Dennis Lehane - The Given Day

Luther shook his head and heard the men groan and then scuttle off.

“Ain’t going to save you, though, Old Byron. You die, you die. Came all the way up here just to kill one of your own for that shit you put in you?” Luther spit on the glass pebbles.

Old Byron spit blood up at Luther, but all it did was land on his own shirt. “Never liked your ass, Luther. You think you special.”

Luther shrugged. “I am special. Any day aboveground that I ain’t you or I ain’t that ?” He jerked his thumb behind him. “You’re god-damned fucking correct I’m special. Ain’t afraid of them anymore, ain’t afraid of you, ain’t afraid of this here color of my skin. Fuck all that forever.”

Old Byron rolled his eyes. “Like you even less.”

“Good.” Luther smiled. He crouched by Old Byron. “I ’spect you’ll live, old man. You get back on that train to Tulsa. Hear? And when you get off it, you go run your sad ass right to Smoke and tell him you missed me. Tell him it don’t matter none, though, because he ain’t going to have to look hard for me from now on.” Luther lowered his face until he was close enough to kiss Old Byron Jackson. “You tell Smoke I’m coming for him .” He slapped his good cheek once, hard. “I’m coming home, Old Byron. You tell Smoke that. You don’t?” Luther shrugged. “I’ll tell him myself.”

He stood and crossed the broken glass and stepped through the window. He never looked back at Old Byron. He worked his way through the feverish white folk and the screams and the rain and the storm of the hive and knew he was done with every lie he’d ever allowed himself to believe, every lie he’d ever lived, every lie.

Scollay Square. Court Square. The North End. Newspaper Row. Roxbury Crossing. Pope’s Hill. Codman and Eggleston Squares. The calls came in from all over the city, but nowhere more voluminously than in Thomas Coughlin’s precinct. South Boston was blowing up.

The mobs had emptied the stores along Broadway and thrown the goods to the street. Thomas couldn’t find even the strayest hair of logic in that — at least use what you looted. From the inner harbor to Andrew Square, from the Fort Point Channel to Farragut Road — not a single window in a single business stood intact. Hundreds of homes had suffered similar fates. East and West Broadway swelled with the worst of the populace, ten thousand strong and growing. Rapes— rapes, Thomas thought with clenched teeth — had occurred in public view, three on West Broadway, one on East Fourth, another at one of the piers along Northern Avenue.

And the calls kept coming in:

The manager of Mully’s Diner beaten unconscious when a roomful of patrons decided not to pay their bills. The poor sod at Haymarket Relief now with a broken nose, a shattered eardrum, and half a dozen missing teeth.

At Broadway and E, some fun-loving fellas drove a stolen buggy over the sidewalk and into the front window of O’Donnell’s Bakery. That wasn’t enough revelry, however — they had to set it afire. In the process, they torched the bakery and burned seventeen years of Declan O’Donnell’s dreams to soot.

Budnick Creamery — destroyed. Connor & O’Keefe’s — ash. Up and down Broadway, haberdashers, tailors, pawnshops, produce stores, even a bicycle shop — all gone. Either burned to the ground or smashed beyond salvage.

Boys and girls, most younger than Joe, hurled eggs and rocks from the roof of Mohican Market, and the scant few officers Thomas could afford to send reported they were helpless to fire back at children. Responding firemen complained of the same thing.

And the latest report — a streetcar forced to stop at the corner of Broadway and Dorchester Street because of all the goods piled in the intersection. The mob added boxes, barrels, and mattresses to the pile and then someone brought some gasoline and a box of matches. The occupants of the streetcar were forced to flee the car along with the driver and most were beaten while the crowd rushed onto the car, tore the seats from their metal clamps, and tossed them through the windows.

What was this addiction to broken glass? That’s what Thomas wanted to know. How was one to stop this madness? He had a mere twenty-two policemen under his command, most sergeants and lieutenants, most well into their forties, plus a contingent of useless frightened volunteers.

“Captain Coughlin?”

He looked up at Mike Eigen, a recently promoted sergeant, standing in the doorway.

“Jesus, Sergeant, what now?”

“Someone sent a contingent of Metro Park Police in to patrol Southie.”

Thomas stood. “No one told me.”

“Not sure where the order came from, Cap’, but they’re pinned down.”

“What?”

Eigen nodded. “St. Augustine’s Church. Guy’s are dropping.”

“Bullets?”

Eigen shook his head. “Rocks, Cap’.”

A church. Brother officers being stoned. At a church. In his precinct .

Thomas Coughlin didn’t know he’d overturned his desk until he heard it crack against the floor. Sergeant Eigen took a step back.

“Enough,” Thomas said. “By God, enough.”

Thomas reached for the gun belt he hung on his coat tree every morning.

Sergeant Eigen watched him buckle the gun belt. “I’d say so, Cap’.”

Thomas reached for the bottom left drawer of his overturned desk. He lifted the drawer out and propped it on the two upper drawers. He removed a box of.32 shells and stuffed it in his pocket. Found a box of shotgun shells and placed them in the opposite pocket. He looked up at Sergeant Eigen. “Why are you still here?”

“Cap’?”

“Assemble every man still standing in this mausoleum. We’ve got a donnybrook to attend.” Thomas raised his eyebrows. “And we shan’t be fooling about in that regard, Sergeant.”

Eigen snapped him a salute, a smile blowing wide across his face.

Thomas found himself smiling back as he pulled his shotgun off the rack over the file cabinet. “Hop to it now, son.”

Eigen ran from the doorway as Thomas loaded his shotgun, loving the snick-snick of the shells sliding into the magazine. The sound of it returned his soul to his body for the first time since the walkout at five-forty-five. On the floor lay a picture of Danny the day he’d graduated from the Academy, Thomas himself pinning the badge to his chest. His favorite photograph.

He stepped on it on his way out the door, unable to deny the satisfaction that filled him when he heard the glass crunch.

“You don’t want to protect our city, boy?” he said. “Fine. I will.”

When they exited the patrol cars at St. Augustine’s, the crowd turned toward them. Thomas could see the Metro Park cops trying to hold the mob back with billy clubs and drawn weapons, but they were already bloody, and the piles of rocks littering the white limestone steps gave testament to a pitched battle these coppers had been losing.

What Thomas knew about a mob was simple enough — any change in direction forced it to lose its voice if only for a matter of seconds. If you owned those seconds, you owned the mob. If they owned it, they owned you.

He stepped out of his car and the man nearest him, a Gustie who went by the moniker of Filching Phil Scanlon, laughed and said, “Well, Captain Cough—”

Thomas split his face to the bone with the butt of his shotgun. Filching Phil dropped like a head-shot horse. Thomas laid the muzzle of his shotgun on the shoulder of the Gustie behind him, Big Head Sparks. Thomas tilted the muzzle toward the sky and fired and Big Head lost the hearing in his left ear. Big Head Sparks wavered, his eyes instantly glazed, and Thomas said to Eigen, “Do the honors, Sergeant.”

Eigen hit Big Head Sparks in the face with his service revolver, and that was the last of Big Head for the night.