“When?”

“In April. They were offered their two-hundred-a-year increase and they declined.”

“Jesus,” Thomas said, “cost of living has risen seventy-three percent. Seventy-three.”

“I know the number.”

“That two hundred a year was a prewar figure. The poverty level is fifteen hundred a year, and most coppers make far less than that. They’re the police, Claude, and they’re working for less wages than niggers and women.”

Claude nodded and placed a hand on Thomas’s shoulder, gave it a soft squeeze. “I can’t argue with you. But the thinking in City Hall and in the commissioner’s office is that the men can be put on the Pay No Heed list because they’re emergency personnel. They can’t affiliate with a union and they sure can’t strike.”

“But they can.”

“No, Thomas,” he said, his eyes clear and cold. “They can’t. Patrick’s been out in the wards, taking an informal poll, if you will. Patrick?”

Patrick spread his hands over the rail. “Tom, it’s like this—I’ve talked to our constituents, and if the police dare strike, this city will vent all its rage—at unemployment, the high cost of living, the war, the niggers coming from down South to take jobs, at the price of getting up in the damn morning—and send it straight at the city.”

“This city will riot,” Claude said. “Just like Montreal. And you know what happens when people are forced to see the mob that lives within them? They don’t like it. They want someone to pay. At the polls, Tom. Always at the polls.”

Thomas sighed and puffed his cigar. Out in the sea, a small yacht floated into his field of vision. He could make out three figures on the deck as thick dark clouds began to mass just to their south and march toward the sun.

Patrick Donnegan said, “Your boys strike? Big Business wins. They’ll use that strike as a cudgel to fuck organized labor, Irishmen, Democrats, fuck anyone who ever thought of a decent day’s pay for a decent day’s work in this country. You let them turn this into what they’ll turn it into? You’ll set the working class back thirty years.”

Thomas gave that a smile. “It’s not all on me, boys. Maybe if O’Meara, God rest him, was still with us, I’d have more say in the outcome, but with Curtis? That toad’ll blow this city down to its foundations to stick it to the wards and the men who run them.”

“Your son,” Claude said.

Thomas turned, the cigar between his teeth pointing at Claude’s nose. “What?”

“Your son is in league with the BSC. Quite an orator, we hear, like his father.”

Thomas removed his cigar. “We stay away from family, Claude. That’s a rule.”

“Maybe in fairer days,” Claude said. “But your son is in this, Tommy. Deep. And the way I hear it, he’s growing in popularity by the day and his rhetoric grows exponentially more inflammatory. If you could talk to him, maybe…” Claude shrugged.

“We don’t have that kind of relationship anymore. There’s been a rift.”