“Filling it with who?”

“Russians, mostly. Jews.”

Luther said, “There’s a colored clinic over on Barton and Chambers. You got any objections to a colored doctor working on you?”

“Take a one-eyed Chinese gal, long as she can make the pain go away.”

“Bet you would,” Luther said and they started walking. “You can sit up in the bed, tell everyone not to call you ‘suh.’ How you just regular-folk like that.”

“You’re some prick.” Danny chuckled, an act that brought fresh blood to his lips. “So what were you doing here?”

“Don’t worry about that.”

Danny swayed so much he almost tipped the two of them to the sidewalk. “Well, I am.” He held up a hand and they both stopped. Danny took a big breath. “She all right?”

“No. She’s not all right. Whatever she did to any of you? She paid her debt.”

“Oh.” Danny tilted his head at him. “You like her?”

Luther caught the look. “Like that?”

“Like that.”

“Hell, no. Most certainly, I do not.”

A bloody smile. “You sure?”

“Want me to drop you? Yeah, I’m sure. You got your tastes, I got mine.”

“And Nora ain’t your taste?”

“White women ain’t. The freckles? The little asses? Them tiny bones and weird hair?” Luther grimaced and shook his head. “Not for me. No, sir.”

Danny looked at Luther through one black eye and one swollen one. “So…?”

“So,” Luther said, exasperated suddenly, “she’s my friend. I look after her.”

“Why?”

He gave Danny a long, careful look. “Ain’t nobody else want the job.”

Danny’s smile spread through cracked, blackened lips. “Okay, then.”

Luther said, “Who got to you? Size you are, had to be a few of ’em.”

“Bolshies. Over in Roxbury, maybe twenty blocks. Long walk. I probably had it coming.” Danny took a few shallow breaths. He leaned his head to the side and vomited. Luther shifted his feet so it wouldn’t hit his shoes or trouser cuffs, and it was a bit awkward, him leaning off to the side, half sprawled over the man’s back. The good news was that it wasn’t half as red as Luther had feared. When Danny finished, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “All right.”

They stumbled another block together before Danny had to rest again. Luther propped him up against a streetlamp and Danny leaned back against it with his eyes closed, his face wet with sweat.

He eventually opened his good eye and stared up at the sky, as if searching for something there. “I’ll tell you, Luther, it’s been one hell of a year.”

Luther thought back to his own year and that got him laughing, laughing hard. He bent over from it. A year ago—shit. That was a whole lifetime away.

“What?” Danny said.

Luther held up a hand. “You and me both.”

“What are you supposed to do,” Danny said, “when everything you built your life on turns out to be a fucking lie?”

“Build a new life, I guess.”