Live by Night

Officer Donald Belinski ran down toward him, a ghost who’d somehow risen from the pond floor, scraped the burned flesh from his bones, and now trotted down the staircase toward Joe — same blond hair, same blotchy complexion, same ridiculously red lips and pale eyes. No wait, this guy was fleshier, and his blond hair had already begun to recede and leaned a bit more toward red than pure blond. And even though Joe had only seen Belinski lying on his back, he was fairly certain the cop had been taller than this man. And probably smelled better too, this guy smelling of onions, Joe that close to him as they passed in the stairwell, the guy’s eyes narrowing. He swept a hank of oily red-blond hair off his forehead, his hat in his free hand, a Boston Examiner press ID tucked inside the grosgrain ribbon. Joe sidestepped him at the last moment, and the man fumbled with his hat.

Joe said, “Excuse me.”

The guy said, “My apologies,” but Joe could feel his eyes on him as he moved up the stairs fast, stunned at his own stupidity not only to have looked someone directly in the face but also to have looked a reporter directly in the face.

The guy called up the stairwell, “Excuse me, excuse me. You dropped something,” but Joe hadn’t dropped shit. He kept going, and a group entered the stairwell above him, already tipsy, one woman draped over another like a loose robe, and then Joe was passing through them and not looking back, not looking back, looking only forward.

At her.

She held a small purse that matched her dress and the silver feather and silver band in her hair. A small vein pulsed in her throat. Her shoulders rippled; her eyes flashed. It was all he could do not to clutch those shoulders and lift her off her feet until she wrapped her legs around his back and lowered her face to his. But instead he kept moving past her and said, “Guy just recognized me. Gotta move.”

She fell in beside him as he walked a red carpet past the main ballroom. The crowds were thick up here but not as jammed in as down below. You could move along the perimeter of the crowd easily enough.

“There’s a service elevator just past the next balcony,” she said. “Goes to the basement. I can’t believe you came.”

He took the right at the next opening, his head down, and pushed his hat to his forehead, pulled it down tight. “What else was I going to do?”

“Run.”

“To what?”

“I don’t know. Jesus. It’s what people do.”

“It’s not what I do.”

The crowd grew thicker as they passed along the back of the mezzanine. Down below, the governor had taken the radiophone and was proclaiming today Hotel Statler Day in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and a cheer went up, the crowd good and drunk now as Emma came abreast of him and nudged him to the left with her elbow.

He saw it now, past where their corridor intersected with another — a dark nook behind the banquet tables and the lights and the marble and red carpet.

Downstairs, a brass band struck its horns and the throngs in the mezzanine kicked up their heels and the flashbulbs flashed and popped and hissed. He wondered if any of the staff photographers would get back to their newsrooms and notice the guy in the background of some of their shots, the guy in the tan suit with the bounty on his head.

“Left, left,” Emma said.

He turned left between two banquet tables and the marble floor gave way to thin black tile. Another couple of steps and he reached the elevator. He pressed the down button.

Four drunken men passed along the edge of the mezzanine. They were a couple years older than Joe and singing “Soldiers Field.”

“O’er the stands of flaming Crimson,” the men crooned off-key, “the Harvard banners fly.”

Joe pressed the down button again.

One of the men met his eyes, then leered at Emma’s ass. He nudged a buddy as they continued to sing, “Cheer on cheer like volleyed thunder echoes to the sky.”

Emma grazed the side of his hand with her own. She said, “Shit, shit, shit.”

He pressed the button again.

A waiter banged through the two kitchen doors to their left, a large tray held aloft. He passed within three feet of them but never looked their way.

The Harvard guys had passed but they could still hear them:

“Then fight, fight, fight! For we win tonight.”

Emma reached past him and pressed the down button.

“Old Harvard forevermore!”

Joe considered slipping through the kitchen, but he suspected it was a box with, at best, a dumbwaiter to bring up food from the main kitchen two stories down. In retrospect, the smart thing would have been for Emma to come to him, not the other way around. If only he’d been thinking clearly, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that.

He reached for the button again, but then he heard the car rising toward them.

“If there’s anyone in it, just show them your back,” he said. “They’ll be in a rush.”

“Not once they see my back,” she said, and he smiled in spite of the weight of his worry.