“You’ll square this with Pasco?” Pat asks Peter.
“We don’t need to burden him with this,” Peter answers.
A beat of silence and then they all burst out laughing. What the hell, they’re feeling their oats and their strength and their youth, knowing they’re taking over the world. Can do things without the old guys knowing, without their okay. Not that it isn’t serious fucking business, dealing dope in Pasco’s backyard without him knowing; it was just funny the way Peter said it is all, and for a few moments there they’re all friends, all boys having a laugh, putting one over.
“And Peter,” Pat says, “lay off the burgers a little, huh?”
“You worried about my waistline?”
“Pay for a sandwich, you cheap prick.”
That starts them laughing again.
It’s good, Danny thinks, being young in the sweet days of summer.
But, driving back, Danny can’t shake the feeling that Liam just set himself up to deal coke with the Moretti brothers.
Four
Danny gets back, Terri sends him right out again.
“Take the groceries to your father’s,” she says.
She went to Stop & Shop in the morning, got groceries for them and Marty, too. Picked up Marty’s bacon, eggs, coffee, milk, bread, his Luckies, his Bushmills, his Sam Adams, his Hormel corned beef hash, his lotto tickets. Now she has it all sitting out in two plastic bags for Danny to deliver.
It’s only fair, Danny thinks—she did the shopping. Stood in line Labor Day weekend, everyone buying stuff for their cookouts.
Danny picks up the bags and heads over to Marty’s, just up the gravel street, a cottage the old man insists on renting year-round. He knocks on the screen door, doesn’t wait for an answer, and nudges it open with his foot. “It’s me!”
Marty’s sitting in his chair, where he always is, sucking down a Lucky and a beer, listening to the Sox on the radio. Ned Egan sits on the couch by the window. You usually don’t have to look too far from Marty to find Ned.
“You bring my Hormel?” Marty asks.
“When does Terri forget your Hormel?” Danny asks, setting the bags down on the kitchen counter. “Hi, Ned.”
“Danny.”
“I thought maybe you shopped,” Marty says.
Ned gets up and starts to unpack the groceries, put them away on the shelves, in the refrigerator. Ned’s in his forties, has a body like a fire hydrant. Still lifts weights every other day. When he reaches up to put the cans away, the .38 in his shoulder holster shows.
You want to get to Marty, you gotta get through Ned, and no one is going to get through Ned. Marty Ryan’s not important enough anymore that anyone wants to kill him, but Ned ain’t taking chances. Anyway, Danny’s glad his old man has company, someone to heat up his hash for him, bitch about the Sox with.
“You get my scratchers?” Marty asks.
Marty plays the lotto like he has an in with Saint Jude. Usually he just wins a little beer money, but once he won a hundred dollars and that keeps him at it. He’s sure he’s going to hit the lottery or something and Danny wonders what Marty would do with a few million dollars if he did.
Skinny, bitter old man sitting in that chair in the same red plaid shirt that Terri gave him, what, three Christmases ago? Buttoned up to the neck, with a slice of the white T-shirt showing? Baggy, dirty old khaki trousers that Terri can talk him out of maybe once a month to wash? White socks, sandals?
Marty Ryan.
Martin Ryan.
A goddamn legend.
When Big Bill Donovan came up from New York and told the Providence boys they were joining the New York branch of the ILA, it was Marty Ryan, just a kid then, who sent him packing. Marty and John Murphy, back in the day. They stared New York down and it was New York that blinked, so we have our own union and our own docks, Danny knows. A few years later, Albert Anastasia himself came up, tried to pull the same shit, Marty told him, “We got our own guineas here.”
It was true—young Pasquale Ferri was standing right beside them. They worked it out, Marty and John and the Italians. The Irish kept the docks, the Italians took the trucking, and both unions were run from Providence. Marty and John told the outsiders that “local” meant just that—local. We didn’t leave Ireland to be a colony of anybody’s anymore. So, for years, nothing came into Providence it didn’t come through Marty Ryan, John Murphy, or Pasco Ferri. By truck or boat, didn’t matter. They had their joke about the bite they took, called it “the Paul Revere”—one if by land, two if by sea.