Read Chapter 11: The Split

The dusk came off the water gray and cold, the smell of low tide and diesel hanging over the pier. Jack stood at the edge of the dock, watching the freighter *Maretta* ride low against her moorings. Behind him, Danny and Mickey were coiling rope, their voices low, their eyes sliding to him every few seconds. Word had spread. Not the kind of word you wanted spreading.

Frank came up the pier alone. No coat. His shirtsleeves rolled past his elbows, his hands loose at his sides. He stopped ten feet away, close enough that Jack could see the bruise fading along his jawline, the one he’d gotten two nights ago. Neither of them had mentioned it.

"You're moving cargo Friday," Frank said. Not a question.

"I'm moving cargo every Friday."

"Not with me on it. I heard you got yourself a buyer. A fancy one."

Jack said nothing. The gulls screamed overhead, wheeling over the pilings.

"You were going to tell me when?" Frank's voice was flat, but there was heat underneath it, banked and waiting. "Or were you just going to keep running it like I was another hand off the line? A hired man?"

"You walked away, Frank. You walked."

"I walked because you wouldn't walk with me." Frank took a step closer. "We built this together. You and me, in Ma's kitchen, talking about what we'd do when we got off this waterfront. Every cent we scraped. Every plan. And then you got your taste of it and you forgot there was a second chair at the table."

"I didn't forget anything."

"You didn't tell me about the Providence money. You didn't tell me about your friend with the clubs. You didn't tell me about the harbor master—I had to find out from Mickey, who heard it from a stevedore who heard it from Russo's boy. My own brother." Frank's fists were clenched at his sides now. "When did I stop being your partner and start being your errand boy?"

Jack looked past Frank at the water. The tide was running out, sullen and brown. Somewhere down the coast, the Coast Guard cutter would be making her rounds, following the schedule that had cost him fifty dollars to learn.

"You bought the O'Malleys' product," Jack said quietly. "You went to them. The same men who want to carve us up if we miss a payment. You went over to the enemy side of the street and you call me the faithless one?"

"I went where I could get a deal," Frank said. "You don't own me, Jack. You don't own the water."

There it was. The thing that had been building between them since the night they'd drifted silent beside the *Marigold*, holding their breath while the patrol boat swept its searchlight across the dark. Jack had never asked Frank what he thought. He'd told him what to do—pull the engine, kill the lights, hold still. And Frank had done it, because that was Frank. He'd always done it. Followed Jack into fights, into schemes, into nights that could've ended with both of them in prison. And somewhere along the way, Jack had stopped noticing he wasn't following anymore. He was walking beside.

"We split the territory," Jack said.

"What?"

"The harbor. The docks. The routes I've built. They're mine. You want the north side—the coves, the small landings. You can have them. I won't send my men north of the grain elevator."

Frank stared at him. "You're cutting me off. Just like that."

"I'm not cutting you off. I'm drawing lines so we don't bleed each other." Jack's voice was tired. "You got your Italian channels. Ashworth wants volume I can't get through one freighter. Who knows—one day you might need a dock, and I might need a route. But not now. Right now, we go our own ways."

"My own way." Frank laughed, a short bitter sound. "You make it sound like a gift."

"It's the only thing I've got to give you."

Frank took another step, close enough that Jack could smell the salt on his shirt, the cigarette smoke clinging to his collar. His eyes were dark and flat, and for a moment Jack saw the boy he'd grown up with, the one who'd held his head when he'd gotten cracked with a bottle outside a bar in Boston, who'd carried him two miles home rather than leave him in the gutter.

"I've been bleeding for you since we were ten years old," Frank said. "In alleyways and boiler rooms, in the cold off the harbor, stealing coal so we'd get through winter. You got brains, Jack, you always did. You can think your way out of things. But I was the one who put his body between you and the world." His voice cracked on the last word. "And you never once checked to see if I was still standing."

Jack opened his mouth. Closed it. Because Frank was right, and the truth of it sat on his chest like an anchor.

"You want the north side," Jack said quietly. "Take it."

"I'll take it." Frank stepped back. "But you remember this—I didn't pick this fight. I just finally stopped following you into yours."

He turned and walked back down the pier, boots heavy on the boards. Danny and Mickey were watching, frozen in their work, and when Jack caught Danny's eye, Danny looked away fast.

Jack watched his brother's back until Frank reached the street and disappeared around a stacked pile of crates. The gulls settled back onto the pilings. The tide kept going out.

"Mickey," Jack said. "Fifty cases ready for Friday. Give me the manifest before you leave tonight."

Mickey nodded and hurried off. Danny came closer, hesitant.

"You good?" Danny asked.

"No." Jack rubbed his face with both hands. "I'm not good. But I'm not dead, and that'll have to do."

"You want me to find you a lookout? Johnny's still in the hospital—"

"I'll handle it. I got someone in mind."

Danny lingered, wanting to say something else, but he thought better of it and followed Mickey down the dock.

Jack stood alone at the edge of the water. He could feel the shape of everything he'd built, the fragile latticework of bribes and promises and men who trusted him enough to work in the dark. It was holding. Barely. But he'd just cut the load-bearing beam loose, and he didn't know yet whether the roof would hold.

He thought about Molly's offer—the introduction to Gus Moran, the Irish iron that ran the ward. He'd been putting it off, not wanting to owe more than he already did. But Frank had the O'Malleys on one side and Marchetti's boat on the other, and Jack had a contact with a man who'd promised to keep the harbor quiet for the asking price of fifty dollars a week. He was going to need someone bigger than Callahan. Someone the O'Malleys wouldn't cross.

The problem was that Moran wouldn't come cheap—and Jack was barely keeping ahead of the debt he already owned.

He turned away from the water and walked up the pier toward the streetlamps coming on along Atlantic Avenue. Behind him, the harbor went on its business, indifferent to the brothers who had just split it between them. The tide kept moving. The gulls kept their watch. And somewhere on the north side, a man who used to carry his brother home was making plans of his own.

Jack reached the corner where the street met the pier, and he stopped. He could feel the space where Frank had stood beside him for twenty years, and it was like a missing tooth—a tongue that kept finding the gap, the place where something sharp and familiar used to be.

He took a breath. Then he went to find Molly.

She was at the Green Lamp, as she always was this hour, sitting at the back table with her hand wrapped around a glass of ginger ale. She looked up when Jack came through the door, and her face didn't change. It never did.

"You look like you lost something," she said.

"I lost my brother."

Molly nodded like she'd been expecting it. "I heard. Word travels faster than cargo in this town."

"How fast did it travel to Gus Moran?"

She tilted her head, eyes sharp. "You ready to talk to him?"

"I don't have a choice. Ashworth wants volume and Frank gets the north side. I need someone who can scare off the O'Malleys long enough for me to get steady."

"And you'll owe me." She said it not as a threat, but as a statement of fact.

"I know what I owe." Jack sat down across from her. "I always pay my debts, Molly. That's the one thing Frank and I still agree on."

She looked at him a long moment, reading whatever she could find in his face. Then she pushed her glass aside and leaned forward.

"I'll set it up for tomorrow. Noon, down at the foundry on Meridian Street. He does business there, away from prying eyes. You bring your numbers and your promise, and you don't waste his time."

"I never waste time."

"You waste it on pride." She stood, smoothing her skirt. "You just spent your brother to keep it. Don't spend anything else you can't get back."

She walked out without looking behind her.

Jack stayed at the table, alone in the empty bar, the glasses catching the low lamplight. He could hear the harbor outside, the creak of rigging, the slap of water against hulls. The sound that had been his whole life, his whole horizon.

And now, for the first time, he was going to climb out of it alone.