Live by Night (Coughlin 2)

The kid sighed and dropped the potato peeler, and Joe banged his head off the wall twice more to be sure. The kid slid to the floor.

Joe had never seen him before.

In the infirmary, a doctor cleaned his wounds, sutured the one in his thigh, and wrapped it tightly in gauze. The doctor, who smelled of something chemical, told him to keep off the leg and the hip for a while.

“How do I do that?” Joe asked.

The doctor went on as if Joe had never spoken. “And keep the wounds clean. Change the dressing twice a day.”

“Do you have more dressing for me?”

“No,” the doctor said, as if embittered by the stupidity of the question.

“So… ”

“Good as new,” the doctor said and stepped back.

He waited for the guards to come and mete out their punishment for the fight. He waited to hear if the boy who’d attacked him was alive or dead. But no one said anything to him. It was as if he’d imagined the whole incident.

At lights-out, he asked Mr. Hammond if he’d heard about the fight on the way to the showers.

“No.”

“No, you didn’t hear?” Joe asked. “Or, no, it didn’t happen?”

“No,” Mr. Hammond said and walked away.

A few days after the stabbing, an inmate spoke to him. There was little special about the man’s voice—it was lightly accented (Italian, he guessed) and a bit gravelly—but after a week of almost total silence it sounded so beautiful that Joe’s throat closed up and his chest filled.

He was an old man with thick glasses too big for his face. He approached Joe in the yard as Joe limped across it. He’d been in the line to the showers on Saturday. Joe remembered him because he’d looked so frail one could only imagine the horrors this place had foisted upon him over the years.

“Do you think they’ll run out of men to fight you soon?”

He was about Joe’s height. He was bald up top, a shade of silver on the sides that matched his pencil-thin mustache. Long legs and a short, pudgy torso. Tiny hands. Something delicate about the way he moved, almost tiptoeing, like a cat burglar, but eyes as innocent and hopeful as a child’s on his first day of school.

“I don’t think they can run out,” Joe said. “Lot of candidates.”

“Won’t you get tired?”

“Sure,” Joe said. “But I’ll go as long as I can, I guess.”

“You’re very fast.”

“I’m fast, I’m not very fast.”

“You are, though.” The old man opened a small canvas pouch and removed two cigarettes. He handed one to Joe. “I’ve seen both your fights. You’re so fast most of these men haven’t noticed you’re protecting your ribs.”

Joe stopped as the man lit their cigarettes with a match he struck off his thumbnail. “I’m not protecting anything.”

The old man smiled. “A long time ago, in another life, before this”—he gestured past the walls and the wire—“I promoted a few boxers. A few wrestlers too. I never made much money, but I met a lot of pretty women. Boxers attract pretty women. And pretty women travel with other pretty women.” He shrugged as they began walking again. “So I know when a man is protecting his ribs. Are they broken?”

Joe said, “There’s nothing wrong with them.”

“I promise,” the old man said, “if they send me to fight you, I’ll limit myself to grasping your ankles and holding on tight.”

Joe chuckled. “Just the ankles, uh?”

“Maybe the nose, if I sense an advantage.”

Joe looked over at him. He must have been here so long he’d seen every hope die and experienced every degradation, and now they left him alone because he’d survived all they’d thrown at him. Or because he was just a bag of wrinkles, unappealing for purposes of trade. Harmless.

“Well, to protect my nose…” Joe took a long drag off the cigarette. He’d forgotten how good one could taste if you didn’t know where your next one was coming from. “A few months ago, I broke six ribs and fractured or sprained the rest.”

“A few months ago. That leaves you only a couple months to go.”

“No. Really?”

The old man nodded. “Broken ribs are like broken hearts—at least six months before they heal.”

Is that how long it takes? Joe thought.

“If only meals lasted as long.” The old man rubbed his small paunch. “What do they call you?”

“Joe.”

“Never Joseph?”

“Just my father.”

The man nodded and exhaled a stream of smoke with slow relish. “This is such a hopeless place. Even in your limited time here, I’m sure you’ve come to the same conclusion.”

Joe nodded.

“It eats men. It doesn’t even spit them back out.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Oh,” the old man said, “I stopped counting years ago.” He looked up at the greasy blue sky and spit a piece of tobacco off his tongue. “There’s nothing about this place I don’t know. If you need help comprehending it, just ask.”

Joe doubted the old fella was as tuned to the pulse of the place as he imagined himself to be, but he saw no harm in saying, “I will. Thank you. I appreciate your offer.”

They reached the end of the yard. As they turned to walk back the way they’d come, the old man placed his arm around Joe’s shoulders.

The whole yard watched.

The old man flicked his cigarette into the dust and held out his hand. Joe shook it.

“My name is Tommaso Pescatore, but everyone calls me Maso. Consider yourself under my care.”

Joe knew the name. Maso Pescatore ran the North End and most of the gambling and women on the North Shore. From behind these walls, he controlled a lot of the liquor coming up from Florida. Tim Hickey had done a lot of work with him over the years and usually mentioned that extreme caution was the only sensible course of action when dealing with the man.

“I didn’t ask to be under your care, Maso.”

“How many things in life—good and bad—come to us whether we ask for them or not?” Maso removed his arm from Joe’s shoulders and placed a hand over his eyebrows to block the sun. Where Joe had just seen innocence in his eyes, he now saw cunning. “Call me Mr. Pescatore from now on, Joseph. And give this to your father next time you see him.” Maso slipped a piece of paper into Joe’s hand.