Arabella said, “No, no, no.”
Mrs. DiMassi cocked her arm again and spoke as fast as Arabella. “Questi Americani ci trattano come cani. Non ti permettero’di umiliarmi dinanzi ad uno di loro. Apri il cappotto, o te lo strappo di dosso!”
Whatever she said—Danny caught “American dogs” and “don’t disgrace me”—it worked. Arabella opened her coat and removed a white paper bag. She handed it to Mrs. DiMassi who handed it to Danny.
Danny looked inside and saw a stack of paper. He pulled out the top sheet:
While you rest and kneel, we worked. We executed.
This is the beginning, not the end. Never the end.
Your childish god and childish blood run to the sea.
Your childish world is next.
Danny showed the note to Steve and said to Mrs. DiMassi, “When was she supposed to distribute these?”
Mrs. DiMassi spoke to her niece. Arabella started to shake her head, then stopped. She whispered a word to Mrs. DiMassi who turned back to Danny. “Sundown.”
He turned back to Steve. “How many churches have a late mass?”
“In the North End? Two, maybe three. Why?”
Danny pointed at the note. “‘While you rest and kneel.’ Yeah?”
Steve shook his head. “No.”
“You rest on the Sabbath,” Danny said. “You kneel in church. And at the end—your blood runs to the sea. Gotta be a church near the waterfront.”
Steve went to Mrs. DiMassi’s phone. “I’m calling it in. What’s your guess?”
“There’s only two churches that fit. Saint Teresa’s and Saint Thomas’s.”
“Saint Thomas doesn’t have an evening mass.”
Danny headed for the door. “You’ll catch up?”
Steve smiled, phone to his ear. “Me and my cane, sure.” He waved Danny off. “Go, go. And, Dan?”
Danny paused at the door. “Yeah?”
“Shoot first,” he said. “And shoot often.”
St. Teresa’s stood at the corner of Fleet and Atlantic across from Lewis Wharf. One of the oldest churches in the North End, it was small and starting to crumble. Danny bent to catch his breath, his shirt drenched in sweat from his run. He pulled his watch from his pocket: five-forty-eight. Mass would end soon. If, like Salutation, the bomb was in the basement, about the only thing to do would be to rush into the church and order everyone out. Steve had made the call, so the bomb squad couldn’t be far off. But if the bomb was in the basement, why hadn’t it detonated? Parishioners had been in there for over forty-five minutes. Ample time to blow out the floor beneath them….
Danny heard it then, off in the distance, the first siren, the first patrol car leaving the Oh-One, surely followed by others.
The intersection was quiet, empty—a few jalopies parked in front of the church, none of them more than a step removed from a horse-drawn cart, though a couple had been maintained with pride. He scanned the rooftops across the street, thinking: Why a church? Even for anarchists, it seemed political suicide, especially in the North End. Then he remembered that the only reason any churches in the neighborhood offered early-evening mass had been to cater to workers deemed so “essential” during the war they couldn’t be afforded a day off on the Sabbath. “Essential” meant some connection, however broad, to the military—men and women who worked with arms, steel, rubber, or industrial alcohol. So this church wasn’t just a church, it was a military target.
Inside the church, dozens of voices rose in hymn. He had no choice—get the people out. Why the bomb hadn’t gone off yet, he couldn’t say. Maybe he was a week early. Maybe the bomber was having trouble with the detonation—anarchists often did. There were dozens of plausible reasons for the lack of an explosion, but none of them would mean shit if he let the worshippers die. Get them to safety, then worry about questions or possible egg on his face. For now, just get them the fuck out.
He started across the street and noticed that one of the jalopies was double-parked.
There was no need for it. There were plenty of spaces on both sides of the street. The only stretch of curb that wasn’t free was directly in front of the church. And that’s where the car was double-parked. It was an old Rambler 63 coupe, probably 1911 or ’12. Danny paused in the middle of the street, just froze as the skin along his throat and under his arms grew clammy. He expelled a breath and moved again, quicker now. As he drew closer to the car, he could see the driver slouched low behind the wheel, a dark hat pulled down his forehead. The sound of the siren grew sharper and was joined by several more. The driver sat up. His left hand was on the wheel. Danny couldn’t see his right.
Inside the church, the hymn ended.
The driver cocked his head and turned his face toward the street.
Federico. No gray in his hair anymore, and he’d shaved his mustache, his features somehow leaner because of the changes, hungrier.
He saw Danny but his eyes didn’t display recognition, just a vague curiosity at this large Bolshevik with the beastly beard crossing a street in the North End.
The doors to the church opened.
The lead siren sounded like it was a block away. A boy came out of a shop four doors down, a tweed scally cap on his head, something under his arm.
Danny reached into his coat. Federico’s eyes locked on Danny’s.
Danny pulled his gun from his coat as Federico reached for something on the car seat.
The first parishioners reached the church steps.
Danny waved his gun. He shouted, “Get back inside!”
No one seemed to realize he was talking to them. Danny stepped to his left, swung his arm, and fired a round into Federico’s windshield.
On the church steps, several people screamed.
Danny fired a second time and the windshield shattered.
“Back inside!”
Something hot hissed just beneath his earlobe. He saw a white muzzle flash off to his left—the boy, firing a pistol at him. Federico’s door popped open; he held up a stick of dynamite, the wick sparking. Danny cupped his elbow in his hand and shot Federico in the left kneecap. Federico yelped and fell against the car. The stick of dynamite dropped onto the front seat.
Danny was close enough now to see the other sticks piled in the backseat, two or three bundles of them.
A chunk of cobblestone spit off the street. He ducked and fired back at the boy. The boy hit the ground and his cap fell off and long caramel hair cascaded out from under it as the boy rolled under a car. No boy. Tessa. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement from the Rambler and he fired again. The bullet hit the running board, an embarrassing shot, and then his revolver clicked on empty. He found bullets in his pocket and emptied his shells onto the street. He ran in a crouch over to a streetlamp pole and placed his shoulder to it and tried to reload his revolver with shaking hands as bullets thunked off the cars nearest to him and hit the lamp pole.
In a plaintive, despairing voice, Tessa called Federico’s name and then shouted, “Scappa, scappa, amore mio! Mettiti in salvo! Scappa!”
Federico twisted his way off the front seat, his good knee hitting the street, and Danny stepped from behind the lamp pole and fired. The first shot hit the door, but the second caught Federico in the ass. Again, the strange yelp as the blood sprouted and darkened the back of his pants. He flopped against the seat and crawled back inside. Danny got a sudden flash of the two of them in Federico’s apartment, Federico smiling that warm and glorious smile of his. He pushed the image away as Tessa screamed, a guttural wail of broken hope. She had both hands on the pistol when she fired. Danny dove to his left and rolled on the street. The rounds ripped up the cobblestone, and he kept rolling until he reached a car on the other side of the street and heard Tessa’s revolver dry-fire. Federico lunged out of the Rambler. He arched his back and turned. He pushed off the car door, and Danny shot him in the stomach. Federico fell back into the Rambler. The door closed against his legs.
Danny fired where he??
?d last seen Tessa, but she wasn’t there anymore. She’d run several doors down from the church, and she pressed a hand to her hip and the hand was red. Tears poured down her face, and her mouth was open in a noiseless howl. As the first prowl car came around the corner, Danny gave her one last look and ran toward the cruiser with his hands raised, trying to wave it off before it got too close.
The blast bubbled outward as if it came from under water. The first wave knocked Danny’s legs out from under him and he landed in the gutter and watched the Rambler jump four feet in the air. It came back to earth almost exactly where it had left it. The windows blew out, and the wheels collapsed, and a portion of the roof peeled back like a can. The front steps of the church splintered and disgorged limestone. The heavy wooden doors fell off their hinges. The stained glass windows collapsed. Debris and white dust floated in the air. Flames poured out of the car. Flames and oily black smoke. Danny stood. He could feel blood dripping out of his ears.
A face loomed in front of his. The face was familiar. The face mouthed his name. Danny held up his hands, one of them still holding his revolver. The cop—Danny remembered his name now, Officer Glen Something, Glen Patchett—shook his head: No, you keep your gun.
Danny lowered the gun and placed it in his coat. The heat of the flames found his face. He could see Federico in there, blackened and afire, leaning against the passenger door, as if sleeping, a guy along for a drive. With his eyes closed, he reminded Danny of that first night they’d broken bread together, when Federico, seemingly enraptured by music, had closed his eyes and mock-conducted the music spilling from his phonograph. People began to exit the church, coming around from the sides, and Danny could hear them suddenly, as if from the bottom of a hole a mile deep.
He turned to Glen, “If you can hear me, nod.”
Patchett gave him a curious look but nodded.
“Put out an APB on a Tessa Ficara. Twenty years old. Italian. Five five, long brown hair. She’s bleeding from the right hip. Glen? She’s dressed as a boy. Tweed knickers, plaid shirt, suspenders, brown work shoes. You got that?”
Patchett scribbled in his notebook. He nodded.
“Armed and dangerous,” Danny said.
More scribbling.
His left ear canal opened with a pop, and more blood sluiced down his neck, but now he could hear and the sounds were sudden and painful. He placed a hand to the ear. “Fuck!”
“You hear me now?”
“Yeah, Glen. Yeah.”
“Who’s the crisper in the car?”
“Federico Ficara. He’s got federal warrants out on him. You probably heard about him at roll call about a month ago. Bomber.”
“Dead bomber. You shoot him?”
“Three times,” Danny said.
Glen looked at all the white dust and debris as it fell into their hair, onto their faces. “Hell of a way to fuck up a Sunday.”
Eddie McKenna arrived on-scene about ten minutes after the explosion. Danny sat amid the rubble on what remained of the church steps and listened as his godfather talked to Fenton, the Bomb Squad sergeant.
“Best we can figure, Eddie? The plan was to detonate the dynamite in the car once all the people were out front, you know, milling about for ten minutes afterward, the way these people do. But when the wops start coming out of the church, Coughlin’s kid over there yells at them to go back inside. Makes his point by discharging his weapon. So the people run back inside and Coughlin starts firing at the asshole in the Rambler. Someone else comes into play around then—I’m hearing from Tactical that it’s a woman, believe that?—and he’s drawing her fire, too, but hell if he’s letting that asshole out of the car. Makes him blow up with his own bombs.”
“A delicious irony, that,” McKenna said. “Special Squads will take over from here, Sergeant.”
“Tell that to Tactical.”
“Oh, I will. Rest assured.” He placed a hand on Fenton’s shoulder before he could walk off. “In your professional opinion, Sergeant, what would have happened if that bomb had gone off while the parishioners congregated on the street?”
“Twenty dead minimum. Maybe thirty. The rest wounded, maimed, what have you.”
“What have you, indeed,” McKenna said. He walked over to Danny, shaking his head with a smile. “You have so much as a scratch?”
“Doesn’t appear so,” Danny said. “Fucking ears hurt like hell, though.”
“First Salutation, then working the flu like you did, and now this?” McKenna sat on the church steps and hitched his pant legs at the knee. “How many near misses can one man have, boy?”
“Apparently, I’m putting the question to the test.”
“Rumor is you winged her. This Tessa cunt.”
Danny nodded. “Caught her in the right hip. Mighta been my bullet, mighta been ricochet.”
“You got dinner in an hour, don’t you?” McKenna said.
Danny cocked his head. “You don’t honestly expect me to go, do you?”
“Why not?”
“The guy I’m supposed to meet for dinner is probably sewing Tessa up as we speak.”
McKenna shook his head. “She’s a soldier, she is. She shan’t panic and cross the city before full dark while she’s bleeding. She’s holed up somewhere right now.” His eyes scanned the buildings around them. “Probably still in this neighborhood. I’ll put a major presence on the street tonight; it should pin her in. At least it’ll keep her from traveling far. Also, your friend Nathan is hardly the only dirty doctor in the game. So I think the dinner should go ahead as planned. Sure now, it’s a calculated risk, but one worth taking.”
Danny searched his face for the joke.
“You’re this close,” McKenna said. “Bishop asked for your writing. You gave it to him. Now he’s asked you to dinner. Fraina, I bet you all the gold in Ireland, will be there.”
“We don’t know that for—”
“We do,” McKenna said. “We can infer it. And if all the stars align and Fraina takes you up to the offices of Revolutionary Age?”
“What? You want me to just say, ‘Hey, while we’re all chummy, mind giving me the mailing list of your entire organization?’ Something like that?”
“Steal it,” McKenna said.
“What?”
“If you get inside the offices, fucking steal it, lad.”
Danny stood, his balance still a little off, one of his ears still plugged up. “What is so all-important about these lists?”
“They’re a way to keep tabs.”
“Tabs.”
McKenna nodded.
“You’re so full of shit you could fill a barn.” Danny walked down the steps. “And I’m not going to be anywhere near the offices. We’re meeting in a restaurant.”
McKenna smiled. “All right, all right. Special Squads will give you some insurance, make sure these Bolshies don’t even think of looking at you funny for a couple of days. Will that make you happy?”
“What kind of insurance?”
“You know Hamilton from my squad, yes?”
Danny nodded. Jerry Hamilton. Jersey Jerry. A goon; all that separated him from a prison cell was a badge.
“I know Hamilton.”
“Good. Keep your eyes peeled tonight and be on the ready.”
“For what?”
“You’ll know it when it happens, believe you me.” McKenna stood and slapped at the white dust on his pants. It had been falling steadily since the explosion. “Now go and clean yourself up. You’ve got tracks of blood running down your neck. You’ve got this dust all over you, you do. Covering your hair, your face. Look like one of them Bushmen I’ve seen in the picture books.”
CHAPTER eighteen
When Danny arrived at the restaurant, he found the door locked and the windows shuttered.
“It’s closed on Sundays.” Nathan Bishop stepped out of a darkened doorway into the weak yellow light cast by the nearest street-lamp. “My mistake.”
Danny looked up and down the e
mpty street. “Where’s Comrade Fraina?”
“At the other place.”
“What other place?”
Nathan frowned. “The other place we’re going.”
“Oh.”
“Because this place was closed.”
“Right.”
“Have you always suffered Mongoloidism, or did you just come down with it?”
“Always.”
Nathan held out his hand. “Car’s across the street.”
Danny saw it now—an Olds Model M, Pyotr Glaviach behind the wheel looking straight ahead. He turned the key, and the rumble of the heavy engine echoed up the street.
Nathan, walking toward the car, looked back over his shoulder. “You coming?”
Danny hoped McKenna’s men were somewhere he couldn’t see, watching, not boozing it up in a bar around the corner until they decided to stroll on over to the restaurant and make whatever move they had planned. He could picture it—Jersey Jerry and some other thug with a tin shield, both of them standing outside the darkened restaurant, one of them looking at the address he’d written on his own hand, then shaking his head with a five-year-old’s befuddlement.
Danny stepped off the curb and walked toward the car.
They drove a few blocks and then turned onto Harrison as a light rain fell. Pyotr Glaviach turned on his wipers. Like the rest of the car, they were heavy things, and the back-and-forth slap of them found Danny’s chest.
“Quiet tonight,” Nathan said.
Danny looked out at Harrison Avenue, its empty sidewalks. “Yeah. Well, it’s Sunday.”
“I was talking about you.”
The restaurant was called Oktober, the name appearing solely on the door in red lettering so small that Danny had passed it several times over the last couple of months without ever knowing it was there. Three tables inside, and only one of them was set. Nathan led Danny to it.
Pyotr threw the lock on the front door and then took a seat by it, his large hands lying in his lap like sleeping dogs.
Louis Fraina stood at the tiny bar, speaking rapidly on the phone in Russian. He nodded a lot and scribbled furiously in a notepad as the barmaid, a heavyset woman in her sixties, brought Nathan and Danny a bottle of vodka and a basket of brown bread. Nathan poured them each a drink and then raised his in toast. Danny did the same.