The Given Day (Coughlin 1)

"Fucking Eddie, they're not--"

"What'd you say?"

"--fucking terrorists. They're Communists. And they'd love to see us fail, yes, see this whole government collapse and cascade into the ocean. I grant you that. But they're not bomb throwers."

"You're naive, lad."

"So be it." Danny reached for the door handle.

"Dan." McKenna put a hand on his shoulder.

Danny waited.

"Too much has been asked of you this last couple of months. I agree, as God is my judge. But it won't be much longer 'til you'll have your gold shield. And all, all will be perfectly brilliant then."

Danny nodded so Eddie would let go of his shoulder. Eddie dropped his hand.

"No, it won't," Danny said and got out of the car.

The next afternoon, in the confessional of a church he'd never entered before, Danny knelt and blessed himself. The priest said, "You smell like liquor."

"That's because I've been drinking, Father. I'd share, but I left the bottle back at my apartment."

"Have you come to confess, son?"

"I don't know."

"How can you not know? You either sinned or you didn't."

"I shot a man to death yesterday. Outside a church. I figure you've heard about it by now."

"I have, yes. The man was an anarchist. You . . . ?"

"Yes. I shot him three times. Tried five times," Danny said, "but I missed twice. Thing is, Father? You'll tell me I did right. Yeah?" "That's for God to--"

"He was going to blow up a church. One of yours."

"Correct. You did right."

"But he's dead. I removed him from this earth. And I can't shake the feeling . . ."

A long silence followed, made all the longer by the fact that it was church silence; it smelled of incense and oil soap and was hemmed in by thick velvet and dark wood.

"What feeling?"

"The feeling that we--me and the guy I shot?--we're just living in the same barrel? See?"

"No. You're being obtuse."

"Forgive me," Danny said. "There's this big barrel of shit. See? And it's--"

"Watch your language."

"--where the ruling class and all the Haves don't live, right? It's where they fucking throw every consequence they don't want to think about. And the idea--"

"You are in a house of God."

"--the idea is, Father? The idea is that we're supposed to play nice and go away when they're done with us. Accept what they give us and drink it and eat it and clap for it and say, 'Mmmm, more, please. Thanks.' And, Father, I gotta tell you, I've about had my fucking fill."

"Leave this church at once."

"Sure. You coming?"

"I think you need to sober up."

"And I think you need to leave this mausoleum you're hiding in and see how your parishioners really live. Done that lately, Father?"

"I--"

"Ever?"

Please," Louis Fraina said, "take a seat." It was just past midnight. Three days since the manufactured assassination attempt. At around eleven, Pyotr Glaviach had called Danny and given him the address of a bakery in Mattapan. When Danny arrived, Pyotr Glaviach stepped from the Olds Model M and waved Danny into an alley that ran between the bakery and a tailor. Danny followed him around to the back and into the storeroom. Louis Fraina waited in a hard- backed wooden chair with its twin directly across from him.

Danny took that seat, close enough to the small, dark- eyed man to reach out and stroke the whiskers of his neatly trimmed beard. Fraina's eyes never left Danny's face. They were not the blazing eyes of a fanatic. They were the eyes of an animal so used to being hunted that some boredom had settled in. He crossed his legs at the ankles and leaned back in his chair. "Tell me what happened after we left."

Danny jerked a thumb behind him. "I've told Nathan and Comrade Glaviach."

Fraina nodded. "Tell me."

"Where is Nathan, by the way?"

Fraina said, "Tell me what happened. Who was this man who tried to kill me?"

"I never got his name. Never even spoke with him."

"Yes, he seems quite the ghost."

Danny said, "I tried to. The police attacked immediately. They hit me, they hit him, they hit me some more. Then they threw us both in the back of the car and drove us to the station house."

"Which one?"

"Roxbury Crossing."

"And you exchanged no pleasantries with my assailant on the ride there?"

"I tried. He didn't respond. Then the copper told me to shut my hole."

"He said that? Shut your hole?"

Danny nodded. "Threatened to run his nightstick through it." Fraina's eyes sparkled. "Vivid."

The floor was caked with old flour. The room smelled of yeast and sweat and sugar and mold. Large brown tins, some the height of a man, stood against the walls, and bags of flour and grain were stacked between them. A bare lightbulb dangled from a chain in the center of the room and left pools of shadow where rodents squeaked. The ovens had probably been shut off since noon, but the room was thick with heat.

Fraina said, "A matter of feet, wouldn't you say?"

Danny put a hand in his pocket and found the button among some coins. He pressed it to his palm and leaned forward. "Comrade?"

"The would- be assassin." He waved at the air around him. "This man no one can find a record of. This man who went unseen, even by a comrade I know who was in the holding cell at Roxbury Crossing that night. A veteran of the first czarist revolution, this man, a true Lett like our comrade, Pyotr."

The big Estonian leaned against the large cooler door, his arms crossed, and gave no indication he'd heard his name.

"He didn't see you there, either," Fraina said.

"They never put me in the holding pen," Danny said. "They had their fun and shipped me in a paddy wagon to Charlestown. I told Comrade Bishop as much."

Fraina smiled. "Well, it's settled, then. Everything is fine." He clapped his hands. "Eh, Pyotr? What did I tell you?"

Glaviach kept his eyes on the shelving behind Danny's head. "Everything fi ne."

"Everything is fine," Fraina said.

Danny sat there, the heat of the place finding his feet, the underside of his scalp.

Fraina leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Except, well, this man was only seven or eight feet away when he fired. How do you miss at that range?"

Danny said, "Nerves?"