442DENNIS LEHANE

Luther spit on the ground and took a breath. "Said this is our country, too."

" 'Tis not, son." McKenna shook his large head. "Nor will it ever be."

He left Luther there and climbed into his car and it pulled away from the curb. Luther rose from his knees and sucked a few breaths into his lungs until the nausea had almost passed. "Yes, it is," he whispered, over and over, until he saw McKenna's taillights take a right turn on Massachusetts Avenue.

"Yes, it is," he said one more time and spit into the gutter.

That morning, the reports started coming out of Division 9 in Roxbury that a crowd was gathering in front of the Dudley Opera House. Each of the other station houses was asked to send men, and the Mounted Unit met at the BPD stables and warmed up their horses.

Men from all the city's precincts were dropped at Division 9 under the command of Lieutenant McKenna. They assembled on the first floor in the wide lobby in front of the desk sergeant's counter, and McKenna addressed them from the landing of the stairwell that curved up toward the second floor.

"We happy, happy few," he said, taking them all in with a soft smile. "Gentlemen, the Letts are gathering in an illegal assembly in front of the Opera House. What do you think about that?"

No one knew if the question was rhetorical or not, so no one answered.

"Patrolman Watson?"

"Loo?"

"What do you think of this illegal assembly?"

Watson, whose family had changed their Polish name from something long and unpronounceable, straightened his shoulders. "I'd say they picked the wrong day for it, Loo."

McKenna raised a hand above them all. "We are sworn to protect and serve Americans in general and Bostonians in particu lar.

THE GIVEN DAYThe Letts, well"--he chuckled--"the Letts are neither, gents. Heathens and subversives that they are, they have chosen to ignore the city's strict orders not to march and plan to parade from the Opera House down Dudley Street to Upham's Corner in Dorchester. From there they plan to turn right on Columbia Road and continue until they reach Franklin Park, where they will hold a rally in support of their comrades--yes, comrades--in Hungary, Bavaria, Greece, and, of course, Rus sia. Are there any Rus sians among us here today?"

Someone shouted, "Hell no!" and the other men repeated it in a cheer.

"Any Bolsheviki?"

"Hell no!"

"Any gutless, atheistic, subversive, hook- nosed, cock-smoking, anti-American dog fuckers?"

The men were laughing when they shouted, "Hell no!"

McKenna leaned on the railing and wiped his brow with a handkerchief. "Three days ago, the mayor of Seattle received a bomb in the mail. Luckily for him, his housekeeper got to it before he did. Poor woman's in the hospital with no hands. Last night, as I'm sure you all know, the U. S. postal service intercepted thirty-four bombs meant to kill the attorney general of this great nation as well as several learned judges and captains of industry. Today, radicals of every stripe--but mostly heathen Bolsheviki--have promised a national day of revolt to take place in key cities across this fi ne land. Gentlemen, I ask you--is this the kind of country we wish to live in?"

"Hell no!"

The men were moving around Danny, shifting from foot to foot.

"Would you like to walk out the back door right now and hand it over to a horde of subversives and ask them to please remember to shut the lights out at bedtime?"

"Hell no!" Shoulders jostled off one another and Danny could smell sweat and hangover breath and a strange burnt-hair odor, an acrid scent of fury and fear.