Thomas took his seat and sipped his coffee. “Your ambition might exceed your ‘understanding,’ lad.”

Finch gave that thin smile. “I’d like access to those lists.”

“Access?”

“Copies.”

“Ah.”

“Is that a problem?”

Thomas leaned back and propped his heels on the desk. “At the moment, I fail to see how interagency cooperation is advantageous to the Boston Police Department.”

“Maybe you’re taking the narrow view.”

“I don’t believe I am.” Thomas smiled. “But I’m always open to fresh perspectives.”

Finch struck a match off the edge of Thomas’s desk and lit a cigarette. “Let’s consider the reaction if word leaked that a rogue contingent of the Boston Police Department was selling the member rolls and mailing lists of known radical organizations to corporations instead of sharing them with the federal government.”

“Allow me to correct one wee mistake.”

“My information is solid.”

Thomas folded his hands over his abdomen. “The mistake you made, son, was in use of the word rogue. We’re hardly that. In fact, were you to point a finger at myself or any of the people I’m in congress with in this city? Why, Agent Finch, you’d surely find a dozen fingers pointing back at you, Mr. Hoover, Attorney General Palmer, and that fledgling, underfunded agency of yours.” Thomas reached for his coffee cup. “So I’d advise caution when making threats in my fair city.”

Finch crossed his legs and flicked ash into the tray beside his chair. “I get the gist.”

“Consider my soul appropriately comforted.”

“Your son, the one who killed the terrorist, I understand he’s lost to my cause.”

Thomas nodded. “A union man now, he is, through and through.”

“But you’ve another son. A lawyer as I understand it.”

“Careful with talk of family, Agent Finch.” Thomas rubbed the back of his neck. “You’re treading a tightrope in a circus fire about now.”

Finch held up a hand. “Just hear me out. Share your lists with us. I’m not saying you can’t make all the profit you want on the side. But if you share them with us, I’ll make sure your son the lawyer gets plum work in the coming months.”

Thomas shook his head. “He’s DA property.”

“Silas Pendergast?” Finch shook his head. “He’s a whore for the wards and everyone knows you run him, Captain.”

Thomas held out his hands. “Make your case.”

“The preliminary suspicions that the molasses tank explosion was a terrorist act have been a boon for us. Simply put, this country is sick of terror.”

“But the explosion wasn’t a terrorist act.”

“The rage remains.” Finch chuckled. “No one is more surprised than us. We thought the rush to judgment over the molasses flood had killed us. Quite the opposite. People don’t want truth, they want certainty.” He shrugged. “Or the illusion of it.”

“And you and Mr. Palmer are more than happy to ride the tide of this need.”

Finch stubbed out his cigarette. “My current mandate is the deportation of every radical plotting against my country. The conventional wisdom on the subject is that deportation falls solely under federal jurisdiction. However, Attorney General Palmer, Mr. Hoover, and myself have recently come to the realization that state and local authorities can get more actively involved in deportation. Would you care to know how?”