City on Fire (Danny Ryan, #1)(7)

“Go see Solly Weiss.”

Weiss had a jewelry store in downtown Providence.

“I was thinking Zales,” Danny said.

“And pay bust-out retail?” Pat said. “You go see Solly, tell him you’re with us, who it’s for, he’ll make you a price.”

Not for nothing was the unofficial state motto “I know a guy.”

“I don’t want to give Terri a diamond fell off a truck,” Danny said.

Pat laughed. “They’re not stolen. Jesus, what kind of brother you think I am? We look after Solly. You ever heard of him getting robbed?”

“No.”

“Why do you think that is?” Pat asked. “Look, if you’re shy, I’ll go in with you.”

So they went in and saw Solly and he sold Danny a full-carat princess-cut diamond at cost with layaway payments, no interest.

“What did I tell you?” Pat asked as they left the store.

“This is how it works, huh?”

“This is how it works,” Pat said. “Now you have to go to the old man, though, and I’m not going in with you.”

Danny found John Murphy at the Gloc—where else—and asked for a minute of his time. John took him into the back, sat down at his booth, and just looked at him; he wasn’t going to make it easy.

“I came to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage,” Danny said, feeling like a dork and also scared shitless.

John wanted Danny Ryan for a son-in-law like he wanted flaming hemorrhoids, but Catherine had already warned him that this was likely to happen and that if he wanted a happy household he had better give his permission.

“I’ll find her somebody else,” John had said.

“She doesn’t want somebody else,” Catherine said, “and let’s get this done before she walks down the aisle in a muumuu.”

“Did he knock her up?”

“Not yet,” Catherine said. “They’re not even sleeping together, if you believe Terri, but . . .”

So John went through the dance with Danny. “How do you intend to support my daughter?”

How the hell do you think? Danny thought. You got me my card, my job at the docks, some stuff on the side.

“I’m a hard worker,” Danny said. “And I love your daughter.”

John gave him the whole “love isn’t enough” speech but eventually gave his blessing, and that night Danny took Terri out to a nice dinner at George’s and she pretended to be surprised when he got down on one knee and popped the question, even though she had told her brother to make sure that Danny was clued in as to getting a good ring without going into debt.

The wedding was elaborate, as befitted a daughter of John Murphy.

Not Italian elaborate, they didn’t go as far as all that, but all the Italians were there and came with envelopes—Pasco Ferri and his wife, the Moretti brothers, Sal Antonucci, his wife, and Chris Palumbo. All the important Irish of Dogtown were there, even Marty showed up for the full wedding mass at St. Mary’s and the reception later at the Biltmore. John sprang for all that, but not for the honeymoon, so Danny and Terri went all the way across the Blackstone Bridge to Newport for a three-day weekend.

No one was happier than Pat when Danny and Terri got married.

“We’ve always been brothers,” Pat said at the rehearsal dinner. “Now it’s official.”

Yeah, it was official, so Terri finally gave it up.

Enthusiastically, energetically—Danny had had nothing to complain about. Still doesn’t. Five years into their marriage and the sex is still good. Only problem is, she hasn’t gotten pregnant yet and everybody feels it’s perfectly okay to constantly ask her about it and he knows it hurts her.

Danny, he’s in no hurry to have a kid, doesn’t know if he wants one at all.

“That’s because you were raised by wolves,” Terri said to him once.

Which isn’t true, Danny thinks.

Wolves stay.

Now he looks at the little alarm clock on top of the old dresser and sees it’s time for the meeting at the Spindrift before Pasco’s clambake.

The Saturday night of every Labor Day weekend, Pasco Ferri throws a party and invites everybody. You could be just walking past Pasco on the beach in front of his house, notice the hole he’s digging, and he’ll invite you, he doesn’t care. He’ll spend all day digging that hole and laying the coals, and then he’ll go get the clams and quahogs fresh out the water.

Sometimes Danny goes with him, stands ankle-deep in the warm mud of the tidal ponds and digs with the long-handled clam rake. It’s slow work, pulling that rake out of the bottom, digging through the mud in the tongs with your fingers to find the shellfish, and then dumping them into the bucket floating in the inner tube that Pasco ties to his belt with a frayed length of old laundry line. Pasco works steady like a machine—stripped down to the waist, his Mediterranean skin tanned a deep brown, sixty-something years old and his muscles still hard and ropy, his pectorals just starting to sag. The man runs all of southern New England, but he’s happy as hell standing under the sun in the mud, working like an old paisan.

Yeah, but how many guys has this old paisan had clipped, Danny wonders sometimes, watching him work so peaceful and content. Or done himself? Local lore has it that Pasco personally did Joey Bon ham, Remy LaChance, the McMahon brothers from Boston. Late-night whiskey talk with Peter and Paul whispered that Pasco was no gunman but did his work with a wire or a knife, so close he could smell the sweat.