“Is that our fault?” Esteban said.
Except one woman. A smaller woman, looking away from the camera, at something out of the frame, as if someone had come into the room and called her name as the camera flashed. A woman with hair the color of sand and eyes as pale as winter.
“What?” Joe said.
“Is it our fault?” Esteban said. “If some mamón decides to—”
“When was this taken?” Joe said.
“When?”
“Yes, yes. When?”
“That’s the opening night of Zoot.”
“And when did it open?”
“Last month.”
Joe looked across the desk at him. “You’re sure?”
Esteban laughed. “It’s my restaurant. Of course I’m sure.”
Joe gulped his drink down. “There’s no way this photo could have been taken at another time and gotten mixed up with the one taken last month?”
“What? No. What other time?”
“Say six years ago.”
Esteban shook his head, still chuckling, but his eyes darkening with concern. “No, no, no, Joseph. No. This was taken a month ago. Why?”
“Because this woman right here?” Joe put his finger on Emma Gould. “She’s been dead since 1927.”
PART III
All the Violent Children
1933–1935
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Haircut
“You’re sure it’s her?” Dion said the next morning in Joe’s office.
From his inside pocket, Joe removed the photograph Esteban had pulled back out of the frame last night. He placed it on the desk in front of Dion. “You tell me.”
Dion’s eyes drifted and then locked and finally widened. “Oh, yeah, that’s her all right.” He looked sideways at Joe. “You tell Graciela?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You tell your women everything?”
“I don’t tell ’em shit, but you’re more of a nance than me. And she’s carrying your child.”
“That’s true.” He looked up at the copper ceiling. “I didn’t tell her yet because I don’t know how.”
“It’s easy,” Dion said. “You just say ‘Honey, sweetie, dearest, you remember that filly I was sweet on before you? One I told you went tits-up? Well, she’s alive and living in your hometown and still quite the dish. Speaking of dishes, what’s for dinner?’ ”
Sal, standing by the door, looked down to hide a chuckle.
“You enjoying yourself?” Joe asked Dion.
“Time of my life,” Dion said, his girth shaking the chair.
“D,” Joe said, “we’re talking about six years of rage here, six years of…” Joe threw his hands up at it, unable to put it into words. “I survived Charlestown because of that rage, I hung Maso off a fucking roof because of it, chased Albert White out of Tampa, hell, I—”
“Built an empire because of it.”
“Yeah.”
“So when you see her?” Dion said. “Tell her thanks from me.”
Joe’s mouth was open, but he couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Look,” Dion said, “I never liked the cooze. You know that. But she sure found a way to inspire you, boss. Reason I ask if you told Graciela is because I do like her. I like her a lot.”
“I like her a lot too,” Sal said, and they both looked over at him. He held up his right hand, the Thompson in his left. “Sorry.”
“We talk a certain way,” Dion said to him, “because we used to beat each other up when we were kids. To you, he’s always the boss.”
“Won’t happen again.”
Dion turned back to Joe.
“We didn’t beat each other up when we were kids,” Joe said.
“Sure we did.”
“No,” Joe said. “You beat the shit out of me.”
“You hit me with a brick.”
“So you’d stop beating the shit out of me.”
“Oh.” Dion was quiet for a moment. “I had a point.”
“When?”
“When I came through the door. Oh, we gotta talk about Maso’s visit. And you hear about Irv Figgis?”
“I heard about Loretta, yeah.”
Dion shook his head. “We all heard about Loretta. But last night? Irv walked into Arturo’s place? Apparently that’s where Loretta scored her last vial of junk the night before last?”
“Okay…”
“Yeah, well, Irv beat Arturo near to death.”
“No.”
Dion nodded. “Kept saying ‘Repent, repent,’ and just driving his fists down like fucking pistons. Arturo could lose an eye.”
“Shit. And Irv?”
Dion whirled his index finger beside his temple. “They got him on a sixty-day observation bit at the bughouse in Temple Terrace.”
“Christ,” Joe said, “what did we do to these people?”
Dion’s face darkened to scarlet. He turned and pointed at Sal Urso. “You never fucking saw this, get me?”
Sal said, “Saw what?” and Dion slapped Joe across the face.
Slapped him so hard Joe hit the desk. He bounced off it and came back with his .32 already pointed into the folds under Dion’s chin.
Dion said, “I’m not watching you walk into another life-or-death meeting knowing you’re half-hoping to die over something you had nothing to do with. You want to shoot me here and now?” He flung his arms wide. “Pull the fucking trigger.”
“Don’t think I will?”
“I don’t care if you do,” Dion said. “Because I’m not going to watch you try to kill yourself a second time. You’re my brother. You get me, you stupid fucking mick? You. More than Seppi or Paolo, God rest ’em. You. And I can’t lose another fucking brother. Can’t do it.”
Dion grabbed Joe’s wrist, curled his finger over Joe’s trigger finger, and dug the gun even deeper into the folds of his neck. He closed his eyes and tightened his lips against his teeth.
“By the way,” he said, “when you going over there?”
“Where?”
“Cuba.”
“Who said I’m going over there?”
Dion frowned. “You just found out this dead girl you used to be bugs for is alive and breathing about three hundred miles south of here, and you’re going to just sit with that information?”