They go after Liam.
Jardine hits the Murphy home in Providence, but Liam isn’t there.
Jardine puts out an all-points, dispatches people to the airport, the train and bus stations.
No Liam.
The Morettis have deployed, too. Get their own people on the streets, the roads, bars, hotels, motels, hookers, pimps, and drug dealers, always with the same message: If you see Liam Murphy, you’d better drop a dime to us, because sooner or later we’re going to find him, and you want to be on the right side of this thing.
Cops on the arm get the word, too—Christmas is around the corner, and there’ll be a nice present under the tree for whoever brings him in.
No one is worried too much about Danny Ryan. They know exactly where he is—at Rhode Island Hospital with his dying wife—and they can pick him up any time they want.
“Wait until the wife passes,” Peter tells Jardine. “Danny’s a fuckup, but he’s good people.”
Jardine agrees to wait.
No, it’s Liam Murphy they’re looking for.
No one is looking harder than Paulie Moretti.
“Fuck Liam Murphy,” Peter says. “What I want to know is, where’s my dope?”
“Liam has whatever wasn’t in the club,” Paulie says. “Trust me on this. We find Liam, we find the dope.”
Peter looks over at Chris.
Chris shrugs. “He’s right. But look on the bright side. The war is over; we won. The Irish are finished.”
“We’re fucking finished, we don’t get that dope back,” Peter says. Six million dollars in heroin, fronted to us, he thinks, by people who are not going to understand us saying it was first hijacked and then busted.
“When are you going to learn to trust me?” Chris asks. “Hasn’t everything gone the way I said it would so far? We’ll get the dope back.”
“Minus twelve keys,” Peter says.
“A small price to pay,” Chris says. “We step on the rest of the shit, it will more than make up for it, you’ll see.”
“We have to get it first,” Peter says.
“Find fucking Liam,” Paulie repeats. Thinking, We get Liam, we get the dope.
And we get Pam.
Danny calls Bernie back.
The accountant’s been working the phones from a cabin in New Hampshire, talking to the few remaining connections who would take his call. A retired cop, a state legislator, a former mayor. Through them and word on the street, Bernie started to piece it together. It was even worse than they thought: The feds had a source inside the Moretti family they were trying to protect. The source—maybe it was Vecchio, maybe someone else—had set up the Murphys with the heroin treatment.
“It’s bad,” Bernie says. “A receptionist in the federal office says they had the Glocca Morra under audio surveillance. It was a legal wiretap under a full warrant. They have John, you, and Liam talking about both the hijacking and the heroin itself. That’s how this Jardine knew to hit the Gloc.”
That means the feds will have a warrant out on me, Danny thinks.
Maybe on all of us.
“What about Liam?” Danny asks.
“They’re trying to serve him now,” Bernie says. “But he’s off the radar.”
“And you?”
“The feds went to my house,” Bernie says. “I decided to let them interview me in absentia.”
“What about Vecchio?”
“Nothing on him so far,” Bernie says.
“Then he’s the rat,” Danny says.
“It certainly appears so,” Bernie says. “But Danny, there’s no indictment on you, either.”
“How’s that possible?” Danny asks. “If they have me on tape, Vecchio’s testimony . . .”
“I don’t know,” Bernie says. “You need to get out of there, Danny.”
“I can’t,” Danny says. “I mean, you heard about Terri, right?”
“Yes, and I’m sorry.”
“I can’t leave her.”
“You have to, son,” Bernie says. “If the feds don’t get you now, the Morettis will. You have no soldiers on the street, everyone knows where you are, you’re a sitting duck.”
“I won’t leave her,” Danny says. “Not until . . .”
He leaves the thought unfinished.
“Go,” Danny tells Jimmy a few minutes later, filling him in on what he’s found out. “Don’t even stop by your house. You can call Angie from out of state.”