All the chief officers of the nascent AFL—Boston Police Union were suspended except for Danny. All the men who’d distributed and collected sign-up sheets for the AFL charter were suspended as well. Except for Danny.

He called his father. “Why not me?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m calling you, Dad.”

He heard the rattle of ice cubes in a glass as his father sighed and then took a drink. “I’ve been after you your whole life to take up chess.”

“You were after me my whole life to take up piano, too.”

“That was your mother. I just enforced the idea. Chess, however, Aiden, that would have helped about now.” Another sigh. “Far more than your ability to play a rag. What do the men think?”

“About?”

“About why you were given an exemption? They’re all about to stand before Curtis for dismissal, and you, the vice president of your union, you’re free as a lark. If you were in their shoes, what would you suspect?”

Danny, standing at the phone Mrs. DiMassi kept on a table in the foyer, wished he had his own drink as he heard his father pour a refill and add a few cubes to his glass.

“If I were in their shoes? I’d think I still had my job because I was your son.”

“Which is exactly what Curtis wants them to think.”

Danny placed the side of his head to the wall and closed his eyes, heard his father fire up a cigar and suck and puff, suck and puff, until he got it going.

“So that’s the play,” Danny said. “Dissension in the ranks. Divide and conquer.”

His father barked a laugh. “No, boy, that’s not the play. That’s the opening act. Aiden, you silly, silly child. I do love you, but apparently I didn’t raise you proper. How do you think the press is going to respond when they discover that only one of the elected union officials wasn’t suspended? First, they’ll report that it’s proof the commissioner is a reasonable man and the city is obviously impartial and that the nineteen suspended men must have done something because the vice president himself wasn’t suspended.”

“But then,” Danny said, seeing hope for the first time on this black day, “they’ll see that it’s a ruse, that I’m just a token symbol of impartiality, and they’ll—”

“You idiot,” his father said, and Danny heard the thump of his heels as they came off the edge of his desk. “You idiot. The press will get curious, Aiden. They’ll dig. And fairly quickly they’ll unearth the fact that you are the son of a precinct captain. And they’ll spend a day talking about that before they decide to investigate further, and sooner or later, one honest scribe will run into one seemingly innocuous desk sergeant who mentions, quite casually, something along the lines of ‘the incident.’ And the reporter will say, ‘What incident?’ To which the desk sergeant will respond, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Then that reporter will really dig, my boy. And we all know that your recent affairs will stand up dimly to scrutiny. Curtis designated you the staked goat, son, and the beasts in the woods have already started sniffing your scent.”