Live by Night

He lay on his right side, his face pressed to warm wood. He could smell low tide. He could smell fish and fish blood. He realized he’d been hearing the engine for some time before he recognized it as such. He’d been on enough boats in his life to recognize what it powered. And then the other sensations coalesced and made sense — the slap of waves against the hull, the rise and fall of the wood on which he lay. He could hardly be sure of this but he didn’t hear any other engines, no matter how hard he concentrated on isolating the various sounds around him. He heard men’s voices and footsteps passing back and forth on the deck and, after a while, he discerned the sharp inhale and fluttering exhale of someone close by smoking a cigarette. But no other engines, and the boat wasn’t going terribly fast. Didn’t feel like it anyway. Didn’t sound like something in flight. Which meant it was fair to assume no one was coming after them.

“Someone get Albert. He’s awake.”

Then they were lifting him — one hand sinking through the hood and into his hair, two more hands under his armpits. He was dragged back along the deck and dropped into a chair, could feel the hard wooden seat under him and the hard wood slats at his back. Hands slid over his wrists and then the cuffs were unlocked. They’d barely had time to pop open before his arms were pulled around the back of the chair and the cuffs were snapped back on. Someone tied his arms and chest to the chair, tied them just short of too tight to breathe. Then someone — maybe the same someone, maybe someone else — did the same to his legs, tying them so tight to the chair legs that movement was out of the question.

They tilted the chair back and he screamed against the tape, the sound of it in his ears, because they were pushing him over the side of the boat. Even with the hood covering his head, he clenched his eyes shut, and he could hear his breath exit his nostrils so desperate and ragged. If breath could beg, his did.

The chair stopped tipping when it met a wall. Joe sat there at a forty-degree angle or so. He guessed his feet and the front chair legs were a foot and a half to two feet off the deck.

Someone removed his shoes. Then his socks. Then the hood.

He batted his eyelids rapid-time at the sudden return of light. And not any light — Florida light, immeasurably strong even though it was diffused by banks of roiling gray clouds. He couldn’t see any sun, but the light managed to bounce off a nickel-plated sea. Somehow the brightness lived in the gray, lived in the clouds, lived in the sea, not strong enough to point to, just strong enough for him to feel its effect.

When he could see clearly again, the first thing that came into focus was his father’s watch. It dangled in front of his eyes. Then Albert’s face came into focus behind it. He let Joe see as he opened the pocket of his cheap vest and dropped the watch in. “I was making do with an Elgin, myself,” he said and leaned forward, hands on his knees. He smiled his small smile at Joe. Behind him, two men dragged something heavy across the deck toward them. Black metal of some kind. With silver handles. The men neared them. Albert stepped back with a bow and a flourish, and they slid the object just below Joe’s bare feet.

It was a tub. The kind one saw at summer cocktail parties. The hosts would have it filled with ice and bottles of white wine and good beer. There wasn’t any ice in it now, though. Or wine. Or good beer.

Just cement.

Joe bucked against his ropes but it was like bucking against a brick house as it fell on top of him.

Albert stepped behind him and slapped the back of the chair and the chair dropped forward and Joe’s legs sank into the cement.

Albert watched him struggle — or try to — with the distant curiosity of a scientist. About the only thing Joe could move was his head. As soon as his feet entered the bucket, they were there to stay. His legs were already bound fast, ankles to knees, not a twitch of mobility available. The cement had been mixed a little earlier judging by the feel of it. It wasn’t soupy. His feet sank into it like they were sinking into slits in a sponge.

Albert sat on the deck in front of him and watched Joe’s eyes as the cement began to set. The sponge sensation gave way to something firmer under the soles of his feet that proceeded to snake around his ankles.

“Takes a while to harden,” Albert said. “Longer than some would think.”

Joe got his bearings when he saw a small barrier island off to his left that looked an awful lot like Egmont Key. Otherwise, nothing around them but water and sky.