Dennis Lehane - The Given Day

A photo clipping reprinted in the January 22 issue of the Tulsa Sun described the great molasses flood under the headline “Boston Slum Disaster.”

There was nothing special about the article — just one more on the North End disaster that the rest of the country seemed humored by. The only thing that made this clipping special was that every time the word Boston was used — a total of nine times — it had been circled in red.

Rayme Finch was carrying a box to his car when he found Thomas Coughlin waiting for him. The car was government issue and was, as befit a government department that was underfunded and undervalued, a heap of shit. He’d left the engine idling, not only because the ignition often refused to engage but also because he secretly hoped someone would steal it. If that wish were granted this morning, however, he’d regret it — the car, shit heap or no, was his only transport back to Washington.

No one would be stealing it for the moment, though, not with a police captain leaning against the hood. Finch acknowledged Captain Coughlin with a flick of his head as he placed the box of office supplies in the trunk.

“Shoving off, are we?”

Finch closed the trunk. “’Fraid so.”

“A shame,” Thomas Coughlin said.

Finch shrugged. “Boston radicals turned out to be a bit more docile than we’d heard.”

“Except for the one my son killed.”

“Federico, yes. He was a believer. And you?”

“Sorry?”

“How’s your investigation going? We never did hear much from the BPD.”

“There wasn’t much to tell. They’re hard nuts to crack, these groups.”

Finch nodded. “You told me a few months ago they’d be easy.”

“History’s ledger will judge me overconfident on that entry, I admit.”

“Not one of your men has gathered any evidence?”

“None substantial.”

“Hard to believe.”

“I can’t see why. It’s no secret we’re a police department caught in a regime change. Had O’Meara, God rest him, not perished, why, you and I, Rayme? We’d be having this lovely conversation while watching a ship depart for Italy with Galleani himself shackled in her bowels.”

Finch smiled in spite of himself. “I’d heard you were the slipperiest sheriff in this slippery one-horse town. Seems my sources weren’t embellishing.”

Thomas Coughlin cocked his head, his face narrowed in confusion. “I think you have been misinformed, Agent Finch. Sure, we’ve more than one horse in this town. Dozens actually.” He tipped his hat. “Safe travels.”

Finch stood by the car and watched the captain walk back up the street. He decided he was one of those men whose greatest gift lay in the inability of others to ever guess what he was truly thinking. That made him a dangerous man, to be sure, but valuable, too, pricelessly so.

We’ll meet again, Captain. Finch entered the building and climbed the stairs toward his last box in an otherwise empty office. No doubt in my mind, we will definitely meet again.

Danny, Mark Denton, and Kevin McRae were called into the police commissioner’s office in the middle of April. They were led into the office, which was empty, by Stuart Nichols, the commissioner’s secretary, who promptly left them alone.

They sat in stiff chairs in front of Commissioner Curtis’s vast desk and waited. It was nine o’clock at night. A raw night of occasional hail.

After ten minutes, they left their chairs. McRae walked over to a window. Mark stretched with a soft yawn. Danny paced from one end of the office to the other.

By nine-twenty, Danny and Mark stood at the window while Kevin paced. Every now and then the three of them exchanged a look of suppressed exasperation, but no one said anything.

At nine-twenty-five, they took their seats again. As they did, the door to their left opened and Edwin Upton Curtis entered, followed by Herbert Parker, his chief counsel. As the commissioner took up a post behind his desk, Herbert Parker briskly passed in front of the three officers and placed a sheet of paper on each of their laps.

Danny looked down at it.

“Sign it,” Curtis said.

“What is it?” Kevin McRae said.

“That should be evident,” Herbert Parker said and came around the desk behind Curtis and folded his arms across his chest.

“It’s your raise,” Curtis said and took his seat. “As you wished.”

Danny scanned the page. “Two hundred a year?”

Curtis nodded. “As to your other wishes, we’ll take them into consideration, but I wouldn’t hold out hope. Most were for luxuries, not necessities.”

Mark Denton seemed stricken of the power of speech for a moment. He raised the paper up by his ear, then slowly lowered it back to his knee. “It’s not enough anymore.”

“Excuse me, Patrolman?”

“It’s not enough,” Mark said. “You know that. Two hundred a year was a 1913 figure.”

“It’s what you asked for,” Parker said.

Danny shook his head. “It’s what the BSC coppers in the 1916 negotiations asked for. Cost of living has gone up—”

“Oh cost of living, my eye!” Curtis said.

“—seventy-three percent,” Danny said. “In seven months, sir. So two hundred a year? Without health benefits? Without sanitary conditions changing at the station houses?”

“As you well know, I’ve created committees to look into those issues. Now—”

“Those committees,” Danny said, “are made up of precinct captains, sir.”

“So?”

“So they have a vested interest in not finding anything wrong with the station houses they command.”

“Are you questioning the honor of your superiors?”

“No.”

“Are you questioning the honor of this department’s chain of command?”

Mark Denton spoke before Danny could. “This offer is not going to do, sir.”

“It very well will do,” Curtis said.

“No,” Mark Denton said. “I think we need to look into—”

“Tonight,” Herbert Parker said, “is the only night this offer will be on the table. If you don’t take it, you’ll be back out in the cold where you’ll find the doors locked and the knobs removed.”

“We can’t agree to this.” Danny flapped the page in the air. “It’s far too little and far too late.”

Curtis shook his head. “I say it’s not. Mr. Parker says it’s not. So it’s not.”

“Because you say ?” Kevin McRae said.

“Precisely,” Herbert Parker said.

Curtis ran his palms over his desktop. “We’ll kill you in the press.”

Parker nodded. “We gave you what you asked for and you turned it down.”

“That’s not how it is,” Danny said.

“But that’s how it’ll play, son.”

Now it was Danny, Kevin, and Mark’s turn to trade glances.

Eventually, Mark turned back to Commissioner Curtis. “No fucking deal.”

Curtis leaned back in his chair. “Good evening, gentlemen.”

Luther came down the Coughlins’ steps on his way to the streetcar when he noticed Eddie McKenna about ten yards up the sidewalk, leaning against the hood of his Hudson.

“And how’s that fine building restoration going? Coming along, she is?” McKenna came off the car and walked toward him.

Luther forced a smile. “Coming along right well, Lieutenant, sir. Right well.”

That was, in fact, the truth. He and Clayton had been on a tear lately. Aided on several occasions by men in NAACP chapters all over New England, men Mrs. Giddreaux found a way to get up or down to Boston on weekends and occasional weeknights, they finished the demo weeks ago, ran the electrical through the open walls and throughout the house, and were working on the water pipes that branched off the kitchen and the bathrooms to the main water pipe, a clay beauty they’d run from the basement to the roof a month back.