The Power of the Dog

Chapter Seven
Christmastime

New York City, December 1985

Callan planes a board.

In one long, smooth motion, he runs the plane from one end of the wood to the other, then steps back to examine his work.

It looks good.

He takes a piece of fine sandpaper, wraps it around a block of scrap wood and starts to smooth the edge he just created.

Things are good.

Mostly, Callan reflects, they’re so good because they got so bad.

Take Peaches’ big cocaine score: 0.

Actually, minus zero.

Callan got not one cent from that, seeing as how all the cocaine ended up in a Feebee storage locker before it could be put out on the street. The Feds must have had it up the whole time, because as soon as Peaches brought that coke into the jurisdiction of the Eastern District of New York, Giuliani’s trained Feebees were on it like flies on shit.

And Peaches got indicted for possession with intent to distribute.

Heavy weight.

Peaches is looking at having his mid-life crisis in Ossining, if he lives that long, and he has to come up with Carl Sagan bail money, not to mention lawyer money, not to mention while all this is going on he isn’t earning, so Peaches is like, Ante up, boys, it’s tax time, so not only do Callan and O-Bop lose their coke investment, they got to kick in to the Big Peaches Defense Fund, which takes a chunk out of their kickback money, extortion money and loan-shark money.

But the good news is that they didn’t get indicted on the coke. For all his faults, Peaches is a stand-up guy-so is Little Peaches-and although the Feds got Peaches on tape talking to and/or about every goombah in the Greater New York Metropolitan Area, they don’t have O-Bop or Callan.

Which, Callan thinks, is a major fucking blessing.

That weight of coke puts you in for thirty-to-life, closer to life.

So, that’s good.

That makes the air very sweet, just being able to smell it and know you’re going to keep smelling it.

You’re already ahead on your day.

But Peaches is up a pole, so is Little Peaches, and word is the Feds got Cozzo and Cozzo’s brother and a couple of others and they’re just waiting to try to flip Big Peaches to nail it down.

Yeah, good luck on that, Callan thinks.

Peaches is old-school.

Old-school don’t roll over for nothing.

But hard time is the least of Peaches’ problems, because the Feds have indicted Big Paulie Calabrese.

Not for the coke, but on a boatload of other RICO predicates, and Big Paulie’s really sweating it because it’s only been a few months since that major hard-on Giuliani got four other bosses a century each in the penitentiary, and Big Paulie’s case is coming up next.

That Giuliani is a funny fuck, well aware of the old Italian toast “Cent’ anni”-May you live a hundred years-except what he means is “May you live a hundred years in the hole.” And Giuliani wants to hit for the cycle-he wants to punch out all the heads of the old Five Families, and it looks like Paulie is going down. Understandably, Paulie don’t want to die in the joint, so he’s a little tense.

He’s looking to take a little of his agita out on Big Peaches.

You deal, you die.

Peaches, he’s screaming that he’s innocent, that the Feds set him up, that he wouldn’t dream of defying his boss by dealing dope, but Calabrese keeps hearing rumors about tapes that have Peaches talking about the coke and saying a few inflammatory things about Paul Calabrese himself, but Peaches is like, Tapes? What tapes? And the Feds won’t turn the tapes over to Paulie, because they don’t intend to use them as evidence in Calabrese’s case-yet-but Calabrese knows that they’re sure as hell going to use them against Peaches in his case, so Peaches has them, and Paulie’s demanding that he bring them around to the house at Todt Hill.

Which Peaches is desperate not to do, because he might as well just stick a grenade up his ass, reach around and pull the pin. Because he’s on them tapes saying shit like, Hey, you know that maid the Godmother is pronging? You ready for this? I hear he’s got this pump-up dick he uses…

And other choice tidbits about the Godmother and what a cheap, mean, limp-dick asshole he is, not to mention a verbal rundown of the whole Cimino batting order, so Peaches does not want Paulie getting an earful of them tapes.

What makes it even more tense is that the cancer is finally taking Neill Demonte, the old-school Cimino underboss and the only thing keeping the Cozzo wing of the family from open rebellion. So not only is that restraining influence gone, but the underboss position is going to be vacant, and the Cozzo wing has expectations.

That Johnny Boy, and not Tommy Bellavia, better be made the new underboss.

“I ain’t reporting to no fucking chauffeur,” Peaches grumbles like he isn’t already skating on skinny ice. Like he’s going to have a fucking chance to report to anybody other than the warden or Saint Peter.

Callan gets all this gossip from O-Bop, who just refuses to believe that Callan’s getting out.

“You can’t get out,” O-Bop says.

“Why not?”

“What, you think you just walk away?” O-Bop asks. “You think there’s an exit door?”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Callan says. “Why, are you gonna stand in it?”

“No,” O-Bop says quickly, “but there are people out there who have, you know, resentments. You don’t want to be out there alone.”

“That’s what I want.”

Well, not exactly.

The truth is, Callan’s in love.

He finishes planing the board and walks home, thinking about Siobhan.

He met her at the Glocca Mora pub on Twenty-sixth and Third. He is sitting at the bar having a beer, listening to Joe Burke play his Irish flute, and he sees her with a group of friends at a table in the front. It’s her long black hair he notices first. Then she turns around and he sees her face and those gray eyes and he’s done for.

He goes over to the table and sits down.

Turns out her name is Siobhan and she’s just over fromBelfast -grew up onKashmir Road.

“My dad was from Clonnard,” Callan says. “Kevin Callan.”

“I heard of him,” she says, then turns away.

“What?”

“I came here to get away from all that.”

“Then why are you in here?” he asks. Shit, every other song they sing in the place is about all that-about the Troubles, past, present or future. Even now, Joe Burke puts down the flute, picks up the banjo and the band launches into “The Men Behind the Wire”:

“Armoured cars and tanks and guns

Came to take away our sons

But every man will stand behind

The men behind the wire.”

She says, “I don’t know-it’s where the Irish go, isn’t it?”

“There are other places,” he says. “Have you had dinner?”

“I’m here with friends.”

“It'd be okay with them.”

“But not with me.”

Shot down in flames.

Then she says, “Another time, though.”

“Is that 'another time,’ like a polite blow-off?” Callan asks. “Or another time, we make a date?”

“I’m off Thursday night.”

He takes her to an expensive place on Restaurant Row, just outside the Kitchen but well within his and O-Bop’s sphere of influence. Not a piece of clean linen arrives in this place without him and O-Bop give it the pass, the fire inspector don’t notice that the back door stays locked, a beat cop always finds it convenient to stroll past the place and show the colors, and sometimes a few cases of whiskey come straight off the truck without the hassle of an invoice, so Callan gets a prime table and attentive service.

“Jesus,” Siobhan asks as she scans the menu. “Can you afford this?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you do?” she asks. “For work?”

Which is an awkward question.

“This and that.”

“This” being labor racketeering, loan-sharking and contract murder; “that” being dope.

“It must be lucrative,” she says, “this and that.”

He thinks she’s maybe going to get up and walk out right then, but instead she orders the fillet of sole. Callan don’t know shit about wine, but he stopped by the restaurant that afternoon and let it be known that whatever the girl orders, the wine steward should bring the right bottle.

He does.

Compliments of the house.

Siobhan gives Callan a funny look.

“I do some work for them,” Callan explains.

“This and that.”

“Yeah.”

He gets up a few minutes later to go to the bathroom, finds the manager and says, “Look, I want the check, okay?”

“Sean, the owner would fucking kill me if I gave you a check.”

Because this isn’t the deal. The deal is, whenever Sean Callan and Stevie O'Leary come in they eat and no check appears and they leave a heavy cash tip for the waiter. That is just understood, just like it’s understood that they don’t come in too often, but spread their visits around the places on Restaurant Row.

He’s nervous-he don’t go out on a lot of dates, and when he does usually it’s to the Gloc or the Liffey and if they eat at all it’s a burger or maybe some lamb stew and they usually just get shit-faced and stagger back and screw and don’t hardly remember it. He only comes into a place like this on business, to-as O-Bop puts it-show the flag.

“That,” she says, wiping the final remnants of chocolate mousse off her lips, “was the best meal I’ve ever had in my entire life.”

The bill comes and it’s a fucking whopper.

When Callan looks at it he don’t know how the average guy can afford to live. He pulls a wad of bills from his pocket and lays them on the tray. This gets him another curious look from Siobhan.

Still, he’s surprised when she takes him to her apartment and leads him straight into the bedroom. She pulls her sweater over her head and shakes her hair out, then reaches behind herself to unsnap her bra. Then she kicks off her shoes, steps out of her jeans and gets under the covers.

“You still have your socks on,” Callan says.

“My feet are still cold,” she says. “Are you coming in?”

He strips down to his underwear and waits until he’s under the sheets to take off his shorts. She guides him inside her. She comes quickly, and when he’s about to come he tries to pull out, but she locks her legs around him and won’t let him. “It’s okay, I’m on the Pill. I want you to come in me.”

Then she rolls her hips and that settles it.

In the morning she gets up to go to confession. Otherwise, she tells him, she can’t take Communion on Sunday.

“Are you going to confess us?” he asks.

“Of course.”

“Are you going to promise not to do it again?” he asks, half-afraid the answer will be yes.

“I wouldn’t lie to a priest,” she says. Then she’s out the door. He falls back asleep. Wakes up when he feels her get back in bed with him. But when he reaches for her, she refuses him, telling him that he’ll have to wait until after Mass tomorrow because her soul has to be clean to take Communion.

Catholic girls, Callan thinks.

He takes her to midnight Mass.

Pretty soon they’re together most of the time.

Too much of the time, according to O-Bop.

Then they move in together. The actress Siobhan has been subletting from comes back from her tour, and Siobhan has to find a place to live, which is not easy in New York on what a waitress makes, so Callan suggests she just move in with him.

“I don’t know,” she says. “That’s a big step.”

“We sleep together almost every night anyway.”

“Almost being the operative word there.”

“You’ll end up living in Brooklyn.”

“Brooklyn’s okay.”

“It’s okay, but it’s a long subway ride.”

“You really want me to move in with you.”

“I really want you to move in with me.”

The problem is, his place is a shit hole. A third-floor walk-up on Forty-sixth and Eleventh. One room and a bath. He’s got a bed, a chair, a TV, an oven he’s never turned on and a microwave.

“You make how much money?” Peaches asks. “And you live like this?”

“It’s all I need.”

Except now it isn’t, so he starts looking for another place.

He’s thinking about the Upper West Side.

O-Bop don’t like it. “It wouldn’t look good,” he says, “you leaving the neighborhood.”

“There’s no good places left here,” Callan says. “Everything’s taken.”

Turns out that’s not true. O-Bop drops a word to a few building managers, some deposits get returned and four or five nice apartments become available for Callan to choose from. He picks a place on Fiftieth and Twelfth with a small balcony and a view of the Hudson.

He and Siobhan start playing house.

She starts buying stuff for the place-blankets and sheets and pillows and towels and all the female shit for the bathroom. And pots and pans and dishes and dishcloths and shit, which freaks him out at first but then he kind of likes it.

“We could eat at home more,” she says, “and save a lot of money.”

“Eat at home more?” he asks. “We don’t eat at home at all.”

“That’s what I mean,” she says. “It adds up. We spend a fortune we could be saving.”

“Saving for what?”

He don’t get it.

Peaches sets him straight. “Men live in the now. Eat now, drink now, get laid now. We’re not thinking about the next meal, the next drink, the next fuck-we’re just happy now. Women live in the future-and this you better learn, you dumb mick: The woman is always building the nest. Everything she does, what she’s really doing is gathering twigs and leaves and shit for the nest. And the nest is not for you, paisan. The nest is not even for her. The nest is for the bambino.”

So Siobhan starts cooking more and at first he don’t like it-he misses the crowds and the noise and the chatter-but then he gets to liking it. Likes the quiet, likes looking at her as she eats and reads the paper, likes wiping the dishes.

“The hell you drying dishes for?” O-Bop asks him. “Get a dishwasher.”

“They’re expensive.”

“No they’re not,” O-Bop says. “You go to Handrigan's, pick out a dishwasher, it comes off the back of the truck, Handrigan gets the insurance.”

“I’ll just wipe the dishes.”

But a week later, him and O-Bop are out taking care of business and Siobhan’s at home when the buzzer buzzes and two guys come up with a dishwasher in the box on a hand truck.

“What’s this?” Siobhan asks.

“A dishwasher.”

“We didn’t order a dishwasher.”

“Hey,” one of the guys says, “we just humped this thing up here, we ain’t humping it back down. And I ain’t telling O-Bop I didn’t do what he said for me to do, so why don’t you just be a nice girl and let us hook up the dishwasher for you?”

She lets them put it in, but it’s a topic of discussion when Callan gets home.

“What’s this?” she asks.

“It’s a dishwasher.”

“I know what it is,” she says. “I mean, what is it?”

I’m going to give fucking Stevie a beating is what it is, Callan thinks, but he says, “A housewarming present.”

“It’s a very generous housewarming present.”

“O-Bop’s a generous guy.”

“It’s stolen, isn’t it?”

“Depends on what you mean by stolen.”

“It’s going back.”

“That would be complicated.”

“What’s complicated about it?”

He don’t want to explain to her that Handrigan has probably already put in a claim for it, and for three or four others just like it, which he’s sold for half-price in a “soup-and-sandwich” scam. So he just says, “It’s complicated is all.”

“I’m not stupid, you know,” she says.

No one’s said anything to her, but she gets it. Just living in the neighborhood-going to the store, to the cleaner's, dealing with the cable guy, the plumber-she feels the deference with which she’s treated. It’s little things-a couple of extra pears tossed into the basket, the clothes done tomorrow instead of the day after, the uncharacteristic courtesy of a cabbie, the man at the newsstand, the construction guys who don’t hoot or whistle.

That night in bed she says, “I left Belfast because I was tired of gangsters.”

He knows what she means-the Provos have become little more than thugs, controlling in Belfast most of the things that, well, most of the things that he and O-Bop control in the Kitchen. He knows what she’s telling him. He wants to beg her to stay, but instead says, “I’m trying to get out.”

“Just get out.”

“It’s not that simple, Siobhan.”

“It’s complicated.”

“That’s right, it is.”

The old myth about only leaving toes-up is just that-a myth. You can walk away, but it is complicated. You can’t just up and stroll. You have to ease out, otherwise there are dangerous suspicions.

And what would I do? he thinks.

For money?

He hasn’t put much away. His is the businessman’s lament-a lot of money comes in, but a lot goes out, too. People don’t understand-there’s Calabrese’s cut, and Peaches’, right off the top. Then the bribes-to union officials, to cops. Then the crew gets taken care of. Then he and O-Bop cut up whatever’s left, which is still a lot but not as much as you think. And now they have to kick into the Big Peaches Defense Fund… well, there ain’t enough to retire on, not enough to open a legit business.

And anyway, he wonders, what would that be? What the hell am I qualified for? All I know about is extortion and strong-arm and-face it-turning the lights out on guys.

“What do you want me to do, Siobhan?”

“Anything.”

“What? Wait tables? I don’t see myself with a towel over my arm.”

One of them long silences in the dark before she says, “Then I guess I don’t see myself with you.”

He gets up the next morning, she’s sitting at the table drinking tea and smoking a cig. (You can take the girl out of Ireland, but.. . he thinks.) He sits down across the table and says, “I can’t get out just like that. That’s not how it works. I need a little more time.”

She gets right down to it, one of the things he loves about her-she’s bottom-line. “How much time?”

“A year, I dunno.”

“That’s too long.”

“But it might take that long.”

She nods several times, then says, “As long as you’re headed toward the door.”

“Okay.”

“I mean steadily toward the door.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

So now, a couple of months later, he’s trying to explain it to O-Bop. “Look, this is all fucked-up. You know, I don’t even know how it all got started. I’m sitting in a bar one afternoon and Eddie Friel walks in and then it all just gets out of hand. I don’t blame you, I don’t blame anybody, all I know is this has got to end. I’m out.”

As if to put a period on it he puts all his hardware into a brown-paper grocery bag and gives it to the river. Then goes home to have a talk with Siobhan. “I’m thinking of carpentry,” he says. “You know, storefronts and apartments and shit like that. Maybe, eventually, I could build cabinets and desks and stuff. I was thinking of going to talk with Patrick McGuigan, maybe see if he’d take me on as an unpaid apprentice. We have enough money set aside to see us over until I can get real work.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“We’re gonna be poor.”

“I’ve been poor,” she says. “I’m good at it.”

So the next morning he goes to McGuigan’s loft on Eleventh and Forty-eighth.

They went to Sacred Heart together and talk about high school for a few minutes, and about hockey for a few more minutes, and then Callan asks if he can come to work for him.

“You’re shitting me, right?” McGuigan says.

“No, I’m serious.”

Hell yes he is-Callan works like a mother learning the trade.

Shows up at seven sharp every morning with a lunch bucket in his hand and a lunch-bucket attitude in his head. McGuigan wasn’t sure what to expect, but what he really didn’t expect was for Callan to be a workhorse. He figured him to be a drunk or a hungover druggie, maybe, but not the citizen who walks through the door on time every morning.

No, the guy came to work, and he came to learn.

Callan finds he likes working with his hands.

At first he’s all thumbs-he feels like a jerk, a mook-but then it starts coming along. And McGuigan, once he sees that Callan is serious, is patient. Takes the time to teach him things, brings him along, gives him small jobs to screw up until he gets to the point where he can do them without screwing up.

Callan goes home at night tired.

End of the day, he’s physically worn out-he’s sore, his arms ache-but mentally he feels good. He’s relaxed, he’s not worried about anything. There’s nothing he’s done during the day he’s going to have bad dreams about that night.

He stops going around to the bars and pubs where he and O-Bop used to hang out. He don’t go around the Liffey or the Landmark no more. Mostly he comes home and he and Siobhan have a quick supper, watch some TV, go to bed.

One day O-Bop shows up at the carpentry studio.

He stands there in the doorway, looking stupid for a minute, but Callan ain’t even looking at him, he’s paying attention to his sanding, and then O-Bop turns around and leaves, and McGuigan thinks maybe he should say something but there don’t seem to be nothing to say. It’s like Callan just took care of it, that’s all, and now McGuigan don’t have to worry about the West Side boyos coming by.

But after work, Callan goes and searches out O-Bop. Finds him on the corner of Eleventh and Forty-third, and they walk over to the waterfront together.

“Fuck you,” O-Bop says. “What was that?”

“That’s me telling you that my work is my work.”

“What, I can’t come say hello?”

“Not when I’m working.”

“We ain’t, what, friends no more?” O-Bop asks.

“We’re friends.”

“I dunno,” says O-Bop. “You don’t come around, no one sees you. You could come have a pint sometimes, you know.”

“I don’t hang in the bars no more.”

O-Bop laughs. “You’re gettin’ to be a regular fuckin’ Boy Scout, aren’t you?”

“Laugh if you want.”

“Yeah, I will.”

They stand there looking across the river. It’s a cold evening. The water looks black and hard.

“Yeah, well, don’t do me any favors,” O-Bop says. “You’re not any fuckin’ fun anyway since you’re on this working-class-hero, Joe-Lunchbucket thing. It’s just that people are asking about you.”

“Who’s asking about me?”

“People.”

“Peaches?”

“Look,” O-Bop says. “There’s a lot of heat right now, a lot of pressure. People getting edgy about other people maybe talking to grand juries.”

“I’m not talking to anybody.”

“Yeah, well, see that you don’t.”

Callan grabs Stevie by the lapels of his pea coat.

“Are you getting heavy with me, Stevie?”

“No.”

A hint of a whine.

“Because you don’t get heavy with me, Stevie.”

“I’m just saying… you know.”

Callan lets loose of him. “Yeah, I know.”

He knows.

It’s a lot harder to walk out than to walk in. But he’s doing it, he’s walking away, and every day he gets more distance. Every day he gets closer to getting this new life, and he likes this new life. He likes getting up and going to work, working hard and then coming home to Siobhan. Having dinner, going to bed early, getting up and doing it all over again.

He and Siobhan are getting along great. They even talk about getting married.

Then Neill Demonte dies.

“I have to go to the funeral,” Callan says.

“Why?” Siobhan asks.

“To show respect.”

“To some gangster?”

She’s pissed off. She’s angry and scared. That he’ll slip back into all of it. Because he’s struggling with all the old demons in his life and now it seems like’s he just walking right back into it after he’s worked so hard to walk away.

“I’ll just go, pay my respects and come back,” he says.

“How about paying me some respect?” she asks. “How about respecting our relationship?”

“I do respect it.”

She throws up her hands.

He’d like to explain it to her but he doesn’t want to scare her. That his absence would be misunderstood. That people who are already suspicious of him would get more suspicious, that it might cause them to panic and do something about their suspicions.

“Do you think I want to go?”

“You must, because that’s what you’re doing.”

“You don’t understand.”

“That’s right, I don’t understand.”

She walks away and slams the bedroom door behind her and he hears the click of the lock. He thinks about kicking the door in, then thinks better of it, so he just punches the wall and walks out.

Hard to find a place to park at the cemetery, what with every wise guy in the city there, not to mention the platoons of local, state and federal cops. One of whom snaps Callan’s picture as he walks past, but Callan don’t care.

Right now he’s like, Fuck everybody.

And his hand hurts.

“Trouble in paradise?” O-Bop says when he sees the hand.

“Go fuck yourself.”

“That’s it,” says O-Bop. “You’re not getting your Funeral Etiquette Merit Badge now.”

Then he shuts up because it’s clear from the darkness on Callan’s face that he ain’t in the mood for humor.

It seems like every wise guy that Giuliani hasn’t already put in the slammer is here. You got your Cozzo brothers, all razor-cut hair and tailored suits, you got the Piccones, you got Sammy Grillo and Frankie Lorenzo, and Little Nick Corotti and Leonard DiMarsa and Sal Scachi. You got the whole Cimino Family, plus some Genovese captains-Barney Bellomo and Dom Cirillo. And some Lucchese people-Tony Ducks and Little Al D'Arco. And what’s left of the Colombo Family, now that Persico is doing his hundred, and even a few of the old Bonanno guys-Sonny Black and Lefty Ruggiero.

All here to pay respect to Aniello Demonte. All here to try to sniff out how things are going to go now that Demonte is dead. They all know it depends on who Calabrese picks to be the new underboss, because with the likelihood that Paulie’s going away, the new underboss is going to be the next boss. If Paulie picks Cozzo, then there’ll be peace in the family. But if he picks someone else… Look out. So all the goombahs are here to try to suss it out.

They’re all here.

With one huge exception.

Big Paulie Calabrese.

Peaches just can’t believe it. Everyone’s waiting for his big black limo to pull up so they can start the service, but it doesn’t arrive. The widow is appalled, she doesn’t know what to do, and finally Johnny Cozzo steps up and says, “Let’s get started.”

“Guy doesn’t go to his own underboss’s funeral?” Peaches says after the service. “That is wrong. That is just wrong.”

He turns to Callan. “I’m glad to see you here, anyway. Where the fuck you been?”

“Around.”

“You ain’t been around me.”

Callan’s not in the mood.

“You guineas don’t own me,” he says.

“You watch your fucking mouth.”

“Come on, Jimmy,” O-Bop says. “He’s good people.”

“So,” Peaches says to Callan, “I hear you’re supposed to be what, a carpenter, now?”

“Yeah.”

Peaches says, “I knew a carpenter got nailed to a cross.”

“When you come for me, Jimmy,” Callan says, “come in a hearse-because that’s how you’re leaving.”

Cozzo moves in between them.

“What the fuck?” he says. “You wanna make more tapes for the Feds? What do you want now, the 'Jimmy Peaches Live Album'? I need you fucking guys to stick together now. Shake hands.”

Peaches puts out his hand to Callan.

Callan takes it and Peaches wraps his other hand around the back of Callan’s head and pulls him close. “Shit, kid, I’m sorry. It’s the tension, it’s the grief.”

“I know. Me, too.”

“I love you, you dumb fucking mick,” Peaches whispers in his ear. “You want out, good for you. You’re out. You go build your cabinets and desks and whatever and be happy, all right? Life is short, you gotta be happy while you can.”

“Thank you, Jimmy.”

Peaches releases Callan and says loudly, “I’ll beat this drug thing, we’ll have a party, okay?”

“Okay.”

Callan’s invited back to the Ravenite with the rest of them, but he doesn’t go.

He goes home.

Finds a parking spot, walks up the stairs and waits outside the door for a minute, working up his nerve before he can turn the key and go in.

She’s there.

Sitting in a chair by the window, reading a book.

Starts to cry when she sees him. “I didn’t think you were going to come back.”

“I didn’t know if you were going to be here.”

He bends over and hugs her.

She holds him very tightly. When she lets go he says, “I was thinking we could go get a Christmas tree.”

They pick a pretty one. It’s small and a little sparse. It isn’t a perfect tree, but it suits them. They put some corny Christmas music on, and they’re busy decorating their tree the rest of the night. They don’t even know that Big Paulie Calabrese has named Tommy Bellavia as his new underboss.

They come for him the next night.

Callan’s walking home from work, the front of his jeans and the tops of his shoes covered with sawdust. It’s a cold night, so he has the collar of his coat pulled up around his neck and his watch cap pulled low over his ears.

So he doesn’t see or hear the car until it pulls up beside him.

A window slides down.

“Get in.”

There’s no gun, nothing sticking out. It’s not needed. Callan knows that sooner or later he’s going to get in the car-if not this one, the next one-so he gets in. Slides into the front seat, lifts his arms and lets Sal Scachi unbutton his coat and feel under his arms, the small of his back, down his legs.

“So it’s true,” Scachi says when he’s done. “You’re a civilian now.”

“Yeah.”

“A citizen,” Scachi says. “The fuck is this? Sawdust?”

“Yeah, sawdust.”

“Shit, I got it on my coat.”

A nice coat, Callan thinks. Has to be five bills.

Scachi pulls onto the West Side Highway, heads uptown and then pulls under a bridge and stops.

A good spot, Callan thinks, to put a bullet into somebody.

Conveniently near the water.

He hears his heart thumping.

So does Scachi.

“Nothing to be afraid of here, kid.”

“What do you want from me, Sal?”

“One last job,” Scachi says.

“I don’t do that kind of work no more.”

He looks across the river at the lights of Jersey, such as they are. Maybe me and Siobhan should move to Jersey, he thinks, get a little distance from this shit. And then we could walk along the river and look at the lights of New York.

“You don’t have a choice, kid,” Scachi says. “Either you’re with us or you’re against us. And you’re too dangerous for us to let you be against us. You’re Billy the Kid Callan. I mean, you’ve shown from day one you got a taste for revenge, right? Remember Eddie Friel?”

Yeah, I remember Eddie Friel, Callan thinks.

I remember I was scared for myself, and scared for Stevie, and the gun came out and up like something else was moving it and I remember the look in Eddie Friel’s eyes as the bullets smacked into his face.

I remember I was seventeen years old.

And I’d give anything to have been anywhere but in that bar that afternoon.

“Some people gotta go, kid,” Scachi’s saying. “And it would be.. . impolitic… for anyone actually in the family to do it. You understand.”

I understand, Callan thinks. Big Paulie wants to purge the Cozzo wing of the family-Johnny Boy, Jimmy Peaches, Little Peaches-but he also wants to be able to deny that he did it. Blame it on the Wild Irish. We have killing in our blood.

And I do have a choice, he thinks.

I can kill or I can die.

“No,” he says.

“No what?”

“I’m not killing any more people.”

“Look-”

“I’m not doing it,” Callan repeats. “If you want to kill me, kill me.”

He feels free all of a sudden, like his soul is already in the air, flying over this dirty old town. Cruising around the stars.

“You got a girl, right?”

Crash.

Back to earth.

“Her name’s something funny,” Scachi’s saying. “Like it’s not spelled the way it’s pronounced. Something Irish, right? No, I remember-it’s like old dress material girls used to wear. Chiffon? What is it?”

To this dirty world.

“You think,” Scachi’s saying, “something happens to you, they’re just going to leave her to run to Giuliani, repeat pillow talk you guys maybe had?”

“She don’t know anything.”

“Yeah, but who’s going to take the chance, huh?”

There ain’t nothin’ I can do about it, Callan thinks. Even if I grabbed Sal right here, took his gun and emptied it into his mouth-which I could do-Scachi’s a made guy and they’d kill me and they’d still kill Siobhan, too.

“Who?” Callan asks.

Who do you want me to kill?

Nora’s phone rings.

Wakes her up. She’s sleepy, having been out on a late date.

“Do you want to work a party?” Haley asks.

“I don’t think so,” Nora says. She’s surprised that Haley’s asking her. She’s a long way past working parties.

“This one’s a little different,” Haley says. “It is a party, they want several girls, but it’s all going to be one-on-one. You’ve been specifically asked for.”

“Some kind of corporate Christmas party?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Nora looks at the digital clock on her alarm radio. It’s 10:35 in the morning. She needs to get up, have her coffee and grapefruit and get to the gym.

“Come on,” Haley’s saying. “It’ll be fun. I’m even going.”

“Where is it?”

“That’s the other fun thing,” Haley says.

The party’s in New York.

“That’s some tree all right,” Nora says to Haley.

They’re standing by the skating rink in Rockefeller Plaza, looking up at the enormous Christmas tree. The plaza is packed with tourists. Carols blare through loudspeakers, Salvation Army Santas ring bells, streetcart vendors hawk warm chestnuts.

“See?” Haley says. “I told you it'd be fun.”

It has been, Nora admits to herself.

Six of them, five working girls and Haley, flew first-class on a red-eye, were picked up by two limos at La Guardia and driven to the Plaza Hotel. Nora had been there before, of course, but never at Christmastime, and it did seem different. Beautiful and old-fashioned with all the decorations up, and her room had a view of Central Park, where even the horse carriages were festooned with holly wreaths and poinsettia.

She took a nap and a shower, then she and Haley set out on a serious shopping expedition to Tiffany’s and Bergdorf’s and Saks-Haley buying, Nora mostly just looking.

“Spend a little,” Haley said. “You’re so cheap.”

“I’m not cheap,” Nora says. “I’m conservative.”

Because a thousand dollars is not just a thousand dollars to her. It’s the interest on a thousand dollars invested over the course of, say, twenty years. It’s an apartment in Montparnasse and the ability to live there comfortably. So she doesn’t spend money loosely because she wants her money out there, working for her. But she does buy two cashmere scarves-one for herself and one for Haley-because it is very cold and because she wants to give Haley a present.

“Here,” she says when they step back out onto the street. She pulls the chalk-gray scarf from the bag. “Wrap up.”

“For me?”

“I don’t want you to catch cold.”

“How sweet you are.”

Nora wraps her own scarf around her neck, then adjusts her faux-fur hat and coat.

It’s one of those clear, cold New York City days, when a breath of air is startling in its frigid intensity and the wind comes rushing down the canyons that are the avenues, to bite your face and make your eyes water.

So when Nora’s eyes tear up as she looks at Haley, she tells herself it’s the cold.

“Have you ever seen the tree?” Haley asks.

“What tree?”

“The Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center,” Haley says.

“I guess not.”

“Come on.”

So now they’re standing, gawking at the huge tree, and Nora has to admit that she’s having fun.

The last Christmas.

This is the point Jimmy Peaches is making to Sal Scachi.

“It’s my last freaking Christmas outside the joint,” he’s saying. Calling phone booth to phone booth to leave the Feds out of the conversation for once. “For a long freaking time. They got me dead to rights, Sally. I’m going away for thirty-to-life, this fucking Rockefeller Act. By the time I get pussy again I probably won’t care.”

“But-”

“But nothing,” Peaches says. “It’s my party. And I want a big fucking steak, I want to go to the Copa with a beautiful babe on my arm, I wanna hear Vic Damone sing and then I want to get the world’s best piece of ass and fuck until my dick is sore.”

“Think of how it will look, Jimmy.”

“My dick?”

“The fact that you’re bringing five hookers to the sit-down,” Sal says. He’s pissed, he’s wondering when and if Jimmy Peaches will ever grow the fuck up. The guy is a loose fucking cannon. You bust your balls to get something set up right, then this fat, horny fuck does something like fly five working girls in from fucking California. Just what he needs-five people in the room who aren’t supposed to be there. Five innocent fucking bystanders. “What does John think about this?”

“John thinks it’s my party.”

Fucking A, he does, Peaches thinks. John is old-school, John is class, not like that fucking old hump they got for a boss now. John is properly grateful that I’m going to go in like a man and take what’s coming, without trying to cut a deal, without naming any names, especially his.

What does John think? John’s footing the fucking bill.

Anything you want, Jimmy. Anything. It’s your night. On me.

What Jimmy wants is Sparks Steak House, the Copa, and this chick Nora, the best-looking, most delectable piece he’s ever had. Ass like a ripe peach. He’s never gotten her out of his head. Putting her on all fours and slamming her from behind, watching those peaches quiver.

“Okay,” Sal says. “How about meeting the women at the Copa, after Sparks?”

“Fuck that.”

“Jimmy-”

“What?”

“This is serious business tonight.”

“I know that.”

“I mean, it doesn’t get more serious.”

“Which is why,” Peaches says, “I’m going to do some serious partying.”

“Look,” Sal says, bringing the hammer down, “I’m in charge of security for this thing-”

“Then make sure I’m secure,” Peaches says. “That’s all you gotta do, Sal, then forget about it, okay?”

“I don’t like it.”

“Don’t like it,” Peaches says. “Fuck you. Merry Christmas.”

Yeah, Sal thinks as he hangs up.

Merry Christmas to you, Jimmy.

I got your present all ready for you.

There are a few packages under the tree.

Good thing it’s a small tree because there aren’t many presents, money being tight and all. But he’s gotten her a new watch, and a silver bracelet and some of those vanilla candles she likes. And there are a few packages for him-they look like clothes, which he needs. A new work shirt, maybe, some new jeans.

A nice little Christmas.

They were planning to go to midnight Mass.

Open presents in the morning, try to cook a turkey, hit an afternoon movie.

A nice, quiet little Christmas.

But that ain’t gonna happen, Callan thinks.

Not now.

It was going to end anyway, but it ends quicker because she finds the other package, the one he shoved way under the bed. He comes home early from work that evening and she’s sitting there with the long box at her feet.

She’s turned the tree lights on. They blink red and green and white behind her.

“What’s this?” she asks.

“How'd you get that?”

“I was dusting under the bed,” she says. “What is it?”

It’s a Swedish Model 45 Garl Gustaf 9-mm submachine gun. With a folding metal stock and a thirty-six-round magazine. More than enough to do the job. Numbers filed off, clean and untraceable. Only twenty-two inches long with the stock folded. Weighs eight pounds. He can carry the box like a Christmas present down to midtown. Drop the box and carry the gun under his pea coat.

Sal had it delivered.

He doesn’t tell her all that. What he says is stupid and obvious: “You weren’t supposed to see that.”

She laughs. “I thought it was a present for me. I was feeling guilty for opening it.”

“Siobhan-”

“You’re back into it again, aren’t you?” she says. Gray eyes hard as stone. “You’re doing another job.”

“I have to.”

“Why?”

He wants to tell her, but he can’t let her carry that weight around with her the rest of her life. So he says, “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh, I understand,” she says. “I’m from Kashmir Road, remember? Belfast? I grew up watching my brothers and uncles leave the house with their little Christmas boxes, going out to kill people. I’ve seen machine guns under the bed before. It’s why I left-I was sick of the killing. And the killers.”

“Like me.”

“I thought you’d changed.”

“I have.”

She gestures down to the box.

“I have to,” he repeats.

“Why?” she asks. “What’s so important it’s worth killing for?”

You, he thinks.

You are.

But he stands there mute. A dumb witness against himself.

“I won’t be here when you come back this time,” she says.

“I’m not coming back,” he says. “I have to go away for a while.”

“Jesus,” she says. “Were you planning on telling me? Or were you just going to go?”

“I was planning on asking you to come with me.”

It’s true. He has two passports, two sets of tickets. He digs them out from the bottom of the desk drawer and lays them on top of the box, at her feet. She doesn’t pick them up. She doesn’t even look at them.

“Just like that?” she asks.

A voice inside him is screaming, Tell her. Tell her you’re doing it for her, for the both of you. Beg her to come. He starts to tell her, but then he can’t. She would never forgive herself, being part of it. She’d never forgive you.

“I love you,” he says. “I love you so much.”

She gets up from the chair.

Comes close and says, “I don’t love you. I did, but I don’t now. I don’t love what you are. A killer.”

He nods. “You’re right.”

He walks past her, puts his ticket and passport into his pocket, closes the box and hefts it over his shoulder.

“You can live here if you want,” he says. “The rent’s paid.”

“I can’t live here.”

This was a good place, though, he thinks, looking around the small apartment. The happiest, best place of his life. This place, this time, here with her. He stands there trying to think of the words to tell her that, but nothing comes out.

“Get out,” she says. “Go murder somebody. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

He gets out in the street, it’s raining like hell. A cold, icy rain. He pulls up his collar and looks back up at the apartment.

Sees her still sitting by the window.

Bent over, her face in her hands.

The tree lights blinking red and green and white behind her.

Her dress sparkles in the lights.

A sequined top of red and green.

Very Christmasy, Haley had said, very sexy.

Tres decollete.

In fact, Jimmy Peaches can’t help looking down her dress.

Otherwise she has to admit that he’s acting the gentleman. Cleans up surprisingly well in his steel gray Armani. Even the black shirt and tie don’t seem horrible. A touch of goombah chic, perhaps, but not entirely gross.

Same with the restaurant. She expected some gaudy Sicilian horror show, but Sparks Steak House, despite the prosaic name, turns out to be done in understated good taste. Not her taste-the oak-paneled walls and hunting prints, basically the English look, are not her thing, but it’s tasteful all the same and not at all what she expected from a mob hangout.

They arrived in several limos, and a doorman held an umbrella to cover the two feet between the car and the long green awning. They make quite an entrance, the wise guys with their dates on their arms. Diners sitting at tables in the big front room stop eating and openly stare, and why not, Nora thinks.

The girls are fantastic.

Haley’s best, served to order.

Chosen by their hair color, their faces, their figures.

Cool, lovely, sophisticated women without a touch of the whore about them. Elegantly dressed, impeccably coiffed, beautifully mannered. The men practically blush with pride as they make their entrance. The women don’t-they take the adulation as their birthright. They take no visible notice of it.

A properly obsequious headwaiter shows them to the private room in the back.

Everyone watches them go in.

Well, not everyone.

Not Callan.

He misses their entrance. He’s around the corner, on Third Avenue, waiting for the word to move in closer. He sees the limos come, working their way through the thick rush-hour holiday traffic, then turning right onto Forty-sixth toward Sparks, so he figures that Johnny Boy and the Piccones and O-Bop have arrived for the sit-down.

He checks his watch.

It’s 5:30-dead on time.

Scachi’s there to greet them, all the wise guys and the girls in turn. He’s the host, right, he set up the meeting. He even (sneaking a glance down her dress) kisses Nora’s hand.

“A pleasure,” he says. God, he can see why Peaches would want her for his last ride. An incredible beauty. They all are, but this one. ..

Johnny Boy takes Scachi by the arm.

“Sal,” he says, “ just wanted to take a minute to thank you for setting this up. I know it took a lot of diplomatic work, a lot of details. If we get the result we hope for tonight, maybe we can have peace in the family.”

“That’s all I want, Johnny.”

“And a place for you at the table.”

“I’m not looking for that,” Scachi says. “I just love my family, Johnny. I love this thing of ours. I want to see it stay strong, unified.”

“That’s what we want, too, Sally.”

“I gotta go out, check on things,” Sal says.

“Sure,” Johnny Boy says. “Now you can call and tell the king he can make his entrance, now that the peasants are here.”

“See, that’s just the kind of attitude-”

Johnny Boy laughs. “Merry Christmas, Sal.”

They hug and exchange kisses on the cheeks.

“Merry Christmas, Johnny.” Sal puts on his coat and starts to go. “Oh, and Johnny?”

“Yeah?”

“Happy fucking New Year.”

Sal steps outside under the awning. Miserable fucking night. Sheets of rain coming down, threatening to turn into an ice storm. The drive back to Brooklyn’s going to be a bitch and a half.

He takes the small walkie-talkie from his overcoat pocket and holds it under his collar and against his mouth.

“You there?”

“Yeah,” Callan says.

“I’m calling the boss in,” Sal says. “So the clock’s on.”

“Everything’s good?”

“Just like we talked,” Sal says. “You got ten minutes, kid.”

Callan walks over to a trash can. Drops the box into it, slides the gun under his coat and starts to walk down Forty-sixth Street.

Into the rain.

The champagne flows over the glass.

To laughs and giggles.

“What the hell,” Peaches announces. “Champagne we got.”

He fills all the glasses.

Nora lifts hers. She won’t really drink it, but she’ll take a sip for the upcoming toast. Anyway, she likes the bubbles in her nose.

“A toast,” Peaches says. “Hey, we got some bad stuff in our lives, but we got some good stuff, too. So don’t nobody be sad this holiday. Life is beautiful. We have plenty to celebrate.”

In this season of hope, Nora thinks.

Then all hell breaks loose.

Callan opens his coat and swings the gun out.

Pulls back the bolt as he aims through the driving rain.

Bellavia sees him first. He’s just finished opening the car door for Mr. Calabrese and he looks over and sees Callan. There’s a small glimmer first of recognition and then of alarm in the man’s piggish eyes, and he starts to ask What are you doing out here but then he realizes the answer and goes for his own gun inside his coat.

Much too late.

His arm is blasted away as the 9-mm Parabellum rounds stitch across his chest. He falls back against the open door of the black Lincoln Continental, then slumps onto the sidewalk.

Callan turns the gun on Calabrese.

Their eyes meet for half a second before Callan pulls the trigger again. The old man staggers, then seems to melt into a puddle with the rain.

Callan steps in and stand above the two crumpled bodies. Holds the barrel near Bellavia’s head and squeezes the trigger twice. Bellavia’s head bounces off the wet concrete. Then Callan places the barrel to Calabrese’s temple and pulls the trigger.

Callan drops the gun, turns around and walks east toward Second Avenue.

The blood flows down the gutter after him.

Nora hears the screams.

The door flies open.

The headwaiter comes in yelling that someone’s been shot outside. Nora stands up, they all do, but they don’t know why. Don’t know whether to run outside or stay where they are.

Then Sal Scachi comes in to tell them.

“Everyone stay put,” he orders. “Someone killed the boss.”

Nora’s like, What boss? Who?

Now the keening of sirens drowns out everything else, and she jumps as Pop.

Her heart is in her throat. Everyone startles as Johnny Boy, still sitting, pours the champagne into his glass.

A car’s waiting at the corner.

The rear passenger door opens and Callan gets in. The car turns east on Forty-seventh, goes to the FDR and heads uptown. There are fresh clothes in the back. Callan takes his own clothes off and wriggles into the new ones. All the while, the driver doesn’t say nothing, just efficiently works his way through the brutal traffic.

So far, Callan thinks, it’s gone just the way they’d planned it. Bellavia and Calabrese arrived expecting to find a crime scene, their colleagues brutally murdered and the stage set for their own weeping and gnashing of teeth and cries of We came here to make peace in our family.

Only that’s not what Sal Scachi and the rest of the family had in mind.

You deal, you die, but if you don’t deal you die anyway, because that’s where the money and the power are. And if you let the other families get all the money and the power, you’re just on a slow road to suicide. That was Scachi’s reasoning, and it was correct.

So Calabrese had to go.

And Johnny Boy had to become king.

“It’s a generational thing,” Sal had explained on their long walk in Riverside Park. “Out with the old, in with the new.”

Of course, it will take a while for it all to shake out.

Johnny Boy will deny any involvement because the heads of the other Four Families, or what’s left of them, would never accept his doing this without their permission, which they would never have given. (“A king,” Scachi had lectured him, “will never sanction the assassination of another king.”) So Johnny Boy will swear that he’ll track down the drug-dealing cocksuckers who killed his boss, and there’ll be a few recalcitrant Calabrese loyalists who’ll have to follow their boss to the next world, but it will all shake out in the end.

Johnny Boy will reluctantly allow himself to be chosen as the new boss.

The other bosses will accept him.

And the dope will flow again.

Uninterrupted from Colombia, to Honduras, to Mexico.

To New York.

Where it’s going to be a White Christmas after all.

But I won’t be here to see it, Callan thinks.

He opens the canvas bag on the floor.

As agreed, a hundred thousand dollars in cash, a passport, airline tickets. Sal Scachi set it all up. A ride to South America and a new gig.

The car makes it onto the Triborough Bridge.

Callan looks out the window and, even through the rain, can see the Manhattan skyline. Somewhere in there, he thinks, was my life. The Kitchen, Sacred Heart, the Liffey Pub, the Landmark, the Glocca Morra, the Hudson. Michael Murphy and Kenny Maher and Eddie Friel. And Jimmy Boylan, Larry Moretti and Matty Sheehan.

And now Tommy Bellavia and Paulie Calabrese.

And the living ghosts Jimmy Peaches.

And O-Bop.

Siobhan.

He looks back at Manhattan and what he sees is their apartment. Her coming to the table for breakfast on Saturday mornings. Her hair mussed, no makeup, so beautiful. Sitting there with her over a cup of coffee and the newspaper, mostly unread, and looking out over the gray Hudson with Jersey on the other side.

Callan grew up on fables.

Cuchulain, Edward Fitzgerald, Wolfe Tone, Roddy McCorley, Padraic Pearse, James Connelly, Sean South, Sean Barry, John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Bloody Sunday, Jesus Christ.

They all ended bloody.