Danny can’t fucking believe it’s happening—he’s never seen anyone shot before. Brendan is crying, trying to hold himself inside himself.
“God, Danny, help me. Jesus.”
He bleeds out, right there in front of Danny, right there on Eddy Street in the clichéd broad daylight. Everybody sees everything and nobody sees nothing.
That’s what John Murphy tells Danny that night in the back room of the Glocca Morra pub in Dogtown.
It’s your classic Irish American joint, done in dark wood with a few tables and deep booths. The tricolor flag on the wall, Irish music in the jukebox, faded photos of Republican martyrs on the wall. Posters reminding you not to forget the men behind the wire. You go in there to be Irish, Danny thinks, as if you’re not already, as if you can get away from it anywhere anyway.
Saturday nights they have live music—some musicians from Ireland or some Americans who just think they are—fiddles and tin whistles and banjos and guitars and it’s a little too “come all ye” for Danny’s taste. The kitchen serves up lamb stew and shepherd’s pie, fish-and-chips and a decent burger, and you often have three generations in the place at the same time.
Nostalgic, Danny thinks, for a life we never led.
But the Gloc has been the headquarters of the Irish mob since the turn of the century, and it isn’t going to change, even though Dogtown is dying. Fewer of the Irish, the Jews, the Chinese; more Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans. In a way it’s a good thing, because more of the Irish have moved to the better parts of the city, or the suburbs. They left the docks and the factories to become doctors and lawyers and businessmen.
The old men, they hold on because the neighborhood is like an old chair they’ve grown used to. They’re sitting in the back room now, the inner sanctum where John Murphy holds court, him and his cronies, sipping their whiskey and plotting. Conspiracies that go nowhere, Danny thinks, dreams that are stillborn.
John Murphy is the king of an empire that died a long time ago.
The light of a long-dead star.
The old men crouch around that booth like leprechauns and advise that they have no choice now, there is no gray area now, this time they have to hit back.
Pat agrees.
His dad doesn’t.
“That’s what Moretti wants us to do,” John says. He taps the tips of his fingers against the side of his head. “Use your brains. Do you really think that Peter gives a damn about your brother stealing Paulie’s girlfriend? All he cares about is money—he’d sell his sisters to a Chinese cathouse if he thought there was a dollar in it. Your idiot brother just gave him an excuse, is all, for a provocation.”
“What do you mean?” Pat asks his father.
“As long as Pasco is the boss,” John says, “we’ll have peace. Unless you do something stupid, that is. But Pasco is moving on soon, and the Morettis are just looking for an excuse to start a war. You want to hand that to them, wrapped up in a pretty bow, do you?”
“They want the docks,” Bernie Hughes pipes up.
Tall, skinny, saturnine—hair as white and wispy as the cotton in an aspirin bottle—Bernie is an accountant, John’s money man, Marty’s before that. He sees nothing but the bottom line. “Peter wants to move up into Pasco’s empty chair, but to do that he needs to show he can be a big earner, make everybody a lot of money. But he’s maxed out on his own businesses—the vending machines, the protection, the gambling, the drugs—and needs a fresh source of income. That would be our source of income, Pat.”
“That Peter is smart,” John says. “And Chris Palumbo is smarter. If we give them a war, they’ll take the docks. We can’t stop them. They have too many men and too much money. They’d have done it already—it’s only Pasco holding them back. If we answer for Handrigan, Pasco will have no choice but to bring his entire family against us. He’ll bring in Boston, if he has to, and Hartford. Maybe even New York.”
“So we have to just take this?” Pat says.
Bernie Hughes says what John doesn’t want to. “Look, we all know it should have been Liam who got shot. Pasco Ferri stayed Paulie’s hand from that, but had to give him something, so they let him do Handrigan. It can end there.”
“Fuck that,” Danny says. “I’m telling the cops what I saw.”
Brendan’s blood is still spattered on his shirt.
“That’s not our way,” John says.
“Fuck that omerta bullshit,” Danny says. “I don’t owe those wops nothing.”