Boardwalk Empire Recap: Promises, Promises

Ominous kettle drums are pounding like thunder as Masseria is at the Turkish baths and tells an attendant that no one gets in. In the background, Sawicki and Owen arrive. Sawicki buys their two admissions while Owen looks like he’s casing the lobby.

This doesn’t look good.

Margaret’s pining/sulking in the sitting room when Nucky comes over. She’s in the dark and he tries to turn on the light but she stops him. Thinking she’s worried about their precarious situation he tells her that the whole mess should be over in a few days and then things can go back to normal where he ignored her and she resented him, or vice versa, but Margaret denies being worried. Nucky tries to be consoling by apologizing for how he “bollixed” the situation then asks if he said it correctly. He’s trying, but it’s way too little, way too late and Margaret can barely hide her contempt for him.

Nucky doesn’t pick up on it, though, and tells her that between her and Owen the old country’s rubbing off on him. This tweaks Margaret’s anxiety, and it’s exacerbated when Nucky holds her hand to tell her that once everything settles back down it will be a brand new start for them. Margaret agrees, but not in the way Nucky thinks. He goes off to bed suggesting she gets some rest, too.

I promise, now that my mistress is dead I’ll dedicate all my time to you. Until I find a new one.

Back in Tabor Heights and Gyp is in a frighteningly good mood as he accounts for all the cases of whiskey. He’s lecturing about how math is easy because it’s always right and that’s how it was when his father would lay bricks. Tonino looks ill while Gyp keeps lecturing about how things like rogue waves didn’t destroy the churches and building his father worked on. Then he points out how being a bricklayer broke his father’s back and he was dead at 50. But not like Franco’s father…right Franco?

Franco’s buried up to his neck at the shoreline and begging for Gyp’s mercy, claiming he’s an idiot and apologizing. Franco pleas for Tonino to jump in and he does, telling Gyp that Franco’s his cousin, his blood, and not to kill him. He’s just a know-it-all. Break his legs, do anything, just don’t kill him, not like that. Gyp walks back to Tonino and they have a “bonding moment” about family, “what are you gonna do?” then he asks one of his other goons for the shovel.

Now, you’d think Tonino would remember how Gyp wields these common, household objects and tackle him to take it away, but he looks relieved when Gyp says he’s doing this because he respects Tonino and doesn’t see it coming when Gyp bashes Franco’s head into the sand. While Gyp shatters the poor guy’s skull, he misses the look on Tonino’s face as every last bit of loyalty he ever felt for the psycho seeps out and is filled with remorse for getting his goofy cousin killed. Then, to put a cherry on that sundae, Gyp tells Tonino he owes Gyp. So very awful.

How soon until he ends up in Atlantic City?