The Given Day (40 page)

"She pretty?" Nora asked.

"She's pretty," Luther said.

"Tall? Short?"

"She kinda small," Luther said. "Like you."

"I'm small, am I?" She gave Luther a look over her shoulder, one hand holding the peeler, and Luther, as he had before, got the sense of the volcanic from her in the most innocent of moments. He didn't know too many other white women and no Irishwomen, but he'd long had the feeling that Nora was a woman worth treading very carefully around.

"You ain't big," he said.

She looked over at him for a long time. "We've been acquainted for months, Mr. Laurence, and it occurred to me at the factory today that I know next to nothing, I do, about you."

Luther chuckled. "Pot calling the kettle black if ever I did hear it." "You've some meaning you're keeping to yourself over there?" "Me?" Luther shook his head. "I know you're from Ireland but not where exactly."

"Do you know Ireland?"

"Not a whit."

"Then what difference would it make?"

"I know you came here five years ago. I know you are courting Mr. Connor but don't seem to think about it much. I--"

"Excuse me, boy?"

Luther had discovered that when the Irish said "boy" to a colored man it didn't mean what it meant when a white American said it. He chuckled again. "Hit a nerve there, I did, lass?"

330DENNIS LEHANE

Nora laughed. She held the back of her wet hand to her lips, the peeler sticking out. "Do that again."

"What?"

"The brogue, the brogue."

"Ah, sure, I don't know what you're on about."

She leaned against the side of the sink and stared at him. "That is Eddie McKenna's voice, right down to the timbre itself, it 'tis."

Luther shrugged. "Not bad, uh?"

Nora's face sobered. "Don't ever let him hear you do that." "You think I'm out my mind?"

She placed the peeler on the counter. "You miss her. I can see it in your eyes."

"I miss her."

"What's her name?"

Luther shook his head. "I'd just as soon hold on to that for the moment, Miss O'Shea."

Nora wiped her hands on her apron. "What're you running from, Luther?"

"What're you?"

She smiled and her eyes sparkled again but this time from the wet in them. "Danny."

He nodded. "I seen that. Something else, though, too. Something further back."

She turned back to the sink, lifted out the pot filled with water and potatoes. She carried it to the sink. "Ah, we're an interesting pair, Mr. Laurence. Are we not? All our intuition used for others, never ourselves."

"Lotta good it does us, then," Luther said.

She said that?" Danny said from the phone in his rooming house. "She was running from me?" "She did." Luther sat at the phone table in the Giddreauxs' foyer. "She say it like she was tired of running?"

"No," Luther said. "She said it like she was right used to it." "Oh."

THE GIVEN DAY"Sorry."

"No. Thanks, really. Eddie come at you yet?"

"He let me know he's on his way. Not how or what yet, though." "Okay. Well, when he does . . ."

"I'll let you know."

"What do you think of her?"

"Nora?"

"Yeah."

"I think she's too much woman for you."

Danny's laugh was a booming thing. Could make you feel like a bomb went off at your feet. "You do, uh?"

"Just an opinion." " 'Night, Luther." " 'Night, Danny."

One of Nora's secrets was that she smoked. Luther had caught her at it early in his time at the Coughlin house, and it had since become their habit to sneak out for one together while Mrs. Ellen Coughlin prepared herself for dinner in the bathroom but long before Mr. Connor or Captain Coughlin had returned from work.

One of those times, on a high- sun-deep- chill afternoon, Luther asked her about Danny again.

"What of him?"

"You said you were running from him."

"I did?"

"Yeah."

"I was sober?"

"In the kitchen that time."

"Ah." She shrugged and exhaled at the same time, her cigarette held up in front of her face. "Well, maybe he ran from me."

"Oh?"

Her eyes flashed, that danger you sensed in her getting closer to the surface. "You want to know something about your friend Aiden? Something you'd never guess?"

332DENNIS LEHANE

Luther knew it was one of those times silence was your best friend.

Nora blew out another stream of smoke, this one coming out fast and bitter. "He seems very much the rebel, yeah? Very inde pendent and free-thinking, he does, yeah?" She shook her head, took another hard drag off her cigarette. "He's not. In the end, he's not a'tall." She looked at Luther, a smile forcing its way onto her face. "In the end, he couldn't live with my past, that past you're so curious about. He wanted to be, I believe the word was, 'respectable.' And I, sure, I couldn't give him that."

"But Mr. Connor, he don't strike me as the type who--"

She shook her head repeatedly. "Mr. Connor knows nothing of my past. Only Danny. And look how the knowledge tossed us in the fi re." She gave him another tight smile and stubbed out her cigarette with her toe. She lifted the dead butt off the frozen porch and placed it in the pocket of her apron. "Are we done with the questions for the day, Mr. Laurence?"

He nodded.

"What's her name?" she said.

He met her gaze. "Lila."

"Lila," she said, her voice softening. "A fine name, that."

Luther and Clayton Tomes were doing structural demolition in the Shawmut Avenue building on a Saturday so cold they could see their breath. Even so, the demo was such hard work--crowbar and sledgehammer work--that within the first hour they'd stripped down to their undershirts.

Close to noon, they took a break and ate the sandwiches Mrs. Giddreaux had prepared for them and drank a couple beers.

"After this," Clayton said, "we--what?--patch up that subfl ooring?"

Luther nodded and lit a cigarette, blew out the smoke in a long, weary exhale. "Next week, week after, we can run the electrical up back of them walls, maybe get around to some of them pipes you so excited about."

THE GIVEN DAY"Shit." Clayton shook his head and let out a loud yawn. "All this work for nothing but a higher ideal? Place for us in Nigger Heaven, sure."

Luther gave him a soft smile but didn't say anything. He'd lost comfort with saying "nigger," even though the only time he'd ever used it was around other colored men. But both Jessie and the Deacon Broscious had used it constantly, and some part of Luther felt he'd entombed it with them back at the Club Almighty. He couldn't explain it any better than that, just that it didn't feel right coming off his tongue any longer. Like most things, he assumed, the feeling would pass, but for now. . . .

"Well, I guess we might as well--"

He stopped talking when he saw McKenna stroll through the front door like he owned the damn building. He stood in the foyer, looking up at the dilapidated staircase.

"Damn," Clayton whispered. "Police."

"I know it. He's a friend of my boss. And he act all friendly, but he ain't. Ain't no friend of ours, nohow."

Clayton nodded because they'd both met plenty of white men that fit that description in their lives. McKenna entered the room where they'd been working, a big room, nearest to the kitchen, probably had been a dining room fifty years ago.

The first words out of McKenna's mouth: "Canton?"

"Columbus," Luther said.

"Ah, right enough." McKenna smiled at Luther, then turned to Clayton. "I don't believe we've met." He held out a meaty hand. "Lieutenant McKenna, BPD."

"Clayton Tomes." Clayton shook the hand.

McKenna gripped his hand, kept shaking it, his smile frozen to his face, his eyes searching Clayton's and then Luther's, seeming to look right into his heart.

"You work for the widow on M Street. Mrs. Wagenfeld. Correct?" Clayton nodded. "Uh, yes, suh."

"Just so." McKenna dropped Clayton's hand. "She's rumored to 334DENNIS LEHANE keep a small fortune in Spanish doubloons beneath her coal bin. Any truth to this, Clayton?"

"I wouldn't know anything about that, sir."

"Wouldn't tell anyone anyway if you did!" McKenna laughed and slapped Clayton on the back so hard Clayton stumbled forward a couple of steps.

McKenna stepped close to Luther. "What brought you here?" "Suh?" Luther said. "You know I live with the Giddreauxs. This is going to be the headquarters."

McKenna shot his eyebrows at Clayton. "The headquarters? Of what?"

"The NAACP," Luther said.

"Ah, grand stuff," McKenna said. "I remodeled me own house once. A constant headache, that." He moved a crowbar to the side with his foot. "You're in the demolition phase, I see."

"Yes, suh."

"Coming along?"

"Yes, suh."

"Almost there, I'd say. 'Least on this floor. My original question, Luther, however, did not pertain to your working in this building. No. When I asked what brought you here, the 'here' I referred to was Boston herself. For instance, Clayton Tomes, where do you hail from, son?"

"The West End, sir. Born and raised."

"Exactly," McKenna said. "Our coloreds tend to be homegrown, Luther. Few come here without a good reason when they could find much more of their kind in New York or, Lord knows, Chicago or Detroit. So what brought you here?"

"A job," Luther said.

McKenna nodded. "To come eight hundred miles just to drive Ellen Coughlin to church? Seems funny."

Luther shrugged. "Well, then, I guess it's funny, suh."

" 'Tis, 'tis," McKenna said. "A girl?"

THE GIVEN DAY"Suh?"

"You got yourself a girl up these parts?"

"No."

McKenna rubbed the stubble along his jaw, looked over at Clayton again, as if they played this game together. "See, I'd believe you came eight hundred miles for cunny. Now that's a valid story. But, as it is?"

He stared at Luther for a long time with that blithe, open face of his.

Once the silence had gone on into its second minute, Clayton said, "We best get back at it, Luther."

McKenna's head turned, as if on a slow swivel, and he gave the open gaze to Clayton Tomes who quickly looked away.

McKenna turned back to Luther. "Don't let me hold you up, Luther. I'd best be getting back to work myself. Thank you for the reminder, Clayton."

Clayton shook his head at his own stupidity.

"Back out to the world," McKenna said with a weary sigh. "These days? People who make a good wage think it's okay to bite the hand that feeds them. Do you know what the bedrock of capitalism is, gents?"

"No, suh."

"Sure don't, sir."

"The bedrock of capitalism, gentlemen, is the manufacture or min- ing of goods for the purpose of sale. That's it. That's what this country is built on. And so the heroes of this country are not soldiers or athletes or even presidents. The heroes are the men who built our railroads and our automobiles and our cotton mills and factories. They keep this country running. The men who work for them, therefore, should be grateful to be a part of the pro cess that forms the freest society in the known world." He reached out and clapped Luther on both shoulders. "But lately they're not. Can you believe that?"

"There isn't much of a subversive movement among us colored, Lieutenant, suh."

McKenna's eyes widened. "Where have you lived, Luther? There's quite the lefty movement going on in Harlem right now. Your high- toned 336DENNIS LEHANE colored got himself some education and started reading his Marx and his Booker T. and his Frederick Douglass and now you got men like Du Bois and Garvey and some would argue they're just as dangerous as Goldman and Reed and the atheistic Wobblies." He held up a fi nger. "Some would argue. Some would even claim that the NAACP is just a front, Luther, for subversive and seditionist ideas." He patted Luther's cheek softly with a gloved hand. "Some."

He turned and looked up at the scorched ceiling.

"Well, you've your work cut out for you, lads. I'll leave you to it."

He placed his hands behind his back and strolled across the floor, and neither Luther nor Clayton took a breath until he'd exited the foyer and descended the front steps.

"Oh, Luther," Clayton said.

"I know it."

"Whatever you did to that man, you got to undo it."

"I didn't do nothing. He just that way."

"What way? White?"

Luther nodded.

"And mean," Luther said. "Kinda mean just keeps eating till the day it dies." chapter twenty After leaving Special Squads, Danny returned to foot patrol in his old precinct, the Oh-One on Hanover Street. He was assigned to walk his beat with Ned Wilson, who at two months shy of his twenty, had stopped giving a shit five years ago. Ned spent most of their shift drinking or playing craps at Costello's. Most days, he and Danny saw each other for about twenty minutes after they punched in and five minutes before they punched out. The rest of the time Danny was free to do as he chose. If he made a hard bust, he called Costello's from a call box and Ned met up with him in time to march the perp up the stairs of the station house. Otherwise, Danny roamed. He walked the entire city, dropping in on as many station houses as he could reach in a day--the Oh -Two in Court Square, down to the Oh-Four on LaGrange, across to the Oh-Five in the South End and as far up the line as he could go on foot in the eighteen station houses of the BPD. The three in West Roxbury, Hyde Park, and Jamaica Plain were left for Emmett Strack; the Oh- Seven in Eastie, for Kevin McRae; Mark Denton covered Dorchester, Southie, and the One-Four in Brighton. Danny worked the rest--downtown, the North and South Ends, and Roxbury.

338DENNIS LEHANE

The job was recruitment and testimony. Danny glad-handed, cajoled, harangued, and persuaded a solid one-third of all the cops he approached into writing down an accurate account of his workweek, his debts versus his income, and the conditions of the station house in which he worked. In his first three weeks back on the beat, he roped in sixty-eight men to meetings of the Boston Social Club at Fay Hall.