He picked the paper up off the bench and stood. Across Washington Street, in front of Kresge’s Five & Dime, two men watched him. They wore pale hats and seersucker suits, and they were both small and scared-looking and they might have been comical—stock clerks dressed up to look respectable—if it weren’t for the wide brown holsters they wore over their hips, the pistol butts exposed to the world. Stock clerks with guns. Other stores had hired private detectives, and the banks were demanding U.S. marshals, but the smaller businesses had to make do by training their everyday employees in the handling of weaponry. More volatile than that volunteer police force, in a way, because Luther assumed—or hoped anyway—that the volunteer coppers would at least receive a bit more training, be afforded a bit more leadership. These hired help, though—these clerks and bag boys and sons and sons-in-law of jewelers and furriers and bakers and livery operators—you saw them all over the city now, and they were scared. Terrified. Jumpy. And armed.
Luther couldn’t help himself—he saw them eyeing him, so he walked toward them, crossing the street even though that hadn’t been his original intention, giving his steps just a bit of saunter, a dash of colored man’s edge to it, throwing the glint of a smile into his eyes. The two little men exchanged looks, and one of them wiped his hand off the side of his pants just below his pistol.
“Nice day, isn’t it?” Luther reached the sidewalk.
Neither of the men said a word.
“Big blue sky,” Luther said. “First clean air in about a week? Ya’ll should enjoy it.”
The pair remained silent and Luther tipped his hat to them and continued on up the sidewalk. It had been a foolish act, particularly since he’d just been thinking about Desmond, about Lila, about becoming a more responsible man. But something about white men with guns, he was sure, would always bring out the devil in him.
And judging by the mood in the city, there was about to be a whole lot more of them. He passed his third Emergency Relief tent of the day, saw some nurses inside setting up tables and wheeling beds around. Earlier that afternoon, he’d walked through the West End and up through Scollay Square, and just about every third block, it seemed, he stumbled upon ambulances grouped together, waiting for what was starting to feel like the unavoidable. He looked down at the Herald in his hand, at the front-page editorial they’d run above the fold:
Seldom has the feeling in this community been more tense than it is today over the conditions in the police department. We are at a turning of the ways. We shall take a long step toward “Russianizing” ourselves, or toward submitting to soviet rule if we, by any pretext, admit an agency of the law to become the servant of a special interest.
Poor Danny, Luther thought. Poor honest, outmatched son of a bitch.
James Jackson Storrow was the wealthiest man in Boston. When he’d become president of General Motors, he’d reorganized it from top to bottom without costing a single worker his job or a sole stockholder his confidence. He founded the Boston Chamber of Commerce and had chaired the Cost of Living Commission in the days leading up to the Great War. During that conflict of waste and despair, he’d been appointed federal fuel administrator by Woodrow Wilson and had seen to it that New England homes never wanted for coal or oil, sometimes using his own personal credit to ensure the shipments left their depots on time.
He’d heard others say he was a man who wore his power lightly, but the truth was, he’d never believed that power, in any shape or form, was anything more than the intemperate protrusion of the egomaniacal heart. Since all egomaniacs were insecure to their frightened cores, they thus wielded “power” barbarically so the world would not find them out.
Terrible days, these, between the “powerful” and the “powerless,” the whole absurd battle opening up a new front here in this city, the city he loved more than any other, and this front possibly the worst anywhere since October of ’17.
Storrow received Mayor Peters in the billiards room of his Louisburg Square home, noting as the mayor entered that he was well tanned. This confirmed for Storrow the suspicion he’d long held that Peters was a frivolous man, one ill-suited to his job in normal circumstances, but in the current climate, egregiously so.
An affable chap, of course, as so many frivolous men were, crossing to Storrow with a bright, eager smile and a spring in his step.
“Mr. Storrow, so kind of you to see me.”
“The honor is mine, Mr. Mayor.”
The mayor’s handshake was unexpectedly firm, and Storrow noted a clarity in the man’s blue eyes that made him wonder if there was more to him than he’d initially assumed. Surprise me, Mr. Mayor, surprise me.
“You know why I’ve come,” Peters said.
“I presume to discuss the situation with the police.”
“Exactly so, sir.”
Storrow led the mayor to two cherry leather armchairs. Between them sat a table with two decanters and two glasses. One decanter held brandy. The other, water. He waved his hand at the decanters as a way of offering them to the mayor.
Peters nodded his thanks and poured a glass of water.
Storrow crossed one leg over the other and reconsidered the man yet again. He pointed at his own glass, and Peters filled it with water and they both sat back.
Storrow said, “How do you envision I can be of assistance?”
“You’re the most respected man in the city,” Peters said. “You are also beloved, sir, for all that you did to keep homes warm during the war. I need you and as many men as you choose from the Chamber of Commerce to form a commission to study the issues the policemen have raised and the counterarguments of Police Commissioner Curtis to decide which have wisdom and which, ultimately, should win the day.”
“Would this commission have the power to rule or merely to recommend?”
“City bylaws state that unless there is evidence of reckless misconduct on the part of the police commissioner, he has final say in all issues regarding police matters. He can’t be overruled by either myself or Governor Coolidge.”
“So we’d have limited power.”
“Power to recommend only, yes, sir. But with the esteem in which you are held, not only in this state, but in this region, and at a national level as well, I feel confident that your recommendation would be taken to heart with the appropriate respect.”
“When would I form such a commission?”
“Without delay. Tomorrow.”
Storrow finished his water and uncorked the brandy decanter. He pointed it at Peters, and the mayor tilted his empty glass in his direction and Storrow poured.
“As far as the policemen’s union, I see no way we can ever allow the affiliation with the American Federation of Labor to stand.”
“As you say then, sir.”
“I’ll want to meet with the union representatives immediately. Tomorrow afternoon. Can you arrange it?”
“Done.”
“As to Commissioner Curtis, what’s your sense of the man, Mr. Mayor?”
“Angry,” Peters said.
Storrow nodded. “That’s the man I remember. He served his term as mayor when I was overseer at Harvard. We met on a few occasions. I remember only the anger. Suppressed though it may have been, it was of the most dire, self-loathing tenor. When a man like that regains authority after so long in the wilderness, I worry, Mr. Mayor.”
“I do, too,” Peters said.
“Such men fiddle while cities burn.” Storrow felt a long sigh leave him, heard it exit his mouth and enter the room as if it had spent so many decades bearing witness to waste and folly that it would still be circling the room when he reentered on the morrow. “Such men love ash.”
The next afternoon, Danny, Mark Denton, and Kevin McRae met with James J. Storrow in a suite at the Parker House. They brought with them detailed reports on the health and sanitation conditions of all eighteen precinct houses, signed accounts from over twenty patrolmen that detailed their average workday or week, and analyses of the pay rates of thirty
other local professions—including city hall janitors, streetcar operators, and dockworkers—that dwarfed their own pay scale. They spread it all before James J. Storrow and three other businessmen who formed his commission and sat back while they went over it, passing particular sheets of interest among them and engaging in nods of surprise and grumps of consternation and eye rolls of apathy that had Danny worried he may have overloaded their hand.
Storrow went to lift another patrolman’s account off the stack and then pushed the whole thing away from him. “I’ve seen enough,” he said quietly. “Quite enough. No wonder you gentlemen feel abandoned by the very city you protect.” He looked at the other three men, all of whom took his lead and nodded at Danny and Mark Denton and Kevin McRae in sudden commiseration. “This is shameful, gentlemen, and not all the blame falls on Commissioner Curtis. This happened on Commissioner O’Meara’s watch, as well as under the eyes of Mayors Curley and Fitzgerald.” Storrow came around from behind the table and extended his hand, shaking first Mark Denton’s, then Danny’s, then Kevin McRae’s. “My profoundest apologies.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Storrow leaned back against the table. “What are we to do, gentlemen?”
“We just want our fair lot, sir,” Mark Denton said.
“And what is your fair lot?”
Danny said, “Well, sir, it’s a three-hundred-a-year increase in pay for starters. An end to overtime and special detail work without compensation comparative to those thirty other professions we brought up in our analysis.”
“And?”
“And,” Kevin McRae said, “it’s an end to the company-store policy of paying for our uniforms and our equipment. It’s also about clean stations, sir, clean beds, usable toilets, a sweeping out of the vermin and the lice.”
Storrow nodded. He turned and looked back at the other men, though it was clear his was the only word that really counted. He turned back to the policemen. “I concur.”
“Excuse me?” Danny said.
A smile found Storrow’s eyes. “I said I concur, Officer. In fact, I’ll champion your point of view and recommend your grievances be settled in the manner you’ve put forth.”
Danny’s first thought: It was this easy?
His second thought: Wait for the “but.”
“But,” Storrow said, “I only have the power to recommend. I cannot implement change. Only Commissioner Curtis can.”
“Sir,” Mark Denton said, “with all due respect, Commissioner Curtis is deciding whether to fire nineteen of us.”
“I’m aware of that,” Storrow said, “but I don’t think he will. It would be the height of imprudence. The city, believe it or not, is for you, gentlemen. They’re just very clearly not for a strike. If you allow me to handle this, you may well get everything you require. The ultimate decision rests with the commissioner, but he is a reasonable man.”
Danny shook his head. “I’ve yet to see evidence of it, sir.”
Storrow gave that a smile so distant it was almost shy. “Be that as it may, the city and the mayor and governor and every fair-minded man will, I promise you, see the light and the logic just as clearly as I’ve seen it today. As soon as I am capable of compiling and releasing my report, you’ll have justice. I ask patience, gentlemen. I ask prudence.”
“You’ll have it, sir,” Mark Denton said.
Storrow walked around to the back of the table and began shuffling up the papers. “But you’ll have to give up your association with the American Federation of Labor.”
So there it was. Danny wanted to throw the table through the window. Throw everyone in the room after it. “And put ourselves upon whose mercy this time, sir?”
“I don’t follow.”
Danny stood. “Mr. Storrow, we all respect you. But we’ve accepted half-measures before, and they’ve all come to naught. We work at the pay scale of 1903 because the men before us took the carrot on the stick for twelve years before demanding their rights in 1915. We accepted the city’s oath that while it could not compensate us fairly during the war, it would make amends afterward. And yet? We are still being paid the 1903 wage. And yet? We never got fittingly compensated after the war. And our precincts are still cesspools and our men are still overworked. Commissioner Curtis tells the press he is forming ‘committees,’ never mentioning that those ‘committees’ are stocked with his own men and those men have prejudicial opinions. We have put our faith in this city before, Mr. Storrow, countless times, and been jilted. And now you want us to forswear the one organization that has given us real hope and real bargaining power?”
Storrow placed both hands on the table and stared across at Danny. “Yes, Officer, I do. You can use the AFL as a bargaining chip. I’ll tell you that fact baldly right here and now. It’s the smart move, so don’t give it up just yet. But, son, I assure you, you will have to give it up. And if you choose to strike, I will be the strongest advocate in this city for breaking you and making certain you never wear a badge again.” He leaned forward. “I believe in your cause, Officer. I will fight for you. But don’t back me or this commission into a corner, because you will not survive the response.”
Behind him, the windows looked out on a sky of the purest blue. A perfect summer day in the first week of September, enough to make everyone forget the dark rains of August, the feeling they’d once had that they would never be dry again.
The three policemen stood and saluted James J. Storrow and the men of his commission and took their leave.
Danny, Nora, and Luther played hearts on an old sheet placed between two iron smokestacks on the roof of Danny’s building. Late evening, all three of them tired—Luther smelling of the stockyard, Nora of the factory—and yet they were up here with two bottles of wine and a deck of cards because there were few places a black man and a white man could congregate in public and fewer still where a woman could join those men and partake of too much wine. It felt to Danny, when the three of them were together like this, that they were beating the world at something.
Luther said, “Who’s that?” and his voice was lazy with the wine.
Danny followed his eyes and saw James Jackson Storrow crossing the roof toward him. He started to stand and Nora caught his wrist when he wavered.
“I was told by a kind Italian woman to search for you here,” Storrow said. He glanced at the three of them, at the tattered sheet with the cards spread across it, at the bottles of wine. “I apologize for intruding.”
“Not at all,” Danny said as Luther made it to his feet and held out a hand to Nora. Nora grasped his hand and Luther tugged her upright and she smoothed her dress.
“Mr. Storrow, this is my wife, Nora, and my friend, Luther.”
Storrow shook each of their hands as if this kind of gathering occurred every day on Beacon Hill.
“An honor to meet you both.” He gave them each a nod. “Could I abscond with your husband for just a moment, Mrs. Coughlin?”
“Of course, sir. Careful with him, though—he’s a bit spongy on his feet.”
Storrow gave her a wide smile. “I can see that, ma’am. It’s no bother.”
He tipped his hat to her and followed Danny across the roof to the eastern edge and they looked out at the harbor.
“You count coloreds among your equals, Officer Coughlin?”
“Long as they don’t complain,” Danny said, “I don’t either.”
“And public drunkenness in your wife is no cause for your concern either?”
Danny kept his eyes on the harbor. “We’re not in public, sir, and if we were, I wouldn’t give much of a fuck. She’s my wife. Means a hell of a lot more to me than the public.” He turned his gaze on Storrow. “Or anyone else for that matter.”
“Fair enough.” Storrow placed a pipe to his lips and took a minute to light it.
“How’d you find me, Mr. Storrow?”
“It wasn’t hard.”
“So what brings you?”
“Your president, Mr. Denton, wasn�
�t home.”
“Ah.”
Storrow puffed on his pipe. “Your wife possesses a spirit of the flesh that fairly leaps off her.”
“A ‘spirit of the flesh’?”
He nodded. “Quite so. It’s easy to see how you became enraptured with her.” He sucked on the pipe again. “The colored man I’m still trying to figure out.”
“Your reason for coming, sir?”
Storrow turned so that they were face-to-face. “Mark Denton may very well have been at home. I never checked. I came directly to you, Officer Coughlin, because you have both passion and temperance, and your men, I can only assume, feel that. Officer Denton struck me as quite intelligent, but his gifts for persuasion are less than yours.”
“Who would you like me to persuade, Mr. Storrow, and what am I selling?”
“The same thing I’m selling, Officer—peaceful resolution.” He placed a hand on Danny’s arm. “Talk to your men. We can end this, son. You and I. I’m going to release my report to the papers tomorrow night. I will be recommending full acquiescence to your demands. All but one.”
Danny nodded. “AFL affiliation.”
“Exactly.”
“So we’re left with nothing again, nothing but promises.”
“But they’re my promises, son. With the full weight of the mayor and governor and the Chamber of Commerce behind them.”
Nora let out a high laugh, and Danny looked across the roof to see her flicking cards at Luther and Luther holding up his hands in mock defense. Danny smiled. He’d learned over the last few months how much Luther’s preferred method of displaying affection for Nora was through teasing, an affection she gladly returned in kind.
Danny kept his eyes on them. “Every day in this country they’re breaking unions, Mr. Storrow. Telling us who we have a right to associate with and who we don’t. When they need us, they speak of family. When we need them, they speak of business. My wife over there? My friend? Myself? We’re outcasts, sir, and alone we’d probably drown. But together, we’re a union. How long before Big Money gets that in their head?”
The Given Day Page 57