Inside the church, the hymn ended.
The driver cocked his head and turned his face toward the street.
Federico. No gray in his hair anymore, and he’d shaved his mustache, his features somehow leaner because of the changes, hungrier.
He saw Danny but his eyes didn’t display recognition, just a vague curiosity at this large Bolshevik with the beastly beard crossing a street in the North End.
The doors to the church opened.
The lead siren sounded like it was a block away. A boy came out of a shop four doors down, a tweed scally cap on his head, something under his arm.
Danny reached into his coat. Federico’s eyes locked on Danny’s.
Danny pulled his gun from his coat as Federico reached for something on the car seat.
The first parishioners reached the church steps.
Danny waved his gun. He shouted, “Get back inside!”
No one seemed to realize he was talking to them. Danny stepped to his left, swung his arm, and fired a round into Federico’s windshield.
On the church steps, several people screamed.
Danny fired a second time and the windshield shattered.
“Back inside!”
Something hot hissed just beneath his earlobe. He saw a white muzzle flash off to his left — the boy, firing a pistol at him. Federico’s door popped open; he held up a stick of dynamite, the wick sparking. Danny cupped his elbow in his hand and shot Federico in the left kneecap. Federico yelped and fell against the car. The stick of dynamite dropped onto the front seat.
Danny was close enough now to see the other sticks piled in the backseat, two or three bundles of them.
A chunk of cobblestone spit off the street. He ducked and fired back at the boy. The boy hit the ground and his cap fell off and long caramel hair cascaded out from under it as the boy rolled under a car. No boy. Tessa. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement from the Rambler and he fired again. The bullet hit the running board, an embarrassing shot, and then his revolver clicked on empty. He found bullets in his pocket and emptied his shells onto the street. He ran in a crouch over to a streetlamp pole and placed his shoulder to it and tried to reload his revolver with shaking hands as bullets thunked off the cars nearest to him and hit the lamp pole.
In a plaintive, despairing voice, Tessa called Federico’s name and then shouted, “Scappa, scappa, amore mio! Mettiti in salvo! Scappa!”
Federico twisted his way off the front seat, his good knee hitting the street, and Danny stepped from behind the lamp pole and fired. The first shot hit the door, but the second caught Federico in the ass. Again, the strange yelp as the blood sprouted and darkened the back of his pants. He flopped against the seat and crawled back inside. Danny got a sudden flash of the two of them in Federico’s apartment, Federico smiling that warm and glorious smile of his. He pushed the image away as Tessa screamed, a guttural wail of broken hope. She had both hands on the pistol when she fired. Danny dove to his left and rolled on the street. The rounds ripped up the cobblestone, and he kept rolling until he reached a car on the other side of the street and heard Tessa’s revolver dry-fire. Federico lunged out of the Rambler. He arched his back and turned. He pushed off the car door, and Danny shot him in the stomach. Federico fell back into the Rambler. The door closed against his legs.
Danny fired where he’d last seen Tessa, but she wasn’t there anymore. She’d run several doors down from the church, and she pressed a hand to her hip and the hand was red. Tears poured down her face, and her mouth was open in a noiseless howl. As the first prowl car came around the corner, Danny gave her one last look and ran toward the cruiser with his hands raised, trying to wave it off before it got too close.
The blast bubbled outward as if it came from under water. The first wave knocked Danny’s legs out from under him and he landed in the gutter and watched the Rambler jump four feet in the air. It came back to earth almost exactly where it had left it. The windows blew out, and the wheels collapsed, and a portion of the roof peeled back like a can. The front steps of the church splintered and disgorged limestone. The heavy wooden doors fell off their hinges. The stained glass windows collapsed. Debris and white dust floated in the air. Flames poured out of the car. Flames and oily black smoke. Danny stood. He could feel blood dripping out of his ears.
A face loomed in front of his. The face was familiar. The face mouthed his name. Danny held up his hands, one of them still holding his revolver. The cop — Danny remembered his name now, Officer Glen Something, Glen Patchett — shook his head: No, you keep your gun.
Danny lowered the gun and placed it in his coat. The heat of the flames found his face. He could see Federico in there, blackened and afire, leaning against the passenger door, as if sleeping, a guy along for a drive. With his eyes closed, he reminded Danny of that first night they’d broken bread together, when Federico, seemingly enraptured by music, had closed his eyes and mock-conducted the music spilling from his phonograph. People began to exit the church, coming around from the sides, and Danny could hear them suddenly, as if from the bottom of a hole a mile deep.
He turned to Glen, “If you can hear me, nod.”
Patchett gave him a curious look but nodded.
“Put out an APB on a Tessa Ficara. Twenty years old. Italian. Five five, long brown hair. She’s bleeding from the right hip. Glen? She’s dressed as a boy. Tweed knickers, plaid shirt, suspenders, brown work shoes. You got that?”
Patchett scribbled in his notebook. He nodded.
“Armed and dangerous,” Danny said.
More scribbling.
His left ear canal opened with a pop, and more blood sluiced down his neck, but now he could hear and the sounds were sudden and painful. He placed a hand to the ear. “Fuck!”
“You hear me now?”
“Yeah, Glen. Yeah.”
“Who’s the crisper in the car?”
“Federico Ficara. He’s got federal warrants out on him. You probably heard about him at roll call about a month ago. Bomber.”
“Dead bomber. You shoot him?”
“Three times,” Danny said.
Glen looked at all the white dust and debris as it fell into their hair, onto their faces. “Hell of a way to fuck up a Sunday.”
Eddie McKenna arrived on-scene about ten minutes after the explosion. Danny sat amid the rubble on what remained of the church steps and listened as his godfather talked to Fenton, the Bomb Squad sergeant.
“Best we can figure, Eddie? The plan was to detonate the dynamite in the car once all the people were out front, you know, milling about for ten minutes afterward, the way these people do. But when the wops start coming out of the church, Coughlin’s kid over there yells at them to go back inside. Makes his point by discharging his weapon. So the people run back inside and Coughlin starts firing at the asshole in the Rambler. Someone else comes into play around then — I’m hearing from Tactical that it’s a woman, believe that? — and he’s drawing her fire, too, but hell if he’s letting that asshole out of the car. Makes him blow up with his own bombs.”
“A delicious irony, that,” McKenna said. “Special Squads will take over from here, Sergeant.”