Thomas shrugged. “It was Eddie mostly.”
Claude handed Thomas a small valise. Thomas opened it and looked at the two bricks of money inside, both wrapped tightly in paper and taped. He had a practiced eye when it came to such transactions, and he knew by the thickness that his and Eddie’s payments were even larger than promised. He raised an eyebrow at Claude.
“Another company joined us,” Claude said. “Profit participation rose accordingly.”
“Shall we walk, Thomas?” Patrick said. “’Tis diabolical heat.”
“A sound suggestion.”
They removed their jackets and strolled to the pier. At midday it was empty of fishermen, save for a few who seemed far more interested in the buckets of beer at their feet than any fish they could jerk over the rail.
They leaned against the rail and looked out at the Atlantic and Claude Mesplede rolled his own cigarette and lit it with a cupped match that he flicked into the ocean. “We’ve compiled that list of saloons that will be converting to rooming houses.”
Thomas Coughlin nodded. “There’s no weak link?”
“Not a one.”
“No criminal histories to worry about?”
“None at all.”
He nodded. He reached into his jacket and removed his cigar from the inside pocket. He snipped the end and put his match to it.
“And they all have basements?”
“As a matter of course.”
“I see no problem then.” He puffed slowly on the cigar.
“There’s an issue with the wharves.”
“Not in my districts.”
“The Canadian wharves.”
He looked at Donnegan, then at Mesplede.
“We’re working on it,” Donnegan said.
“Work faster.”
“Thomas.”
He turned to Mesplede. “Do you know what will happen if we don’t control point of entry and point of contact?”
“I do.”
“Do you?”
“I said I do.”
“The lunatic Irish and the lunatic dagos will organize. They won’t be mad dogs in the street anymore, Claude. They’ll be units. They’ll control the stevedores and the teamsters, which means they’ll control transport. They’ll be able to set terms.”
“That will never happen.”
Thomas considered the ash at the end of his cigar. He held it out to the wind and watched the wind eat the ash until the flame glowed underneath. He waited until it had turned from blue to red before he spoke again.
“If they take control of this, they’ll tip the balance. They’ll control us. At their leisure, gents, not ours. You’re our man with the friends in Canada, Claude.”
“And you’re our man in the BPD, Thomas, and I’m hearing talk of a strike.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“It is the subject.”
Thomas looked over at him and Claude flicked his ash into the sea and took another hungry puff. He shook his head at his own anger and turned his back to the sea. “Are you telling me there won’t be a strike? Can you guarantee that? Because from what I saw on May Day, you have a rogue police department out there. They engage in a gang fight, and you’re telling us you can control them?”
“I was after you all last year to get the mayor’s ear on this one, and what happened?”
“Don’t put this on my door, Tommy.”
“I’m not putting it on your door, Claude. I’m asking about the mayor.”
Claude looked over at Donnegan and said, “Ach,” and flipped his cigarette into the sea. “Peters is no mayor. You know that. He spends all his time shacked up with his fourteen-year-old concubine. Who is, I might add, his cousin. Meanwhile, his men, carpetbaggers all, could make Ulysses Grant’s gangster-cabinet blush. Now there might be some sympathy for your men’s plight, but they pissed that all away, didn’t they?”
“When?”
“In April. They were offered their two-hundred-a-year increase and they declined.”
“Jesus,” Thomas said, “cost of living has risen seventy-three percent. Seventy-three.”
“I know the number.”
“That two hundred a year was a prewar figure. The poverty level is fifteen hundred a year, and most coppers make far less than that. They’re the police, Claude, and they’re working for less wages than niggers and women.”
Claude nodded and placed a hand on Thomas’s shoulder, gave it a soft squeeze. “I can’t argue with you. But the thinking in City Hall and in the commissioner’s office is that the men can be put on the Pay No Heed list because they’re emergency personnel. They can’t affiliate with a union and they sure can’t strike.”
“But they can.”
“No, Thomas,” he said, his eyes clear and cold. “They can’t. Patrick’s been out in the wards, taking an informal poll, if you will. Patrick?”
Patrick spread his hands over the rail. “Tom, it’s like this — I’ve talked to our constituents, and if the police dare strike, this city will vent all its rage — at unemployment, the high cost of living, the war, the niggers coming from down South to take jobs, at the price of getting up in the damn morning — and send it straight at the city.”
“This city will riot,” Claude said. “Just like Montreal. And you know what happens when people are forced to see the mob that lives within them? They don’t like it. They want someone to pay. At the polls, Tom. Always at the polls.”
Thomas sighed and puffed his cigar. Out in the sea, a small yacht floated into his field of vision. He could make out three figures on the deck as thick dark clouds began to mass just to their south and march toward the sun.
Patrick Donnegan said, “Your boys strike? Big Business wins. They’ll use that strike as a cudgel to fuck organized labor, Irishmen, Democrats, fuck anyone who ever thought of a decent day’s pay for a decent day’s work in this country. You let them turn this into what they’ll turn it into? You’ll set the working class back thirty years.”
Thomas gave that a smile. “It’s not all on me, boys. Maybe if O’Meara, God rest him, was still with us, I’d have more say in the outcome, but with Curtis? That toad’ll blow this city down to its foundations to stick it to the wards and the men who run them.”
“Your son,” Claude said.
Thomas turned, the cigar between his teeth pointing at Claude’s nose. “What?”
“Your son is in league with the BSC. Quite an orator, we hear, like his father.”
Thomas removed his cigar. “We stay away from family, Claude. That’s a rule.”
“Maybe in fairer days,” Claude said. “But your son is in this, Tommy. Deep. And the way I hear it, he’s growing in popularity by the day and his rhetoric grows exponentially more inflammatory. If you could talk to him, maybe …” Claude shrugged.
“We don’t have that kind of relationship anymore. There’s been a rift.”
Claude took that information in, his small eyes tilting up in his head for a moment as he sucked softly on his lower lip. “You’ll have to repair it then. Someone has to talk these boys out of doing anything stupid. I’ll work on the mayor and his hoodlums. Patrick will work on the public sentiment. I’ll even see what I can do about a favorable article or two in the press. But, Thomas, you’ve got to work on your son.”
Thomas looked over at Patrick. Patrick nodded.
“We don’t want to take the gloves off, sure now, do we, Thomas?”
Thomas declined to respond to that. He placed his cigar back in his mouth, and the three of them leaned on the rail again and looked out at the ocean.
Patrick Donnegan looked out at the yacht as the clouds reached it and covered it in shadow. “I’ve been thinking about one of those for myself. Smaller, of course.”