“I know, I know, son. But we’ll get through this.”
Connor turned his head away and tried to remove his hand, but Thomas held fast to it.
“Con’,” Thomas said, hearing the helplessness in his own voice, “it’s a terrible blow. Of that there can be little doubt. But don’t give in to the sin of despair, son. It’s the worst sin of all. God will help you through this. He just asks for strength.”
“Strength?” Connor coughed a wet laugh. “I’m blind.”
At the window, Ellen blessed herself.
“Blind,” Connor whispered.
Thomas could think of nothing to say. Maybe this, of all things, was the true price of family—being unable to stop the pains of those you loved. Unable to suck it out of the blood, the heart, the head. You held them and named them and fed them and made your plans for them, never fully realizing that the world was always out there, waiting to apply its teeth.
Danny walked into the room and froze.
Thomas hadn’t thought it through, but he realized immediately what Danny saw in their eyes: They blamed him.
Well, of course they did. Who else was to blame?
Even Joe, who’d idolized Danny for so long, stared up at him with confusion and spite.
Thomas kept it simple. “Your brother was blinded last night.” He raised Connor’s hand to his lips and kissed it. “In the riots.”
“Dan?” Connor said. “That you?”
“It’s me, Con’.”
“I’m blind, Dan.”
“I know.”
“I don’t blame you, Dan. I don’t.”
Danny lowered his head and his shoulders shook. Joe looked away.
“I don’t,” Connor said again.
Ellen left the window and crossed the room to Danny. She placed a hand on his shoulder. Danny raised his head. Ellen looked in his eyes as Danny dropped his hands by his side and turned up the palms.
Ellen slapped him in the face.
Danny’s face crumpled and Ellen slapped him again.
“Get out,” she whispered. “Get out, you…you Bolshevik.” She pointed at Connor. “You did that. You. Get out.”
Danny looked toward Joe, but Joe looked away.
He looked at Thomas. Thomas met his eyes and then shook his head and turned his face from him.
That night, the State Guard shot four men in Jamaica Plain. One died. The Tenth Regiment cleared the dice players from the Boston Common, marching them up Tremont Street at bayonet point. A crowd gathered. Warning shots were fired. A man was shot through the chest trying to rescue a dice player. He succumbed to his wounds later that evening.
The rest of the city was quiet.
Danny spent the next two days marshaling support. He was assured in person that the Telephone & Telegraph Union was ready to walk off the job at a moment’s notice. The Bartenders Union assured him of the same, as did the United Hebrew Trade Unions, and the Carmen and Electrical Workers Unions. The firemen, however, would not agree to meet with him or return his calls.
I came here to say good-bye,” Luther said.
Nora stepped back from the door. “Come in, come in.”
Luther entered. “Danny around?”
“No. He’s at a meeting in Roxbury.”
Luther noticed she had her coat on. “You’re going there?”
“I am. I expect it might not go well.”
“Let me walk you then.”
Nora smiled. “I’d like that.”
On their way to the el, they got plenty of stares, this white woman and this black man strolling through the North End. Luther considered staying a step behind her, so he’d appear to be her valet or something similar, but then he remembered why he was going back to Tulsa in the first place, what he’d seen in that mob, and he kept abreast of her, his head high, his eyes clear and looking straight ahead.
“So you’re going back,” Nora said.
“Yeah. Got to. Miss my wife. Want to see my child.”
“It’ll be dangerous, though.”
“What isn’t these days?” Luther said.
She gave that a small smile. “You’ve a point.”
On the el, Luther felt his legs stiffen involuntarily when they crossed the trestle that had been hit during the molasses flood. It had long since been repaired and reinforced, but he doubted he’d ever feel safe crossing it.
What a year! If he lived a dozen lives, would he ever see another twelve months like these? He’d come to Boston for safety, but the thought of it now made him suppress a laugh—from Eddie McKenna to the May Day riots to the whole police force walking off the job, Boston had to be the least safe city he’d ever come across in his life. The Athens of America, my ass. Way these crazy Yankees had been acting since Luther arrived, he’d change the name to the Asylum of America.
He caught Nora smiling at him from the white section of the car and he tipped his hat to her and she gave him a mock salute in return. What a find she was. If Danny didn’t find a way to fuck it up, he’d grow old a very happy man with this woman by his side. Not that Danny seemed intent on fucking it up, just that he was a man after all, and no one knew better than Luther himself how completely a man could step on his own dick when what he thought he wanted contradicted what he knew he needed.
The el car rolled through a shell of a city, a ghost town of ash and glass pebbles. No one on the streets but the State Guard. All that rage of the last two days gone corked up and bottled. Machine guns could have that effect, Luther didn’t doubt it, but he wondered if there were more to it than just the show of power. Maybe in the end the need to postpone the truth—we are the mob—was stronger than the ecstasy of giving in to it. Maybe everyone just woke up this morning ashamed, tired, unable to face another pointless night. Maybe they looked at those machine guns and a sigh of relief left their hearts. Daddy was home now. They no longer had to fear he’d left them alone, left them for good.
They got off the el at Roxbury Crossing and walked toward Fay Hall.
Nora said, “How are the Giddreauxs taking your departure?”
Luther shrugged. “They understand. I think Yvette had taken a bit more of a shine to me than she’d counted on, so it’s hard, but they understand.”
“You’re leaving today?”
“Tomorrow,” Luther said.
“You’ll write.”
“Yes, ma’am. Ya’ll should think of coming for a visit.”
“I’ll mention it to himself. I don’t know what we’re going to do, Luther. I surely don’t.”
Luther looked over at her, at the minute quiver in her chin. “You don’t think they’ll get their jobs back?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
At Fay Hall, they held a vote on whether to remain with the American Federation of Labor. The result was in favor, 1388 to 14. They held a second vote on whether to continue the strike. This was a bit more contentious. Men called out from the floor, asking Danny if the Central Labor Union would make right on their promise of a sympathy strike. Another cop mentioned he’d heard the firemen were waffling. They were pissed about all the false alarms during the riots, and the BFD had made a great show of advertising for volunteers to replace them. The turnout had been twice as large as expected.
Danny had left two messages with Ralph Raphelson’s office, asking him to come to Fay Hall, but he hadn’t heard back yet. He took the podium. “The Central Labor Union is still trying to pull together all their delegates. As soon as they do, they’ll vote. I’ve had no indication that they’ll vote any other way but than how they told us they expect to. Look, they’re killing us in the press. I understand. The riots hurt us.”
“They’re killing us from the pulpits, too,” Francis Leonard shouted. “You should hear what they’re saying about us in morning mass.”
Danny held up a hand. “I’ve heard, I’ve heard. But we can still win the day. We just have to hold together, stay strong in our resolve. The governor and the mayor still fear a sympathy strik
e, and we still have the power of the AFL behind us. We can still win.”
Danny wasn’t sure how much of his own words he believed, but he felt a sudden glow of hope when he noticed Nora and Luther enter the back of the hall. Nora gave him a wave and a bright smile and he smiled back.
Then as they moved to their right, Ralph Raphelson stepped into the space they’d vacated. He removed his hat and his eyes met Danny’s.
He shook his head.
Danny felt as if he’d been hit in the spine with a pipe and stabbed in the stomach with an ice-cold knife.
Raphelson put his hat back on and turned to go, but Danny wasn’t letting him off the hook, not now, not tonight.
“Gentlemen, please give a warm hand to Ralph Raphelson of the Boston Central Labor Union!”
Raphelson turned with a grimace on his face as the men turned, saw him, and broke into applause.
“Ralph,” Danny called with a wave of his arm, “come on up here and tell the men what the BCLU has planned.”
Raphelson came down the aisle with a sick smile plastered to his face and a stiff gait. He climbed the steps to the stage and shook Danny’s hand and whispered, “I’ll get you for this, Coughlin.”
“Yeah?” Danny gripped his hand tight, squeezing the bones, and smiled big. “I fucking hope you choke to death.”
He dropped the hand and walked to the back of the stage as Raphelson took the podium and Mark sidled up to Danny.
“He selling us out?”
“He already sold us.”
“It gets worse,” Mark said.
Danny turned, saw that Mark’s eyes were damp, the pockets beneath them dark.
“Jesus, how could it get worse?”
“This is a telegram Samuel Gompers sent to Governor Coolidge this morning. Coolidge released it to the press. Just read the circled part.”
Danny’s eyes scanned the page until he found the sentence circled in pencil:
While it is our belief that the Boston Police were poorly served and their rights as workingmen denied by both yourself and Police Commissioner Curtis, it has always been the position of the American Federation of Labor to discourage all government employees from striking.
The men were booing Raphelson now, most on their feet. Several chairs toppled.
Danny dropped the copy of the telegram to the floor of the stage. “We’re done.”
“There’s still hope, Dan.”
“For what?” Danny looked at him. “The American Federation of Labor and the Central Labor Union both just sold us down the river on the same day. Fucking hope?”
“We could still get our jobs back.”
Several men rushed the stage and Ralph Raphelson took a half dozen steps backward.
“They’ll never give us our jobs back,” Danny said. “Never.”
The el ride back to the North End was bad. Luther had never seen Danny in so dark a mood. It covered him like a cloak. He sat beside Luther and offered hard eyes to the other passengers who gave him a funny look. Nora sat beside him and rubbed his hand nervously, as if to calm him, but it was really to calm herself, Luther knew.
Luther had known Danny long enough to know you’d have to be insane to take the guy on in a fair fight. He was too big, too fearless, too impervious to pain. So he’d never be dumb enough to question Danny’s strength, but he’d never been close enough before to feel this capacity for violence that lived in the man like a second, deeper soul.
The other men on the car stopped giving them funny looks. Stopped giving them any looks at all. Danny just sat there, staring out at the rest of the car, never seeming to blink, those eyes of his gone dark, just waiting for an excuse to let the rest of him erupt.
They got off in the North End and walked up Hanover toward Salem Street. Night had come on while they rode the el, but the streets were near empty due to the State Guard presence. About halfway along Hanover, as they were passing the Prado, someone called Danny’s name. It was a hoarse, weak voice. They turned and Nora let out a small yelp as a man stepped out of the shadows of the Prado with a hole in his coat that expelled smoke.
“Jesus, Steve,” Danny said and caught the man as he fell into his arms. “Nora, honey, can you find a guardsman, tell him a cop’s been shot?”
“I’m not a cop,” Steve said.
“You’re a cop, you’re a cop.”
He lowered Steve to the ground as Nora went running up the street.
“Steve, Steve.”
Steve opened his eyes as the smoke continued to flow from the hole in his chest. “All this time asking around? And I just ran into her. Turned into the alley between Stillman and Cooper? Just looked up and there she was. Tessa. Pop.”
His eyelids fluttered. Danny pulled up his shirt and tore off a length of it, wadded it up and pressed it to the hole.
Steve opened his eyes. “She’s gotta be…moving now, Dan. Right now.”
A guardsman’s whistle blew and Danny saw Nora running back down the street toward them. He turned to Luther. “Put your hand on this. Press hard.”
Luther followed his instructions, pressed the heel of his palm against the wadded-up shirt, watched it redden.
Danny stood.
“Wait! Where you going?”
“Get the person who did this. You tell the guardsmen it was a woman named Tessa Ficara. You got that name?”
“Yeah, yeah. Tessa Ficara.”
Danny ran through the Prado.
He caught her coming down the fire escape. He was in the rear doorway of a haberdashery on the other side of the alley and she came out of a window on the third floor onto the fire escape and walked down to the landing below. She lifted the ladder until its hooks disengaged from the housing and then latched onto the iron again as she lowered it to the pavement. When she turned her body to begin the climb down, he drew his revolver and crossed the alley. When she reached the last rung and stepped to the pavement, he placed the gun to the side of her neck.
“Keep your hands on the ladder and do not turn around.”
“Officer Danny,” she said. She started to turn and he slapped the side of her face with his free hand.
“What did I say? Hands on the ladder and don’t turn around.”
“As you wish.”
He ran his hands through the pockets of her coat and then the folds of her clothing.
“You like that?” she said. “You like feeling me?”
“You want to get hit again?” he said.
“If you must hit,” she said, “hit harder.”
His hand bumped a hard bulge by her groin and he felt her body stiffen.
“I’ll assume you didn’t grow a dick, Tessa.”
He reached down her leg, then ran his hands up under her dress and chemise. He pulled the Derringer from the waistband of her underwear and pocketed it.
“Satisfied?” she said.
“Not by a fair sight.”
“What about your dick, Danny?” she said, the word coming out “deke,” as if she were trying it out for the first time. Although, from experience, he knew she wasn’t.
“Raise your right leg,” he said.
She complied. “Is it hard?”
She wore a gunmetal-lace boot with a Cuban heel and black velveteen top. He ran his hand up and around it.
“Now the other one.”
She lowered her right leg. As she raised the left, she bumped her ass back against him. “Oh, it is. Very hard.”
He found the knife in her left boot. It was small and thin but, he had little doubt, very sharp. He pulled it out with the crude scabbard attached and pocketed it beside the gun.
“Would you like me to lower my leg or do you want to fuck me where I stand?”
He could see his breath in the cold. “Fucking you ain’t in my plans tonight, bitch.”
He ran his hand up her body again and heard her take slow even breaths. Her hat was a broad-brimmed crepe sailor with a red ribbon across the brim tied off into a bow at the front. He removed i
t and stepped back from her and ran his hand over the trim. He found two razor blades tucked beneath the silk and he tossed them to the alley along with the hat.
“You dirtied my hat,” she said. “Poor, poor hat.”
He placed a hand on her back and removed all the pins from her hair until it spilled down her neck and back and then he threw the pins away and stepped back again.
“Turn around.”
“Yes, master.”
She turned and leaned back against the ladder and crossed her hands at the waist. She smiled and it made him want to slap her again.
“You think you will arrest me now?”
He produced a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and dangled them from his finger.
She nodded and the smile remained. “You are no longer a police officer, Danny. I know these things.”
“Citizen’s arrest,” he said.
“If you arrest me, I’ll hang myself.”
It was his turn to shrug. “Okay.”
“And the baby in my belly will die as well.”
He said, “Knocked up again, are we?”
“Sì.”
She stared at him, her eyes wide and dark as always. She ran a hand over her belly. “A life lives in me.”
“Uh-uh,” Danny said. “Try another one, honey.”
“I don’t have to. Bring me to jail and the jail doctor will confirm that I am pregnant. I promise you, I will hang myself. And a child will die in my womb.”
He locked the cuffs over her wrists and then yanked on them so that her body slammed into his and their faces almost touched.
“Don’t fucking play me, whore. You pulled it off once, but twice ain’t going to happen in your time on earth.”
“I know that,” she said, and he could taste her breath. “I am a revolutionary, Danny, and I—”
“You’re a fucking terrorist. A bomb maker.” He grabbed the cuff chain and pulled her close. “You just shot a guy who spent the last nine months looking for a job. He was of ‘the people.’ Just another working stiff trying to get by and you fucking shot him.”
“Ex-officer Danny,” she said and her tone was that of an elderly woman speaking to a child, “casualties are a part of war. Just ask my dead husband.”
The Given Day Page 65