Chapter 4 - The Salt on the Wound
Frankie Moretti was crying so hard that snot and bile were pooling in the yellowed dust beneath his cheek.
His red satin jacket was soaked in dirty lye water and raw gasoline, the white embroidered letters of the Chicago Bulls logo stained a violent, mottled gray. Every time he tried to pull his left arm toward his stomach, the broken fragments of his radius bone ground together inside the swelling flesh with a sickening, wet crunch that made Jimmy "The Gland" look away toward the broken neon sign.
Otis did not lower the twelve-gauge.
The heavy steel muzzle remained three inches from the third button of Jimmy’s polyester overcoat, cocked, the safety off, held with one massive, hair-covered hand that didn't show a single millimeter of tremble.
Raphael took the unlit cigarette from his mouth, tucked it behind his right ear, and reached down into his trousers pocket.
He pulled out a silver money clip, slid three fifty-dollar bills from the folded stack, and let them drop through the cold air.
They fluttered down like dry autumn leaves, landing squarely on Frankie’s face, one of them sticking to the bloody mucus beside his nostril.
"That's for the window you cracked when you kicked the door open, Frankie," Raphael murmured.
Frankie lifted his head two inches, his eyes rolling back in his skull, his teeth chattering from shock and the four-degree draft whistling through the open entrance.
"Santoro..." Frankie sobbed, his voice reduced to a thin, gargling rasp. "My... my uncle Sal... he’s going to peel the skin off your back for this... he’s got the whole twenty-second district... he’s got the city council—"
"Your uncle Sal is seventy-one years old, Frankie," Raphael said softly, crouching down until his polished leather shoes were inches from the young man’s nose.
He didn't grab Frankie’s hair. He didn't raise his fist. He rested his left forearm against his own knee—wincing slightly as the movement pulled against the unhealed incision beneath his ribs—and looked into the boy’s bloodshot eyes with the cold, absolute certainty of an undertaker taking measurements for an oak box.
"Your uncle Sal spent the last three years believing I was dead because he needed to believe it," Raphael said, his voice dropping into a whisper that barely carried above the clanking of the streetcars on the avenue. "Because if I was alive, he would have had to explain to the Commission why sixty thousand dollars a month in terminal protection fees were disappearing into an unlisted bank account in the Bahamas."
Raphael reached out with two fingers, plucked the fifty-dollar bill from Frankie’s cheek, and folded it into a neat, tight triangle.
"Tell Salvatore that I will be at the Union League Club on Jackson Boulevard tomorrow afternoon at two o'clock," Raphael whispered, sliding the folded bill into the breast pocket of Frankie's red jacket. "Tell him to bring his tax attorney, his notary public, and the original nineteen-seventy-eight corporate deed for the cold storage warehouse on the slip."
He paused, his eyes narrowing into two shards of gray slate.
"And tell him that if I see your face on Twenty-Sixth Street again before the snow melts... Otis will not bring the shotgun. Otis will bring the lime."
He stood up.
He didn't look at Frankie again. He turned toward the counter, where Jimmy was standing with his hands held high above his head, sweating through his polyester shirt despite the sub-zero wind blowing through the room.
"Jimmy," Raphael said.
"Yes, Mr. Santoro," the fat man croaked, his voice shaking so violently his double chin wobbled against his collar.
"Pick up your garbage," Raphael said, gesturing toward Frankie on the floor. "Take him to the emergency clinic on Blue Island Avenue. Tell the doctor he fell off a grain elevator. And take your gasoline with you."
Jimmy didn't wait for a second invitation.
He scrambled forward, scooped the yellow plastic container off the tiles with his left hand, hauled Frankie up by the waistband of his trousers with his right, and dragged the weeping boy backward through the front doors, the heels of Frankie’s sneakers leaving two long, clean streaks through the dust as they vanished into the winter night.
The door swung shut.
The brass bell gave its final, trembling TING.
Silence fell over the room once more, thick, heavy, and smelling of sulfur, petroleum, and seventy years of Irish stubbornness.
Otis lowered the shotgun, resting the butt against his thigh, his breath pluming white in the freezing draft. He looked at Maeve, then looked at the sixteen-inch hickory club she was still holding at her side, its lead-weighted head smeared with three drops of Frankie Moretti’s blood.
"The girl’s got a good swing, boss," Otis rumbled, his flat Polish face cracking into a rare, microscopic grin that vanished as quickly as it appeared.
"She learned it from her father," Raphael said.
He turned to face the counter.
Maeve had not moved. Her knuckles were white on the hickory handle, her chest heaving beneath the green woolen cardigan, her dark blue eyes burning with an adrenaline so fierce it looked like fever.
She looked at Raphael. She looked at the blood on the floor tiles.
Then she looked at the five-hundred-pound steel griddle she had spent three hours scraping with a wire brush.
"The gasoline soaked into the grout between the tiles," Maeve said, her voice trembling, though she fought with every muscle in her throat to keep it level. "It will smell like a refinery in here for a week."
Raphael walked over to the counter, pulled a clean linen napkin from an antique chrome dispenser, and laid it over the spot where Frankie had spat on the mosaic.
"Salt," Raphael said.
Maeve frowned, her brow furrowing in confusion. "What?"
"Coarse rock salt," Raphael answered, pointing toward the dry storage pantry behind the swinging half-doors. "Two inches over the grout. It pulls the petroleum out of the porous mortar within six hours. Then you wash it with boiling water and white vinegar. My grandmother used it on the olive oil presses in Palermo."
Maeve stared at him.
The surreal, impossible absurdity of the moment seemed to crash down upon her shoulders all at once: standing in a freezing, condemned diner at three in the morning with the most feared criminal boss in Cook County, discussing the chemical absorption properties of rock salt after beating a man's arm in two with a tire thumper.
A ragged, breathless laugh broke from her lips—a sound that was half sob, half hysterical exhaustion.
She let the hickory club drop. It hit the floor with a heavy THUD, rolling against the base of the counter.
She sat down on the edge of the second red vinyl stool, buried her face in her chapped, red-knuckled hands, and began to shake.
She didn't cry. The Callahans didn't cry in front of men who carried overcoats. But her breath came in long, shuddering gasps that tore through the quiet room like tearing paper.
Raphael did not step toward her. He did not put an arm around her shoulders; he knew enough about pride to know that an unearned touch from a powerful man is just another form of insult.
He walked into the prep kitchen, found an old enamel saucepan that had survived the bailiffs, filled it with two cups of water from the dripping utility tap, and set it on the single working ring of a portable Coleman camp stove that sat on the back prep table.
He struck his gold lighter, lit the burner, and waited for the water to sing.
When the steam rose, he reached into his overcoat pocket, pulled out an unopened tin of dried chamomile flowers he had bought from an apothecary on Taylor Street three days ago for his own sleepless nights, and dropped two spoonfuls into the boiling water.
He poured the pale, fragrant tea into a chipped white ceramic mug that bore the faded blue logo of the Chicago Fire Department.
He carried the mug back to the counter, set it down two inches from her trembling fingers, and leaned against the opposite side of the laminate.
"Drink it, Maeve," Raphael said softly.
She slowly lifted her head from her hands. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her face smudged with soot and lye, but the stubborn, unbreakable line of her jaw was still there, carved from the same stone as the old canal locks.
She looked at the tea. The sweet, clean scent of chamomile and steam rose between them, pushing back the smell of gasoline and blood.
"You're going to get yourself killed, Raphael," she whispered, her voice rough as sandpaper. "Sal Moretti has eight nephews. He has three precinct captains. He has the whole south side."
Raphael reached up, took the unlit Camel from behind his ear, and rolled it between his long, scarred fingers.
"Sal Moretti has eighty-two million dollars in unsecured debt and three grand juries waiting for his bank records, Maeve," Raphael said, his gray eyes reflecting the small yellow flame of the pilot light behind her.
May you like
He looked around the dark room—at the broken pie case, the grease-filmed mirrors, the six red stools, and the woman sitting in her father’s oversized cardigan.
"And I," Raphael murmured, a slow, terrifying, and beautiful smile touching the corners of his mouth for the first time in thirty-four years, "have a diner to open."
