“You wanted to be a man,” Pasco says, “you should have gone after him one-on-one with your fists, not with three other guys and a bat. Now you just look weak.”
“Weak? I bashed his fucking head in.”
“One of my guests!” Pasco yells. “At my party! In front of my house! I should put you in the bed next to him!”
Peter says, “You’re right, Pasco. Of course. We should have waited.”
“Now we have to make this right,” Pasco says.
“Make it right how?” Peter asks.
“You’re going to pay half the medical bills.”
“Bullshit!” Paulie yells.
“Do you want to repeat that, young Paulie?” Pasco leans slightly over the table and looks at him.
Paulie drops his eyes. He knows the next word out of his mouth could put him in a landfill.
Pasco is furious. Everything we spent years putting together, keeping together, is going to fall apart over a piece of ass?! If this horny Irish fuck taps out, I’ll have to give John something, maybe even Paulie Moretti, or go to war with him. And if I do that, I might lose a whole wing of the family, hard to know how Paulie’s old man will react from inside the ACI. Hard to know which way the Antonuccis and Palumbos of the world would go. I don’t know, maybe John would settle for one of them. If I go to war against John, I’ll win. But at what cost, in blood and money?
Fuck these hotheads.
“Be grateful it’s half,” Pasco says. “And then you go to church, light a candle, and pray this kid don’t die.”
They put Liam in an ambulance and haul him up to Rhode Island Hospital in Providence because South County can’t do the surgery needed to relieve the pressure on his brain. He’s still unconscious and the doctors won’t say if he’s going to make it or not.
Liam’s ex-girlfriend Karen comes out into the waiting room and hugs Cassie. “I’m sorry . . . I can’t work on him. I’m too close.”
“I understand,” Cassie says.
“They have good people in there, though,” Karen says. “The best. I’ll keep you informed. I promise.”
She looks shook, sad, Danny thinks. Christ, she still loves him.
“Thank you.” The wives close rank. Sheila, Terri, and Angie look after Catherine Murphy, go for coffees, bring back trays of food, make the phone calls that need to be made.
Jimmy Mac takes Danny aside. “I say we hit them now.”
Danny says, “We have to wait. If Liam makes it, we’re looking at one scenario; if he doesn’t, we’re looking at another.”
“We at least owe them a beating,” Jimmy says.
“Let’s wait to see what we owe them.”
He stops talking because two men walk in and Danny lamps them as cops—detectives—right away. They walk up to Danny and one says, “Detective Carey, South Kingstown Police. Are you Daniel Ryan?”
“Yeah.”
“You found the victim?”
“He came to my door.”
“Did he tell you who did this to him?” Carey asks.
“No,” Danny says. “He passed out. He’s been unconscious since.”
“Do you have any idea who might have done this to him?”
“No,” Danny says.
“You all come down from Providence, right?” Carey asks. “Rent places in Goshen?”
“That’s right.”
“You’re friends with Pasco Ferri.”
So this cop knows exactly who we are, Danny thinks. He knows the score—that no one is going to tell him shit, and we’ll handle this internally. “I know Pasco, yeah.”
“We’re going to go talk to him, too,” Carey says.
“I doubt he knows anything.”
Carey smirks. “Me too.”
Pasco has a good relationship with the local cops.
Carey hands Danny his card. “If you think of anything you may have forgotten, give me a call. I’ll keep a good thought about your friend.”
“Thanks,” Danny says. “Hey? Don’t bother the family. They don’t know anything, either.”
Carey walks away and Danny steps over to a trash can and tosses the card. That’s when he sees Chris Palumbo get off the elevator.
“Shit,” Danny says.
He and Jimmy walk over to head him off.
“Maybe not the best time, Chris,” Danny says, wondering who sent him, whether it was Peter Moretti or Pasco. Or maybe Chris came on his own boot, to see if there’s any information he can use for himself.