Small Mercies

When Bobby is in bed with Carmen, they turn on the television to find a news report featuring Bobby with Rum and George Dunbar. The next segment covers the anti-busing protests. The two debate the merits of busing, and both agree that the system is unjust while differing on the question of whether busing is the solution. Carmen asks how Bobby manages to avoid being racist, as is common among Boston Irish cops. He admits that his parents had such a dim view of humanity that they did not believe one group of people to be better or worse than any other.

Mary Pat is in a motel across from the Christian Science church, thinking about how silly it is that she would have had a fit over what god Jules chose to worship. Watching the news, she learns about Auggie’s upcoming funeral and wants to write Dreamy a note but is afraid of her reaction. Mary Pat decides to attend the funeral service in Mattapan, which is now a majority-Black neighborhood. She initially passes judgment on the shoddy condition of some of the buildings there but soon realizes that she is just trying to cling to an undeserved sense of superiority. The church is full, and Detective Bobby Coyne is there as well. Mary Pat does not know what to expect from a Baptist funeral and is disturbed when the minister compares the four teenagers who killed Auggie to a racist militia that tormented the parishioners’ ancestors.

Auggie’s father Reginald rises to speak, saying that nothing will change so long as white Bostonians continue to see Black people as others. Mary Pat thinks to herself that they are others and is immediately ashamed at the thought. After the service, she goes to the Williamsons’ house, but when she tries to express her condolences to Reginald, he grasps her arm tightly and says that killing her right there would make him a hero in prison. Dreamy comes in and demands that he let Mary Pat go. He complies and demands that Dreamy get Mary Pat out of his house. At first, Mary Pat hopes that she and Dreamy might be able to reach an understanding, but instead Dreamy accuses her of killing her son by fostering a culture of racism. She says that integration is happening and orders Mary Pat to leave.

Bobby and Pritchard are monitoring the leftist drug dealers who received the rifles from George Dunbar. Pritchard wants to conduct a massive raid on the building, like the newly formed SWAT units who raided the Black Panthers in Los Angeles. Bobby worries about setting a precedent whereby firepower will be seen as the default option. Instead, he arrests people close to the leadership and threatens to charge them with trafficking unless they hand over the weapons. The leader admits that they were supposed to attack South Boston High School and kill some students in exchange for a large supply of heroin. He won’t admit who gave the order, but Bobby knows that it was Butler.

Mary Pat now targets Frank Toomey’s wife, Agnes, who is the leader of another group opposed to busing but is also a rival of SWAB. Agnes is planning to speak at an event, and Mary Pat believes that Frank might attend. She uses some of Butler’s hush money to buy clothes that conceal her features. Next, she meets with a local lawyer and drops off more of Butler’s money, feeling relieved to be rid of it. At the rally, she sees Frank Toomey, who passes by her without recognition. He gets into his car, and she rushes to Bess to try and follow him. The car he bought to replace the one lost in the Fields of Athenry fire is conspicuous enough for Mary Pat to follow, and she tails him into Charlestown.

After an hours-long stakeout bears no fruit, she goes to a phone booth and calls Bobby, telling him that because she grew up with racism as an accepted fact of life, she passed those same attitudes on to her children, poisoning them. Bobby asks her to wait 24 hours before doing anything else and tells her that she has good in her heart. She responds that she has nothing left and hangs up just as Frank drives past her. She follows him back to his house and attempts to run him over, crushing his leg. She gets out of the car and shoots him in the stomach as his wife and youngest daughter come out of the house. Holding them off with her gun, she drags Frank into her car and drives away.

Mary Pat drives Frank to Castle Island, an old fort near the location where Butler gave Mary Pat the money and confirmed Jules’s death. Bess struggles up the steep hill, and then the engine dies. Bidding the vehicle farewell, Mary Pat picks the lock to the fort and drags Frank inside, his wounds reducing him to cries and pleas. She tells him that he is going to die no matter what, and his pleas turn to rage. She asks how he can love his own children while being a child-murderer, and he responds that Jules was the one to kill Auggie with the rock. She punches his broken leg and screams that he’s lying, but he claims that Jules did it as a way to kill Auggie quickly, because Frank wanted him electrocuted on the third rail. Frank states that he saw Jules’s action as a sign of weakness that confirmed his resolve to kill her. Just as Mary Pat prepares to kill Frank, Marty Butler appears.

Bobby receives word that Mary Pat has kidnapped Frank. After investigating the crime scene, he returns to the station and discovers that Butler’s crew is heading toward Castle Island.

Mary Pat calculates that there are four people outside the room where she’s holding Frank. She drags Frank to the doorway and sees Brian Shea mere feet away. Mary Pat executes Frank, shocking these men who are no strangers to violence. She then shoots Brian Shea, using his body as a shield while fleeing to a storage room. Once there, she beats him until he cannot resist. Brian expresses shock Mary Pat’s ability to murder Frank. He claims that he was not involved in Jules’s murder, only in the coverup after the fact. Marty Butler calls to Mary Pat from outside, asking why she didn’t flee with his money when she had the chance. She tells him that he is the source of the evil in her neighborhood.

He responds that he was a sniper in the Korean War. Just then, a rifle shot goes through her armpit, and the next shot kills Brian Shea. Butler tells her that she will lie there and bleed out. While Mary Pat regrets not killing Butler, she takes pride in having done enormous damage to his organization. In one last act of defiance, she gets up and fires a few shots before dying in a hail of gunfire.

Busing commences the next day under heavy police escort and fierce protests, with some protesters hurling bricks at the buses full of Black students. Not a single white student attends South Boston High School on the first day of the busing. On Castle Island, Bobby arrests Butler and his surviving crew while doubting that he will be able to pin charges on them. Mary Pat has died from a shot to the heart, and Bobby thinks that nothing else could have stopped her. Calliope Williamson calls Bobby to ask if Mary Pat helped him, as the women at the nursing home are calling her a traitor. Bobby confirms that she did help get justice for Auggie, even if that wasn’t exactly her intention. Mary Pat’s sister Peg believes that Mary Pat brought her many troubles on herself by being too generous and spoiling her kids.

Few people attend Mary Pat’s funeral, but among them are Calliope and Kenny Fennessy. When the two meet, Kenny asks if she is Dreamy. She responds that her father called her that as a child, but no one else has since. When her coworkers heard the story, they clung to the name as a way to dehumanize her. They agree to get a drink together, but no one will serve them. They each pull out flasks and toast to the dead and to the living. Jules is buried, and Butler’s money is used to place her in a mausoleum with fresh flowers every month. Also, every weekday, the sexton must sit inside the mausoleum for a half hour and play the classical music station. He comes to enjoy the ritual and tells Julia Fennessy all about his life, the good and the bad.