“Then came crack. Socia knew what it would mean, long before it made the cover of Newsweek. He killed the mule of one of the Jamaican syndicates, took over the man’s action. We all figured he had about a week to live after that, but he flew to Kingston, showed the Boss the size of his balls, dared him to retaliate.” Devin shrugged. “Next thing you know, the man to see for crack in this town was Marion Socia. This was back in the early days, but even now, with all the competition, he’s still the top man. He’s got an army of kids willing to die for him, no questions asked, and he’s got a network that’s so detailed, you could bust one of his upper-echelon suppliers and still be four or five buffer people removed from Socia himself.”

We sat silent for a while, drinking our coffee.

Angie said, “How’s Roland ever hope to beat Socia?”

Devin shrugged. “You got me. I got a hundred bucks on Socia in the pool, myself.”

“The pool?” I said.

He nodded. “Of course. The departmental pool, see who wins the gang war. They don’t pay me enough to do this job, so I got to take my perks where I find them. Odds on Roland are about sixty to one.”

Angie said, “They looked pretty even at the funeral.”

“Looks can be deceiving. Roland’s tough, he’s smart, and he’s got a pretty good posse working for him up on Angel Avenue. But he’s not his father, not yet. Marion is ruthless and he’s got nine lives. There ain’t a member of the Saints who isn’t convinced he’s Satan. You fuck up even slightly in Socia’s organization and you die. No outs. No compromises. The Saints think they’re in a holy war.”

“And the Avengers?”

“Oh, they’re dedicated. Don’t doubt that. But, push come to shove, enough of them die, they’ll back down. Roland’s going to lose. Bank on it. Couple years from now, it might be a different story, but he’s too green right now.” He looked down at his cold coffee and grimaced. “What time is it?”

Angie looked at her watch. “Eleven.”

“Hell, it’s noon somewhere,” he said. “I need alcohol.” He stood up, dropped some coins on the table. “Come on, kids.”

I stood. “Where?”

“There’s a bar around the corner. Lemme buy you a drink before the war.”

***

The bar was small, cramped, and the black rubber tile on the floor smelled of stale beer and wet soot and sweat. It was one of those paradoxes that are common in this city  a white Irish bar in a black neighborhood. The men who drank here had been drinking here for decades. They walled themselves up inside with their dollar drafts and their pickled eggs and their frozen attitudes and pretended the world outside hadn’t changed. They were construction workers who’d been working within the same five-mile radius since they got their union cards because something’s always being built in Boston; they were foremen from the docks, from the General Electric plant, from Sears and Roebuck. They chased cut-rate whiskey with impossibly cold beer at eleven o’clock in the morning and watched a videotape of the Notre Dame Colorado Orange Bowl from last New Year’s.