Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

“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.”