Dennis Lehane - The Given Day

“I was mayor then, of course,” Curtis said to Peters.

“And a fine one you were, Commissioner.” Peters looked over at Coolidge as if surprised the governor had let him finish a thought.

It was the wrong thought, though. A dark squall passed through Curtis’s small eyes, taking the blithe compliment Peters had delivered and twisting it into an insult. By calling him “Commissioner,” the current mayor had reminded him of what he no longer was.

Dear Lord, Storrow thought, this city could burn to its bricks because of narcissism and a meaningless faux pas.

Curtis stared at him. “Do you think the men have a grievance, James?”

Storrow took his time searching for his pipe. He used three matches to get it lit in the ocean breeze and then crossed his legs. “I think they do, Edwin, yes, but let’s be clear that you inherited those grievances from the previous administration. No one believes that you are the cause of those grievances or that you have done anything but attempt to deal with them honorably.”

Curtis nodded. “I offered them a raise. They turned it down flat.”

Because it was sixteen years too late, Storrow thought.

“I initiated several committees to study their work conditions.”

Cherry-picked with toadies, Storrow thought.

“It’s an issue of respect now. Respect for the office. Respect for this country.”

“Only if you make it thus, Edwin.” Storrow uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “The men respect you, Commissioner. They do. And they respect this Commonwealth. I believe my report will bear that out.”

“Your report,” Curtis said. “What about my report? When do I share my voice?”

Good God, it was like fighting over toys in a nursery.

“Commissioner Curtis,” the governor said, “we all understand your position. You should no more be beholden to the brazen demands of workingmen than—”

“Beholden?” Curtis said. “I am no such thing, sir. I am extorted. That is what this is, pure and simple. Extortion.”

“Be that as it may,” Peters said, “we think that the best course—”

“—is to forgo personal feelings at this time,” Coolidge said.

“This is not personal.” Curtis craned his head forward and screwed his face into a mask of victimization. “This is public. This is principle. This is Seattle, gentlemen. And St. Petersburg. And Liverpool. If we let them win here, then we truly will be Russianized. The principles that Jefferson and Franklin and Washington stood for will—”

“Edwin, please.” Storrow couldn’t help himself. “I may have brokered a settlement that will allow us to regain our footing, both locally and nationally.”

Edwin Curtis clapped his hands together. “Well, I for one, would love to hear it.”

“The mayor and the city council have found the funds to raise the level of the men’s pay to a fair scale for 1919 and beyond. It’s fair, Edwin, not a gross capitulation, I assure you. We’ve further designated monies to address and improve the working conditions in the precinct houses. It’s a tight budget we’re working with and some other public workers will not receive departmental funding they’d been counting on, but we tried to minimize the overall damage. The greater good will be served.”

Curtis nodded, his lips white. “You think so.”

“I do, Edwin.” Storrow kept his voice soft, warm.

“These men affiliated with a national union against my express orders, in open contempt of the rules and regulations of this police department. That affiliation is an affront to this country.”

Storrow recalled the wonderful spring of his freshman year at Harvard when he’d joined the boxing team and experienced a purity of violence unlike any he could have ever imagined if he wasn’t pummeling and being pummeled every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. His parents found out eventually and that put an end to his pugilism, but, oh, how he would have loved to lace up the gloves right now and pound Curtis’s nose down to the rocks of itself.

“Is that your sticking point, Edwin? The AFL affiliation?”

Curtis threw up his hands. “Of course it is!”

“And if, let us say, the men agreed to withdraw from that affiliation?”

Curtis narrowed his eyes. “Have they?”

“If they did, Edwin,” Storrow said slowly, “what then?”

“I would take it under advisement,” Curtis said.

“Advisement of what ?” Peters said.

Storrow shot him a glare he hoped was sharp enough and Peters dropped his eyes.

“Advisement, Mr. Mayor, of the larger picture.” Curtis’s eyes had moved inward, something Storrow had seen often in financial negotiations — self-pity disguised as inner counsel.

“Edwin,” he said, “the men will withdraw from the American Federation of Labor. They’ll concede. The question is: Will you?”

The ocean breeze found the awning over the doorway and the flaps of the tarp snapped against themselves.

“The nineteen men should be disciplined but not punished,” Governor Coolidge said. “Prudence, Commissioner, is all we ask.”

“Common sense,” Peters said.

Soft waves broke against the rocks.

Storrow found Curtis staring at him, as if awaiting his final plea. He stood and extended his hand to the little man. Curtis gave the hand a damp shake of his fingers.

“You have my every confidence,” Storrow said.

Curtis gave him a grim smile. “That’s heartening, James. I’ll take it under advisement, rest assured.”

Later that afternoon, in an incident that would have proven a profound embarrassment to the Boston Police Department if it had been reported to the press, a police detail arrived at the new headquarters of the NAACP on Shawmut Avenue. Lieutenant Eddie McKenna, armed with a search warrant, dug up the floor in the kitchen and the yard behind the headquarters.

As guests who’d come to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony stood around him, he found nothing.

Not even a toolbox.

The Storrow Report was released to the papers that night.

Monday morning, portions of it were published, and the editorial pages of all four major dailies proclaimed James J. Storrow the savior of the city. Crews arrived to break down the emergency hospital tents that had been erected across the city, and the extra ambulance drivers were sent home. The presidents of Jordan Marsh and Filene’s ordered employee-firearm training to cease and all company-provided weapons were confiscated. Divisions of the State Guard and platoons of the United States Cavalry, which had been mustering in Concord, found their alert status downgraded from red to blue.

At three-thirty that afternoon, the Boston City Council passed a resolution to name either a building or a public thoroughfare after James J. Storrow.

At four, Mayor Andrew Peters left his office at City Hall to find a crowd awaiting him. The throng cheered.

At five-forty-five, policemen of all eighteen precincts met for evening roll call. It was then that the duty sergeant of each precinct house informed the men that Commissioner Curtis had ordered the immediate termination of the nineteen men he’d suspended the previous week.

In Fay Hall, at eleven in the evening, the members of the Boston Police Department Union voted to reaffirm their affiliation with the American Federation of Labor.

At eleven-oh-five, they voted to strike. It was agreed that this action would occur at tomorrow evening’s roll call, a Tuesday, when fourteen hundred policemen would walk off the job.

The vote was unanimous.

In his empty kitchen, Eddie McKenna poured two fingers of Power’s Irish whiskey into a glass of warm milk and drank it as he ate the plate of chicken and mashed potatoes Mary Pat had left on the stove. The kitchen ticked with its own quiet, and the only light came from a small gas lamp over the table behind him. Eddie ate at the sink, as he always did when he was alone. Mary Pat was out at a meeting of the Watch and Ward Society, also known as the New England Society for the Suppression of Vice. Eddie, who barely believed in naming dogs, would never understand naming an organization, not once, but twice. Ah well, now that Edward Junior was at Rutgers and Beth was off to the convent, at least it kept Mary Pat out of his hair, and the thought of all those frigid biddies klatching together to rail against the sots and the suffragettes brought a smile to his face in the dark kitchen on Telegraph Hill.