Live by Night (Coughlin 2)

“He just blew up the tracks,” Maso said and looked across at his son. “You get your retard from your mother, by the way. Woman couldn’t win a game of checkers against a bowl of fucking soup.”

Maso and his men waited by a pay phone on Platt while Anthony Servidone went on ahead with a suitcase full of money to the Tampa Bay Hotel. He called an hour later to report that the rooms were taken care of. There was no police presence and no local hoods as far as he could see. Send in the security detail.

They did. Not that there was much of one left after whatever had happened on that tugboat. They’d sent twelve guys out on that boat, thirteen if you counted that Slick Sammy fuck, Albert White. That left a security detail of seven men plus Maso’s personal bodyguard, Seppe Carbone. Seppe was from the same town Maso had grown up in, Alcamo, on the northwest coast of Sicily, though Seppe was much younger, so he and Maso had grown up there in different times. Still, Seppe was a man from that town—merciless, fearless, and loyal to the death.

After Anthony Servidone called back to confirm that the security detail had cleared the floor and the lobby, Seppe drove Maso and Digger to the back of the Tampa Bay Hotel, and they took the service elevator to the seventh floor.

“How long?” Digger said.

“Day after tomorrow,” Maso said. “We keep our heads down until then. Even that mick son of a bitch doesn’t have the pull to keep roadblocks up that long. We drive down to Miami, catch the train from there.”

“I want a girl,” Digger said.

Maso slapped his son hard in the back of the head. “What part of lying low don’t you understand? A girl? A fucking girl? Why don’t you ask her to bring some friends, maybe a couple of guns, you dumb fuck.”

Digger rubbed his head. “A man has needs.”

“You see a man around here,” Maso said, “you point him out to me.”

They arrived at the seventh floor and Anthony Servidone met the lift. He handed Maso his room key and Digger his.

“You clear the room?”

Anthony nodded. “They’re clean. Every one. Whole floor.”

Maso had met Anthony in Charlestown, where everyone was loyal to Maso because it was death if you weren’t. Seppe, on the other hand, had come from Alcamo with a letter from Todo Bassina, the local boss, and had distinguished himself more times than Maso could count.

“Seppe,” he said now, “give the room another look.”

“Subito, capo. Subito.” Seppe’s Thompson cleared his raincoat and he walked through the men gathered outside Maso’s suite and let himself inside.

Anthony Servidone stepped in close. “They were seen at the Romero.”

“Who?”

“Coughlin, Bartolo, a bunch of Cubans and Italians on their side.”

“Coughlin, definitely?”

Anthony nodded. “No question.”

Maso closed his eyes for just a moment. “He even get a scratch?”

“Yeah,” Anthony said quickly, excited to deliver some good news. “Big cut on his head and took a slug to his right arm.”

Maso said, “Well, I guess we should wait for him to die of fucking blood poisoning.”

Digger said, “I don’t think we got that kind of time.”

And Maso closed his eyes again.

Digger walked down to his room with a man on either side of him as Seppe came back out of Maso’s suite.

“It’s all clear, boss.”

Maso said, “I want you and Servidone on the door. Everyone else better act like centurions on the Hun border. Capice?”

“Capice.”

Maso entered the room and removed his raincoat and his hat. He poured himself a drink but from the bottle of anisette they’d sent up. Booze was legal again. Most of it, anyway. And what wasn’t, would be. The country had found sanity again.

A fucking shame, what it was.

“Pour me one, would ya?”

Maso turned, saw Joe sitting on the couch by the window. He had his Savage .32 sitting on his knee with a Maxim silencer screwed onto the muzzle.

Maso wasn’t surprised. Not even a little bit. Just curious about one thing.

“Where were you hiding?” He poured Joe a glass and brought it to him.

“Hiding?” Joe took the glass.

“When Seppe cleared the room?”

Joe used his .32 to point Maso to a chair. “I wasn’t hiding. I was sitting on the bed over there. He walked in and I asked him if he wanted to work for someone who’d be alive tomorrow.”

“That’s all it took?” Maso said.

“It took you wanting to place a fucking dunce like Digger in a position of power. We had a great thing here. A great thing. And you come in and fuck it all up in one day.”

“That’s human nature, isn’t it?”

“Fixing what ain’t broke?” Joe said.

Maso nodded.

“Well, shit,” Joe said, “it doesn’t have to be.”

“No,” Maso said, “but it usually is.”

“You know how many people died today because of you and your fucking greed? You, the ‘simple Wop from Endicott Street’? Well, you ain’t that.”

“Someday, maybe you’ll have a son and then you’ll understand.”

“Will I?” Joe said. “And what will I understand?”

Maso shrugged, as if to put it into words would sully it. “How is my son?”

“By now?” Joe shook his head. “Gone.”

Maso pictured Digger lying facedown on a floor in the next room over, a bullet in the back of his head, the blood pooling on the carpet. He was surprised by how deep and suddenly the grief overtook him. It was so black, so black and hopeless and horrific.

“I’d always wanted you for a son,” he said to Joe and heard his voice break. He looked down at his drink.

“Funny,” Joe said, “I never wanted you for a father.”

The bullet entered Maso’s throat. The last thing he ever saw was a drop of his blood landing in his glass of anisette.

Then it all went back to black.

When Maso fell, he dropped the glass and landed on his knees and his head hit the coffee table. It lay on the right cheek, empty eye staring at the wall to his left. Joe stood and looked at the silencer he’d picked up at the hardware store for three bucks that afternoon. Rumor was Congress was going to raise the price to $200 and then outlaw them entirely.

Pity.

Joe shot Maso through the top of the head just to be sure.