Live by Night (Coughlin 2)

Loomis spun him back around, then went to work the crank, and Albert pulled a fresh cigarette from a pewter case and put it between Joe’s lips and lit it for him. In the flare of the match, Joe could see that Albert took no joy from any of this, that when Joe was sinking to the bottom of the Mystic River with a leather noose around his head and sacks full of rocks tied to his ankles, Albert would rue the price of doing business in a dirty world.

For tonight anyway.

On the first floor, they left the elevator and walked down an empty service corridor, the sounds of the party reaching them through the walls—dueling pianos and a horn section going full blast and lots of gay laughter.

They reached the door at the end of the corridor. DELIVERIES had been stamped across the center in fresh yellow paint.

“I’ll make sure it’s clear.” Loomis opened the door onto a March night that had grown much rawer. A light sprinkle fell and gave a tinfoil smell to the iron fire escapes. Joe could also smell the building, the newness of the exterior, as if limestone dust kicked up by the drills still hung in the air.

Albert turned Joe to him and fixed his tie. He licked both his palms and smoothed Joe’s hair. He looked bereft. “I never wanted to grow up to be a man who kills people to maintain my profit margin, and yet I am. I never get a single night’s decent sleep—not fucking one, Joe. I get up every day in fear and lay my head back to the pillow at night the same way.” He straightened Joe’s collar. “You?”

“What?”

“Ever wanted to be anything else?”

“No.”

Albert picked something off Joe’s shoulder, flicked it away with his finger. “I told her if she delivered you to us, I wouldn’t kill you. Nobody else believed you’d be stupid enough to show up tonight, but I hedged my bets. So she agreed to lead you to me to save you. Or so she told herself. But you and I know I have to kill you, don’t we, Joe?” He looked at Joe with heartbroken eyes, glassy with moisture. “Don’t we?”

Joe nodded.

Albert nodded as well. He leaned in and whispered in Joe’s ear, “And then I’m going to kill her too.”

“What?”

“Because I loved her too.” Albert raised his eyebrows up and down. “And because the only way you could have known to knock over my poker game on that particular morning? Would be if she tipped you.”

Joe said, “Wait.” He said, “Look. She didn’t tip me to anything.”

“What else would you say?” Albert fixed his collar, smoothed his shirt. “Look at it this way—if what you sweethearts have is true love? Then you’ll meet tonight in heaven.”

He buried a fist in Joe’s stomach, driving it up to the solar plexus. Joe doubled over and lost all his oxygen again. He jerked at the rope around his wrists and tried to butt Albert with his head, but Albert merely slapped his face away and opened the door to the alley.

He grabbed Joe by the hair and straightened him up, so Joe could see the car waiting for him, the back door open, Julian Bones standing by it. Loomis crossed the alley and grabbed Joe’s elbow, and they dragged him over the threshold. Joe could smell the backseat foot wells now. He could smell the oil rags and dirt.

Just as they were about to hoist him in, they dropped him. He fell to his knees on the cobblestones and he heard Albert yell, “Go! Go! Go!” and their footsteps on the cobblestones. Maybe they’d already shot him in the back of the head because the heavens descended in bars of light.

His face was saturated in white, and the buildings along the alley erupted in blue and red, and tires squealed and somebody shouted something through a megaphone and someone fired a gun and then another gun.

A man walked through the white light toward Joe, a trim and confident man, a man who wore command like a birthmark.

His father.

More men walked out of the white behind him, and Joe was soon surrounded by a dozen members of the Boston Police Department.

His father cocked his head. “So you’re a cop killer now, Joseph.”

Joe said, “I didn’t kill anybody.”

His father ignored that. “Looks like your accomplices were about to take you on the dead man’s drive. Did they decide you were too much of a liability?”

Several of the policemen had removed their billy clubs.

“Emma’s in the back of a car. They’re going to kill her.”

“Who?”

“Albert White, Brendan Loomis, Julian Bones, and some guy named Donnie.”

On the streets beyond the alley, several women screamed. A car horn blared, followed by the solid thump of a crash. More screams. In the alley, the rain turned from a drizzle to a heavy downpour.

His father looked at his men, then back at Joe. “Fine company you keep, son. Any other fairy tales you have for me?”

“It’s not a fairy tale.” Joe spit blood from his mouth. “They’re going to kill her, Dad.”

“Well, we won’t kill you, Joseph. In fact, I won’t touch you a’tall. But some of my coworkers would like a word.”

Thomas Coughlin leaned forward, hands on his knees, and stared at his son.

Somewhere behind that gaze of iron lived a man who’d slept on the floor of Joe’s hospital room for three days when Joe had the fever back in 1911, who’d read each of the city’s eight newspapers to him, cover to cover, who told him he loved him, who told him if God wanted his son, He’d have to go through him, Thomas Xavier Coughlin, and God would know, sure, what a rough proposition that could turn out to be.

“Dad, listen to me. She’s—”

His father spit in his face.

“He’s all yours,” he said to his men and walked away.

“Find the car!” Joe screamed. “Find Donnie! She’s in a car with Donnie!”

The first blow—a fist—connected with Joe’s jaw. The second, a shot from a billy club, he was pretty sure, hit his temple. After that, all light disappeared from the night.

CHAPTER SIX

All the Sinners Saints

The ambulance driver gave Thomas his first hint of the publicity nightmare about to descend on the BPD.

As they strapped Joe to a wooden gurney and lifted him into the back of the ambulance, the driver said, “You throw this kid off the roof?”

The rain came down in a clatter so loud they all had to shout.

Thomas’s aide and driver, Sergeant Michael Pooley, said, “His injuries were sustained before we arrived.”