Dennis Lehane - The Given Day

The blast bubbled outward as if it came from under water. The first wave knocked Danny’s legs out from under him and he landed in the gutter and watched the Rambler jump four feet in the air. It came back to earth almost exactly where it had left it. The windows blew out, and the wheels collapsed, and a portion of the roof peeled back like a can. The front steps of the church splintered and disgorged limestone. The heavy wooden doors fell off their hinges. The stained glass windows collapsed. Debris and white dust floated in the air. Flames poured out of the car. Flames and oily black smoke. Danny stood. He could feel blood dripping out of his ears.

A face loomed in front of his. The face was familiar. The face mouthed his name. Danny held up his hands, one of them still holding his revolver. The cop — Danny remembered his name now, Officer Glen Something, Glen Patchett — shook his head: No, you keep your gun.

Danny lowered the gun and placed it in his coat. The heat of the flames found his face. He could see Federico in there, blackened and afire, leaning against the passenger door, as if sleeping, a guy along for a drive. With his eyes closed, he reminded Danny of that first night they’d broken bread together, when Federico, seemingly enraptured by music, had closed his eyes and mock-conducted the music spilling from his phonograph. People began to exit the church, coming around from the sides, and Danny could hear them suddenly, as if from the bottom of a hole a mile deep.

He turned to Glen, “If you can hear me, nod.”

Patchett gave him a curious look but nodded.

“Put out an APB on a Tessa Ficara. Twenty years old. Italian. Five five, long brown hair. She’s bleeding from the right hip. Glen? She’s dressed as a boy. Tweed knickers, plaid shirt, suspenders, brown work shoes. You got that?”

Patchett scribbled in his notebook. He nodded.

“Armed and dangerous,” Danny said.

More scribbling.

His left ear canal opened with a pop, and more blood sluiced down his neck, but now he could hear and the sounds were sudden and painful. He placed a hand to the ear. “Fuck!”

“You hear me now?”

“Yeah, Glen. Yeah.”

“Who’s the crisper in the car?”

“Federico Ficara. He’s got federal warrants out on him. You probably heard about him at roll call about a month ago. Bomber.”

“Dead bomber. You shoot him?”

“Three times,” Danny said.

Glen looked at all the white dust and debris as it fell into their hair, onto their faces. “Hell of a way to fuck up a Sunday.”

Eddie McKenna arrived on-scene about ten minutes after the explosion. Danny sat amid the rubble on what remained of the church steps and listened as his godfather talked to Fenton, the Bomb Squad sergeant.

“Best we can figure, Eddie? The plan was to detonate the dynamite in the car once all the people were out front, you know, milling about for ten minutes afterward, the way these people do. But when the wops start coming out of the church, Coughlin’s kid over there yells at them to go back inside. Makes his point by discharging his weapon. So the people run back inside and Coughlin starts firing at the asshole in the Rambler. Someone else comes into play around then — I’m hearing from Tactical that it’s a woman, believe that? — and he’s drawing her fire, too, but hell if he’s letting that asshole out of the car. Makes him blow up with his own bombs.”

“A delicious irony, that,” McKenna said. “Special Squads will take over from here, Sergeant.”

“Tell that to Tactical.”

“Oh, I will. Rest assured.” He placed a hand on Fenton’s shoulder before he could walk off. “In your professional opinion, Sergeant, what would have happened if that bomb had gone off while the parishioners congregated on the street?”

“Twenty dead minimum. Maybe thirty. The rest wounded, maimed, what have you.”

“What have you, indeed,” McKenna said. He walked over to Danny, shaking his head with a smile. “You have so much as a scratch?”

“Doesn’t appear so,” Danny said. “Fucking ears hurt like hell, though.”

“First Salutation, then working the flu like you did, and now this?” McKenna sat on the church steps and hitched his pant legs at the knee. “How many near misses can one man have, boy?”

“Apparently, I’m putting the question to the test.”

“Rumor is you winged her. This Tessa cunt.”

Danny nodded. “Caught her in the right hip. Mighta been my bullet, mighta been ricochet.”

“You got dinner in an hour, don’t you?” McKenna said.

Danny cocked his head. “You don’t honestly expect me to go, do you?”

“Why not?”

“The guy I’m supposed to meet for dinner is probably sewing Tessa up as we speak.”

McKenna shook his head. “She’s a soldier, she is. She shan’t panic and cross the city before full dark while she’s bleeding. She’s holed up somewhere right now.” His eyes scanned the buildings around them. “Probably still in this neighborhood. I’ll put a major presence on the street tonight; it should pin her in. At least it’ll keep her from traveling far. Also, your friend Nathan is hardly the only dirty doctor in the game. So I think the dinner should go ahead as planned. Sure now, it’s a calculated risk, but one worth taking.”

Danny searched his face for the joke.

“You’re this close,” McKenna said. “Bishop asked for your writing. You gave it to him. Now he’s asked you to dinner. Fraina, I bet you all the gold in Ireland, will be there.”

“We don’t know that for—”

“We do,” McKenna said. “We can infer it. And if all the stars align and Fraina takes you up to the offices of Revolutionary Age ?”

“What? You want me to just say, ‘Hey, while we’re all chummy, mind giving me the mailing list of your entire organization?’ Something like that?”

“Steal it,” McKenna said.

“What?”

“If you get inside the offices, fucking steal it, lad.”

Danny stood, his balance still a little off, one of his ears still plugged up. “What is so all-important about these lists?”

“They’re a way to keep tabs.”

“Tabs.”

McKenna nodded.

“You’re so full of shit you could fill a barn.” Danny walked down the steps. “And I’m not going to be anywhere near the offices. We’re meeting in a restaurant.”

McKenna smiled. “All right, all right. Special Squads will give you some insurance, make sure these Bolshies don’t even think of looking at you funny for a couple of days. Will that make you happy?”

“What kind of insurance?”

“You know Hamilton from my squad, yes?”

Danny nodded. Jerry Hamilton. Jersey Jerry. A goon; all that separated him from a prison cell was a badge.

“I know Hamilton.”

“Good. Keep your eyes peeled tonight and be on the ready.”

“For what?”

“You’ll know it when it happens, believe you me.” McKenna stood and slapped at the white dust on his pants. It had been falling steadily since the explosion. “Now go and clean yourself up. You’ve got tracks of blood running down your neck. You’ve got this dust all over you, you do. Covering your hair, your face. Look like one of them Bushmen I’ve seen in the picture books.”

When Danny arrived at the restaurant, he found the door locked and the windows shuttered.

“It’s closed on Sundays.” Nathan Bishop stepped out of a darkened doorway into the weak yellow light cast by the nearest streetlamp. “My mistake.”

Danny looked up and down the empty street. “Where’s Comrade Fraina?”

“At the other place.”

“What other place?”

Nathan frowned. “The other place we’re going.”