The Given Day (Coughlin 1)

Fraina stroked his beard and nodded. "That's what I thought at fi rst. But then I began to wonder. There were three of us clustered together. Four, if we count you bringing up the rear. And beyond us? A big, heavy touring car. So, I put it to you, Comrade Sante, where did the bullets go?"

"The sidewalk, I'd guess."

Fraina clucked his tongue and shook his head. "Unfortunately, no.

We checked there. We checked everywhere within a two-block radius. This was easy to do, because the police never checked. They never looked. A gun fired within city limits. Two shots discharged? And the police treated it as if it were no more than a hurled insult."

"Hmm," Danny said. "That is--"

"Are you federal?"

"Comrade?"

Fraina removed his glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief. "Justice Department? Immigration? Bureau of Investigation?"

"I don't--"

He stood and placed his glasses back on. He looked down at Danny. "Or local, perhaps? Part of this undercover dragnet we hear is sweeping the city? I understand the anarchists in Revere have a new member who claims to be from the north of Italy but speaks with the accent and cadence of one from the south." He strolled around to the back of Danny's chair. "And you, Daniel? Which are you?"

"I'm Daniel Sante, a machinist from Harlansburg, Pennsylvania. I'm no bull, Comrade. I'm no government slug. I am exactly who I say I am."

Fraina crouched behind him. He leaned in and whispered in Danny's ear, "What other response would you give?"

"None." Danny tilted his head until he could see Fraina's lean profile. "Because it's the truth."

Fraina placed his hands on the back of the chair. "A man tries to assassinate me and just happens to be a terrible shot. You come to my rescue because you just happen to be exiting at the same time as I. The police just happen to arrive within seconds of the gunshot. Everyone in the restaurant is detained and yet none are questioned. The assassin vanishes from police custody. You are released without charge and, in the height of providence, just happen to be a writer of some talent." He strolled around to the front of the chair again and tapped his temple. "You see how fortunate all these events are?"

"Then they're fortunate."

"I don't believe in luck, Comrade. I believe in logic. And this story of yours has none." He crouched in front of Danny. "Go now. Tell your bourgeois bosses that the Lettish Workingman's Society is above reproach and violates no law. Tell them not to send a second rube to prove otherwise."

Danny heard footsteps enter the storeroom behind him. More than a pair. Maybe three pair, all told.

"I am exactly who I say," Danny said. "I am dedicated to the cause and to the revolution. I'm not leaving. I refuse to deny who I am for any man."

Fraina raised himself from his haunches. "Go."

"No, Comrade."

Pyotr Glaviach used one elbow to push himself away from the cooler door. His other arm was behind his back.

"One last time," Fraina said. "Go."

"I can't, Comrade. I--"

Four pistols cocked their hammers. Three came from behind him, the fourth from Pyotr Glaviach.

"Stand!" Glaviach shouted, the echo pinging off the tight stone walls.

Danny stood.

Pyotr Glaviach stepped up behind him. His shadow spilled onto the floor in front of Danny, and that shadow extended one arm.

Fraina gave Danny a mournful smile. "This is the only option left for you and it could expire at a moment's notice." He swept his arm toward the door.

"You're wrong."

"No," Fraina said. "I am not. Good night."

Danny didn't reply. He walked past him. The four men in the rear of the room cast their shadows on the wall in front of him. He opened the door with a fiery itch at the base of his skull and exited the bakery into the night.

The last thing Danny did in the Daniel Sante rooming house was shave off his beard in the second-fl oor bathroom. He used shears to cut away the majority of it, placing the thick tufts in a paper bag, and then soaked it with hot water and applied the shaving cream in a thick lather.

With each stroke of the straight razor, he felt leaner, lighter. When he wiped off the last stray spot of cream and the final errant hair, he smiled.

Danny and Mark Denton met with Commissioner O'Meara and Mayor Andrew Peters in the mayor's office on a Saturday afternoon.

The mayor struck Danny as a misplaced man, as if he didn't fit in his offi ce, his big desk, his stiff, high-collared shirt and tweed suit. He played with the phone on his desk a lot and aligned and realigned his desk blotter.

He smiled at them once they'd taken their seats. "The BPD's finest, I suspect, eh, gents?"

Danny smiled back.

Stephen O'Meara stood behind the desk. Before he'd said a word, he commanded the room. "Mayor Peters and I have looked into the budget for this coming year and we see places we could move a dollar here, a dollar there. It won't, I assure you, be enough. But it's a start, gentlemen, and it's a little more than that--it's a public acknowledgment that we take your grievances seriously. Isn't that right, Mr. Mayor?"

Peters looked up from his pencil holder. "Oh, absolutely, yes."

"We've consulted with city sanitation crews about launching an investigation into the health conditions of each and every station house. They've agreed to commence within the first month of the new year." O'Meara met Danny's eyes. "Is that a satisfactory start?"

Danny looked over at Mark and then back at the commissioner. "Absolutely, sir."

Mayor Peters said, "We're still paying back loans on the Commonwealth Avenue sewer project, gentlemen, not to mention the streetcar route expansions, the home fuel crisis during the war, and a substantial operating deficit for the public schools in the white districts. Our bond rating is low and sinking further. And now cost of living has exploded at an unprece dented rate. So we do--we very much do--appreciate your concerns. We do. But we need time."

"And faith," O'Meara said. "Just a bit more of that. Would you gen--

tlemen be willing to poll your fellow officers? Get a list of their grievances and personal accounts of their day-to-day experiences on the job? Personal testimonials as to how this fiscal imbalance is affecting their home lives? Would you be willing to fully document the sanitation conditions at the station houses and list what you believe are repeated abuses of power at the upper chains of command?"

"Without fear of reprisal?" Danny said.