City of Dreams

by Don Winslow

If there is a God, he thinks, he’s a cruel, vengeful prick who made my wife and my little boy pay for the things I did. I thought Jesus died for my sins, that’s what the nuns said anyway. Maybe my sins just maxed out Christ’s credit card.

Thing of it was, the Irish and Italians had been friends before that. Allies for generations. Danny’s own father, Marty—who’s now thankfully dozed off, snoring instead of singing—was one of the men who made that happen. The Irish had the docks, the Italians had the gambling, and they shared the unions. They ran New England together. They were all at the same beach party when Liam made his move on Pam.

Danny wasn’t a Murphy; he’d married into the family that ruled the Irish mob. Even then he was pretty much just a soldier. John Murphy and his two sons, Pat and Liam, ran things.

Ned Egan walks up. Marty’s longtime bodyguard, he’s in his forties now. Built like a fire hydrant but a hell of a lot tougher. You don’t fuck with Ned Egan, you don’t even joke about fucking with him, because Ned Egan has killed more guys than cholesterol.

Yesterday they put her brother Liam in the ground. Beautiful, flawed, selfish Liam, the cause of all the trouble. The police said it was suicide, a bullet to the head, but Cassie doesn’t believe it—Liam was far too in love with himself to do his favorite person any harm.

The doctor comes out of the exam room to talk with Danny. He’s young but pragmatic. “Look, I could run a battery of tests, but it’s readily apparent that your uncle has dementia, exacerbated by late-stage, chronic alcoholism. His liver is shot, he’s losing control of his bodily functions, his mental acuity is fading fast. He’ll show flashes of his old self, but he’s going to need full-time residential care.” Danny thought his old man would put up more of a fight about going into a home, but he doesn’t. “I get my own room?” Marty asks. “You get your own room.” “And the nurses will give me hand jobs?” “That you have to negotiate for yourself,” Danny says. “See if I don’t.”

Which she could have bought at fucking REI, he thinks, because Pam has put on a few pounds, more than a fucking few. He liked her better when she was doing coke and skinny; now any white powder under her nose probably comes from a doughnut. It wasn’t always like this. It wasn’t all that long ago—a handful of years—when Pam was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, hell, the most beautiful woman anyone had ever seen. Which was what started the whole fucking thing in the first place—Liam Murphy jealous that Paulie had a woman like that, getting drunk and assaulting her after a beach party, Paulie and Peter and Sal, God rest, beating the shit of Liam. Then Pam had gone to see the Irish fuck at the hospital and ended up leaving with him. It started there and didn’t stop. How many bodies? How many funerals?

“What do you mean, what do I mean?” Benetto asks. “We went to the bar where he works, he didn’t show up for his shift, hasn’t shown up for weeks. He’s gone. Your bird flew the coop.” “Shit,” Peter says. He hangs up, looks at Vinnie. “Someone tipped Ryan off.” “The fuck you looking at me for?” Vinnie asks. “I’m not looking at you,” Peter says. “Yeah, you are,” Vinnie says. “You’re looking right at me right now.” “Because I’m talking to you,” Peter says. “Jesus.”

Danny sees the car coming down the street toward him, an SUV driving just a little too slow, and he knows what’s going to happen. A guy will jump out, jam a gun into his back and then push him into the car. And that will be that, because once they have you in the car they have you. First thing you learn in this kind of life: Never get in the car. Make your stand in the street, die in the parking lot, but never get in the car.

Lunch goes great. Kevin and Sean regale Mitch with stories that fall short of confessions but easily make it to the level of lurid violence porn. Mitch is titillated. Not an uncommon phenomenon, directors and actors vicariously getting off on the exploits of real-life gangsters. Hard to tell, sometimes, who’s a groupie for whom, whether the gangsters are hanging on the Hollywood coattails or vice versa, but suffice to say that after an hour of stories and whispered confidences, if Sean and Kevin had asked Mitch to go into the men’s room and suck their cocks, it’s an even bet that Mitch, famed for the sexual swath he cuts through the screen actress ranks, would scuff his knees on the tiles.

He’s taking stock. You have a high school education, he tells himself. You’ve been a fisherman, a longshoreman, a leg-breaker, a hijacker, a racketeer. A killer. Now you’re a multimillionaire, and the reality is that you can let your money work for you. And do what, though? Watch it? Boring as freakin’ shit, and you’re not that guy. Not that guy to get up in the morning, check your investments and go golfing with doctors and lawyers and stockbrokers. The only thing that could improve golf is snipers. Then those guys wouldn’t wear those stupid clothes, and it would sure as shit speed up the game.

“I want these guys off the set,” Mitch says. Larry says, “We just paid them a hundred grand to be on the set.” “Then give them another hundred to get them off.” Yeah, that’s not going to happen. That might work with a businessman, who would look at an offer like that and figure he’s scored two hundred grand for doing nothing and step away from the table. But that’s not the way a criminal thinks. A criminal thinks that if you offer him $200K for doing nothing, you must have a lot more money to spend, so he should stick around and tap into the main source. The criminal gets almost insulted that you’re offering him chump change for doing nothing. He truly feels that he deserves a lot more for doing nothing. This is where the film industry and the criminal class intersect. A serene choir in a pitch-perfect harmony of indolence and greed.

Diane Carson was a serious actress. A major star. Men loved her for her looks and sexuality, women for her intelligence and beauty. But Diane’s personal life was a train wreck. She wed the director of Jan Hayes—the marriage lasted seven months. Next, she got involved with a country-western star who drank and cheated on her. Diane finally broke it off when he knocked up a twenty-year-old centerfold. She did a rebound wedding in Vegas with an actor—it was true love this time, the real thing—two weeks later they had it annulled.

Danny learns that a film set is one of the most boring places on earth. Most of the time is spent setting up lighting, so there isn’t a lot to look at. Unless you’re actively engaged in making the movie, there’s nothing to do and Danny quickly tires of feeling useless.

“Obviously there’s been some sort of misunderstanding here,” Faella says. “No misunderstanding,” Danny says. “I pay for seven, I get seven. I pay for three, I get three.” “You better talk to someone at the studio,” Faella says. “Who?” Danny asks. “Who should I talk to? Give me a name.” Faella stares at him but doesn’t say anything. “What I thought,” Danny says. “Anyway, I just fired you.” “We have a contract, my friend.” “Call your lawyer,” Danny says. “I’ll call ours. I’m sure everyone will have a good time going over your books.” “Do you know who I am?” Faella asks. “Don’t you know who you are?” Danny asks. “We have an amnesia problem here?”

Kevin Coombs is not impressed with Ronnie Faella and Angelo Petrelli. It took him two days, but he tracked them down to a bakery in Westlake Village where they usually meet for a late breakfast. “Guess what they were eating,” he says to Sean. “Do I have to?” “Croissants,” Kevin says with disgust. “The fuck kind of mob guys eat croissants?” “What do you want them to eat?” “Bacon and eggs,” Kevin says. “Mob guys eat bacon and eggs, okay, maybe sausage, the Italians. But croissants? Sean, come on. And you know what they were wearing? Pastel polo shirts.” “So what?” Kevin shakes his head. “Mob guys wear black. Captains and above, black suits. Below, black leather jackets.” “It’s ninety degrees out.” “Doesn’t matter,” Kevin says. “There are standards. And the next morning, my hand to freakin’ God, one gets oatmeal, with berries, the other? Yogurt. A so-called boss. Yogurt. How are we supposed to take these guys seriously?”

Angelo Petrelli wasn’t happy with his phone call to Pasco Ferri. He knows when he’s being blown off, and that old wop breezed him like foam off a beer.

The main thing is that Kevin’s bored. Sure, the money from the drug heist is good, life around the set has been sweet, but Kevin wants to get active again, he wants to do work, and Danny isn’t allowing any of that because he wants them off the radar. So it really fries Kevin’s balls that Danny has become a huge blip on everyone’s screen while he’s telling his people to lie low.

“Thank you for coming, Danny. I’m Johnny Marks.” They walk past the big Ferris wheel out onto the pier. “What’s this about?” Danny asks. “Our friend wants you to know he thinks you’re doing the wrong thing here,” Marks says. “He thinks it’s time for you to move on.” “I don’t.” “Let me put it another way,” Marks says. “You know speed limit signs?” “Yeah.” What the hell, Danny thinks. “We think of them more as suggestions, don’t we,” Mark says. “This isn’t a speed limit sign, this is a stop sign. And at a stop sign, you stop.”

Danny goes straight to the pool, where he knows he’ll find Ian with Holly. He pays her, then plays with Ian in the pool for an hour or so. Pulling Ian across the water, Danny looks across to a man-made berm with a fence and a bunch of trees and sees a guy trimming bushes. A white guy, which would be the first guy he’s seen in California doing yard work who wasn’t Mexican. He isn’t trimming bushes, Danny thinks. He’s lining up his shot, doing his research.

Chris thinks psychics are bullshit. But he doesn’t want to piss Laura off, so he plays along when she brings over one of her friends from the coven for a “reading.” “Gwendolyn is wonderful,” Laura said. “She predicted that I’d meet you.” Yeah, Chris thought, she probably said that you’d meet a man, which, given your sexual history, was a high-probability bet. Chris would take that number and give points.

Frankie has information, and this has always been his real bread and butter. But any fucking idiot (well, apparently not any fucking idiot) knows that when a miracle comes from nowhere and pulls you out of a bad situation, you stay out. When people who should by all rights have killed you let you live, you thank God and leave those people alone. Yeah, not Frankie. Chalk it up to desperation. Or to being fucking stupid. What Frankie does is he walks over to East Village to a corner where they’re clearly slinging H and asks the Mexican kid on the corner if he knows Neto Valdez. The kid is too smart to answer that. “Whatever,” Frankie says. “Tell him that Frankie V wants to talk to him.” And then Frankie actually says that he’s living at the Golden Lion Hotel. Spoon. Drawer. Two nights later, Frankie is hanging from a meat hook in a warehouse in Chula Vista. “Who was it?” Neto asks him. “Who robbed the stash house? Was it Chris?” Frankie has balls, you have to give him that. More balls than brains. He says, “A hundred grand and I’ll tell you.” “Frankie, you’re going to die,” Neto says. “But you have a choice. You can die slowly and in great pain, or you can die quickly. Up to you, I don’t care. But you are going to tell me who robbed the safe house and you are going to tell me the truth, because I’ll know. Now, what’s it going to be?” It’s going to be Danny Ryan.