Thomas stared at the ceiling. “I’d assume under the state antisyndicalist laws.”

Finch stared at him. “How’d you arrive at that conclusion?”

“I didn’t arrive anywhere. Basic common sense, man. The laws are on the books, have been for years.”

Finch asked, “You wouldn’t ever consider working in Washington, would you?”

Thomas rapped the window with his knuckles. “See out there, Agent Finch? Can you see the street? The people?”

“Yes.”

“Took me fifteen years in Ireland and a month at sea to find it. My home. And a man who’d abandon his home is a man who’d abandon anything.”

Finch tapped his boater off his knee. “You’re an odd duck.”

“Just so.” He opened a palm in Finch’s direction. “So the antisyndicalist laws?”

“Have opened a door in the deportation process that we’d long assumed closed.”

“Local.”

“And state, yes.”

“So you’re marshaling your forces.”

Finch nodded. “And we’d like your son to be a part of it.”

“Connor?”

“Yes.”

Thomas took a drink of coffee. “How much a part?”

“Well, we’d have him work with a lawyer from Justice or local—”

“No. He works the cases as the point man in Boston or he doesn’t work at all.”

“He’s young.”

“Older than your Mr. Hoover.”

Finch looked around the office, indecisive. “Your son catches this train? I promise you the track won’t run out in his lifetime.”

“Ah,” Thomas said, “but I’d like him to board at the front as opposed to the rear. The view would be all the finer, wouldn’t you say?”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. You call him to Washington to hire him. You make sure a photographer’s in attendance.”

“And in exchange, Attorney General Palmer’s team will have access to the lists your men are compiling.”

Thomas said, “Per specific requests that would be subject to my review, yes.”

Thomas watched Finch give it some thought, as if he had a choice in the matter.

“Acceptable.”

Thomas stood. He reached across the desk.

Finch stood and shook his hand. “So we have a deal.”

“We have a contract, Agent Finch.” Thomas gripped Finch’s hand fast. “Do consider it inviolate.”

Luther had noticed that Boston might have been different from the Midwest in a lot of ways—the people talked funny for one and everyone dressed in this city, dressed like they were going out to dinner and a show every day, even the children—but a stockyard was a stockyard. Same mud, same stench, same noise. And same job for coloreds—on the bottom rung. Isaiah’s friend Walter Grange had been there fifteen years and he’d risen to the post of key man for the pens, but any white man with fifteen years on the job would have made yard manager by now.

Walter met Luther when he exited the streetcar at the top of Market Street in Brighton. Walter was a small man with huge white muttonchop sideburns to compensate, Luther guessed, for all the hair he’d lost up top. He had a chest like an apple barrel and short wishbone legs and as he led Luther down Market Street, his thick arms swung in concert with his hips. “Mr. Giddreaux said you were from the Midwest?”