“As you well know, I’ve created committees to look into those issues. Now—”

“Those committees,” Danny said, “are made up of precinct captains, sir.”

“So?”

“So they have a vested interest in not finding anything wrong with the station houses they command.”

“Are you questioning the honor of your superiors?”

“No.”

“Are you questioning the honor of this department’s chain of command?”

Mark Denton spoke before Danny could. “This offer is not going to do, sir.”

“It very well will do,” Curtis said.

“No,” Mark Denton said. “I think we need to look into—”

“Tonight,” Herbert Parker said, “is the only night this offer will be on the table. If you don’t take it, you’ll be back out in the cold where you’ll find the doors locked and the knobs removed.”

“We can’t agree to this.” Danny flapped the page in the air. “It’s far too little and far too late.”

Curtis shook his head. “I say it’s not. Mr. Parker says it’s not. So it’s not.”

“Because you say?” Kevin McRae said.

“Precisely,” Herbert Parker said.

Curtis ran his palms over his desktop. “We’ll kill you in the press.”

Parker nodded. “We gave you what you asked for and you turned it down.”

“That’s not how it is,” Danny said.

“But that’s how it’ll play, son.”

Now it was Danny, Kevin, and Mark’s turn to trade glances.

Eventually, Mark turned back to Commissioner Curtis. “No fucking deal.”

Curtis leaned back in his chair. “Good evening, gentlemen.”

Luther came down the Coughlins’ steps on his way to the streetcar when he noticed Eddie McKenna about ten yards up the sidewalk, leaning against the hood of his Hudson.

“And how’s that fine building restoration going? Coming along, she is?” McKenna came off the car and walked toward him.

Luther forced a smile. “Coming along right well, Lieutenant, sir. Right well.”

That was, in fact, the truth. He and Clayton had been on a tear lately. Aided on several occasions by men in NAACP chapters all over New England, men Mrs. Giddreaux found a way to get up or down to Boston on weekends and occasional weeknights, they finished the demo weeks ago, ran the electrical through the open walls and throughout the house, and were working on the water pipes that branched off the kitchen and the bathrooms to the main water pipe, a clay beauty they’d run from the basement to the roof a month back.

“When do you suppose she’ll open?”

Luther’d been wondering that himself lately. He still had plenty of pipe to run and was waiting on a shipment of horsehair plaster before he could start sealing the walls. “Hard to say, sir.”

“Not ‘suh’? Usually you get a bit more southern for my benefit, Luther, something I noticed back in the early days of winter.”

“I guess it’s ‘sir,’ tonight,” Luther said, feeling a different edge in the man than he’d felt before.

McKenna shrugged. “So how long you think?”

“Till I’m done? A few months. Depends on a lot of things, sir.”