Sean O’Reilly was a heavyset Italian who was raised by an Irish family. He had made a fortune with a fleet of floating casinos—gambling ships that picked up passengers in the city and traveled beyond the legal limit, plying the players with food and drink along the way. He owned a helicopter and ate fried calamari religiously, claiming that their high neurological functions fueled his business sense.

Ambruzzo easily secured a job as a blackjack dealer, just in time to take part in O’Reilly’s annual Gaelic festival. All of the dealers were required to wear green plastic derbies and memorize certain Gaelic phrases, such as “Céad mile fáilte,” and “Erin go bragh.” Sean toured the tables in a shiny suit with members of the Pequot Indian tribe. He was proposing a shuttle to link Foxwoods directly to the city. Casino attendance would boom. O’Reilly would get players coming home rolling hard to recoup their losses. The lawyers had come to close the deal.

Underneath his plastic derby, Ambruzzo had hidden a pile of cards edged with razors. Sean O’Reilly passed his table and Ambruzzo took out the pack and did a fifty-two-card pickup. The razor-edged spades and clubs flipped through the air and landed in arms, foreheads, necks, and hands. The chief of the Pequots had a queen of diamonds in his cheek; one of the lawyers had a three of hearts in his ear. There was confusion, screaming, people knocking one another down as Ambruzzo slipped under the table.

Sean O’Reilly had caught a jack of clubs in his left eyebrow. As he pulled it out, he felt a sharp blow underneath his chin as the bullet from Ambruzzo’s Beretta broke his jaw, then spun its way into his brain. He toppled and in the commotion went unnoticed. Ambruzzo removed the silencer from his gun, left his derby beneath the table and crawled out.

On deck the waves were pitching against the sides of the boat. Ambruzzo stood in the shadows, pausing for a moment to see if he’d been followed. The moon was full, and as it danced along the water beside him, Ambruzzo remembered being afraid of it. When he was a boy he’d had nightmares that the moon was chasing him. Walking home at night, he’d feel it over his shoulder, sense the speed of it coming for him, and break into a run. Ambruzzo held his breath. No one had followed him. He untied a rubber dinghy, set it in the water, and cut loose.