The Given Day (35 page)

"Avery came back from the grave to tell you I was different?" Luther shook his head. "He wrote a note to his 'replacement.' " "Ah." Danny took the bottle back. "Whatta you think about my Uncle Eddie?"

"Seems nice enough."

"No, he doesn't." Danny's voice was soft.

Luther leaned against the car beside Danny. "No, he doesn't." "You feel him circling you in there?"

"I felt it."

"You got a nice clean past, Luther?"

"Clean as most, I guess."

"That ain't too clean."

Luther smiled. "Fair point."

Danny handed the bottle over again. "My Uncle Eddie? He reads people better than any man alive. Stares right through their heads and sees whatever it is they don't want the world to find out. They got a suspect in one of the station houses nobody can break? They call in my uncle. He gets a confession every time. Uses whatever it takes to get one, too."

Luther rolled the bottle between his palms. "Why you telling me this?"

"He smells something he doesn't like about you--I can see it in his eyes--and we took that joke in there too far for his comfort. He started thinking we were laughing at him and that's not good."

"I appreciate the liquor." Luther stepped away from the car. "Never shared a bottle with a white man before." He shrugged. "But I best be getting home."

"I'm not working you."

"You ain't, uh?" Luther looked at him. "How do I know that?"

Danny held out his hands. "Only two types of men in this world worth talking about--a man who is as he appears and the other kind. Which do you think I am?"

Luther felt the whiskey swimming beneath his flesh. "You about the strangest kind I've come across in this city."

Danny took a drink, looked up at the stars. "Eddie might circle you for a year, even two. He'll take all the time in the world, believe me. But when he fi nally does come for you? He'll have left you no way out." He met Luther's eyes. "I've made my peace with whatever Eddie and my father do to achieve their ends with plug-uglies and grifters and gunsels, but I don't like it when they go after civilians. You understand?"

Luther placed his hands in his pockets as the crisp air grew darker, colder. "So you're saying you can call off this dog?"

Danny shrugged. "Maybe. Won't know until the time comes." Luther nodded. "And what's your end?"

Danny smiled. "My end?"

Luther found himself smiling in return, feeling both of them circling now, but having fun with it. "Ain't nothing free in this world but bad luck."

"Nora," Danny said.

Luther stepped back to the car and took the bottle from Danny. "What about her?"

"I'd like to know how things progress with her and my brother." Luther drank, eyeing Danny, then let loose a laugh.

"What?"

"Man's in love with his brother's girl and he says 'what' to me." Luther laughed some more.

Danny joined him. "Let's say Nora and I have a history."

"That ain't news," Luther said. "I only been in the same room with you both this one time but my blind, dead uncle could have seen it." "That obvious, uh?"

"To most. Can't figure out why Mr. Connor can't see it. He can't see a lot when it comes to her."

"No, he can't."

"Why don't you just ask the woman for her hand? She'll jump at it." "No, she won't. Believe me."

"She will. That rope? Shit. That's love."

Danny shook his head. "You ever known a woman acted logically when it came to love?"

"No."

"Well, then." Danny looked up at the house. "I don't know the first thing about them. Can't tell you what they're thinking from minute to minute."

Luther smiled and shook his head. "I 'spect you get along just fine all the same."

Danny held up the bottle. "We got about two fingers left. Last swig?"

"Don't mind if I do." Luther took a snort and handed the bottle back, watched Danny drain it. "I'll keep my eyes and ears open. How's that?"

"Fair. Eddie makes a run at you, you keep me informed." Luther held out his hand. "Deal."

Danny shook his hand. "Glad we could get to know each other, Luther."

"The same, Danny."

Back at the building on Shawmut Avenue, Luther checked and rechecked for leaks, but nothing came down through the ceilings, and he found no moisture in the walls. He ripped all the plaster out, first thing, and saw that plenty of the wood behind it could be salvaged, some with little more than hope and tenderness, but hope and tenderness would have to do. Same with the flooring and the staircase. Normally a place that had been this fucked-up by neglect and then fire and water damage, the first thing you'd do would be to gut it to its skin. But given their limited finances and beg-borrow-steal approach, the only solution in this case was to salvage what could be salvaged, right down to the nails themselves. He and Clayton Tomes, the Wagenfelds' houseman, worked similar hours in their South Boston households and even had the same day off. After one dinner with Yvette Giddreaux, Clayton had been enlisted into the project before he knew what hit him, and that weekend, Luther finally had some help. They spent the day carrying the salvageable wood and metal and brass fi xtures up to the third floor so they could get to work on installing the plumbing and electrical next week.

It was hard work. Dusty and sweaty and chalky. The pull of pry bars and the tear of wood and the wrench of the hammer's claw. Kind of work made your shoulders tighten hard against your neck, the cartilage under your kneecaps feel like rock salt, dug hot stones into the small of your back and bit the edges of your spine. Kind of work made a man sit down in the middle of a dusty floor and lower his head to his knees and whisper, "Whew," and keep his head down and his eyes closed a bit longer.

After weeks in the Coughlin house doing almost nothing, though, Luther wouldn't have traded it for anything. This was work of the hand and of the mind and of muscle. Work that left some hint of itself and yourself behind after you were gone.

Craftsmanship, his Uncle Cornelius had once told him, was just a fancy word for what happened when labor met love.

"Shit." Clayton, lying on his back in the entrance hallway, stared up at the ceiling two stories above. "You realize that if she's committed to indoor plumbing--"

"She is."

"--then the waste pipe, Luther--the waste pipe alone--that going to have to climb up from the basement to a roof vent? That's four stories, boy."

"Five-inch pipe, too." Luther chuckled. "Cast iron."

"And we got to run more pipes off that pipe on every floor? Two maybe off the bathrooms?" Clayton's eyes widened to saucers. "Luther, this shit's crazy."

"Yeah."

"Then why you smiling?"

"Why you?" Luther said.

What about Danny?" Luther asked Nora as they walked through Haymarket. "What about him?"

"He doesn't seem to fit that family somehow."

"I'm not sure Aiden fits anything."

"How come sometimes you-all call him Danny and other times Aiden?"

She shrugged. "It just happened. You don't call him Mister Danny, I've noticed."

"So?"

"You call Connor 'Mister.' You even do it with Joe."

"Danny told me not to call him 'Mister,' 'less we were in company."

"Fast friends you are, yeah?"

Shit. Luther hoped he hadn't tipped his hand. "Don't know I'd call us friends."

"But you like him. It's clear on your face."

"He's different. Not sure I ever met a white man quite like him. Never met a white woman quite like you, though."

"I'm not white, Luther. I'm Irish."

"Yeah? What color they?"

She smiled. "Potato-gray."

Luther laughed and pointed at himself. "Sandpaper-brown. Pleased to meet you."

Nora gave him a quick curtsy. "A pleasure, sir."

After one of the Sunday dinners, McKenna insisted on driving Luther home, and Luther, shrugging into his coat in the hall, couldn't think of a reply quick enough.

" 'Tis awful cold," McKenna said, "and I promised Mary Pat I'd be home before the cows." He stood from the table and kissed Mrs. Coughlin on the cheek. "Would you pull my coat from the hook, Luther? There's a fine lad."

Danny wasn't at this dinner and Luther looked around the room, saw that no one else was paying much attention.

"Ah, we'll see you soon, folks."

" 'Night, Eddie," Thomas Coughlin said. " 'Night, Luther." " 'Night, sir," Luther said.

Eddie drove down East Broadway and turned right on West Broadway where, even on a cold Sunday night, the atmosphere was as raucous and unpredictable as anything in Greenwood had been on a Friday night. Dice games being played out in the open, whores leaning out of windowsills, loud music from every saloon, and there were so many saloons you couldn't count them all. Progress, even in a big, heavy car, was slow.

"Ohio?" McKenna said.

Luther smiled. "Yes, sir. You were close with Kentucky. I fi gured you'd get it that night, but . . ."

"Ah, I knew it." McKenna snapped his fingers. "Just the wrong side of the river. Which town?"

Outside, the noise of West Broadway dunned the car and the lights of it melted across the windshield like ice cream. "Just outside Columbus, sir."

"Ever been in a police car before?"

"Never, suh."

McKenna chuckled loud, as if he were spitting rocks. "Ah, Luther, you may find this hard to believe but before Tom Coughlin and I became brothers of the badge, we spent a fair amount of time on the wrong side of the law. Saw us some paddy wagons we did and, sure, no small amount of Friday-night drunk tanks." He waved his hand. "It's the way of things for the immigrant class, this oat sowing, this fi guring out of the mores. I just assumed you'd taken part in the same rituals."

"I'm not an immigrant, suh."

McKenna looked over at him. "What's that?"

"I was born here, suh."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It doesn't mean anything. It's just . . . you said it was the way of things for immigrants, and that may be so, but I was saying that I'm not--"

"What may be so?"

"Sir?"

"What may be so?" McKenna smiled at him as they rolled under a streetlight.

"Suh, I don't know what you--"

"You said."

"Suh?"

"You said. You said jail may be the way of things for immigrants." "No, suh, I didn't."

McKenna tugged on his earlobe. "Me head must be fi lled with the wax then."

Luther said nothing, just stared out the windshield as they stopped at a light at the corner of D and West Broadway.

"Do you have something against immigrants?" Eddie McKenna said.

"No, suh. No."

"Think we haven't earned our seat at the table yet?"

"No."

"Supposed to wait for our children's children to achieve that honor on our behalf, are we?"

"Suh, I never meant to--"

McKenna wagged a finger at Luther and laughed loudly. "I got you there, Luther. I pulled your leg there, I did." He slapped Luther's knee and let loose another hearty laugh as the light turned green. He continued up Broadway.

"Good one, suh. You sure had me."

"I sho' did!" McKenna said and slapped the dashboard. They drove over the Broadway Bridge. "Do you like working for the Coughlins?" "I do, suh, yes."

"And the Giddreauxs?"

"Suh?"

"The Giddreauxs, son. You don't think I know of them? Isaiah's quite the high- toned- Negroid- celebrity up in these parts. Has the ear of Du Bois, they say. Has a vision of colored equality, of all things, in our fair city. Won't that be something?"

"Yes, suh."

"Sure, that'd be grand stuff indeed." He smiled the warmest of smiles. "Of course, you'd find some folk who would argue the Giddreauxs are not friends to your people. That they are, in fact, enemies. That they will push this dream of equality to a dire conclusion, and the blood of your race will flood these streets. That's what some would say." He placed a hand to his own chest. "Some. Not all, not all. 'Tis a shame there has to be so much discord in this world. Don't you think?"

"Yes, suh."

"A tragic shame." McKenna shook his head and tsk-tsked as he turned onto St. Botolph Street. "Your family?"

"Suh?"

McKenna peered at the doors of the homes as he rolled slowly up the street. "Did you leave family behind in Canton?"

"Columbus, suh."

"Columbus, right."

"No, suh. Just me."

"What brought you all the way to Boston, then?"

"That's the one."

"Huh?"

"The Giddreauxs' house, suh, you just passed it."

McKenna applied the brakes. "Well, then," he said. "Another time." "I look forward to it, suh."

"Stay warm, Luther! Bundle up!"

"I will. Thank you, suh." Luther climbed out of the car. He walked around behind it and reached the sidewalk, hearing McKenna's window roll down as he did.

"You read about it," McKenna said.

Luther turned. "Which, suh?"

"Boston!" McKenna's eyebrows were raised happily.

"Not really, sir."

McKenna nodded, as if it all made perfect sense to him. "Eight hundred miles."

"Suh?"

"The distance," McKenna said, "between Boston and Columbus." He patted his car door. "Good night to you, Luther."

"Good night, suh."

Luther stood on the sidewalk and watched McKenna drive off. He raised his arms and got a look at his hands--shaking, but not too bad. Not too bad at all. Considering. chapter seventeen Danny met Steve Coyle for a drink at the Warren Tavern in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, the day more winter than autumn. Steve made several jokes about Danny's beard and asked him about his case, even though Danny had to repeat, with apologies, that he couldn't discuss an open investigation with a civilian.

"But it's me," Steve said, then held up a hand. "Just kidding, just kidding. I understand." He gave Danny a smile that was huge and weak at the same time. "I do."

So they talked about old cases, old days, old times. Danny had one drink for every three Steve had. Steve lived in the West End these days in a windowless room of a rooming-house basement that had been partitioned into six sections, all of which smelled thickly of coal.