The Given Day (71 page)

Danny's first thought: It was this easy?

His second thought: Wait for the "but."

"But," Storrow said, "I only have the power to recommend. I cannot implement change. Only Commissioner Curtis can."

"Sir," Mark Denton said, "with all due respect, Commissioner Curtis is deciding whether to fire nineteen of us."

"I'm aware of that," Storrow said, "but I don't think he will. It would be the height of imprudence. The city, believe it or not, is for you, gentlemen. They're just very clearly not for a strike. If you allow me to handle this, you may well get everything you require. The ultimate decision rests with the commissioner, but he is a reasonable man."

Danny shook his head. "I've yet to see evidence of it, sir."

Storrow gave that a smile so distant it was almost shy. "Be that as it 592DENNIS LEHANE may, the city and the mayor and governor and every fair-minded man will, I promise you, see the light and the logic just as clearly as I've seen it today. As soon as I am capable of compiling and releasing my report, you'll have justice. I ask patience, gentlemen. I ask prudence."

"You'll have it, sir," Mark Denton said.

Storrow walked around to the back of the table and began shuffl ing up the papers. "But you'll have to give up your association with the American Federation of Labor."

So there it was. Danny wanted to throw the table through the window. Throw everyone in the room after it. "And put ourselves upon whose mercy this time, sir?"

"I don't follow."

Danny stood. "Mr. Storrow, we all respect you. But we've accepted half-measures before, and they've all come to naught. We work at the pay scale of 1903 because the men before us took the carrot on the stick for twelve years before demanding their rights in 1915. We accepted the city's oath that while it could not compensate us fairly during the war, it would make amends afterward. And yet? We are still being paid the 1903 wage. And yet? We never got fittingly compensated after the war. And our precincts are still cesspools and our men are still overworked. Commissioner Curtis tells the press he is forming 'committees,' never mentioning that those 'committees' are stocked with his own men and those men have prejudicial opinions. We have put our faith in this city before, Mr. Storrow, countless times, and been jilted. And now you want us to forswear the one organization that has given us real hope and real bargaining power?"

Storrow placed both hands on the table and stared across at Danny. "Yes, Officer, I do. You can use the AFL as a bargaining chip. I'll tell you that fact baldly right here and now. It's the smart move, so don't give it up just yet. But, son, I assure you, you will have to give it up. And if you choose to strike, I will be the strongest advocate in this city for breaking you and making certain you never wear a badge again." He leaned forward. "I believe in your cause, Officer. I will fight for you.

THE GIVEN DAYBut don't back me or this commission into a corner, because you will not survive the response."

Behind him, the windows looked out on a sky of the purest blue. A perfect summer day in the first week of September, enough to make everyone forget the dark rains of August, the feeling they'd once had that they would never be dry again.

The three policemen stood and saluted James J. Storrow and the men of his commission and took their leave.

Danny, Nora, and Luther played hearts on an old sheet placed be
tween two iron smokestacks on the roof of Danny's building.

Late evening, all three of them tired--Luther smelling of the stockyard, Nora of the factory--and yet they were up here with two bottles of wine and a deck of cards because there were few places a black man and a white man could congregate in public and fewer still where a woman could join those men and partake of too much wine. It felt to Danny, when the three of them were together like this, that they were beating the world at something.

Luther said, "Who's that?" and his voice was lazy with the wine.

Danny followed his eyes and saw James Jackson Storrow crossing the roof toward him. He started to stand and Nora caught his wrist when he wavered.

"I was told by a kind Italian woman to search for you here," Storrow said. He glanced at the three of them, at the tattered sheet with the cards spread across it, at the bottles of wine. "I apologize for intruding."

"Not at all," Danny said as Luther made it to his feet and held out a hand to Nora. Nora grasped his hand and Luther tugged her upright and she smoothed her dress.

"Mr. Storrow, this is my wife, Nora, and my friend, Luther." Storrow shook each of their hands as if this kind of gathering occurred every day on Beacon Hill.

"An honor to meet you both." He gave them each a nod. "Could I abscond with your husband for just a moment, Mrs. Coughlin?"

594DENNIS LEHANE

"Of course, sir. Careful with him, though--he's a bit spongy on his feet."

Storrow gave her a wide smile. "I can see that, ma'am. It's no bother."

He tipped his hat to her and followed Danny across the roof to the eastern edge and they looked out at the harbor.

"You count coloreds among your equals, Offi cer Coughlin?" "Long as they don't complain," Danny said, "I don't either." "And public drunkenness in your wife is no cause for your concern either?"

Danny kept his eyes on the harbor. "We're not in public, sir, and if we were, I wouldn't give much of a fuck. She's my wife. Means a hell of a lot more to me than the public." He turned his gaze on Storrow. "Or anyone else for that matter."

"Fair enough." Storrow placed a pipe to his lips and took a minute to light it.

"How'd you find me, Mr. Storrow?"

"It wasn't hard."

"So what brings you?"

"Your president, Mr. Denton, wasn't home."

"Ah."

Storrow puffed on his pipe. "Your wife possesses a spirit of the flesh that fairly leaps off her."

"A 'spirit of the flesh'?"

He nodded. "Quite so. It's easy to see how you became enraptured with her." He sucked on the pipe again. "The colored man I'm still trying to fi gure out."

"Your reason for coming, sir?"

Storrow turned so that they were face-to-face. "Mark Denton may very well have been at home. I never checked. I came directly to you, Officer Coughlin, because you have both passion and temperance, and your men, I can only assume, feel that. Officer Denton struck me as quite intelligent, but his gifts for persuasion are less than yours."

THE GIVEN DAY"Who would you like me to persuade, Mr. Storrow, and what am I selling?"

"The same thing I'm selling, Officer--peaceful resolution." He placed a hand on Danny's arm. "Talk to your men. We can end this, son. You and I. I'm going to release my report to the papers tomorrow night. I will be recommending full acquiescence to your demands. All but one."

Danny nodded. "AFL affiliation."

"Exactly."

"So we're left with nothing again, nothing but promises."

"But they're my promises, son. With the full weight of the mayor and governor and the Chamber of Commerce behind them."

Nora let out a high laugh, and Danny looked across the roof to see her fl icking cards at Luther and Luther holding up his hands in mock defense. Danny smiled. He'd learned over the last few months how much Luther's preferred method of displaying affection for Nora was through teasing, an affection she gladly returned in kind.

Danny kept his eyes on them. "Every day in this country they're breaking unions, Mr. Storrow. Telling us who we have a right to associate with and who we don't. When they need us, they speak of family. When we need them, they speak of business. My wife over there? My friend? Myself? We're outcasts, sir, and alone we'd probably drown. But together, we're a union. How long before Big Money gets that in their head?"

"They will never get it in their heads," Storrow said. "You think you're fighting a larger fight, Offi cer, and maybe you are. But it's a fight as old as time, and it will never end. No one will wave a white flag, nor ever concede defeat. Do you honestly think Lenin is any different from J. P. Morgan? That you, if you were given absolute power, would behave any differently? Do you know the primary difference between men and gods?"

"No, sir."

"Gods don't think they can become men."

Danny turned and met the man's eyes, said nothing.

"If you remain adamant on AFL affiliation, every hope you ever held for a better lot will be ground into dust."

596DENNIS LEHANE

Danny looked back at Nora and Luther again. "Do I have your word that if I sell my men on withdrawal from the AFL, the city will grant us our due?"

"You have my word and the mayor's and the governor's."

"It's your word I care about." Danny held out his hand. "I'll sell it to my men."

Storrow shook his hand, then held it firm. "Smile, young Coughlin-- we're going to save this city, you and I."

"Wouldn't that be nice?"

Danny sold it to them. In Fay Hall, at nine the next morning. After
the vote, which was a shaky 406 to 377, Sid Polk asked, "What if they shaft us again?"

"They won't."

"How do you know?"

"I don't," Danny said. "But at this point, I don't see any logic to it." "What if this was never about logic?" someone called.

Danny held up his hands because no answer occurred to him.

Calvin Coolidge, Andrew Peters, and James Storrow made the drive to Commissioner Curtis's house in Nahant late Sunday afternoon.

They met the commissioner out on his back deck which overlooked the Atlantic under a sallow sky.

Several things were clear to Storrow within moments of their assemblage. The first was that Coolidge had no respect for Peters and Peters hated him for it. Every time Peters opened his mouth to make a point, Coolidge cut him off.

The second thing, and the more worrisome, was that time had done nothing to remove from Edwin Upton Curtis the air of self-loathing and misanthropy that lived in him so fully it colored his flesh like a virus.

Peters said, "Commissioner Curtis, we have--"

"--come, " Coolidge said, "to inform you that Mr. Storrow may have found a resolution to our crisis."

Peters said, "And that--"

THE GIVEN DAY"--if you were to hear our reasoning, I'm sure you would conclude we have all reached an acceptable compromise." Coolidge sat back in his deck chair.

"Mr. Storrow," Curtis said, "how have you been faring since last we met?"

"Well, Edwin. Yourself?"

Curtis said to Coolidge, "Mr. Storrow and I last met at a fabulous fete thrown by Lady Dewar in Louisburg Square. A legendary night, that, wouldn't you say, James?"

Storrow couldn't recall the night for the life of him. Lady Dewar had been dead more than a de cade. As socialites went, she'd been presentable, but hardly elite. "Yes, Edwin, it was a memorable occasion."

"I was mayor then, of course," Curtis said to Peters.

"And a fine one you were, Commissioner." Peters looked over at Coolidge as if surprised the governor had let him finish a thought.

It was the wrong thought, though. A dark squall passed through Curtis's small eyes, taking the blithe compliment Peters had delivered and twisting it into an insult. By calling him "Commissioner," the current mayor had reminded him of what he no longer was.

Dear Lord, Storrow thought, this city could burn to its bricks because of narcissism and a meaningless faux pas.

Curtis stared at him. "Do you think the men have a grievance, James?"

Storrow took his time searching for his pipe. He used three matches to get it lit in the ocean breeze and then crossed his legs. "I think they do, Edwin, yes, but let's be clear that you inherited those grievances from the previous administration. No one believes that you are the cause of those grievances or that you have done anything but attempt to deal with them honorably."

Curtis nodded. "I offered them a raise. They turned it down flat." Because it was sixteen years too late, Storrow thought.

"I initiated several committees to study their work conditions." Cherry-picked with toadies, Storrow thought.

598DENNIS LEHANE

"It's an issue of respect now. Respect for the office. Respect for this country."

"Only if you make it thus, Edwin." Storrow uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. "The men respect you, Commissioner. They do. And they respect this Commonwealth. I believe my report will bear that out."

"Your report," Curtis said. "What about my report? When do I share my voice?"

Good God, it was like fighting over toys in a nursery.

"Commissioner Curtis," the governor said, "we all understand your position. You should no more be beholden to the brazen demands of workingmen than--"

"Beholden?" Curtis said. "I am no such thing, sir. I am extorted. That is what this is, pure and simple. Extortion."

"Be that as it may," Peters said, "we think that the best course--"

"--is to forgo personal feelings at this time," Coolidge said.

"This is not personal." Curtis craned his head forward and screwed his face into a mask of victimization. "This is public. This is principle. This is Seattle, gentlemen. And St. Petersburg. And Liverpool. If we let them win here, then we truly will be Russianized. The principles that Jefferson and Franklin and Washington stood for will--"

"Edwin, please." Storrow couldn't help himself. "I may have brokered a settlement that will allow us to regain our footing, both locally and nationally."

Edwin Curtis clapped his hands together. "Well, I for one, would love to hear it."

"The mayor and the city council have found the funds to raise the level of the men's pay to a fair scale for 1919 and beyond. It's fair, Edwin, not a gross capitulation, I assure you. We've further designated monies to address and improve the working conditions in the precinct houses. It's a tight budget we're working with and some other public workers will not receive departmental funding they'd been counting on, but we tried to minimize the overall damage. The greater good will be served."

THE GIVEN DAYCurtis nodded, his lips white. "You think so."