The Given Day

  “How?”

  Finch handed Danny a photograph. The quality was poor, as if it had been reproduced several times. The man in it looked to be about thirty with a thin, patrician nose and eyes narrowed to slits. He was clean-shaven. His hair was fair, and his skin appeared pale, though that was more of a guess on Danny’s part.

  “Doesn’t look like a card-carrying Bolshie.”

  “And yet he is,” Finch said.

  Danny handed the photograph back. “Who is he?”

  “Name’s Nathan Bishop. He’s a real beaut’. A British doctor and radical. These terrorists accidentally blow off a hand or slip away from a riot with wounds? They can’t just stroll into an emergency room. They go to see our friend here. Nathan Bishop’s the company quack for the Massachusetts radical movement. Radicals don’t tend to fraternize outside their individual cells, but Nathan’s the connective tissue. He knows all the players.”

  “And he drinks,” Hoover said. “Quite copiously.”

  “So get one of your own men to cozy up to him.”

  Finch shook his head. “Won’t work.”

  “Why?”

  “Honestly? We don’t have the budget.” Finch looked embarrassed. “So we came to your father, and he told us you’ve already begun the prep work to go after a radical cell. We want you to circle the entire movement. Get us license plate numbers, membership counts. All the while, you keep your eyes peeled for Bishop. Your paths will cross sooner or later. You get close to him, you get close to the rest of these sons-a-bitches. You heard of the Roxbury Lettish Workingman’s Society?”

  Danny nodded. “’Round here they’re just called the Letts.”

  Finch cocked his head, as if this were news to him. “For whatever bullshit sentimental reason, they seem to be Bishop’s favorite group. He’s friends with the guy who runs it, a Hebe name of Louis Fraina with documented ties to Mother Russia. We’re hearing rumors Fraina might be the lead plotter in all this.”

  “All what?” Danny said. “I was kept in the dark on a need-to-know basis.”

  Finch looked over at Thomas Coughlin. Danny’s father raised his hands, palms up, and shrugged.

  “They may be planning something big in the spring.”

  “What exactly?”

  “A national May Day revolt.”

  Danny laughed. No one else did.

  “You’re serious.”

  His father nodded. “A bomb campaign followed by armed revolt, coordinated among all the radical cells in all the major cities across the country.”

  “To what end? It’s not like they can storm Washington.”

  “That’s what Nicholas said about St. Petersburg,” Finch said.

  Danny removed his greatcoat and the blue coat underneath, stood there in his T-shirt as he unbuckled his gun belt and hung it on the closet door. He poured himself a glass of rye and didn’t offer anyone else the bottle. “So this Bishop fella, he’s connected to the Letts?”

  A nod from Finch. “Sometimes. The Letts have no ostensible connection to the Galleanists, but they’re all radicals, so Bishop has connections to both of them.”

  “Bolsheviks on one hand,” Danny said, “anarchists on the other.”

  “And Nathan Bishop linking them together.”

  “So I infiltrate the Letts and see if they’re making bombs for May Day or—what—if they’re connected to Galleani in some way?”

  “If not him, then his followers,” Hoover said.

  “And if they’re not?” Danny said.

  “Get their mailing list,” Finch said.

  Danny poured himself another drink. “What?”

  “Their mailing list. It’s the key to breaking any group of subversives. When I raided the offices of Cronaca last year? They’d just finished printing their latest issue. I got the names of every single person they were sending it to. Based on that list, the Justice Department managed to deport sixty of them.”

  “Uh-huh. I heard Justice once deported a guy for calling Wilson a cocksucker.”

  “We tried,” Hoover said. “Unfortunately the judge decided jail was more fitting.”

  Even Danny’s father was incredulous. “For calling a man a cocksucker?”

  “For calling the president of the United States a cocksucker,” Finch said.

  “And if I see Tessa or Federico?” Danny caught a whiff of her scent suddenly.

  “Shoot ’em in the face,” Finch said. “Then say, ‘Halt.’”

  “I’m missing a link here,” Danny said.

  His father said, “No, you’re fine.”

  “The Bolsheviks are talkers. The Galleanists are terrorists. One doesn’t necessarily equal the other.”

  “Nor do they necessarily cancel one another out,” Hoover said.

  “Be that as it may, they—”

  “Hey.” Finch’s tone was sharp, his eyes too clear. “You say ‘Bolsheviks’ or ‘Communists’ like there are nuances here the rest of us are too thick to grasp. They’re not different—they’re fucking terrorists. Every last one. This country’s heading for one hell of a showdown, Officer. We think that showdown will happen on May Day. That you won’t be able to swing a cat without hitting some revolutionary with a bomb or a rifle. And if that occurs, this country will tear itself apart. Picture it—the bodies of innocent Americans strewn all over our streets. Thousands of kids, mothers, workingmen. And for what? Because these cocksuckers hate the life we have. Because it’s better than theirs. Because we’re better than them. We’re richer, we’re freer, we’ve got a lot of the best real estate in a world that’s mostly desert or undrinkable ocean. But we don’t hoard that, we share. Do they thank us for sharing? For welcoming them to our shores? No. They try to kill us. They try to tear down our government like we’re the fucking Romanovs. Well, we’re not the fucking Romanovs. We’re the only successful democracy in the world. And we’re done apologizing for it.”

  Danny waited a moment and then clapped.

  Hoover looked ready to bite him again, but Finch took a bow.

  Danny saw Salutation Street again, the wall transformed into a white drizzle, the floor vanishing underfoot. He’d never talked about it to anyone, not even Nora. How did you put words to helplessness? You didn’t. You couldn’t. Falling from the first floor straight through to the basement, he’d felt seized with the utter certainty that he’d never eat again, walk a street again, feel a pillow against his cheek.

  You own me, he’d thought. To God. To chance. To his own helplessness.

  “I’ll do it,” Danny said.

  “Patriotism or pride?” Finch arched one eyebrow.

  “One of the two,” Danny said.

  After Finch and Hoover left, Danny and his father sat at the small table and took turns with the bottle of rye.

  “Since when did you let federal cops shoehorn in on BPD business?”

  “Since the war changed this country.” His father gave him a distant smile and took a sip from the bottle. “If we’d come out on the losing side, maybe we’d still be the same, but we didn’t. Volstead”—he held up the bottle and sighed—“will change it further. Shrink it, I think. The future is federal, not local.”

  “Your future?”

  “Mine?” His father chuckled. “I’m an old man from an even older time. No, not my future.”

  “Con’s?”

  His father nodded. “And yours. If you can keep your penis at home where it belongs.” He corked the bottle and slid it across to Danny. “How long will it take you to grow a beard fit for a Red?”

  Danny pointed at the thick stubble already sprouting from his cheeks. “Guess.”

  His father rose from the table. “Give your uniform a good brushing before putting it away. You won’t be needing it for a while.”

  “You saying I’m a detective?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Say it, Dad.”

  His father stared across the room at him, his face blank. Eventually, he nodded. “You do this, you’ll have y
our gold shield.”

  “All right.”

  “I hear you showed up at a BSC meeting the other night. After you told me you wouldn’t rat on your own.”

  Danny nodded.

  “So you’re a union man now?”

  Danny shook his head. “Just like their coffee.”

  His father gave him another long look, his hand on the doorknob. “You might want to strip that bed of yours, give those sheets a good washing.” He gave Danny a firm nod and left.

  Danny stood by the table and uncorked the rye. He took a sip as his father’s footsteps faded in the stairwell. He looked at his unmade bed and took another drink.

  CHAPTER eleven

  Jessie’s car only got Luther as far as central Missouri before one of the tires blew out just past Waynesville. He’d been sticking to back roads, driving at night as much as possible, but the tire blew out close to dawn. Jessie, of course, hadn’t packed a spare, so Luther had no choice but to drive on it. He crawled along the side of the road in first gear, never getting above the speed an ox pulled a plow, and just as the sun entered the valley, he found a filling station and pulled in.

  Two white men came out of the mechanic’s shed, one of them wiping his hands on a rag, the other pulling from a bottle of sassafras. It was that one who said it sure was a nice car and asked Luther how he’d come by it.

  Luther watched them spread out on either side of the hood, and the one with the rag wiped his brow with it and spit some chaw into the dirt.

  “I saved up,” Luther said.

  “Saved up?” the one with the bottle said. He was lean and lanky and wore a sheepskin coat against the cold. He had a thick head of red hair but up top he had a bald spot the size of a fist. “What kind of work you do?” He had a pleasant voice.

  “Work in a munitions factory for the war effort,” Luther said.

  “Uh-huh.” The man walked around the car, taking a good look, squatting from time to time to check the body lines for dents that might have been hammered out and painted over. “You were in a war once, weren’t you, Bernard?”

  Bernard spit again and wiped his mouth and ran his stubby fingers along the edge of the hood looking for the latch.

  “I was,” Bernard said. “Haiti.” He looked at Luther for the first time. “They dropped us off in this one town, said kill any natives give you a funny look.”

  “You get a lot of funny looks?” the redheaded man asked.

  Bernard popped the hood. “Not once we started shooting.”

  “What’s your name?” the other man asked Luther.

  “I’m just looking to fix this here flat.”

  “That’s a long name,” the man said. “Wouldn’t you say, Bernard?”

  Bernard stuck his head out from behind the hood. “It’s a mouthful.”

  “My name’s Cully,” the man said, and reached out his hand.

  Luther shook the hand. “Jessie.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Jessie.” Cully walked around the back of the car and hitched his pants to squat by the tire. “Oh, sure, there it is, Jessie. You want to look?”

  Luther walked down the car and followed Cully’s finger, saw a jagged tear the width of a nickel in the tire right by the rim.

  “Probably just a sharp stone,” Cully said.

  “Can you fix it?”

  “Yeah, we can fix it. How far’d you drive on it?”

  “Couple miles,” Luther said. “But real slow.”

  Cully took a close look at the wheel and nodded. “Don’t seem to be any damage to the rim. How far you come, Jessie?”

  The whole time he’d been driving, Luther kept telling himself he needed to come up with a story, but as soon as he’d start trying, his thoughts would drift to Jessie lying on the floor in his own blood or the Deacon trying to reach for his arm or Arthur Smalley inviting them into his home or Lila looking at him in the living room with her heart closed to him.

  He said, “Columbus, Ohio,” because he couldn’t say Tulsa.

  “But you came from the east,” Cully said.

  Luther could feel the cold wind biting the edges of his ears and he reached in and took his coat from the front seat. “I went to visit a friend in Waynesville,” Luther said. “Now I’m heading back.”

  “Took a drive through the cold from Columbus to Waynesville,” Cully said as Bernard closed the hood with a hard clank.

  “That’ll happen,” Bernard said, coming down the side of the car. “Nice coat.”

  Luther looked at it. It had been Jessie’s, a fine wool cheviot carovette overcoat with a convertible collar. For a man who loved to dress, he’d been prouder of this coat than anything he owned.

  “Thank you,” Luther said.

  “Might roomy,” Bernard said.

  “What’s that?”

  “A bit big for you is all,” Cully said with a helpful smile as he straightened to his full height. “What you think, Bern’? Can we fix this man’s tire?”

  “Don’t see why not.”

  “How’s that engine looking?”

  Bernard said, “Man takes care of his car. Everything under that hood is cherry. Yes, sir.”

  Cully nodded. “Well, Jessie, we’re happy to oblige you then. We’ll get you up and running in no time.” He took a stroll around the car again. “But we got some funny laws in this county. One says I can’t work on a colored man’s car until I check his license against the registration. You got a license?”

  The man smiled all pleasant and logical.

  “I misplaced it.”

  Cully looked over at Bernard, then out at the empty road, then back at Luther. “That’s unfortunate.”

  “It’s just a flat.”

  “Oh, I know, Jessie, I do. Hell, it was up to me we’d have you fixed up and on the road five minutes from last Tuesday. We surely would. If it was up to me, I’ll tell you true, there’d be a whole lot less laws in this county. But they got their ways of doing things and it’s not my place to tell them different. I tell you what—it’s a slow day. Why don’t we let Bernard get to working on the car and I’ll drive you down to the county courthouse and you can just fill out an application and see if Ethel will make you up a new license on the spot?”

  Bernard ran his rag down along the hood. “This car ever been in an accident?”

  “No, suh,” Luther said.

  “First time he said ‘suh,’” Bernard said. “You notice that?”

  Cully said, “It did catch my attention.” He spread his hands to Luther. “It’s okay, Jessie. We’re just used to our Missouri coloreds showing a bit more deference. Again, makes no difference to me, you see. Just the way of things.”

  “Yes, suh.”

  “Twice!” Bernard said.

  “Whyn’t you grab your things,” Cully said, “and we’ll take that ride?”

  Luther took his suitcase from the backseat and a minute later he was in Cully’s pickup truck and they were driving west.

  After about ten minutes of silence, Cully said, “You know I fought in the war. You?”

  Luther shook his head.

  “Damnedest thing, Jessie, but I couldn’t tell you now what it was exactly we were fighting about. Seems like back in ’fourteen, that Serbian fella shot that Austrian fella? And next thing you know, in ’bout a minute, Germany was threatening Belgium and France was saying, well, you can’t threaten Belgium and then Russia—’member when they were in it?—they’re saying you can’t threaten France and before you know it, everyone’s shooting. Now you, you say you worked in a munitions factory, so I’m wondering—did they tell you what it was about?”

  Luther said, “No. To them I think it was just about munitions.”

  “Hell,” Cully said with a hearty laugh, “maybe that’s what it was about for all of us. Maybe that’s all indeed. Wouldn’t that be something?” He laughed again and nudged Luther’s thigh with his fist and Luther smiled in agreement because if the whole world were that stupid then it truly was something indeed.

>   “Yes, suh,” he said.

  “I read a bunch,” Cully said. “I hear at Versailles that they’re going to make Germany surrender something like fifteen percent of her coal production and near fifty percent of her steel. Fifty percent. Now how’s that dumb country supposed to ever get back on its feet? You wonder that, Jessie?”

  “I’m wondering it now,” he said, and Cully chuckled.

  “They supposed to give up, like, another fifteen percent of their territory. And all this for backing the play of a friend. All that. And the thing is, who amongst us picks our friends?”

  Luther thought of Jessie and wondered who Cully was thinking of as he stared at the window, his eyes gone wistful or rueful, Luther couldn’t tell.

  “No one,” Luther said.

  “Exactly. You don’t pick friends. You find each other. And any man don’t back a friend gives up the right to call himself a man in my opinion. And I understand, you gots to pay if you back a bad play by your friend, but do you have to be ground into the dirt? I don’t think so. World apparently thinks different, though.”

  He settled back in his seat, his arm loose against the wheel, and Luther wondered if he was expected to say something.

  “When I was in the war,” Cully said, “a plane flies over this field one day, starts dropping grenades? Whew. That’s a sight I try to forget. Grenades start hitting the trenches and everyone’s jumping out and the Germans start firing from their trenches and I’ll tell you, Jessie, wasn’t no way to tell hell from hell that day. What would you do?”

  “Suh?”

  Cully’s fingers rested lightly on the wheel. He looked over. “Stay in the trench with grenades falling on you or jump out into a field where boys were shooting at you?”

  “I can’t imagine, suh.”

  “I suspect you can’t. Hideous really, the cries boys make when they’re dying. Just hideous.” Cully shuddered and yawned at the same time. “Yes, sir. Sometimes life don’t give you a choice but between the hard thing and the harder thing. Times like that, man can’t afford to lose much time thinking. Just got to get doing.”

  Cully yawned again and went silent and they drove that way for another ten miles, the plains spread out around them, frozen stiff under a hard white sky. The cold gave everything the look of metal that had been rubbed with steel wool. Gray wisps of frost swirled along the edges of the road and kicked up in front of the grille. They reached a railroad crossing and Cully stopped the truck in the middle of the tracks, the engine giving off a low chug as he turned in his seat and looked over at Luther. He smelled of tobacco, though Luther had yet to see him smoke, and small pink veins sprouted from the corners of his eyes.