World Gone By

by Dennis Lehane

  Joe looked over at him. “What if that’s the play, though? The hitter’s waiting there for me. I run right into his arms.”

  “That’d be a smart play,” Rico agreed. “Who do we know who’s that smart, though?”

  “King Lucius’s name keeps coming up.”

  “So go talk to him.”

  “On my way tomorrow. You got plans?”

  Rico smiled big. “Like old times?”

  “Like old times.”

  “That’d be a kick.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Hell, yeah.”

  The thick oak door to Dion’s office opened and they were ushered in by Mike Aubrey. Geoff the Finn was waiting just inside the door, suit jacket off, his shoulder holster and pistol exposed. Both Mike and Geoff the Finn wore their stone faces for the guests today, but Joe had his doubts either of them would stand tall if they ever faced the kind of shit Dion and Joe had back in the 1930s.

  Joe and Rico made themselves drinks and Captain Dale Byner of the Fifth Precinct showed up, made his own drink. Byner had been in their pocket since he was a detective sergeant. One day he’d be commissioner. He wasn’t exceptionally corrupt—you could never place a bet on those guys—he just wanted to keep the peace, by whatever means necessary. He was also people-smart but money-dumb, a perfect combination.

  Joe sat on the couch across from Dion’s desk and Freddy sat down beside him, sat so close their knees touched. It immediately got on Joe’s nerves. Fucking Freddy sitting there like both the injured party and the puppy who’d had another accident on the rug. Wanted everyone to believe it was beyond his control, wanted everyone to believe he meant well.

  Dion lit his cigar, looked through the smoke at Freddy, and said, “All right, make your case.”

  Freddy couldn’t believe what he’d been asked. “My case? My case is Montooth Dix killed two of my guys, so he’s gotta go. That’s it. Plain and simple.”

  The police captain, Dale Byner, said, “There’s been rumblings for months, Freddy, that you were pushing the guy off his racket.”

  “The guy?” Freddy said. “Like you drink with him down the Elks, Byner? He ever showed up in your neighborhood, you’d shoot him on sight.”

  Joe said, “Montooth Dix has been running the numbers in Brown Town since I got here in ’29. He’s always been a businessman, always been fair in his dealings, even hid the Sukulowski brothers after that clusterfuck in Oldsmar two years ago. Every cop in the city looking for them, and Montooth was a tall glass of ice on our behalf.”

  “That’s how the Sukulowskis got out?” Captain Byner asked.

  “Yup.” Joe lit a cigarette.

  “Where’d they end up?”

  Joe tossed his match in the ashtray. “You don’t really want to know.”

  Rico said, “Gentlemen, I agree with you. Freddy was a fucking asshole going after Montooth in the first place.”

  Freddy, already aggrieved, looked even more dismayed.

  “You were.” Rico looked Freddy in the eye and formed a circle with the thumb and index of his right hand. “Huge asshole. Size of a fucking paint can.” He turned to the other men in the room. “But, gents, we can’t let a nigger kill a white man. Even if it’s a nigger we like, and I like Montooth Dix. I’ve broken bread with the man. But still. And we can’t let a guy who’s not in our thing kill someone who is. No matter what. Dion? Joe? You two taught me that. Anyone hits our family gets hits back by our family. That’s gospel.”

  Dion looked at Joe for a long moment. “What do you think? Business-wise, not emotional.”

  “You ever known me to let emotion rule the day?”

  Dion started to open his mouth.

  Joe cut him off. “This decade?”

  Dion eventually nodded. “Fair enough.”

  “From a business standpoint,” Joe said, “there’s a lot of potential for disaster. All Montooth’s people turn against us? They can fuck us on heroin, our bolita cut, our control of some of the cigar factories. In terms of hookers, they control the Jamaican and Haitian pipelines, which is almost half the business down here. We always act like they’re a separate thing, but they are not. Anyone who’s come at Montooth’s throne in the past twenty years has died bloody. And there’s no appointed successor. Which means, whichever way the wind blows, there’s gonna be a nightmare of a power vacuum left in his wake. And all our profits down there will get sucked up into it.”

  “He’s got sons,” Freddy said.

  Joe turned to Freddy and hid his contempt. He appeared logical, reasonable, and respectful. “But only one of them—Breezy—is strong. And I can think of at least three guys down there who would come at Breezy if he got the throne.”

  Dion said, “But would any have a shot?”

  They looked at Rico because it was his territory at the end of the day.

  “Nah.” He shook his head, then paused, then shook his head again. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Who?” Dion said.

  Rico looked at Joe for confirmation.

  Joe said, “You thinking who I’m thinking?”

  Rico nodded, and they turned to Dion and said it together. “Little Lamar.”

  Dion said, “The guy deals in Chinks?”

  Joe nodded.

  Rico said, “He’s the only one who’s got a shot at uniting the tribe if he takes the throne fast enough.”

  “They trust him that much?” Dion asked.

  Joe shook his head. “They fear him that much.”

  Dion said, “So can anyone deal with him?”

  Now it was Freddy and Rico who looked at each other.

  Rico said, “I think he can be reasoned with you put enough green in front of him.”

  Freddy nodded. “He’s a businessman. He—”

  “He’s a fucking snake.”

  They all looked over at Captain Byner.

  “Slaughter his own young if there was ten dollars in it. Fuck their corpses for twenty.” Byner leaned forward and refilled his drink. “That ‘Chink business’ he’s into? We found a shipping container of them last year—nine men, seven women, seven children—at the bottom of the ocean. Best we pieced it together, one of the men in the container had been the father of a girl Lamar pimped out on Fifteenth Street. She ran off with another Chink, lit out for San Francisco. He heard her father was coming over on a Chink freighter that he’d bought into? He had them dump the container overboard. Killed twenty-three people because a whore ran off on him. That’s who you’re thinking of putting in power.”

  “You know,” Freddy said to Byner, “shut the fuck up.” He grimaced like he’d bit into a lemon. “All right? Just shut the fuck up, you.”

  Byner said, “Hey, Freddy, anytime you want to meet off the clock, we’ll see if you can make me shut up. We’ll give that a try. Okay?”

  “Enough,” Dion said. “Christ.” He took a pull from his own drink. He pointed the glass at Joe and Rico. “This comes down to you two. What do I know from the streets of Brown Town anymore?”

  Joe knew the retort in everyone’s mind: What do you know from the streets anywhere in Tampa anymore?

  But the last guy who’d publicly suggested Dion was too hands-off as a boss encountered Dion’s hands around his throat until his windpipe snapped.

  Joe ceded the floor to Rico with a glance.

  The younger man slapped some peanut dust off his palms and leaned forward. “I wish I could see another solution, but I can’t. Dix has gotta go. And to keep reprisals to a minimum, his son’s gotta go next. We put Lamar behind the big desk, and if he proves too crazy to handle it, by that time we’ll have found his replacement. Or we’ll be close. And the temporary loss in profits during the transition stage will be more than compensated for by the fact we’ll own Montooth’s book. All those numbers they play down there? It’s a religion.” He reached for some more peanuts. “I wish there was another way, like I said. But there ain’t.”

  Everyone looked at Joe.

  Joe stubbed out his
cigarette. “I don’t think Lamar can be dealt with. He’s too off the beam. But I know Breezy Dix isn’t strong enough to take over for his father and fight off Little Lamar. So I think the hit to our profits is going to be a lot bigger than Rico does. Montooth runs a tight shop, and everyone respects him down there. So there’s been peace in Black Ybor now since 1920. Because of Montooth Dix. So I suggest we let Freddy have what he came for—he takes over Montooth’s book, cuts the man in as a junior partner, but Montooth will take the hit willingly because he knows the alternative to it is death.”

  Joe sat back against the couch and Dion looked around the room for a bit and no one said anything. Dion rose and took his drink and his cigar to the enormous full-circle window that looked out on the ship cranes and grain silos and the sluggish channel. He turned back from the window and Joe saw the answer in his face.

  “Shine’s gotta go.” He shrugged. “Sends the wrong message we let him kill two of ours.”

  “It won’t be an easy hit,” Captain Byner said. “He’s holed up in that fortress of his. He’s got provisions. He’s got soldiers manning all the doors and windows. Got a few on the roof. It’s impregnable right now.”

  “Burn him out,” Freddy said.

  “Christ.” Rico shook his head. “Fuck is wrong with you?”

  “What?”

  “He’s got his three wives in there,” Rico said.

  “And six kids,” Joe said.

  “So?”

  Even Dion, who’d spilled more blood than any boss in recent memory, looked aghast.

  Freddy said, “So, yeah, a wife or kid may burn up, but it’s war. Bad things happen in war. Where am I wrong on this?”

  “You see baboons in this room? Fucking jackals?” Dion asked. “We’re not animals.”

  “All I’m saying is—”

  “I hear you suggest killing kids again,” Joe said quietly, “and, Freddy? I’ll kill you myself.” He turned so Freddy could look in his eyes when he smiled at him.

  “Ho!” Rico threw up his hands. “Let’s all bring the temperature back down, shall we, gents? Freddy, no one’s killing kids, and, Joe, no one’s killing Freddy. Capice?” He turned to Dion. “Just tell us what to do, boss.”

  “Put some guns on the building. If he pops his head up, blow it off. If he doesn’t, he won’t last more than a few weeks until cabin fever gets to him. And we’ll kill him then. In the meantime, start getting your ducks aligned down there, so the transition will be smooth once he is gone. Make sense?”

  “Why you’re the boss.” Rico nodded, a bright smile on his boyish face.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Infinite Capacity

  DUNCAN JEFFERTS WAS LOCKING UP the back door of the Hillsborough County medical examiner’s office when a man he’d never expected to see again strolled out from behind the nearest meat wagon and said, “Hello.”

  Jefferts was on top of a loading bay as Joe Coughlin ambled up the ramp toward him. The gangster, allegedly retired, wore a cream-colored suit, matching Panama hat, crisp white shirt, perfectly knotted tie, and polished shoes that reflected the lights above the loading bay. His face was a bit more weathered than it had been seven years ago, but the eyes were just as boyish, almost innocent. Light burned bright in the irises, light that promised great things for you the closer you got to it. Jefferts had watched that light turn dead the day he’d met Joe Coughlin, though, the day Coughlin’s wife had died and Jefferts had first introduced himself. For the longest moment of his life, Coughlin had stared at him with no life, no light, and Duncan remembered the irrational conviction that Coughlin would, in the next second, cut his throat. Instead, the death had left the man’s eyes, to be replaced with gratitude that Duncan Jefferts was showing concern for Tomas Coughlin. Joe Coughlin had squeezed his shoulder, shook his hand, and led his son off the pier.

  Jefferts rarely spoke of meeting the infamous “retired” gangster, Joe Coughlin. He tried telling his wife once but only flailed about, trying to articulate something that, he suspected, was too messy for words. In their brief encounter, he’d felt emanating from the man more grief, love, power, charisma, and potential for evil than he’d come across before or since.

  What seemed to define Joe Coughlin, he tried explaining to his wife, was an infinite capacity.

  “Capacity for what?” his wife had asked.

  “Anything,” he’d said.

  When he reached the top of the loading dock, Joe held out his hand. “Remember me?”

  Jefferts shook his hand. “I do, yes. Mr. Coughlin, the importer.”

  “Dr. Jefferts, the coroner.”

  They stood under the harsh light above the door and smiled awkwardly at each other.

  “Uh . . .”

  “What’s that?”

  “Can I help you with something?”

  “I dunno. Can you?”

  “I’m not sure—”

  “How’s that?”

  “—why you’re here at this time of night.”

  “What time of night is it?”

  “Two in the morning.”

  “My wife.”

  Jefferts found the man looking at him suddenly as he tipped his hat back off his forehead a bit. “What about your wife?”

  “You did the autopsy on her, correct?”

  “You knew that.”

  “No, I didn’t know that. I just knew you picked up her body. I gotta figure there are other coroners here. But you yourself performed the autopsy.”

  “Yes.”

  Joe perched himself on the iron rail that fringed the sides of the loading dock. He lit a cigarette and offered the pack to Jefferts, who took one. When he leaned in for a light, Coughlin said, “You’re married now yourself.”

  Jefferts never wore his ring to work because he’d once lost it in a body. It had taken him half an hour to retrieve it and four more hours to repair the damage he’d done.

  “How would you know that?”

  “Your appearance is tidier. Slobby guys don’t get tidier if they stay single.”

  “I’ll mention that to my wife. She’ll be pleased.”

  Joe nodded and spit a piece of tobacco off his tongue. “Was she pregnant?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “My wife. Graciela Corrales Coughlin, died September twenty-ninth, 1935.” He smiled at Jefferts, but the blue eyes were gray. “Was she pregnant?”

  Jefferts looked out into the parking lot for a moment. He tried to gauge if he had any ethical quandary here, but if he did, he couldn’t find it.

  “Yes,” he told Joe.

  “Gender?”

  Jefferts shook his head.

  “It was seven years ago,” Joe said. “You seem awfully sure.”

  “It . . .” Jefferts exhaled and dropped his cigarette off the dock.

  “What?”

  “It was my first autopsy.” He turned and met Joe’s gaze. “I remember everything about it. The fetus was quite small. It had been gestating for no more than six weeks. The genital tubercle? The thing that turns into the penis or the clitoris? That was still far too underdeveloped to make a gender determination.”

  Joe finished his cigarette and flicked it off into the night. He hopped down off the rail and stuck out his hand again. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  Jefferts nodded and returned the handshake.

  Joe had reached the parking lot when Jefferts asked, “Why do you care about the gender of an unborn fetus?”

  Coughlin, hands in his pockets, looked back up at him for a long time. Then he shrugged and walked off into the night.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Bone Valley

  TO REACH KING LUCIUS, they drove south on Route 5 until they reached Route 32, then headed east through damp country under a sky so purple it was nearly black. Farther east, rain clouds spilled and sprayed—smaller bruises bleeding within the bigger one. Once the rain found them—and it would, it was only a matter of when—it would be warm, Joe guessed. Warm and oily, like the gods were sweating. It
was ten in the morning and they had their lights on. Weather in Florida was numbingly predictable until it wasn’t. And then it became something vengeful—lightning that cleaved the sky, wind that shrieked like the ghosts of a dead army, a sun so white and cruel it set autumn fields ablaze. The weather here reminded him that he was just a man. For all his delusions of power, he was just that.

  About thirty minutes out of Tampa, Rico asked Joe if he wanted him to take the wheel.

  “No,” Joe said, “I’m fine for now.”

  Rico settled low into his seat, dropped his fedora halfway down his forehead. “It’s good we got time to talk.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I know that clipping Montooth sits bad with you, and I never forgot that about working with you—you’re the most moral motherfucking gangster I ever met.”

  Joe frowned. “It’s not morality, it’s ethics. Montooth did right by us until Freddy pushed into his territory. And now Montooth’s gotta take a dirt nap because, well, no offense, Freddy’s a shithead.”

  Rico sighed. “I know it. I know it. He’s my brother and he’s a shithead and he’s an asshole and still, Joe, what am I gonna do?”

  Neither said anything for a bit.

  “But I’m of the mind,” Rico said eventually, “that Montooth is the least of our problems right now.”

  “What’re the bigger ones?”

  “We got a rat in the organization for starters. Our loads are getting hit at twice the rate of any other crews. And they ain’t getting hit by other gangsters; they’re getting hit by Feds and local law. I think we can survive it for a while longer because we’re a family of earners. I mean, we get after it. And we got you.”

  Joe glanced over at him. “And you.”

  Rico started to protest but then shrugged. “Okay. Fair enough. I do earn.”

  “Rico, you earn about twenty percent of the Family’s nut.”

  Rico pushed the hat back up his forehead and sat straighter in his seat. “There’s a lot of scary talk around campfires right now, Joe. Lot of it.”