A horse burst between them, its great black body trembling, its smooth flank shuddering in the air. Another horse burst through the throng followed by two more, all in full charge with riders astride them. Behind them was an army of blue uniforms, still crisp and un-soiled, and the wall of people around Danny and Nathan Bishop and the boy with the pistol collapsed. Several of the Letts had fought in guerrilla campaigns back in the motherland and knew the benefits of cut-and-run. In the mad-dash dispersal, Danny lost sight of Nathan Bishop. Within a minute, most of the Letts were running past the Opera House, and Dudley Square was suddenly littered with blue uniforms, Danny and the other men looking at one another as if to say: Did any of that just happen?

But men lay crumpled in the street and against walls as the reinforcements used their nightsticks on the few that weren’t brothers of the badge whether the bodies were moving or not. On the far fringes of the crowd, a small group of demonstrators, the last ones out apparently, were cut off by more reinforcements and more horses. Cops had cut heads and cut knees and holes that leaked from their shoulders and hands and thighs and swelling contusions and black eyes and broken arms and fat lips. Danny saw Mark Denton trying to pull himself to his feet, and he crossed to him and gave him his hand. Mark stood and applied weight to his right foot and winced.

“Broken?” Danny said.

“Twisted, I think.” Mark slung his arm around Danny’s shoulder and they walked to the loading dock on the other side of the street, Mark sucking oxygen from the air with a hiss.

“You sure?”

“Might be sprained,” Mark said. “Fuck, Dan, I lost my helmet.”

He had a cut along his hairline that had dried black and he gripped his ribs with his free arm. Danny leaned him against the loading dock and noticed two cops kneeling over Sergeant Francie Stoddard. One of them met his eyes and shook his head.

“What?” Danny said.

“He’s dead. He’s gone,” the cop said.

“He’s what?” Mark said. “No. How the fuck…?”

“He just grabbed his chest,” the cop said. “Right in the middle of it all. Just grabbed his chest and went all red and starting gasping. We got him over here, but…” The cop shrugged. “Fucking heart attack. You believe that? Here? In this?” The cop looked out at the street.

His partner still held Stoddard’s hand. “Fucking guy had less than a year till his thirty, he goes like this?” The cop was crying. “He goes like this, because of them?”

“Jesus Christ,” Mark whispered and touched the top of Stoddard’s shoe. They’d worked together five years at D-10 in Roxbury Crossing.

“They shot Welch in the thigh,” the first cop said. “Shot Armstrong in the hand. Fuckers were stabbing guys with ice picks?”

“There’s going to be some hell to pay,” Mark said.