Dennis Lehane - The Given Day

“No, the son. Father’s a sot, a gin junkie. The son does all the work now.”

“One thousand discharge slips?”

Tim shook his head. “Five hundred discharge slips, five hundred suspensions.”

“Already printed.”

Tim nodded. “And delivered to Useless Curtis himself at eight sharp this a.m.”

Danny caught himself tugging on his chin and nodding at the same time, another habit he’d inherited from his father. He stopped and gave Tim what he hoped was a confident smile. “Well, I guess they took their dancing shoes off, uh?”

“I guess they did.” Tim gestured with his chin at Mark Denton and Frank McCarthy. “Who’s the swell with Denton?”

“Organizer with the AFL.”

Tim’s eyes pulsed. “He bring the charter?”

“He brought the charter, Tim.”

“Guess we took off our dancing shoes then, too, eh, Dan?” A smile exploded across Tim’s face.

“We did at that.” Danny clapped his shoulder as Mark Denton picked the megaphone off the floor and stepped to the dais.

Danny crossed to the stage, and Mark Denton knelt at the edge to give Danny his ear and Danny told him about the discharge and suspension slips.

“You’re sure?”

“Positive. They got to his office at eight this morning. Solid info.”

Mark shook his hand. “You’re going to make a fine vice president.”

Danny took a step back. “What?”

Denton gave him a sly smile and stepped up to the dais. “Gentlemen, thank you for coming. This man to my left is Frank McCarthy. He’s your New England rep with the AF of L. And he’s come to bring us something.”

As McCarthy took the dais and the megaphone, Kevin McRae and several other officers of what was about to become the extinct BSC stopped at each row to hand out ballots that the men passed down the rows, their eyes pinwheeling.

“Gentlemen of the Boston Police Department,” McCarthy said, “once you mark those ballots ‘yay’ or ‘nay,’ a decision will have been made as to whether you remain the Boston Social Club or accept this charter I raise before you and become, instead, the Boston Police Union Number sixteen thousand eight hundred and seven of the American Federation of Labor. You will, with some measure of sadness I’m sure, be saying good-bye to the notion and the name of the Boston Social Club, but in return, you will join a brotherhood that is two million strong. Two million strong, gentlemen. Think about that. You will never feel alone again. You will never feel weak or at the mercy of your bosses. Even the mayor, himself, will be afraid to tell you what to do.”

“He already is!” someone shouted, and laughter spread through the room.

Nervous laughter, Danny thought, as the men realized the import of what they were about to do. No going back after today. Leaving a whole other world behind, one in which their rights weren’t respected, yes, but that lack of respect was at least predictable. It made the ground firm underfoot. But this new ground was something else again. Foreign ground. And for all McCarthy’s talk of brotherhood, lonely ground. Lonely because it was strange, because all bearings were unfamiliar. The potential for disgrace and disaster lay ahead everywhere, and every man in the room felt it.

They passed the ballots back down the rows. Don Slatterly rounded up the stacks from the men collecting them like ushers at mass and carried the entire fourteen hundred toward Danny, his steps a bit soggy, his face drained of color.

Danny took the stack from his hands, and Slatterly said, “Heavy, uh?”

Danny gave him a shaky smile and nodded.

“Men,” Frank McCarthy called, “do you all attest that you answered the ballot question truthfully and signed your names? A show of hands.”

Every hand in the room rose.

“So that our young officer to stage left doesn’t have to count them right here and right now, could I get a show of hands as to how many of you voted in favor of accepting this charter and joining the AF of L? If all of you who voted ‘yay,’ would please stand.”

Danny looked up from the stack in his hands as fourteen hundred chairs pushed back and fourteen hundred men rose to their feet.

McCarthy raised his megaphone. “Welcome to the American Federation of Labor, gentlemen.”

The collective scream that exploded in Fay Hall pushed Danny’s spine into the center of his chest and flooded his brain with white light. Mark Denton snatched the stack of ballots from his hands and tossed them high above his head and they hung in the air and then began to float downward as Mark lifted him off his feet and kissed his cheek and hugged him so hard his bones howled.

“We did it!” Tears streamed down Mark’s face. “We fucking did it!”

Danny looked out through the floating ballots at the men toppling their chairs and hugging and howling and crying and he grabbed the top of Mark’s head and sank his fingers into his hair and shook it, howling along with the rest of them.

Once Mark let him down, they were rushed. The men poured onto the stage and some slipped on the ballots and one grabbed the charter from McCarthy’s hand and went running back and forth across the stage with it. Danny was tackled and then lifted and then passed across a sea of hands, bouncing and laughing and helpless, and a thought occurred to him before he could suppress it:

What if we’re wrong?

After the meeting, Steve Coyle found Danny on the street. Even in his euphoria — he’d been unanimously voted vice president of Boston Police Union 16807 less than an hour ago — he felt an all-too-familiar irritation at Steve’s presence. The guy was never sober anymore, and he had this way of looking into your eyes nonstop, as if searching your body for his old life.

“She’s back,” he said to Danny.

“Who?”

“Tessa. In the North End.” He pulled his flask from a tattered coat pocket. He had trouble getting the stopper out. He had to squint and take a deep breath to get a grip.

“You eaten today?” Danny asked.

“You hear me?” Steve said. “Tessa’s back in the North End.”

“I heard. Your source told you?”

“Yeah.”

Danny put his hand on his old friend’s shoulder. “Let me buy you a meal. Some soup.”

“I don’t need fucking soup. She’s come back to her old haunts because of the strike.”

“We’re not striking. We just joined the AF of L.”

Steve went on like he hadn’t heard. “They’re all coming back. Every subversive on the Eastern Seaboard is raising stakes and coming here. When we strike—”

We.

“—they think it’s going to be a free-for-all. St. Petersburg. They’re going to stir the pot and—”

“So where is she?” Danny said, trying to keep his annoyance at bay. “Exactly?”

“My source won’t say.”

“Won’t say? Or won’t say for free?”

“For free, yeah.”

“How much does he want this time? Your source?”

Steve looked at the sidewalk. “Twenty.”

“Just a week’s pay this time, huh?”

Steve cocked his head. “You know, if you don’t want to find her, Coughlin, that’s fine.”

Danny shrugged. “I got other things on my mind right now, Steve. You understand.”

Steve nodded several times.

“Big man,” he said and walked up the street.

The next morning, upon hearing word of the BSC’s unanimous decision to join the American Federation of Labor, Edwin Upton Curtis issued an emergency order canceling all vacations for division commanders, captains, lieutenants, and sergeants.

He summoned Superintendent Crowley to his office and let him stand at attention before his desk for half a minute before he turned from his window to look at him.

“I’m told they elected officers to the new union last night.”