“Don’t thank me yet, but as you said”—Raphelson glanced at the rain—“‘why not?’”

Commissioner Edwin Upton Curtis tipped the printer’s courier a nickel and carried the boxes to his desk. There were four of them, each the size of a brick, and he placed one in the center of his ink blotter and removed the cardboard cover to consider the contents. They reminded him of wedding invitations, and he swallowed a sour and sad reflection of his only daughter, Marie, plump and dull-eyed since the cradle, now fading into spinsterhood with a complacency he found sordid.

He lifted the top slip of paper from the box. The script was quite handsome, utile but bold, the paper a heavy cotton bond the color of flesh. He placed the slip back on the top of the stack and decided to send the printer a personal letter of thanks, a commendation on such a fine job delivered under the stress of a rush order.

Herbert Parker entered from his office next door and said not a word as he crossed to Curtis and joined his friend at the desk, and they stared down at the stack of slips on the ink blotter.

To:____________________

Boston Police Officer

By authority conferred on me as Police Commissioner, I hereby discharge you from the Boston Police Department. Said discharge is effective upon receipt of this notice. The cause and reasons for such discharge are as follows:

Specifications:____________________

Respectfully,

Edwin Upton Curtis

“Who did you use?” Parker said.

“The printer?”

“Yes.”

“Freeman and Sons on School Street.”

“Freeman. Jewish?”

“Scottish, I think.”

“He does fine work.”

“Doesn’t he, though?”

Fay Hall. Packed. Every man in the department who wasn’t on duty and even some who were, the room smelling of the warm rain and several decades’ worth of sweat, body odor, cigar and cigarette smoke so thick it slathered the walls like another coat of paint.

Mark Denton was over in one corner of the stage, talking to Frank McCarthy, the just-arrived organizer of the New England chapter of the American Federation of Labor. Danny was in the other corner talking to Tim Rose, a beat cop from the Oh-Two who pounded the bricks around City Hall and Newspaper Row.

“Who told you this?” Danny said.

“Wes Freeman himself.”

“The father?”

“No, the son. Father’s a sot, a gin junkie. The son does all the work now.”

“One thousand discharge slips?”

Tim shook his head. “Five hundred discharge slips, five hundred suspensions.”

“Already printed.”

Tim nodded. “And delivered to Useless Curtis himself at eight sharp this a.m.”

Danny caught himself tugging on his chin and nodding at the same time, another habit he’d inherited from his father. He stopped and gave Tim what he hoped was a confident smile. “Well, I guess they took their dancing shoes off, uh?”

“I guess they did.” Tim gestured with his chin at Mark Denton and Frank McCarthy. “Who’s the swell with Denton?”

“Organizer with the AFL.”

Tim’s eyes pulsed. “He bring the charter?”