A thick guy popped out of the crowd and punched Kevin McRae full in the face. Danny was separated from him by a dozen people. As he pushed his way through, he heard the thick guy shouting, “’Member me, McRae? Broke my fucking arm during a nick last year? What you gonna do now?” By the time Danny reached Kevin, the guy was long gone, but others were taking his cue, others who’d shown up to do nothing more than pay back beatings they’d received at the hands of these no-longer cops, these ex-cops.

Ex-cops. Jesus.

Danny lifted Kevin to his feet as the crowd surged forward, bouncing off them. The men in the truck had dismounted and were fighting their way toward the station house. Someone threw a brick and one of the scabs went down. A whistle blew as the doors of the station opened and Strivakis and Ellenburg appeared on the steps, flanked by a few other sergeants and lieutenants and a half dozen white-faced volunteers.

As Danny watched the scabs fight their way toward the steps and Strivakis and Ellenburg swing their billy clubs to clear a path, his instinct was to run toward them, to help them, to join them. Another brick sailed through the crowd and glanced off the side of Strivakis’s head. Ellenburg caught him before he could go down and the two of them began to swing their billies with renewed fury, blood streaming down Strivakis’s face and into his collar. Danny took a step toward them, but Kevin pulled him back.

“Ain’t our fight anymore, Dan.”

Danny looked at him.

Kevin, his teeth bloodied, his breath short, said it again. “Ain’t our fight.”

The scabs made it through the doors as Danny and Kevin reached the back of the crowd and Strivakis took a few last swooping cracks at the crowd and then slammed the doors behind him. The mob beat on the doors. Some men overturned the truck that had delivered the recruits and someone lit the contents of a barrel on fire.

Ex-cops, Danny thought.

For the time being anyway.

Good Lord.

Ex-cops.

Commissioner Curtis sat behind his desk with a revolver lying just to the right of his ink blotter. “So, it’s begun.”

Mayor Peters nodded. “It has, Commissioner.”

Curtis’s bodyguard stood behind him with his arms folded across his chest. Another waited outside the door. Neither was from the department, because Curtis no longer trusted any of the men. They were Pinkertons. The one behind Curtis looked old and rheumatic, as if any sudden movement would send his limbs flying off. The one outside the door was obese. Neither, Peters decided, looked fit enough to provide protection with their bodies, so they could only be one other thing: shooters.

“We need to call out the State Guard,” Peters said.

Curtis shook his head. “No.”

“That’s not your decision, I’m afraid.”

Curtis leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. “It’s not yours, either, Mr. Mayor. It’s the governor’s. I just got off the phone with him not five minutes ago and he made it very clear, we are not to engage the Guard at this juncture.”