The Given Day (Coughlin 1)

Danny found himself at Fay Hall again for another meeting of the BSC. On tonight's agenda, the department's continued refusal to treat infl uenza-related sickness among the men as work related. Steve Coyle, a little drunker than one would have hoped, spoke of his ongoing fi ght to get some kind of disability payments from the department he'd served twelve years.

After the flu discussion was exhausted, they moved on to a preliminary proposal for the department to assume part of the expense of replacing damaged or severely worn uniforms.

"It's the most innocuous salvo we can fire," Mark Denton said. "If they reject it, then we can point to it later to show their refusal to grant us any concessions at all."

"Point for who?" Adrian Melkins asked.

"The press," Mark Denton said. "Sooner or later, this fight will be fought in the papers. I want them on our side."

After the meeting, as the men milled by the coffee urns or passed their flasks, Danny found himself thinking of his father and then of Nathan Bishop's.

"Nice beard," Mark Denton said. "You grow cats in that thing?"

"Undercover work," Danny said. He pictured Bishop's father crawling through a collapsed mine. Pictured his son still trying to drink it away. "What do you need?"

"Huh?"

"From me," Danny said.

Mark took a step back, appraised him. "I've been trying to fi gure out since the first time you showed up here whether you're a plant or not." "Who'd plant me?"

Denton laughed. "That's rich. Eddie McKenna's godson, Tommy Coughlin's son. Who'd plant you? Hilarious."

"If I was a plant, why'd you ask for my help?"

"To see how fast you jumped at the offer. I'll admit, you not jumping right away gave me pause. Now here you are, though, asking me how you can help out."

"That's right."

"I guess it's my turn to say I'll think about it," Denton said.

Eddie McKenna sometimes conducted business meetings on his roof. He lived in a Queen Anne atop Telegraph Hill in South Boston. His view--of Thomas Park, Dorchester Heights, the downtown skyline, the Fort Point Channel, and Boston Harbor--was, much like his persona, expansive. The roof was tarred and flat as sheet metal; Eddie kept a small table and two chairs out there, along with a metal shed where he stored his tools and those his wife, Mary Pat, used in the tiny garden behind their house. He was fond of saying that he had the view and he had the roof and he had the love of a good woman so he couldn't begrudge the good Lord for forsaking him a yard.

It was, like most of the things Eddie McKenna said, as full of the truth as it was full of shit. Yes, Thomas Coughlin, had once told Danny, Eddie's cellar was barely able to hold its fill of coal, and yes, his yard could support a tomato plant, a basil plant, and possibly a small rosebush but certainly none of the tools needed to tend them. This was of little import, however, because tools weren't all Eddie McKenna kept in the shed.

"What else?" Danny had asked.

Thomas wagged a finger. "I'm not that drunk, boy."

Tonight, he stood with his godfather by the shed with a glass of Irish and one of the fine cigars Eddie received monthly from a friend on the Tampa PD. The air smelled damp and smoky the way it did in heavy fog, but the skies were clear. Danny had given Eddie his report on meeting Nathan Bishop, on Bishop's comment about what should be done to the rich, and Eddie had barely acknowledged he'd heard.

But when Danny handed over yet another list--this one half names/ half license plates of a meeting of the Co alition of the Friends of the Southern Italian Peoples, Eddie perked right up. He took the list from Danny and scanned it quickly. He opened the door to his garden shed and removed the cracked leather satchel he carried everywhere and added the piece of paper to it. He put the satchel back in the shed and closed the door.

"No padlock?" Danny said.

Eddie cocked his head. "For tools now?"

"And satchels."

Eddie smiled. "Who in their right mind would ever so much as ap- proach this abode with less than honest intentions?"

Danny gave that a smile, but a perfunctory one. He smoked his cigar and looked out at the city and breathed in the smell of the harbor. "What are we doing here, Eddie?"

"It's a nice night."

"No. I mean with this investigation."

"We're hunting radicals. We're protecting and serving this great land."

"By compiling lists?"

"You seem a bit off your feed, Dan."

"What's that mean?"

"Not yourself. Have you been getting enough sleep?"

"No one's talking about May Day. Not how you expected them to anyway."

"Well, it's not like they're going to go a galavanting about, shouting their nefarious aims from the rooftops, are they? You've barely been on them a month."

"They're talkers, the lot of them. But that's all they are."

"The anarchists?"

"No," Danny said. "They're fucking terrorists. But the rest? You've got me checking out plumbers unions, carpenters, every toothless socialist knitting group you can find. For what? Names? I don't understand."

"Are we to wait until they do blow us up before we decide to take them seriously?"

"Who? The plumbers?"

"Be serious."

"The Bolshies?" Danny said. "The socialists? I'm not sure they have the capacity to blow up anything outside of their own chests." "They're terrorists."

"They're dissidents."

"Maybe you need some time off."

"Maybe I just need a clearer sense of exactly what the hell we're doing here."

Eddie put an arm around his shoulder and led him to the roof edge. They looked out at the city--its parks and gray streets, brick buildings, black rooftops, the lights of downtown reflecting off the dark waters that coursed through it.

"We're protecting this, Dan. This right here. That's what we're doing." He took a pull of his cigar. "Home and hearth. And nothing less than that indeed."

With Nathan Bishop, another night at the Capitol Tavern, Nathan taciturn until the third drink kicked in and then: "Has anyone ever hit you?"

"What?"

He held up his fists. "You know."

"Sure. I used to box," he said. Then: "In Pennsylvania."

"But have you ever been physically pushed aside?"

"Pushed aside?" Danny shook his head. "Not that I can remember. Why?"

"I wonder if you know how exceptional that is. To walk through this world without fear of other men."