Dennis Lehane - The Given Day

Just like that, Danny thought. Just like that.

Leaving the Oktober, he found himself behind Louis Fraina and Pyotr Glaviach as Nathan Bishop trotted across the sidewalk to open the back of the Olds Model M. Fraina stumbled and a gunshot report echoed in the empty street. Pyotr Glaviach knocked Fraina to the ground and covered his body. The smaller man’s glasses fell off the curb and into the gutter. The gunman stepped out of the building next door, one arm extended, and Danny took the lid off a trash can and knocked the pistol out of his hand and the gun went off again and Danny hit him in the forehead. Sirens rang out. They were drawing closer. Danny hit the gunman another time with the metal lid and the man fell on his ass.

He turned back as Glaviach shoved Fraina into the backseat of the Model M and stood on the running board. Nathan Bishop hopped up front. Bishop waved his arm frantically at Danny. “Come on!”

The shooter grabbed Danny by his ankles and pulled his legs out from under him. Danny hit the sidewalk so hard he bounced.

A police cruiser turned onto Columbus.

“Go!” Danny called.

The Model M squealed as it pulled away from the curb.

“Find out if he a White!” Glaviach shouted from the running board as the cruiser drove over the curb in front of the restaurant and the Model M took a sharp left out of sight.

The first two coppers on the scene ran into the restaurant. They pushed back the barmaid and two men who’d ventured out. They shut the door behind them. The next cruiser arrived on their heels and banged to a stop halfway up the curb. McKenna climbed out, already chuckling at the absurdity of it all, as Jersey Jerry Hamilton let go of Danny’s ankles. They got to their feet. The two patrolmen with McKenna came over and manhandled them over to the cruiser.

“Realistic enough, you think?” McKenna said.

Hamilton rubbed his forehead several times and then he punched Danny’s arm. “I’m bleeding, you fuck.”

Danny said, “I kept away from the face.”

“Kept away from the …?” Hamilton spit blood onto the street. “I should ram your—”

Danny stepped in close. “I could hospitalize you right fucking here, right now. You want that, mug?”

“Hey, why’s he think he can talk to me like this?”

“Because he can.” McKenna clapped their shoulders. “Assume the positions, gents.”

“No, I’m serious,” Danny said. “You want to two-step with me?”

Hamilton looked away. “I was just saying.”

“You were just saying,” Danny said.

“Gents,” McKenna said.

Danny and Jersey Jerry placed their palms on the hood of the cruiser and McKenna made a show of frisking them.

“This is bullshit,” Danny whispered. “They’ll see through it.”

“Nonsense,” McKenna said. “Ye of little faith.”

McKenna placed loose cuffs on their hands and pushed them into the back of the cruiser. He got behind the wheel and drove them all back down Harrison.

In the car, Hamilton said, “You know? If I ever see you off the job—”

“You’ll what?” Danny said. “Cry yourself stupider?”

McKenna drove Danny back to his cover apartment in Roxbury and pulled to the curb a half block up from the building.

“How you feeling?”

Truth was, Danny felt like weeping. Not for any particular reason, just a general and all-consuming exhaustion. He rubbed his hands over his face.

“I’m okay.”

“You shot the bejesus out of an Eye-tie terrorist under extraordinary duress just four hours ago, then went right into an undercover meeting with another possible terrorist and—”

“Fucking Eddie, they’re not—”

“What’d you say?”

“—fucking terrorists. They’re Communists. And they’d love to see us fail, yes, see this whole government collapse and cascade into the ocean. I grant you that. But they’re not bomb throwers.”

“You’re naïve, lad.”

“So be it.” Danny reached for the door handle.

“Dan.” McKenna put a hand on his shoulder.

Danny waited.

“Too much has been asked of you this last couple of months. I agree, as God is my judge. But it won’t be much longer ’til you’ll have your gold shield. And all, all will be perfectly brilliant then.”

Danny nodded so Eddie would let go of his shoulder. Eddie dropped his hand.

“No, it won’t,” Danny said and got out of the car.

The next afternoon, in the confessional of a church he’d never entered before, Danny knelt and blessed himself.

The priest said, “You smell like liquor.”

“That’s because I’ve been drinking, Father. I’d share, but I left the bottle back at my apartment.”

“Have you come to confess, son?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not know? You either sinned or you didn’t.”

“I shot a man to death yesterday. Outside a church. I figure you’ve heard about it by now.”

“I have, yes. The man was an anarchist. You …?”

“Yes. I shot him three times. Tried five times,” Danny said, “but I missed twice. Thing is, Father? You’ll tell me I did right. Yeah?”

“That’s for God to—”

“He was going to blow up a church. One of yours.”

“Correct. You did right.”

“But he’s dead. I removed him from this earth. And I can’t shake the feeling …”

A long silence followed, made all the longer by the fact that it was church silence; it smelled of incense and oil soap and was hemmed in by thick velvet and dark wood.

“What feeling?”

“The feeling that we — me and the guy I shot? — we’re just living in the same barrel? See?”

“No. You’re being obtuse.”

“Forgive me,” Danny said. “There’s this big barrel of shit. See? And it’s—”

“Watch your language.”

“—where the ruling class and all the Haves don’t live, right? It’s where they fucking throw every consequence they don’t want to think about. And the idea—”

“You are in a house of God.”

“—the idea is, Father? The idea is that we’re supposed to play nice and go away when they’re done with us. Accept what they give us and drink it and eat it and clap for it and say, ‘Mmmm, more, please. Thanks .’ And, Father, I gotta tell you, I’ve about had my fucking fill.”

“Leave this church at once.”

“Sure. You coming?”

“I think you need to sober up.”

“And I think you need to leave this mausoleum you’re hiding in and see how your parishioners really live. Done that lately, Father?”

“I—”

“Ever?”

Please,” Louis Fraina said, “take a seat.”

It was just past midnight. Three days since the manufactured assassination attempt. At around eleven, Pyotr Glaviach had called Danny and given him the address of a bakery in Mattapan. When Danny arrived, Pyotr Glaviach stepped from the Olds Model M and waved Danny into an alley that ran between the bakery and a tailor. Danny followed him around to the back and into the storeroom. Louis Fraina waited in a hard-backed wooden chair with its twin directly across from him.

Danny took that seat, close enough to the small, dark-eyed man to reach out and stroke the whiskers of his neatly trimmed beard. Fraina’s eyes never left Danny’s face. They were not the blazing eyes of a fanatic. They were the eyes of an animal so used to being hunted that some boredom had settled in. He crossed his legs at the ankles and leaned back in his chair. “Tell me what happened after we left.”

Danny jerked a thumb behind him. “I’ve told Nathan and Comrade Glaviach.”

Fraina nodded. “Tell me.”

“Where is Nathan, by the way?”

Fraina said, “Tell me what happened. Who was this man who tried to kill me?”