Live by Night

Joe had spent the last two years accepting not only that Emma was dead but that, for him, there’d never be another love. Someday, he might marry, but it would be a sensible arrangement, certain to raise him up in his profession and give him heirs. He loved the idea of that word — heirs. (Working-class men had sons. Successful men had heirs.) In the meantime, he’d go to whores. Maybe the woman who’d shot him the dirty look was a whore playing the “chaste” tip. If she was, he’d definitely try her out — a beautiful mulatto whore fit for a criminal prince.

When the porter deposited Joe’s bags in front of him, Joe tipped him with bills grown as damp as everything else. He’d been told someone would meet his train, but he’d never thought to ask how they’d pick him out of the crowd. He turned in a slow pivot, looking for a man who appeared sufficiently disreputable, but instead he saw the mulatto woman walking back down the platform toward him. Another strand of hair fell from along her temple and she brushed it back off her cheekbone with her free hand. Her other arm was wrapped in the arm of a Latin guy in a straw skimmer and tan silk trousers with long, sharp pleats and a white collarless shirt buttoned to the top. In this heat, the man’s face was dry, as was his shirt, even at the top, where the button was cinched tight below his Adam’s apple. He moved with the same gentle sway as the woman; it was in his calves and his ankles, even as the steps themselves were so sharp his feet snapped off the platform.

They passed Joe speaking Spanish, the words coming fast and light, and the woman gave Joe the quickest of glances, so quick he might have imagined it, though he doubted it. The man pointed at something down the platform and said something in his rapid Spanish, and they both chuckled, and then they were past him.

He was turning to take another look for whoever was picking him up, when someone did just that — lifted him off the hot platform like he weighed no more than a sack of laundry. He looked down at the two beefy arms wrapped around his midsection and smelled a familiar reek of raw onions and Arabian Sheik cologne.

He was dropped back onto the platform and spun around and he faced his old friend for the first time since that awful day in Pittsfield.

“Dion,” he said.

Dion had traded chubbiness for corpulence. He wore a champagne-colored four-button suit, chalk-striped. His lavender shirt had a high white contrasting collar over a bloodred tie with black stripes. His black and white speculator shoes were laced up above the ankles. If you asked an old man gone poor of sight to identify the gangster on the platform from a hundred yards away, he’d point his shaking finger at Dion.

“Joseph,” he said with a starchy formality. Then his round face collapsed around a wide smile and he lifted Joe off the ground again, this time from the front and hugged him so tight Joe feared for his spine.

“Sorry about your father,” he whispered.

“Sorry about your brother.”

“Thank you,” Dion said with a strange brightness. “All for canned ham.” He let Joe down and smiled. “I would have bought him his own pigs.”

They walked down the platform in the heat.

Dion took one of Joe’s suitcases from him. “When Lefty Downer found me in Montreal and told me the Pescatores wanted me to come work for them, I thought it was a right bamboozle, I don’t mind telling you. But then they said you were jailing with the old man and I thought, ‘If anyone could charm the devil himself, it’s my old partner.’ ” He slapped a thick arm against Joe’s shoulders. “It’s just swell to have you back.”

Joe said, “Good to be out in free air.”

“Was Charlestown…?”

Joe nodded. “Maybe worse than they say. But I figured out a way to make it livable.”

“Bet you did.”

The heat was even whiter in the parking lot. It bounced up off the crushed shell lot and off the cars, and Joe placed a hand above his eyebrows but it didn’t help much.

“Christ,” he said to Dion, “and you’re wearing a three-piece.”

“Here’s the secret,” Dion said as they reached a Marmon 34 and he dropped Joe’s suitcase to the crushed shell pavement. “Next time you’re in a department store, clip every shirt in your size. I wear four in a day.”

Joe looked at his lavender shirt. “You found four in that color?”

“Found eight.” He opened the back door of the car and put Joe’s luggage inside. “We’re only going a few blocks, but in this heat…”

Joe reached for the passenger door but Dion beat him to it. Joe looked at him. “You’re having me on.”

“I work for you now,” Dion said. “Boss Joe Coughlin.”

“Quit it.” Joe shook his head at the absurdity of it and climbed inside.

As they pulled out of the station lot, Dion said, “Reach under your seat. You’ll find a friend.”

Joe did and came back with a Savage.32 automatic. Indian Head grips and a three-and-a-half-inch barrel. Joe slid it into the right pocket of his trousers and told Dion he’d need a holster for it, feeling a mild irritation that Dion hadn’t thought to bring one with him.