The Power of the Dog

Hell’s Kitchen

New York City, 1977

Callan grows up on bloody fables.

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

The rich red stew of Irish Nationalism and Catholicism, or Irish Catholic Nationalism, or Irish National Catholicism. Doesn’t matter. The walls of the small West Side walk-up and the walls of St. Bridget’s Elementary are decorated, if that’s the word, with bad pictures of martyrdom: McCorley dangling from the Bridge of Toome; Connelly tied to his chair, facing the British firing party; Saint Timothy with all them arrows sticking out of him; poor, hopeless Wolfe Tone slicing his own neck with a razor but fucking it up and severing his windpipe instead of his jugular-anyway, he manages to die before they manage to hang him; poor John and poor Bobby looking down from heaven; Christ on the Cross.

Of course there are the Twelve Stations of the Cross in St. Bridget’s itself. Christ being whipped, the Crown of Thorns, Christ staggering through the streets ofJerusalem with the Cross on his back. The nails going in his blessed hands and feet. (A very young Callan asks the sister if Christ was Irish, and she sighs and tells him, No, but he might as well have been.)

He’s seventeen years old and he’s slamming beers in the Liffey Pub on Forty-seventh and Twelfth with his buddy O-Bop.

Only other guy in the bar besides Billy Shields the bartender is Little Mickey Haggerty. Little Mickey’s sitting at the far end of the bar doing some serious drinking behind an upcoming date with a judge who’s a lock to put him eight-to-twelve from his next Bushmills. Little Mickey came in with a roll of quarters, all of which he fed into the jukebox while pressing the same button. E-5. So Andy Williams has been crooning “MoonRiver” for the past hour, but the boys don’t say nothing because they know all about Little Mickey’s hijacking beef.

It’s one of those killerNew York August afternoons-one of those “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity” afternoons-when shirts stick to backs and grudges just plain stick.

Which is what O-Bop’s talking about to Callan.

They’re sitting at the bar drinking beers, and O-Bop just can’t let it go.

What they did to Michael Murphy.

“What they did to Michael Murphy was wrong,” O-Bop says. “It was a wrong thing.”

“It was,” Callan agrees.

What happened with Michael Murphy is that he’d shot and killed his best friend, Kenny Maher. It was one of them things; they was both stoned at the time, flat ripped on Mexican Mud, the brown-opium heroin that was making the rounds of the neighborhood at the time, and it was just one of them things. A quarrel between two junkies that gets out of hand, and Kenny whacks Michael around a little and Michael stays pissed off and he goes out and gets a little. 25-caliber target pistol and follows Kenny home and puts one in his head.

Then he sits down in the middle of fuckingForty-ninth Street, sobbing because he killed his best friend. It’s O-Bop that comes along and gets him out of there before the cops come, and Hell’s Kitchen being what it is, the cops never find out who canceled Kenny’s reservation.

Except the cops are the only people in the neighborhood who don’t know who killed Kenny Maher. Everyone else gets the word, including Eddie Friel, which is bad news for Murphy. Eddie “The Butcher” Friel collects money for Big Matt Sheehan.

Big Matt runs the neighborhood, he runs the West Side Longshoreman’s Union, he runs the local teamsters, he runs the gambling, the loan-sharking, the whores, you name it-except Matt Sheehan won’t let any drugs in the neighborhood.

That’s a point of pride with Sheehan, and a reason he’s so popular with the Kitchen’s older residents.

“Say what you will about Matt,” they’ll say. “He’s kept our kids off of dope.”

Except for Michael Murphy and Kenny Maher and a few dozen others, but that don’t seem to make no difference to Matt Sheehan’s rep. And a big part of Matt’s rep is due to Eddie the Butcher, because the whole neighborhood is scared to death of him. When Eddie the Butcher comes to collect, you pay. Preferably, you pay in money, but if not, you pay in blood and broken bones. And then you still owe the money.

At any given point in time, roughly half of Hell’s Kitchen owes money to Big Matt Sheehan.

Which is another reason they all got to pretend to like him.

But O-Bop, he hears Eddie talking about how someone should take care of that fucking junkie Murphy, and he goes to Murphy and tells him he should go away for a while. So does Callan. Callan tells him this because not only does Eddie have a reputation for backing up his bad words, but Matty’s put the word out that junkies killing each other is bad for the neighborhood and bad for his reputation.

So O-Bop and Callan tell Murphy he should split, but Murphy says fuck it, he’s staying where he is, and they guess he’s suicidal over having killed Kenny. But a few weeks later they suddenly don’t see him around anymore so they figure he got smart and took off, and this is what they figure until one morning Eddie the Butcher shows up in the Shamrock Cafe with a big grin and a milk carton.

He’s like showing it around, and he comes over to where Callan and O-Bop are trying to have a quiet cup of coffee to work on a hangover and he tilts the carton down so O-Bop can see and he says, “Hey, look in here.”

O-Bop looks in the carton and then he throws up right on the table, which Eddie thinks is hysterical, and he calls O-Bop a pussy and walks away laughing. And the talk in the neighborhood for the next few weeks is how Eddie and his asshole buddy Larry Moretti go to Michael’s apartment, drag him into the shower and stab him about a hundred and forty-seven times and then cut him up.

The story is that Eddie the Butcher goes to work on Michael Murphy’s body and cuts him up like he’s a piece of pork and takes the different pieces out in garbage bags and scatters them around the city.

Except for Michael’s cock, which he puts in the milk carton to show around the neighborhood lest there be any doubt about what happens to you when you fuck with one of Eddie’s buddies.

And no one can do anything about it, because Eddie is so connected with Matt Sheehan and Sheehan has an arrangement with the Cimino Family, so he’s like untouchable.

Except six months later, O-Bop’s still brooding about it.

Saying it’s wrong what they did to Murphy.

“Okay, maybe they had to kill him,” O-Bop is saying. “Maybe. But to do him that way? Then do what they did, showing that part of him around? No, that is wrong. That is so wrong.”

The bartender, Billy Shields, is wiping the bar-which is like the first time maybe ever-and he’s getting real nervous listening to this kid bad-mouth Eddie the Butcher. He’s wiping the bar like he’s going to perform surgery on it later.

O-Bop sees the bartender eyeing him, but it doesn’t slow him down. O-Bop and Callan have been at it all day, walking along the Hudson toking on a joint and drinking beer from brown paper bags, so while they’re not exactly wasted they’re not exactly all there, either.

So O-Bop keeps it up.

Actually, it was Kenny Maher that gave him the name O-Bop. They’re all in the park playing street hockey and they’re taking a break when Stevie O'Leary, as he was still known back then, comes walking up and Kenny Maher, he looks at Stevie and he says, “We should call you 'Bop.’ ”

Stevie’s not displeased. He’s what, fifteen? And getting tagged by a couple of older guys is cool, so he smiles and says, “ 'Bop'? Why 'Bop'?”

“Because of the way you walk,” Kenny says. “You bounce on every step. You sort of bop.”

“Bop,” Callan says. “I like that.”

“Who cares what you like?” Kenny says.

Then Murphy busts in, “What the fuck kind of a name is 'Bop’ for an Irishman? Fuckin’ look at him with that red hair. He’s standing on the corner, cars stop. Look at the fuckin’ white skin and the freckles, for Christ’s sake. How can you call him 'Bop'? Sounds like a black guy. This is the whitest guy I ever seen in my life.”

Kenny thinks about this.

“Has to be Irish, huh?”

“Fuck yes.”

“Okay,” Kenny says. “How about O'Bop?”

Except he says it with the stress on the O, so it becomes O-Bop.

And it sticks.

Anyway, O-Bop keeps it up about Eddie the Butcher.

“I mean, fuck that guy,” he says. “So he’s hooked up with Matty Sheehan, he can do anything he wants? Who the fuck is Matty Sheehan? Some lace-curtain old drunk Harp still crying in his beer about Jack Kennedy? I gotta respect this guy? Fuck him. Fuck the both of them.”

“Steady,” Callan says.

“Steady my ass,” O-Bop says. “What they did to Michael Murphy was wrong.”

He hunches over the bar and goes back to drinking his beer. Turns sullen, like the afternoon.

It’s maybe ten minutes later when Eddie Friel walks in.

Eddie Friel is a big fucking guy.

He walks in and sees O-Bop and says, real loud, “Hey, pubic hair.”

O-Bop doesn’t sit up or turn around.

“Hey!” Eddie yells. “I’m talking to you. That is pubic hair on your head, isn’t it? All curly and red?”

Callan watches O-Bop turn around.

“What do you want?”

He’s trying to sound tough, but Callan can hear he’s scared.

Why not? So is Callan.

“I hear you have a problem with me,” Friel says.

“No, I got no problem,” O-Bop says.

Which Callan thinks is the smart thing to say, except Friel isn’t satisfied.

“Because if you got a problem with me, I’m standing right here.”

“No, I don’t got a problem.”

“That’s not what I heard,” Friel says. “I heard you was going around the neighborhood running your mouth about you have a problem with something I may have did.”

“No.”

If it wasn’t one of them murderous New York August afternoons it would probably end right there. Shit, if the Liffey was air-conditioned, it would probably end right there. But it ain’t, it’s just got a couple of ceiling fans giving a bunch of dust and dead flies a lazy merry-go-round ride, so anyway, it doesn’t end right there where it should.

Because O-Bop has totally backed down. His balls are like lying on the floor, and there’s no need to push this any further except that Eddie is a sadistic prick, so he says, “You lying little cocksucker.”

Down at the end of the bar, Mickey Haggerty finally glances up from his Bushmills and says, “Eddie, the boy told you he don’t have no problem.”

“Anyone ask you, Mickey?” Friel says.

Mickey says, “He’s just a boy, for Christ’s sake.”

“Then he shouldn’t be running his mouth like a man,” Friel says. “He shouldn’t be going around talking about how certain people got no right to be running the neighborhood.”

“I’m sorry,” O-Bop whines.

His voice is shaking.

“Yeah, you’re sorry,” Friel says. “You’re a sorry little motherfucker. Look at him, he’s crying like a little girl, and this is the big man who thinks certain other people got no right to run the neighborhood.”

“Look, I said I was sorry,” O-Bop whines.

“Yeah, I hear what you say to my face,” Friel says. “But what are you going to say behind my back, huh?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Friel pulls a. 38 from under his shirt. “Get down on your knees.”

“What?”

“ 'What?’ ” Friel mimics. “Get down on your fucking knees, you little cocksucker.”

O-Bop is pale anyway, but now Callan sees he is like white. He looks dead already, and maybe he is, because it looks for all the world like Friel’s going to execute him right here.

O-Bop is shaking as he lowers himself off the stool. He has to lower his hands to the floor first so he doesn’t just topple over as he gets to his knees. And he’s crying-big tears spilling out of his eyes and streaming down his face.

Eddie’s got this shit-eating grin on his face.

“Come on,” Callan says to Friel.

Friel turns on him.

“You want part of this, kid?” Eddie asks. “You need to decide who you’re with, us or him.”

Staring Callan down.

“Him,” Callan says as he pulls a. 22 from under his shirt and shoots Eddie the Butcher twice in the forehead.

Eddie looks like he can’t fucking believe what just happened. He just looks at Callan like What the fuck? and then folds up. He’s lying on his back on the dirty floor when O-Bop takes the. 38 from his hand, sticks it in Eddie’s mouth, and starts jerking on the trigger.

O-Bop’s crying and shrieking obscenities.

Billy Shields has his hands up.

“I got no problem,” he says.

Little Mickey looks up from his Bushmills and tells Callan, “You might want to think about leaving.”

Callan asks, “Should I leave the gun?”

“No,” Mickey says. “Give it to the Hudson.”

Mickey knows the Hudson River between Thirty-eighth and Fifty-seventh streets has more hardware at the bottom than, say, Pearl Harbor. And the cops ain’t exactly going to drag the bottom to find the weapon that rained on Eddie the Butcher. The reaction at Manhattan South is going to go something like Someone blanked Eddie Friel? Oh. Anyone want this last chocolate glazed?

No, these kids’ problem is not the law, these kids’ problem is Matt Sheehan. Not that it’s going to be Mickey that goes running to Big Matt to tell him who popped Eddie. Matt could have reached out one ham-fisted hand to the judge and lifted some of the weight off Mickey on this hijacking beef, but he couldn’t be bothered, so Mickey doesn’t figure he owes any loyalty to Sheehan.

But Billy Shields the bartender will trip all over himself to get a marker with Big Matt, so these two kids might as well go hang themselves up on meat hooks and save Matt the aggravation. Unless they can take out Big Matt first, which they can’t. So these kids are pretty much dead, but they shouldn’t ought to stand around and wait for it.

“Go now,” Mickey says to them. “Get out of town.”

Callan tucks the. 22 back under his shirt and gets an arm under O-Bop’s elbow and lifts him up from where he’s crouching over Eddie the Butcher’s body.

“Come on,” he says.

“Hold on a second.”

O-Bop digs into Friel’s pockets and comes out with a wad of crumpled bills. Rolls him on his side and takes something out of his back pocket.

A black notebook.

“Okay,” O-Bop says.

They walk out the door.

Cops come in around ten minutes later.

The Homicide guy, he steps over the pool of blood forming a big, wet, red halo around Friel’s head, then he looks at Mickey Haggerty. Homicide guy is just up from Safes and Lofts, so he knows Mickey. Looks at Mickey and shrugs like What happened?

“Slipped in the shower,” Mickey says.

They never get out of town.

What happens is they walk out of the Liffey Pub and follow Mickey Haggerty’s suggestion and walk right over to the river and toss in the guns.

Then they stand out there and count Eddie’s roll.

“Three hundred and eighty-seven bucks,” O-Bop says.

Which is disappointing.

They ain’t gonna get very far on three hundred and eighty-seven bucks.

And anyway, they don’t know where to go.

They’re neighborhood guys, they never been anywhere else, they wouldn’t know what to do, what not to do, how to act, how to function. They oughta get on a bus to somewhere, but where?

They go into a corner store and buy a couple quart bottles of beer and then get under an abutment under the West Side Highway to think it over.

“Jersey?” O-Bop says.

This is about the limit of his geographical imagination.

“You know anyone in Jersey?” Callan asks.

“No. Do you?”

“No.”

Where they know people is in Hell’s Kitchen, so they end up slamming a couple more beers and waiting until it’s dark, and then they slip back into the neighborhood. Break into an abandoned warehouse and sleep there. Early in the morning they go to Bobby Remington’s sister’s apartment on Fiftieth Street.

Bobby’s there, having had another fight with his old man.

He comes to the door, sees Callan and O-Bop standing there and pulls them inside.

“Jesus Christ,” Bobby says, “what'd you guys do?”

“He was going to shoot Stevie,” Callan explains.

Bobby shakes his head, “He wasn’t going to shoot him. He was going to piss in his mouth, is all. That’s the word out.”

Callan shrugs. “Anyway.”

“Are they looking for us?” O-Bop asks.

Bobby doesn’t answer. He’s too busy pulling down blinds.

“Bobby, do you have any coffee?” Callan asks.

“Yeah, I’ll make some.”

Beth Remington comes out of her bedroom. She’s wearing a Rangers jersey that comes down over her thighs. Her red hair is all tangled and droops down around her shoulders. She looks at Callan and says, “Shit.”

“Hi, Beth.”

“You gotta get outta here.”

“I’m just going to get 'em some coffee, Beth.”

“Hey, Bobby,” Beth says. She flicks a cigarette out of a pack on the kitchen counter, slips it into her mouth and lights it. “Bad enough I got you crashing on my couch, I don’t need these guys. No offense.”

O-Bop says, “Bobby, we need some hardware.”

“Oh, great,” Beth says. She flops down on the couch next to Callan. “Why the fuck did you come here?”

“Nowhere else to go.”

“I’m honored.” She gets drunk a couple times and does the dirty with him and now he thinks he can come over here, now he’s in trouble. “Bobby, make them toast or something.”

“Thank you,” says Callan.

“You’re not staying here.”

“So, Bobby,” O-Bop says, “can you hook us up?”

“They find out, I’m fucked.”

“You could go to Burke, tell him it’s for you,” O-Bop says.

“What are you guys still doing in the neighborhood?” Beth asks. “You should be in like Buffalo by now.”

“Buffalo?” O-Bop says, smiling. “What’s in Buffalo?”

Beth shrugs. “Niagara Falls. I dunno.”

They drink their coffee and eat their toast.

“I’ll go see Burke,” Bobby says.

“Yeah, that’s what you need,” Beth says, “to get sideways with Matty Sheehan.”

“Fuck Sheehan,” Bobby says.

“Yeah, go tell him that,” says Beth. She turns to Callan. “You don’t need guns, what you need is bus tickets. I got some money…”

Beth is a cashier at Loews Forty-second Street. Occasionally she sells one of the theater’s tickets along with her own. So she has a little cash tucked away.

“We have money,” Callan says.

“Then go.”

They go. They go all the way up to the Upper West Side, hang around in Riverside Park, up by Grant’s Tomb. Then they come back downtown; Beth lets them into Loews and they sit in the back of the balcony all day, watching Star Wars.

Fucking Death Star’s about to blow for like the sixth time when Bobby shows up with a paper bag and leaves it by Callan’s feet.

“Good movie, huh?” he says, and takes off as fast as he came in.

Callan eases his ankle over to the bag and feels the metal.

They go into the men’s room and open the bag.

An old. 25 and an equally ancient. 38 police special.

“What?” O-Bop says. “He didn’t have flintlocks?”

“Beggars can’t be choosers.”

Callan feels a lot better with a little hardware at his waist. Funny how quick you miss not having it there. You just feel light, he thinks. Like you might float up off the ground. The metal keeps you on the earth.

They sit in the theater until just before it closes, then carefully work their way back to the warehouse.

A Polish sausage saves their lives.

Tim Healey, he’s been sitting up there half the fucking night and he’s hungrier than shit waiting for these two kids, so he gets Jimmy Boylan to go out for a Polish sausage.

“What you want on it?” Boylan asks.

“Sauerkraut, hot mustard, the works,” Tim says.

So Boylan goes out and comes back and Tim wolfs down that Polish sausage like he’s spent the war in a Japanese prison camp, and that solid sausage is converting itself to gas in his intestines just when Callan and O-Bop are coming in. They’re in a stairwell on the other side of a closed metal door when they hear Healey cut loose.

They freeze.

“Jesus Christ,” they hear Boylan say. “Anybody hurt?”

Callan looks at O-Bop.

“Bobby gave us up?” O-Bop whispers.

Callan shrugs.

“I’m gonna open the door, get some air,” Boylan says. “Christ, Tim.”

“Sorry.”

Boylan opens the door and sees the boys standing there. He yells, “Shit!” as he raises his shotgun, but all Callan can hear is the explosion of guns echoing in the stairwell as he and O-Bop let loose.

The tinfoil slides off Healey’s lap as he gets up from the wooden folding chair and goes for his gun. But he sees Jimmy Boylan staggering backwards as chunks of him are flying out the back of him and loses his nerve. Drops his. 45 to the ground and throws his hands up.

“Do him!” O-Bop yells.

“No, no, no, no, no!” Healey yells.

They’ve known Fat Tim Healey all their lives. He used to give them quarters to buy comic books. One time they’re playing hockey in the street and Callan’s backswing breaks Tim Healey’s right headlight and Healey comes out of the Liffey and just laughs and says it’s okay. “You’ll get me tickets when you’re playing for the Rangers, okay?” is all Tim Healey says.

Now Callan stops O-Bop from shooting Healey.

“Just get his gun!” he hollers.

He’s yelling because his ears are ringing. His voice sounds like it’s at the other end of a tunnel, and his head hurts like a bastard.

Healey’s got mustard on his chin.

He’s saying something about being too old for this shit.

Like there’s a right age for this shit? Callan thinks.

They take Healey’s. 45 and Boylan’s 12-gauge and hit the street.

Running.

Big Matty freaks when he hears about Eddie the Butcher.

Especially when he gets the word that it was two kids practically with shit in their diapers. He’s wondering what the world is coming to-what kind of world it’s going to be-when you have a generation coming up that has no respect for authority. What also concerns Big Matty is how many people approach him to plead mercy for the two kids.

“They have to be punished,” Big Matt tells them, but he’s disturbed when they question his decision.

“Punished, sure,” they tell him. “Maybe break their legs or their wrists, send them out of the neighborhood, but they don’t deserve to get killed for this.”

Big Matt ain’t used to being challenged like this. He don’t like it all. He also don’t like that the pipeline don’t seem to be working. He should have had his hands on these two young animals within hours, but they’ve been down for days now and the rumor’s going around that they’re still in the neighborhood-which is shoving it in his face-but no one seems to know exactly where.

Even people who should know don’t know.

Big Matt even considers this idea of punishment. Decides that maybe the just thing to do is just to take the hands that pulled the triggers. The more he considers it, the more he likes the idea. Leave these two kids walking around Hell’s Kitchen with a couple of stumps as reminder of what happens when you don’t show the proper respect for authority.

So he’ll have their hands cut off and leave it at that.

Show them that Big Matt Sheehan can be magnanimous.

Then he remembers he don’t have Eddie the Butcher anymore to do the cutting.

A day later he also don’t have Jimmy Boylan or Fat Tim Healey, because Boylan is dead and Healey has just disappeared. And Kevin Kelly has found it convenient to take care of some business in Albany. Marty Stone has a sick aunt in Far Rockaway. And Tommy Dugan is on a bender.

All of which leads Big Matt to suspect that there’s maybe a coup-a downright revolution-in the works.

So he makes a reservation to fly down to his other home in Florida.

Which would be very good news for Callan and O-Bop, except that it looks like before Matty got on the plane, he reached out to Big Paulie Calabrese, the new representante-the boss-of the Cimino Family, and called in a marker.

“What do you think he gave him?” Callan asks O-Bop.

“Piece of the Javits Center?” O-Bop says.

Big Matt controls the construction unions and the teamsters’ unions working on the huge convention center being planned on the West Side. The Italians have been slavering after a piece of that business for a year or more. The skim off the cement contract alone is worth millions. Now Matt’s in no real position to say no, but he could reasonably expect a little favor for saying yes.

Professional courtesy.

Callan and O-Bop are holed up in a second-floor apartment on Forty-ninth between Tenth and Eleventh. They don’t get a lot of sleep. Lie there looking at the sky. Or what you can see of it from a rooftop in New York.

“We’ve killed two guys,” O-Bop says.

“Yeah.”

“Self-defense, though,” O-Bop says. “I mean, we had to, right?”

“Sure.”

A while later O-Bop says, “I wonder if Mickey Haggerty’s gonna trade us in.”

“You think?”

“He’s looking at eight-to-twelve on a robbery,” O-Bop says. “He could trade up.”

“No,” Callan says. “Mickey is old-school.”

“Mickey could be old-school,” O-Bop says, “but he also could be tired of doing time. This is his second bit.”

Callan knows that Mickey will do his time and come back to the neighborhood and want to hold his head up. And Mickey knows he won’t be able to get as much as a bowl of peanuts in any bar in the Kitchen if he rolls over to the cops.

Mickey Haggerty’s the least of their worries.

Which is what Callan’s thinking as he looks out the window at the Lincoln Continental parked across the street.

“So we might as well get it over with,” he says to O-Bop.

O-Bop’s got his head of kinky red hair under the kitchen tap, trying to get cool. Yeah, that’s gonna work-it’s a hundred and four out and they’re in a two-room apartment on the fifth floor with a fan the size of a propeller on a toy boat and the water pressure is zero because the little neighborhood bastards have opened up every fire hydrant on the street and if all that wasn’t bad enough there’s a crew from the Cimino Family out there looking to whack them.

And will whack them, soon as it’s late enough for darkness to provide a curtain of decency.

“What do you wanna do?” O-Bop asks. “You want to go out there blasting? Gunfight at the OK Corral?”

“It would be better than baking to death up here.”

“No it wouldn’t,” O-Bop says. “Up here sucks to be sure, but down there we’d be gunned down in the street like dogs.”

“We have to go down sometime,” Callan says.

“No we don’t,” O-Bop says. He takes his head out from under the tap and shakes the water off. “As long as they still deliver pizza, we never have to go down.”

He comes over to the window and looks at the long black Lincoln parked across the street.

“Fucking Italians never change,” O-Bop says. “You think they’d maybe mix in a Mercedes, a BMW, I dunno, a fuckin’ Volvo or something. Anything but these fucking Lincolns and Caddies. I’m tellin’ ya, it must be some kind of goombah rule or something.”

“Who’s in the car, Stevie?”

There are four guys in the car. Three more guys standing around outside. Real casual like. Smoking cigs, drinking coffee, shooting the shit. Like a mob announcement to the neighborhood-we’re going to whack somebody here so you might want to be someplace else.

O-Bop refocuses.

“Piccone’s sub-crew of Johnny Boy Cozzo’s crew,” O-Bop says. “Demonte wing of the Cimino Family.”

“How do you know?”

“The guy in the passenger seat is eating a can of peaches,” O-Bop says. “So it’s Jimmy Piccone-Jimmy Peaches. He’s got this thing for canned peaches.”

O-Bop is the Paul’s Peerage of mobdom. He follows them like some guys follow baseball teams. He has the whole Five Families organizational chart in his head.

So O-Bop is hipped to the fact that since Carlo Cimino died last year, the family’s been in a state of flux. Most of the hard-core guys were sure Cimino would pick Neill Demonte to be his successor, but he went for his brother-in-law Paulie Calabrese instead.

It was an unpopular choice, especially among the old guard, who think that Calabrese is too white-collar, too soft. Too focused on turning the money into legitimate businesses. The hard guys-the loan sharks, extortion artists and flat-out plain robbers-don’t like it.

Jimmy “Big Peaches” Piccone is one of these guys. In fact, he’s sitting in the Lincoln holding forth on it.

“We’re the Cimino Crime Family,” Peaches is saying to his brother, Little Peaches. Joey “Little Peaches” Piccone is actually bigger than his older brother, Big Peaches, but no one is going to say that, so the nicknames stick. “Even the fuckin' New York Times calls us the Cimino Crime Family. We do crime. If I wanted to be a businessman I would’ve joined-what-IBM.”

Peaches also doesn’t like that Demonte was overlooked as boss. “He’s an old man, what’s the harm of letting him have his few years in the sun? He’s earned it. What the Old Man should have done is, he should have made Mister Neill boss and Johnny Boy the underboss. Then we would have had 'our thing,’ our cosa nostra.”

For a young guy-Peaches is twenty-six-he’s a throwback, a conservative, a mafioso William F. Buckley without the tie. He likes the old ways, the old traditions.

“In the old days,” Peaches says, like he was even around in the old days, “we would have just taken a piece of the Javits Center. We wouldn’t have to suck ass to some old Harp like Matty Sheehan. Not like Paulie’s gonna give us a taste anyway. He don’t care if we fuckin’ starve.”

“Hey,” Little Peaches says.

“Hey what.”

“Hey, Paulie gives this job to Mister Neill, who gives it to Johnny Boy, who gives it to us,” Little Peaches says. “All I need to know: Johnny Boy gives us a job, we do the job.”

“We’re gonna do the fuckin’ job,” Peaches says. He don’t need his little brother giving him lectures about how it works. Peaches knows how it works, likes how it works, especially in the Demonte wing of the family, where it works like it did in the old days.

Another thing, Peaches fucking worships Johnny Boy.

Johnny Boy is everything the Mafia used to be.

What it oughta be again, Peaches thinks.

“Soon as it gets really dark,” Peaches says, “we’ll go up there and punch their tickets.”

Callan’s sitting there flipping through the black notebook.

“Your dad’s in here,” he says.

“There’s a surprise,” O-Bop says sarcastically. “For how much?”

“Two large.”

“Probably bet on the Budweiser Clydesdales to show at Aqueduct,” O-Bop says. “Hey, here comes the pizza. Hey, what the fuck is this? They’re taking our pizza!”

O-Bop is genuinely pissed. He’s not especially angry that these guys are here to kill him-that’s to be expected, that’s just business-but he takes the pizza hijacking as a personal affront.

“They don’t got to do that!” he wails. “That’s just wrong!”

Which, Callan recalls, is how this whole thing started in the first place.

He glances up from the black book to see this fat guinea with a big grin on his face, holding a slice of pizza up at him.

“Hey!” O-Bop yells.

“It’s good!” Peaches yells back.

“They’ve got our pizza!” O-Bop says to Callan.

“It’s no big deal,” Callan says.

O-Bop whines, “I’m hungry!”

“Then go down and take it from them,” Callan says.

“I might.”

“Take a shotgun.”

“Fuck!”

Callan can hear the guys out in the street laughing at them. He doesn’t care. It doesn’t get to him the way it gets to O-Bop. O-Bop hates to be laughed at. It’s always been an instant fight with him. Callan, he can just walk away.

“Stevie?”

“What.”

“What did you say was the name of that guy down there?”

“Which guy?”

“Guy they sent to whack us.”

“Jimmy Peaches.”

“He’s in here.”

“Say what?”

O-Bop comes away from the window. “For how much?”

“A hundred thousand.”

They look at each other and start to laugh.

“Callan,” O-Bop says, “we got us a whole new ball game here.”

Because Peaches Piccone owes Matty Sheehan $100,000. And that’s just the principal-the vigorish has to be piling up faster than stink in a garbage strike, so Piccone is in serious trouble here. He’s in to Matt Sheehan deep. Which would be bad news-all the more motivation for him to do Sheehan a solid-except that Callan and O-Bop have the book.

Which gives them an angle.

If they can live long enough to play it.

Because it’s getting dark, fast.

“You got any ideas?” O-Bop asks.

“Yes, I do.”

It’s one of them desperate fourth-and-long plays, but shit, it’s fourth and long.

O-Bop walks out onto the fire escape with a milk bottle in his hand.

Yells, “Hey, you guinea bastards!”

The boys look up from the Continental.

Just as O-Bop lights the rag stuck in the bottle, yells, “Eat this!” and launches it in a long, lazy arc at the Lincoln.

“What the fuck-”

This is from Peaches, who presses the button to roll the window down and sees this freaking torch coming out of the sky straight at him, so he scrambles to get the door open and get his ass out of the backseat of the Lincoln, and he does it just in time because O-Bop’s aim is perfect and the bottle crashes onto the top of the car and flames spread across the roof.

Peaches yells up at the fire escape, “That’s a new fucking car!”

And he’s really pissed because he don’t even have a chance to shoot at nobody because a crowd gathers, and then there’s sirens and all that shit and it’s just a couple of minutes before the whole block is full of Irish cops and Irish firemen, who start hosing down what’s left of the Lincoln.

Irish cops and Irish firemen and about fifteen thousand fucking drag queens from Ninth Avenue, and they’re standing around Peaches screaming and screeching and dancing and shit. He sends Little Peaches down to the phone on the corner to make a call and get a new fucking vehicle, and then he feels metal pressed against his left fucking kidney and someone whispers, “Mr. Piccone, turn around very slowly, please.”

Respectful like, though, which Peaches appreciates.

He turns around and here’s this Irish kid-not the red Brillo-pad asshole with the bottle but a tall, dark kid-standing there with a pistol in a brown paper bag and holding something up in his other hand.

The fuck is it? Peaches wonders.

Then he gets it.

Matty Sheehan’s little black book.

“We should talk,” the kid says.

“We should,” says Peaches.

So they’re in the basement of Paddy Hoyle’s ptomaine palace way the fuck over on Twelfth and you could call it a Mexican standoff, except there ain’t no Mexicans involved.

What you got is, you got this Italo-Irish get-together, and what it looks like is Callan and O-Bop are standing at one end with their backs literally to the wall, and Callan he looks like some freaking desperado with a pistol in each hand, and O-Bop he’s holding the shotgun leveled at his waist. And by the door, you got the two Piccone brothers. The Italians, they don’t got their guns pulled, they’re just standing there in their nice clothes looking very cool and very tough.

O-Bop, he respects this. He totally gets it. Like they’ve already been embarrassed once tonight-never mind losing a Lincoln-they’re not going to embarrass themselves further by looking like they’re even concerned with two punks openly holding an arsenal on them. It’s mob chic, and O-Bop gets it. In fact, he likes it.

Callan could give a rat’s ass.

If this thing starts to go wrong, he’s going to start pulling triggers and just see what happens.

“How old are you guys anyway?” Peaches asks.

“Twenty,” O-Bop lies.

“Twenty-one,” Callan says.

“You’re two tough little humps, I’ll tell you that,” Peaches says. “Anyway, we gotta deal with this Eddie Friel thing.”

Here it comes, Callan thinks. He’s one slow-muscle-fiber twitch away from touching it all off.

“I hated that sick twist,” says Peaches. “Pissing in guy’s mouths? What’s that about? How many times did you fucking shoot him anyway? Like eight? You guys wanted to get the job done, didn’t you?”

He laughs. Little Peaches laughs with him.

So does O-Bop.

Not Callan. He’s just ready, is all.

“Sorry about your car,” O-Bop says.

“Yeah,” Peaches says. “Next time you want to talk, use the fucking phone, all right?”

Everyone except Callan laughs.

“It’s what I try to tell Johnny Boy,” says Peaches. “I tell him you got me over here on the West Side with the Zulus and the PRs and the Wild Irish. What the fuck am I supposed to do? I’m going to tell him they’re fucking flinging fire from the sky, now I gotta get a new car. Wild fucking Irish. You look inside that little black book?”

“What do you think?” O-Bop asks.

“I think you did. I definitely think you did. What did you see?”

“Depends.”

“On?”

“What happens here.”

“Tell me what should happen here.”

Callan hears O-Bop swallow. Knows that O-Bop is scared to death, but he’s going to go for it anyway. Callan thinks, Do it, Stevie, make the play.

“First thing is,” O-Bop says, “we ain’t got the book with us.”

“Hey, Brillo,” Peaches says. “We start going to work on you, you’ll tell us where the book is. That is not an ace you’re holding. Ease up on that trigger there, we’re still talking.”

Looking now at Callan.

O-Bop says, “We know where every penny is that Sheehan has on the street.”

“No kidding-he’s sweating bricks to get that book back.”

“Fuck him,” says O-Bop. “He don’t get his book back, you don’t owe him shit.”

“Is that right?”

“As far as we’re concerned,” O-Bop says. “And Eddie Friel ain’t gonna say different.”

O-Bop sees the relief on Peaches’ face, so he presses it.

“There’s cops in that book,” he says. “Union guys. Councilmen. Couple of million dollars in money out on the street.”

“Matty Sheehan’s a rich man,” Peaches says.

“Why should he be?” O-Bop says. “Why not us? Why not you?”

They watch Peaches think. Watch him weigh the risks versus rewards. After a minute he says, “Sheehan’s doing some favors for my boss.”

O-Bop says, “You got that book, you could deliver the same favors.”

Callan realizes he’s made a mistake, having the guns out. His arms are getting tired, shaky. He’d like to lower the gun but he doesn’t want to send any messages. Still, he’s afraid that if Peaches decides the wrong way, his own hands will be too shaky to shoot straight, even at this range.

Finally, Peaches asks, “Have you told anyone else about seeing my name in that book?”

O-Bop says no so quickly that Callan realizes it’s a very important question. Makes him wonder why Peaches borrowed the money, what he was using it for.

“Wild Irish,” Peaches says to himself. Then to them, “Keep your fucking heads down. Try not to kill anyone for a day or so, all right? I’ll get back to you on this.”

Then he turns around and walks back up the stairs, his brother right behind him.

“Jesus,” Callan says. He sits down on the floor.

His hands start shaking like crazy.

Peaches rings the doorbell of Matt Sheehan’s building.

Some big fucking Harp answers the door. Peaches hears Sheehan inside, asking, “Who is it?”

His voice sounds scared.

“It’s Jimmy Peaches,” the guy says, letting him in. “He’s in the den.”

“Thanks.”

Peaches goes down the hallway, takes a left into the den.

Room has green fucking wallpaper. Shamrocks and shit all over the place. Big picture of John Kennedy. Another one of Bobby. Picture of the Pope. Guy’s got everything in here except a fucking leprechaun perched on a stool.

Big Matt’s got the Yankees game on.

He gets out of his chair, though-Peaches likes the respect-and gives Peaches one of these big Irish-politician smiles and says, “James, it’s good to see you. Did you have any luck with that little difficulty while I was gone?”

“Yeah.”

“You found those two animals.”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

Jimmy’s got the knife in him before Matty can say “Gosh and begorra.” Sticks the blade in under the left pectoral and shoves it upward. Rolls the blade around a little to make sure there’ll be no difficult ethical decisions at the hospital.

Fucking knife gets stuck in Sheehan’s ribs, so Jimmy has to put his foot into the man’s broad chest and shove to get the blade out. Sheehan hits the floor so hard the pictures on the walls shake.

Fat guy who let him in is standing in the doorway.

Not looking like he wants to do anything.

“How much you owe him?” Peaches asks.

“Seven-five.”

“You don’t owe him nothing,” Peaches says, “if he disappears.”

They cut Matty up and take him out to Wards Island, dump him into the sewage disposal.

On the way back, Peaches is singing,

“Anybody here seen my old friend Matty…

Can you tell me where he’s go-o-o-one?”

A month after what has come to be known in Irish Hell’s Kitchen as the “Rising of the Moon River,” Callan’s life has changed a little. Not only is he still living it, which is a surprise to him, he’s become a neighborhood hero.

Because while Peaches was flushing Sheehan, he and O-Bop were taking a black felt-tip pen to Matty’s little black book and literally settling some debts. They had a great goddamn time-eliminating some entries, reducing others, maintaining the ones they figured would give them the most swag.

It’s fat times in the Kitchen.

Callan and O-Bop set themselves up in the Liffey Pub like they own it, which if you look carefully at the black book, they sort of do. People come in and practically kiss their rings, either they’re so grateful they’re off the hook with Matty or they’re so scared they’re still on the hook with the boys who took down Eddie Friel, Jimmy Boylan and very probably Matty Sheehan himself.

Someone else, too.

Larry Moretti.

It’s the only killing Callan will feel bad about. Eddie the Butcher was necessary. So was Jimmy Boylan. So, especially, was Matty Sheehan. But Larry Moretti is just revenge-for helping Eddie cut up Michael Murphy.

“It’s expected of us,” O-Bop says. “It’s a respect thing.”

Moretti knows it’s coming. He’s holed up in his place on 104th, off Broadway, and he’s been drinking on it. Hasn’t made a meeting in a couple of weeks-he just stays drunk-so he’s an easy mark when Callan and O-Bop come through the door.

Moretti’s lying on the floor with a bottle. Got his head between the stereo speakers and he’s listening to some fucked-up disco shit with the bass booming like distant artillery. He opens his eyes for a second and looks at Callan and O-Bop standing there with their guns pointed at him, and then he shuts his eyes and O-Bop yells, “This is for Mikey!” and starts shooting. Callan feels bad about it but he joins in, and it’s weird, blasting a guy who’s already down.

Then they got the body to deal with, but O-Bop’s come prepared and they roll Moretti onto a sheet of heavy plastic and Callan now realizes how strong Eddie Friel had to be to cut meat up like that. It’s hard fucking work and Callan goes into the bathroom a couple of times to throw up, but they finally get Moretti into enough pieces to get him into garbage bags and then they take the bags out to Wards Island. O-Bop thinks they should put Moretti’s thing into a milk carton and walk it around the neighborhood, but Callan says no.

They don’t need that shit. The word gets out and a lot of people come into the Liffey to pay tribute.

One guy who doesn’t come in is Bobby Remington. Callan knows Bobby is scared that they think he gave them up to Matty, and he knows that Bobby didn’t.

Beth did.

“You were just trying to protect your brother,” Callan tells her when she shows up at his new apartment. “I understand that.”

She looks down at the floor. She’s come looking good; her long hair is brushed and shiny and she’s wearing a dress. A black dress cut just low enough in front to show the tops of her white breasts.

Callan gets it. She’s come over prepared to give it up to save her life, her brother's.

“Does Stevie understand?” she asks.

“I’ll make him understand,” Callan says.

“Bobby feels awful,” she says.

“No, Bobby’s good.”

“He needs a job,” she says. “He can’t get a union card…”

Callan feels weird hearing this addressed to him. It’s the sort of favor people used to ask of Matty.

“Yeah, we can do that,” Callan says. He’s holding paper from union officers in teamsters, construction, whatever. “Tell him to come around. I mean, we’re friends.”

“How about me?” she asks. “Are we friends?”

He’d like to make her. Shit, he’d love to make her. But it would be different, it would be like he was taking her just because he can, because she owes him. Because he has power now and she doesn’t.

So he says, “Yeah, we’re friends.”

To let her know it’s all right, it’s cool, she doesn’t have to put out for him.

“And that’s all we are?”

“Yeah, Beth. That’s all.”

He feels kind of bad because she’s dressed up and put on makeup and everything, but he doesn’t want to go to bed with her anymore.

It’s kind of sad.

Anyway, Bobby comes around and they hook him up with a job that his new boss assumes is a no-show-and Bobby doesn’t disappoint him in this regard-and other people come in to pay their vig or look for a favor, and for about a month Callan and O-Bop are playing junior godfathers from a booth in the Liffey Pub.

Until the real godfather calls.

Big Paulie Calabrese reaches a hand out and demands that they come to Queens to explain to him personally why (a) they are not dead, and (b) his friend and associate Matt Sheehan is.

“I told them it was you guys whacked Sheehan,” Peaches explains. They’re sitting in a booth at the Landmark Tavern, and Peaches is trying to eat some fucking lamb shit with potatoes and greasy brown gravy poured all over it. At least at the sitdown with Big Paulie, they’ll get a decent fucking meal.

It might be their last, but it’ll be decent.

“Why did you do that?” Callan asks.

“He has his reasons,” O-Bop says.

“Good,” says Callan. “What are they?”

“Because,” Peaches carefully explains, “if I told him I did it, he’d have me killed, no question.”

“This is a great reason,” Callan says to O-Bop. He turns back to Peaches. “So now he’ll just have us whacked.”

“Not necessarily,” Peaches says.

“Not necessarily?”

“No,” Peaches explains. “You guys aren’t in the family. You’re not made guys. You’re not subject to the same discipline. See, if I were going to kill Matt Sheehan, I’d have to get Calabrese’s permission, which he would never give. So if I went ahead and did it anyway, I’m in serious trouble.”

“Oh, this is good news,” Callan says.

“But you guys don’t need permission,” Peaches says. “All you need is a good reason. And the right attitude.”

“What kind of attitude?”

“Toward the future,” Peaches says. “An attitude of friendship. Cooperation.”

O-Bop gets seriously geeked. This is like a dream come true.

“Calabrese wants to hook us up?” he asks. He’s practically coming out of his seat.

“I don’t know if I want to be hooked up,” Callan says.

O-Bop says, “This is our shot! This is the fucking Cimino Family! They want to work with us!”

“There’s another thing,” Peaches says.

“That’s good,” says Callan. “I was hoping that wasn’t, you know, everything.”

“The book,” Peaches says.

“What about it?”

“My entry,” Peaches says. “The hundred grand? Calabrese can’t ever know about that. If he does, I’m dead.”

“Why?” Callan asks.

“It’s his money,” Peaches says. “Sheehan laid off a couple hundred from Paulie. I borrowed it from Matt.”

“So you’re ripping off Paul Calabrese,” Callan says.

“We,” Peaches corrects him.

“Jesus God,” says Callan.

Even O-Bop doesn’t look so enthusiastic now. Says, “I dunno, Jimmy.”

“What the fuck?” Peaches says. “You don’t know? I was supposed to whack you guys. Those were my orders, and I didn’t obey them. They could kill me just for that. I saved your fucking lives. Twice. First I didn’t kill you, then I took out Matty Sheehan for you. And you don’t know?”

Callan stares at him. Then he says, “So this meeting. It’s gonna make us rich, or it’s gonna make us dead.”

“That’s pretty much it,” Peaches says.

“What the fuck,” Callan says.

Rich or dead.

There’s worse choices.

The meeting is set for the back room of a restaurant in Bensonhurst.

“Goombah Central,” Callan says.

Very convenient. If Calabrese decides to kill us, all he has to do is walk out and shut the door behind him. He goes out the front, our bodies go out the service entry.

Or exit, or whatever.

He’s thinking this as he’s looking in the mirror trying to knot his tie.

“Haven’t you ever worn a tie before?” O-Bop asks. His voice is high, nervous.

“Sure I have,” says Callan, “at my First Communion.”

“Shit.” O-Bop comes over and starts to tie the tie for him. Then says, “Turn around, I can’t tie it backwards like this.”

“Your hands are shaking.”

“Fuck yes, they’re shaking.”

They got to go to this sitdown naked. No hardware of any kind. No one carries a gun around the boss except the boss’s people. Which is going to make it even easier to take them out.

Not that they intend to go out unaccompanied. They got Bobby Remington and Fat Tim Healey and another kid from the neighborhood, Billy Bohun, going to cruise in a car outside the restaurant.

O-Bop’s instructions are very clear.

“Anyone other than us comes out the front door,” he tells them, “kill them.”

And another precaution: Beth and her girlfriend Moira are going to be having lunch in the public part of the restaurant. Beth and Moira are also going to be having a. 22 and a. 44 in their respective handbags, just in case things go sick and the boys have a chance to get out of the back room.

As O-Bop says, “If I’m going to hell, it’s going to be on a crowded bus.”

They take a subway to Queens because O-Bop says he doesn’t want to come out of a happy, successful meeting and get into his car and have it go boom.

“Italians don’t do bombs,” Peaches tries to tell him. “That’s Irish shit.”

O-Bop reminds him he’s Irish and takes the subway. They get off in Bensonhurst, and him and Callan are walking down the street toward the restaurant and turn the corner and O-Bop says, “Oh, fucking shit.”

“What, oh, fucking shit? What?”

There’s four or five wise guys standing out front of the restaurant. Callan’s like, So what, there are always four or five wise guys standing out front of wise-guy restaurants-it’s what they do.

“That’s Sal Scachi,” O-Bop says.

Big, thick guy, early forties, with Sinatra-blue eyes and silver hair, which is razor-cut short for a goombah. He looks like a wise guy, Callan thinks, but then again he don’t look like a wise guy. And he’s wearing these real square black shoes, which are polished so they shine like black marble.

This is a serious fucking guy, Callan thinks.

“What’s his story?” he asks O-Bop.

“He’s a fucking colonel in the Green Berets,” O-Bop says.

“You’re shittin’ me.”

“I shit you not,” O-Bop says. “Tons of medals from 'Nam, and he’s a made guy. If they decide to take us off the count, it’s Scachi who’ll do the subtraction.”

Now Scachi turns and sees them coming. Steps away from his group, walks up to O-Bop and Callan, smiles and says, “Gentlemen, welcome to the first or last day of the rest of your lives. No offense, but I have to make sure you’re not carrying sidearms.”

Callan nods and lifts his arms. Scachi pats him down with a few smooth moves, all the way to his ankles, then does the same with O-Bop. “Good,” he says. “Now shall we go get some lunch?”

He takes them into the back room of the restaurant. Callan’s seen it before, in about forty-eight freaking mob movies. Murals on the walls depict happy scenes from sunny Sicily. There’s a long table with a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth. Wineglasses, espresso cups, little pats of butter sitting on iced plates.

Bottles of red, bottles of white.

Even though they’re exactly on time, there’s guys already there. Peaches nervously introduces them to Johnny Boy Cozzo and Demonte and a couple of others. Then the door opens and two hitters come in, chests like butcher’s blocks, and then Calabrese comes in.

Callan gets a glance in at Johnny Boy, who has a smile on his face that’s dangerously close to a smirk. But they all do that Sicilian hugging and kissing shit and then Calabrese sits down at the head of the table and Peaches makes the necessary introductions.

Callan doesn’t like it that Peaches looks scared.

Peaches gets their names out, then Calabrese holds up a hand and says, “First we eat, then business.”

Even Callan has to admit that the food is out of this world. It’s the best meal Callan’s had in his whole life. It starts with a big antipasto with provolone and prosciutto and sweet red peppers. Thin rolls of ham and tiny little tomatoes that Callan’s never seen before.

Waiters are coming in and out like they’re nuns waiting on the Pope.

They finish the appetizer and the pasta course comes in. Nothing fancy, just small bowls of spaghetti in a red sauce. Then there’s a chicken piccata-thin slices of chicken breast in white wine, lemon and capers and then a baked fish. Then there’s another salad, then dessert-a sweet white cake soaked with anisette.

All this and the wines coming in and out, and by the time the waiters set the espressos down Callan’s about half in the bag. He watches Calabrese take a long sip from an espresso cup. Then the boss says, “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you.”

One motherfuck of an essay question.

Part of Callan wants to scream, You shouldn’t kill us because Jimmy Piccone stole a hundred grand from you and we can prove it! but he keeps his mouth shut, trying to think of a different answer.

Then he hears Peaches say, “They’re good boys, Paul.”

Calabrese smiles. “But you're not a good boy, Jimmy. If you were a good boy, I’d be having lunch with Matt Sheehan today.”

He turns and looks at O-Bop and Callan.

“I’m still waiting for your answer.”

So is Callan. He’s trying to think whether he’s going to hear one, or whether he should try to bust through the two slabs of meat guarding the door, make it into the dining room to grab the guns from Beth and come back in blasting.

But even if I make it out and make it back, Callan thinks, O-Bop will be dead by then. Yeah, but I can send him out on his crowded bus.

He tries to slide to the edge of his chair without anyone noticing. Inch to the edge of his seat and get his legs under him so he can burst off that chair. Maybe go straight for Calabrese and get a hold around his neck and back out the door…

And go where? he thinks. The freaking moon? Where can we go that the Cimino Family can’t find us?

Fuck it, he thinks. Go for the guns, go out like men.

Across the table, Sal Scachi shakes his head at him. It’s an almost imperceptible gesture, but it’s there, telling him that if he keeps moving, he’s dead.

Callan doesn’t move.

All this thinking seems to take about an hour, but it actually takes only a few seconds in the, shall we say, tense atmosphere of the room, and Callan is actually surprised when he hears O-Bop’s thin voice pipe up with, “You shouldn’t kill us because…”

Because, uhhhhhhhhh…

“… because we can do more for you than Sheehan ever could,” Callan says. “We can deliver you a piece of the Javits Center, teamsters’ local, construction local. Not a chunk of concrete moves or goes in you don’t own a piece of. You get ten percent of every shylock dollar we move on the street, and we take care of all of this for you. You don’t have to lift a finger or get involved.”

Callan watches Calabrese consider this.

And take his sweet freaking time about it.

Which starts to piss Callan off. Like he’s almost hoping Calabrese says Fuck you guys so they can cut this diplomatic crap and just get down to it.

But instead, Big Paulie says, “There are some conditions and some rules. First, we’ll take thirty-not ten-percent of your book. Second, we’ll take fifty percent of any monies arising from union and construction activities, and thirty percent of any monies emanating from any other activities. In exchange, I offer you my friendship and protection.

“While you cannot become members of the family because you are not Sicilian, you can become associates. You will work under the supervision of Jimmy Peaches. I will hold him personally responsible for your activities. If you have a need, you go to Jimmy. If you have a problem, you go to Jimmy. This Wild West nonsense must stop. Our business functions best in an atmosphere of quietude. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mr. Calabrese.”

Calabrese nods. “From time to time I might have need of your assistance. I will communicate that to Jimmy, who will communicate it to you. My expectation is that, in return for the friendship and protection I afford you, you will not turn your faces when I reach out to you. If your enemies are to be my enemies, then mine must be yours.”

“Yes, Mr. Calabrese.”

Callan wonders if this is when they kiss his ring.

“One last thing,” Calabrese says. “Attend to your business. Make money. Prosper. Do what you need to do, except-no drugs. This was the rule that Carlo handed down, and it is still the rule now. It’s too dangerous. I do not intend to spend my old age in prison, so the rule is absolute: You deal, you die.”

Calabrese gets up from his chair. Everyone else gets up from theirs.

Callan’s standing there when Calabrese gives a brief good-bye and the two slabs open the door for him.

And Callan is like, What is wrong with this picture?

He says, “Stevie, the man is leaving.”

O-Bop looks at him like, Good.

“Stevie, the man is headed out the door.”

Everything stops. Peaches is appalled by this faux pas, and he says as graciously as he can, “The don always leaves first.”

“Is there a problem?” Scachi asks.

“There is,” Callan says. “There is a problem.”

O-Bop turns absolutely white. Peaches has his jaw clenched so tight it’s going to take an Allen wrench to loosen it. Demonte’s looking at them like he’s watching something on a National Geographic special. Johnny Boy just thinks it’s kind of funny.

Scachi doesn’t. He snaps, “What’s the problem?”

Callan gulps and says, “The problem is, we got people out in the street we told to kill the first person comes out the door, if it’s not us.”

A tense moment.

Calabrese’s two guards have their hands on their guns. So does Scachi, except his. 45 service revolver is pointed squarely at Callan’s head.

Calabrese is looking at Callan and O-Bop, shaking his head.

Jimmy Peaches is trying to remember the exact wording of the Act of Contrition.

Then Calabrese laughs.

Laughs so hard he has to pull a white handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and dab his eyes. That doesn’t even do it-he has to sit back down. Finishes laughing and looks at Scachi and says, “What are you standing there for? Shoot 'em.”

Then, just as quickly, he says, “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. You two boys, thinking I was going to walk out that door and World War Three was going to start. Aww, that’s funny.”

He waves them toward the door.

“This time,” he says.

They go out the door and it shuts behind them. From the restaurant’s dining room they can still hear them in there laughing. They walk past Beth and her friend Moira, out onto the street.

No sign of Bobby Remington and fat Tim Healey.

Just a bunch of black Lincolns from corner to corner.

Mob guys standing around them.

“Jesus Christ,” O-Bop says. “They couldn’t get a parking spot.”

Later, an apologetic Bobby will tell them that he just drove around and around until some of the mob guys stopped the car and told them to get the fuck out of there. So they did.

But that will be later.

Right now, O-Bop stands out on the street and looks up at the blue sky and says, “You know what this means, don’t you?”

“No, Stevie, what does it mean?”

“It means,” O-Bop says, throwing his arm around Callan, “we’re the kings of the West Side.”

Kings of the West Side.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is what Jimmy Peaches has done with the hundred grand he now has free and clear from the last will and testament of Matty Sheehan. What he’s done is he’s bought dope with it.

Not the usual heroin from the usual Turkey-to-Sicily connection. Not from the Marseilles connection. Not even from the new Laotian connection that Santo Trafficante set up. No-if he buys from any of those sources, Calabrese hears about it about fifteen seconds later, and about a week after that Jimmy Peaches’ bloated body shocks tourists on the Circle Line.

No, he has to find a new source.

Mexico.