Dennis Lehane - Live by Night

“Yeah, I thought that too at first. But look at that asshole in the tux. The tall one, all the way to the right, leaning against the piano? Look at the newspaper. The one by his elbow, Albert. Look at the fucking headline.”

“That was last month, Albert.”

Now both boats were within 350 yards.

Albert looked at the boats, looked at Maso’s men, looked back at Joe. He let out a long breath through pursed lips. “You think they’re going to rescue you? They’re half our size and we have the high ground. You could send six boats our way and we’ll turn every last one of them into fucking matchsticks.” He turned to the men. “Kill them.”

They lined up along the gunwales. They knelt. Joe counted an even dozen of them. Five to starboard, five to port, Ilario and Fausto heading into the cabin for something. Most of the men on deck carried tommy guns and a few handguns but none had the rifles necessary for long-range shooting.

Ilario and Fausto made that point moot when they dragged a crate back out of the cabin. Joe noticed for the first time that there was a bronze tripod bolted to the deck at the gunwale and a toolbox sitting beside it. Then he realized it wasn’t a tripod exactly; it was a deck mount. For a gun. A big fucking gun. Ilario reached into the crate and removed two ammunition belts of .30-06 rounds that he lay beside the tripod. He and Fausto then reached into the crate and came back out with a 1903 ten-barrel Gatling. They placed it on top of the deck mount and went to work securing it.

The approaching runabouts grew louder. They were maybe 250 yards away now, which put them about a hundred yards out of range for anything but the Gatling. But once that fucker got locked onto the deck mount, it was capable of firing up to nine hundred rounds a minute. One sustained burst into either of the boats and the only thing left would be meat for the sharks.

Albert said, “Tell me where she is, and I’ll make it fast. One shot. You’ll never feel it. If you make me force it out of you, I’ll tear the pieces off you long after you’ve told me. I’ll stack them on the deck until the stack falls over.”

The men shouted at one another, changing their positions as the runabouts began to move erratically, the one on the port side adopting a serpentine pattern while the starboard assault boat jerked right-left, right-left, the engines ratcheting up in pitch.

Albert said, “Just tell me.”

Joe shook his head.

“Please,” Albert said so quietly no one else could hear. With the boat engines and the Gatling assembly, Joe could barely hear. “I love her.”

“I loved her too.”

“No,” Albert said. “I love her.”

They finished securing the Gatling to the deck mount. Ilario inserted the ammunition belt into the feed guide and blew at any dust that might be in the hopper.

Albert leaned into Joe. He looked around them. “I don’t want this. Who wants this ? I just want to feel like I felt when I made her laugh or when she threw an ashtray at my head. I don’t even care about the fucking. I just want to watch her drink coffee in a hotel bathrobe. You have that, I hear. With the spic woman?”

“Yeah,” Joe said, “I do.”

“What is she by the way? Nigger or spic?”

“Both,” Joe said.

“And that doesn’t bother you?”

“Albert,” Joe said, “why on earth would it bother me?”

Ilario Nobile, a veteran of the Spanish-American War, manned the crank handle of the Gatling while Fausto took a seat below the gun, the first of the ammunition belts lying across his lap like a grandmother’s blanket.

Albert drew his long-barrel .38 and placed it to Joe’s forehead. “Tell me.”

No one heard the fourth engine until it was too late.

Joe looked as deep into Albert as he ever had and what he saw there was someone as shit-scared-terrified as everyone else he’d ever known.

“No.”

Farruco Diaz’s plane appeared out of the western clouds. It came in high but dove fast. Dion stood tall in the rear seat, his machine gun secured to the mount Farruco Diaz had busted Joe’s balls about for months until he let him install it. Dion wore thick goggles and seemed to be laughing.

The first thing Dion and his machine gun aimed at was the Gatling.

Ilario turned to his left and Dion’s bullets blew off his ear and moved through his neck like a scythe and the ricochets bounced off the gun and bounced off the deck mount and the deck cleats, and collided with Fausto Scarfone. Fausto’s arms danced in the air by his head and then he tipped over, spitting red everywhere.

The deck was spitting too—wood and metal and sparks. The men ducked, crouched, and curled into balls. They screamed and fumbled with their weapons. Two fell off the boat.

Farruco Diaz’s plane banked and surged toward the clouds and the gunners recovered. They got to their feet and fired away. The steeper the plane climbed, the more vertical they fired.

And some of the bullets came back down.

Albert took one in the shoulder. Another guy grabbed the back of his neck and fell to the deck.

The smaller boats were now close enough to be fired upon. But all of Albert’s gunners had turned their backs to shoot at Farruco’s plane. Joe’s gunners weren’t the best shots—they were in boats and boats that were moving wildly—but they didn’t have to be. They managed to hit hips and knees and abdomens and a third of the men on the boat flopped to the deck and made the noises men made when they were shot in the hip and the knees and the abdomen.

The plane came back for a second pass. Men were firing from the boats and Dion was working that machine gun like it was a fireman’s hose and he was the fire chief. Albert righted himself and pointed his .32 long-barrel at Joe as the back of the boat turned into a tornado of dust and chips of wood and men failing to escape a fusillade of lead and Joe lost sight of Albert.

Joe was hit in the arm by a bullet fragment and once in the head by a wood chip the size of a bottle cap. It ripped off a piece of his left eyebrow and nicked the top of his left ear on its way into the Gulf. A Colt .45 landed at the base of the tub, and Joe picked it up and dropped the magazine into his hand long enough to confirm there were at least six bullets left in it before he slammed it back home.

By the time Carmine Parone reached him, the blood flowing out of the left side of his face looked a lot worse than it was. Carmine gave Joe a towel, and he and one of the new kids, Peter Wallace, set to work on the cement with axes. While Joe had assumed it had already set, it hadn’t, and after fifteen or sixteen swings of the axes and a shovel Carmine had found in the galley, they got him out of there.

Farruco Diaz set his plane down on the water and cut the engine. The plane glided over to them. Dion climbed aboard and the men went about killing the wounded.

“How you doing?” Dion asked Joe.

Ricardo Cormarto tracked a young man who was dragging himself toward the stern, his legs a mess, but the rest of him looking ready for a night out in a beige suit and cream-colored shirt, mango-red tie flipped over his shoulder, like he was preparing to eat a lobster bisque. Cormarto put a burst into his spine and the young man exhaled an outraged sigh, so Cormarto put another burst into his head.

Joe looked at the bodies piled on the deck and said to Wallace, “If he’s alive in all that, bring him to me.”

“Yes, sir. Yes, sir,” Wallace said.

He tried flexing his ankles but it hurt too much. He placed a hand to the ladder under the wheelhouse and said to Dion, “What was the question again?”

“How you doing?”