Palmer caught his eye. “You see what they can do, these radicals.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But I won’t give them the satisfaction of moving out, I assure you.”

“Very brave of you, sir.”

Palmer swiveled his chair slightly from side to side as Hoover and Finch took theirs on either side of him.

“Mr. Coughlin, are you happy with the direction in which our country is heading?”

Connor pictured Danny and his whore dancing on their wedding day, sleeping in their soiled bed. “No, sir.”

“And why is that?”

“We seem to be giving away the keys to it.”

“Well said, young Coughlin. Would you help us stop this habit?”

“With pleasure, sir.”

Palmer swiveled his chair until he was looking at the cracks in his window. “Ordinary times call for ordinary law. Would you call these times ordinary?”

Connor shook his head. “I would not, sir.”

“Extraordinary times, then…?”

“Call for extraordinary measures.”

“Just so. Mr. Hoover?”

John Hoover hitched his pants at the knee and leaned forward. “The attorney general is determined to rout the evil from our midst. To this end, he has asked me to head a new section of the Bureau of Investigation to be known from here on as the General Intelligence Division or G-I-D. Our mandate, as the name suggests, is to gather intelligence against the radicals, the Communists and Bolsheviki, the anarchists and the Galleanists. In short, the enemies of a free and just society. You?”

“Mr. Hoover?”

“You?” Hoover’s eyes bulged. “You?”

Connor said, “I’m not sure I—”

“You, Coughlin? You, sir. Which are you?”

“I’m none of those,” Connor said and the hardness of his own voice surprised him.

“Then join us, Mr. Coughlin.” Mitchell Palmer turned back from his window and extended his hand across the desk.

Connor stood and shook the hand. “I’d be honored, sir.”

“Welcome to our table, son.”

Luther was plastering walls on the first floor of the Shawmut Avenue building with Clayton Tomes when they heard three car doors slam outside and saw McKenna and two plainclothes cops exit the black Hudson and climb the stairs into the building.

In McKenna’s eyes, as soon as he entered the room, Luther saw something far beyond the normal corruption, the normal disdain. He saw something so unhinged by rage it belonged in a pit, chained and caged.

The two cops he’d brought with him spread out into the room. One of them carried a toolbox for some reason. Judging by the way it pulled his shoulder down, it was heavy. He placed it on the floor near the kitchen doorway.

McKenna removed his hat and waved with it toward Clayton. “Good to see you again, son.”

“Sir.”

McKenna stopped by Luther and looked down at the bucket of plaster between them. “Luther, would you be offended if I asked you a rather arcane question?”

Luther thought: So much for Danny or the captain taking care of this problem.

“Nah, suh.”

“I’m curious as to where you trace your ancestry,” McKenna said. “Africa? Haiti? Or Australia, eh? You could be one of the aboriginals, yeah? Do you know, son?”