Live by Night

“That this” — he pointed back and forth between his chest and Joe’s — “is how we live. But everything else?” He gestured at all those photographs. “Well, that’s why we live.”

Joe nodded. “And never the twain shall meet.”

Chief Figgis smiled. “Heard you were educated too.” A small glance for Dion. “Don’t find much of that in your trade.”

“Or in yours,” Dion said.

Figgis smiled and tipped his head in acknowledgment. He fixed Joe in a mild gaze. “Before I settled here, I was a soldier and then a U.S. marshal. I’ve killed seven men in my lifetime,” he said without a hint of pride.

Seven? Joe thought. Christ.

Chief Figgis’s gaze remained mild, even. “I killed them because it was my job. I take no pleasure from it and, truth be told, their faces haunt me most nights. But if I had to kill an eighth tomorrow to protect and serve this city? Mister, I would do so with a steady arm and a clear eye. You follow?”

“I do,” Joe said.

Chief Figgis stood by a city map on the wall behind his desk and used his finger to draw a slow circle around Ybor City. “If you keep your business here — north of Second, south of Twenty-seventh, west of Thirty-fourth, and east of Nebraska — you and I will have little in the way of discord.” He gave Joe a small arch of his eyebrow. “How’s that sound?”

“Sounds good,” Joe said, wondering when he’d get around to naming his price.

Chief Figgis saw the question in Joe’s eyes and his own darkened slightly. “I don’t take bribes. If I did, three of those seven dead I mentioned would still be among the living.” He came around to sit on the edge of the desk, spoke in a very low voice. “I have no illusions, young Mr. Coughlin, on how business is transacted in this town. If you were to ask me in private how I feel about Volstead, you’d see me do a pretty fair imitation of a kettle come to boil. I know plenty of my officers take money to look the other way. I know I serve a city swimming in corruption. I know we live in a fallen world. But just because I breathe corrupt air and rub elbows with corrupt people, never make the mistake of believing I am corruptible.”

Joe searched the man’s face for signs of puffery, pride, or self-aggrandizement — the usual weaknesses he’d come to associate with “self-made” men.

Nothing stared back at him but quiet fortitude.

Chief Figgis, he decided, was never to be underestimated.

“I won’t make that mistake,” Joe said.

Chief Figgis held out his hand and Joe shook it.

“I thank you for coming by. Careful in the sun.” A flash of humor passed through Figgis’s face. “That skin of yours could catch fire, I suspect.”

“A pleasure meeting you, Chief.”

Joe went to the door. Dion opened it, and a teenage girl, all breathless energy, stood on the other side. It was the daughter in all the photographs, beautiful and apple-haired, rose gold skin so unblemished it achieved a soft-sun radiance. Joe guessed she was seventeen. Her beauty found his throat, stopped it for a moment, put a catch in the words about to leave his mouth, so all he could manage was a hesitant, “Miss…” Yet it wasn’t a beauty that evoked anything carnal in him. It was somehow purer than that. The beauty of Chief Irving Figgis’s daughter wasn’t something you wanted to despoil, it was something you wanted to beatify.

“Father,” she said, “I apologize. I thought you were alone.”

“That’s all right, Loretta. These gentlemen were leaving. Your manners,” he said.

“Yes, Father, I’m sorry.” She turned and gave Joe and Dion a small curtsy. “Miss Loretta Figgis, gentlemen.”

“Joe Coughlin, Miss Loretta. Pleased to meet you.”

When Joe lightly shook her hand, he felt the strangest urge to genuflect. It stayed with him all afternoon, how pristine she was, how delicate, and how hard it must be to parent something so fragile.

Later that evening, they ate dinner at Vedado Tropicale at a table off to the right of the stage, which gave them a perfect view of the dancers and the band. It was early so the band — a drummer, piano player, trumpeter, and slide trombonist — kept it peppy but didn’t go full bore yet. The dancers wore little more than shifts, pale as ice, the color matching their headgear, which varied. A couple of them wore sequined bandeaux with aigrettes arching out from the center of their foreheads. Others wore silver hairnets with frosted bead rosettes and fringe. They danced with one hand on their hips and one raised to the air or pointing out at the audience. They gave the dinner crowd just enough flesh and gyrations not to offend the missus but to guarantee the mister would return at a later hour.

Joe asked Dion if their dinner was the best in the city.

Dion smiled around a forkful of lechon asado and fried yucca. “In the country.”

Joe smiled. “It’s not bad, I gotta say.” Joe had ordered ropa vieja with black beans and yellow rice. He wiped the plate clean and wished the plate was bigger.