So Peter will tell Frankie to shut his stupid mouth unless he wants it shut permanently, and if it comes to that, he’ll give Sal the okay to whack him. Chris would gladly tell Sal that if he could find him.
He pulls up in Sal’s driveway, gets out and rings the bell.
Judy comes to the door. “Sal isn’t here.”
“Will he be back soon?”
“Not if Saint Anthony hears my prayers,” Judy says. “You want to come in, Chris, instead of standing on the doorstep like a jadrool?”
Chris comes in and follows her into the kitchen.
“I was having a sambuca,” Judy says.
“I wouldn’t say no.”
She pours him a shot.
“You have any idea where Sal might be?” Chris asks, sitting down on a barstool at the kitchen counter. He sips the fiery liquor.
“I don’t.”
“Does he have . . . no offense, huh, Judy . . . a gumar?”
Judy laughs. “I only wish. I’m half-afraid he’s given me the AIDS.”
“So you heard about that.”
“You think you know a man,” Judy says. “You don’t know anything.”
Chris sets the glass down and stands up. “If he calls, will you let me know?”
“I hate him,” Judy says, “but I don’t want him dead.”
“Judy . . .”
“I’ve been around this thing my whole life, Chris,” she says. “I know how it is.”
“Nobody wants to hurt him,” Chris says.
“Bullshit.”
“Truth.” Chris holds his hand up.
He leaves the house convinced that Judy doesn’t know where her husband is and that she won’t tell him if she finds out.
Danny sits in the back room of the Gloc.
“It’s a shame,” John says. “I liked that boy.”
“Marvin wasn’t a boy,” Danny says.
“I didn’t mean boy like ‘boy,’” John says. “I mean he was young. What do we know about Sal?”
“Nothing,” Danny says.
He’s had the Altar Boys out beating the bushes and they’ve come up with shit. It’s more than worrisome—with Marvin gone and the Blacks staying on the sideline, there’s nothing to restrain Peter from coming hard.
He’ll want Sal, though, and Sal makes a difference.
“Have you checked the pet stores?” Liam asks.
“What?”
“To see if there’s been a run on gerbils,” Liam says with a smirk.
“Funny,” Danny says. “Funny stuff.”
“I always told you Sal played for the other team,” Liam says. “It’s his what-do-you-call-it, his Achilles’ heel.”
“I gotta get home,” Danny says.
“How’s Terri?” John asks. “She doing okay?”
“Her surgery’s tomorrow.”
“I’ll say a rosary.”
Yeah, you do that, John. I’m sure it will help. Danny gets up. “You wanna do something, Liam? Get out there, try to find Sal.”
“Don’t worry about Sal,” Liam says, still with that fucking smirk on his face.
“I worry,” Danny says.
He worries about everything.
Mostly he worries about Terri.
They’re admitting her this afternoon. Cassie’s going to stay with Ian for the night. The surgery will be first thing in the morning.
It’s funny about words, Danny thinks as he walks home.
Most of the time they don’t mean anything. Then all of a sudden one word means everything, and I’d give anything I have to hear one word, a word that didn’t used to mean anything to me.
Benign.
Liam pours some coke onto the glass coffee table. “They all treat me like dogshit.”
“Who does?” Pam asks, tired of her husband’s self-pitying harangues.
“Danny, for one,” Liam says. “All the guys at the Gloc. Even my own father thinks I’m worthless.”
I wonder why? Pam thinks, although she knows better than to say anything. Maybe it’s because you started this whole thing, kept it going when you had a chance to end it? Maybe because you’ve sworn revenge for your brother—loudly, to whoever would listen—and haven’t done a damn thing except lie around and get high. Maybe because everyone—Danny, the boys at the Gloc, and your father—knows that you’re scared shitless of Sal Antonucci and won’t do a damn thing except talk.
Which is what you’re good at, Liam.