Liam shoots Danny a look, like Shut the fuck up.
“We’ve worked labor,” Bernie says, “construction rackets, loan-sharking, gambling, we’ve liberated some merchandise from the docks, we’ve boosted trucks. But we have never stooped to selling women in prostitution or selling poison for people to shoot in their arms. Why? Because we go to confession on Saturday and communion on Sunday and we know that we will have to answer to our Lord.”
He takes a long sip of the tea.
“And for pragmatic reasons as well,” Bernie says. “We have good working relationships with the police, the judges, and the politicians, who are reasonable about the way the world works. But they draw the line at drugs, and we would lose those relationships.”
“Don Corleone over there,” Liam mutters.
“For these reasons,” Bernie says, “I strongly oppose the arrangement you’ve made with Vecchio, and I urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to reconsider. Danny Ryan, you know better.”
“This is a one-time thing,” Danny says.
“Your soul is never a rental,” Bernie says. “It’s always a sale.”
“You an accountant or a priest?” Liam asks.
“There are similarities,” Bernie says. He turns to John. “What do you say?”
“I don’t like drugs, either,” John says. “It’s a bad business we’ve always left to the wops and the Blacks. But we need the money, and this is the world we live in now. So I say we do it.”
“And that’s your decision?” Bernie asks.
“It is.”
Bernie nods and sits back down.
The night of the hijacking, Danny sits on the bed with Terri, watching some stupid sitcom on television.
She’s half out of it on the pain pills.
“I gotta go out,” Danny says.
“Out where?”
“Work stuff,” Danny says. “Cassie is downstairs if you need anything.”
She holds up her empty glass. “Could you get me some water before you go?”
Danny takes it into the bathroom, fills it and sets it on the side table. Then he leans over and kisses her on the cheek. “I love you.”
“Love you.”
Danny goes to look in on Ian.
Sound asleep. Good.
Cassie’s reading.
“I don’t know what time I’ll be back,” Danny says. That’s no shit. You go to jack the biggest shipment of heroin ever to come into New England, you don’t know when—or if—you’re coming back.
“What’s going on, Danny?”
“Nothing.”
She laughs. “I’m the crazy one, not the stupid one. It’s in the air around here, big doings.”
“How do you know about this?”
“Liam can’t keep a secret in his head any more than he can keep his dick in his pants,” she says. “We have souls, Danny Ryan. We have to take care of them or we lose them.”
“Okay.”
Cassie says, “I’ve got a bad feeling. I tried telling Pop, tried telling Liam. They say it’s just me being crazy me, but it isn’t, Danny, it isn’t.”
“It’s going to be okay,” he says.
Even though he knows it isn’t. Knows that Cassie is right, Bernie is right. He knows that he’s walking toward the edge of a cliff, but somehow he can’t stop his feet from moving—left, right, left, right—toward the abyss. It’s like something else is pushing him, something outside himself, beyond his control.
Cassie says, “I miss Pat.”
“So do I,” Danny says. For a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that I wish it was him making these decisions instead of me.
“Don’t do it, Danny.”
“I have to.”
Because I’m Danny Ryan, the good soldier, he thinks as he walks out. Good old Danny, who does what has to be done.
A few minutes later, Jimmy Mac swings by, with Kevin Coombs riding shotgun. They drive over to Atwells Avenue, where Frankie V is waiting in his Caddy. Jimmy slides behind the wheel. Danny and Kevin get in back, and Kevin pokes his .45 into the back of the front passenger seat as Danny says, “Anything. Anything at all, he splatters you all over the car.”
Kevin smiles and nods. Hard to escape the impression that he wants it to go south. Kevin likes the wet work so much he ought to wear a raincoat instead of the leather jacket.
Vecchio says, “Nothing’s going to go wrong.”
Nothing’s going to go wrong, Danny thinks. Something’s going to go wrong, always does, always has. This deal is wrong from the get-go. If it starts wrong it’s gonna end wrong, that simple.