World Gone By: A Novel (11 page)

“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.

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.

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.”

“About the rat?”

“About the whole organization. We look weak. We look ripe for takeover.”

“To who?”

“Where you want to start? Santo’s guys.”

Joe didn’t argue that one. Santo worked out of the Italian Social Club on Seventh Avenue, and was looking very hungry of late. Hungry and humorless, always a bad combination.

“Who else?”

Rico lit a smoke, tossed the match out the window. “Fucking whatshisname, uh, from Miami.” He snapped his fingers.

“Anthony Crowe?”

Rico pointed an affirmative finger at him. “Nick Pisano knows he has to give him some big territory right fucking soon or Anthony’s gonna come for Nick Pisano. He might-could tell Anthony to help himself to ours.”

“Crowe’s not full-blooded Italian. He can’t take over.”

“Sorry to break the news, but he is. Parents changed the name from Crochetti or something when they came over, but that fucker can trace his roots right back to Sicily. He’s smart, he’s mean, and he’s not satisfied with his spot at the table anymore. Wants his own dining hall.”

Joe gave it some thought. “We’re not
that
weak. We’re a little shaky right now, okay. Everybody is. Revenue’s down all over because of that Kraut midget and his mustache and the fucking war. But we still control one of the richest ports in this country, we control narcotics for half the state, gambling for a quarter of it, and trucking for damn near all of it.”

Rico said, “But our house is out of order. And everyone knows it.”

Joe took his time lighting his own cigarette. Took his time cracking his window to let the smoke out. “You talking treason, Rico?”

“What?”

“You talking about removing the boss?”

Rico stared across the seat at Joe for a long moment and then
held up his hands. “Fuck no. Dion’s the boss and that’s all there is to it.”

“That is all there is to it.”

“I know.”

“But?”

“But somebody’s gotta talk to him, Joe. Somebody he listens to. Somebody has to . . .”

“What?”

“Get him to take the reins again. He took over? Everyone loved him. They still do, but he doesn’t seem to be watching the store the same way. You know? There’s a lot of bad talk going around, is all I’m saying.”

“Let me hear it.”

Rico took a moment. “Everyone knows the boss has a problem with the cards. And the horses. And the wheel.”

“Noted,” Joe said.

“The big weight loss over the last few years? People think he’s sick. You know, dying.”

“He’s not dying. It’s something else.”

“I
know
that.” Rico tapped the side of his nose a few times. “But it’s not common knowledge outside the Family. And what do you say to people—he ain’t dying, he’s just getting tight on the powder?” Rico held up his hands again. “Joe, this is said just between us and with all respect.”

Joe drove for a bit in silence, let Rico twist for a while.

“I’ll agree you might have a point,” he said eventually. He glanced across the seat. “Don’t give you the right to talk about it, though.”

“You don’t think I know that?” Rico flicked his cigarette out the window and took a long slow exhale. “I love our thing. You know? I fucking love it. We wake up every day and find new ways
to screw the system. Don’t take a knee for anyone, don’t line up in rows of two for anyone. We”—he drove his index finger into the dashboard—“make our lives, make our rules, make our way like men.” He hunched forward. “I fucking
love
being a gangster.”

Joe chuckled softly.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Joe said.

“No, what?”

Joe looked over at him. “I like it a whole hell of a lot too.”

“So, so . . .” Rico took a breath. “I risked talking about, you know, problems with—”

“
Perceived
problems.”

“Right. I risked talking about perceived problems with the boss because I don’t want to lose this thing. I don’t want to end up with two in the dome or doing time, come out nobody knows me anymore, I gotta fucking get a straight job or something. I never made an honest buck in my life, and I don’t want to learn how.”

Joe nodded and said nothing until they were just outside Sarasota.

“I’ll talk to Dion,” he said eventually. “I’ll impress upon him that we need to find this rat and get our house in order.”

“He’ll go for it.”

Joe shrugged. “He might.”

“He will,” Rico said, “because it comes from you. He still looks up to you, I think.”

“Get the fuck out of this car.”

“No, really.”

“Let me tell you something about Dion—he was the boss of our crew when we were kids. He was the toughest and scariest of all of us. Only reason he ended up taking orders from me was because of a bank job that went bad. He ended up on the run; I ended up
making powerful friends. Except for that little . . . run of time, he’s always been my boss, not the other way around.”

“Might be so,” Rico said, “but you’re still the only guy he looks at like he cares what you think.”

Joe said nothing and they drove on along a ghostly strip of road under the ruined plum sky.

“Tomas.” Rico said, “Kid’s growing like a weed. I couldn’t believe it when I saw him the other day.”

“Tell me about it. His mother was tall. His uncles are tall.”

“You’re not a midget.”

“But I might look like one standing next to him someday.”

“How do you like it?” Rico said, his voice a bit more serious.

“Being a father?”

“Yeah.”

“I like it a lot. I mean, I’m terrible at it most days. Lose my temper more than I ever thought I would.”

“I’ve never even heard you raise your voice.”

“I know, I know.” Joe shook his head. “Most people haven’t. My son, though? Seen it so many times, he rolls his eyes if I do it now. They get to you. I mean, he’s a great kid, but he still does shit like climb up on a barn roof when he knows the roof is weak and needs repairs. That’s how he broke his arm last year at our farm in Cuba. When he was a toddler, he was always trying to swallow small, sharp rocks. Or I’d be giving him a bath, I’d look away for a second, he’d be standing up trying to dance. And,
boom,
down he goes. And all you’re thinking is, My
job
is to keep you alive. Keep you from getting another broken arm or losing an eye. So, you know, stop fucking dancing in the fucking tub.”

Rico cracked up and Joe laughed along with him.

“You can’t believe it now,” Joe said, “but once you have one, buckle up, partner.”

“I will be having one.”

Joe looked over at him.

Rico raised his eyebrows up and down and Joe punched him in the shoulder.

“Damn.” Rico rubbed the shoulder.

“Who’s the girl?”

“Kathryn Contarino. Everyone calls her Kat?”

“From South Tampa?”

A proud, boyish smile. “Yeah.”

“Beautiful girl,” Joe said. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Rico said. “Yeah, I . . . yeah.” He looked out the window. “I’m lucky.”

“What’re you,” Joe asked, “smitten?”

Rico rolled his eyes and then nodded. “Matter of fact. Gonna marry her.”

“What?” Joe swerved the car slightly.

“What’s the big deal? People get married.”

“I never took you for the type.”

“Not ‘the type,’” Rico said, smoothing his shirt into his pants where it had bunched up from the car ride. “The fucking nerve of ya. What about you?”

Joe laughed.

“No, really. No one’s seen you with a steady filly in seven years. You got something secret stashed away?”

“Nope.”

“Sure?”

“You know I’d tell
you
if I did,” Joe said with a straight face.

Rico gave him the finger. “You hardly ever go to whores, Joe. And the ones you do see say you take them to dinner and buy ’em nice dresses and earrings and half the time you don’t even fuck them.”

“I got someone regular in Cuba,” Joe said to get him off his back. “Not Havana. A village girl in the west, near my farm. She cooks well, she’s real pretty, lets me come and go as I please. Ain’t true love, but it ain’t bad.”

“Well, good for you,” Rico said. “Now we just gotta find a girl for my brother.”

She’d have to be a young one, Joe thought. Or a boy.

“Yeah, I’ll get thinking on that,” Joe told him.

About a half an hour west of Zolfo Springs, Rico said, “Are we ready for this?”

Joe said, “Lucius?”

Rico nodded, lips parted, his eyes a little wider than usual.

“We’ve both dealt with the man before.”

“Not on his boat, though. You ever been on his boat?”

Joe shook his head.

“People get on, sometimes they don’t come off. You heard about those Adrocalese, or whatever they call them?”

“
Androphagi,
” Joe said. Lucius’s Palace Guard, a group of twenty men you had to pass through before you got to him.

“I heard the reason nobody ever finds the bodies Lucius drops is because they eat them.”

Joe forced a chuckle. “That’s what
Androphagi
means, yeah.”

Rico looked over at him. “Means what?”

“A tribe of cannibals.”

“Fuck.” Rico exhaled the word, turning one syllable into three or four. “How do you know this shit?”

“Jesuit high school,” Joe said. “You study a lot of Greek mythology.”

“The Greeks had cannibals?”

Joe shook his head. “This was a private army. Some say they were out of Africa, others say they were Finns or Russians. Either
way, they helped Darius the Great invade Southern Russia. And supposedly they, uh, ate a few people.” He tried to lighten his tone, had to work at it. “So Lucius names his guys
Androphagi
to scare the shit out of everyone.”

Rico said, “Succeeded.”

After another mile, Joe said, “You don’t have to board with me. Just drop me off. As long as you’re seen.”

Rico shook his head with a wry smile. “I talk to calm my nerves. Don’t mean I’m some fucking moke would leave a pal in his hour of need. Fuck, Joe, the two of us? Take a battalion of these fucking Androcalese—”

“
Androphagi
.”

“
Andro-fuck-them
. Okay? Take a battalion of them to get the better of a couple tough monkeys like us.” He took out his flask and handed it to Joe. “Drink to that.”

Joe raised the flask. “Glad to have you with me, Rico.” He drank and handed the flask back.

“Glad to be here, Joe.” Rico took a powerful snort. “If they try to fuck with a couple of downtown fellas like us, we’ll show these country assholes a thing or two.”

THE RAIN FOUND THEM a few miles short of Zolfo Springs. It lashed the car and floated across the road in great sheets. They’d rolled down their windows to smoke but now they rolled them back up and the rain clattered on the roof and the road hissed under their tires and the frame of the Pontiac shuddered in gusts that came and went at random.

They reached Zolfo Springs and left the main road and from there Rico had to read from the directions Joe had placed on the seat between them. Right here, next left, no second left, sorry. The
low sky and the bending palm trees formed a cowl around the car, and the rain slowed but the drops thickened. It was like driving through broth.

Charlie Luciano himself had once said he never wanted to get any closer to the devil on this earth than he already had to his gatekeeper, King Lucius. Meyer wouldn’t deal with Lucius face-to-face, and even Joe had avoided the man whenever humanly possible over the past fifteen years.

King Lucius had appeared on the scene during the Florida land boom back in ’23, coming, some said, from Russia by way of New Orleans. It was impossible to pinpoint his accent because it was so maddeningly faint. It could have been Russian or Montenegron or even Albanian. It was definitely aristocratic, as was the care Lucius took with his eyebrows and nails.