That’s when the straight razor came out.
Joe dropped to all fours and scrambled between Rory’s legs. Once he’d cleared them, he stayed that way, moving through the dense crowd on his hands and knees—between a pair of dark trousers and then a pair of tan ones, then two-toned spats followed by brown work boots caked with dried mud. He didn’t look back. He just kept crawling, feeling like a crab, scuttling left, then right, then left again, the pairs of legs growing denser and denser, the air carrying less and less oxygen as he crawled ever deeper into the heart of the mob.
At nine-fifteen, Thomas received a call from General Cole, the acting commissioner.
“Are you in contact with Captain Morton at the Sixth?” General Cole said.
“Constant contact, General.”
“How many men does he have at his command?”
“A hundred, sir. Mostly volunteers.”
“And you, Captain?”
“About the same, General.”
General Cole said, “We’re sending the Tenth Regiment of the State Guard to the Broadway Bridge. You and Captain Morton are to sweep the crowd up West Broadway toward the bridge. You understand, Captain?”
“Yes, General.”
“We’ll pin them down there. We’ll start making arrests and hauling them into trucks. That sight alone should disperse the majority of them.”
“I agree.”
“We’ll meet at the bridge at twenty-two hundred, Captain. You think that gives you enough time to push them toward my net?”
“I was just waiting on your orders, General.”
“Well, now you have them, Captain. See you soon.”
He hung up and Thomas rang Sergeant Eigen’s desk. When he answered, Thomas said, “Assemble the men immediately,” and hung up.
He called Captain Morton. “You ready, Vincent?”
“Ready and willing, Thomas.”
“We’ll send ’em your way.”
“Looking forward to it,” Morton said.
“See you at the bridge.”
“See you at the bridge.”
Thomas performed the same ritual he had the previous night, donning his holster, filling his pockets with shells, loading his Remington. Then he walked out of his office into the roll call room.
They were all assembled—his men, the Metro Park cops from last night, and sixty-six volunteers. These last gave him momentary pause. It wasn’t the aged war veterans he was worried about, it was the young pups, particularly the Harvard contingent. He didn’t like their eyes, the way they swam with the light of those on a lark, a fraternity prank. There were two sitting on a table in the back who kept whispering and chuckling as he explained their orders.
“…and when we enter West Broadway, we’ll be coming up on their flank. We will form a line stretching from one side of the street to the other and we will not break that line. We will push them west, always west, toward the bridge. Don’t get caught up trying to push every single body. Some will remain behind. As long as they pose no direct threat, leave them. Just keep pushing.”
One of the Harvard footballers nudged the other and they both guffawed.
Thomas stepped off the rostrum and continued talking as he worked his way through the men. “If you are hit with projectiles, ignore them. Just keep pushing. If we receive fire, I will give the order to fire back. Only me. You are not to return fire until you hear my order.”
The Harvard boys watched him come with bright smiles on their faces.
“When we reach D Street,” Thomas said, “we will be joined by the men of the Sixth Precinct. There we will form a pincer and funnel what’s left of the mob straight at the Broadway Bridge. At that point, we will leave no stragglers behind. Everyone comes along for the ride.”
He reached the Harvard boys. They raised their eyebrows at him. One was blond and blue-eyed and the other brown-haired and bespectacled, his forehead splattered with acne. Their friends sat along the back wall with them and watched to see what would happen.
Thomas asked the blond one, “What’s your name, son?”
“Chas Hudson, Cap’n.”
“And your friend?”
“Benjamin Lorne,” the brown-haired one said. “I’m right here.”
Thomas nodded at him and turned back to Chas. “You know what happens, son, when you don’t take a battle seriously?”
Chas rolled his eyes. “Guess you’ll be telling me, Cap’n.”
Thomas slapped Benjamin Lorne in the face so hard he fell off the table and his glasses flew into the back row. He stayed down there, on his knees, as blood dribbled from his mouth.
Chas opened his mouth but Thomas cut off anything he might have said by squeezing his hand over his jaw. “What happens, son, is that the man next to you usually gets hurt.” Thomas looked over at Chas’s Harvard buddies as Chas gurgled. “You are officers of the law tonight. Understood?”
He got eight nods in return.
He turned his attention back to Chas. “I don’t care who your family is, son. If you make a mistake tonight? I will shoot you in the heart.”
He pushed him back against the wall and let go of his chin.
Thomas turned back to the rest of the men. “Further questions?”
Everything went fine until they reached F Street. They were hit with eggs and they were hit with stones, but for the most part the mob moved steadily up West Broadway. When one didn’t, he was hit with a billy club and the message was received and the mob moved again. Several dropped their rifles to the sidewalk and the cops and volunteers scooped them up as they continued forward. After five blocks, they were carrying an extra rifle per man and Thomas had them stop long enough to remove the bullets. The crowd stopped as well and Thomas found several faces who might have been making designs on those rifles, so he ordered the men to smash them against the pavement. The sight of that got the crowd moving again, and moving smoothly, and Thomas began to feel the same confidence he’d felt last night when he’d swept Andrew Square with Crowley.
At F Street, however, they ran into the radicalized section—the sign holders, the rhetoric spouters, the Bolsheviks, and the anarchists. Several were fighters, and a melee broke out on the corner of F and Broadway as a dozen volunteers taking up the rear were outflanked and then set upon by the godless subversives. They used pipes mostly, but then Thomas spotted a heavily bearded fella raising a pistol and he drew his own revolver, took one step forward, and shot the man.
The slug hit him high in the shoulder and he spun and dropped. Thomas pointed his revolver at the man who’d been standing next to him as the rest of the Bolshies froze. Thomas looked at his men as they fanned out beside him and he said one word:
“Aim!”
The rifle barrels came up in one swift line, as if choreographed, and the Bolshies turned and ran for their lives. Several of the volunteers were cut and bleeding, but none critically, and Thomas gave them a minute to check themselves for more serious damage as Sergeant Eigen checked on the man Thomas had shot.
“He’ll live, Cap’.”
Thomas nodded. “Then leave him where he lies.”
From there they faced no further challenge as they walked the next two blocks and the crowd ran before them. The logjam started when they reached D Street, home of the Sixth Precinct. Captain Morton and his men had pushed from the sides and now the entire crowd was jammed and milling between D Street and A, just short of the Broadway Bridge. Thomas saw Morton himself on the north side of Broadway, and when their eyes met Thomas pointed to the south side and Morton nodded. Thomas and his men fanned out along the south side of the street while Morton’s men took the north and now they very much did push. They pushed hard. They formed a fence out of their rifles and used that steel and their own fury and fear to manhandle the entire herd forward, ever forward. For several blocks it was like trying to push a pride of lions through a mouse hole. Thomas lost track of how many times he was spat on or scratched and it became impossible to tell which fluids on his fac
e and neck were which. He did find one reason to permit himself a small smile in the midst of it all, however, when he spotted the formerly smug Chas Hudson with a broken nose and an eye as black as a cobra.
The faces of the mob, however, did not elicit anything near to joy in him. His people, the faces nearest him as Irish as potatoes and drunken sentiment, all twisted into repulsive, barbaric masks of rage and self-pity. As if they’d a right to do this. As if this country owed them any more than it had handed Thomas when he stepped off the boat, which is to say nothing but a fresh chance. He wanted to push them straight back to Ireland, straight back to the loving arms of the British, back to their cold fields and their dank pubs and their toothless women. What had that gray country ever given them except melancholia and alcoholism and the dark humor of the habitually defeated? So they came here, one of the few cities in the world where their kind was given a fair shake. But did they act like Americans? Did they act with respect or gratitude? No. They acted like what they were—the niggers of Europe. How dare they? When this was over, it would take Thomas and good Irishmen like him another decade to undo all the damage this mob had done in two days. Damn you all, he thought as they continued to push them back. Damn you all for smearing our race yet again.
Just past A Street, he felt some give. Broadway widened here, opening into a basin where it met the Fort Point Channel. Just beyond was the Broadway Bridge, and Thomas’s heart fairly leapt to see the troops arrayed on the bridge and the trucks rolling off it into the square. He allowed himself his second smile of the evening, and that’s when someone shot Sergeant Eigen in the stomach. The sound of it hung in the air as Eigen’s face bore a look of surprise mixed with growing awareness. Then he fell to the street. Thomas and Lieutenant Stone reached him first. Another bullet hit a drainpipe just to their left and the men returned fire, a dozen rifles discharging at once as Thomas and Stone lifted Eigen off the ground and carried him toward the sidewalk.
That’s when he saw Joe. The boy ran along the north side of the street toward the bridge and Thomas made out the man chasing his son as well, a onetime pimp and barker named Rory Droon, a pervert and rapist, now chasing his son. Thomas got Eigen to the sidewalk and they lowered him so that his back was against a wall, and Eigen said, “Am I dying, Cap’?”
“No, but you’ll be in a fair sight of pain, son.” Thomas searched the crowd for his son. He couldn’t find Joe, but he saw Connor suddenly, streaking up the street toward the bridge, dodging those he could, bulling his way through others, and Thomas felt a flush of pride for his middle son that surprised him because he couldn’t remember the last time such a feeling had come upon him.
“Get him,” he whispered.
“What’s that, sir?” Stone said.
“Stay with Sergeant Eigen,” Thomas said. “Slow the bleeding.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“I’ll be back,” Thomas said and headed into the mob.
The volleys of gunfire had whipped the crowd to a boil. Connor couldn’t tell where the bullets were coming from, just that they were coming, pinging off poles and brick and street signs. He wondered if this is how men had felt in the war, during a battle, this sense of complete chaos, of your own death flying past you in the air, ricocheting off something hard and coming back for a second pass. People ran every which way, banged into one another, snapped ankles, shoved and scratched and wailed in terror. A couple ahead of him fell down, either from a bullet or a rock or just because they entwined their legs and tripped, and Connor vaulted into the air and cleared them. As he came down he saw Joe up by the bridge, the dirty-looking man grabbing him by the hair. Connor sidestepped a guy swinging a pipe at no one in particular, then spun around a woman on her knees, and the dirty-looking guy was turning his way when Connor punched him full in the face. His momentum carried him forward so that he finished the punch by landing on the guy and dropping him to the street. He scrambled up and grabbed the guy by the throat and raised his fist again but the guy was out, out cold, a small pool of blood forming on the pavement where his head had landed. Connor stood and looked for Joe, saw the kid crumpled in a ball when Connor had managed to knock them both over. He went to his little brother and turned him over and Joe looked up at him with wide eyes.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Here.” Connor stooped and Joe wrapped his arms around his shoulders and Connor lifted him off the street.
“Fire at will!”
Connor spun, saw the State Guard troops coming off the bridge, their rifles extended. Rifles from the crowd pointed back. A collection of volunteer policemen, one with a black eye and broken nose, leveled their weapons as well. Everyone was pointing at everyone else, as if there were no sides, just targets.
“Close your eyes, Joe. Close your eyes.”
He pressed Joe’s head to his shoulder and all the rifles seemed to go off at once. The air exploded with white puffs from the muzzles. A sudden, high-pitched shriek. A member of the State Guard grabbing his neck. A bloody hand raised in the air. Connor ran for a car overturned at the base of the bridge with Joe in his arms as the crack of rifle fire erupted anew. Bullets sparked off the side of the car, the clang of them like the sound of heavy coins thrown into a metal bowl, and Connor pressed Joe’s face harder to his shoulder. A bullet hissed by on his right and hit a guy in the knee. The guy fell. Connor turned his head away. He’d almost reached the front of the car when the bullets hit the window. The glass slid through the night air like sleet or hail, translucent, a shower of silver rushing out of all that blackness.
Connor found himself on his back. He didn’t remember slipping. He was just suddenly on the ground. He could hear the ping of bullets grow less insistent, could hear the yells and moans and people shouting out names. He smelled cordite and smoke in the air and the faint odor of roasted meat for some reason. He heard Joe call his name and then shriek it, his voice wracked with horror and sadness. He reached out his hand and felt Joe’s close over it, but Joe still wouldn’t stop screaming.
Then his father’s voice, shushing Joe, cooing to him. “Joseph, Joseph, I’m here. Ssssh.”
“Dad?” Connor said.
“Connor,” his father said.
“Who turned out the lights?”
“Jesus,” his father whispered.
“I can’t see, Dad.”
“I know, son.”
“Why can’t I see?”
“We’re going to get you to a hospital, son. Immediately. I swear.”
“Dad?”
He felt his father’s hand on his chest. “Just lie still, son. Just lie still.”
CHAPTER thirty-nine
The next morning, the State Guard placed a machine gun on a tripod at the northern end of West Broadway in South Boston. They placed another at the intersection of West Broadway and G Street and a third at the intersection of Broadway and Dorchester Street. The Tenth Regiment patrolled the streets. The Eleventh Regiment manned the rooftops.
They repeated the procedure in Scollay Square and along Atlantic Avenue in the North End. General Cole blocked off access to any streets entering Scollay Square and set up a checkpoint on the Broadway Bridge. Anyone caught on the streets in question without a viable reason for being there was subject to immediate arrest.
The city remained quiet throughout the day, the streets empty.
Governor Coolidge held a press conference. While he expressed sympathy for the nine confirmed dead and the hundreds injured, he stated that it was the mob itself that was to blame. The mob and the policemen who had left their posts. The governor went on to state that while the mayor had attempted to shore up the city during the terrible crisis, it was clear he had been wholly unprepared for such an emergency. Therefore control from this point on would be assumed by the state and the governor himself. In that capacity, his first order of business was to reinstate Edwin Upton Curtis to his rightful place as police commissioner.
Curtis appeared by his side at the rostrum
and announced that the police department of the great city of Boston, acting in concert with the State Guard, would brook no further rioting. “The rule of law will be respected or the consequences will be dire. This is not Russia. We will use every measure of force at our disposal to ensure democracy for our citizens. Anarchy ends today.”
A reporter from the Transcript stood and raised his hand. “Governor Coolidge, am I clear that it is your opinion that Mayor Peters is at fault for the past two nights’ chaos?”
Coolidge shook his head. “The mob is at fault. The policemen who committed gross dereliction of their sworn duties are at fault. Mayor Peters is not at fault. He was merely caught unawares and was thus, in the early stages of the riots, a bit ineffectual.”
“But, Governor,” the reporter said, “we’ve heard several reports that it was Mayor Peters who wished to call out the State Guard within an hour of the police walkout, and that you, sir, and Commissioner Curtis vetoed the idea.”
“Your information is incorrect,” Coolidge said.
“But, Governor—”
“Your information is incorrect,” Coolidge repeated. “This press conference is completed.”
Thomas Coughlin held his son’s hand while he wept. Connor didn’t make a sound, but the tears slid freely from the thick white bandages covering his eyes and rolled off his chin to dampen the collar of his hospital gown.
His mother stared out the window of Mass General, trembling, her eyes dry.
Joe sat in a chair on the other side of the bed. He hadn’t spoken a word since they’d lifted Connor into the ambulance last night.
Thomas touched Connor’s cheek. “It’s okay,” he whispered.
“How’s it okay?” Connor said. “I’m blind.”
The Given Day Page 64
