“The worst thing,” Tony says, “would be if the Murphys won without you. Then you’re fucked.”
Out in the cold, Sal thinks.
“Can they win?” he asks. Outmanned, outgunned, Danny Ryan on the sidelines . . .
“With us on their side, maybe,” Tony says.
“The balance of power.”
“The balance of power.” Tony smiles.
“I can’t take a chance being seen with Pat,” Sal says. “Not until all the ducks are in a row. If we have a meet, it will be you. You good with that?”
“Of course.”
“Go back to Jimmy,” Sal says. “Tell him I might be interested in sitting down, but not before certain roads are opened in Florida. This works out, you’re my consigliere.”
He looks down at Tony, who’s still lying there, the lazy fuck that he is. The lazy, beautiful fuck.
“Jesus,” Sal says.
“What?”
“If my wife, my kids . . .”
“You don’t think Judy already knows?” Tony asks.
“Hey, I give it to her good.”
“She knows,” Tony says. “She just doesn’t want to say.”
“Other guys have their gumars.”
Tony bristles. “I’m not your fucking gumar.”
“I know. I didn’t mean . . .”
Sal gets up, puts on his coat, goes out the door.
Twenty-Two
Her perfume precedes her into the room—Danny, resting after his rehab session, smells her before he sees her. Madeleine sweeps into the clinic, looking all cool and lovely, and it just pisses him off.
“I want you to talk to somebody,” she says.
“Who?”
“He’s out in the parking lot,” she says. “Danny, please, for your family’s sake, just hear him out.”
He follows her out to where a car is parked. Madeleine opens the passenger door for him and says, “Just keep an open mind, Danny. Please.”
Then she’s gone.
The guy in the car says, “Danny, I’m Phillip Jardine. FBI.”
No shit, Danny thinks. Jardine looks like FBI, because the feds have a look. Short hair, dull ties, bland WASP faces. This fucking Jardine fits the bill—razor-cut blond hair, clear blue eyes, a real Eagle Scout.
Except Danny knows the fed Eagle Scouts get badges in throat-cutting.
But he gets into the car. Because if someone he knows pulls up and sees him talking to someone they don’t know, they want to know who and why. “Make it quick.”
“I want to help you.”
Yeah, right, Danny thinks. Famous first words. I want to help you fuck your friends, become a rat, go into the Witness Protection Program and sell chicken feed in East Bumfuck somewhere. What feds mean by “I want to help you” is “I want to help you help me.”
Danny knows the federal pitch: Friendship? Fuck friendship. I know you were boys together and all that happy crap, but now it’s time for you to grow the fuck up. You have kids, you want them to know their father? Or you want to see them once a month over a metal table, you’re not allowed to touch them? How about the wife? No offense, but is she going to wait? How long is she going to toss and turn in an empty bed before she finds a new man she teaches your kids to call “Uncle”？
“Help me do what?” Danny asks.
“Have a life,” Jardine answers.
“I have one.”
“For how much longer?” Jardine asks. “You’re losing the war. You know it, I know it, everyone on the street knows it’s just a matter of time. You have a wife, and a kid on the way. A family that loves you.”
Danny feels a flash of anger. “What do you know about my family?”
Jardine shrugged. “If you love them, and you have a chance to give them a life, you’ll take it.”
“What, you’re offering me that chance?”
“That’s right,” Jardine says. “You finish your therapy up here and you go. You and Terri and the baby she’s carrying.”
“Into the program.”
Jardine nods.
“But I’d have to testify against my friends,” Danny says.
“Your friends?” Jardine asks. “Which ones? The Morettis? They want you dead. The Murphys? You think you’re one of them? One of the family? You’re not. They may let you eat at their table, but they’ll never give you your own chair.”
“Fuck that. No.” No way, no fucking way in hell he’s testifying against his friends. Against Pat, or even John.