The Venetian and the Rum Runner - L.A. Witt Page 0,102
tonight. They could go back to Montauk once these men were done with them. Load up some of the stash they’d hidden. Hope Carmine understood what had happened.
Assuming these men let them go.
Danny gulped. He tried to stay strong and stoic for the others. Especially Liam, who stayed close to his brother; the lad was a man, but he was young. Not long at all since he’d been just a boy. He only wanted to steal enough to stay fed. He wasn’t in this for blood or bullets.
Danny gave Liam’s shoulder a squeeze. Liam glanced up at him, eyes wide. He looked even younger now. Just a boy who hadn’t bargained for this.
“We’ll be all right,” Danny whispered. “Just stay strong.”
Liam nodded, swallowing hard. He opened his mouth to speak, but the night was suddenly bright with orange light.
Flinching, Danny turned, and he watched in horror as the cops lit three torches, then tossed them into the backs of each truck.
“Francis, no!” Paddy cried, but it was too late. Francis lunged at one of the cops, grabbed his nightstick, and drove it hard into the man’s gut, doubling him over. Then he tried to run for one of the burning trucks—oh no, Giulia!—when another cop tried to get in his way. Francis swung the stick at his head. It connected with a horrifying crack, and the cop made a strangled noise as he crumpled to the ground. Francis kicked him hard in the ribs, then swung the nightstick at another cop, hitting him across the chest.
“Francis!” Bernard shouted. “Behind you!”
Francis whirled around, but he wasn’t fast enough. Danny only saw the burly man for a heartbeat before the butt of the shotgun hit Francis’s temple, and Danny and Tommy both cried out in horror as Francis collapsed beside the cop he’d overpowered.
Francis didn’t move, but the cops didn’t give him a chance to. Nightsticks. Boots. A shotgun. They came at him in a relentless volley of blows from all directions. At first, Francis feebly shielded his face, but then his arms dropped, and he just took the kicks and hits like a discarded ragdoll.
“Stop!” Danny cried. “Leave him be!” He tried to run for his friend, but then he was again on the ground, arms pulled roughly behind his back. Eyes stinging with tears from both pain and fear, he tried to focus on Francis.
They weren’t beating him anymore, but Francis wasn’t moving. He might’ve been breathing—even with the raging fires, it was too dark and there was too much noise for Danny to tell—but he was still. So still.
Then everyone and everything was still except for the crackling fires.
“Francis,” Danny whispered. “God, no.” Never in his life had he felt more helpless than he did in that moment. His friend was quite possibly dying—maybe even already dead—and there wasn’t a thing Danny could do to help him or get the rest of them out of this.
He craned his neck to take stock of his crew. In the light of the blazing trucks, most everyone was more or less all right. Shaken. Restrained. But upright and breathing. Uninjured? He wished. Mathew had blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. Bernard’s nose was bleeding. Tommy was gingerly protecting his left side. Giulia was… Bloody hell. The truck was completely engulfed now, and Giulia was nowhere in sight.
Danny closed his eyes and let his forehead touch the cool ground.
I sold us to the Devil.
And now he’s come to collect.
The men who’d stopped them weren’t done with them yet. While the trucks burned, the crew’s hands were tied behind their backs before everyone was ordered into a paddy wagon that had arrived shortly after Bernard and Danny were stopped.
Somehow, Danny wasn’t surprised when they weren’t taken to jail. These men were hardly going to tell the real police that this crew of Irishmen had stolen their illegal liquor. Instead, when the paddy wagon parked, the lads were led into the back door of a building that was so dark, Danny had no idea if it was a house, a barn, or a bloody church. It could’ve even been the barn they’d been stealing liquor from not long ago, especially if this was connected to that night.
The crew was led down some narrow, crumbling steps into a dank underground room lit only by a single bare bulb. All seven of them—Francis was nowhere in sight—were lined up against the wall. Shoulder to shoulder, backs against cold brick, hands still bound.