Live by Night (7 page)

Once he did, he reached back for Emma, thinking somehow he could protect her. But Brendan Loomis had a fist like a butcher's mallet. Every time it hit Joe's head—bap bap bap bap—Joe felt his brain go numb and his vision white out. His eyes slid through the white, unable to fix on anything. He heard his own nose break and then—bap bap bap—Loomis hit him in the same spot three more times.

When Loomis let go of his tie, Joe fell to all fours on the cement floor. He heard a series of steady drips, like leaky faucets, and opened his eyes to see his own blood dripping to the cement, the drops the size of nickels, but piling up so fast they turned into amoebas and the amoebas became puddles. He turned his head to see if somehow, some way, Emma had used his beating to slam the elevator door shut and make a run for it, but the elevator wasn't where he'd left it, or he wasn't where he'd left the elevator, because all he saw was a cement wall.

That's when Brendan Loomis kicked him in the stomach hard enough to lift him off the floor. When he landed in a fetal position, he couldn't find air. He gulped for it, but it wouldn't come. He tried to rise to his knees, but his legs slid away from him, so he used his elbows to lift his chest off the cement and gulped like a fish, trying to get something down his windpipe but seeing his chest as a black stone, without openings, without gaps, nothing in there but the stone, no room for anything else, because he could not fucking breathe.

It pushed up his esophagus like a balloon through a fountain pen, squeezing his heart, crushing his lungs, closing off his throat, but then, finally, it punched up past his tonsils and out through his mouth. It had a whistle at its tail, a whistle and several gasps, but that was okay, that was fine, because he could breathe again, at least he could breathe.

Loomis kicked him in the groin from behind.

Joe ground his head into the cement floor and coughed and might have puked, he had no idea, the pain something he couldn't have imagined prior to this. His balls were stuffed into his intestines; flames licked the walls of his stomach; his heart beat so fast it had to give out soon, just had to; his skull felt like someone had pried it open with their hands; his eyes bled. He vomited, vomited for certain, vomited bile and fire onto the floor. He thought he was done and then he did it again. He fell onto his back and looked up at Brendan Loomis.

“You look”—Loomis lit a cigarette—“unfortunate.”

Brendan swung from side to side with the room. Joe stayed where he was, but everything else was on a pendulum. Brendan looked down at Joe as he pulled on a pair of black gloves and flexed his fingers in them until they fit to his liking. Albert White appeared beside him, Albert on the same pendulum, and they both looked down at Joe.

Albert said, “I have to turn you into a message, I'm afraid.”

Joe looked up through the blood in his eyes at Albert in his white dinner jacket.

“To everyone out there who thinks it's okay to disregard what I say.”

Joe looked for Emma, but he couldn't find the elevator in all the swinging and swaying.

“It's not going to be a nice message,” Albert White said. “And I'm sorry about that.” He squatted in front of Joe, his face sad, weary. “My mother always said everything happens for a reason. I'm not sure she was right, but I do think people often become what they're supposed to be. I thought I was supposed to be a cop but then the city took my job and I became this. And most times I don't like it, Joe. I fucking hate it to tell the truth, but I can't deny that it comes natural to me. It fits. What comes natural to you, I'm afraid, is fucking up. All you had to do was run but you didn't. And I'm sure—look at me.”

Joe's head had lolled to the left. He rolled it back, met Albert's kind gaze.

“I'm sure, as you die, you'll tell yourself you did it for love.” Albert gave Joe a rueful smile. “But that's not why you fucked up. You fucked up because it's your nature. Because deep down you feel guilty about what you do, so you want to get caught. But in this line of work, you face your guilt at the end of every night. You turn it over in your hands, you make a ball of it. And then you pitch it into the fire. But
you,
you don't do that, so you've spent your short life hoping someone will punish you for your sins. Well, I'm that someone.”

Albert rose from his crouch and Joe lost focus for a moment, everything turning to a blur. He caught a flash of silver and then another and he narrowed his eyes until the blurring sharpened and everything came into focus again.

And he wished it hadn't.

Albert and Brendan still shimmied a bit, but the pendulum was gone. Emma stood beside Albert, her hand on his arm.

For a moment, Joe didn't understand. And then he did.

He looked up at Emma and it no longer mattered what they did to him. He was okay with dying because living hurt too much.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered. “I'm sorry.”

“She's sorry,” Albert White said. “We're all sorry.” He gestured toward somebody Joe couldn't see. “Take her out of here.”

A beefy guy in a coarse wool jacket and knit hat pulled down on his forehead put his hands on Emma's arm.

“You said you wouldn't kill him,” Emma said to Albert.

Albert shrugged.

“Albert,” Emma said. “That was the deal.”

“And I'll honor it,” Albert said. “Don't you worry.”

“Albert,” she said, her voice catching in her throat.

“Dear?” Albert's voice was far too calm.

“I never would have led him here if—”

Albert slapped her face with one hand and smoothed his shirt with the other. Slapped her hard enough to split her lips.

He looked down at his shirt. “You think
you're
safe? You think I'm going to be humiliated by a whore? You're under the impression I'm mush for you. Maybe I was yesterday, but I've been up all night. And I've already replaced you. Get me? You'll see.”

“You said—”

Albert wiped her blood off his hand with a kerchief. “Put her in the fucking car, Donnie. Now, Donnie.”

The beefy guy wrapped Emma in a bear hug and started walking backward. “Joe! Please don't hurt him anymore! Joe, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.” She screamed and kicked and scratched Donnie's head. “Joe, I love you! I love you!”

The elevator gate slammed shut and the car rose out of the basement.

Albert squatted beside him and put a cigarette between his lips. A match flared and the tobacco cackled and he said, “Inhale. You'll get your wits back faster.”

Joe did. For a minute, he sat on the floor and smoked and Albert crouched beside him and smoked his own cigarette and Brendan Loomis stood there watching.

“What're you going to do with her?” Joe asked once he trusted himself to speak.

“With her? She just sold you down the river.”

“For a good reason, I bet.” He looked at Albert. “There was a good reason, right?”

Albert chuckled. “You're some kind of rube, aren't you?”

Joe raised a split eyebrow and the blood fell in his eye. He wiped at it. “What're you going to do with her?”

“You should be more worried about what I'm going to do to you.”

“I am,” Joe admitted, “but I'm asking what you're going to do with her.”

“Don't know yet.” Albert shrugged and pulled a speck of tobacco off his tongue, flicked it away. “But you, Joe, you're going to be the message.” He turned to Brendan. “Get him up.”

“What message?” Joe said as Brendan Loomis slipped his arms under him from behind and hoisted him to his feet.

“What happened to Joe Coughlin is what will happen to you if you cross Albert White and his crew.”

Joe said nothing. Nothing occurred to him. He was twenty years old. That's all he was going to get in this world—twenty years. He hadn't wept since he was fourteen but it was all he could do, looking into Albert's eyes, not to break down and beg for his life.

Albert's face softened. “I can't let you live, Joe. If I could see any way I could, I'd try to make it work. And it's not about the girl, if that helps. I can get whores anywhere. Got a pretty new one waiting for me as soon as I'm done with you.” He studied his hands for a moment. “But you shot up a small town and stole sixty thousand dollars without my permission and left three cops dead. That brings a shit-brown rain down on all of us. Because now every cop in New England thinks Boston gangsters are mad dogs to be put down like mad dogs. And I need to make everyone understand that's just not true.” He said to Loomis. “Where's Bones?”

Bones was Julian Bones, another of Albert's gun monkeys.

“In the alley, engine running.”

“Let's go.”

Albert led the way to the elevator and opened the gate and Brendan Loomis dragged Joe into the car.

“Turn him around.”

Joe was spun in place and the cigarette fell from his lips when Loomis gripped the back of his head and pushed his face into the wall. They pulled his hands behind his back. Coarse rope snaked around his wrists, Loomis pulling it tight with every loop before he tied off the ends. Joe, something of an expert on the subject, knew a secure knot when he felt one. They could leave him alone in this elevator and not come back till April and he still wouldn't have freed himself.

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.