The Given Day (Coughlin 1)

The men who took the megaphone began to express similar sentiments. The testimonials to O'Meara faded away. They could hear the wind pick up outside, see the frost on the windows.

Dom Furst was up at the megaphone now, rolling up the sleeve of his dress blues so they could all see his arm. "These are the bug bites I got at the station just last night, boys. They jump to our beds when they're tired of riding the backs of the rats. And they answer our gripes with Curtis? He's one of them!" He pointed off in the general direction of Beacon Hill, his bare arm peppered with red bites. "There's a lot of men they could have picked to replace Stephen O'Meara and send the message 'We don't care.' But picking Edwin Up-Your-Arse Curtis? That's saying, 'Fuck you!'"

Some men banged chairs off the walls. Some threw their coffee cups at the windows.

"We better do something here," Danny said to Mark Denton. "Be my guest," Denton said.

"Fuck you?" Furst shouted. "I say, 'Fuck them.' You hear me? Fuck them!"

Danny was still working his way through the crowd toward the megaphone when the whole room picked up the chant:

Fuck them! Fuck them! Fuck them! Fuck them!

He gave Dom a smile and a nod and stepped behind him to the megaphone.

"Gentlemen," Danny tried but was drowned out by the continuous chant.

"Gentlemen!" he tried again. He saw Mark Denton in the crowd giving him a cocked eyebrow and a cocked smile.

One more time. "Gentlemen!"

A few looked his way. The rest chanted and slashed their fi sts through the air and spilled beer and coffee on one another.

"Shut. The fuck. Up!" Danny screamed it into the megaphone. Danny took a breath and looked out at the room. "We are your union reps.

Yes? Me, Mark Denton, Kevin McRae, Doolie Ford. Let us negotiate with Curtis before you go off half- crazed."

"When?" someone shouted from the crowd.

Danny looked out at Mark Denton.

"Christmas Day," Denton said. "We've a meeting at the mayor's offi ce."

Danny said, "He can't be taking us lightly, he wants to meet on Christmas morn, can he, boys?"

"Could be he's half-kike," someone shouted, and the men broke up laughing.

"Could be," Danny said. "But it's a solid step in the right direction, boys. An act of good faith. Let's give the man the benefit of the doubt until then, yeah?"

Danny looked out at the several hundred faces; they were only half- sold on the idea. A few shouted "Fuck them!" again from the back of the hall and Danny pointed at the photograph of O'Meara that hung on the wall to his left. As dozens of eyes followed his fingers, he realized something terrifying and exhilarating at the same time:

They wanted him to lead them.

Somewhere. Anywhere.

"That man!" he shouted. "That great man was laid to rest today!"

The room quieted, no more shouts. They all looked to Danny, wondering where he was going with this, where he was taking them. He wondered himself.

He lowered his voice. "He died with a dream still unfulfi lled." Several men lowered their heads.

Jesus, where was he coming up with this stuff?

"That dream was our dream." Danny craned his head, looked out at the crowd. "Where's Sean Moore? Sean, I saw you earlier. Raise a hand."

Sean Moore raised one sheepish hand in the air.

Danny locked eyes with him. "You were there that night, Sean. In the bar, the night before he died. You were with me. You met the man. And what did he say?"

Sean looked at the men around him and shifted on his feet. He gave Danny a weak smile and shook his head.

"He said . . ." Danny's eyes swept the room. "He said, 'A promise is a promise.'"

Half the room clapped. A few whistled.

"A promise is a promise," Danny repeated.

More clapping, a few shouts.

"He asked whether we had faith in him. Do we? Because it was his dream as much as it was ours."

Bullshit, Danny knew, but it was working. Chins lifted all over the room. Pride replaced anger.

"He raised his glass--" And here Danny raised his own glass. He could feel his father working through him: the blarney, the appeal to sentiment, the sense of the dramatic. "And he said, 'To the men of the Boston Police Department, you have no peers in this nation.' Will you drink to that, boys?"

They drank. They cheered.

Danny dropped his voice several octaves. "If Stephen O'Meara knew we were without peer, Edwin Upton Curtis will know it soon enough."

They started chanting again, and it took Danny several moments to recognize the word they chanted because they'd broken it into two syllables so it sounded like two words, and he felt blood rush up his face so quickly it felt cold and newly born:

"Cough-lin! Cough-lin! Cough-lin!"

He found Mark Denton's face in the crowd and saw a grim smile there, a confirmation of something, of previously held suspicions maybe, of fate.

"Cough-lin! Cough-lin! Cough-lin!"

"To Stephen O'Meara!" Danny shouted, raising his glass again to a ghost, to an idea. "And to his dream!"

When he stepped away from the megaphone, the men besieged him. Several even tried to lift him above the fray. It took him ten minutes to reach Mark Denton, who placed a fresh beer in his hand and leaned in to shout into his ear above the crowd noise. "You set a hell of a table."

"Thanks," Danny shouted back.

"You're welcome." Mark's smile was taut. He leaned in again. "What happens if we don't deliver, Dan? You thought of that? What happens?"

Danny looked out at the men, their faces sheened with sweat, several reaching past Mark to slap at Danny's shoulder, to raise their glasses to him. Exhilarating? Hell, it made him feel like kings must feel. Kings and generals and lions.

"We'll deliver," he shouted back at Mark.

"I sure as hell hope so."

Danny had a drink with Eddie McKenna at the Parker House a few days later, the two of them lucky to fi nd chairs by the hearth on a bitter evening of black gusts and shuddering window frames. "Any news on the new commissioner?"

McKenna fingered his coaster. "Ah, he's a lackey for the fucking Brahmins, through and through. A purple-veined whore wearing virgin's clothes, he is. You know he went after Cardinal O'Connell himself last year?"

"What?"

McKenna nodded. "Sponsored a bill at the last Republican Convention to pull all public funding from parochial schools." He raised his eyebrows. "They can't take our heritage, they go after our religion. Nothing's sacred to these Haves. Nothing."