“It must be nice,” Nathan said. “That’s all.”

“What do you do?” Danny asked.

“What do you do?”

“I’m looking for work. But you? Your hands aren’t those of a laborer. Your clothes, either.”

Nathan touched the lapel of his coat. “These aren’t expensive clothes.”

“They’re not rags either. They match your shoes.”

Nathan Bishop gave that a crooked smile. “Interesting observation. You a cop?”

“Yes,” Danny said and lit a cigarette.

“I’m a doctor.”

“A copper and a doctor. You can fix whoever I shoot.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“No really.”

“Okay, I’m not a copper. You a doctor, though?”

“I was.” Bishop stubbed his cigarette out. He took a slow pull of his drink.

“Can you quit being a doctor?”

“You can quit anything.” Bishop took another drink and let out a long sigh. “I was a surgeon once. Most of the people I saved didn’t deserve to be saved.”

“They were rich?”

Danny saw an exasperation cross Bishop’s face that he was becoming familiar with. It meant Bishop was heading for the place where his anger would dominate him, where he couldn’t be calmed down until he’d exhausted himself.

“They were oblivious,” he said, his tongue lathering the word with contempt. “If you said to them, ‘People die every day. In the North End, in the West End, in South Boston, in Chelsea. And the thing that’s killing them is one thing. Poverty. That’s all. Simple as that.’” He rolled another cigarette and leaned over the table as he did, slurped his drink from the glass with his hands still in his lap. “You know what people say when you tell them that? They say, ‘What can I do?’ As if that’s an answer. What can you do? You can very well fucking help. That’s what you can do, you bourgeois piece of shit. What can you do? What can’t you do? Roll up your fucking sleeves, get off your fat fucking arse, and move your wife’s fatter fucking arse off the same cushion, and go down to where your mates—your brother and sister fellow fucking human beings—are quite authentically starving to death. And do whatever you need to do to help them. That’s what the bloody fuck you can bloody well fucking do.”

Nathan Bishop slammed back the rest of his drink. He dropped the glass to the scarred wood table and looked around the bar, his eyes red and sharp.

In the heavy air that often followed one of Nathan’s tirades, Danny said nothing. He could feel the men at the nearest table shift in awkwardness. One of them suddenly began talking about Ruth, about the newest trade rumors. Nathan breathed heavily through his nostrils while he reached for the bottle and placed his cigarette between his lips. He got a shaky hand on the bottle. He poured himself another drink. He leaned back in his chair and flicked his thumbnail over a match and lit his cigarette.

“That’s what you can do,” he whispered.