City on Fire (Danny Ryan, #1)(74)

But what does “good” mean against cancer? The doctor can make it not cancer? He can change what’s already there? Tell a young woman with an infant and her whole life in front of her that she’s going to get to live that life?

He looks at a recipe for sloppy joes, then checks his watch again. The time won’t move. It doesn’t in purgatory. What the nuns taught him about eternity. Finally the door opens and the doctor is standing there.

“Mr. Ryan?”

Danny stands up.

“Come on in, please.”

Danny follows him into a small room. Terri is sitting there and she doesn’t look good—her eyes are moist, red-rimmed. The doctor gestures Danny to a chair beside her and then sits down behind his desk and holds up an X-ray for Danny to see and uses his pen to point out a “mass” in Terri’s left breast.

Danny flashes back to a moment on the beach, that moment Pam first arrived, bringing so much death with her.

“I like your boobs.”

“Good answer.”

The doctor is saying something about a “biopsy.” “. . . if it’s positive, we’ll go back into surgery and remove the breast.”

“Then what?” Terri asks. “Are we looking at chemo?”

The doctor smiles one of those “good bedside manner” smiles. “Why don’t we cross that bridge if we come to it? In the meantime, we’ll hope for the best.”

“It’s cancer,” Terri says in the car.

“We don’t know that,” Danny says.

“I know it.”

“Like the doctor said, let’s hope for the best,” Danny says.

Hope, he thinks.

Purgatory.

He just gets Terri settled in when Jimmy Mac pulls up outside. When Danny goes down, Jimmy asks, “You hear about Marvin Jones?”



Danny attends Marvin’s homegoing.

Seems like the right thing to do.

The cops wasted no time in deciding that Marvin’s murder was a drive-by gang thing and said they were pursuing leads. They rounded up a bunch of rival gang members and put them through the wringer, but none of them knew anything and they all had alibis.

Marvin’s own people didn’t know anything either, and none of the guys at the scene saw shit.

So as far as the police are concerned, this was simply garbage taking out garbage and they waited for the inevitable retaliation with more garbage taking out more garbage.

Sal Antonucci’s name was never mentioned.

And Sal’s gone off the radar.

Now Danny walks up to the house on Friendship Street that Marvin bought for his mother. People are gathered on the sidewalk, the wide steps, and the broad front porch of the big Victorian that has been completely remodeled.

A few give Danny, the sole white guy, some glances.

Danny goes in.

Marvin lies in an open coffin in the living room, where rows of folding chairs, all full now, have been set up. Most of the mourners are women, who sit there in black, weeping quietly into handkerchiefs.

Danny walks over to the coffin.

Marvin took a bullet in the heart, so his face is unmarred, still handsome, still proud, almost arrogant in death. Marvin Jones believed he was invincible, Danny thinks, that nothing could touch him. Maybe we all believe that, until something does.

He steps over to Marvin’s mother. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

She’s as handsome as her son, with the same dignity. “Thank you. I’m sorry, but who are you?”

“My name’s Danny Ryan.”

“How did you know Marvin?”

“We played ball together.”

“Oh,” she says. “But we haven’t met before.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, thank you for coming.”

Danny spots Demetrius standing in the kitchen doorway. He goes up to him and asks, “Can we talk?”

“Backyard,” Demetrius says.

The backyard is large and leafy, with a big oak and maple trees casting most of it in shade. White wrought-iron table and chairs are set under the maple, a hooded grill up against the fence.

“I’m sorry about Marvin,” Danny says.

“You’re sorry you lost a field hand,” Demetrius says. “I ain’t no field hand.”

“What does that mean?”

“Means you can fight your own battles,” Demetrius says. “We’re out of it.”

“You don’t want to pay Sal back for Marvin?” Danny asks.

“I loved Marvin,” Demetrius says. “But he got us into a white man’s war. I tried to tell him.”

“So, what, he had it coming?”

“Something like that,” Demetrius says.

“That’s cold.”

“Cold world, man.”

“What about getting your neighborhood back?” Danny asks.

“We’re going to get it,” Demetrius says. “And we don’t have to do nothing. Every day, fewer and fewer of y’all. Every day, more of us. All we gotta do is wait. You want to speed up the process by killing each other, be my guest, motherfucker.”

“You know what Marvin wanted.”

“Do I?” Demetrius asks. “Let’s go back in and ask him, see what he says. You got my cousin killed, white man. I think it’s better if you leave now.”