Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

“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?”