The Given Day by Dennis Lehane Read Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Dennis Lehane
tenements, hens roamed the hallways, goats shit in the stairwells, and sows nestled in torn newspaper and a dull rage of flies. Add an entrenched distrust of all things non-Italian, including the English language, and you had a society no Americano was ever going to comprehend.
So it wasn't terribly surprising that the North End was the prime recruiting area for every major anarchist, Bolshevik, radical, and subversive organi zation on the Eastern Seaboard. Which made Danny love it all the more for some perverse reason. Say what you would about the people down here--and most did, loudly and profanely--but you sure couldn't question their passion. In accordance with the Espionage Act of 1917, most of them could be arrested and deported for speaking out against the government. In many cities they would have been, but arresting someone in the North End for advocating the overthrow of the United States was like arresting people for letting their horses shit on the street--they wouldn't be hard to find, but you'd better have an awfully large truck.
Danny and Steve entered a cafe on Richmond Street. The walls were covered with black wool crosses, three dozen of them at least, most the size of a man's head. The owner's wife had been knitting them since America had entered the war. Danny and Steve ordered espressos. The owner placed their cups on the glass countertop with a bowl of brown sugar lumps and left them alone. His wife came in and out from the back room with trays of bread and placed them in the shelves below the counter until the glass steamed up below their elbows.
The woman said to Danny, "War end soon, eh?"
"It sounds like it."
"Is good," she said. "I sew one more cross. Maybe help." She gave him a hesitant smile and a bow and returned to the back.
They drank their espressos and when they walked back out of the cafe, the sun was brighter and caught Danny in the eyes. Soot from the smokestacks along the wharf seesawed through the air and dusted the cobblestone. The neighborhood was quiet except for the occasional roll-up of a shop grate and the clop-and-squeak of a horse- drawn wagon delivering wood. Danny wished it could stay like this, but soon the streets would fill with vendors and livestock and truant kids and soapbox Bolsheviks and soapbox anarchists. Then some of the men would hit the saloons for a late breakfast and some of the musicians would hit the corners not occupied by the soapboxes and someone would hit a wife or a husband or a Bolshevik.
Once the wife beaters and husband beaters and Bolshevik beaters were dealt with, there would be pickpockets, penny-to-nickel extortions, dice games on blankets, card games in the back rooms of cafes and barbershops, and members of the Black Hand selling insurance against everything from fire to plague but mostly from the Black Hand.
"Got another meeting tonight," Steve said. "Big doings."
"BSC meeting?" Danny shook his head. " 'Big doings.' You're serious?"
Steve twirled his pocket billy on its leather strap. "You ever think if you showed up to union meetings, maybe you'd be bumped to Detective Division by now, we'd all have our raise, and Johnny Green'd still have his wife and kids?"
Danny peered up at a sky with glare but no visible sun. "It's a social club."
"It's a union," Steve said.
"Then why's it called the Boston Social Club?" Danny yawned up at the white leather sky.
"A fine point. The point of the matter, in fact. We're trying to change that."
"Change it all you want and it's still just a union in name. We're cops, Steve--we've got no rights. The BSC? Just a boys' club, a fucking tree house."
"We're setting up a meeting with Gompers, Dan. The AF of L."
Danny stopped. If he told his father or Eddie McKenna about this, he'd get a gold shield and be bumped up out of patrol the day after tomorrow.
"The AF of L is a national union. You crazy? They'll never let cops join."
"Who? The mayor? The governor? O'Meara?"
"O'Meara," Danny said. "He's the
So it wasn't terribly surprising that the North End was the prime recruiting area for every major anarchist, Bolshevik, radical, and subversive organi zation on the Eastern Seaboard. Which made Danny love it all the more for some perverse reason. Say what you would about the people down here--and most did, loudly and profanely--but you sure couldn't question their passion. In accordance with the Espionage Act of 1917, most of them could be arrested and deported for speaking out against the government. In many cities they would have been, but arresting someone in the North End for advocating the overthrow of the United States was like arresting people for letting their horses shit on the street--they wouldn't be hard to find, but you'd better have an awfully large truck.
Danny and Steve entered a cafe on Richmond Street. The walls were covered with black wool crosses, three dozen of them at least, most the size of a man's head. The owner's wife had been knitting them since America had entered the war. Danny and Steve ordered espressos. The owner placed their cups on the glass countertop with a bowl of brown sugar lumps and left them alone. His wife came in and out from the back room with trays of bread and placed them in the shelves below the counter until the glass steamed up below their elbows.
The woman said to Danny, "War end soon, eh?"
"It sounds like it."
"Is good," she said. "I sew one more cross. Maybe help." She gave him a hesitant smile and a bow and returned to the back.
They drank their espressos and when they walked back out of the cafe, the sun was brighter and caught Danny in the eyes. Soot from the smokestacks along the wharf seesawed through the air and dusted the cobblestone. The neighborhood was quiet except for the occasional roll-up of a shop grate and the clop-and-squeak of a horse- drawn wagon delivering wood. Danny wished it could stay like this, but soon the streets would fill with vendors and livestock and truant kids and soapbox Bolsheviks and soapbox anarchists. Then some of the men would hit the saloons for a late breakfast and some of the musicians would hit the corners not occupied by the soapboxes and someone would hit a wife or a husband or a Bolshevik.
Once the wife beaters and husband beaters and Bolshevik beaters were dealt with, there would be pickpockets, penny-to-nickel extortions, dice games on blankets, card games in the back rooms of cafes and barbershops, and members of the Black Hand selling insurance against everything from fire to plague but mostly from the Black Hand.
"Got another meeting tonight," Steve said. "Big doings."
"BSC meeting?" Danny shook his head. " 'Big doings.' You're serious?"
Steve twirled his pocket billy on its leather strap. "You ever think if you showed up to union meetings, maybe you'd be bumped to Detective Division by now, we'd all have our raise, and Johnny Green'd still have his wife and kids?"
Danny peered up at a sky with glare but no visible sun. "It's a social club."
"It's a union," Steve said.
"Then why's it called the Boston Social Club?" Danny yawned up at the white leather sky.
"A fine point. The point of the matter, in fact. We're trying to change that."
"Change it all you want and it's still just a union in name. We're cops, Steve--we've got no rights. The BSC? Just a boys' club, a fucking tree house."
"We're setting up a meeting with Gompers, Dan. The AF of L."
Danny stopped. If he told his father or Eddie McKenna about this, he'd get a gold shield and be bumped up out of patrol the day after tomorrow.
"The AF of L is a national union. You crazy? They'll never let cops join."
"Who? The mayor? The governor? O'Meara?"
"O'Meara," Danny said. "He's the
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