“These men are going home!” Governor Coolidge stood at the landing above them all. “Mayor Peters, you have no business here. Go home as well, sir.”

As Coolidge came down the stairs, flanked by General Stevens and Colonel Dalton, Peters rushed up. All four men met in the middle.

“This city is rioting.”

“It is doing no such thing.”

“I have been out in it, Governor, and I tell you, I tell you, I tell you—” Peters hated this stammer he developed when upset but he wouldn’t let it stop him now. “I tell you, sir, that it is not sporadic. It is tens of thousands of men and they are—”

“There is no riot,” Coolidge said.

“Yes, there is! In South Boston, in the North End, in Scollay Square! Look for yourself, man, if you don’t believe me.”

“I have looked.”

“Where?”

“From the State House.”

“The State House?” Peters said, screaming now, his voice sounding to his own ears like that of a child. A female child. “The rioting isn’t happening on Beacon Hill, Governor. It’s happening—”

“Enough.” Coolidge held up a hand.

“Enough?” Peters said.

“Go home, Mr. Mayor. Go home.”

It was the tone that got to Andrew Peters, the tone a parent reserved for a bratty child having a pointless tantrum.

Mayor Andrew Peters then did something he was reasonably sure had never occurred in Boston politics—he punched the governor in the face.

He had to jump from a lower step to do it, and Coolidge was tall to begin with, so it wasn’t much of a punch. But it did connect with the tissue around the governor’s left eye.

Coolidge was so stunned, he didn’t move. Peters was so pleased, he decided to do it again.

The general and the colonel grabbed at his arms, and several troopers ran up the stairs, but in those few seconds, Peters managed to land a few more flailing shots.

The governor, oddly, never moved back or raised his hands to defend himself.

Several troopers carried Mayor Andrew Peters back down the stairs and deposited him on the floor.

He thought of rushing up them again.

Instead, he pointed a finger at Governor Coolidge. “This is on your conscience.”

“But your ledger, Mr. Mayor.” Coolidge allowed himself a small smile. “Your ledger, sir.”

CHAPTER thirty-seven

Horace Russell drove Mayor Peters to City Hall Wednesday morning at half past seven. Absent fires and screams and darkness, the streets had lost their ghoulish flavor, but stark evidence of the mob lay everywhere. Nary a window was left intact along Washington or Tremont or any of the streets that intersected them. Husks where once stood businesses. The skeleton frames of charred automobiles. So much trash and debris in the streets Peters could only assume this was what cities looked like after protracted battles and sporadic bombing.

Along the Boston Common, men lay in drunken stupors or openly engaged in dice games. Across Tremont, a few souls raised plywood over their window frames. In front of some businesses, men paced with shotguns and rifles. Phone lines hung severed from their poles. All street signs had been removed, and most gas lamps were shattered.