“Uh, yes, sir, I did.”
“What brought you over there? You’ve no friends in the West End, do you?”
“No, sir.”
“And you live in the South End. As we know, you work over here, so…”
The captain rolled the glass between his hands and waited.
Luther said, “Well, you know why most men go to Scollay Square, sir.” He tried for a conspiratorial smile.
“I do,” Captain Coughlin said. “I do, Luther. But even Scollay Square has its racial principles. I’m to assume you were at Mama Hennigan’s, then? ’Tis the only place I know in the square that services coloreds.”
“Yes, sir,” Luther said, although by now he knew he’d walked into a trap.
The captain reached into his humidor. He removed two cigars and snipped the ends and handed one to Luther. He lit it for him and then lit his own.
“I understand my friend Eddie was giving you a bit of a hard time.”
Luther said, “Uh, sir, I don’t know that I would—”
“Aiden told me,” the captain said.
“Oh.”
“I’ve spoken to Eddie on your behalf. I owe you that for saving my son.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I promise he’ll be a bother to you no longer.”
“I really do appreciate that, sir. Thank you again.”
The captain raised his glass and Luther did the same and they both took a drink of the fine Irish whiskey.
The captain reached behind him again and came back with a white envelope that he tapped against his thigh. “And Helen Grady, she’s working out as a house woman, she is?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“No doubts to her competency or her work ethic?”
“Absolutely none, sir.”
Helen was as cold and distant to Luther as the day she’d arrived five months ago, but that woman could work, boy.
“I’m glad to hear that.” The captain handed Luther the envelope. “Because she’ll be doing the job of two now.”
Luther opened the envelope and saw the small sheaf of money inside.
“There’s two weeks’ severance in there, Luther. We closed Mama Hennigan’s a week ago for code violations. The only person you know in Scollay Square is one who used to be in my employ. It explains the food that’s gone missing from my pantry these past few months, a theft that Helen Grady began to report to me weeks ago.” He considered Luther over his scotch glass as he drained it. “Stealing food from my home, Luther? You’re aware I’d be well within my rights to shoot you where you sit?”
Luther didn’t respond to that. He reached over and placed his glass on the edge of the desk. He stood. He held out his hand. The captain considered it for a moment, then placed his cigar in the ashtray and shook the hand.
“Good-bye, Luther,” he said pleasantly.
“Good-bye, Captain, sir.”
When he returned to the house on St. Botolph, it was empty. A note waited on the kitchen table.
Luther,
Out doing the good work (we hope). This came for you. A plate in the icebox.
Isaiah
Underneath the note was a tall yellow envelope with his name scrawled on it in his wife’s hand. Given what had just happened the last time he opened an envelope, he took a moment before reaching for it. Then he said, “Ah, fuck it,” finding it strangely guilt-inducing to cuss in Yvette’s kitchen.
He opened it carefully and pulled out two pieces of cardboard that were pressed together and tied off with string. There was a note folded underneath the string and Luther read it and his hands trembled as he placed it on the table and undid the knot to remove the top piece of cardboard and look at what lay underneath.
He sat there a long time. At some point he wept even though he’d never, not in his whole life, known this kind of joy.
Off Scollay Square, he went down the alley that ran alongside Nora’s building and let himself in the green door at the back, which was only locked about 25 percent of the time, this night not being one of them. He stepped quickly to her door and knocked and heard the last sound he would have expected on the other side: giggling.
He heard whispers and “Sssh, sssh,” and he knocked again.
“Who is it?”
“Luther,” he said and cleared his throat.
The door opened, and Danny stood there, his dark hair falling in tangles over his forehead, one suspender undone, the first three buttons of his undershirt open. Nora stood behind him, touching her hair and then smoothing her dress, and her cheeks were flushed.
Danny had a wide grin on his face, and Luther didn’t have to guess what he’d interrupted.
“I’ll come back,” he said.
“What? No, no.” Danny looked back to make sure Nora was sufficiently covered and then he opened the door wide. “Come on in.”
Luther stepped into the tiny room, feeling foolish suddenly. He couldn’t explain what he was doing here, why he’d just gotten up from the kitchen table in the South End and hurried all the way over here, the large envelope under his arm.
Nora came toward him, her arm extended, her feet bare. She had the flush of interrupted sex on her face, but a deeper flush as well, one of openness and love.
“Thank you,” she said, taking his hand and then leaning in and placing her cheek to his. “Thank you for saving him. Thank you for saving me.”
And in that moment he felt like he was home for the first time since he’d left it.
Danny said, “Drink?”
“Sure, sure,” Luther said.
Danny went to the tiny table where Luther had left the fruit just yesterday. There was a bottle there now and four cheap glasses. He poured all three of them a glass of whiskey and then handed Luther his.
“We just fell in love,” Danny said and raised his glass.
“Yeah?” Luther chuckled. “Finally figured it out, uh?”
“We’ve been in love,” Nora said to Danny. “We finally faced it.”
“Well,” Luther said, “ain’t that a pip?”
Nora laughed and Danny’s smile broadened. They raised their glasses and drank.
“What you got under your arm there?” Danny said.
“Oh, oh, this, yeah.” Luther placed his drink down on the tiny table and opened the envelope. Just pulling out the cardboard, his hands trembled again. He held the cardboard in his hands and offered it to Nora. “I can’t explain why I came here. Why I wanted you to see it. I just…” He shrugged.
Nora reached out and squeezed his arm. “It’s all right.”
“It seemed important to show someone. To show you.”
Danny placed his drink down and came over beside Nora. She lifted off the top piece of cardboard, and their eyes widened. Nora slid her arm under Danny’s and placed her cheek to his arm.
“He’s beautiful,” Danny said softly.
Luther nodded. “That’s my son,” he said while his face filled with warm blood. “That’s my baby boy.”
CHAPTER twenty-nine
Steve Coyle was drunk but freshly bathed when, as a licensed justice of the peace, he officiated over the marriage of Danny Coughlin and Nora O’Shea on June 3, 1919.
The night before, a bomb had exploded outside the home of Attorney General Palmer in Washington, D.C. The detonation came as a surprise to the bomber, who’d still been several yards short of Palmer’s front door. Though his head was eventually recovered from a rooftop four blocks away, the man’s legs and arms were never found. Attempts to identify him using only his head met with failure. The explosion destroyed the facade of Palmer’s building and shattered the windows that faced the street. His living room, sitting room, foyer, and dining room were obliterated. Palmer had been in the kitchen at the back of the house, and he was discovered under the rubble, remarkably unscathed, by the assistant secretary of the navy, Franklin Roosevelt, who lived across the street. While the bomber’s charred head wasn’t sufficient to identify him, it was clear he’d be
en an anarchist by the pamphlets he’d been carrying, which floated over R Street in the moments after the attack and soon adhered themselves to the streets and buildings of a three-block area. Under the heading “Plain Words,” the message was nearly identical to those plastered to street poles in Boston seven weeks before:
You have left us no choice. There will have to be bloodshed. We will destroy and rid the world of your tyrannical institutions. Long live social revolution. Down with tyranny. The Anarchist Fighters
Attorney General Palmer, described in the Washington Post as “shaken but uncowed,” promised to redouble his efforts and entrench his resolve. He warned all Reds on U.S. soil to consider themselves on notice. “This will be a summer of discontent,” Palmer promised, “but not for this country. Only her enemies.”
Danny and Nora’s wedding reception was held on the rooftop of Danny’s rooming house. The cops who attended were of low rank. Most were acting members of the BSC. Some brought their wives, others their girlfriends. Danny introduced Luther to them as “the man who saved my life.” That seemed good enough for most of them, though Luther noted a few who seemed disinclined to leave their wallets or their women out of sight as long as Luther was in proximity to either.
But it was a fine time. One of the tenants, a young Italian man, played violin until Luther expected his arm to fall off, and later in the evening he was joined by a cop with an accordion. There were heaps of food and wine and whiskey and buckets of Pickwick Ale on ice. The white folk danced and laughed and toasted and toasted until they were toasting the sky above and the earth below as both grew blue with the night.
Near midnight, Danny found him sitting along the parapet and sat beside him, drunk and smiling. “The bride’s in a bit of a snit that you haven’t asked for a dance.”
Luther laughed.
“What?”
“A black man dancing with a white woman on a roof. Yeah. I’ll bet.”
“Bet nothing,” Danny said, a bit of a slur in the words. “Nora asked me herself. You want to make the bride sad on her wedding day, you go right ahead.”
Luther looked at him. “There’s lines, Danny. Lines you don’t cross even here.”
“Fuck lines,” Danny said.
“Easy for you to say,” Luther said. “So easy.”
“Fine, fine.”
They looked at each other for some time.
Eventually, Danny said, “What?”
“You’re asking a lot,” Luther said.
Danny pulled out a pack of Murads, offered one to Luther. Luther took it and Danny lit it, then lit his own. Danny blew out a slow plume of blue smoke. “I hear the majority of the executive office positions of the NAACP are filled by white women.”
Luther had no idea where he was going with this. “There’s some truth to that, yeah, but Dr. Du Bois, he’s looking to change that. Change comes slow.”
“Uh-huh,” Danny said. He took a swig from the whiskey bottle at his feet and handed it to Luther. “You think I’m like them white women?”
Luther noticed one of Danny’s cop friends watching him raise the bottle to his lips, the guy making note which whiskey he wouldn’t be drinking the rest of the night.
“Do you, Luther? You think I’m trying to prove something? Show what a free-minded white man I am?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing.” Luther handed the bottle back.
Danny took another swig. “Ain’t doing shit, except trying to get my friend to dance with my wife on her wedding day because she asked me to.”
“Danny.” Luther could feel the liquor riding in him, itching. “Things is.”
“Things is?” Danny cocked an eyebrow.
Luther nodded. “As they’ve always been. And they don’t change just because you want them to.”
Nora crossed the roof toward them, a little tipsy herself judging by the sway of her, a champagne glass held loosely in one hand, cigarette in the other.
Before Luther could speak, Danny said, “He don’t want to dance.”
Nora turned her lower lip down at that. She wore a pearl-colored gown of satin messaline and silver tinsel. The drop skirt was wrinkled and the whole outfit a hair on the sloppy side now, but she still had those eyes, and that face made Luther think of peace, think of home.
“I think I’ll cry.” Her eyes were gay and shiny with alcohol. “Boo hoo.”
Luther chuckled. He noticed a lot of people looking at them, just as he’d feared.
He took Nora’s hand with a roll of his eyes and she tugged him to his feet and the violinist and the accordionist began to play, and she led him out to the center of the roof under the half moon and her hand was warm in his. His other hand found the small of her back and he could feel the heat coming off the skin there and off her jaw and the pulse of her throat. She smelled of alcohol and jasmine and that undeniable whiteness he’d noticed the first time he’d ever put his arms around her, as if her flesh had never been touched by dew. A papery smell, starchy.
“It’s an odd world, is it not?” she said.
“Most certainly.”
Her brogue was thicker with the alcohol. “I’m sorry you lost your job.”
“I’m not. I got another one.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Stockyards. Start day after next.”
Luther raised his arm and she swirled under it and then turned back into his chest.
“You are the truest friend I’ve ever had.” She spun again, as light as summer.
Luther laughed. “You’re drunk, girl.”
“I am,” she said gleefully. “But you’re still family, Luther. To me.” She nodded at Danny. “To him, too. Are we your family yet, Luther?”
Luther looked into her face and the rest of the roof evaporated. What a strange woman. Strange man. Strange world.
“Sure, sister,” he said. “Sure.”
The day of his eldest son’s wedding, Thomas came to work to find Agent Rayme Finch waiting for him in the anteroom outside the desk sergeant’s counter.
“Come to register a complaint, have we?”
Finch stood, straw boater in hand. “If I may have a word.”
Thomas ushered him through the squad room and back to his office. He removed his coat and hat and hung them on the tree by the file cabinets and asked Finch if he wanted coffee.
“Thank you.”
Thomas pressed the intercom button. “Stan, two coffees, please.” He looked over at Finch. “Welcome back. Staying long?”
Finch gave that a noncommittal twitch of the shoulders.
Thomas removed his scarf and placed it on the tree over his coat and then moved last night’s stack of incident reports from his ink blotter to the left side of his desk. Stan Beck brought the coffee and left. Thomas handed a cup across the desk to Finch.
“Cream or sugar?”
“Neither.” Finch took the cup with a nod.
Thomas added cream to his own cup. “What brings you by?”
“I understand that you do, in fact, have quite a network of men attending meetings of the various radical groups in your city, that you even have some who’ve infiltrated a few groups under deep cover.” Finch blew on his coffee and took a tiny sip, then licked the sting from his lips. “As I understand it, and quite the contrary to what you led me to believe, you’re compiling lists.”
Thomas took his seat and sipped his coffee. “Your ambition might exceed your ‘understanding,’ lad.”
Finch gave that thin smile. “I’d like access to those lists.”
“Access?”
“Copies.”
“Ah.”
“Is that a problem?”
Thomas leaned back and propped his heels on the desk. “At the moment, I fail to see how interagency cooperation is advantageous to the Boston Police Department.”
“Maybe you’re taking the narrow view.”
“I don’t believe I am.” Thomas smiled. “But I’m always open to fresh perspectives.”
Finch struck a match off the edge of Thomas’s desk and lit a cigarette. “Let’s consider the reaction if word leaked that a rogue contingent of the Boston Police Department was selling the member rolls and mailing lists of known radical organizations to corporations instead of sharing them with the federal government.”
“Allow me to correct one wee mistake.”
“My information is solid.”
Thomas folded his hands over his abdomen. “The mistake you made, son, was in use of the word rogue. We’re hardly that. In fact, were you to point a finger at myself or any of the people I’m in congress with in this city? Why, Agent Finch, you’d surely find a dozen fingers pointing back at you, Mr. Hoover, Attorney General Palmer, and that fledgling, underfunded agency of yours.” Thomas reached for his coffee cup. “So I’d advise caution when making threats in my fair city.”
Finch crossed his legs and flicked ash into the tray beside his chair. “I get the gist.”
“Consider my soul appropriately comforted.”
“Your son, the one who killed the terrorist, I understand he’s lost to my cause.”
Thomas nodded. “A union man now, he is, through and through.”
“But you’ve another son. A lawyer as I understand it.”
“Careful with talk of family, Agent Finch.” Thomas rubbed the back of his neck. “You’re treading a tightrope in a circus fire about now.”
Finch held up a hand. “Just hear me out. Share your lists with us. I’m not saying you can’t make all the profit you want on the side. But if you share them with us, I’ll make sure your son the lawyer gets plum work in the coming months.”
Thomas shook his head. “He’s DA property.”
“Silas Pendergast?” Finch shook his head. “He’s a whore for the wards and everyone knows you run him, Captain.”
Thomas held out his hands. “Make your case.”
“The preliminary suspicions that the molasses tank explosion was a terrorist act have been a boon for us. Simply put, this country is sick of terror.”
“But the explosion wasn’t a terrorist act.”
The Given Day Page 47
