Dennis Lehane - The Given Day

On April 29, in the Baltimore distribution annex of the U.S. Post Office, a postal inspector noticed fluid leaking from a brown cardboard package addressed to Judge Wilfred Enniston of the Fifth District U.S. Appellate Court. When closer inspection of the package revealed that the fluid had burned a hole in the corner of the box, the inspector notified Baltimore police, who dispatched their bomb squad and contacted the Justice Department.

By the end of the evening, authorities discovered thirty-four bombs. They were in packages addressed to Attorney General Mitchell Palmer, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, John Rockefeller, and thirty-one others. All thirty-four targets worked in either industry or in government agencies whose policies affected immigration standards.

On the same evening in Boston, Louis Fraina and the Lettish Workingman’s Society applied for a parade permit to march from the Dudley Square Opera House to Franklin Park in recognition of May Day.

The application for a permit was denied.

May Day, Luther had breakfast at Solomon’s Diner before he went to work at the Coughlins’. He left at five-thirty and got as far as Columbus Square before Lieutenant McKenna’s black Hudson detached itself from a curb across the street and did a slow U-turn in front of him. He didn’t feel surprised. He didn’t feel alarmed. He didn’t feel much of anything really.

Luther had read the Standard at the Solomon’s counter, his eyes immediately drawn to the headline — “Reds Plot May Day Assassinations.” He ate his eggs and read about the thirty-four bombs discovered in the U.S. mail. The list of targets was posted in full on the second page of the paper, and Luther, no fan of white judges or white bureaucrats, still felt ice chips flow through his blood. This was followed by a jolt of patriotic fury, the likes of which he’d never suspected could live in his soul for a country that had never treated his people with any welcome or justice. And yet he pictured these Reds, most of them aliens with accents as thick as their mustaches, willing to do violence and wreckage to his country, and he wanted to join any mob that was going to smash them through the teeth, wanted to say to someone, anyone: Just give me a rifle.

According to the paper, the Reds were planning a day of national revolt, and the thirty-four bombs that had been intercepted suggested a hundred more that could be out there primed to explode. In the past week, leaflets had been pasted to lamp poles across the city, all of which bore the same words:

Go ahead. Deport us. You senile fossils ruling the United States will see red! The storm is within and very soon will leap and crash and annihilate you in blood and fire. We will dynamite you!

In yesterday’s Traveler, even before news of the thirty-four bombs leaked out, an article had listed some of the recent, inflammatory comments of American subversives, including Jack Reed’s call for “the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism through a proletarian dictatorship” and Emma Goldman’s anticonscription speech last year, in which she’d urged all workers to “Follow Russia’s lead.”

Follow Russia’s lead? Luther thought: You love Russia so much, fucking move there. And take your bombs and your onion-soup breath with you. For a few, strangely joyous hours, Luther didn’t feel like a colored man, didn’t even feel there was such a thing as color, only one thing above all others: He was an American.

That changed, of course, as soon as he saw McKenna. The large man stepped out of his Hudson and smiled. He held up a copy of the Standard and said, “You seen it?”

“I seen it,” Luther said.

“We’re about to have a very serious day ahead of us, Luther.” He slapped the newspaper off Luther’s chest a couple of times. “Where’s my mailing list?”

“My people ain’t Reds,” Luther said.

“Oh, they’re your people now, uh?”

Shit, Luther wanted to say, they always were.

“You build my vault?” McKenna said, almost singing the words.

“Working on it.”

McKenna nodded. “You wouldn’t be lying now?”

Luther shook his head.

“Where’s my fucking list?”

“It’s in a safe.”

McKenna said, “All I asked of you is that you get me one simple list. Why has that been so difficult?”

Luther shrugged. “I don’t know how to bust a safe.”

McKenna nodded, as if that were perfectly reasonable. “You’ll bring it to me after your shift at the Coughlins’. Outside Costello’s. It’s on the waterfront. Six o’clock.”

Luther said, “I don’t know how I’m going to do that. I can’t bust a safe .”

In reality, there was no safe. Mrs. Giddreaux kept the mailing list in her desk drawer. Unlocked.

McKenna tapped the paper lightly off his thigh, as if giving it some thought. “You need to be inspired, I see. That’s okay, Luther. All creative men need a muse.”

Luther had no idea what he was on about now, but he didn’t like his tone — airy, confident.

McKenna draped his arm across Luther’s shoulder. “Congratulations.”

“On?”

That lit a happy fire in McKenna’s face. “Your nuptials. I understand you were married last fall in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to a woman named Lila Waters, late of Columbus, Ohio. A grand institution, marriage.”

Luther said nothing, though he was sure the hate showed in his eyes. First the Deacon, now Lieutenant Eddie McKenna of the BPD — it seemed no matter where he went the Lord saw fit to place demons in his path.

“Funny thing is, when I started sniffing around back in Columbus, I found that your bride has a warrant out for her arrest.”

Luther laughed.

“You find that funny?”

Luther smiled. “If you knew my wife, McKenna, you’d be laughing, too.”

“I’m sure I would, Luther.” McKenna nodded several times. “Problem is, this warrant is very real. Seems your wife and a boy by the name of Jefferson Reese — that ring a bell? — seems they were stealing from their employers, family by the name of Hammond? Apparently, they’d been doing it for years by the time your beloved took off to Tulsa. But Mr. Reese, he got himself arrested with some silver frames and some petty cash, and he pinned the whole thing on your wife. Apparently he was under the impression that a partner in his enterprise made the difference between hard time and soft time. They slapped the hard charge on him anyway, and he’s in prison now, but the charge is still pending against your wife. Pregnant wife, the way I hear it. So she’s sitting there on, let me see if I remember, Seventeen Elwood Street in Tulsa, and I doubt she’s moving around all that much, what with the loaf in her oven.” McKenna smiled and patted Luther’s face. “Ever see the kind of midwives they hire in a county lockup?”

Luther didn’t trust himself to speak.

McKenna slapped him in the face, still smiling. “They’re not the gentlest of souls, I can tell you that. They merely show the mother the baby’s face and then they take that child — if it’s a Negro child, that is — and they whisk it straightaway to the county orphanage. That wouldn’t be the case, of course, if the father was around, but you’re not around, are you? You’re here.”

Luther said, “Tell me what you want me—”

“I fucking told you, Luther. I fucking told you and told you.” He squeezed the flesh along Luther’s jaw and pulled his face close. “You get that list and you bring it to Costello’s tonight at six. No fucking excuses. Understood?”

Luther closed his eyes and nodded. McKenna let go of his face and stepped back.