The Given Day (Coughlin 1)

"Without a one," O'Meara said. "I assure you."

"Then certainly," Mark Denton said.

O'Meara nodded. "Let's meet back here in one month. In that time, let's refrain from voicing complaints in the press or stirring up the bees' nest in any way. Is that acceptable?"

Danny and Mark nodded.

Mayor Peters stood and shook their hands. "I may be new to the post, gentlemen, but I hope to reward your confi dence."

O'Meara came from around the desk and pointed at the offi ce doors. "When we open those doors, the press will be there. Camera flashes, shouted questions, the like. Are any of you undercover at the moment?"

Danny couldn't believe how quick the smile broke across his face or how inexplicably proud he felt to say, "Not anymore, sir."

In a rear booth at the Warren Tavern, Danny handed Eddie McKenna a box that contained his Daniel Sante clothes and rooming-house key, various notes he'd taken that hadn't been included in his reports, and all the literature he'd studied to inform his cover.

Eddie pointed at Danny's clean-shaven face. "So, you're done."

"I am done."

McKenna picked through the box, then pushed it aside. "There's no chance he could change his mind? Wake up after a good night's sleep and--?"

Danny gave him a look that cut him off.

"Think they would have killed you?"

"No. Logically? No. But when you hear four hammers cock at your back?"

McKenna nodded. "Sure that'd make Christ Himself revisit the wisdom of His convictions."

They sat in silence for a while, each to his own drink and his own thoughts.

"I could build you a new cover, move you to a new cell. There's one in--"

"Stop. Please. I'm done. I don't even know what the fuck we were doing. I don't know why--"

"Ours is not to reason why."

"Mine is not to reason why. This is your baby."

McKenna shrugged.

"What did I do here?" Danny's gaze fell on his open palms. "What was accomplished? Outside of making lists of union guys and harmless Bolsheviki--"

"There are no harmless Reds."

"--what the fuck was the point?"

Eddie McKenna drank from his brown bucket of beer and then relit his cigar, one eye squinting through the smoke. "We've lost you." "What?" Danny said.

"We have, we have," Eddie said softly.

"I don't know what you're on about. It's me. Danny."

McKenna looked up at the ceiling tiles. "When I was a boy, I stayed with an uncle for a time. Can't remember if he was on me mother's side or me da's, but he was gray Irish trash just the same. No music to him a'tall, no love, no light. But he had a dog, yeah? Mangy mutt, he was, and dumb as peat, but he had love, he had light. Sure he'd dance in place when he saw me coming up the hill, his tail awagging, dance for the sheer joy of knowing I'd pet him, I'd run with him, I'd rub his patchy belly." Eddie drew on his cigar and exhaled slowly. "Became sick, he did. Worms. Started sneezing blood. Time comes, me uncle tells me to take him to the ocean. Cuffs me when I refuse. Cuffs me worse when I cry. So I carry the cur to the ocean. I carry him out to a point just above me chin and I let him go. I'm supposed to hold him down for a count of sixty, but there's little point. He's weak and feeble and sad and he sinks without a noise. I walk back into shore, and me uncle cuffs me again. 'For what?' I shout. He points. And there he is, that feeble brick-headed mutt, swimming back in. Swimming toward me. Eventually, he makes it to shore. He's shivering, he's heaving, he's sopping wet. A marvel, this dog, a romantic, a hero. And he looks at me just in time for me uncle to bring the axe down on his spine and cut him in half."

He sat back. He lifted his cigar from the ashtray. A barmaid removed half a dozen mugs from the next table over. She walked back to the bar, and the room was quiet.

"Fuck you tell a story like that for?" Danny said. "Fuck's wrong with you?"

"It's what's wrong with you, boy. You've got 'fair' in your head now. Don't deny it. You think it's attainable. You do. I can see it."

Danny leaned in, his beer sloshing down the side of his bucket as he lowered it from his mouth. "I'm supposed to fucking learn something from the dog story? What--that life is hard? That the game is rigged? You think this is news? You think I believe the unions or the Bolshies or the BSC stand a spit of a chance of getting their due?"

"Then why are you doing it? Your father, your brother, me--we're worried, Dan. Worried sick. You blew your cover with Fraina because some part of you wanted to blow it."

"No."

"And yet you sit there and tell me you know that no reasonable or sensible government--local, state, or federal--will ever allow the Sovietizing of this country. Not ever. But you continue to get deeper and deeper into the BSC muck and further and further from those who hold you dear. Why? You're me godson, Dan? Why?"

"Change hurts."

"That's your answer?"

Danny stood. "Change hurts, Eddie, but believe me, it's coming." "It isn't."

"It's got to."

Eddie shook his head. "There are fights, m' boy, and there is folly. And I fear you'll soon learn the difference." chapter nineteen In the kitchen with Nora late of a Tuesday afternoon, Nora just back from her job at the shoe factory, Luther chopping vegetables for the soup, Nora peeling potatoes, when Nora said, "You've a girl?"

"Hmm?"

She gave him those pale eyes of hers, the sparkle of them like a fl ickering match. "You heard what I said. Have you a girl somewhere?" Luther shook his head. "No, ma'am."

She laughed.

"What?"

"Sure, you're lying."

"Uh? What makes you say that?"

"I can hear it in your voice, I can."

"Hear what?"

She gave him a throaty laugh. "Love."

"Just 'cause I love someone don't mean she's mine."

"Now that's the truest thing you've said all week. Just because you love someone doesn't mean . . ." She trailed off and went back to hum--

ming softly as she peeled the potatoes, the humming a habit of hers Luther was fairly certain she was unaware of.

Luther used the flat of the knife to push the chopped celery off the cutting board and into the pot. He sidestepped Nora to pull some carrots from the colander in the sink and took them back down the counter with him, chopped off their tops before lining them up and slicing them four at a time.

"She pretty?" Nora asked.