Live by Night

Albert’s face softened. “I can’t let you live, Joe. If I could see any way I could, I’d try to make it work. And it’s not about the girl, if that helps. I can get whores anywhere. Got a pretty new one waiting for me as soon as I’m done with you.” He studied his hands for a moment. “But you shot up a small town and stole sixty thousand dollars without my permission and left three cops dead. That brings a shit-brown rain down on all of us. Because now every cop in New England thinks Boston gangsters are mad dogs to be put down like mad dogs. And I need to make everyone understand that’s just not true.” He said to Loomis. “Where’s Bones?”

Bones was Julian Bones, another of Albert’s gun monkeys.

“In the alley, engine running.”

“Let’s go.”

Albert led the way to the elevator and opened the gate and Brendan Loomis dragged Joe into the car.

“Turn him around.”

Joe was spun in place and the cigarette fell from his lips when Loomis gripped the back of his head and pushed his face into the wall. They pulled his hands behind his back. Coarse rope snaked around his wrists, Loomis pulling it tight with every loop before he tied off the ends. Joe, something of an expert on the subject, knew a secure knot when he felt one. They could leave him alone in this elevator and not come back till April and he still wouldn’t have freed himself.

Loomis spun him back around, then went to work the crank, and Albert pulled a fresh cigarette from a pewter case and put it between Joe’s lips and lit it for him. In the flare of the match, Joe could see that Albert took no joy from any of this, that when Joe was sinking to the bottom of the Mystic River with a leather noose around his head and sacks full of rocks tied to his ankles, Albert would rue the price of doing business in a dirty world.

For tonight anyway.

On the first floor, they left the elevator and walked down an empty service corridor, the sounds of the party reaching them through the walls — dueling pianos and a horn section going full blast and lots of gay laughter.

They reached the door at the end of the corridor. DELIVERIES had been stamped across the center in fresh yellow paint.

“I’ll make sure it’s clear.” Loomis opened the door onto a March night that had grown much rawer. A light sprinkle fell and gave a tinfoil smell to the iron fire escapes. Joe could also smell the building, the newness of the exterior, as if limestone dust kicked up by the drills still hung in the air.

Albert turned Joe to him and fixed his tie. He licked both his palms and smoothed Joe’s hair. He looked bereft. “I never wanted to grow up to be a man who kills people to maintain my profit margin, and yet I am. I never get a single night’s decent sleep — not fucking one, Joe. I get up every day in fear and lay my head back to the pillow at night the same way.” He straightened Joe’s collar. “You?”

“What?”

“Ever wanted to be anything else?”

“No.”

Albert picked something off Joe’s shoulder, flicked it away with his finger. “I told her if she delivered you to us, I wouldn’t kill you. Nobody else believed you’d be stupid enough to show up tonight, but I hedged my bets. So she agreed to lead you to me to save you. Or so she told herself. But you and I know I have to kill you, don’t we, Joe?” He looked at Joe with heartbroken eyes, glassy with moisture. “Don’t we?”

Joe nodded.

Albert nodded as well. He leaned in and whispered in Joe’s ear, “And then I’m going to kill her too.”

“What?”

“Because I loved her too.” Albert raised his eyebrows up and down. “And because the only way you could have known to knock over my poker game on that particular morning? Would be if she tipped you.”

Joe said, “Wait.” He said, “Look. She didn’t tip me to anything.”

“What else would you say?” Albert fixed his collar, smoothed his shirt. “Look at it this way — if what you sweethearts have is true love? Then you’ll meet tonight in heaven.”

He buried a fist in Joe’s stomach, driving it up to the solar plexus. Joe doubled over and lost all his oxygen again. He jerked at the rope around his wrists and tried to butt Albert with his head, but Albert merely slapped his face away and opened the door to the alley.

He grabbed Joe by the hair and straightened him up, so Joe could see the car waiting for him, the back door open, Julian Bones standing by it. Loomis crossed the alley and grabbed Joe’s elbow, and they dragged him over the threshold. Joe could smell the backseat foot wells now. He could smell the oil rags and dirt.

Just as they were about to hoist him in, they dropped him. He fell to his knees on the cobblestones and he heard Albert yell, “Go! Go! Go!” and their footsteps on the cobblestones. Maybe they’d already shot him in the back of the head because the heavens descended in bars of light.

His face was saturated in white, and the buildings along the alley erupted in blue and red, and tires squealed and somebody shouted something through a megaphone and someone fired a gun and then another gun.