“Just tell me,” she says, not looking up from the stove. “Is it Liam?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Dad?” Her voice quavers.
“Pat would have said.”
“Then who—”
“I don’t know, Terri. I just know it’s bad.”
Wants to tell her that he’s safe for the time being, that he has the choice of just opting out of this thing. But he hasn’t decided what he’s going to do yet, and don’t know how to tell her anyway. “Go to your parents’， take care of your mom.”
The bacon starts to smoke. Terri takes it off and lays it on a folded paper towel on a plate, then cracks two eggs in the pan and fries them in the hot grease. Then she takes two slices of Wonder bread out of the bag and pops them into the toaster.
“What are we going to do?” she asks.
“About what?”
“We’re gonna have a baby, Danny.”
She has tears in her eyes. Unusual for Terri; she don’t cry about a lot. Danny wraps his arms around her and she lays her head on his shoulder and cries.
“It’s going to be all right, Terri,” he says. “It’s going to be all right.”
“How, Danny?” she asks, straightening up and looking him in the eyes. “How’s it going to be all right?”
“Let’s just go,” Danny says. “You, me, and the baby.”
“Where?”
“California.”
“California again,” Terri says. “What is it with you and that place?”
“It’s supposed to be nice.”
“You don’t just pick up and move,” Terri says. “It takes money to relocate. You don’t have a job there . . . and we need your health insurance.”
She breaks away from him, goes back to the stove, flips the eggs and uses the spatula to break the yolks. Danny likes his eggs over hard with the yolk spread out.
“I’ll get a job,” he says. “With benefits.”
“How?”
“Terri, quit nagging me, all right?!”
“Don’t yell at me!”
“Well, don’t yell at me!”
“Make your own fucking eggs. Jerk.”
She walks out.
Danny turns the heat off on the stove. Decides he doesn’t have time for bacon and eggs, so he pours himself a cup of coffee, milk and sugar, and takes it with him.
“Go to your parents’！” he yells.
He heads out the door.
Walks down to the Gloc.
Head on a swivel just in case the Morettis think they didn’t get their answer quick enough.
Two unmarked police cars are parked out by the Gloc as Danny walks up. Good thing to know, he thinks, we still have a few cops left. The Morettis aren’t going to hit the Gloc in daylight, not after last night, but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious. He nods at the cops and goes in.
Bobby Bangs is behind the bar, making fresh pots of coffee. Jimmy Mac is already there, watching the door. He takes Danny by the elbow and says, “They want you in back.”
“Yeah?”
“What they said.”
Danny opens the door to the back room. They’re gathered at the usual booth—John, Pat, and Bernie.
He don’t see Liam.
“Thanks for coming, Danny,” Pat says. He walks over, puts his arm around Danny and walks him to the booth.
Now, Danny thinks, I get a seat at the table.
Now.
John nods to him. A gesture of respect, acknowledgment. Danny thinks he looks suddenly old, and maybe he is, because it’s clearly Pat who’s running the meeting.
“You want something to fortify that cup?” Pat asks Danny.
“No, I’m okay.”
“All right,” Pat says. “Here it is and it’s not good . . .”
Brian Young, Howie Moran, Kenny Meagher, all dead. Young and Moran shot from long range—single bullets to the head or heart. Meagher gunned down at close range coming out of an after-hours club.
No wonder John looks like an old man now.
Danny ain’t feeling so young himself. Brian and Kenny—both friends, guys he went to school with or knew from the neighborhood. Parties, pickup hockey games, weddings.
Now it will be wakes and funerals.
“They must have been planning this for a long time,” Pat is saying. “They knew habits, cars . . .”
Pat says, “It was Sal Antonucci.”
“For the close stuff, maybe,” Danny says. “The others? Long range? That ain’t anyone on Sal’s crew, even Peter and Paul’s. They brought someone in.”