On the floor, the men sought out Danny and Mark Denton. The price of coal had jumped another penny in the last month. Men returned from work to icy bedrooms puffed with vapor clouds from their children’s mouths. Christmas was just around the corner. Their wives were sick of darning, sick of serving thinner and thinner soup, angry that they couldn’t shop the Christmas sales at Raymond’s, at Gilchrist’s, at Houghton & Dutton. Other wives could—the wives of trolley drivers, of teamsters, of stevedores and dockworkers—but not the wives of policemen?

“I’m fed up being put out of my own bed,” one patrolman said. “I only sleep there twice a week as it is.”

“They’re our wives,” someone else said, “and they’re only poor because they married us.”

The men who took the megaphone began to express similar sentiments. The testimonials to O’Meara faded away. They could hear the wind pick up outside, see the frost on the windows.

Dom Furst was up at the megaphone now, rolling up the sleeve of his dress blues so they could all see his arm. “These are the bug bites I got at the station just last night, boys. They jump to our beds when they’re tired of riding the backs of the rats. And they answer our gripes with Curtis? He’s one of them!” He pointed off in the general direction of Beacon Hill, his bare arm peppered with red bites. “There’s a lot of men they could have picked to replace Stephen O’Meara and send the message ‘We don’t care.’ But picking Edwin Up-Your-Arse Curtis? That’s saying, ‘Fuck you!’”

Some men banged chairs off the walls. Some threw their coffee cups at the windows.

“We better do something here,” Danny said to Mark Denton.

“Be my guest,” Denton said.

“Fuck you?” Furst shouted. “I say, ‘Fuck them.’ You hear me? Fuck them!”

Danny was still working his way through the crowd toward the megaphone when the whole room picked up the chant:

Fuck them! Fuck them! Fuck them! Fuck them!

He gave Dom a smile and a nod and stepped behind him to the megaphone.

“Gentlemen,” Danny tried but was drowned out by the continuous chant.

“Gentlemen!” he tried again. He saw Mark Denton in the crowd giving him a cocked eyebrow and a cocked smile.

One more time. “Gentlemen!”

A few looked his way. The rest chanted and slashed their fists through the air and spilled beer and coffee on one another.

“Shut. The fuck. Up!” Danny screamed it into the megaphone. Danny took a breath and looked out at the room. “We are your union reps. Yes? Me, Mark Denton, Kevin McRae, Doolie Ford. Let us negotiate with Curtis before you go off half-crazed.”

“When?” someone shouted from the crowd.

Danny looked out at Mark Denton.

“Christmas Day,” Denton said. “We’ve a meeting at the mayor’s office.”

Danny said, “He can’t be taking us lightly, he wants to meet on Christmas morn, can he, boys?”

“Could be he’s half-kike,” someone shouted, and the men broke up laughing.