Dennis Lehane - The Given Day

“I ain’t selling out my people,” he told McKenna. “Ain’t planting anything in the NAACP offices. Fuck that and fuck you.”

Clayton let loose a hiss of disbelief.

McKenna, though, looked like he’d been expecting it. “Is that right?”

“That’s right.” Luther looked down at the toolbox. He looked back up at McKenna. “I ain’t—”

McKenna put a hand behind his ear, as if to hear better, pulled the revolver from his belt, and shot Clayton Tomes in the chest.

Clayton held up a hand, palm turned outward. He looked down at the smoke curling from the hole in his overalls. The smoke gave way to a stream of thick, dark fluid, and Clayton cupped his hand under it. He turned and walked carefully over to one of the cans of plaster he and Luther had just been sitting on while they ate and smoked and jawed. He touched the can with his hand before taking a seat.

He said, “What the …?” and leaned his head back against the wall.

McKenna crossed his hands over his groin and tapped the barrel of the pistol against his thigh. “You were saying, Luther?”

Luther’s lips trembled, hot tears pouring down his face. The air smelled of cordite. The walls shook from the winter wind.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Luther whispered. “What the fuck is—”

McKenna fired again. Clayton’s eyes widened, and a small wet pop of disbelief left his mouth. The bullet hole appeared then, just below his Adam’s apple. He grimaced, as if he’d eaten something that hadn’t agreed with him and reached his hand toward Luther. Then his eyes rolled back from the effort and he lowered the hand to his lap. He closed his eyes. He took several shallow gulps of air and then the sound of him stopped.

McKenna took another sip from his flask. “Luther? Look at me.”

Luther stared at Clayton. They’d just been talking about the finish-work that lay ahead. They’d just been eating sandwiches. Tears slid into Luther’s mouth.

“Why would you do that? He didn’t mean anyone harm. He never—”

“Because you don’t run this monkey show. I do.” McKenna tilted his head and bored his eyes into Luther’s. “You’re the monkey. Clear?”

McKenna slid the barrel of the gun into Luther’s mouth. It was still hot enough to burn his tongue. He gagged on it. McKenna pulled back the hammer. “He was no American. He was not a member of any acceptable definition of the human race. He was labor. He was a footrest. He was a beast of burden, sure, nothing more. I disposed of him to prove a point, Luther: I would sooner mourn a footrest than the death of one of yours. Do you think I’m going to stand idly by while Isaiah Giddreaux and that clothed orangutan Du Bois attempt to mongrelize my race? Are you insane, lad?” He pulled the pistol from Luther’s mouth and swung it at the walls. “This building is an affront to every value worth dying for in this country. Twenty years from now people will be stunned to hear we allowed you to live as freemen. That we paid you a wage. That we allowed you to converse with us or touch our food.” He holstered the pistol and grabbed Luther by the shoulders and squeezed. “I will happily die for my ideals. You?”

Luther said nothing. He couldn’t think of anything to say. He wanted to go to Clayton and hold his hand. Even though he was dead, Luther thought he could somehow make him feel less alone.

“If you speak to anyone about this, I will kill Yvette Giddreaux after she takes her lunch in Union Park some afternoon. If you don’t do exactly what I tell you — whatever I tell you and whenever I tell you it — I will kill one nigger every week in this city. You’ll know it’s me because I will shoot them through the left eye so they will go to their nigger god half blind. And their deaths will be on your head, Luther Laurence. Yours and yours alone. Do we have an understanding?”

He let go of Luther and stepped back.

“Do we?”

Luther nodded.

“Good Negro.” McKenna nodded. “Now Officer Hamilton and Officer Temple and myself, we’re going to stay with you until — Are you listening?”

Clayton’s body fell off the plaster can. It lay on the floor, one arm pointed at the door. Luther turned his head away.

“We’re going to stay here with you until dusk. Say you understand, Luther.”

“I understand,” Luther said.

“Isn’t that ducky?” McKenna put his arm around Luther. “Isn’t that grand?” He steered Luther around until they were both facing Clayton’s body.

“We’re going to bury him in the backyard,” McKenna said. “And we’re going to put the toolbox in the vault. And we’re going to come up with an acceptable story for you to tell Miss Amy Wagenfeld when she sends an investigator your way, which surely she will, as you will be the last person to have seen our Mr. Tomes before he absconded from our fair city, probably with an underage white girl. And once we’ve done all that, we’ll wait for the announcement of the ribbon cutting. And you will call me the moment you know that date or …?”

“You’ll … you’ll—”

“Kill a nigger,” McKenna said, pushing Luther’s head back and forth in a nod. “Is there any part of this I need to repeat for you?”

Luther looked into the man’s eyes. “No.”

“Magnificent.” He let go of Luther and removed his coat. “Boys, take off your coats, the both of you. Let’s give Luther a hand with this plaster, shall we? Man shouldn’t have to do everything by himself, sure.”

The house on K Street shriveled into itself. The rooms narrowed and the ceilings seemed to droop and the quiet that replaced Nora was spiteful. It remained that way through the spring and then deepened when word reached the Coughlins that Danny had taken Nora for a wife. Joe’s mother went to her room with migraines, and the few times Connor wasn’t working — and he worked around the clock lately — his breath stank of alcohol and his temper was so short that Joe gave him a wide berth whenever they found themselves in the same room. His father was even worse — Joe would look up to see the old man staring at him with a glaze in his eyes that suggested he’d been doing it for some time. The third time this happened, in the kitchen, Joe said, “What?”

His father’s eyelids snapped. “Excuse me, boy?”

“You’re staring, sir.”

“Don’t get lippy with me, son.”

Joe dropped his eyes. It may have been the longest he’d dared hold his father’s gaze in his life. “Yes, sir.”

“Ah, you’re just like him,” his father said and opened his morning paper with a loud crackling of the pages.

Joe didn’t bother asking who his father was referring to. Since the wedding, Danny’s name had joined Nora’s on the list of things you couldn’t speak aloud. Even at twelve, Joe was all too aware that this list, which had been in place long before he was born, held the key to most mysteries of the Coughlin bloodline. The list was never discussed because one of the items on the list was the list itself, but Joe understood that first and foremost on the list was anything that could cause embarrassment to the family — relatives who’d engaged in repeated public drunkenness (Uncle Mike), who’d married outside of the Church (Cousin Ed), who’d committed crimes (Cousin Eoin, out in California), committed suicide (Cousin Eoin again), or given birth out of wedlock (Aunt Somebody in Vancouver; she’d been so completely banished from the family that Joe didn’t know her name; she existed like a small stream of smoke that curled into the room before someone thought to shut the door). Sex, Joe understood, was stamped in bold at the top of the list. Anything to do with it. Any hint that people even thought about it, never mind had it.