Danny took a quick glance at it. “You’re BI?”

“Try saying it without a smirk.”

Danny jerked his thumb at the other guy. “And who’s this exactly?”

Finch opened his mouth but the other man wiped his hand with a handkerchief before extending the hand to Danny. “John Hoover, Mr. Coughlin,” the man said, and Danny’s hand came away with sweat from the handshake. “I work with the antiradical department at Justice. You don’t cotton to radicals, do you, Mr. Coughlin?”

“There’re no Germans in the building. Isn’t that what Justice handles?” He looked back at Finch. “And the BI is all about bankruptcy fraud. Yeah?”

The doughy lump on the coffee table looked at Danny like he wanted to bite the tip of his nose. “Our purview has expanded a bit since the war started, Officer Coughlin.”

Danny nodded. “Well, good luck.” He stepped over the threshold. “Mind getting the fuck out of my apartment?”

“We also deal with draft dodgers,” Agent Finch said, “agitators, seditionists, people who would make war on the United States.”

“It’s a living, I’d guess.”

“A good one. Anarchists in particular,” Finch said. “Those bastards are tops on our lists. You know—bomb throwers, Officer Coughlin. Like the one you were fucking.”

Danny squared his shoulders to Finch’s. “I’m fucking who?”

Agent Finch took a turn leaning against the doorjamb. “You were fucking Tessa Abruzze. At least that’s how she called herself. Am I correct?”

“I know Miss Abruzze. What of it?”

Finch gave him a thin smile. “You don’t know shit.”

“Her father’s a phonograph salesman,” Danny said. “They had some trouble back in Italy but—”

“Her father,” Finch said, “is her husband.” He raised his eyebrows. “You heard me right. And he couldn’t give a damn about phonographs. Federico Abruzze is not even his real name. He’s an anarchist, and more particularly he’s a Galleanist. You know what that term means or should I provide help?”

Danny said, “I know.”

“His real name is Federico Ficara and while you’ve been fucking his wife? He’s been making bombs.”

“Where?” Danny said.

“Right here.” Rayme Finch jerked his thumb back down the hall.

John Hoover crossed one hand over the other and rested them on his belt buckle. “I ask you again, Officer, are you the kind of man who cottons to radicals?”

“I think my son answered the question,” Thomas Coughlin said.

John Hoover shook his head. “Not that I heard, sir.”

Danny looked down at him. His skin had the look of bread pulled too early from the oven and his pupils were so tiny and dark they seemed meant for the head of another animal entirely.

“The reason I ask is because we are closing the barn door. After the horses have left it, I’ll grant you, but before the barn has burned to the ground. What the war showed us? Is that the enemy is not just in Germany. The enemy came over on ships and availed himself of our wanton immigration policies and he set up shop. He lectures to mine workers and factory workers and disguises himself as the friend of the worker and the downtrodden. But what he really is? What he really is is a prevaricator, an inveigler, a foreign disease, a man bent on the destruction of our democracy. He must be ground into dust.” Hoover wiped the back of his neck with his handkerchief; the top of his collar had darkened with sweat. “So I’m going to ask you a third time—are you a coddler of the radical element? Are you in effect, sir, an enemy of my Uncle Samuel?”