Danny, he don’t know what to say, but Liam says, “Danny, I think you know Pam.”
You think I know Pam, you dumb fuck? You think I know Pam?
“Sure. Yeah. Hi.”
“Hi, Danny.”
Like this is just another day at the freakin’ beach. She yaps on about some real estate shit or something, but Danny ain’t hearing none of it. His head is whirling. Finally, he hears her say, “Well, I’d better be on my way.”
“Thanks for coming by,” Liam says.
Pam leans down and kisses him on the cheek.
Danny follows her out into the corridor.
“No disrespect,” he says, “but, Pam, what the hell?”
“He apologized to me,” Pam says. “He was very sweet. And what Paulie did to him was wrong.”
“The hell you think Paulie would do to him now,” Danny asks, his temper rising, “he saw you here with him, holding his hand?”
“I’m not with Paulie anymore,” Pam says. “He’s an animal.”
Fucking A, he’s an animal, Danny thinks. And “animal” don’t begin to describe it, what he’s gonna do when he hears about this. “Does Paulie know?”
“Does he know what?” she answers, really cool, like Danny has no business asking her questions.
“That you’re dumping him.”
“He calls,” she says. “I don’t call back.”
“Jesus, Pam.”
“It’s my life,” she says.
Yeah, it is and it isn’t, Danny thinks. It’s your life, but it’s all our lives you’re fucking with, and you have to get that, you’re not stupid.
Pam says, “Anyway, I feel a little guilty, like maybe some of it was my fault, what happened. I was kind of drunk, maybe I led him on . . . and he didn’t really hurt me. Maybe I was just being, you know, a drama queen.”
Yeah, now you think this, Pam?
She shrugs one pretty bare shoulder and walks away. Right past Pat, coming down the hall with a coffee cabinet for Liam. Pat takes one look at her, walks into Liam’s room, hands him the milkshake and says, “You dumb shit.”
Liam’s smile is phony. “She just came to apologize for what happened.”
“Yeah, well you tell her you forgive her,” Pat says, “and that’s that.”
“Big brother,” Liam says, “you don’t tell me what’s what.”
“You’ve already caused enough trouble.”
“And what have you done about it?” Liam asks. “Nothing.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Fuck you, Liam,” Pat says.
“Yeah, fuck me.”
“You stay away from that girl.”
Yeah, except a week later, when Liam is taking the wheelchair ride out of the hospital, it’s Pam pushing the chair, Pam who drives him home, Pam who moves in with him.
Okay, Danny thinks, maybe Liam is really in love with her, but maybe it’s a giant fuck-you to Paulie Moretti. Like, look who really won the fight. You may have beat me up, but look whose bed she’s in now. Look who’s tapping your girl. It’s freaking genius, really. Liam can’t physically hit back at Paulie, so he gets back at him in the worst way—slicing his balls clean off, turning him into a cornuto.
Every bar, every club he goes in, Paulie hears about it. His goombahs walk right up to the edge with him—“Hey, whatever happened to that Pam chick? Did I see your old squeeze out the other night? Who did I see her with? Can’t remember.” Dangerous shit, but irresistible. I mean, you have to bust balls, right?
Who the fuck knew that Paulie really loved her? That she wasn’t just arm candy, a walking status symbol? Who knew that, as he confessed to his brother in the small hours of a dark morning, Pamela ripped his heart out?
Now the slow burn is on up Federal Hill. The Morettis fume, the embers of their resentment stoked by the whispered jokes, the sly, snide looks, the sight of Pam out with Liam Murphy. Providence is a small town in a small state. You can’t go anywhere without seeing someone you know, someone who knows you, somebody who knows somebody.
It’s going to happen, Danny knows.
It just needs a spark.
Dumbass Brendan Handrigan touches it off.
Handrigan is a minor player—like Danny, a collector for the Murphy loan-shark operations. Early October, he and Danny are sitting in a bar after doing a job, tossing a few back, and Brendan says, “Liam’s cock is like the Starship Enterprise, boldly going where no man has gone before. A good two inches past Paulie, anyway, what I hear.”