Dennis Lehane - The Given Day

“You’re the spitting image of my Uncle Paudric. Have I ever told you that?”

Danny shook his head.

“Biggest man in Clonakilty,” his father said. “Oh, he could drink something fierce and he’d get a sight unreasonable when he did. A publican once refused him service? Why, Paudric tore out the bar between them. Heavy oak, Aiden, this bar. And he just tore a piece of it out and went and poured himself another pint. A legendary man, really. Oh, and the ladies loved him. Much like you in that regard. Everyone loved Paudric when he was sober. And you? Everyone loves you, don’t they, son? Women, children, mangy Italians and mangy dogs. Nora.”

Danny put his drink on the desk. “What did you say?”

His father turned from the window. “I’m not blind, boy. You two may have told yourselves one thing, and she may very well love Con’ in a different way. And maybe it’s the better way.” His father shrugged. “But you—”

“You’re on thin fucking ice, sir.”

His father looked at him, his mouth half-open.

“Just so you know,” Danny said and could hear the tightness in his own voice.

Eventually his father nodded. It was the sage nod, that one that let you know he was acknowledging one aspect of your character while pondering flaws in another. He took Danny’s glass. He carried it to the decanter with his own and refilled them.

He handed Danny his glass. “Do you know why I allowed you to box?”

Danny said, “Because you couldn’t have stopped me.”

His father clinked his glass with his own. “Exactly. I’ve known since you were a boy that you could occasionally be prodded or smoothed, but you could never be molded. It’s anathema to you. Has been since you could walk. Do you know I love you, boy?”

Danny met his father’s eyes and nodded. He did. He always had. Strip away all the many faces and many hearts his father showed the world when it suited him, and that face and that heart were always evident.

“I love Con’, of course,” his father said. “I love all my children. But I love you differently because I love you in defeat.”

“Defeat?”

His father nodded. “I can’t rely on you, Aiden. I can’t shape you. This thing with O’Meara is a perfect example. This time it worked out. But it was imprudent. It could have cost you your career. And it’s a move I never would have made or allowed you to make. And that’s the difference with you, of all my children — I can’t predict your fate.”

“But Con’s?”

His father said, “Con’ will be district attorney someday. Without a doubt. Mayor, definitely. Governor, possibly. I’d hoped you’d be chief of police, but it’s not in you.”

“No,” Danny agreed.

“And the thought of you as mayor is one of the more comical ideas I’ve ever imagined.”

Danny smiled.

“So,” Thomas Coughlin said, “your future is something you’re hell-bent on writing with your own pen. Fine. I accept defeat.” He smiled to let Danny know he was only half serious. “But your brother’s future is something I tend to like a garden.” He hoisted himself up on the desk. His eyes were bright and liquid, a sure sign that doom was on the way. “Did Nora ever talk much about Ireland, about what led her here?”

“To me?”

“To you, yes.”

He knows something.

“No, sir.”

“Never mentioned anything about her past life?”

Maybe all of it.

Danny shook his head. “Not to me.”

“Funny,” his father said.

“Funny?”

His father shrugged. “Apparently you two had a less intimate relationship than I’d imagined.”

“Thin ice, sir. Very thin.”

His father gave that an airy smile. “Normally people talk about their pasts. Particularly with close … friends. And yet Nora never does. Have you noticed?”

Danny tried to formulate a reply but the phone in the hall rang. Shrill and loud. His father looked at the clock on the mantel. Almost ten o’clock.

“Calling this home after nine o’clock?” his father said. “Who just signed his own death warrant? Sweet Jesus.”

“Dad?” Danny heard Nora pick up the phone in the hall. “Why do you—?”

Nora knocked softly on the door and Thomas Coughlin said, “It’s open.”

Nora pushed open the doors. “It’s Eddie McKenna, sir. He says it’s urgent.”

Thomas scowled and pushed himself off the desk and walked out into the hall.

Danny, his back to Nora, said, “Wait.”

He came out of the chair and met her in the doorway as they heard his father pick up the phone in the alcove off the kitchen at the other end of the hall and say, “Eddie?”

“What?” Nora said. “Jesus, Danny, I’m tired.”

“He knows,” Danny said.

“What? Who?”

“My father. He knows.”

“What? What does he know? Danny?”

“About you and Quentin Finn, I think. Maybe not all of it, but something. Eddie asked me last month if I knew any Finns. I just chalked it up to coincidence. It’s a common enough name. But the old man, he just—”

He never saw the slap coming. He was in too close and when it connected with his jaw, he actually felt his feet move beneath him. All five foot five of her, and she nearly knocked him to the floor.

“You told him.” She practically spit the words into his face.

She started to turn and he grabbed her wrist. “Are you fucking crazy?” It came out a harsh whisper. “Do you think I would ever— ever, Nora — sell you down the river? Ever? Don’t look away. Look at me . Ever?”

She stared back into his eyes and hers were those of a hunted animal, darting around the room, searching for safety. One more night alive.

“Danny,” she whispered. “Danny.”

“I can’t have you believe that,” he said, and his voice cracked. “Nora, I can’t.”

“I don’t,” she said. She pressed her face to his chest for a moment. “I don’t, I don’t.” She pulled back and looked up at him. “What do I do, Danny? What?”

“I don’t know.” He heard his father replace the receiver in the cradle.

“He knows?”

“He knows something, ” Danny said.

His father’s footfalls came down the hall toward them and Nora broke away from him. She gave him one last wild, lost look and then turned into the hall.

“Sir.”

“Nora,” her father said.

“Will you need anything, sir? Tea?”

“No, dear.” His father’s voice sounded shaky as he turned into the room. His face was ashen and his lips trembled. “Good night, dear.”

“Good night, sir.”

Thomas Coughlin closed the pocket doors behind him. He walked to the desk in three long strides and drained his drink and immediately poured himself another. He mumbled something to himself.

“What?” Danny said.

His father turned, as if surprised to find him there. “Cerebral hemorrhage. Went off in his head like a bomb.”

“Sir?”

He held out his glass, his eyes wide. “Struck him to the floor of his parlor and he was off to see the angels before his wife could even get to the phone. Jesus H.”

“Sir, you’re not making sense. Who are you—?”

“He’s dead. Commissioner Stephen O’Meara is dead, Aiden.”

Danny put his hand on the back of a chair.

His father stared out at the walls of his study as if they held answers. “God help this department now.”

Stephen O’Meara was laid to rest at Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline on a white, windless morning. When Danny searched the sky he found neither birds nor sun. Frozen snow covered the ground and the treetops in a marble white cast that matched the sky and the breath of the mourners gathered around the grave. In the sharp air, the echo of Honor Guard’s twenty-one-gun salute sounded less like an echo and more like a second volley of gunfire from another, lesser burial on the other side of the frozen trees.