Live by Night (Coughlin 2)

Until such a day as Joe and Esteban decided to declare open war on the Coast Guard and J. Edgar’s men, however, the small barrier islands that dotted this stretch of Gulf coastline—Longboat Key, Casey Key, Siesta Key, among others—were perfect places to duck and hide or temporarily stow a load.

They were also perfect places to get boxed in, because those same keys had only two ways on and off—one, the boat you’d sailed in on, and two, a bridge. One bridge. So if the laws were closing in, megaphones blaring, searchlights scouring, and you didn’t have a way to fly off the island, then you, sir, were going to jail.

Over the years, they’d temporarily dumped a dozen or so loads at the Ritz. Not Joe, personally, but he’d heard the stories about the place. Ringling had gotten the skeleton up, even installed the plumbing and subflooring, but then he’d walked away. Just left it sitting there, this three-hundred-room Spanish Mediterranean, so big that if they’d lit the rooms, you could probably see it from Havana.

Joe got there an hour early. He’d brought a flashlight with him, had asked Dion to pick him up a good one, and this one wasn’t bad, but it still needed frequent rests. The beam would gradually dim, begin to flicker, and then it would vanish entirely. Joe would have to shut it off for a few minutes and then turn it back on and go through the same process all over again. It occurred to him as he waited in the dark of what he believed had been meant to be a third-floor restaurant, that people were flashlights—they beamed, they dimmed, they flickered and died. It was a morbid and childish observation, but on the drive down he’d grown morbid and maybe a bit childish in his pique at RD Pruitt because he knew that RD was just one in a line. He wasn’t the exception, he was the rule. And if Joe succeeded in erasing him as a problem tonight, another RD Pruitt would come along soon after.

Because the business was illegal, it was, by necessity, dirty. And dirty businesses attracted dirty people. People of small minds and big cruelty.

Joe walked out onto the white limestone veranda and listened to the surf and Ringling’s imported royal palm fronds rustling in the warm night breeze.

The drys were losing; the country was pushing back against the Eighteenth. Prohibition would end. Maybe not for ten years, but it could be as soon as two. Either way, its obituary was written, it just hadn’t been published. Joe and Esteban had bought into importing companies up and down the Gulf Coast and along the Eastern Seaboard. They were cash poor right now, but the first morning alcohol became legal again, they could flip a switch and their operation would arise, gleaming, into the bright new day. The distilleries were all in place, the shipping companies currently specializing in glassware, the bottling plants servicing soda pop companies. By the afternoon of that first morning, they’d be up and running, ready to take over what they estimated to be well within their reach—16 to 18 percent of the U.S. rum market.

Joe closed his eyes and sucked in the sea air and wondered how many more RD Pruitts he’d have to deal with before he achieved that goal. Truth was, he didn’t understand an RD, a guy who came at the world wanting to beat it at some competition that existed only in his head, a battle to the death, no question, because death was the only blessing and the only peace he’d ever find on this earth. And maybe it wasn’t only RD and his ilk who bothered Joe; maybe it was what you had to do to put an end to them. You had to kneel down in the grime with them. You had to show a good man like Irving Figgis pictures of his firstborn with a cock in her ass and a chain around her neck, track marks running down her arm like garter snakes baked crisp by the sun.

He hadn’t needed to put the second picture down in front of Irving Figgis, but he’d done so because it made things go quicker. What concerned him more and more about this business to which he’d hitched his star was that every time you sold off another piece of yourself in the name of expediency, the easier it got.

The other night, he and Graciela had gone out for drinks at the Riviera and dinner at the Columbia and then caught a show at the Satin Sky. They’d been accompanied by Sal Urso, who was Joe’s full-time driver now, and their car was shadowed by Lefty Downer, who watched them when Dion was dealing with other matters. The bartender at the Riviera had tripped and fallen to one knee trying to get Graciela’s chair pulled out for her before she arrived at the table. When the waitress at the Columbia spilled a drink on the table and some of it leaked onto Joe’s pants, the maître d’, the manager, and eventually the owner had come to the table to apologize. Joe then had to convince them not to fire the waitress. He argued that her mistake was honest, and that her service was, in all other respects, impeccable and had been every time they’d been lucky to have her service their table. (Service. Joe hated that word.) The men had relented, of course, but as Graciela reminded him on their way to Satin Sky, what else would they say to Joe’s face? See if she still has a job next week, Graciela said. At the Satin Sky, the tables were all taken, but then before Joe and Graciela could turn back to the car where Sal waited, the manager, Pepe, rushed over to them and assured them that four patrons had just paid their check. Joe and Graciela watched two men approach a table of four, whisper in the ears of the couples sitting there, and hasten their exit with hands on their elbows.

At the table, neither Joe nor Graciela spoke for some time. They drank their drinks, they watched the band. Graciela looked around the room and then out at Sal standing by the car, his eyes never leaving them. She looked at the patrons and the waiters who pretended not to watch them.

She said, “I’ve become the people my parents worked for.”

Joe said nothing because every response he thought of would be a lie.

Something was getting lost in them, something that was starting to live by day, where the swells lived, where the insurance salesmen and the bankers lived, where the civic meetings were held and the little flags were waved at the Main Street parades, where you sold out the truth of yourself for the story of yourself.

But along the sidewalks lit by dim, yellow lamps and in the alleys and abandoned lots, people begged for food and blankets. And if you got past them, their children worked the next corner.

The reality was, he liked the story of himself. Liked it better than the truth of himself. In the truth of himself, he was second-class and grubby and always out of step. He still had his Boston accent and didn’t know how to dress right, and he thought too many thoughts that most people would find “funny.” The truth of himself was a scared little boy, mislaid by his parents like reading glasses on a Sunday afternoon, treated to random kindnesses by older brothers who came without notice and departed without warning. The truth of himself was a lonely boy in an empty house, waiting for someone to knock on his bedroom door and ask if he was okay.