Mark Denton stood in his dress blues and tucked his domed hat under his arm.

“Patrolman Denton, are you affiliated with Boston Police Union Number Sixteen Thousand Eight Hundred and Seven of the American Federation of Labor?”

“I am, sir.”

“Are you not, in fact, the president of said union?”

“I am, sir. Proudly.”

“Your pride is of no relevance to this board.”

“Board?” Mark Denton said, looking to the left and right of Curtis.

Curtis took a sip of water. “And did you not distribute sign-up sheets within your station house for affiliation with the aforementioned American Federation of Labor?”

“With the same aforementioned pride, sir,” Denton said.

“You may sit back down, Patrolman,” Curtis said. “Patrolman Kevin McRae, stand at attention…”

It went on for over two hours, Curtis asking the same monotonous questions in the same monotonous tone and each cop answering with varying degrees of petulance, contempt, or fatalism.

When it was time for defense counsel to take the floor, James Vahey did the talking. Long the general counsel for the Street and Electric Railway Employees of America, he’d been famous since before Danny was born, and it was Mark Denton’s coup to bring him into this fight just two weeks ago at the urging of Samuel Gompers. He moved with an athlete’s fluidity as he strode from the back and flashed a slim, confident smile at the nineteen men before turning to face Curtis.

“While I agree that we are not here today to argue the legality of Rule Thirty-five, I find it telling that the commissioner himself, the author of said rule, admits its nebulous status. If the commissioner himself does not believe firmly in the soundness of his own rule, what are we to make of it? Why, we are to make of it what it is—quite simply the greatest invasion of a man’s personal liberty—”

Curtis banged his gavel several times.

“—and the most far-reaching attempt to restrict his freedom of action I have ever known.”

Curtis raised the gavel again, but Vahey pointed directly at his face.

“You, sir, have denied these men their most basic human rights as workers. You have consistently refused to raise their pay to a level above the poverty line, provide them with safe and hygienic quarters in which to work and sleep, and have demanded they work hours of such duration that not only is their safety jeopardized but that of the public as well. And now you sit before us, as sole judge, and attempt to obfuscate the sworn responsibility you had toward these men. It is a low action, sir. A low action. Nothing you have said today has called into question these men’s commitment to the populace of this great city. These men have not abandoned their posts, have not failed to answer the call of duty, have never, not a sole time, failed to uphold the law and protect and serve the people of Boston. Had you evidence to the contrary, I trust you would have produced it by now. Instead, the only failure—and, for the record, I use that term ironically—that these men are guilty of is that they have failed to capitulate to your desire that they not affiliate themselves with a national labor union. That is all. And given that a simple calendar will show that your insertion of Rule Thirty-five to be of rather dubious urgency, I am quite confident any judge in the land will deem that rule the naked gambit to restrict these men’s rights that we all see it as here today.” He turned to the men and the reporters beyond, resplendent in his suit and his grace and his white-white hair. “I am not going to defend these men because there is nothing to defend. It is not they who should have their patriotism or Americanism questioned in this room today,” Vahey thundered. “It is you, sir!”