Dennis Lehane - Live by Night

He hadn’t slept properly, if at all, in two days and he could feel it now in every step he took, every thought he tried to formulate.

As the truck backed up to the ramp, he saw Craddick watching him, and he wondered if the older man was just naturally suspicious or if Joe had given him a reason to be. And then Joe realized something that nauseated him.

He’d abandoned his post.

He’d left the gate unmanned. No soldier would do that, not even a hungover National Guardsman.

He glanced back, expecting to see it empty, expecting a shot in the back from Craddick’s .45 and the peal of alarms, but instead he saw Esteban Suarez standing erect in the guard shack, wearing a corporal’s uniform, looking to all but the most curious eyes every inch the soldier.

Esteban, Joe thought, I barely know you but I could kiss your head.

Joe glanced back at the truck, saw that Craddick wasn’t looking at him any longer. He was turned on the seat, saying something to the seaman apprentice as the boy applied the brake and then shut off the engine.

Craddick hopped from the cab and shouted orders to the back of the truck, and by the time Joe got there, the sailors were out on the ramp and the tailgate was down.

Craddick handed Joe a clipboard. “Initial the first and third pages, sign the second. Clearly states that we are leaving these weapons in your charge for no less than three and no more than thirty-six hours.”

Joe signed “Albert White, SSG, USANG,” initialed where appropriate, and handed it back.

Craddick looked at Lefty, Cormarto, Fasani, and Parone, then back at Joe. “Five men? That’s all you got?”

“We were told you were bringing the muscle.” Joe gestured at the dozen sailors on the ramp.

“Just like the army,” Craddick said, “putting its feet up when the work gets tough.”

Joe blinked in the sun. “That why you guys were late—you were working hard?”

“’Scuse me?”

Joe squared off, not just because his blood was up, but because not to do so would look suspicious. “You were supposed to be here half an hour ago.”

“Fifteen minutes,” Craddick said, “and we were delayed.”

“By?”

“Fail to see how any of this is your business, Corporal.” Craddick stepped up close. “But, in truth, we were delayed by a woman.”

Joe looked back at Lefty and his men and laughed. “Women can be hard work.”

Lefty chuckled and the others followed suit.

“All right, all right.” Craddick held up a hand and smiled to show he was in on the joke. “Well, this one, boys, was a beauty. Ain’t that right, Seaman Pluff?”

“Aye, sir. She was a looker. Bet she’s a real biscuit too.”

“Little dark for my tastes,” Craddick said. “But she come out the middle of the road, been all roughed up by her spic boyfriend, lucky he didn’t cut her, fond as they are of their knives.”

“You leave her where you found her?”

“Left a sailor with her. Pick him up on the way back if you ever give us a chance to unload these weapons.”

“Fair enough,” Joe said and stepped back.

Craddick may have eased up a notch, but he was still a man on the alert. His eyes soaked up everything. Joe stuck with him, taking one end of a crate while Craddick took the other, lifting by the rope handles built into the ends. As they walked the loading bay corridor to the hold, they could see through the windows to the next corridor over and the offices beyond. Dion had placed all the fair-skinned Cubans in the offices with their backs to the windows, all of them typing gibberish on their Underwoods or crooking receivers to their ears with thumbs pressed down on the cradles. Even so, on their second trip down the corridor it occurred to Joe that every head they saw over there had black hair. Not a blond or a sandy dome in the bunch.

Craddick’s eyes were on the windows as they walked, so far unaware that the corridor between theirs and those offices had just played host to an armed assault and the death of one man.

“Where’d you serve overseas?” Joe asked.

Craddick kept his eyes on the window. “How’d you know I was overseas?”

Bullet holes, Joe thought. Those fucking itchy-fingered Cubans would have left bullet holes behind in the walls. “You have the look of a man seen some action.”

Craddick looked over at Joe. “You recognize men who’ve been in battle?”

“I do today,” Joe said. “With you, anyway.”

“Almost shot that spic woman by the side of the road,” Craddick said mildly.

“Really?”

He nodded. “It was spics tried to blow us up last night. And these boys with me don’t know it yet, but spics called in a threat against the whole crew, said we were all going to die today.”

“I hadn’t heard that.”

“That’s ’cause it ain’t for hearing yet,” Craddick said. “So I see a spic girl waving us down in the middle of Highway 41? I think, Walter? Shoot that bitch between the tits.”

They reached the hold and stacked the crate on top of the first stack to the left. They stepped aside and Craddick took a handkerchief to his forehead in the hot hallway and they watched the last of the crates come to them as the sailors filed down the corridor.

“Woulda done it too but that she had my daughter’s eyes.”

“Who?”

“The spic girl. Got me a daughter from my time in the DR. Don’t see her or nothing, but her mama sends me pictures every now and then. She got them big dark eyes most Carib’ women have? I see those eyes in this gal today, I holstered my weapon.”

“It was already out?”

“Halfway.” He nodded. “I already had it in my head, you know? Why take chances? Put the bitch down. White men don’t get much more’n a tongue-lashing for that around here. But…” He shrugged. “My daughter’s eyes.”

Joe said nothing, his blood loud in his ears.

“Sent a boy to do it.”

“What?”

He nodded. “One of the boys we got, Cyrus, I believe. Looking for a war but he can’t find one right now. Spic woman saw the look in his eyes, she took off running. Cyrus is part coon hound though, grew up in swampland near the Alabama border. Should find her without breaking him a sweat.”

“Where will you take her?”

“There’s no taking her anywhere. She attacked us, boy. Her people did anyway. Cyrus will do what he will with her, leave the rest for the reptiles.” He put the stub of a cigar in his mouth and struck a match off his boot. He squinted over the flame at Joe. “Confirm your assumption—I seen battle, son, yeah. Killed me one Dominican, killed me Haitians by the bushel, point of fact. Few years later, I took out three Panamanians with one Thompson burst on account they were all bunched together, praying I wouldn’t. The truth of it all and don’t let no one ever tell you different?” He got the cigar going and flicked the match over his shoulder. “It was some fun.”

As soon as the sailors left, Esteban ran to the motor pool to grab a vehicle. Joe changed out of his uniform as Dion backed the truck over to the ramp and the Cubans began pulling the crates right back out of the hold.

“You got this?” Joe asked Dion.

Dion beamed. “Got it? We own it. You go get her. We’ll see you at the spot in an hour.”

Esteban pulled up in a scout car and Joe hopped in and they took off down Highway 41. Within five minutes they saw the transport truck about a half mile ahead rumbling down a road so straight and flat you could practically see Alabama at the other end.

“If we can see them,” Joe said, “they can see us.”

“Not for long,” Esteban said.

The road appeared to their left. It cut through the palmettos and across the crushed-shell highway and back into the scrub and palmettos on the other side. Esteban turned left, and they bounced onto it. It was gravel and dirt and half the dirt was mud. Esteban drove like Joe felt—harried and reckless.