Live by Night

by Dennis Lehane

  Another bump, this one lifting them both out of their seats and then back down again.

  “She says she’s doing all this for her husband?” Talking helped put the fear in a manageable place, made Joe feel less helpless.

  “Ach,” Esteban said. “He’s no husband. He’s no man.”

  “I thought he was a revolutionary?”

  This time Esteban spat. “He is a thief, a . . . a . . . estafador. You call them con men. Yes? He dresses the part of the revolutionary, he recites the poetry, and she fell for him. She lost everything for this man—her family, all her money and she never had much, most of her friends but me.” He shook his head. “She doesn’t even know where he is.”

  “I thought he was in jail.”

  “He’s been out for two years.”

  Another bump. This time they went sideways and the rear quarter panel on Joe’s side slapped a pine sapling before they bounced back into the road.

  “But she still pays his family.”

  “They lie to her. They tell her he escaped, that he’s hiding in the hills and a gang of los chacales from Nieves Morejón prison are hunting him and Machado’s men are hunting him. They tell her she cannot return to Cuba to see him or they will both be in danger. No one, Joseph, is hunting this man, except for those he owes money. But you cannot tell Graciela that; she does not hear when it comes to him.”

  “Why? She’s a smart woman.”

  He gave Joe a quick glance and shrugged. “We all believe lies that bring us more comfort than the truth. She’s no different. Her lie is just bigger.”

  They missed the turnoff, but Joe caught it out of the corner of his eye and told Esteban to stop. He braked and they slid twenty yards before they finally stopped. He backed up and they turned onto the road.

  “How many men have you killed?” Esteban asked.

  “None,” Joe said.

  “But you’re a gangster.”

  Joe didn’t see the point in arguing the distinction between gangster and outlaw because he wasn’t sure there was one anymore. “Not all gangsters kill people.”

  “But you must be willing to.”

  Joe nodded. “Just like you.”

  “I’m a businessman. I provide a product people want. I kill no one.”

  “You’re arming Cuban revolutionaries.”

  “That’s a cause.”

  “In which people will die.”

  “There’s a difference,” Esteban said. “I kill for something.”

  “What? A fucking ideal?” Joe said.

  “Exactly.”

  “And what ideal is that, Esteban?”

  “That no man should rule another’s life.”

  “Funny,” Joe said, “outlaws kill for the same reason.”

  She wasn’t there.

  They came out of the pine forest and approached Route 41, and there was no sign of Graciela or the sailor who’d been left behind to hunt her. Nothing but the heat and the hum of dragonflies and the white road.

  They drove down the road half a mile and then back up to the dirt road and then north another half mile. When they drove back again, Joe heard something he thought was a crow or a hawk.

  “Kill the engine, kill the engine.”

  Esteban did, and they both stood in the scout car and looked out at the road and the pines and the cypress swamp beyond and the hard white sky that matched the road.

  Nothing. Nothing but the dragonfly buzz Joe now suspected never stopped—morning, noon, or night, like living with your ear to a train track just after the train had passed over it.

  Esteban sat back down and Joe went to but stopped.

  He thought he saw something just to the east, back the way they’d come, something that—

  “There.” He pointed, and as he did she ran out from behind a stand of pines. She didn’t run in their direction and Joe realized she was too smart for that. If she had, she would have been running full out for fifty yards through low palmettos and pine saplings.

  Esteban gunned the engine and they dropped down the shoulder and through a ditch and then back out again, Joe holding on to the top of the windshield and hearing the shots now—hard cracks strangely muted even out here with nothing around them. From his vantage point, he still couldn’t see the shooter, but he could see the swamp and he knew she was headed for it. He nudged Esteban with his foot and waved his arm to the left, a little farther southwest than the line they were on.

  Esteban turned the wheel and Joe got a sudden glimpse of dark blue, just a flash of it, and saw the man’s head and heard his rifle. Up ahead, Graciela fell to her knees in the swamp and Joe couldn’t tell whether she’d fallen because she’d tripped or because she’d been shot. They ran out of firm land, the shooter just off to their right. Esteban slowed as he entered the swamp and Joe jumped out of the scout.

  It was like jumping out onto the moon if the moon was green. The bald cypress rose like great eggs from the milky green water, and prehistoric banyan trees with a dozen or more trunks stood watch like palace guards. Esteban drove to his right just as Joe saw Graciela dart between two of the bald cypress trees to his left. Something uncomfortably heavy crawled over his feet just as he heard a rifle report, the shot much closer now. The bullet tore a chunk from the cypress tree where Graciela was hiding.

  The young seaman stepped out from behind a cypress ten feet away. He was about Joe’s height and build, his hair quite red, his face very lean. His Springfield was raised to his shoulder, the sight raised to his eye, the barrel pointed at the cypress. Joe extended his .32 automatic and exhaled a long breath as he shot the man from ten feet. The rifle jerked and spun in the air so erratically Joe assumed it was all he’d hit. But as it fell to the tea-colored water, the young man fell with it, and the blood spilled from under his left armpit and darkened the water as he landed with a splash.

  “Graciela,” he called, “it’s Joe. Are you okay?”

  She peeked out from behind the tree and Joe nodded. Esteban came around behind her in the scout car and she climbed in it and they drove over to Joe.

  He picked up the rifle and looked down at the sailor. He sat in the water with his arms draped over his knees and his head down, like a man trying to catch his breath.

  Graciela climbed out of the scout. Actually, she half fell out, half reeled into Joe. He put his arm around her to right her and felt the adrenaline racking her body as if she’d been hit with a cattle prod.

  Behind the sailor, something moved through the mangroves. Something long and so dark green it was almost black.

  The sailor looked up at Joe, his mouth open as he drew shallow breaths. “You’re white.”

  “Yeah,” Joe said.

  “Fuck you shoot me for then?”

  Joe looked at Esteban and then at Graciela. “If we leave him here, something’s gonna eat him within a couple minutes. So we either take him with us or . . .”

  He could hear more of them out there as the sailor’s blood continued to spill into the green swamp.

  Joe said, “So we either take him with us . . .”

  Esteban said, “He’s gotten too good a look at her.”

  “I know it,” Joe said.

  Graciela said, “He turned it into a game.”

  “What?”

  “Hunting me. He kept laughing like a girl.”

  Joe looked at the sailor and the kid looked back at him. The fear lived far back in the young man’s eyes, but the rest of him was pure defiance and backwoods grit.

  “You want me to beg, you barking up the wrong—”

  Joe shot him in the face and the exit hole splattered pink all over the ferns, and the alligators thrashed in anticipation.

  Graciela let out a small involuntary cry and Joe might have as well. Esteban caught his eye and nodded, thanks, Joe realized, for doing what they all kn
ew had to be done but which none had been willing to do. Hell, Joe—standing in the sound of the gunshot, the cordite smell of it, a wisp of smoke trailing from the barrel of the .32 no more substantial than the smoke from one of his cigarettes—couldn’t believe he’d actually done it.

  A man lay dead at his feet. Dead, on some fundamental level, only because Joe had been born.

  They climbed into the scout without another word. As if they’d been waiting for permission, two alligators came at the body at once—one walking out of the mangroves with the steady waddle of an overweight dog and the other gliding up through the water and the lily pads beside the scout’s tires.

  Esteban drove away as both reptiles reached the body at the same time. One took an arm, the other went for a leg.

  Back in the pines, Esteban drove southeast along the edge of the swamp, running parallel to the road, but not turning toward it yet.

  Joe and Graciela sat in the backseat. Alligators and humans weren’t the only predators in the swamp that day: a panther stood at the edge of the waterline, lapping up the copper water. It was the same tan color as some of the trees, and Joe might have missed it altogether if it didn’t look up as they passed from twenty yards away. It was at least five feet long, wet limbs all grace and muscle. Its underbelly and throat were creamy white, and steam rose off its wet fur as it considered the car. Actually, it wasn’t considering the car, it was considering him. Joe met its liquid eyes, as ancient, yellow, and pitiless as the sun. For a moment, in his jagged exhaustion he thought he heard its voice in his head.

  You can’t outrun this.

  What’s this? he wanted to ask, but Esteban turned the wheel and they left the edge of the swamp and bounced violently over the roots of a fallen tree, and when Joe looked again the panther was gone. He scanned the trees to catch another glimpse but he never saw it again.

  “You see that cat?”

  Graciela stared at him.

  “The panther,” he said, holding his arms wide.

  Her eyes narrowed like she worried he might have sunstroke. She shook her head. She was a mess—more scratches on her body than skin it seemed. Her face was swollen from where he’d hit her, of course, and the mosquitoes and deerflies had feasted on her—and not just them but the fire ants as well, leaving behind their white welts with red rings all over her feet and calves. Her dress was torn at the shoulder and over her left hip and the hem was shredded. Her shoes were gone.

  “You can put it away,” she said.

  Joe followed her gaze, saw that he still held the gun in his right hand. He thumbed the safety on and placed it in the holster behind his back.

  Esteban pulled out onto 41 and stomped the gas so hard the scout shuddered in place before streaking down the road. Joe looked out at the crushed-shell pavement racing away from them, at the merciless sun in the merciless sky.

  “He would have killed me.” Her wet hair blew across her face and neck.

  “I know.”

  “He hunted me like a squirrel for his lunch. He kept saying, ‘Honey, honey, I will put one in your leg, honey, and then have at you.’ Does ‘have at you’ mean . . . ?”

  Joe nodded.

  “And if you’d let him live,” she said, “I would have been arrested. And then you would have been arrested.”

  He nodded. He considered the insect bites on her ankles and then raised his eyes up her calves, across her dress, and into her eyes. She held his gaze just long enough to slide hers off his face. She looked out at an orange grove as they raced past it. After a while, she looked back at him.

  “Do you think I feel bad?” he asked.

  “I can’t tell.”

  “I don’t,” he said.

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “I don’t feel good.”

  “You shouldn’t feel that, either.”

  “But I don’t feel bad.”

  That pretty much summed it up.

  I’m not an outlaw anymore, he thought. I’m a gangster. And this is my gang.

  In the back of the scout car with the sharp smell of citrus giving way, once again, to the stench of swamp gas, she held his gaze for a full mile, and neither of them said another word until they reached West Tampa.

  Chapter Seventeen

  About Today

  When they got back to Ybor, Esteban dropped Graciela and Joe at the building where Graciela kept a room above a café. Joe walked her up while Esteban and Sal Urso went to dump the scout car in South Tampa.

  Graciela’s room was very small and very neat. The wrought iron bed was painted the same white as the porcelain washbasin under a matching oval mirror. Her clothes hung in a battered pine wardrobe that looked to predate the building, but she kept it clear of dust or mold, which Joe would have guessed impossible in this climate. The one window overlooked Eleventh Avenue, and she’d left the shade down to keep the room cool. She had a dressing screen made of the same raised-grain wood as the wardrobe, and she pointed Joe to face the window as she went behind it.

  “So you are a king now,” she said as he raised the shade and looked out at the avenue.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You have cornered the rum market. You will be a king.”

  “A prince, maybe,” he admitted. “Still gotta deal with Albert White.”

  “Why do I think you’ve already figured out how to do that?”

  He lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of the windowsill. “Plans are just dreams until they’re executed.”

  “Is this what you always wanted?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Well, then, congratulations.”

  He looked back at her. The filthy evening gown hung over the screen and her shoulders were bare. “You don’t sound like you mean it.”

  She pointed for him to turn back around. “I do. It’s what you wanted. You achieved it. That’s admirable in some way.”

  He chuckled. “In some way.”

  “But how will you hold the power now that you have it? That’s an interesting question, I think.”

  “You think I’m not strong enough?” He looked back at her again and she allowed him to because she’d covered her upper body with a white blouse.

  “I don’t know if you’re cruel enough.” Her dark eyes were very clear. “And if you are, then that will be sad.”

  “Powerful men don’t have to be cruel.”

  “But they usually are.” Her head ducked below the screen as she stepped into her skirt. “Now that you’ve seen me dress and I’ve seen you shoot a man, can I ask you a personal question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Who?”

  Her head appeared above the screen again. “The one you love.”

  “Who says I’m in love with anyone?”

  “I say so.” She shrugged. “A woman knows these things. Is she in Florida?”

  He smiled, shook his head. “She’s gone.”

  “She left you?”

  “She died.”

  She blinked and then stared at him to see if he was putting her on. When she realized he wasn’t, she said, “I’m sorry.”

  He changed the subject. “Are you happy about the guns?”

  She leaned her arms on the top of the screen. “Very. When the day comes to end Machado’s rule—and that day will come—we will have a . . .” She snapped her fingers, looked at him. “Help me.”

  “An arsenal,” he said.

  “Arsenal, yes.”

  “So these aren’t the only weapons.”

  She shook her head. “Not the first and they will not be the last. When the time comes, we will be ready.” She came out from behind the screen in the standard clothes of a female cigar worker—white blouse with string tie over tan skirt. “You think what I’m doing is foolish.”

  “Not
at all. I think it’s noble. It’s just not my cause.”

  “What is?”

  “Rum.”

  “You do not want to be a noble person?” She held her thumb and index finger close together. “A little bit?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve got nothing against noble people, I’ve just noticed they rarely live past forty.”

  “Neither do gangsters.”

  “True,” he said, “but we eat in better restaurants.”

  From the wardrobe, she selected a pair of flats the same color as her shirt, sat on the bed to put them on.

  He stayed at the window. “Let’s say someday you have this revolution.”

  “Yes.”

  “Will anything change?”

  “People can change.” She put one shoe on.

  He shook his head. “The world can change, but people, no, people stay pretty much the same. So even if you replace Machado, there’s a good chance you’ll replace him with a worse version. Meanwhile, you could be maimed or you could—”

  “I could die.” She twisted her torso to put on the other shoe. “I know how this probably ends, Joseph.”

  “Joe.”

  “Joseph,” she said. “I could die because a comrade betrays me for money. I could get captured by damaged men, as damaged as the one today or even worse, and they will torture me until my body can no longer endure it. And there won’t be anything noble in my death because death is never noble. You weep and beg and the shit flows out of your ass as you die. And those who kill you laugh and spit on your corpse. And I will be quickly forgotten. As if”—she snapped her fingers—“I was never here. I know all that.”

  “So why do it?”

  She stood and smoothed the skirt. “I love my country.”

  “I love mine but—”

  “There is no but,” she said. “That’s the difference between us. Your country is something you see out that window. Yes?”

  He nodded. “Pretty much.”

  “My country is something in here.” She tapped the center of her chest and then her temple. “And I know she won’t thank me for my efforts. She’s not going to return my love. That would be impossible, because I don’t just love the people and the buildings and the smell of her. I love the idea of her. And that’s something I made up, so I love what isn’t there. Like you love that dead girl.”