“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.
“When do you suppose she’ll open?”
Luther’d been wondering that himself lately. He still had plenty of pipe to run and was waiting on a shipment of horsehair plaster before he could start sealing the walls. “Hard to say, sir.”
“Not ‘suh’? Usually you get a bit more southern for my benefit, Luther, something I noticed back in the early days of winter.”
“I guess it’s ‘sir,’ tonight,” Luther said, feeling a different edge in the man than he’d felt before.
McKenna shrugged. “So how long you think?”
“Till I’m done? A few months. Depends on a lot of things, sir.”
“I’m sure. But the Giddreauxs must be planning a ribbon cutting, that sort of thing, a gathering of their ilk.”
“Again, sir, I’m hoping to be done summer’s end, somewhere thereabouts.”
McKenna placed his arm on the wrought-iron railing that curved out from the Coughlin stoop. “I need you to dig a hole.”
“A hole?”
McKenna nodded, his trench coat flapping around his legs in the warm spring breeze. “A vault, really. I’ll want you to be sure to make it weather-tight. I’d recommend poured concrete, if I could be so bold.”
Luther said, “And where do you want me to build this vault? Your house, sir?”
McKenna leaned back from the suggestion, an odd smile on his face. “I’d never let your kind in my home, Luther. Good Lord.” He exhaled a small whoop at the entire idea, and Luther could see the weight of carrying a fake self for Luther’s benefit leave him, the man finally ready to show Luther his depths. With pride. “An ebon on Telegraph Hill? Ha. So, no, Luther, the vault is not for my home. It’s for these ‘headquarters’ you’re so nobly aspiring to build.”
“You want me to put a vault in the NAACP?”
“Yes. Under the floor. I believe last time I was over there, you’d yet to lay in the floor of the rear room in the east corner. Used to be a kitchen, I believe?”
Last time he was over there?
“What of it?” Luther said.
“Dig the hole there. The size of a man, we’ll say. Weatherproof it, then cover it with the flooring of your choice, but make sure that flooring is easy to lift. I don’t presume to tell you how to do your job, but you may consider hinges in that regard, an inconspicuous handle of some sort.”
Luther, standing on the sidewalk by now, waited for the punch line. “I don’t understand, Lieutenant, sir.”
“You know who’s proven my most irreplaceable intelligence source these last couple of years? Do you?”
“No,” Luther said.
“Edison. They’re grand ones for tracking the movements of a person.” McKenna lit a half-smoked cigar and waved at the air between them once he got it going. “You, for example, terminated your electric service in Columbus in September. Took my Edison friends some time to discover where you started it up again, but eventually we got it. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, in October. It’s still being supplied to your Tulsa address, so I can only assume you left a woman there. Maybe a family? You’re on the run, Luther. Knew it the moment I laid eyes on you, but it was nice to have it confirmed. When I asked the Tulsa PD if they had any unsolved crimes of note, they mentioned a nightclub in niggertown that someone shot the hell out of, left three dead. A full day’s labor someone did.”
Luther said, “Don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”
“Of course, of course.” McKenna nodded. “Tulsa PD said folks there don’t get too riled up when their niggers start shooting each other, ’specially when they can put the blame on one of the dead niggers. Far as they’re concerned, it’s a closed case with three coons in the grave no one’ll miss. So on that score, you are in the clear.” McKenna raised his index finger. “Unless I were to call Tulsa PD back and ask them, as a professional courtesy, to question the sole survivor of said bloodbath and in the course of questioning mention that a certain Luther Laurence, late of Tulsa, was living up here in Boston.” His eyes glittered. “Then I’d have to wonder how many places you’ve got left to hide.”
Luther felt all the fight in him just roll up and die. Just lie down. Just wither away. “What do you want?”
“I want a vault.” McKenna’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, I want the Crisis mailing list.”
“What?”
“The Crisis. The newsletter of the National Association for the Advancement of Chimpanzees.”
“I know what it is. Where would I get the mailing list?”
“Well, Isaiah Giddreaux must have access to it. There must be a copy of it somewhere in that nigger-bourgeoisie palace you call home. Find it.”
“And if I build your vault and find your mailing list?”
“Don’t adopt the tone of someone who has options, Luther.”
“Fine. What do you want me to put in this vault?” Luther asked.
“You keep asking questions?” McKenna draped his arm over Luther’s shoulders. “Maybe it’ll be you.”
Leaving another ineffectual BSC meeting, Danny was exhausted as he headed for the el stop at Roxbury Crossing, and Steve Coyle fell in beside him as Danny knew he would. Steve was still coming to meetings, still making people wish he’d go away, still talking about grander and grander fool-ambitions. Danny had to report for duty in four hours and wished only to lay his head to his pillow and sleep for a day or so.
“She’s still here,” Steve said as they walked up the stairs to the el.
“Who?”
“Tessa Ficara,” Steve said. “Don’t pretend you’ve forgotten her.”
“I’m not pretending anything,” Danny said, and it came out too sharp.
“I’ve been talking to people,” Steve said quickly. “People who owe me from when I worked the streets.”
Danny wondered just who these people could be. Cops were always under the misguided impression that people felt gratitude or indebtedness toward them when nothing could be further from the truth. Unless you were saving their lives or their wallets, people resented cops. They did not want you around.
“Talking to people is a bit dangerous,” he said. “In the North End particularly.”