The Power of the Dog

by Don Winslow

  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.

  C
allan 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.