City on Fire (Danny Ryan, #1)(8)

Some days Pasco and Danny would go to Almacs, buy some chicken thighs, then drive over to Narrow River, where Pasco would tie a long piece of string onto the chicken, toss it out into the water, and then pull it back real slow. What would happen was a blue crab would fasten its claws onto the meat and not let go until Pasco pulled it right into the net that Danny held for him.

“Lesson for you,” Pasco said once as they watched the crab thrash in the bucket, trying to get out. Then he tied another piece of chicken and repeated the process until they had a bucketful of crabs to boil that night.

Lesson: Don’t hold on to something’s going to pull you into a trap. If you’re going to let go, let go early.

Better yet, don’t take the bait at all.





Three


Danny and Liam hop into Pat’s Camry and drive five minutes over to Mashanuck Point.

“So what are we meeting about?” Pat asks his brother.

“The Morettis are taxing the Spindrift,” Liam says, reminding him.

“It’s their territory,” Pat says.

“Not the Drift,” Liam answers. “It’s grandfathered.”

This is true, Danny thinks as he looks out the window. The rest of the places on the shore kick to the Italians, but the Spindrift has been Irish since his father’s time. He knows the place well, used to get drunk there when he worked the boats, sometimes went in to listen to the local blues bands they’d book on weekends in the summer.

The owner, Tim Carroll, is a friend.

They drive past cornfields, and Danny’s always amazed that this land hasn’t been developed. The same family has owned it for three hundred years and they’re stubborn, those Swamp Yankees, would rather grow sweet corn than sell the land and retire rich. But Danny’s grateful for it. It’s nice there, farms right up to the ocean.

“So, what?” Pat asks Liam. “Tim came to you?”

It’s a violation of protocol. If Tim has a beef, he should go to John, or at least Pat. Not the younger brother, not Liam.

“He didn’t come to me,” Liam says, a little defensive. “I was having a beer, we got talking . . .”

There’s so many little peninsulas and tidal marshes along the shore, Danny thinks, you got to drive inland, then along the coast, then back toward the sea to get to any particular place. Quicker if they drained the marshes and built some roads, but that’s Connecticut, not Rhode Island.

Rhode Island likes things difficult, hard to find.

The other unofficial state motto—“If you were supposed to know, you’d know.”

So it takes a few minutes to drive to the Spindrift, when they could have just walked up the beach. But they go by road, past the cornfields and then the little grocery store, the hot dog stand, the laundromat, the ice cream stand. As they make the curve that takes them back along the ocean, there’s a trailer park on their left, and then the bar.

They park out in front.

You walk through the door, you know this ain’t no money machine. It’s an old clapboard joint, pounded by salt air and winter winds for sixty-some-odd years, and it’s a wonder it’s still standing. One good blow, Danny thinks, could knock it down, and hurricane season is coming up.

Tim Carroll is standing behind the bar, jerking a brew for a tourist.

Skinny Tim Carroll, Danny thinks, a pound wouldn’t stick to him with glue. Tim’s, what, thirty-three now, and he already looks like the responsibility of running the place since his old man died is aging him. He wipes his hands on his apron and comes out from behind the bar. “Peter and Paul are already here,” he says, jerking his chin out toward the deck. “Chris Palumbo’s with them.”

“So what’s the problem, Tim?” Pat asks.

“They come in tugging their cuffs,” Tim says. “They’re here about every afternoon, drinking pitchers they don’t pay for, ordering sandwiches, burgers . . . You seen the price of beef lately? Buns?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Now they want an envelope, too?” Tim says. “I got basically ten, eleven weeks of summer to make money, the rest of the year I’m fucked. A few locals and fishermen nursing their beers for two hours at a time. No offense, Danny.”

Danny shakes his head, like Forget it.

They walk through an open slider out onto a deck precariously cantilevered above some rocks the state put in to try to prevent the whole building from sliding into the ocean. From out there Danny can see the whole southern shoreline, from the lighthouse at Gilead down to Watch Hill.

It’s beautiful.

The Moretti brothers sit at a white plastic table next to the railing that Chris Palumbo’s got his feet up on.

Peter Moretti looks like your classic wiseguy—thick, slicked-back black hair, black shirt rolled up at the sleeves to show off the Rolex, designer jeans over loafers.

Paulie Moretti is a skinny guinea, maybe five-seven, with caramel skin, his light brown hair highlighted and permed into tight curls. Permed, Danny thinks, which is the style now but nothing Danny can get down with. Danny thinks Paulie’s always looked a little Puerto Rican, although he ain’t gonna say it.

Chris Palumbo’s something else. Red hair like he came from freakin’ Galway, but otherwise he’s as Italian as Sunday gravy. Danny remembers what old Bernie Hughes said about him—“Never trust a redheaded wop. They’re the worst of the breed.”