He crept up the stairs, though, so he could hear the words better and what he heard made him want to trade places with the Hollaway dog.
“I’m just feeling under the weather, Auntie.”
“Don’t you lie to me, girl. Don’t you lie! I know morning sickness when I see it. How long?”
“I’m not pregnant.”
“Lila, you my baby sister’s child, yes. My goddaughter, yes. But, girl, I will strap the black straight offa your body from head to toe if you lie to me again. You hear?”
Luther heard Lila break out in a fresh run of sobbing, and it shamed him to picture her.
Marta shrieked, “James!” and Luther heard the large man’s footfalls coming toward the kitchen, and he wondered if the man had grabbed his shotgun for the occasion.
“Git that boy up here.”
Luther opened the door before James could and Marta’s eyes were flashing all over him before he crossed the threshold.
“Well, lookit himself. Mr. Big Man. I done told you we are churchgoers here, did I not, Mr. Big Man?”
Luther thought it best not to say a word.
“Christians is what we are. And we don’t abide no sinning under this here roof. Ain’t that right, James?”
“Amen,” James said, and Luther noticed the Bible in his hand and it scared him a lot more than the shotgun he’d pictured.
“You get this poor, innocent girl impregnated and then you expect to what? I’m talking to you, boy? What?”
Luther tilted a cautious eye down at the little woman, saw a fury in her looked about to take a bite out of him.
“Well, we hadn’t really—”
“You ‘hadn’t really,’ my left foot.” And Marta stomped that left foot of hers into the kitchen floor. “You think for one pretty second that any respectable people are going to rent you a house in Greenwood, you are mistaken. And you won’t be staying under my roof one second longer. No, sir. You think you can get my only niece in the family way and then go off galavanting as you please? I am here to tell you that that will not be happening here today.”
He caught Lila looking at him through a stream of tears.
She said, “What’re we going to do, Luther?”
And James, who in addition to being a businessman and a mechanic, was, it turned out, an ordained minister and justice of the peace, held up his Bible and said, “I believe we have a solution to your dilemma.”
Chapter three
The day the Red Sox played their first World Series home game against the Cubs, First Precinct Duty Sergeant George Strivakis called Danny and Steve into his office and asked them if they had their sea legs.
“Sergeant?”
“Your sea legs. Can you join a couple of Harbor coppers and visit a ship for us?”
Danny and Steve looked at each other and shrugged.
“I’ll be honest,” Strivakis said, “some soldiers are sick out there. Captain Meadows is under orders from the deputy chief who’s under orders from O’Meara himself to deal with the situation as quietly as possible.”
“How sick?” Steve asked.
Strivakis shrugged.
Steve snorted. “How sick, Sarge?”
Another shrug, that shrug making Danny more nervous than anything else, old George Strivakis not wanting to commit to the slightest evidence of knowledge aforethought.
Danny said, “Why us?”
“Because ten men already turned it down. You’re eleven and twelve.”
“Oh,” Steve said.
Strivakis hunched forward. “What we would like is two bright officers to proudly represent the police department of the great city of Boston. You are to go out to this boat, assess the situation, and make a decision in the best interest of your fellow man. Should you successfully complete your mission, you will be rewarded with one half-day off and the everlasting thanks of your beloved department.”
“We’d like a little more than that,” Danny said. He looked over the desk at his duty sergeant. “With all due respect to our beloved department, of course.”
In the end, they struck a deal — paid sick days if they contracted whatever the soldiers had, the next two Saturdays off, and the department had to foot the next three cleaning bills for their uniforms.
Strivakis said, “Mercenaries, the both of you,” and then shook their hands to seal the contract.
The USS McKinley had just arrived from France. It carried soldiers returning from battle in places with names like Saint-Mihiel and Pont-à-Mousson and Verdun. Somewhere between Marseilles and Boston, several of the soldiers had grown ill. The conditions of three of them were now deemed so dire that ship doctors had contacted Camp Devens to tell the colonel in charge that unless these men were evacuated to a military hospital they would die before sundown. And so on a fine September afternoon, when they could have been working a soft detail at the World Series, Danny and Steve joined two officers of the Harbor Police on Commercial Wharf as gulls chased the fog out to sea and the dark waterfront brick steamed.
One of the Harbor cops, an Englishman named Ethan Gray, handed Danny and Steve their surgical masks and white cotton gloves.
“They say it helps.” He smiled into the sharp sun.
“Who’s they?” Danny pulled the surgical mask over his head and down his face until it hung around his neck.
Ethan Gray shrugged. “The all-seeing they.”
“Oh, them,” Steve said. “Never liked them.”
Danny placed the gloves in his back pocket, watched Steve do the same.
The other Harbor cop hadn’t said a word since they’d met on the wharf. He was a small guy, thin and pale, his damp bangs falling over a pimply forehead. Burn scars crept out from the edges of his sleeves. Upon a closer look, Danny noticed he was missing the bottom half of his left ear.
So, then, Salutation Street.
A survivor of the white flash and the yellow flame, the collapsing floors and plaster rain. Danny didn’t remember seeing him during the explosion, but then Danny didn’t remember much after the bomb went off.
The guy sat against a black steel stanchion, long legs stretched out in front of him, and studiously avoided eye contact with Danny. That was one of the traits shared by survivors of Salutation Street — they were embarrassed to acknowledge one another.
The launch approached the dock. Ethan Gray offered Danny a cigarette. He took it with a nod of thanks. Gray pointed the pack at Steve but Steve shook his head.
“And what instructions did your duty sergeant give you, Officers?”
“Pretty simple ones.” Danny leaned in as Gray lit his cigarette. “Make sure every soldier stays on that ship unless we say otherwise.”
Gray nodded as he exhaled a plume of smoke. “Identical to our orders as well.”
“We were also told if they try to override us using some federal-government-at-time-of-war bullshit, we’re to make it very clear that it may be their country but it’s your harbor and our city.”
Gray lifted a tobacco kernel off his tongue and gave it to the sea breeze. “You’re Captain Tommy Coughlin’s son, aren’t you?”
Danny nodded. “What gave it away?”
“Well, for one, I’ve rarely met a patrolman of your age who had so much confidence.” Gray pointed at Danny’s chest. “And the name tag helped.”
Danny tapped some ash from his cigarette as the launch cut its engine. It rotated until the stern replaced the bow and the starboard gunwale bounced off the dock wall. A corporal appeared and tossed a line to Gray’s partner. He tied it off as Danny and Gray finished their cigarettes and then approached the corporal.