Live by Night (Coughlin 2)

“Someone get Albert. He’s awake.”

Then they were lifting him—one hand sinking through the hood and into his hair, two more hands under his armpits. He was dragged back along the deck and dropped into a chair, could feel the hard wooden seat under him and the hard wood slats at his back. Hands slid over his wrists and then the cuffs were unlocked. They’d barely had time to pop open before his arms were pulled around the back of the chair and the cuffs were snapped back on. Someone tied his arms and chest to the chair, tied them just short of too tight to breathe. Then someone—maybe the same someone, maybe someone else—did the same to his legs, tying them so tight to the chair legs that movement was out of the question.

They tilted the chair back and he screamed against the tape, the sound of it in his ears, because they were pushing him over the side of the boat. Even with the hood covering his head, he clenched his eyes shut, and he could hear his breath exit his nostrils so desperate and ragged. If breath could beg, his did.

The chair stopped tipping when it met a wall. Joe sat there at a forty-degree angle or so. He guessed his feet and the front chair legs were a foot and a half to two feet off the deck.

Someone removed his shoes. Then his socks. Then the hood.

He batted his eyelids rapid-time at the sudden return of light. And not any light—Florida light, immeasurably strong even though it was diffused by banks of roiling gray clouds. He couldn’t see any sun, but the light managed to bounce off a nickel-plated sea. Somehow the brightness lived in the gray, lived in the clouds, lived in the sea, not strong enough to point to, just strong enough for him to feel its effect.

When he could see clearly again, the first thing that came into focus was his father’s watch. It dangled in front of his eyes. Then Albert’s face came into focus behind it. He let Joe see as he opened the pocket of his cheap vest and dropped the watch in. “I was making do with an Elgin, myself,” he said and leaned forward, hands on his knees. He smiled his small smile at Joe. Behind him, two men dragged something heavy across the deck toward them. Black metal of some kind. With silver handles. The men neared them. Albert stepped back with a bow and a flourish, and they slid the object just below Joe’s bare feet.

It was a tub. The kind one saw at summer cocktail parties. The hosts would have it filled with ice and bottles of white wine and good beer. There wasn’t any ice in it now, though. Or wine. Or good beer.

Just cement.

Joe bucked against his ropes but it was like bucking against a brick house as it fell on top of him.

Albert stepped behind him and slapped the back of the chair and the chair dropped forward and Joe’s legs sank into the cement.

Albert watched him struggle—or try to—with the distant curiosity of a scientist. About the only thing Joe could move was his head. As soon as his feet entered the bucket, they were there to stay. His legs were already bound fast, ankles to knees, not a twitch of mobility available. The cement had been mixed a little earlier judging by the feel of it. It wasn’t soupy. His feet sank into it like they were sinking into slits in a sponge.

Albert sat on the deck in front of him and watched Joe’s eyes as the cement began to set. The sponge sensation gave way to something firmer under the soles of his feet that proceeded to snake around his ankles.

“Takes a while to harden,” Albert said. “Longer than some would think.”

Joe got his bearings when he saw a small barrier island off to his left that looked an awful lot like Egmont Key. Otherwise, nothing around them but water and sky.

Ilario Nobile brought Albert a canvas folding chair and wouldn’t meet Joe’s eyes. Albert rose from the deck. He adjusted the chair so the glare off the sea was off his face. He leaned forward and clasped his hands between his knees. They were on a tugboat. Joe and his chair leaned against the rear wall of the wheelhouse, looking out at the back of the boat. It was a great choice in crafts, Joe had to admit; you wouldn’t know it to look at one, but tugs were fast and they could turn on a fucking dime.

Albert spun Thomas Coughlin’s watch on its chain for a minute, like a boy with his yo-yo, sending it out into the air and then back into his palm with a snap. He said to Joe, “It’s running slow. You know that?”

Even if he could have spoken, Joe doubted he would have.

“Big, expensive watch like this, and it can’t even keep the fucking time right.” He shrugged. “All the money in the world, am I right, Joe? All the money in the world, and some things are just meant to run their course.” Albert looked up at the gray sky and out at the gray sea. “This isn’t a race we enter to place second. We all know the stakes. Fuck up, you die. Trust the wrong person? Stake the wrong horse?” He snapped his fingers. “Lights-out. Have a wife? Kids? That’s unfortunate. Planning a trip to Merry Olde England next summer? The plan just changed. Thought you’d be breathing tomorrow? Fucking, eating, taking a bath? You won’t.” He leaned forward and stabbed his finger into Joe’s chest. “You will be sitting at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. And the world will be shut to you. Hell, if two fish go up your nose and a few nibble your eyes? You won’t mind. You’ll be with God. Or the devil. Or no place. Where you won’t be, Joe?” He raised his hands to the clouds. “Is here. So take a good last look. Take some deep breaths. Really suck that oxygen in.” He slipped the watch back into his vest, leaned in, grasped Joe’s face in his hands, and kissed the top of his head. “Because you die now.”

The cement had hardened. It squeezed Joe’s toes, heels, ankles. It squeezed everything so hard he could only assume some of the bones in his feet were broken. Maybe all of them.

He met Albert’s eyes and flicked his own at his left inside pocket.

“Stand him up.”

“No,” Joe tried to say, “look in my pocket.”

“Mmmm! Mmmm! Mmmm!” Albert mimicked, his eyes bulging. “Coughlin, show a little class. Don’t beg.”

They slashed the rope over Joe’s chest. Gino Valocco walked over with a hacksaw and dropped to his knees and sawed away at the front chair legs, cutting them free of the chair bottom.

“Albert,” he said through the tape, “look in this pocket. This pocket. This pocket. This one.”

Every time he said “this,” he jerked his head and his eyes toward the pocket.

Albert laughed and continued to mimic him and some of the other men joined in, Fausto Scarfone going so far as to imitate an ape. He made “hoo hoo hoo” sounds and scratched his armpits. Over and over, he jerked his head to the left.