Dennis Lehane - Live by Night

“You’re sure it’s her?” Dion said the next morning in Joe’s office.

From his inside pocket, Joe removed the photograph Esteban had pulled back out of the frame last night. He placed it on the desk in front of Dion. “You tell me.”

Dion’s eyes drifted and then locked and finally widened. “Oh, yeah, that’s her all right.” He looked sideways at Joe. “You tell Graciela?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You tell your women everything?”

“I don’t tell ’em shit, but you’re more of a nance than me. And she’s carrying your child.”

“That’s true.” He looked up at the copper ceiling. “I didn’t tell her yet because I don’t know how.”

“It’s easy,” Dion said. “You just say ‘Honey, sweetie, dearest, you remember that filly I was sweet on before you? One I told you went tits-up? Well, she’s alive and living in your hometown and still quite the dish. Speaking of dishes, what’s for dinner?’ ”

Sal, standing by the door, looked down to hide a chuckle.

“You enjoying yourself?” Joe asked Dion.

“Time of my life,” Dion said, his girth shaking the chair.

“D,” Joe said, “we’re talking about six years of rage here, six years of…” Joe threw his hands up at it, unable to put it into words. “I survived Charlestown because of that rage, I hung Maso off a fucking roof because of it, chased Albert White out of Tampa, hell, I—”

“Built an empire because of it.”

“Yeah.”

“So when you see her?” Dion said. “Tell her thanks from me.”

Joe’s mouth was open, but he couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Look,” Dion said, “I never liked the cooze. You know that. But she sure found a way to inspire you, boss. Reason I ask if you told Graciela is because I do like her. I like her a lot.”

“I like her a lot too,” Sal said, and they both looked over at him. He held up his right hand, the Thompson in his left. “Sorry.”

“We talk a certain way,” Dion said to him, “because we used to beat each other up when we were kids. To you, he’s always the boss.”

“Won’t happen again.”

Dion turned back to Joe.

“We didn’t beat each other up when we were kids,” Joe said.

“Sure we did.”

“No,” Joe said. “You beat the shit out of me.”

“You hit me with a brick.”

“So you’d stop beating the shit out of me.”

“Oh.” Dion was quiet for a moment. “I had a point.”

“When?”

“When I came through the door. Oh, we gotta talk about Maso’s visit. And you hear about Irv Figgis?”

“I heard about Loretta, yeah.”

Dion shook his head. “We all heard about Loretta. But last night? Irv walked into Arturo’s place? Apparently that’s where Loretta scored her last vial of junk the night before last?”

“Okay…”

“Yeah, well, Irv beat Arturo near to death.”

“No.”

Dion nodded. “Kept saying ‘Repent, repent,’ and just driving his fists down like fucking pistons. Arturo could lose an eye.”

“Shit. And Irv?”

Dion whirled his index finger beside his temple. “They got him on a sixty-day observation bit at the bughouse in Temple Terrace.”

“Christ,” Joe said, “what did we do to these people?”

Dion’s face darkened to scarlet. He turned and pointed at Sal Urso. “You never fucking saw this, get me?”

Sal said, “Saw what?” and Dion slapped Joe across the face.

Slapped him so hard Joe hit the desk. He bounced off it and came back with his .32 already pointed into the folds under Dion’s chin.

Dion said, “I’m not watching you walk into another life-or-death meeting knowing you’re half-hoping to die over something you had nothing to do with. You want to shoot me here and now?” He flung his arms wide. “Pull the fucking trigger.”

“Don’t think I will?”

“I don’t care if you do, ” Dion said. “Because I’m not going to watch you try to kill yourself a second time. You’re my brother. You get me, you stupid fucking mick? You. More than Seppi or Paolo, God rest ’em. You. And I can’t lose another fucking brother. Can’t do it.”

Dion grabbed Joe’s wrist, curled his finger over Joe’s trigger finger, and dug the gun even deeper into the folds of his neck. He closed his eyes and tightened his lips against his teeth.

“By the way,” he said, “when you going over there?”

“Where?”

“Cuba.”

“Who said I’m going over there?”

Dion frowned. “You just found out this dead girl you used to be bugs for is alive and breathing about three hundred miles south of here, and you’re going to just sit with that information?”

Joe removed his gun and placed it back in its holster. He noticed Sal looking white as ash and moist as a hot towel. “I’m going as soon as this meeting with Maso’s over. You know how the old man can talk.”

“Which is what I come here to discuss.” Dion opened the moleskin notebook he carried with him everywhere, thumbed the pages. “There’s a lot of things I don’t like about this.”

“Such as?”

“Him and his guys took over half a train to come down here. That’s an awful big entourage.”

“He’s old—he got the nurse with him everywhere, maybe a doctor, and he keeps four gunners around him at all times.”

Dion nodded. “Well, he’s got at least twenty guys with him. That’s not twenty nurses. He took over the Romero Hotel on Eighth. The whole hotel. Why?”

“Security.”

“But he always stays at the Tampa Bay Hotel. Just takes over a floor. His security’s guaranteed that way. Why commandeer a whole hotel in the middle of Ybor?”

“I think he’s getting more paranoid,” Joe said.

He wondered what he’d say to her when he saw her. Remember me?

Or was that too corny?

“Boss,” Dion said, “listen to me for a second. He didn’t take the Seaboard out here direct. He started on the Illinois Central. He stopped in Detroit, KC, Cincinnati, and Chicago.”

“Right. Where all his whiskey partners are.”

“It’s also where all the bosses are. All the ones who matter outside of New York and Providence, and guess where he went two weeks ago?”

Joe looked across the desk at his friend. “New York and Providence.”

“Yup.”

“So you think what?”

“I don’t know.”

“You think he’s barnstorming the country asking permission to take us out?”

“Maybe.”

Joe shook his head. “Makes no sense, D. In five years, we’ve quadrupled the profits of this organization. This was a fucking cow town when we got here. Last year we netted—what?—eleven million from rum alone?”

“Eleven-five,” Dion said. “And we’ve more than quadrupled.”

“So why fuck up a good thing? I don’t buy Maso’s ‘Joseph, you’re like a son to me’ bullshit any more than you do. But he respects the numbers. And our numbers are first-rate.”

Dion nodded. “I agree it makes no sense to take us out. But I don’t like these signs. I don’t like how they make my stomach feel.”

“That’s the paella you ate last night.”

Dion gave him a weak smile. “Sure. Maybe that’s it.”

Joe stood. He parted the blinds and looked out on the factory floor. Dion was worried, but Dion was paid to worry. So he was doing his job. In the end, Joe knew, everyone in this business did what they did to make the most money they could make. Simple as that. And Joe made money. Bags and bags of it that went up the seaboard with the bottles of rum and filled the safe in Maso’s mansion in Nahant. Every year Joe made more than he had the year before. Maso was ruthless and he’d grown a bit less predictable as his health declined. But he was, above all else, greedy. And Joe fed that greed. He kept its stomach warm and full. There was no logical reason Maso would risk going hungry again to replace Joe. And why replace Joe? He’d committed no transgressions. He didn’t skim off the top. He posed no threat to Maso’s power.