“Jesus, Danny,” Chris says. “This is terrible. A terrible thing.”
“Yeah.”
“How did this get so out of hand?” Chris says.
“Ask your buddies,” Jimmy says.
Chris holds up his hands. “I had nothing to fuckin’ do with this. They had asked me first, I would have told them, go through channels.”
“Too bad they didn’t ask you, then,” Danny says.
“Look,” Chris says, “I know everyone’s pretty raw right now—”
“You think?” Danny asks.
“—but we all need to keep cool heads,” Chris says. “Let’s get Liam out of the woods, then we can—”
“Get out of here, Chris,” Danny says. “Nothing personal, but no one wants to see anyone from the Moretti family right now. Jesus, Pat sees you here . . .”
“I get it,” Chris says. “I’m gone. Do me a favor, though? If the right moment comes up? Give my respect?”
“Yeah, okay. Goodbye, Chris. See you.”
Palumbo gets back in the elevator.
“The balls on that guy,” Jimmy says.
“He’s covering his ass,” Danny says. “He’s probably on his way over to Federal Hill now to tell the Morettis they did the right thing.”
And to tell them Liam’s still alive.
Liam makes it through surgery, which Karen tells them is a big deal. But he’s not out of the woods yet. It’s two more long days before they’re ready to say that Liam is going to make it.
Loses his spleen and needs plastic surgery to repair the broken orbital bone under his eye. But his brain is okay.
Well, as okay as Liam’s brain can be, Danny thinks.
He and Pat go to talk to Pasco.
They find him on the beach in front of his house, two poles in the water, baited for stripers.
“What Liam did wasn’t right,” Pasco says before Pat can get a word out.
Pat says, “But he didn’t deserve that.”
“They beat him half to death,” Danny says. “He almost died.”
“He touched a made guy’s woman,” Pasco says, adjusting the tension on one of the lines. “If that girl and Paulie were married, Paulie would have been within his rights to kill your brother.”
“Liam was drunk,” Pat said. “We all were.”
Pasco shrugs. Drunk or sober, Liam had disrespected Paulie Moretti in a very personal way. The beating got out of hand, no question, but the Murphy kid had taken his chances.
“I came here out of respect,” Pat says. “I came here to ask your permission.”
“To do what?” Pasco asks. “Give Paulie a beating? Peter and Sal and Tony, too? You think—even if I give the nod—you can take all four of them?”
“I think we can,” Pat says.
Pasco smiles. “Patdannyjimmy.”
“Just fists, I swear,” Pat says.
“Where do you think you are, high school?” Pasco asks. “Let it go. Your brother is alive, God bless, I made Paulie cover the bills, let it pass. What does your father say?”
“I haven’t talked to him about it.”
“When you do,” Pasco says, “he’ll tell you what I’m telling you and what I told Peter and Paulie: We worked too hard to put this thing together. I’m not going to let it fall apart because your brother got drunk and felt some tette.”
Young men are stupid and their balls are too full. Pasco remembers when it was that way with him, and the old bulls had to teach him what was what. Now he has to be the teacher. He turns and looks at these two young Irish bucks, all on fire with indignation and the hunger for revenge. They have to learn—vengeance is an expensive luxury, too expensive in this case. Too rich for their blood, anyway. He says, “Take your brother home—be glad you’re not at his wake.”
Danny knows that if they hit back at the Moretti brothers or Sal, it will be a personal affront to Pasco Ferri. Then Pasco would approve a hit on them.
“They’re going to get away with it,” Pat says as they drive away and head back up to Providence.
“Looks like it,” Danny says.
It sucks, but there it is.
End of story.
Eight
Except it isn’t.
It might all have died down and blown over like a summer squall, but a week later Danny goes to visit Liam in the hospital, and when he gets up to the room, she’s there.
Pam.
Smiling, looking gorgeous in a white summer dress, holding Liam’s hand, and he’s smiling back, weakly but bravely.