City on Fire (Danny Ryan, #1)(82)

“Relax, Ned,” Liam says.

Ned don’t relax.

Frankie V was always a smooth, cocky fuck, Danny thinks, but he don’t look like it now. He looks scared. “You mind if I smoke?”

Ned nixes it. “No. It could be a signal.”

“Can you wait?” Danny asks Frankie.

“Guess I’m going to have to,” Frankie says. “I was sorry to hear about your wife’s illness.”

Danny don’t answer.

Liam says to Vecchio, “Tell him what you told me.”

Danny looks at Vecchio like Okay, I’m listening. What he wants to hear is that Frankie is here to set up a peace negotiation.

That’s not what he hears.

“Heroin,” Vecchio says.

“What about it?”

The Morettis have a big shipment coming in, is what about it. Forty kilos of heroin from the Golden Triangle, market value $150,000 per—so a cool six million. And that’s before you step on it and put it out on the street, where the value could double or even triple. Biggest score ever, enough to get every junkie in New England high. The shit is coming in on a cargo ship, right into the Port of Providence, and Vecchio’s crew is in charge of pickup and distribution.

“It’s yours for the taking,” Frankie says.

“The hell,” Danny says. This guy is going to do what, drop a few mil into our hands? For what? He looks at Liam and shrugs his disbelief.

“Hear the man out,” Liam says.

Danny leans over the seat toward Vecchio. Like Okay, tell me a story, feed me the bullshit.

“I think Peter’s going to have me clipped,” Frankie says. “He blames me for Sal, like I did anything wrong, like I didn’t say anything that wasn’t the truth.”

“Get to it,” Danny says.

“I need money to run with,” Frankie says. “I got kids in college; if I go into the wind, who’s going to pay the bills? I got rainy-day money, but we’re talking rainy years here, if I even make it that long. I have a family, for Chrissakes. My mother is not well . . .”

He’s hauling it all out, Danny thinks. The kids, the family, a sick mother . . . Now we’re supposed to have what, sympathy for this greaseball? Well, fuck that. Fuck Frankie V and the horse he rode in on.

Frankie keeps talking but Danny hardly listens. The deal is obvious: Frankie gives them the details on the heroin shipment, they jack it, Frankie gets his payout, they all live happily ever after.

“I’m telling you,” Frankie is saying, “this puts the nail in their coffin. The war has worn them out, they’re all broke, they’re counting on this score to get well.”

“If the Morettis don’t trust you,” Danny says, “why are they putting you in charge of this, it’s so important?”

“You think they’d go anywhere near it?” Frankie says. “They’re too chickenshit. No, it’s let Frankie V take the chances, we’ll take the profits, same old bullshit. Well, fuck that—good old Frankie’s taking care of himself for a change.”

Danny looks at Liam and says, “He’s setting us up. We go to jack this shipment, we walk right into an ambush.”

“On my kids’ lives,” Frankie says.

“I believe him,” Liam says.

“Are you out of your mind?” Danny asks. “He shows you a little flash jewelry and you jump into the back seat with him?”

“We could win this war.”

“They’re on their last legs,” Frankie says. “This will push them over. They’ll have to come to you and make a deal. You’ll get back the docks, everything. And the money from the dope—I only want ten keys for myself. Okay, five.”

Danny don’t like it.

For one thing, he don’t trust Vecchio—still thinks they could be walking into an ambush. And he don’t like the whole dope thing. It’s evil shit, and if you get caught, it puts you away for life. And he knows that Liam ain’t gonna just take the heroin and go Boston Tea Party with it, dump it in the water and cost the Morettis the millions they need to keep going. Nobody tosses millions of dollars, nobody. Liam will want to put it out on the street and get the big payday.

So Danny don’t like it, he don’t like it at all.

But he can tell Liam has a hard-on for it.

“I need to think about this,” Danny says.

“I can’t come to more meetings,” Frankie says. “Shit, they knew I was here now, I’m dead.”

“Go sit in the other car a minute,” Danny says.

Ned takes Frankie out.

“What’s there to think about?” Liam asks.

“You fucking kidding me?” Danny lays out all the things there are to think about. Then adds, “I’m not a dope dealer.”

“What if it’s a walkaway score?” Liam asks. “Your heart isn’t in this anymore; tell you the truth, neither is mine. You have medical bills to pay, and God willing you’ll have a lot more. I say we do this, cut up the money, pay my old man his share. Then I go to Florida, you take your family to California, we live our lives. Away from Dogtown.”

“I dunno.”

“What about Terri?” Liam asks. “This kind of money buys the best doctors in the world, the best treatment.”