The Venetian and the Rum Runner - L.A. Witt Page 0,95
to the war, I saw something that’s always stayed with me.”
Danny eyed his friend through the screen dividing them. He’d been there for enough of James’s nightmares to know that plenty of things he’d seen during the war had stayed with him. “Yeah?”
“Aye. See, it turns out that when you get deep into battle, once there’s enough mud and blood and smoke, men stop being German soldiers and British soldiers. They all just start being scared boys in muddy uniforms, desperate to go home and terrified there’s no home to return to.” James released a long breath. “Maybe the men in charge of us were good, or maybe they were evil, but all us soldiers on the front lines and in the trenches? We was just boys. And we just had to keep killing each other because those were our orders. Then we come to New York, and our kin tell us to hate the Italians. And so we all fight because someone told us we hate each other. But in the end, once this new world has ground us all into the same mud, does it matter who’s Italian? Irish? Black? Jewish?”
Danny chewed on that for a moment, and he couldn’t think of a single argument against it. The situation wasn’t that simple, not in practice, but it was hard to disagree with James about it.
After a while, his friend asked, “Italians come to confession here too. Did you know that?”
“I do,” Danny said softly. Old St. Patrick’s was mostly an Irish church these days, but Italian families in the surrounding neighborhoods came too. The gangsters never did. Not that Danny saw.
“Do you know what they confess to?”
Danny stared at the divider between them and the vague impression of James’s profile. “You can tell me that?”
“Not specifics,” James said. “And I wouldn’t give you names even if I had them. The point is that when people walk into the confessionals, they confess to the same sins. They ask for the same forgiveness. They confess that they haven’t loved their neighbors as they should, but they never admit it’s their Irish neighbors they don’t love. Or their Italian neighbors.”
Danny furrowed his brow. “What does that mean?”
“It means, Danny, that in the end, we’re all the same. We’re all people who’ve left different Egypts for the same Promised Land. And I can’t help but think we’d all live better than we do if we lived as neighbors instead of enemies.”
“You think it’s that simple?”
“I think it’s that simple, but I also know men are stubborn and imperfect, and I wonder sometimes if the Lord Himself could make some of the men of this world shake hands.”
Danny pushed out a breath. He’d long been one of those Irishmen who’d sooner shake hands with the Devil than an Italian, but working with Carmine—working with a gangster of all people—had softened him in ways he’d never thought possible.
“My brothers,” he murmured. “Just thinking I have eyes for a man like him—they’d never forgive me.”
“Perhaps not,” James said, “but I think the Lord would.”
Swallowing, Danny looked again at James through the screen. “You think He would?”
His friend took a deep breath. “These are difficult times, Danny. We’re all drowning in hate in this city. Hate for men just trying to survive, same as we are.” Despite the divider, Danny swore he could feel his friend’s gaze on him. “I can’t imagine the Lord would begrudge a man finding love in the middle of all that.”
Danny closed his eyes and exhaled. He wasn’t so sure he’d call it love, this thing happening between him and Carmine, but it was more than business and it wasn’t hate.
And whether the Lord or his brothers could ever forgive him for it, it was real.
And in ways Danny never had before in his life, he needed it.
He needed Carmine.
Chapter 20
The moment Danny walked into the office, Carmine couldn’t breathe quite right. Danny didn’t say a word besides “here’s the chits from the last run,” but there was something in his eyes that had Carmine less steady on his feet than usual.
Carmine moistened his lips and refused to notice the way Danny watched his mouth. “Another run already?”
“Aye.” Eyes locked on Carmine’s, Danny handed over the chits. Carmine took them, but he held Danny’s gaze because… because…
Lord, he never wanted to look away, but something was definitely different this time. Danny had long since stopped being—or at least seeming—intimidated by Carmine, but he’d never been quite so…bold? Intense? Carmine couldn’t put