He came upon a Framingham cop he’d never met before kicking a striker who offered no resistance. The cop wasn’t putting much into the kicks anymore, and the striker probably wasn’t even conscious. Danny put his hand on the guy’s shoulder and the guy raised his night-stick before he recognized the uniform.

“What?”

“You’ve made your point,” Danny said. “Enough.”

“Ain’t no enough,” the cop said and walked away.

Danny rode back to Boston in a bus with the other city cops. The sky hung low and gray. Scraps of frozen snow gripped the scalp of the earth like crabs.

“Meeting tonight, Dan?” Kenny Trescott asked him.

Danny had almost forgotten. Now that Mark Denton was rarely available to attend a BSC meeting, Danny had become the de facto head of the union. But it wasn’t really a union anymore. It was, true to its original roots and its given name, a social club.

“Sure,” Danny said, knowing it would be a waste of time. They were powerless again and they knew it, but some child’s hope kept them coming back, kept them talking, kept them acting as if they had a voice that mattered.

Either that, or there was no place else to go.

He looked in Trescott’s eyes and patted his arm. “Sure,” he said again.

One afternoon on K Street, Captain Coughlin returned home early with a cold and sent Luther home.

“I have it from here,” he said. “Go enjoy what’s left of the day.”

It was one of those sneaky days in late winter where spring came along to get a lay of the land. The gutters gurgled with a stream of melted snow; sun prisms and small rainbows formed in windows and on slick black tar. But Luther didn’t give himself over to the idle stroll. He walked straightaway into the South End and made it to Nora’s shoe factory just as her shift ended. She walked out sharing a cigarette with another girl, and Luther was immediately shocked at how gray she looked. Gray and bony.

“Well, look at himself,” she said with a broad smile. “Molly, this is Luther, the one I used to work with.”

Molly gave Luther a small wave and took a drag off her cigarette.

“How are you?” Nora asked.

“I’m fine, girl.” Luther felt desperate to apologize. “I couldn’t get here before now. I really couldn’t. The shifts, you know? They didn’t—”

“Luther.”

“And I didn’t know where you lived. And I—”

“Luther.” This time her hand found his arm. “Sure, it’s fine. I understand, I do.” She took the cigarette from Molly’s hand, a practiced gesture between friends, and took a quick drag before handing it back. “Would you walk me home, Mr. Laurence?”

Luther gave her a small bow. “Be my pleasure, Miss O’Shea.”

She didn’t live on the worst street in the city, but it was close. Her rooming house was on Green Street in the West End, just off Scollay Square, in a block of buildings that catered primarily to sailors, where rooms could often be rented by the half hour.