Storrow puffed on his pipe. “Your wife possesses a spirit of the flesh that fairly leaps off her.”

“A ‘spirit of the flesh’?”

He nodded. “Quite so. It’s easy to see how you became enraptured with her.” He sucked on the pipe again. “The colored man I’m still trying to figure out.”

“Your reason for coming, sir?”

Storrow turned so that they were face-to-face. “Mark Denton may very well have been at home. I never checked. I came directly to you, Officer Coughlin, because you have both passion and temperance, and your men, I can only assume, feel that. Officer Denton struck me as quite intelligent, but his gifts for persuasion are less than yours.”

“Who would you like me to persuade, Mr. Storrow, and what am I selling?”

“The same thing I’m selling, Officer—peaceful resolution.” He placed a hand on Danny’s arm. “Talk to your men. We can end this, son. You and I. I’m going to release my report to the papers tomorrow night. I will be recommending full acquiescence to your demands. All but one.”

Danny nodded. “AFL affiliation.”

“Exactly.”

“So we’re left with nothing again, nothing but promises.”

“But they’re my promises, son. With the full weight of the mayor and governor and the Chamber of Commerce behind them.”

Nora let out a high laugh, and Danny looked across the roof to see her flicking cards at Luther and Luther holding up his hands in mock defense. Danny smiled. He’d learned over the last few months how much Luther’s preferred method of displaying affection for Nora was through teasing, an affection she gladly returned in kind.

Danny kept his eyes on them. “Every day in this country they’re breaking unions, Mr. Storrow. Telling us who we have a right to associate with and who we don’t. When they need us, they speak of family. When we need them, they speak of business. My wife over there? My friend? Myself? We’re outcasts, sir, and alone we’d probably drown. But together, we’re a union. How long before Big Money gets that in their head?”

“They will never get it in their heads,” Storrow said. “You think you’re fighting a larger fight, Officer, and maybe you are. But it’s a fight as old as time, and it will never end. No one will wave a white flag, nor ever concede defeat. Do you honestly think Lenin is any different from J. P. Morgan? That you, if you were given absolute power, would behave any differently? Do you know the primary difference between men and gods?”

“No, sir.”

“Gods don’t think they can become men.”

Danny turned and met the man’s eyes, said nothing.

“If you remain adamant on AFL affiliation, every hope you ever held for a better lot will be ground into dust.”

Danny looked back at Nora and Luther again. “Do I have your word that if I sell my men on withdrawal from the AFL, the city will grant us our due?”

“You have my word and the mayor’s and the governor’s.”