But when Danny handed over yet another list—this one half names/half license plates of a meeting of the Coalition of the Friends of the Southern Italian Peoples, Eddie perked right up. He took the list from Danny and scanned it quickly. He opened the door to his garden shed and removed the cracked leather satchel he carried everywhere and added the piece of paper to it. He put the satchel back in the shed and closed the door.

“No padlock?” Danny said.

Eddie cocked his head. “For tools now?”

“And satchels.”

Eddie smiled. “Who in their right mind would ever so much as approach this abode with less than honest intentions?”

Danny gave that a smile, but a perfunctory one. He smoked his cigar and looked out at the city and breathed in the smell of the harbor. “What are we doing here, Eddie?”

“It’s a nice night.”

“No. I mean with this investigation.”

“We’re hunting radicals. We’re protecting and serving this great land.”

“By compiling lists?”

“You seem a bit off your feed, Dan.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Not yourself. Have you been getting enough sleep?”

“No one’s talking about May Day. Not how you expected them to anyway.”

“Well, it’s not like they’re going to go a galavanting about, shouting their nefarious aims from the rooftops, are they? You’ve barely been on them a month.”

“They’re talkers, the lot of them. But that’s all they are.”

“The anarchists?”

“No,” Danny said. “They’re fucking terrorists. But the rest? You’ve got me checking out plumbers unions, carpenters, every toothless socialist knitting group you can find. For what? Names? I don’t understand.”

“Are we to wait until they do blow us up before we decide to take them seriously?”

“Who? The plumbers?”

“Be serious.”

“The Bolshies?” Danny said. “The socialists? I’m not sure they have the capacity to blow up anything outside of their own chests.”

“They’re terrorists.”

“They’re dissidents.”

“Maybe you need some time off.”

“Maybe I just need a clearer sense of exactly what the hell we’re doing here.”

Eddie put an arm around his shoulder and led him to the roof edge. They looked out at the city—its parks and gray streets, brick buildings, black rooftops, the lights of downtown reflecting off the dark waters that coursed through it.

“We’re protecting this, Dan. This right here. That’s what we’re doing.” He took a pull of his cigar. “Home and hearth. And nothing less than that indeed.”

With Nathan Bishop, another night at the Capitol Tavern, Nathan taciturn until the third drink kicked in and then:

“Has anyone ever hit you?”

“What?”

He held up his fists. “You know.”

“Sure. I used to box,” he said. Then: “In Pennsylvania.”

“But have you ever been physically pushed aside?”

“Pushed aside?” Danny shook his head. “Not that I can remember. Why?”

“I wonder if you know how exceptional that is. To walk through this world without fear of other men.”

Danny had never thought of it like that before. It suddenly embarrassed him that he’d moved through his entire life expecting it to work for him. And it usually had.