“We send Frankie V to the Irish,” Chris said, “and let him pretend that he’s flipping on us. He tips them off to the heroin shipment and gets Danny Ryan to boost it.”
“The fuck, Chris?” Peter asked, because what the fuck kind of idea was it to get your own dope boosted, especially by a gang you’ve been at war with. Christ, was Chris high himself?
Chris explained that he had a fed, Phillip Jardine, on the arm. The Irish take the heroin and Jardine busts them, effectively ending the long war between the Moretti family and the Irish.
“Four mill is too high a price tag,” Peter said.
“That’s the beauty part,” Chris said.
He explained that Jardine would keep some of the heroin to make it look legit but the bulk of the heroin would come straight back to them. They’d have to give Jardine a taste but by the time they cut up the drugs, there’d be more than enough in street value to make up for the loss.
“Win, win,” Chris said.
Peter went for it.
Yeah, and it all went according to plan.
Officially, Jardine seized twelve kilos from the Irish in a highly publicized raid. John Murphy, the Irish boss, got popped on thirty-to-life federal charges.
Good.
His son, Liam, got dead.
Even better.
Okay, twenty-eight keys is a fucking fortune and everybody gets paid.
Except—
Chris Palumbo and Jardine were supposed to go bust Danny and take his ten kilos.
Fine.
But—
No one’s heard from either of them since. And Jardine supposedly has the other eighteen keys.
Ryan’s gone, too. Left the hospital where his wife was dying, somehow got around Peter’s guys, and no one’s seen him since, either.
Billy Battaglia comes through the door.
He looks shaken.
“What?” Peter asks.
“Me and some other guys went with Chris to get that dope from Ryan,” Billy says. “Chris goes in, comes out ten minutes later—without the dope—tells us to go home.”
“What the fuck?” Peter’s heart feels like it’s going to jump out of his chest.
“Ryan had shooters outside Chris’s house,” Billy says. “Said he’d have them kill Chris’s whole family if he didn’t back off.”
“Why isn’t Chris here telling me that?”
“Chris hasn’t come?”
“You think you needed to tell me this if Chris already came?” Peter asks. “Where is he now?”
“I dunno. He just drove away.”
The phone rings and Peter jumps.
It’s Paulie. “I just got a call from a Gilead cop. They found a body on the beach.”
Peter feels like he could throw up. Is it Ryan? Chris?
“It’s Jardine,” Paulie says. “Two in the chest. Had his gun in his hand, one round fired.”
“What about Chris?”
“Nothin’。”
Peter hangs up.
The news about Jardine is devastating. The fed was supposed to deliver the rest of the heroin to them. And why did Chris take off? Shit, could he and Ryan have cooked up some deal? That red-headed guinea Chris triple-crossed everyone? It would be just like him.
Merry fuckin’ Christmas, Peter thinks.
We won the war but lost our money.
All of it—the years of fighting, the killings, the funerals—all for what?
Nothing.
Unless we find Danny Ryan.