The Given Day (56 page)

He left her sleeping and went up the alley, and when he came to the end of it, he saw Danny lumbering across Green Street toward him.

THE GIVEN DAYBut not Danny, really. A version of him. A Danny who'd been fi red from a cannon into a block of ice. A Danny with blood all over himself as he walked. Or tried to. Reeled was more like it.

Luther met him in the middle of the street as Danny fell to one knee.

"Hey, hey," Luther said softly. "It's me. Luther."

Danny looked up at him, his face like something someone had tested hammers on. One eye was black. That was the good one. The other was so swollen shut it looked to have been sutured. His lips were twice their normal size, Luther wanting to make a joke about it but feeling it was definitely the wrong time.

"So." Danny raised a hand, as if to signal the start of a game. "Still mad at me?"

Well, that was something no one had managed to take away apparently--the man's ease with himself. Busted all to hell and kneeling in the middle of a shit hole street in shit hole Scollay Square, the man was chatting all casual-like, as if this sort of thing happened to him once a week.

"Not at this exact moment," Luther said. "In general, though? Yeah."

"Take a number," Danny said and vomited blood onto the street. Luther didn't like the sight or the sound of it. He got a grip of Danny's hand and started to tug him to his feet.

"Oh, no, no," Danny said. "Don't do that. Let me kneel here a bit. Actually, let me crawl. I'm going to crawl to that curb, Luther. Gonna crawl to it."

Danny, true to his word, crawled from the center of the street to the sidewalk. When he reached it, he crawled a few more feet over the curb and then lay down. Luther sat beside him. Danny eventually worked himself up to a sitting position. He held on to his knees as if they were the only things keeping him from falling off the earth.

"Fuck," he said eventually. "I'm busted up pretty good." He smiled through cracked lips as a high whistle preceded his every breath. "Wouldn't have a handkerchief, would you?"

466DENNIS LEHANE

Luther dug in his other pocket and came back with one. He handed it to him.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Luther said and something about the phrase struck them both funny at the same time and they laughed together in the soft night.

Danny dabbed at the blood on his face until the handkerchief was destroyed by it. "I came to see Nora. I got things to say to her."

Luther put an arm around Danny's shoulder, something he'd never ventured to do with a white man before but which seemed perfectly natural under the circumstances. "She needs her sleep, and you need a hospital."

"I need to see her."

"Puke some more blood and tell me again."

"No, I do."

Luther leaned in. "You know what your breath sound like?" Danny shook his head.

"A fucking canary's," Luther said. "Canary with buckshot in its chest. You're dying here."

Danny shook his head again. Then he bent over and heaved his chest. Nothing came out. He heaved again. Again, nothing came out but a sound, the sound Luther had described, the high-pitched hiss of a desperate bird.

"How far's Mass General from here?" Danny bent over and vomited some more blood into the gutter. "I'm a little too fucked-up to remember."

" 'Bout six blocks," Luther said.

"Right. Long blocks." Danny winced and laughed at the same time and spit some blood onto the sidewalk. "I think my ribs are broken." "Which ones?"

"All of 'em," Danny said. "I'm hurt kinda bad here, Luther."

"I know." Luther turned and crawled over behind Danny. "I can push you up."

" 'Preciate that."

THE GIVEN DAY"On three?"

"Fine."

"One, two, three." Luther put his shoulder into the big man's back, pushed hard, and Danny let out a series of loud groans and one sharp yelp, but then he was on his feet. Wavering, but on his feet.

Luther slid under him and draped Danny's left arm over his shoulder.

"Mass General's going to be filled," Danny said. "Fuck. Every hospital. My boys in blue going to be filling emergency rooms all over this city."

"Filling it with who?"

"Rus sians, mostly. Jews."

Luther said, "There's a colored clinic over on Barton and Chambers. You got any objections to a colored doctor working on you?"

"Take a one- eyed Chinese gal, long as she can make the pain go away."

"Bet you would," Luther said and they started walking. "You can sit up in the bed, tell everyone not to call you 'suh.' How you just regular-folk like that."

"You're some prick." Danny chuckled, an act that brought fresh blood to his lips. "So what were you doing here?"

"Don't worry about that."

Danny swayed so much he almost tipped the two of them to the sidewalk. "Well, I am." He held up a hand and they both stopped. Danny took a big breath. "She all right?"

"No. She's not all right. Whatever she did to any of you? She paid her debt."

"Oh." Danny tilted his head at him. "You like her?"

Luther caught the look. "Like that?"

"Like that."

"Hell, no. Most certainly, I do not."

A bloody smile. "You sure?"

"Want me to drop you? Yeah, I'm sure. You got your tastes, I got mine."

468DENNIS LEHANE

"And Nora ain't your taste?"

"White women ain't. The freckles? The little asses? Them tiny bones and weird hair?" Luther grimaced and shook his head. "Not for me. No, sir."

Danny looked at Luther through one black eye and one swollen one. "So . . . ?"

"So," Luther said, exasperated suddenly, "she's my friend. I look after her."

"Why?"

He gave Danny a long, careful look. "Ain't nobody else want the job."

Danny's smile spread through cracked, blackened lips. "Okay, then."

Luther said, "Who got to you? Size you are, had to be a few of 'em."

"Bolshies. Over in Roxbury, maybe twenty blocks. Long walk. I probably had it coming." Danny took a few shallow breaths. He leaned his head to the side and vomited. Luther shifted his feet so it wouldn't hit his shoes or trouser cuffs, and it was a bit awkward, him leaning off to the side, half sprawled over the man's back. The good news was that it wasn't half as red as Luther had feared. When Danny fi nished, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve. "All right."

They stumbled another block together before Danny had to rest again. Luther propped him up against a streetlamp and Danny leaned back against it with his eyes closed, his face wet with sweat.

He eventually opened his good eye and stared up at the sky, as if searching for something there. "I'll tell you, Luther, it's been one hell of a year."

Luther thought back to his own year and that got him laughing, laughing hard. He bent over from it. A year ago--shit. That was a whole lifetime away.

"What?" Danny said.

Luther held up a hand. "You and me both."

"What are you supposed to do," Danny said, "when everything you built your life on turns out to be a fucking lie?"

THE GIVEN DAY"Build a new life, I guess."

Danny raised an eyebrow at that.

"Oh, because you're bleeding all over yourself, you want sympathy?" Luther stepped back up to Danny, the big man lying back against the streetlamp pole like it was all he had left of friends in this world. "I ain't got that for you. Whatever's wearing you down, shit, throw it off. God don't care. Ain't nobody care. Whatever you need to do to make yourself right, get yourself out of pain? I say you do that thing."

Danny's smile was cracked, his lips half black. "Easy, huh?"

"Ain't nothing easy." Luther shook his head. "Simple, though, yeah."

"I wish it was that--"

"You walked twenty blocks, puking up your own blood, to get to one place and one person. If you need any more truth in your life, white boy, than that?" Luther's laugh was hard and quick. "It ain't showing up on this here earth."

Danny didn't say anything. He looked at Luther through his one good eye and Luther looked back. Then he came off the lamp pole and reached out his arm. Luther stepped under it and they walked the rest of the way to the clinic. chapter twenty-eight Danny stayed in the clinic overnight. He barely remembered Luther leaving. He did remember him putting a sheaf of paper on Danny's bedside table.

"Tried to give that to your uncle. He never showed up for the meet."

"He was pretty busy today."

"Yeah, well, you make sure he gets it? Maybe find a way to get him off me like you said you would once?"

"Sure." Danny held out his hand and Luther shook it, and Danny floated off to a black-and-white world where everyone was covered in bomb debris.

At one point he woke to a colored doctor sitting by his bed. The doctor, a young man with the gentle air and slim fingers of a concert pianist, confirmed that he'd broken seven of his ribs and the others were badly sprained. One of those broken ribs had nicked a blood vessel and they'd had to cut Danny open to repair it. This explained the blood he'd vomited and made it highly likely that Luther had saved his life. They wrapped Danny's torso tightly with adhesive tape and told THE GIVEN DAYhim he'd suffered a concussion and would piss blood for a few days from all the shots the Rus sians had delivered to his kidneys. Danny thanked the doctor, his words slurring from whatever they'd pumped into his IV, and passed out.

In the morning, he woke to his father and Connor sitting by the bed. His father had one of his hands wrapped in both of his and he smiled softly. "Look who's up."

Con' folded the newspaper and smiled at Danny and shook his head.

"Who did this to you, boy?"

Danny sat up a bit in the bed and his ribs screamed. "How'd you even fi nd me?"

"Colored fella--says he's a doctor here?--he called into headquarters with your badge number, said another colored fella brought you in here all banged to hell. Ah, it's a sight, you in a place like this."

In the bed on the other side of his father lay an old man with his foot hanging in a cast. He looked at the ceiling.

"What happened?" Connor asked.

"Got jumped by a bunch of Letts," Danny said. "That colored fella was Luther. He probably saved my life."

The old man in the next bed scratched his leg at the top of the cast.

"We've got the holding cells filled to the brink with Letts and Commies," his father said. "You go have a look later. Find the men who did it and we'll find ourselves a nice dark lot before we book them."

Danny said, "Water?"

Con' found a pitcher on the windowsill and filled a glass and brought it to him.

His father said, "We don't even have to book them, if you follow my meaning."

"It's not hard, sir, to follow your meaning." Danny drank. "I never saw them."

"What?"

472DENNIS LEHANE

"They came up on me fast, got my coat over my head, and went to work."

"How could you not see--?"

"I was following Tessa Ficara."

"She's here?" his father said.

"She was last night."

"Jesus, boy, why didn't you call for backup?"

"You guys were throwing a party in Roxbury, remember?" His father ran a hand along his chin. "You lose her?"

"Thanks for the water, Con'." He smiled at his brother.

Connor chuckled. "You're a piece of work, brother. You really are."

"Yeah, I lost her. She turned onto Hammond Street, and the Russians showed up. So what do you want to do, Dad?"

"Well, we'll talk to Finch and the BI. I'll have some badges canvass Hammond and the rest of the area, hope for the best. But I doubt she's still hanging around after last night." His father held up the Morning Standard. "Front-page news, boy."

Danny sat up fully in the bed and his ribs howled some more. He blinked at the pain and looked at the headline: "Police Wage War on Reds."

"Where's Mom?"

"Home," his father said. "You can't keep putting her through this. First Salutation. Now this. It's a strain on her heart, it is."

"How about Nora? She know?"

His father cocked his head. "Why would she know anything? We've no contact with her anymore."

"I'd like her to know."

Thomas Coughlin looked at Connor and then back at Danny. "Aiden, you don't say her name. You don't bring her up in my presence."

Danny said, "Can't do that, Dad."

"What?" This from Connor, coming up behind their father. "She lied to us, Dan. She humiliated me. Jesus."

THE GIVEN DAYDanny sighed. "She was family for how long?"

"We treated her as family," his father said, "and look how she repaid us. Now it's the end of this subject, Aiden."

Danny shook his head. "For you maybe. Me?" He pulled the sheet off his body. He swung his legs off the side of the bed and hoped neither of them could see the price it cost. Jesus! The pain blew up through his chest. "Con', hand me my pants, would you?"

Con' brought them to him, his face dark and bewildered.

Danny stepped into his pants and then found his shirt hanging over the foot of the bed. He slid into it, one careful arm at a time, and considered his father and brother. "Look, I've played it your way. But I can't anymore. I just can't."

"Can't what?" his father said. "You're talking nonsense." He looked at the old black man with the broken leg as if for a second opinion, but the man's eyes were closed.

Danny shrugged. "Then I'm talking nonsense. You know what I realized yesterday? What I fi nally realized? Ain't a fucking thing made--"

"Ah, the language!"

"--made sense in my life, Dad. Ever. 'Cept her."

His father's face drained of color.

Danny said, "Hand me my shoes, would you, Con'?"

Connor shook his head. "Get 'em yourself, Dan." He held out his hands, a gesture of such helpless pain and betrayal that it pierced Danny.

"Con'."

Connor shook his head. "No."

"Con', listen."

"Fuck listening. You'd do this? To me? You'd--"

Connor dropped his hands and his eyes filled. He shook his head at Danny again. He shook his head at the whole ward. He turned on his heel and walked out the door.