Live by Night

Maso said, “He was arrested last night. Beat a man outside of Filene’s. Because they both wanted to buy the same coat. Because he’s a savage who doesn’t think. The victim has friends, so Albert White’s right hand is not returning to Albert’s wrist anytime in the immediate future.” He looked at Joe, the moon turning his flesh orange. “You hate him?”

Joe said, “Of course.”

“Good.” Maso patted his arm once. “Give the note to your father.”

At the bottom of the copper mesh screen between Joe and his father was a gap big enough to slide notes back and forth. Joe meant to place Maso’s note on his side of the gap and push, but he couldn’t bring himself to lift it off his knee.

That summer his father’s face had grown translucent, like onion skin, and the veins in his hands had turned unreasonably bright — bright blue, bright red. His eyes and shoulders sagged. His hair had thinned. He looked every day and more of his sixty years.

But that morning something had put a bit of snap back into his speech and some life into the broken green of his eyes.

“You’ll never guess who’s coming to town,” he said.

“Who?”

“Your brother Aiden himself.”

Ah. That explained it. The favorite son. The beloved prodigal.

“Danny’s coming, uh? Where’s he been?”

Thomas said, “Oh, he’s been all over. He wrote me a letter that took fifteen minutes to read. He’s been to Tulsa and Austin and even Mexico. Of late, he’s apparently been in New York. But he’s coming to town tomorrow.”

“With Nora?”

“He didn’t mention her,” Thomas said in a tone that suggested he would prefer to do the same.

“Did he say why he was coming to town?”

Thomas shook his head. “Just said he’d be passing through.” Hi trailed off as he looked around at the walls like he couldn’t get used to them. And he probably couldn’t. Who could, unless they had to? “You holding up?”

“I’m…” Joe shrugged.

“What?”

“Trying, Dad. Trying.”

“Well, that’s all you can do.”

“Yeah.”

They stared through the mesh at each other and Joe found the courage to remove the note from his knee and push it across to his father.

His father unfolded it and looked at the name there. For a long moment, Joe wasn’t sure if he was still breathing. And then…

“No.”

“What?”

“No.” Thomas pushed the note back across the table and said it again. “No.”

“ ‘No’ isn’t a word Maso likes, Dad.”

“So it’s ‘Maso’ now.”

Joe said nothing.

“I don’t do murder for hire, Joseph.”

“That’s not what they’re asking,” Joe said, thinking, Is it?

“How naive can you be before it becomes unforgivable?” His father’s breath exited through his nostrils. “If they give you the name of a man in police custody, then they want that man found hanging in his cell or shot in the back ‘trying to escape.’ So, Joseph, given the degree of ignorance you seem willfully to cling to in such matters, I need you to hear exactly what I have to say.”

Joe met his father’s stare, surprised by the depths of love and loss he saw there. His father, it seemed quite clear, now sat at the culmination of a life’s journey, and the words about to leave his mouth were a summation of it.

“I will not take the life of another without cause.”

“Even a killer?” Joe said.

“Even a killer.”

“And the man responsible for the death of a woman I loved.”

“You told me you think she’s alive.”

“That’s not the point,” Joe said.

“No,” his father agreed, “it’s not. The point is that I don’t engage in murder. Not for anyone. Certainly not for that dago devil you’ve sworn your allegiance to.”

“I’ve got to survive in here,” Joe said. “In here.”

“And you do what you have to.” His father nodded, his green eyes brighter than usual. “And I’ll never judge you for it. But I won’t commit homicide.”

“Even for me?”

“Especially for you.”

“Then I’ll die in here, Dad.”

“That’s possible, yes.”

Joe looked down at the table, the wood blurring, everything blurring. “Soon.”

“And if that happens” — his father’s voice was a whisper — “I’ll die soon after of a broken heart. But I won’t murder for you, son. Kill for you? Yes. But murder? Never.”

Joe looked up. He was ashamed how wet his voice sounded when he said, “Please.”

His father shook his head. Softly. Slowly.

Well, then. There was nothing left to say.

Joe went to stand.

His father said, “Wait.”

“What?”

His father looked at the guard standing by the door behind Joe. “That screw, is he in Maso’s pocket?”

“Yeah. Why?”

His father removed his watch from his vest. He removed the chain from the watch.

“No, Dad. No.”

Thomas dropped the chain back into his pocket and slid the watch across the table.

Joe tried to keep the tears in his eyes from falling. “I can’t.”

“You can. You will.” His father stared through the screen at him like something on fire, all the exhaustion swept from his face, all the hopelessness too. “It’s worth a fortune, that piece of metal. But that’s all it is — a piece of metal. You buy your life with it. You hear me? You give it to that dago devil and buy your life.”

Joe closed his hand over the watch and it was still warm from his father’s pocket, ticking against his palm like a heart.