Live by Night (Coughlin 2)

Joe was so overjoyed that it would be days before he could admit to himself that it still ran a bit slow.

In September, Graciela received a letter informing her that the Greater Ybor Board of Overseers had elected her Woman of the Year for her work with the less fortunate in the Latin Quarter. The Greater Ybor Board of Overseers was a loose collection of Cuban, Spanish, and Italian men and women who gathered once a month to discuss their shared interests. In the first year, the group had disbanded three times while most of the meetings had ended in fights that spilled out of the restaurant of choice and into the street. The fights were usually between the Spaniards and the Cubans, but every now and then the Italians threw a punch or two so they wouldn’t feel left out. After enough of the bad blood had been given full measure, the members managed to find common ground in their shared exile from the rest of Tampa and grew into a fairly powerful interest group in a very short time. If Graciela would agree, the board wrote, they would be pleased to present her with her award at a gala to be held at the Don Ce-Sar Hotel on St. Petersburg Beach the first weekend in October.

“What do you think?” Graciela asked over breakfast.

Joe was groggy. He’d been having variations on the same nightmare lately. He was with his family and they were somewhere foreign, Africa he felt, but he couldn’t say why exactly. Just that they were surrounded by tall grass and it was very hot. His father appeared at the limit of his vision, at the farthest edge of the fields. He said nothing. He just watched as the panthers emerged from the tall grass, sleek and yellow-eyed. They were the same shade of tan as the grass and, thus, impossible to see until it was too late. When Joe saw the first of them, he shouted to warn Graciela and Tomas, but his throat had already been removed by the cat that sat on his chest. He noticed how red his blood looked on its great white teeth and then he closed his eyes as the cat went back for seconds.

He poured himself more coffee and willed the dream from his head.

“I think,” he said to Graciela, “that it’s time for you to see Ybor again.”

The restoration of the house, much to their surprise, was mostly complete. And last week Joe and Ciggy had laid the grass sod for the outfield. There was nothing holding them to Cuba, for the time being, except Cuba.

They left near the end of September at the end of the rainy season. They left Havana Harbor and crossed the Florida Straits and steamed due north along the west coast of Florida, arriving at the Port of Tampa in the late afternoon of September 29.

Seppe Carbone and Enrico Pozzetta, both of whom had risen fast in Dion’s organization, met them in the terminal, and Seppe explained that word had leaked of their arrival. He showed Joe page five of the Tribune:

REPUTED YBOR SYNDICATE BOSS RETURNING

The story alleged that the Ku Klux Klan was making threats again and that the FBI was mulling an indictment.

“Jesus,” Joe said, “where do they come up with this shit?”

“Take your coat, Mr. Coughlin?”

Over his suit, Joe wore a silk raincoat he’d bought in Havana. It was imported from Lisbon and sat as lightly on him as a layer of epidermis, but the rain couldn’t make a dent in it. The final hour of the boat ride Joe had seen the clouds massing, which was no surprise—Cuba’s rainy season might be far worse, but Tampa’s was no joke, either, and judging by the clouds, it was still hanging around.

“I’ll keep it on,” Joe said. “Help my wife with her bags.”

“Of course.”

The four of them left the terminal and walked into the parking lot, Seppe to Joe’s right, Enrico to Graciela’s left. Tomas rode Joe’s hip, his arms around his neck, Joe checking the time, when the sound of the first gunshot reached them.

Seppe died on his feet—Joe had seen it enough times. He continued to hold Graciela’s bags as the hole went straight through the center of his head. Joe turned as Seppe fell and the second gunshot followed the first, the gunman saying something in a calm, dry voice. Joe clutched Tomas to his shoulder and threw himself at Graciela and they all toppled to the ground.

Tomas cried out, more in shock than pain as far as Joe could tell, and Graciela grunted. Joe heard Enrico firing his gun. He looked over, saw that Enrico was hit in the neck, the blood coming out of him way too fast and way too dark, but he was firing his ’17 Colt .45, firing it under the car nearest to him.

Now Joe heard what the shooter was saying.

“Repent. Repent.”

Tomas wailed. Not in pain but in fear, Joe knew the difference. He said to Graciela, “You okay? Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said. “Wind knocked out. Go.”

Joe rolled off them, drew his .32, and joined Enrico.

“Repent.”

They fired under the car at a pair of tan boots and trouser legs.

“Repent.”

On Joe’s fifth try, he and Enrico hit bull’s-eyes on the same shots. Enrico’s blew a hole in the shooter’s left boot and Joe’s snapped his left ankle in half.

Joe looked over at Enrico in time to see him cough once and die. It was that quick and he was gone, the gun in his hand still smoking. Joe jumped over the hood of the car between him and the shooter and landed on the ground in front of Irving Figgis.

He was dressed in a tan suit with a faded white shirt. He wore a straw cowboy hat and used his pistol, a long-barrel Colt, to push himself to his one good foot. Stood there on the gravel in his tan suit with his shattered foot dangling from his ankle nub like his pistol dangled from his hand.

He looked in Joe’s eyes. “Repent.”

Joe kept his own gun aimed at the center mass of Irv’s chest. “I don’t follow.”

“Repent.”

“Fine,” Joe said. “To who?”

“God.”

“Who says I don’t?” Joe took a step closer. “What I won’t do, Irv, is repent to you.”

“Then repent to God,” Irv said, his breath thin and rushed, “in my presence.”

“No,” Joe said. “ ’Cause then it’s still about you and not about God, isn’t it?”

Irv shuddered several times. “She was my baby girl.”

Joe nodded. “But I didn’t take her from you, Irv.”

“Your kind did.” Irv’s eyes opened and fixed on Joe’s person, on something in the waist area.

Joe glanced down, didn’t see anything.

“Your kind,” Irv repeated. “Your kind.”

“What’s my kind?” Joe asked and risked another glance down his own chest, still couldn’t see anything.