City on Fire (Danny Ryan, #1)(88)

He passes other people walking back to their cars. He can tell from their faces what news they got. Some are smiling, even laughing—maybe a baby was born or tests came back benign. Other faces are set in worry or grief, grim resignation relieved only by belief in the Virgin Mary or a special saint. Hospital parking lots are tough places—people go to their cars to cry, punch the steering wheel, just sit in stunned silence.

Like he did after he got the word.

Young mother with a son not two years old.

The old catechism question: Why did God make us? He made us to love him and share the kingdom of heaven. In short, he made us to die. We live to die, that’s the whole point. Receive last rites, say a perfect Act of Contrition, go straight to heaven to live at his side for eternity.

When the nuns talked about eternity they usually meant hell. Imagine living in a fire, burning your skin, forever and ever without end. The fire never goes out and it never stops burning you, and that’s for eternity. Hold a match up to your finger, boys, and feel how it hurts. Now imagine that times a thousand thousand and you have a thousandth idea of the pains of hell. They never talked about sharing the peace and glory of heaven without end. It was always about hell.

If God made us to die, he should be pretty happy with Dogtown the past few years. Forty-eight souls sent to heaven or hell since the “New England Crime War,” as the newspapers like to call it, started. A body count to make God and the papers happy.

And now God wants Terri, too.

Going in through the revolving door, Danny smells that hospital smell. It’s warm in there, but the air is stale and cloying. There’s no way around it, a hospital smells like sickness and death.

The Christmas lights, the brightly decorated artificial tree with fake presents underneath seem almost mocking.

Jimmy Mac’s waiting in the lobby. “You get some rest?”

“A little,” Danny says. “You should go home. I got Ned here.”

He goes upstairs.

Terri’s out cold when he gets to the room. It’s good, she’s not in pain. Lying on her back with the sheet up to her neck, her once-pretty face thin and drawn, her skin gray. Danny pulls the plastic chair up by the bed and sits next to her. He doesn’t know why. She doesn’t know he’s there. Off in a dream world of her own, hopefully a better one. Has to be a better one.

And now the war is over and Terri’s dying.

Makes no sense.

Sure, but none of it ever did.



Cassie sits drinking a Diet Coke at the bar in the front room of the Gloc.

It’s well after closing time, but she has nowhere else to go. Her dad and some of the other old men are in the back room telling lies about when they were young, and Bobby Bangs doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to get out from behind the bar.

She knows Bobby has a little crush on her; it’s harmless.

Another goddamn Diet Coke, she thinks. When what she really wants is a warm bourbon melting some rocks.

Be honest, she tells herself, what you really want is a shot of heroin.

Talk about warmth.

Like being wrapped in the warmest blanket there ever was.

Someone had taken a stab at decorating the joint for Christmas, some bulbs strung around the walls, a fake Christmas tree in one corner with some tinsel Bobby dug out of the basement. Trying to brighten the place up, she thinks, but the only thing that could really cheer up an Irish bar would be England sinking into the ocean.

The birth of our Savior, Cassie thinks.

Oh, but we do love our martyrs—their pictures are all over the walls: James Connolly, Padraic Pearse, and on and on. If no one else will nail them to the cross, they’ll find a way to do it themselves.

And now Terri is “terminal.” It’s fucking awful, but Cassie can’t help but feel it’s karma, because they did the dope boost and this is the universe paying them back.

“Is Santa going to be good to you?” Bobby asks.

“I’ve been a good girl.” She shrugs.

The front door shatters.

Wood splinters, hinges rip from the frame.

Cassie turns to look. Men with helmets and flak jackets stand there with a battering ram, for Chrissakes. For a second she thinks it’s some weird dream, or a Monty Python movie or something, but then more men pour in behind them, guns drawn, screaming for them to get down.

Cassie slides down and grips the base of the barstool.

Hears a man yell, “John Murphy! FBI! Come out with your hands up!”

She laughs, it’s such a cliché.

“What’s so fucking funny?!” Jardine yells.

“You,” Cassie says.

He grabs her by the hair and lifts her up.

“Hey!” Bobby Bangs says. He starts to vault the bar to defend her but one of the cops whacks him across the chest with a baton, flips him onto the bar and cuffs him.

“Cuff her, too,” Jardine says, passing Cassie to one of the other cops. “You’re Cassandra Murphy, aren’t you? Where’s your father?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Nice mouth on you.”

The cop cuffs her behind her back.

Then the door to the back room opens and John comes out. “What the hell is going on here?! Who are you?! Get out of my place!”

He strides toward Jardine like he’s going to hit him.

“Daddy, don’t!” Cassie screams.