“So he can fire them before they unionize?” Danny nodded at the idea. “You sold out your own.”

“I’ll bet my life that not a name on any of the lists is Irish.”

“I wasn’t talking about the Irish,” Danny said.

His father looked up at the ceiling, as if he saw cobwebs there that needed tending. He pursed his lips, then looked at his son, a slight quiver in his chin. He said nothing.

“Who got you the list of the Letts once I was out?”

“As luck would have it,” his father’s voice was barely a whisper, “we took care of that yesterday in the raid.”

Danny nodded. “Ah.”

“Anything else, son?”

Danny said, “Matter of fact, yeah. Luther saved my life.”

“So I should give him a raise?”

“No,” Danny said. “Call off your dog.”

“My dog?”

“Uncle Eddie.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“Call him off just the same. He saved my life, Dad.”

His father turned to the old man in the bed. He touched his cast and winked at the man when he opened his eyes. “Ah, you’ll be fit as a fiddle, as God is my judge.”

“Yes, suh.”

“Indeed.” Thomas gave the guy a hearty smile. His eyes swept past Danny and the windows behind him. He nodded once and then walked out the same door as Connor.

Danny found his coat on a hook against the wall and put it on.

“That your pops?” the old man said.

Danny nodded.

“I’d stay clear of him for a while.”

Danny said, “Looks like I don’t have much choice.”

“Oh, he’ll be back. His kind always comes back. Sure as time,” the old man said. “Always wins, too.”

Danny finished buttoning his coat. “Ain’t nothing to win anymore,” he said.

“That ain’t the way he sees it.” The old man gave him a sad smile. He closed his eyes. “Which is why he’ll keep winning. Yes, sir.”

After he left the hospital, he visited four more before he found the one where they’d taken Nathan Bishop. Bishop, like Danny, had declined to stay, though Nathan had slipped two armed policemen to do it.

The doctor who’d worked on him before his escape looked at Danny’s tattered uniform, its black splotches of blood, and said, “If you’ve come for your second licks, they should have told you—”

“He’s gone. I know.”

“Lost an ear,” the doctor said.

“Heard that, too. How about his eye?”

“I don’t know. He left before I could hazard an informed diagnosis.”

“Where to?”

The doctor glanced at his watch and slipped it back into his pocket. “I’ve got patients.”

“Where’d he go?”

A sigh. “Far from this city, I suspect. I already told this to the two officers who were supposed to be guarding him. After he climbed out the bathroom window, he could have gone anywhere, but from the time I spent with him, I gathered he saw no point sacrificing five or six years of his life to a Boston prison.”