Danny waited a moment and then clapped.

Hoover looked ready to bite him again, but Finch took a bow.

Danny saw Salutation Street again, the wall transformed into a white drizzle, the floor vanishing underfoot. He’d never talked about it to anyone, not even Nora. How did you put words to helplessness? You didn’t. You couldn’t. Falling from the first floor straight through to the basement, he’d felt seized with the utter certainty that he’d never eat again, walk a street again, feel a pillow against his cheek.

You own me, he’d thought. To God. To chance. To his own helplessness.

“I’ll do it,” Danny said.

“Patriotism or pride?” Finch arched one eyebrow.

“One of the two,” Danny said.

After Finch and Hoover left, Danny and his father sat at the small table and took turns with the bottle of rye.

“Since when did you let federal cops shoehorn in on BPD business?”

“Since the war changed this country.” His father gave him a distant smile and took a sip from the bottle. “If we’d come out on the losing side, maybe we’d still be the same, but we didn’t. Volstead”—he held up the bottle and sighed—“will change it further. Shrink it, I think. The future is federal, not local.”

“Your future?”

“Mine?” His father chuckled. “I’m an old man from an even older time. No, not my future.”

“Con’s?”

His father nodded. “And yours. If you can keep your penis at home where it belongs.” He corked the bottle and slid it across to Danny. “How long will it take you to grow a beard fit for a Red?”

Danny pointed at the thick stubble already sprouting from his cheeks. “Guess.”

His father rose from the table. “Give your uniform a good brushing before putting it away. You won’t be needing it for a while.”

“You saying I’m a detective?”

“What do you think?”

“Say it, Dad.”

His father stared across the room at him, his face blank. Eventually, he nodded. “You do this, you’ll have your gold shield.”

“All right.”

“I hear you showed up at a BSC meeting the other night. After you told me you wouldn’t rat on your own.”

Danny nodded.

“So you’re a union man now?”

Danny shook his head. “Just like their coffee.”

His father gave him another long look, his hand on the doorknob. “You might want to strip that bed of yours, give those sheets a good washing.” He gave Danny a firm nod and left.

Danny stood by the table and uncorked the rye. He took a sip as his father’s footsteps faded in the stairwell. He looked at his unmade bed and took another drink.

CHAPTER eleven

Jessie’s car only got Luther as far as central Missouri before one of the tires blew out just past Waynesville. He’d been sticking to back roads, driving at night as much as possible, but the tire blew out close to dawn. Jessie, of course, hadn’t packed a spare, so Luther had no choice but to drive on it. He crawled along the side of the road in first gear, never getting above the speed an ox pulled a plow, and just as the sun entered the valley, he found a filling station and pulled in.