The Given Day

by Dennis Lehane

  “Ah now,” she said, raising her hands to the room as if to a mansion, “we’re in the lap of luxury, we are, Luther.”

  Luther tried to smile, but he couldn’t. He’d grown up poor, but this? This was fucking grim. “I heard the factories never pay the women enough to support themselves.”

  “No,” she said. “And they’ll be cutting our hours, we hear.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.” She shrugged.

  “What’ll you do?”

  She chewed a thumbnail and gave him another shrug, her eyes strangely gay, as if this was some lark she was trying out. “Don’t know.”

  Luther looked around for a hot plate. “Where do you cook?”

  She shook her head. “We gather at our landlady’s table every night—promptly, mind you—at five sharp. Usually it’s beets. Sometimes potatoes. Last Tuesday, we even had meat. I don’t know what kind of meat it ’twas exactly, but I assure you it was meat.”

  Outside, someone screamed. Impossible to tell if it was from pain or enjoyment.

  “I won’t allow this here,” Luther said.

  “What?”

  He said it again. “I won’t allow this. You and Clayton the only friends I made in this town. I won’t abide this.” He shook his head. “No, sir.”

  “Luther, you can’t—”

  “Know I killed a man?”

  She stopped chewing her thumb and looked at him with big eyes.

  “That’s what brought me here, missy-thing. Shot a man straight up through his head. Had to leave behind my wife and she’s pregnant with my child. So I’ve been doing some hard things, some hard time since I got here. And damned if anyone—you included—is gonna tell me what I can and can’t do. I can damn well get you some food. Put some meat back on you. That I can do.”

  She stared at him. Outside, catcalls, the honking of horns.

  She said, “‘Missy-thing’?” and the tears came with her laughter, and Luther hugged the first white woman he’d ever hugged in his life. She smelled white, he thought, starchy. He could feel her bones as she wept into his shirt, and he hated the Coughlins. Hated them outright. Hated them wholesale.

  In early spring, Danny followed Nora home from work. He kept a city block behind her the whole way, and she never once looked back. He watched her enter a rooming house off Scollay Square, maybe the worst section of the city in which a woman could live. Also the cheapest.

  He walked back toward the North End. It wasn’t his fault. If she ended up destitute and a ghost of herself, well, she shouldn’t have lied, should she?

  Luther received a letter from Lila in March. It came in an eight-by-eleven envelope and there was another envelope, a small white one, that had already been opened, in there alongside a newspaper clipping.

  Dear Luther,

  Aunt Marta says babys in the belly turn a womans head upside down and make her see things and feel things that dont make a lick of sense. Still I have seen a man lately to many times to count. He has Satans smile and he drives a black Oakland 8. I have seen him outside the house and in town and twice outside the post office. That is why I will not write for a while for the last time I caught him trying to look at the letters in my hand. He has never said a word to me except hello and good morning but I think we know who he is Luther. I think it was him who left this newspaper article in the envelope at the door one day. The other article I clipped myself. You will know why. If you need to contact me please send mail to Aunt Martas house. My belly is huge and my feet ache all the time and climbing stairs is a chore but I am happy. Please be careful and safe.

  Love,

  Lila

  Even as he felt dread at the rest of the letter and fear of the newspaper clippings, still folded, that he held in his hand, Luther stared at one word above all others—love.

  He closed his eyes. Thank you, Lila. Thank you, Lord.

  He unfolded the first clipping. A small article from the Tulsa Star:

  DA DROPS CHARGES AGAINST NEGRO

  Richard Poulson, a Negro bartender at the Club Almighty in Greenwood, was released from state custody when District Attorney Honus Stroudt refused to press charges in return for the Negro Poulson’s pleading guilty to illegal use of a firearm. The Negro Poulson was the sole survivor of Clarence Tell’s shooting rampage in the Club Almighty on the night of November 17 of last year. Slain in the shooting were Jackson Broscious and Munroe Dandiford, both Greenwood Negroes and reputed purveyors of narcotics and prostitution. Clarence Tell, also a Negro, was killed by the Negro Poulson after he received the Negro Tell’s fire. DA Stroudt said, “It is clear that the Negro Poulson fired in self-defense for fear of his life and nearly succumbed to wounds inflicted by the Negro Tell. The people are satisfied.” The Negro Poulson will serve three years’ probation for the weapons charge.

  So Smoke was a free man. And a reasonably healthy one. Luther played it back in his head for the umpteenth time—Smoke lying in a growing pool of blood on the stage. His arm outstretched, the back of his head to Luther. Even now, knowing what he knew would come of it, he still doubted he could have pulled that trigger. Deacon Broscious was a different thing, a different circumstance—looking Luther in the eye, talking his bullshit talk. But could Luther have shot what he’d believed was a dying man in the back of the head? No. And yet he knew he probably should have. He turned over the envelope and saw his name and nothing else written across it in a male’s blocky handwriting. He opened the envelope and looked at the second clipping and decided to remove “probably” from his thoughts. Should have. Without question or regret.

  A photo clipping reprinted in the January 22 issue of the Tulsa Sun described the great molasses flood under the headline “Boston Slum Disaster.”

  There was nothing special about the article—just one more on the North End disaster that the rest of the country seemed humored by. The only thing that made this clipping special was that every time the word Boston was used—a total of nine times—it had been circled in red.

  Rayme Finch was carrying a box to his car when he found Thomas Coughlin waiting for him. The car was government issue and was, as befit a government department that was underfunded and undervalued, a heap of shit. He’d left the engine idling, not only because the ignition often refused to engage but also because he secretly hoped someone would steal it. If that wish were granted this morning, however, he’d regret it—the car, shit heap or no, was his only transport back to Washington.

  No one would be stealing it for the moment, though, not with a police captain leaning against the hood. Finch acknowledged Captain Coughlin with a flick of his head as he placed the box of office supplies in the trunk.

  “Shoving off, are we?”

  Finch closed the trunk. “’Fraid so.”

  “A shame,” Thomas Coughlin said.

  Finch shrugged. “Boston radicals turned out to be a bit more docile than we’d heard.”

  “Except for the one my son killed.”

  “Federico, yes. He was a believer. And you?”

  “Sorry?”

  “How’s your investigation going? We never did hear much from the BPD.”

  “There wasn’t much to tell. They’re hard nuts to crack, these groups.”

  Finch nodded. “You told me a few months ago they’d be easy.”

  “History’s ledger will judge me overconfident on that entry, I admit.”

  “Not one of your men has gathered any evidence?”

  “None substantial.”

  “Hard to believe.”

  “I can’t see why. It’s no secret we’re a police department caught in a regime change. Had O’Meara, God rest him, not perished, why, you and I, Rayme? We’d be having this lovely conversation while watching a ship depart for Italy with Galleani himself shackled in her bowels.”

  Finch smiled in spite of himself. “I’d heard you were the slipperiest sheriff in this slippery one-horse town. Seems my sources weren’t embellishing.”

  Thomas Coughlin cocked h
is head, his face narrowed in confusion. “I think you have been misinformed, Agent Finch. Sure, we’ve more than one horse in this town. Dozens actually.” He tipped his hat. “Safe travels.”

  Finch stood by the car and watched the captain walk back up the street. He decided he was one of those men whose greatest gift lay in the inability of others to ever guess what he was truly thinking. That made him a dangerous man, to be sure, but valuable, too, pricelessly so.

  We’ll meet again, Captain. Finch entered the building and climbed the stairs toward his last box in an otherwise empty office. No doubt in my mind, we will definitely meet again.

  Danny, Mark Denton, and Kevin McRae were called into the police commissioner’s office in the middle of April. They were led into the office, which was empty, by Stuart Nichols, the commissioner’s secretary, who promptly left them alone.

  They sat in stiff chairs in front of Commissioner Curtis’s vast desk and waited. It was nine o’clock at night. A raw night of occasional hail.

  After ten minutes, they left their chairs. McRae walked over to a window. Mark stretched with a soft yawn. Danny paced from one end of the office to the other.

  By nine-twenty, Danny and Mark stood at the window while Kevin paced. Every now and then the three of them exchanged a look of suppressed exasperation, but no one said anything.

  At nine-twenty-five, they took their seats again. As they did, the door to their left opened and Edwin Upton Curtis entered, followed by Herbert Parker, his chief counsel. As the commissioner took up a post behind his desk, Herbert Parker briskly passed in front of the three officers and placed a sheet of paper on each of their laps.

  Danny looked down at it.

  “Sign it,” Curtis said.

  “What is it?” Kevin McRae said.

  “That should be evident,” Herbert Parker said and came around the desk behind Curtis and folded his arms across his chest.

  “It’s your raise,” Curtis said and took his seat. “As you wished.”

  Danny scanned the page. “Two hundred a year?”

  Curtis nodded. “As to your other wishes, we’ll take them into consideration, but I wouldn’t hold out hope. Most were for luxuries, not necessities.”

  Mark Denton seemed stricken of the power of speech for a moment. He raised the paper up by his ear, then slowly lowered it back to his knee. “It’s not enough anymore.”

  “Excuse me, Patrolman?”

  “It’s not enough,” Mark said. “You know that. Two hundred a year was a 1913 figure.”

  “It’s what you asked for,” Parker said.

  Danny shook his head. “It’s what the BSC coppers in the 1916 negotiations asked for. Cost of living has gone up—”

  “Oh cost of living, my eye!” Curtis said.

  “—seventy-three percent,” Danny said. “In seven months, sir. So two hundred a year? Without health benefits? Without sanitary conditions changing at the station houses?”

  “As you well know, I’ve created committees to look into those issues. Now—”

  “Those committees,” Danny said, “are made up of precinct captains, sir.”

  “So?”

  “So they have a vested interest in not finding anything wrong with the station houses they command.”

  “Are you questioning the honor of your superiors?”

  “No.”

  “Are you questioning the honor of this department’s chain of command?”

  Mark Denton spoke before Danny could. “This offer is not going to do, sir.”

  “It very well will do,” Curtis said.

  “No,” Mark Denton said. “I think we need to look into—”

  “Tonight,” Herbert Parker said, “is the only night this offer will be on the table. If you don’t take it, you’ll be back out in the cold where you’ll find the doors locked and the knobs removed.”

  “We can’t agree to this.” Danny flapped the page in the air. “It’s far too little and far too late.”

  Curtis shook his head. “I say it’s not. Mr. Parker says it’s not. So it’s not.”

  “Because you say?” Kevin McRae said.

  “Precisely,” Herbert Parker said.

  Curtis ran his palms over his desktop. “We’ll kill you in the press.”

  Parker nodded. “We gave you what you asked for and you turned it down.”

  “That’s not how it is,” Danny said.

  “But that’s how it’ll play, son.”

  Now it was Danny, Kevin, and Mark’s turn to trade glances.

  Eventually, Mark turned back to Commissioner Curtis. “No fucking deal.”

  Curtis leaned back in his chair. “Good evening, gentlemen.”

  Luther came down the Coughlins’ steps on his way to the streetcar when he noticed Eddie McKenna about ten yards up the sidewalk, leaning against the hood of his Hudson.

  “And how’s that fine building restoration going? Coming along, she is?” McKenna came off the car and walked toward him.

  Luther forced a smile. “Coming along right well, Lieutenant, sir. Right well.”

  That was, in fact, the truth. He and Clayton had been on a tear lately. Aided on several occasions by men in NAACP chapters all over New England, men Mrs. Giddreaux found a way to get up or down to Boston on weekends and occasional weeknights, they finished the demo weeks ago, ran the electrical through the open walls and throughout the house, and were working on the water pipes that branched off the kitchen and the bathrooms to the main water pipe, a clay beauty they’d run from the basement to the roof a month back.

  “When do you suppose she’ll open?”

  Luther’d been wondering that himself lately. He still had plenty of pipe to run and was waiting on a shipment of horsehair plaster before he could start sealing the walls. “Hard to say, sir.”

  “Not ‘suh’? Usually you get a bit more southern for my benefit, Luther, something I noticed back in the early days of winter.”

  “I guess it’s ‘sir,’ tonight,” Luther said, feeling a different edge in the man than he’d felt before.

  McKenna shrugged. “So how long you think?”

  “Till I’m done? A few months. Depends on a lot of things, sir.”

  “I’m sure. But the Giddreauxs must be planning a ribbon cutting, that sort of thing, a gathering of their ilk.”

  “Again, sir, I’m hoping to be done summer’s end, somewhere thereabouts.”

  McKenna placed his arm on the wrought-iron railing that curved out from the Coughlin stoop. “I need you to dig a hole.”

  “A hole?”

  McKenna nodded, his trench coat flapping around his legs in the warm spring breeze. “A vault, really. I’ll want you to be sure to make it weather-tight. I’d recommend poured concrete, if I could be so bold.”

  Luther said, “And where do you want me to build this vault? Your house, sir?”

  McKenna leaned back from the suggestion, an odd smile on his face. “I’d never let your kind in my home, Luther. Good Lord.” He exhaled a small whoop at the entire idea, and Luther could see the weight of carrying a fake self for Luther’s benefit leave him, the man finally ready to show Luther his depths. With pride. “An ebon on Telegraph Hill? Ha. So, no, Luther, the vault is not for my home. It’s for these ‘headquarters’ you’re so nobly aspiring to build.”

  “You want me to put a vault in the NAACP?”

  “Yes. Under the floor. I believe last time I was over there, you’d yet to lay in the floor of the rear room in the east corner. Used to be a kitchen, I believe?”

  Last time he was over there?

  “What of it?” Luther said.

  “Dig the hole there. The size of a man, we’ll say. Weatherproof it, then cover it with the flooring of your choice, but make sure that flooring is easy to lift. I don’t presume to tell you how to do your job, but you may consider hinges in that regard, an inconspicuous handle of some sort.”

  Luther, standing on the sidewalk by now, waited for the punch line. “I don’t understand, L
ieutenant, sir.”

  “You know who’s proven my most irreplaceable intelligence source these last couple of years? Do you?”

  “No,” Luther said.

  “Edison. They’re grand ones for tracking the movements of a person.” McKenna lit a half-smoked cigar and waved at the air between them once he got it going. “You, for example, terminated your electric service in Columbus in September. Took my Edison friends some time to discover where you started it up again, but eventually we got it. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, in October. It’s still being supplied to your Tulsa address, so I can only assume you left a woman there. Maybe a family? You’re on the run, Luther. Knew it the moment I laid eyes on you, but it was nice to have it confirmed. When I asked the Tulsa PD if they had any unsolved crimes of note, they mentioned a nightclub in niggertown that someone shot the hell out of, left three dead. A full day’s labor someone did.”

  Luther said, “Don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”

  “Of course, of course.” McKenna nodded. “Tulsa PD said folks there don’t get too riled up when their niggers start shooting each other, ’specially when they can put the blame on one of the dead niggers. Far as they’re concerned, it’s a closed case with three coons in the grave no one’ll miss. So on that score, you are in the clear.” McKenna raised his index finger. “Unless I were to call Tulsa PD back and ask them, as a professional courtesy, to question the sole survivor of said bloodbath and in the course of questioning mention that a certain Luther Laurence, late of Tulsa, was living up here in Boston.” His eyes glittered. “Then I’d have to wonder how many places you’ve got left to hide.”

  Luther felt all the fight in him just roll up and die. Just lie down. Just wither away. “What do you want?”

  “I want a vault.” McKenna’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, I want the Crisis mailing list.”

  “What?”

  “The Crisis. The newsletter of the National Association for the Advancement of Chimpanzees.”