“They’re killing us from the pulpits, too,” Francis Leonard shouted. “You should hear what they’re saying about us in morning mass.”
Danny held up a hand. “I’ve heard, I’ve heard. But we can still win the day. We just have to hold together, stay strong in our resolve. The governor and the mayor still fear a sympathy strike, and we still have the power of the AFL behind us. We can still win.”
Danny wasn’t sure how much of his own words he believed, but he felt a sudden glow of hope when he noticed Nora and Luther enter the back of the hall. Nora gave him a wave and a bright smile and he smiled back.
Then as they moved to their right, Ralph Raphelson stepped into the space they’d vacated. He removed his hat and his eyes met Danny’s.
He shook his head.
Danny felt as if he’d been hit in the spine with a pipe and stabbed in the stomach with an ice-cold knife.
Raphelson put his hat back on and turned to go, but Danny wasn’t letting him off the hook, not now, not tonight.
“Gentlemen, please give a warm hand to Ralph Raphelson of the Boston Central Labor Union!”
Raphelson turned with a grimace on his face as the men turned, saw him, and broke into applause.
“Ralph,” Danny called with a wave of his arm, “come on up here and tell the men what the BCLU has planned.”
Raphelson came down the aisle with a sick smile plastered to his face and a stiff gait. He climbed the steps to the stage and shook Danny’s hand and whispered, “I’ll get you for this, Coughlin.”
“Yeah?” Danny gripped his hand tight, squeezing the bones, and smiled big. “I fucking hope you choke to death.”
He dropped the hand and walked to the back of the stage as Raphelson took the podium and Mark sidled up to Danny.
“He selling us out?”
“He already sold us.”
“It gets worse,” Mark said.
Danny turned, saw that Mark’s eyes were damp, the pockets beneath them dark.
“Jesus, how could it get worse?”
“This is a telegram Samuel Gompers sent to Governor Coolidge this morning. Coolidge released it to the press. Just read the circled part.”
Danny’s eyes scanned the page until he found the sentence circled in penciclass="underline"
While it is our belief that the Boston Police were poorly served and their rights as workingmen denied by both yourself and Police Commissioner Curtis, it has always been the position of the American Federation of Labor to discourage all government employees from striking.
The men were booing Raphelson now, most on their feet. Several chairs toppled.
Danny dropped the copy of the telegram to the floor of the stage. “We’re done.”
“There’s still hope, Dan.”
“For what?” Danny looked at him. “The American Federation of Labor and the Central Labor Union both just sold us down the river on the same day. Fucking hope?”
“We could still get our jobs back.”
Several men rushed the stage and Ralph Raphelson took a half dozen steps backward.
“They’ll never give us our jobs back,” Danny said. “Never.”
The el ride back to the North End was bad. Luther had never seen Danny in so dark a mood. It covered him like a cloak. He sat beside Luther and offered hard eyes to the other passengers who gave him a funny look. Nora sat beside him and rubbed his hand nervously, as if to calm him, but it was really to calm herself, Luther knew.
Luther had known Danny long enough to know you’d have to be insane to take the guy on in a fair fight. He was too big, too fearless, too impervious to pain. So he’d never be dumb enough to question Danny’s strength, but he’d never been close enough before to feel this capacity for violence that lived in the man like a second, deeper soul.
The other men on the car stopped giving them funny looks. Stopped giving them any looks at all. Danny just sat there, staring out at the rest of the car, never seeming to blink, those eyes of his gone dark, just waiting for an excuse to let the rest of him erupt.
They got off in the North End and walked up Hanover toward Prince Street. Night had come on while they rode the el, but the streets were near empty due to the State Guard presence. About halfway along Hanover, as they passed St. Leonard’s Church, someone called Danny’s name. It was a hoarse, weak voice. They turned and Nora let out a small yelp as a man stepped out of the shadows of St. Leonard’s with a hole in his coat that expelled smoke.
“Jesus, Steve,” Danny said and caught the man as he fell into his arms. “Nora, honey, can you find a guardsman, tell him a cop’s been shot?”
“I’m not a cop,” Steve said.
“You’re a cop, you’re a cop.”
He lowered Steve to the ground as Nora went running up the street.
“Steve, Steve.”
Steve opened his eyes as the smoke continued to flow from the hole in his chest. “All this time asking around? And I just ran into her. Turned into the alley between Stillman and Cooper? Just looked up and there she was. Tessa. Pop.”
His eyelids fluttered. Danny pulled up his shirt and tore off a length of it, wadded it up and pressed it to the hole.
Steve opened his eyes. “She’s gotta be … moving now, Dan. Right now.”
A guardsman’s whistle blew and Danny saw Nora running back down the street toward them. He turned to Luther. “Put your hand on this. Press hard.”
Luther followed his instructions, pressed the heel of his palm against the wadded-up shirt, watched it redden.
Danny stood.
“Wait! Where you going?”
“Get the person who did this. You tell the guardsmen it was a woman named Tessa Ficara. You got that name?”
“Yeah, yeah. Tessa Ficara.”
Danny ran up Prince Street.
He caught her coming down the fire escape. He was in the rear doorway of a haberdashery on the other side of the alley and she came out of a window on the third floor onto the fire escape and walked down to the landing below. She lifted the ladder until its hooks disengaged from the housing and then latched onto the iron again as she lowered it to the pavement. When she turned her body to begin the climb down, he drew his revolver and crossed the alley. When she reached the last rung and stepped to the pavement, he placed the gun to the side of her neck.
“Keep your hands on the ladder and do not turn around.”
“Officer Danny,” she said. She started to turn and he slapped the side of her face with his free hand.
“What did I say? Hands on the ladder and don’t turn around.”
“As you wish.”
He ran his hands through the pockets of her coat and then the folds of her clothing.
“You like that?” she said. “You like feeling me?”
“You want to get hit again?” he said.
“If you must hit,” she said, “hit harder.”
His hand bumped a hard bulge by her groin and he felt her body stiffen.
“I’ll assume you didn’t grow a dick, Tessa.”
He reached down her leg, then ran his hands up under her dress and chemise. He pulled the Derringer from the waistband of her underwear and pocketed it.
“Satisfied?” she said.
“Not by a fair sight.”
“What about your dick, Danny?” she said, the word coming out “deke,” as if she were trying it out for the first time. Although, from experience, he knew she wasn’t.
“Raise your right leg,” he said.
She complied. “Is it hard?”
She wore a gunmetal-lace boot with a Cuban heel and black velveteen top. He ran his hand up and around it.