The Given Day (23 page)

She'd been right in everything she'd said.

But, oh, she'd been cold. She'd seen to breaking his heart as much as he, he now realized, had broken hers these last months. This house he'd feared and bristled at was something he now wished he could wrap his arms around and carry out to Jessie's car and take with him wherever he was going.

"I do so love you, Lila Waters Laurence," he said and kissed the tip of his index finger and touched it to her forehead.

She didn't stir, so Luther leaned over and kissed her belly and then he left his home and went back to Jessie's car and drove north with the dawn rising over Tulsa and the birds waking from their sleep. chapter ten For two weeks, if her father wasn't home, Tessa came to Danny's door. They rarely slept, but Danny wouldn't call what they did making love. A bit too raw for that. On several occasions, she gave the orders--slower, faster, harder, put it there, no there, roll over, stand up, lie down. It seemed hopeless to Danny, the way they clawed and chewed and squeezed each other's bones. And yet he kept returning for more. Sometimes, walking the beat, he'd find himself wishing the uniform weren't so coarse; it rubbed parts of him that had already been scratched to the last layer of flesh. His bedroom on those nights gave off the feel of a lair. They entered and tore at each other. And while the sounds of the neighborhood did reach them--an occasional car horn, the shouts of children kicking a ball in the alleys, the neighs and huffs from the stables behind their building, even the clank of footsteps on the fire escape of some other tenants who'd discovered the attraction of the roof he and Tessa had abandoned--they seemed the sounds of an alien life.

For all her abandon in the bedroom, Tessa withheld herself when the sex was finished. She would sneak back to her room without a word and never once fell asleep in his bed. He didn't mind. In fact, he preferred it this way--heated yet cold. He wondered if his part in all of this unleashing of unnameable fury was tied into his feelings for Nora, his urge to punish her for loving him and leaving him and continuing to live.

There was no danger he would fall in love with Tessa. Or she with him. In all their snakelike commingling he sensed contempt above all, not just she for him, or he for her, but both of them for their barren addiction to this act. Once, when she was on top, her hands clenched against his chest, she whispered, "So young," like a condemnation.

When Federico was in town, he invited Danny over for some anisette and they sat listening to opera on the Silvertone while Tessa sat on the davenport, working on her English in primers that Federico brought back from his trips across New England and the Tri-States. At first Danny worried that Federico would sense the intimacy between his drinking companion and his daughter, but Tessa sat on the davenport, a stranger, her legs tucked under her petticoat, her crepe blouse cinched at the throat, and whenever her eyes found Danny's they were blank of anything but linguistic curiosity.

"Dee-fi ne avar-iss," she said once.

Those nights, Danny would return to his rooms feeling both the betrayer and the betrayed, and he'd sit by his window and read from the stacks provided by Eddie McKenna until late into the evening.

He went to another BSC meeting and still another, and little about the men's situation or prospects had changed. The mayor still refused to meet with them, while Samuel Gompers and the American Federation of Labor seemed to be having second thoughts about granting a charter.

"Keep the faith," he heard Mark Denton say to a flatfoot one night. "Rome wasn't built in a day."

"But it was built," the guy said.

Then one night, when he returned after two solid days of duty, he found Mrs. DiMassi dragging Tessa and Federico's rug down the stairs. Danny tried to help her, but the old woman shrugged him off and dropped the rug into the foyer and let loose a loud sigh before looking at him.

"She's gone," the old woman said, and Danny saw that she knew what he and Tessa had been up to and it colored how she would look at him as long as he lived here. "They go without a word. Owe me rent, too. You look for her, you will not fi nd her, I think. Women of her village are known for their black hearts. Yes? Witches, some think. Tessa have black heart. Baby die, make it blacker. You," she said as she pushed past him to her own apartment, "you probably make it blacker still."

She opened her door and looked back at him. "They waiting for you."

"Who?"

"The men in your room," she said and entered her apartment.

He unsnapped the leather guard on his holster as he walked up the stairs, half of him still thinking of Tessa, of how it might not be too late to find her if the trail wasn't too cold. He thought she owed him an explanation. He was convinced there was one.

At the top of the stairs, he heard his father's voice coming from his apartment and snapped the guard back on his holster. Instead of going toward the voice, though, he went to Tessa and Federico's apartment. He found the door ajar. He pushed it open. The rug was gone, but otherwise the parlor looked the same. Yet as he walked around it, he saw that all the photographs had been removed. In the bedroom, the closets were empty and the bed was stripped. The top of the dresser where Tessa had kept her powders and perfumes was bare. The hat tree in the corner sprouted empty pegs. He walked back into the parlor and felt a cold drop of sweat roll behind his ear and then down the back of his neck: they'd left behind the Silvertone.

The top was open and he went to it, smelling it suddenly. Someone had poured acid onto the turntable, and the velvet inlay had been eaten down to nothing. He opened the cabinet to find all of Federico's beloved record discs smashed into shards. His first instinct was that they must have been murdered; the old man would have never left this behind or allowed anyone to vandalize it so obscenely.

Then he noticed the note. It was glued to the right cabinet door. The handwriting was Federico's, identical to that on the note he'd left inviting Danny to dinner that first night; Danny suddenly felt nauseated.

Policeman, Is this wood still a tree? Federico "Aiden," his father said from the doorway. "Good to see you, boy." Danny looked over at him. "What the hell?"

His father stepped into the apartment. "The other tenants say he seemed like such a sweet old man. Your opinion of him as well, I assume?"

Danny shrugged. He felt numb.

"Well, he isn't sweet and he isn't old. What's the note he left you all about?"

"Private joke," Danny said.

His father frowned. "Nothing about this is private, boy." "Why don't you tell me what's going on?"

His father smiled. "Elucidation awaits in your room."

Danny followed him down the hall to find two men waiting in his apartment. They wore bow ties and heavy rust- colored suits with dark pinstripes. Their hair was plastered to their skulls by petroleum jelly and parted down the middle. Their shoes were a flat brown and polished. Justice Department. They couldn't have been more obvious if they'd worn their badges pinned to their foreheads.

The taller of the two looked over at him. The shorter one sat on the edge of Danny's coffee table.

"Officer Coughlin?" the tall man said.

"Who're you?"

"I asked first," the tall man said.

"I don't care," Danny said. "I live here."

Danny's father folded his arms and leaned against the window, content to watch the show.

The tall man looked over his shoulder at the other man and then back at Danny. "My name's Finch. Rayme Finch. Rayme. No 'ond.' Just Rayme. You can call me Agent Finch." He had the look of an athlete, loose-limbed and strong of bone.

Danny lit a cigarette and leaned against the doorjamb. "You got a badge?"

"I already showed it to your father."

Danny shrugged. "Didn't show it to me."

As Finch reached into his back pocket, Danny caught the little man on the coffee table watching him with the kind of delicate contempt he'd normally associate with bishops or showgirls. He was a few years younger than Danny, maybe twenty-three at the most, and a good ten years younger than Agent Finch, but the pockets beneath his bulging eyes were pendulous and darkly pooled like those of a man twice his age. He crossed his legs and picked at something on his knee.

Finch produced his badge and a federal ID card stamped with the seal of the United States government: Bureau of Investigation.

Danny took a quick glance at it. "You're BI?"

"Try saying it without a smirk."

Danny jerked his thumb at the other guy. "And who's this exactly?"

Finch opened his mouth but the other man wiped his hand with a handkerchief before extending the hand to Danny. "John Hoover, Mr. Coughlin," the man said, and Danny's hand came away with sweat from the handshake. "I work with the antiradical department at Justice. You don't cotton to radicals, do you, Mr. Coughlin?"

"There're no Germans in the building. Isn't that what Justice handles?" He looked back at Finch. "And the BI is all about bankruptcy fraud. Yeah?"

The doughy lump on the coffee table looked at Danny like he wanted to bite the tip of his nose. "Our purview has expanded a bit since the war started, Offi cer Coughlin."

Danny nodded. "Well, good luck." He stepped over the threshold. "Mind getting the fuck out of my apartment?"

"We also deal with draft dodgers," Agent Finch said, "agitators, seditionists, people who would make war on the United States."

"It's a living, I'd guess."

"A good one. Anarchists in particu lar," Finch said. "Those bastards are tops on our lists. You know--bomb throwers, Offi cer Coughlin. Like the one you were fucking."

Danny squared his shoulders to Finch's. "I'm fucking who?"

Agent Finch took a turn leaning against the doorjamb. "You were fucking Tessa Abruzze. At least that's how she called herself. Am I correct?"

"I know Miss Abruzze. What of it?"

Finch gave him a thin smile. "You don't know shit."

"Her father's a phonograph salesman," Danny said. "They had some trouble back in Italy but--"

"Her father," Finch said, "is her husband." He raised his eyebrows. "You heard me right. And he couldn't give a damn about phonographs. Federico Abruzze is not even his real name. He's an anarchist, and more particularly he's a Galleanist. You know what that term means or should I provide help?"

Danny said, "I know."

"His real name is Federico Ficara and while you've been fucking his wife? He's been making bombs."

"Where?" Danny said.

"Right here." Rayme Finch jerked his thumb back down the hall. John Hoover crossed one hand over the other and rested them on his belt buckle. "I ask you again, Officer, are you the kind of man who cottons to radicals?"

"I think my son answered the question," Thomas Coughlin said. John Hoover shook his head. "Not that I heard, sir."

Danny looked down at him. His skin had the look of bread pulled too early from the oven and his pupils were so tiny and dark they seemed meant for the head of another animal entirely.

"The reason I ask is because we are closing the barn door. After the horses have left it, I'll grant you, but before the barn has burned to the ground. What the war showed us? Is that the enemy is not just in Germany. The enemy came over on ships and availed himself of our wanton immigration policies and he set up shop. He lectures to mine workers and factory workers and disguises himself as the friend of the worker and the downtrodden. But what he really is? What he really is is a prevaricator, an inveigler, a foreign disease, a man bent on the destruction of our democracy. He must be ground into dust." Hoover wiped the back of his neck with his handkerchief; the top of his collar had darkened with sweat. "So I'm going to ask you a third time--are you a coddler of the radical element? Are you in effect, sir, an enemy of my Uncle Samuel?"

Danny said, "Is he serious?"

Finch said, "Oh yes."

Danny said, "John, right?"

The round man gave him a small nod.

"You fight in the war?"

Hoover shook his large head. "I did not have the honor."

"The honor," Danny said. "Well, I didn't have the honor either, but that's because I was deemed essential personnel on the home front. What's your excuse?"

Hoover's face reddened and he pocketed his handkerchief. "There are many ways to serve your country, Mr. Coughlin."

"Yes, there are," Danny said. "I've got a hole in my neck from serving mine. So if you question my patriotism again, John? I'll have my father duck and throw you out that fucking window."

Danny's father fluttered a hand over his heart and stepped away from the window.

Hoover, though, stared back at Danny with the coal- blue clarity of the unexamined conscience. The moral fortitude of a knee-high boy who played at battle with sticks. Who grew older, but not up.

Finch cleared his throat. "The business at hand, gents, is bombs. Could we return to that?"

"How would you have known about my association with Tessa?" Danny said. "Were you tailing me?"

Finch shook his head. "Her. Her and her husband, Federico, were last seen ten months ago in Oregon. Beat the holy shit out of a railroad porter who tried to inspect Tessa's bag. Had to jump off the train while it was going a good head of steam. Thing was, they had to leave the bag behind. Portland PD met the train, found blasting caps, dynamite, a couple of pistols. A real anarchist's toolbox. The porter, poor suspicious bastard, died from his injuries."

"Still haven't answered my question," Danny said.

"We tracked them here about a month ago. This is Galleani's home base, after all. We'd heard rumors she was pregnant. The flu was running the show then, though, so that slowed us up. Last night a guy, let's say, we count on in the anarchist underground coughed up Tessa's address. She must have got word, though, because she got into the wind before we could get here. You? You were easy. We asked all the tenants in the building if Tessa had been acting suspicious lately. To a man or woman they all said, 'Outside of fucking the cop on the fi fth floor? Why no.'"

"Tessa a bomber?" Danny shook his head. "I don't buy it."