Dennis Lehane - Live by Night

“Wait a minute,” Joe said, “this city’s named after one guy?”

“Yeah,” Dion said, “Vicente Ybor. He was a cigar guy.”

“Now, that,” Joe said, “is power.” He looked out the window and saw Ybor City to the east, handsome from a distance, reminding Joe again of New Orleans, but a much smaller version.

“I dunno,” Dion said, “Coughlin City?” He shook his head. “Doesn’t have a ring to it.”

“No,” Joe agreed, “but Coughlin County?”

Dion chuckled. “You know? That’s not bad.”

“Sounds good, doesn’t it?”

“How many sizes your hat go up when you were in prison?” Dion asked.

“Suit yourself,” Joe said, “dream small.”

“How about Coughlin Country? No, hold it, Coughlin Conti-nent .”

Joe laughed and Dion roared and slapped the wheel and Joe was surprised to realize how much he’d missed his friend and how much it would break his heart if he had to order his murder by the end of the week.

Dion drove them down Jefferson toward the courthouses and government buildings. They ran into a snarl of traffic and the heat found the car again.

“Next on the agenda?” Joe asked.

“You want heroin? Morphine? Cocaine?”

Joe shook his head. “Gave them all up for Lent.”

Dion said, “Well, if you ever decide to get hooked, this is the place to come, sport. Tampa, Florida—illegal narcotics center of the South.”

“Chamber of commerce know that?”

“And they’re plenty sore about it. Anyway, reason I bring it up is—”

“Oh, a point, ” Joe said.

“I do have them now and again.”

“By all means then, proceed, sir.”

“One of Esteban’s guys, Arturo Torres? He was pinched last week for cocaine. So normally he’d be out half an hour after he went in, but they got this Federal task force sniffing around right now. IRS guys came down beginning of the summer with a bunch of judges, and the furnace got turned on. Arturo is going to be deported.”

“Why do we care?”

“He’s Esteban’s best cooker. ’Round Ybor you see a bottle of rum with Torres’s initials on the cork, it’s gonna cost you double.”

“When’s he supposed to be deported?”

“In about two hours.”

Joe placed his hat over his face and slouched in his seat. He felt exhausted suddenly from the long train ride, the heat, the thinking, that dizzying display of wealthy white people in their wealthy white clothes. “Wake me when we get there.”

After meeting with the judge, they walked from the courthouse to pay a courtesy call on Chief Irving Figgis of the Tampa Police Department.

Headquarters sat on the corner of Florida and Jackson, Joe having oriented himself enough to realize he’d have to pass by it every day as he went from the hotel to work in Ybor. Cops were like nuns that way—always letting you know they were watching.

“He asked you to come to him,” Dion explained as they walked up the steps of headquarters, “so he won’t have to come to you.”

“What’s he like?”

“He’s a copper,” Dion said, “so he’s an asshole. Beyond that, he’s okay.”

In his office, Figgis was surrounded by photographs of the same three people—a wife, a son, and a daughter. They were all apple-haired and startlingly attractive. The children had skin so unblemished it was as if angels had scrubbed them clean. The chief shook Joe’s hand, looked him directly in the eye, and asked him to take a seat. Irving Figgis wasn’t a tall man or one of great size or muscle. He was slim and ran small and kept his gray hair trimmed tight to his scalp. He looked like a man who’d give you a fair shake if you gave the same to him, but a man who’d give you twice the hell you’d come looking for if you played him for a fool.

“I won’t insult you by asking the nature of your business,” he said, “so you won’t have to insult me by lying. Fair?”

Joe nodded.

“True you’re a police captain’s son?”

Joe nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“So you understand.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“That this”—he pointed back and forth between his chest and Joe’s—“is how we live. But everything else?” He gestured at all those photographs. “Well, that’s why we live.”

Joe nodded. “And never the twain shall meet.”

Chief Figgis smiled. “Heard you were educated too.” A small glance for Dion. “Don’t find much of that in your trade.”

“Or in yours,” Dion said.

Figgis smiled and tipped his head in acknowledgment. He fixed Joe in a mild gaze. “Before I settled here, I was a soldier and then a U.S. marshal. I’ve killed seven men in my lifetime,” he said without a hint of pride.

Seven? Joe thought. Christ.

Chief Figgis’s gaze remained mild, even. “I killed them because it was my job. I take no pleasure from it and, truth be told, their faces haunt me most nights. But if I had to kill an eighth tomorrow to protect and serve this city? Mister, I would do so with a steady arm and a clear eye. You follow?”

“I do,” Joe said.

Chief Figgis stood by a city map on the wall behind his desk and used his finger to draw a slow circle around Ybor City. “If you keep your business here—north of Second, south of Twenty-seventh, west of Thirty-fourth, and east of Nebraska—you and I will have little in the way of discord.” He gave Joe a small arch of his eyebrow. “How’s that sound?”

“Sounds good,” Joe said, wondering when he’d get around to naming his price.

Chief Figgis saw the question in Joe’s eyes and his own darkened slightly. “I don’t take bribes. If I did, three of those seven dead I mentioned would still be among the living.” He came around to sit on the edge of the desk, spoke in a very low voice. “I have no illusions, young Mr. Coughlin, on how business is transacted in this town. If you were to ask me in private how I feel about Volstead, you’d see me do a pretty fair imitation of a kettle come to boil. I know plenty of my officers take money to look the other way. I know I serve a city swimming in corruption. I know we live in a fallen world. But just because I breathe corrupt air and rub elbows with corrupt people, never make the mistake of believing I am corruptible.”

Joe searched the man’s face for signs of puffery, pride, or self-aggrandizement—the usual weaknesses he’d come to associate with “self-made” men.

Nothing stared back at him but quiet fortitude.

Chief Figgis, he decided, was never to be underestimated.

“I won’t make that mistake,” Joe said.

Chief Figgis held out his hand and Joe shook it.

“I thank you for coming by. Careful in the sun.” A flash of humor passed through Figgis’s face. “That skin of yours could catch fire, I suspect.”

“A pleasure meeting you, Chief.”

Joe went to the door. Dion opened it, and a teenage girl, all breathless energy, stood on the other side. It was the daughter in all the photographs, beautiful and apple-haired, rose gold skin so unblemished it achieved a soft-sun radiance. Joe guessed she was seventeen. Her beauty found his throat, stopped it for a moment, put a catch in the words about to leave his mouth, so all he could manage was a hesitant, “Miss…” Yet it wasn’t a beauty that evoked anything carnal in him. It was somehow purer than that. The beauty of Chief Irving Figgis’s daughter wasn’t something you wanted to despoil, it was something you wanted to beatify.

“Father,” she said, “I apologize. I thought you were alone.”

“That’s all right, Loretta. These gentlemen were leaving. Your manners,” he said.

“Yes, Father, I’m sorry.” She turned and gave Joe and Dion a small curtsy. “Miss Loretta Figgis, gentlemen.”