If Susan Kwan is intimidated by Danny’s gun, she doesn’t show it as he walks her to the small office in the back. “Do you know who we’re with?”
“I know,” Danny says. “I just don’t care. Open the safe.”
She opens it, but says, “Then you are a deeply stupid man.”
“I have heard that said.” He holds his hand out for the money. “Have the girls been paid out?”
“Not yet.”
Danny takes half the cash—the house share that includes the Morettis’ taste. When he comes out of the office, his crew is almost done going through the rooms, robbing the johns.
Kevin is deeply amused. “One of them was a judge. He put me in juvie once.”
It’s a good boost. Just in, just out, this time with about six grand in cash and prizes, and no one gets hurt.
Danny knows that Kwan isn’t going to go to the cops, either. She’s going to go straight to Peter Moretti and ask him what the hell she’s paying protection for, anyway. And she’s going to describe Danny and the Altar Boys.
So is the owner of a candy store when Danny and the Altar Boys go in with baseball bats and smash up the Moretti vending machines.
Likewise the night clerk of a liquor store when they go in and clean out all of the cigarettes that had come in from a Moretti truck hijack.
Ditto the manager of a clothing store when Danny and his crew force their way into the back room and take a rack of hot Italian suits.
They all say the same thing.
Danny Ryan.
“You gonna fuckin’ let him get away with this shit?” Paulie asks Peter after this last boost. “Fuckin’ Danny Ryan?”
“What do you want me to do?” Peter asks.
“Whack him.”
“You remember what happened the last time we tried that?” Peter asks.
The two De Salvo brothers got dead.
But Peter looks around the office and sees his guys’ faces—Frankie V, Sal Antonucci, Chris Palumbo—and none of them is taking his side. He knows his people are tired of getting hit, that they expect him to do something.
“Well, whack somebody,” Paulie says. “Hit back.”
“What’s New York going to say?” Peter asks. “Boston.”
Sal kicks in. “Fuck New York. Fuck Boston. We laid off these donkeys a whole year, look what it got us.”
Peter turns to Chris.
“If we look weak in front of the big families,” Chris says, “they will come in and swallow us whole.”
The man is right, Peter thinks. But we can’t be disproportional—the Irish haven’t killed anybody.
He gives his order.
But make sure, he says, don’t get carried away.
One of Paulie’s crew, Dominic Marchetti, waits outside the Spindrift until Tim Carroll comes out after closing the place.
He grabs Tim before he can open his car door.
“You owe Paulie money,” Dom says.
“What?” Tim asks. “No, I don’t. We worked that out. I’m with the Murphys.”
“You giving me mouth, you lying motherfucker?!”
Dom is a big, heavy guy; Tim isn’t.
So when Dom smacks Tim across the face, his head bounces against the car with a sickening thud.
Dom is one of those guys who once he starts, he don’t know how to stop. Paulie knew that and shouldn’t have sent him, or maybe that’s why he sent him, but anyway, Dom gets carried away.
He punches the semiconscious Tim three times in the face, lets him slide down the car and then stomps on his back a few times for good measure. Then he remembers what he’s there for. “Tell fucking Danny Ryan to knock it the fuck off.”
Tim can barely repeat the message to Danny.
Lying in the hospital bed, jaw wired shut, cheekbone broken, two cracked vertebrae, potential long-term brain damage.
“Who was it?” Danny asks. “Did you recognize him?”
“Dom,” Tim mumbles. “Marchetti.”
“You going to do something now?” Liam asks Danny.
Danny strides across the floor of the restaurant.
Il Fornaio isn’t crowded late in the evening, just a few regulars lingering over coffees and cannoli, and Dom Marchetti sitting by himself on a bench seat along the wall, hunched over a plate of pasta puttanesca.
He tries to get up when he sees Danny coming with a .38 in his hand, but the table is pushed too tightly against his big stomach and he can’t get to his feet—or his gun—in time.
Danny slams his pistol into the side of Dom’s head, three times fast, smashing his left eye orbital and cracking his skull. Dom slumps down on the bench and throws his arms over his head to ward off the blows, but Danny knocks them aside. He shoves the pistol barrel through Dom’s teeth, into his mouth, and pulls the hammer back.