City on Fire (Danny Ryan, #1)(59)

Gray as grief.

The unrelenting gray sorrow Danny has felt since Pat’s death. Sorrow he almost wears, like clothes he puts on when he wakes up, like he’s seeing the world on one of those black-and-white TVs he had when he was a kid.

Danny turns the collar of his leather jacket up as he walks to the Gloc. He isn’t Danny Ryan the longshoreman, the collector, the hijack guy—he’s Danny Ryan the man who has to step into Pat Murphy’s big shoes.

Someone has to, and it sure as shit isn’t going to be Liam.

Liam, fucking Liam, of course wants to go out and kill everyone. Well, he wants other people to go out and kill everyone; he didn’t want a big part of that himself, just wanted to push the buttons.

Danny talked him off the cliff. “We can’t respond right now.”

“They killed my fucking brother!” Liam said.

“I know that,” Danny said. They killed my fucking best friend, he thinks. “What I’m telling you is we don’t have the guys right now to go all D-Day.”

And he’s grieving, for Chrissakes, his heart is freakin’ broken. His pregnant wife is grieving, too, and he has to look after her. And then there’s his in-laws—Catherine is a mess and John, John is about catatonic. In no condition to run the business, never mind command a war.

So it falls on Danny.

Danny has to run the day-to-day—the docks, the union, the loan-sharking, the boosts, it all drops on his shoulders. A hundred freakin’ details a day it seems, from making sure the right guys got picked on the shape-ups to seeing that collections got made, cash distributed, envelopes delivered to the cops and judges they had left. He has to assign tasks, mediate disputes, make rulings.

Bernie’s been a big help with the numbers, and Jimmy takes up a lot of the slack, but it’s still Danny who’s in charge.

Danny who has to run the war.

Thing of it is, the fighting dies down for a while.

Part of it is exhaustion.

Both sides are just flat-out tired, worn down.

Then there’s the public perception.

People would put up with a gang war—it had entertainment value—but the brutal murder of Pat Murphy was too much. A guy getting dragged down a street in the middle of the city? Parts of him scraped on the asphalt?

No.

The public is sick of it.

The word came down from the bosses of the bigger families in New York, Boston, even Chicago to cool it, dial it back, give it a rest. Don’t do shit in public which should be done in private. Keep us out of the headlines for a while.

Pretty much what Pasco told Danny on the phone. “I understand you’re filling in for John during his period of mourning.”

“I’m helping out.”

“I need you to stay your hand,” Pasco said. “You know what I mean. Certain people are getting very concerned. It’s not a good look, not with all this RICO shit, the trials . . .”

Danny knew what he meant. The feds were pounding organized crime with the RICO statutes and all the families were feeling the pressure. Car bombings and guys getting run over in the street weren’t helping with the public image.

“I hear you,” Danny said. “Does Peter?”

“He does,” Pasco said. “I don’t suppose you’d consider a sit-down.”

“That train has left the station.”

“That was his response, too,” Pasco said. “I’ll tell you what I told him—be smart, be discreet. If certain people have to come in on this, it won’t be good for either of you. Capisce?”

Danny understands: If New York or Boston decide we’re too much trouble, they’ll come in. It will be a hostile takeover, and their first move will be to put both me and Peter in the dirt.

So there’s a breather, a gasping spell of sorts.

March weather is fickle in this part of the world. It can rain or snow, sleet or drizzle or clear up. March should be the end of winter—everyone is sick to death of it and wants it to be over, but the month usually delivers what Danny thinks of as a fuck-you storm. Like You want spring, right? Well, I’ve got your spring for you right here. Then it dumps snow on your head.

Fuck you.

Right now it’s just windy—a damp cold that blows up from Narragansett Bay—and Danny’s glad to be out of it as he walks through the Gloc’s door.

Bobby Bangs is already behind the bar and hands him a cup of coffee, a sign of Danny’s new status.

Jimmy’s sitting in a booth, reading the Journal. He sees Danny, gets up and follows him into the back room. Bernie shows up a few minutes later and they get to work going through the day-to-day.

It’s almost time for lunch when they come out, and two skinny punk kids in jeans and black leather jackets are sitting in a booth looking nervous.

Danny looks at Bobby.

“I carded them,” Bobby says. “They’re legal. Twenty-one.”

“We just wanted to see Mr. Ryan,” one of them says, his voice actually cracking. They both slide out of the booth and stand up.

Jimmy pats them down, looks to Danny and shakes his head, meaning no, they aren’t carrying.

“Do I know you?” Danny asks. One of the kids looks familiar, Danny’s pretty sure he’s seen him at a hockey game or something.

“My name is Sean South, this is Kevin Coombs.”