World Gone By: A Novel (9 page)

SINCE THE DAY HE’D WALKED OUT of a prison in 1929, Joe had vowed never to step back into one. For three years he’d been incarcerated at Charlestown Penitentiary in Boston, one of the worst prisons in the country. Fourteen years later, the sound the bars had made when they snapped shut at 8:00
P
.
M
. lockdown could poison his dreams. He’d wake in a damp and gummy panic, eyes scurrying around his bedroom until he’d assured himself that it was, in fact, his bedroom. He’d only admitted the source of his night terrors to Graciela. She’d said it made sense—given that he’d never sat still in all the time she’d known him, she could barely imagine him being contained in a house, never mind a cage.

He and Tomas flew on the Suarez Sugar cargo plane to a landing strip in Crystal Springs not far from Jacksonville and then drove south thirty miles to Raiford. His advance man in the region was
Al Butters, a moonshiner and first-class getaway driver with the Bunsford Mob. The Bunsfords ran Duval County and a small swatch of northern Georgia. They gave Joe Al because he’d contracted chicken pox as a child himself. When Tomas dozed off in the heat of the backseat, Al assured Joe that all the necessary people had been paid, all the necessary arrangements made. Sure enough, at Raiford, the deputy warden, man went by the name of Cummings, met him outside the gate and led him alongside the fence that ran the length of the western side of the prison. After about five hundred yards, they reached a small section of yard where Theresa Del Fresco sat waiting, perching her small body on an orange crate she’d turned on its side.

Deputy Warden Cummings said, “Well, I’ll leave you to it,” and walked back up the small incline a good hundred yards before he stopped and lit his pipe.

Joe had always heard Theresa was small, and he guessed by the look of her she couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. But the way she came off the crate and moved to the fence reminded Joe of a panther he’d seen once in the swamplands of unincorporated Tampa. The cat had moved with coiled languor. Theresa moved the same way, as if to give everyone else a sporting chance. He’d bet she could climb the fence between them in the time it took for him to glance at his watch.

“You came,” she said.

He nodded. “It was a reasonably compelling message.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Your . . . friend?”

“If you like.”

“He potty trained yet?”

“Aww, Mr. Coughlin,” she said, “that’s so below you.”

He lit a cigarette, removed a tobacco leaf from his tongue. “He said someone put a contract out on you—”

“He used that word?
Contract?
”

“No,” Joe said. “He’s a yokel. I can’t remember what word he used. But the gist was if you die you’ll never be able to tell me who’s supposedly trying to kill me.”

“There’s no ‘supposedly’ about it.”

“Theresa,” he said. “Okay if I call you Theresa?”

“Sure. What do I call you?”

“Joe will do. Theresa, why would anyone want to kill me?”

“That’s what I was wondering. You’re the fair-haired boy.”

“I’m the gray-haired boy lately.”

She smiled.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No, what?”

“I’d heard you were vain.”

“It’s vain to mention I’m going gray in my thirties?”

“It’s vain the way you mention it. Hoping I’ll correct you. Tell you it’s not
that
gray, tell you your baby blues still set the gals’ hearts a swooning.”

He chuckled. “Heard you had a mouth on you. Guess we both heard right.”

She lit her own cigarette and they set to walking, she on her side of the fence, he on his, Deputy Warden Cummings taking up the trail behind them, maintaining a steady distance of a hundred yards.

“So let’s start with who’s trying to kill you,” Joe said.

She nodded. “My guess would be my boss.”

“Why would Lucius want you dead?”

“We robbed a German ship three months ago in Key West.”

“A what?”

She nodded several times. “It sailed under the Union Jack out
of St. Thomas, allegedly to bring supplies to our troops in North Africa. They stopped off in Key West to take on fuel, but really they were transporting diamonds smuggled out of Germany months ago, sent down through Argentina and then on to St. Thomas. They were going to off-load them in Key West, get them to one of their operatives in New York, finance his whole sabotage ring for years to come. But we hit them as they were off-loading. Killed eight of them, all Krauts. So, you might want to say thank you; we helped the war effort.”

“Thank you,” Joe said. “You’re swell.”

She gave him a small curtsey.

“Lucius bankroll the job?”

She nodded.

“And how much did he make?”

“It’s a scary number.”

“Try me.”

“Two million.”

Jesus. His whole life Joe had never heard of a score that big. And he’d heard of, or been part of, some pretty big scores. But two million dollars? That was the kind of money railroads and oil companies netted in a year. Hell, the entire Bartolo Family operation only made a million and a half last year—
gross—
and they were swimming in green.

Joe asked Theresa, “What was your cut?”

“Five percent.”

Enough to live out her days comfortably in a style well beyond any she’d been accustomed to up to now.

“And you’re worried he won’t pay it.”

“I
know
he won’t pay it. Two bitches have already tried to kill me in here and I was only sentenced last week. I couldn’t figure out why the prosecutor—Archie Boll, you know him?”

Joe nodded.

“Couldn’t figure out why he was in such a forgiving mood. I mean, shit, I smashed Tony’s head so hard there were pieces of him sticking to cabinets on the other side of the kitchen. And they let me plead to
involuntary manslaughter
? So I just assumed Archie Boll was trying to fuck me; figured he’d drop by the jail the night before they shipped me over here. But when he didn’t? I started asking the kind of questions I should have asked when they offered me the deal.”

“Why didn’t you ask them then?”

“Who’s looking a gift horse like that in the mouth? I got a record, I’m Italian, and, oh right, I beat my husband to death with a mallet. They could have given me the chair. Instead they gave me five years. I get out, my son will be eight. Young enough to start fresh with me.” She nodded to herself. “But if I
had
asked around, I would have figured out what I bet you already know.” She looked through the fence at him.

He nodded and spoke softly. “That Archie Boll is all the way in King Lucius’s pocket.”

“Yup.”

“Which means,” Joe said, “the object was always just to get you in here.”

Another nod, followed by a bitter exhalation of smoke. “As soon as I killed Tony, King Lucius saw a way to hold on to another hundred grand. And maybe he thinks someone’ll come along soon and offer me a deal to turn state’s. Either way he looks at it, me breathing is bad for him. Me not breathing? That’ll give him clear skies and a full sail.”

“So you want me to talk to him?”

She chewed the skin around one of her nails. “I was kind of depending on it, yeah.”

“And what are you paying for your life?”

She took a big breath and let it out.

“Ninety percent. He puts ten grand in a bank account for my son, and he lets me live. That’s worth ninety thousand dollars to me.”

Joe gave it some thought. “That’s a big number and it’s a smart number. What you have to consider is that Lucius may take it but then spend the next few months second-guessing himself and thinking, ‘She’s going to come out of prison and be pissed. She doesn’t think so, but she’s gonna be furious about this deal. Not now, but
then
. And that makes her a liability again.’”

She was nodding. “I thought of that.”

“And?”

“If you make the deal with him, you have to bring along a witness. Then it’s out there, part of the lore in our thing. Everyone will know.”

“But then everyone will know he tried to kill you over the hundred grand.”

“Who
wouldn’t,
though? If my employee took a pinch when I owed her a hundred grand, I’d put a contract on her too. That’s just smart business.”

Christ, Joe thought, Lucius’s people are a hard fucking breed.

Theresa said, “But if word gets out that I bought my life back and paid a pretty hefty sum to do so and Lucius killed me anyway, well, even in our thing, Joe, there are ethics.”

“There are?” Joe thought about it. “I guess you got as good a point as any. So let’s say I find somebody with the balls to step on Lucius’s boat with me and I proffer him your deal. And let’s say he takes it. What’s it worth to me, though?”

“You wouldn’t save a life out of the goodness of your heart?”

“Depends on the life. You’ve put a lot of people in the ground, including a couple of my acquaintances. I’m not sure your death is the tragedy you think it is.”

“What about my son?”

“Someone who didn’t murder his father will raise him.”

“So why come see me?”

“Curiosity. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why you’d ask for me.”

“Well, that’s just it—for the life of you.” She allowed herself a small, haughty smile. “And for your son, Joe, so
he
doesn’t grow up in an orphanage any more than mine.”

Joe matched her smile with his own. “You want me to believe
my
life’s in danger. I make money, not waves. My death would do serious damage to the profit margin of our thing in Tampa, in Havana, in Boston, and in Portland, Maine. So who would want me dead?”

“Anyone who wants to do serious damage to the profit margin of our thing in Tampa, Havana, Boston, and Portland.”

Joe had to give her that one. “So the threat’s from without? Not normally the way it works in this business.”

“I honestly don’t know where it’s from—within, without, the German high command, I have no idea. All I have is a name and a date.”

Joe laughed. “When I’m supposed to be killed? Someone picked a fucking
day
?”

She nodded. “Ash Wednesday.”

“So my killers are religious? Or just from New Orleans?”

“You can joke your way right into the cemetery, Joseph. Be my guest.”

They turned another corner of the fence. The parking lot was now just off to their left. Joe could see Al and Tomas in the car, Al with his hat over his eyes, Tomas watching his father. Joe gave him a small wave and his son returned it.

“So you really don’t know much,” Joe said, “about this alleged hit.”

“I know who’s gonna carry it out and I’m pretty sure I know who subcontracted the job in the first place.”

Tomas went back to reading his book.

Joe said, “Well, if
you
heard about it, then Lucius is holding the paper on it. That’s an easy one. And you want me to go into the lion’s den—no, fuck the den, into his jaws—and buy your freedom.”

“Lucius doesn’t kill anymore.”

“Tell that to the last two guys who got on his boat and didn’t get back off.”

“Then bring someone unassailable with you, someone no one would dare touch.”

Joe gave that a tight grin. “Until two days ago, I would have said that person was me.”

“Gil Valentine would have said the same thing back in 1940.”

“So who
did
kill Gil?”

“I have no idea. I don’t know anyone who does. I mentioned his name so you’d realize—actually, so you’d
remember
—that no one is safe in our thing.” She flicked her cigarette off into the grass and smiled through the fence at him. “Not even you.”

“So you’ll tell me who’s taken the contract on me.”

A nod. “The second my ten percent shows up in my bank account.”

“There aren’t too many guys up to the job of killing me. What if I just used my powers of deduction to figure out who it is?”

“And what if you were wrong?”

Behind Theresa, on the other side of the yard and the other side of the next fence, the boy watched them from a bright green knoll.

“Theresa.”

“Yes, Joseph.”

“Can you do me a favor and turn around? Tell me what you see at twelve o’clock?”

She gave him a curious arch of an eyebrow, but then she swiveled, looked straight through the fence at the knoll.

The boy was dressed in dark blue suspender shorts and a large-collar white shirt today. He didn’t vanish when Theresa turned to look at him. Instead, he sat down on the grass and hugged his knees to his chest.

“I see a fence,” Theresa said.

“Beyond the fence.”

Theresa pointed. “Right there?”

Joe nodded. “Straight ahead. You see anything on that little hill?”

Theresa looked back at him with a tiny smile. “Sure.”

“What is it?”

“Your vision that bad?”

“What is it?” he repeated.

“A fawn,” she said. “Cute. There he goes.”

The boy climbed the knoll and disappeared over the other side.

“A fawn.”

Theresa nodded. “Baby deer, you know? Like Bambi?”

“Like Bambi,” Joe said.

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “You got a pen to take down my bank account number?”

TOMAS SAT IN THE BACK OF THE PACKARD and tried not to scratch his face or arms. It took so much effort, it actually made him sleepy again.

He watched his father talk to the small, slender woman in the orange prison clothes, and he wondered, not for the first time, exactly what it was his father did for a living. He knew he was a businessman and that he had a sugar company and a rum company
with Uncle Esteban, who, like Uncle Dion, wasn’t really an uncle. A lot of things in their life that seemed to be one thing could also be something else.

He watched his father turn and walk back the way he’d come along the fence line. The woman walked parallel to him on the other side of the chain-link. She had very dark hair, which often set Tomas to brooding about his mother; it was the only memory he was certain he had of her. His face had been pressed to her neck and her abundant hair fell around him like a cowl. She’d smelled of soap and had been humming a song. He never forgot the tune either. When he was five, he hummed it for his father, who was so shocked, his eyes filled.