Dennis Lehane - Live by Night

“Crew boss,” Joe said.

“Ah,” Maso said with a broad smile, “my boy.” He pinched Joe’s cheeks. “My boy.”

When Maso got out of his chair, Joe did too. They shook hands. They hugged. Maso kissed both his cheeks in the same spots where he’d pinched them.

Joe shook hands with Digger and told him how much he looked forward to working with him.

“For,” Digger reminded him.

“Right,” Joe said. “For you.”

He headed for the door.

“Dinner tonight?” Maso said.

Joe stopped at the door. “Sure. Tropicale at nine sound good?”

“Sounds great.”

“Okay. I’ll get us the best table.”

“Wonderful,” Maso said. “And make sure he’s dead by then.”

“What?” Joe took his hand off the knob. “Who?”

“Your friend.” Maso poured himself a cup of coffee. “The large one.”

“Dion?”

Maso nodded.

“He hasn’t done anything,” Joe said.

Maso looked up at him.

“What am I missing?” Joe said. “He’s been a great earner and a great gun.”

“He’s a rat,” Maso said. “Six years ago, he ratted on you. Means six minutes from now, six days, six months, he’ll do it again. I can’t have a rat working for my son.”

“No,” Joe said.

“No?”

“No, he didn’t sell me out. That was his brother. I told you.”

“I know what you told me, Joseph. I also know you lied. Now, I allow you one lie.” He held up his index finger while he added cream to his coffee. “You’ve had yours. Kill that hunk of shit before dinner.”

“Maso,” Joe said. “Listen. It was his brother. I know it for a fact.”

“You do?”

“I do.”

“You’re not lying to me?”

“I’m not lying to you.”

“Because you know what it means if you are.”

Jesus, Joe thought, you came down here to steal my operation for your useless fucking son. Just steal it already.

“I know what it means,” Joe said.

“You’re sticking to your story.” Maso dropped a cube of sugar into his cup.

“I’m sticking to it because it’s not a story. It’s the truth.”

“The whole truth and nothing but, uh?”

Joe nodded. “The whole truth and nothing but.”

Maso shook his head slowly, sadly, and the door behind Joe opened and Albert White walked into the room.

The first thing Joe noticed about Albert White was how much he’d aged in three years. Gone were the white- and cream-colored suits and fifty-dollar spats. His shoes were one step above the cardboard worn by the people who lived in the streets and the tents all over the country now. The lapels of his brown suit were frayed and the elbows thin. His haircut was the kind you got at home from a distracted wife or daughter.

The second thing Joe noticed was that he held Sal Urso’s Thompson in his right hand. Joe knew it was Sal’s because of the markings along the breech. Sal had a habit of rubbing the breech with his left hand when he was sitting with the Thompson on his lap. He still wore his wedding ring, even though his wife had caught the typhus in ’23, not long before he came to work for Lou Ormino in Tampa. When Sal rubbed the Thompson, the ring scratched the metal. Now, after years of cradling that gun, there was almost no bluing left.

Albert raised it to his shoulder as he crossed to Joe. He appraised Joe’s three-piece suit.

“Anderson and Sheppard?” he asked.

Joe said, “H. Huntsman.”

Albert nodded. He opened the left side of his own jacket so Joe could admire the label—Kresge’s. “My fortunes have changed a bit since the last time I was here.”

Joe said nothing. There was nothing to say.

“I’m back in Boston. I was close to getting a tin cup, you know? Selling fucking pencils, Joe. But then I run into Beppe Nunnaro in this little basement place in the North End. Beppe and I used to be friends. A long time ago, before all this unfortunate series of misunderstandings with Mr. Pescatore. And Beppe and me, Joe, we got to talking. Your name didn’t come up immediately but Dion’s did. See, Beppe used to be a newsie with Dion and Dion’s dumb brother, Paolo. Did you know that?”

Joe nodded.

“So you can probably see where this is going. Beppe said he’d known Paolo most of his life and had a hard time believing Paolo would double-cross anyone, never mind his own brother and a police captain’s son, on a bank job.” Albert slung his arm around Joe’s neck. “To which I said, ‘Paolo didn’t double-cross anyone. Dion did. I know because I’m the guy he ratted to .’ ” Albert walked toward the window that faced the alley and Horace Porter’s defunct piano warehouse. Joe had no choice but to walk with him. “At this point, Beppe thought it might be a good idea if I talked to Mr. Pescatore.” They stopped at the window. “Which leads us to now. Raise your hands.”

Joe did and Albert frisked him as Maso and Digger wandered over and stood by the windows. He removed the Savage .32 from behind Joe’s back and the derringer single-shot above his right ankle and the switchblade in his left shoe.

“Anything else?” Albert said.

“Usually that suffices,” Joe said.

“Cracking wise to the end.” Albert put his arm around Joe’s shoulders.

Maso said, “The thing about Mr. White, Joe, that you should probably have grasped—”

“And what’s that, Maso?”

“It’s that he knows Tampa.” Maso raised a thick eyebrow at Joe.

“Which makes you a lot less ‘needed,’ ” Digger said. “Dumb fuck.”

“The language,” Maso said. “Is that really necessary?”

They all turned back to the window, like kids waiting for the curtain to part at a puppet show.

Albert raised the tommy gun in front of their faces. “Nice piece. I understand you know the owner.”

“I do.” Joe heard the sadness in his own voice. “I do.”

They stood facing the window for about a minute before Joe heard the scream and the shadow plummeted down the yellow brick wall across from him. Sal’s face flew past the window, his arms flapping wildly at the air. And then he stopped falling. His head snapped up straight and his feet jerked up toward his chin as the noose snapped his neck. The body swung into the building twice and then twirled on the rope. The idea, Joe assumed, had been for Sal to end up hanging directly in front of their eyes, but someone had misjudged the length of rope or maybe the effect of a man’s weight at the end of it. So they stood looking down at the top of his head as his body hung between the tenth and ninth floors.

They’d cut Lefty’s rope correctly, however. He arrived without a scream, his hands free and clasped to the noose. He looked resigned, as if someone had just told him a secret he’d never wanted to hear but had always expected to. Because he’d relieved the weight of the rope with his hands, his neck didn’t break. He arrived in front of their faces like something conjured by magicians. He bounced up and down a few times and then dangled. He kicked at the windows. His movements were not desperate or frantic. They were strangely precise and athletic and the look on his face never changed, even when he saw them watching. He tugged at the rope even as the tracheal cartilage pressed over the edges of it and his tongue flopped over his lower lip.

Joe watched it ebb out of him, slowly, and then all at once. The light left Lefty like a hesitant bird. But once it left, it flew high and fast. The only solace Joe took from it was that Lefty’s eyes, at the very end, fluttered to a close.

He looked at Lefty’s sleeping face and the top of Sal’s head and begged their forgiveness.