City on Fire (Danny Ryan, #1)(4)

So he picks up some extra coin that way, and then there’s the cargo he helps walk off the dock, and the trucks that he and Pat and Jimmy Mac sometimes take on the dark road from Boston to Providence.

They work with the Morettis on those jobs, getting the word and the nod from the brothers and then taking the trucks down, the tax-free cigarettes going into the Moretti vending machines, the booze going to Moretti-protected clubs or the Gloc or other bars in Dogtown. Suits like they took last night get sold out the trunks of cars in Dogtown, and the Morettis get their cut. Everybody wins except the insurance companies, and fuck them, they charge you up the ass anyway and then raise your rates if you have an accident.

So Danny makes a living, but nothing like the Murphys, who get points from the dock bosses, the no-show wharf jobs, the loan-shark ops, the gambling, and the kickbacks that come from the Tenth Ward, which includes Dogtown. Danny gets some crumbs from all that, but he don’t sit at the big table in the back room with the Murphys.

It’s embarrassing.

Even Peter Moretti said something to him about it.

They were walking down the beach together the other day when Peter said, “No offense, Danny, but, as your friend, I can’t help but wonder.”

“Wonder what, Peter?”

“With you marrying the daughter and all,” Peter said, “we all figured you’d get a little boost up, you know what I mean.”

Danny felt the heat rise to his cheeks. Thinking about the Moretti crew sitting around the vending machine office on Federal Hill, playing cards, sipping espressos, shooting the shit. Danny didn’t like it his name came up, especially not about this.

He didn’t know what to say to Peter. Truth was, he’d figured he’d get a boost, too, but it hadn’t happened. He expected his father-in-law to have taken him into the back room of the Gloc for a “chat,” put his arm around him and given him a piece of the street action, a card game, a seat at the table—something.

“I don’t like to push,” Danny finally said.

Peter nodded and looked past Danny out at the horizon, where Block Island seemed to float like a low cloud. “Don’t get me wrong, I love Pat like a brother, but . . . I don’t know, sometimes I think the Murphys . . . Well, you know, because it used to be the Ryans, didn’t it? Maybe they’re afraid to move you up, you might have thoughts of restoring the old dynasty. And if you and Terri have a boy . . . a Murphy and a Ryan? I mean, come on.”

“I just want to make a living.”

“Don’t we all?” Peter laughed, and he let it drop.

Danny knew that Peter was making onions. He liked Peter, considered him a friend, but Peter was going to be Peter. And Danny had to admit there was some truth to what Peter said. He’d thought it, too—that Old Man Murphy was shutting him out because he was afraid of the Ryan name.

Danny don’t mind it so much with Pat, a good guy and a hard worker who runs the docks well and doesn’t lord it over anyone. Pat’s a natural leader, and Danny, well, if he’s being honest with himself, is a natural follower. He don’t want to lead the family, take his father’s place. He loves Pat and would follow him to hell with a squirt gun.

Kids from Dogtown, they’ve been together forever—him and Pat and Jimmy. St. Brendan’s Elementary, then St. Brendan’s High School. They played hockey together, got slaughtered by the French-Canadian kids from Mount St. Charles. They played basketball together, got slaughtered by the Black kids at Southie. Didn’t matter they got slaughtered—they played tough and didn’t back down from nobody. They ate most suppers together, sometimes at Jimmy’s, mostly at Pat’s.

Pat’s mom, Catherine, would call them to the table like they were one person, “Patdannyjimmyyyyyyy!” Down the street, across the little backyards. Patdannyjimmyyyyyyy! Suppaaaaaah! When there was no food at home because Marty was too drunk to get it together, Danny would sit at the big Murphy table and have pot roast and boiled potatoes, spaghetti and meatballs, always fish-and-chips on Friday, even after the Pope said it was okay to eat meat.

With no real family of his own—Danny was that anomaly, an Irish only child—he loved the sprawling Murphy household. There was Pat and Liam, Cassie, and, of course, Terri, and they took Danny in like he was family.

He wasn’t exactly an orphan, Danny, but a near thing, what with his mother running off when he was just a baby and his father pretty much ignoring him because all he could see in him was her.

As Martin Ryan fell deeper into the bitterness and the bottle, he was hardly a fit father for the boy, who more and more took refuge on the streets with Pat and Jimmy and at the Murphy house, where there was laughter and smiles and rarely any yelling except when the sisters fought for the bathroom.

Danny was a lonely boy, Catherine Murphy always thought, a lonely, sad boy, and who could blame him? So if he was at the house a bit more than was normal, she was happy to give him a smile and a mother’s hug, some cookies and a peanut butter sandwich, and as he grew up and his interest in Terri became obvious—well, Danny Ryan was a nice boy from the neighborhood and Terri could do worse.

John Murphy wasn’t so sure. “He’s got that blood.”

“What blood?” his wife asked, although she knew.

“That Ryan blood,” Murphy answered. “It’s cursed.”

“Stop being foolish,” Catherine said. “When Marty was well . . .”