for the guys to see you out front.”