Live by Night (Coughlin 2)
Page 83Joe was sitting in the front office of his cigar export company—a fully legitimate corporation; they lost a small fortune every year exporting superior tobacco to countries like Ireland and Sweden and France, where cigars had never really caught on—when Irv and his daughter walked through the front door.
Irv gave Joe a quick nod but wouldn’t meet his eyes. In the years since Joe had shown him those pictures of his daughter, he hadn’t met Joe’s eyes once and Joe estimated they’d passed each other on the street at least thirty times.
“My Loretta has some words for you.”
Joe looked up at the pretty young woman in her white dress and bright, wet eyes. “Yes, ma’am. Do take a seat if you’d like.”
“I’d prefer to stand, sir.”
“As you wish.”
“Mr. Coughlin,” she said, clasping her hands over her thighs, “my father said there was once a good man in you.”
“I wasn’t aware that man had departed.”
Loretta cleared her throat. “We know of your philanthropy. And that of the woman with whom you choose to cohabitate.”
“The woman with whom I choose to cohabitate,” Joe said, just to try it out.
“Yes, yes. We understand she is quite active in charitable work within the Ybor community and even in Greater Tampa.”
“She has a name.”
“But her good works are strictly temporal in nature. She refuses all religious affiliation and rebuffs all attempts to embrace the one true Lord.”
“She is named Graciela. And she is a Catholic,” Joe said.
“Wow,” Joe said, “you completely lost me on that one.”
She said, “Luckily, you have not lost me. For all your good works, Mr. Coughlin, we both know they are unmitigated by your evil deeds and your distance from the Lord.”
“How so?”
“You profit from the illegal addictions of others. You profit off people’s weakness and their need for sloth and gluttony and libidinous behavior.” She gave him a sad and kindly smile. “But you can free yourself of that.”
Joe said, “I don’t want to.”
“Of course you do.”
“Miss Loretta,” Joe said, “you seem like a lovely person. And I understand Preacher Ingalls has seen his flock triple since you’ve begun preaching before them.”
Irv held up five fingers, his eyes on the floor.
“Oh,” Joe said, “I’m sorry. So attendance has quintupled. My.”
Loretta’s smile never left her face. It was soft and sad. It knew what you were going to say before you said it and it judged those words pointless before they left your mouth.
“Loretta,” Joe said, “I sell a product people enjoy so much that the Eighteenth Amendment will be overturned within the year.”
“That’s not true,” Irv said, his jaw set.
“Or,” Joe said, “it is. Either way, Prohibition is dead. They used it to keep the poor in line and it failed. They used it to make the middle class more industrious, and instead the middle class got curious. More booze was drunk in the last ten years than ever before, and that’s because people wanted it and didn’t want to be told they couldn’t have it.”
“Nor should they.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Nor should they,” Joe said. “If people wish to fornicate, I see no pressing reason to stop them, Miss Figgis.”
“And if they wish to lie down with animals?”
“Do they?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Do people wish to lie down with animals?”
“Some do. And their sickness will spread if you have your way.”
“I’m afraid I don’t see a correlation between drinking and fornication with animals.”
“But that isn’t to say there isn’t a correlation.”
Now she sat, hands still clasped in her lap.
“Sure it is,” Joe said. “That’s exactly what I said.”
“But that’s just your opinion.”
“So you do not believe in God?”
“No, Loretta, I just don’t believe in your God.”
Joe looked over at Irv because he could feel the man seething, but, as always, Irv wouldn’t meet his eyes, just stared at his hands, which were clasped into fists.
“Well, he believes in you,” she said. “Mr. Coughlin, you will renounce your evil path. I just know it. I can see it in you. You will repent and become baptized in Jesus Christ. And you will make a great prophet. I see this as clearly as I see a sinless city on a hill, here in Tampa. And, yes, Mr. Coughlin, before you can make fun, I realize there are no hills in Tampa.”
“Well, none you’d notice, even if you were driving fast.”
She smiled a real smile, and it was the one he remembered from a few years ago, coming across her at the soda fountain or in the magazine section of Morin Drugstore.
Then it transformed into the sad, frozen one again, and her eyes brightened and she extended a gloved hand across the desk to him, and he shook it, thinking of the track scars it covered, as Loretta Figgis said, “I will one day spirit you off your path, Mr. Coughlin. Of that, you can be sure. I feel this to my bones.”
“Just because you feel it,” Joe said, “doesn’t make it so.”
“But that doesn’t mean it isn’t so.”
“I’ll grant you that.” Joe looked up at her. “Now why can’t you grant my opinions the same benefit of the doubt?”
Loretta’s sad smile brightened. “Because they’re wrong.”
Unfortunately for Joe, Esteban, and the Pescatore Family, as Loretta’s popularity rose, so did her legitimacy. After a few months, her proselytizing began to endanger the casino deal. Those who’d initially brought her up in public company had done so mostly to ridicule her or marvel at the circumstances that had brought her to her current state—all-American police chief’s daughter goes to Hollywood, comes back a raving loon with track marks in her arms that yokels mistake for stigmata. But the tone of the conversation began to shift not only as the roads clogged with both cars and foot traffic on nights it was rumored Loretta would appear at a revival, but also as regular townsfolk were exposed to her. Loretta, far from hiding from the public eye, engaged it. Not just in Hyde Park but also in West Tampa, Port of Tampa, and Ybor as well, where she liked to come to purchase coffee, her one vice.