Dennis Lehane - The Given Day

“I never got his name. Never even spoke with him.”

“Yes, he seems quite the ghost.”

Danny said, “I tried to. The police attacked immediately. They hit me, they hit him, they hit me some more. Then they threw us both in the back of the car and drove us to the station house.”

“Which one?”

“Roxbury Crossing.”

“And you exchanged no pleasantries with my assailant on the ride there?”

“I tried. He didn’t respond. Then the copper told me to shut my hole.”

“He said that? Shut your hole ?”

Danny nodded. “Threatened to run his nightstick through it.”

Fraina’s eyes sparkled. “Vivid.”

The floor was caked with old flour. The room smelled of yeast and sweat and sugar and mold. Large brown tins, some the height of a man, stood against the walls, and bags of flour and grain were stacked between them. A bare lightbulb dangled from a chain in the center of the room and left pools of shadow where rodents squeaked. The ovens had probably been shut off since noon, but the room was thick with heat.

Fraina said, “A matter of feet, wouldn’t you say?”

Danny put a hand in his pocket and found the button among some coins. He pressed it to his palm and leaned forward. “Comrade?”

“The would-be assassin.” He waved at the air around him. “This man no one can find a record of. This man who went unseen, even by a comrade I know who was in the holding cell at Roxbury Crossing that night. A veteran of the first czarist revolution, this man, a true Lett like our comrade, Pyotr.”

The big Estonian leaned against the large cooler door, his arms crossed, and gave no indication he’d heard his name.

“He didn’t see you there, either,” Fraina said.

“They never put me in the holding pen,” Danny said. “They had their fun and shipped me in a paddy wagon to Charlestown. I told Comrade Bishop as much.”

Fraina smiled. “Well, it’s settled, then. Everything is fine.” He clapped his hands. “Eh, Pyotr? What did I tell you?”

Glaviach kept his eyes on the shelving behind Danny’s head. “Everything fine.”

“Everything is fine,” Fraina said.

Danny sat there, the heat of the place finding his feet, the underside of his scalp.

Fraina leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Except, well, this man was only seven or eight feet away when he fired. How do you miss at that range?”

Danny said, “Nerves?”

Fraina stroked his beard and nodded. “That’s what I thought at first. But then I began to wonder. There were three of us clustered together. Four, if we count you bringing up the rear. And beyond us? A big, heavy touring car. So, I put it to you, Comrade Sante, where did the bullets go?”

“The sidewalk, I’d guess.”

Fraina clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. We checked there. We checked everywhere within a two-block radius. This was easy to do, because the police never checked. They never looked. A gun fired within city limits. Two shots discharged? And the police treated it as if it were no more than a hurled insult.”

“Hmm,” Danny said. “That is—”

“Are you federal?”

“Comrade?”

Fraina removed his glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief. “Justice Department? Immigration? Bureau of Investigation?”

“I don’t—”

He stood and placed his glasses back on. He looked down at Danny. “Or local, perhaps? Part of this undercover dragnet we hear is sweeping the city? I understand the anarchists in Revere have a new member who claims to be from the north of Italy but speaks with the accent and cadence of one from the south.” He strolled around to the back of Danny’s chair. “And you, Daniel? Which are you?”

“I’m Daniel Sante, a machinist from Harlansburg, Pennsylvania. I’m no bull, Comrade. I’m no government slug. I am exactly who I say I am.”

Fraina crouched behind him. He leaned in and whispered in Danny’s ear, “What other response would you give?”

“None.” Danny tilted his head until he could see Fraina’s lean profile. “Because it’s the truth.”

Fraina placed his hands on the back of the chair. “A man tries to assassinate me and just happens to be a terrible shot. You come to my rescue because you just happen to be exiting at the same time as I. The police just happen to arrive within seconds of the gunshot. Everyone in the restaurant is detained and yet none are questioned. The assassin vanishes from police custody. You are released without charge and, in the height of providence, just happen to be a writer of some talent.” He strolled around to the front of the chair again and tapped his temple. “You see how fortunate all these events are?”

“Then they’re fortunate.”

“I don’t believe in luck, Comrade. I believe in logic. And this story of yours has none.” He crouched in front of Danny. “Go now. Tell your bourgeois bosses that the Lettish Workingman’s Society is above reproach and violates no law. Tell them not to send a second rube to prove otherwise.”

Danny heard footsteps enter the storeroom behind him. More than a pair. Maybe three pair, all told.

“I am exactly who I say,” Danny said. “I am dedicated to the cause and to the revolution. I’m not leaving. I refuse to deny who I am for any man.”

Fraina raised himself from his haunches. “Go.”

“No, Comrade.”

Pyotr Glaviach used one elbow to push himself away from the cooler door. His other arm was behind his back.

“One last time,” Fraina said. “Go.”

“I can’t, Comrade. I—”

Four pistols cocked their hammers. Three came from behind him, the fourth from Pyotr Glaviach.

“Stand!” Glaviach shouted, the echo pinging off the tight stone walls.

Danny stood.

Pyotr Glaviach stepped up behind him. His shadow spilled onto the floor in front of Danny, and that shadow extended one arm.

Fraina gave Danny a mournful smile. “This is the only option left for you and it could expire at a moment’s notice.” He swept his arm toward the door.

“You’re wrong.”

“No,” Fraina said. “I am not. Good night.”

Danny didn’t reply. He walked past him. The four men in the rear of the room cast their shadows on the wall in front of him. He opened the door with a fiery itch at the base of his skull and exited the bakery into the night.

The last thing Danny did in the Daniel Sante rooming house was shave off his beard in the second-floor bathroom. He used shears to cut away the majority of it, placing the thick tufts in a paper bag, and then soaked it with hot water and applied the shaving cream in a thick lather. With each stroke of the straight razor, he felt leaner, lighter. When he wiped off the last stray spot of cream and the final errant hair, he smiled.

Danny and Mark Denton met with Commissioner O’Meara and Mayor Andrew Peters in the mayor’s office on a Saturday afternoon.

The mayor struck Danny as a misplaced man, as if he didn’t fit in his office, his big desk, his stiff, high-collared shirt and tweed suit. He played with the phone on his desk a lot and aligned and realigned his desk blotter.

He smiled at them once they’d taken their seats. “The BPD’s finest, I suspect, eh, gents?”

Danny smiled back.

Stephen O’Meara stood behind the desk. Before he’d said a word, he commanded the room. “Mayor Peters and I have looked into the budget for this coming year and we see places we could move a dollar here, a dollar there. It won’t, I assure you, be enough. But it’s a start, gentlemen, and it’s a little more than that — it’s a public acknowledgment that we take your grievances seriously. Isn’t that right, Mr. Mayor?”

Peters looked up from his pencil holder. “Oh, absolutely, yes.”