Behind him, the windows looked out on a sky of the purest blue. A perfect summer day in the first week of September, enough to make everyone forget the dark rains of August, the feeling they’d once had that they would never be dry again.

The three policemen stood and saluted James J. Storrow and the men of his commission and took their leave.

Danny, Nora, and Luther played hearts on an old sheet placed between two iron smokestacks on the roof of Danny’s building. Late evening, all three of them tired—Luther smelling of the stockyard, Nora of the factory—and yet they were up here with two bottles of wine and a deck of cards because there were few places a black man and a white man could congregate in public and fewer still where a woman could join those men and partake of too much wine. It felt to Danny, when the three of them were together like this, that they were beating the world at something.

Luther said, “Who’s that?” and his voice was lazy with the wine.

Danny followed his eyes and saw James Jackson Storrow crossing the roof toward him. He started to stand and Nora caught his wrist when he wavered.

“I was told by a kind Italian woman to search for you here,” Storrow said. He glanced at the three of them, at the tattered sheet with the cards spread across it, at the bottles of wine. “I apologize for intruding.”

“Not at all,” Danny said as Luther made it to his feet and held out a hand to Nora. Nora grasped his hand and Luther tugged her upright and she smoothed her dress.

“Mr. Storrow, this is my wife, Nora, and my friend, Luther.”

Storrow shook each of their hands as if this kind of gathering occurred every day on Beacon Hill.

“An honor to meet you both.” He gave them each a nod. “Could I abscond with your husband for just a moment, Mrs. Coughlin?”

“Of course, sir. Careful with him, though—he’s a bit spongy on his feet.”

Storrow gave her a wide smile. “I can see that, ma’am. It’s no bother.”

He tipped his hat to her and followed Danny across the roof to the eastern edge and they looked out at the harbor.

“You count coloreds among your equals, Officer Coughlin?”

“Long as they don’t complain,” Danny said, “I don’t either.”

“And public drunkenness in your wife is no cause for your concern either?”

Danny kept his eyes on the harbor. “We’re not in public, sir, and if we were, I wouldn’t give much of a fuck. She’s my wife. Means a hell of a lot more to me than the public.” He turned his gaze on Storrow. “Or anyone else for that matter.”

“Fair enough.” Storrow placed a pipe to his lips and took a minute to light it.

“How’d you find me, Mr. Storrow?”

“It wasn’t hard.”

“So what brings you?”

“Your president, Mr. Denton, wasn’t home.”

“Ah.”