The Power Of The Dog (14 page)

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.