A meaty hand slapped his back. He turned his head to find Steve looking down at him, eyebrow cocked.

“Still receiving company, I hope.”

“Still.”

“Still buying the first round?”

“The first.” Danny caught Alfonse’s dark eyes and pointed at the bar top. “Where’s the Widow Coyle?”

Steve shrugged off his coat and took a seat. “Praying. Lighting candles.”

“Why?”

“No reason. Love, maybe?”

“You told her,” Danny said.

“I told her.”

Alfonse brought Steve a shot of rye and a bucket of suds. Once he’d walked away, Danny said, “You told her what exactly? About the grippe on the boat?”

“A little bit.”

“A little bit.” Danny threw back his second shot. “We’ve been sworn to silence by state, federal, and maritime authorities. And you tell the widow?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“What was it like?”

“All right, it was like that.” Steve downed his own shot. “She grabbed the kids, though, and run right off to church. Only word she’ll say is to Christ Himself.”

“And the pastor. And the two priests. And a few nuns. And her kids.”

Steve said, “It can’t stay hidden long, in either case.”

Danny raised his mug. “Well, you weren’t trying to make detective anyway.”

“Cheers.” Steve met the mug with his bucket and they both drank as Alfonse replenished their shots and left them alone again.

Danny looked at his hands. The doctor on the launch had said the grippe sometimes showed there, even when there were no other signs in the throat or head. It yellowed the flesh along the knuckles, the doctor told them, thickened the fingertips, made the joints throb.

Steve said, “How’s the throat?”

Danny removed his hands from the bar. “Fine. Yours?”

“Tip-top. How long you want to keep doing this?”

“What?” Danny said. “Drinking?”

“Laying our lives on the line for less than a streetcar operator makes.”

“Streetcar operators are important.” Danny raised a glass. “Vital to municipal interests.”

“Stevedores?”

“Them, too.”

“Coughlin,” Steve said. He said it pleasantly, but Danny knew the only time Steve called him by his last name was when he was irate. “Coughlin, we need you. Your voice. Hell, your glamour.”

“My glamour?”

“Fuck off, ya. You know what I mean. False modesty won’t help us a duck’s fart right now and that’s God’s truth.”

“Help who?”

Steve sighed. “It’s us against them. They’ll kill us if they can.”

“Forget the singing.” Danny rolled his eyes. “You need to find an acting troupe.”

“They sent us out to that boat with nothing, Dan.”

Danny scowled. “We get the next two Saturdays off. We get—”

“It fucking kills. And we went out there for what?”

“Duty?”

“Duty.” Steve turned his head away.

Danny chuckled. Anything to lighten the mood, which had grown sober so quickly. “Who would risk us? Steve. On the Blessed Mother? Who? With your arrest record? With my father? My uncle? Who would risk us?”

“They would.”

“Why?”

“Because it’d never occur to them that they couldn’t.”

Danny gave that another dry chuckle, although he felt lost suddenly, a man trying to scoop up coins in a fast current.