“Jesus, Brendan,” Danny says.
Because Frankie Vecchio hears it. Frankie’s a soldier in the Moretti crew; he’s sitting at the next table with a couple of his guys, hears it and looks over. “You’ll keep your fucking mouth shut if you know what’s good for you.”
Yeah, well, Brendan Handrigan never knew what was good for him—if he had, he might have graduated high school, or gone into the navy or something. Now he makes some lame response about it being a free country, but finishes his drink and leaves the bar.
“You should tell your friend there to button his lip,” Frankie V tells Danny.
“He don’t mean no harm,” Danny says. It was a stupid joke, the kind guys make to each other a dozen times a day. Back in the good times, before the clambake, they’d laugh about it. But that was before, and now feelings are raw, and Liam has stolen Paulie’s woman, and it isn’t funny.
Frankie V can’t freakin’ wait to find Paulie and tell him—he goes hustling over to the American Vending Machine office, an old two-story white building on Atwells Avenue that doubles as the Moretti family base and a social club, and tattles like a girl.
Paulie goes predictably apeshit.
“We gotta do something about this,” he says to his brother. Liam Murphy groping his girl at a party is one thing. Taking her away is another—and now the whole town is clowning him? A dipshit like Brendan Handrigan thinks it’s okay to run his mouth? “I mean, where’s it going to end, Peter?”
Peter gets it. People start to disrespect you in one area of your life, it leaks into others. Pretty soon they don’t want to make payments, they don’t think they need to do what they’re told, they think maybe they can step into your spot. With the move up Peter wants to make, he can’t let his little brother look like a douchebag. He has other reasons, too. Peter is a little bit of a philosopher—he believes that no problem comes without an opportunity. “What do you want to do?”
“You know what I want to do.”
But Pasco Ferri tells them no.
Standing in the little kitchen area, he stirs the chowder that’s been simmering on the stove since early morning. Real Rhode Island chowder, with clear broth, not that milky baby puke they throw at you up in Boston. He turns and looks deliberately at Paulie Moretti. “If you hit John Murphy’s son we’ll be in a war that won’t end until we kill every mick in Rhode Island.”
“Okay with me,” Paulie says.
“Is that right?” Pasco asks. “It’s okay with you some of our own people get killed in the process? Our businesses are disrupted? Okay with you we lose cops and politicians when we start littering the state with bodies? This stronza is worth all that? Some joke about your little pesce is worth all that?”
It isn’t, Pasco thinks as he turns his eyes to Peter. But the Murphy-controlled docks are, aren’t they, Peter?
To you, though. Not to me.
I’ve fought my wars.
Paulie says, “If my father was in charge—”
“But he isn’t,” Pasco says. “If you want to go to the ACI and ask him what you should do, be my guest—he’s going to tell you the same thing: you can’t clip Liam Murphy over this.”
“They disrespected us,” Peter says. “We can’t just do nothing.”
“Did I say do nothing?” Pasco asks.
He sips the chowder, then adds a little pepper. The doctor has told him no pepper, but what do doctors really know?
Nine
Danny finishes his chop suey and wipes up the gravy with bread. The old Chinese joints, they still serve slices of white bread with the chop suey because their mostly gweilo customers don’t want to waste good gravy.
Brendan is doing the same thing.
The two of them came to get the three-dollar lunch special before going to visit this deadbeat over on Hope Street. The irony isn’t lost on Danny that a degenerate gambler lives on Hope Street.
Where the hell else would he live?
“Let’s go do this,” Brendan says.
Danny nods. Ain’t neither of them too happy about it. It’s never fun, going to break a guy down. He wipes his lips on the paper napkin, gets up, pushes back his chair and follows Brendan onto Eddy Street. At first he thinks it’s tomato sauce on his shirt, but he remembers he had Chinese, not Italian, then he sees Brendan crumple to the sidewalk.
“Big-mouth motherfucker,” Paulie says, and he shoots Brendan two more times in the stomach. Then he steps back into a car and Frankie V drives him away.