Live by Night

Five minutes later one of the SPs walked to a ringing phone on the deck. A few moments later, he came running back down the gangplank and slapped his partner’s arm. The SPs ran a few yards along the pier to a scout car. They drove down the pier and turned left, headed into Ybor, to the club on Seventeenth where ten of Dion’s guys were, at this moment, beating the shit out of about twenty sailors.

“So far” — Dion smiled at Joe — “admit it.”

“Admit what?”

“Everything’s going like clockwork.”

“So far,” Joe said.

Beside him, Graciela drew on her cigar.

The sound reached them, the echo of a surprisingly dull thud. Didn’t sound like much, but the catwalk swayed for a moment, and they all held out their arms as if they stood atop the same bicycle. The USS Mercy shuddered. The water around it rippled and small waves broke against the pier. Smoke as thick and gray as steel wool billowed from a hole in the hull the size of a piano.

The smoke grew thicker, darker, and after a few moments of staring at it, Joe could see a yellow ball blooming behind it, pulsing like a beating heart. He kept looking until he saw red flames mixed in with the yellow, but then both colors vanished behind the plumes of smoke, which was now the black of fresh tar. It filled the channel and blotted out the city beyond, blotted out the sky.

Dion laughed and Joe met his eyes and Dion kept laughing, shaking his head, and nodding at Joe.

Joe knew what the nod meant — this was why they became outlaws. To live moments the insurance salesmen of the world, the truck drivers and lawyers and bank tellers and carpenters and Realtors would never know. Moments in a world without nets — none to catch you and none to envelop you. Joe looked at Dion and recalled what he’d felt after the first time they’d knocked over that newsstand on Bowdoin Street when they were thirteen years old: We will probably die young.

But how many men, as they stepped into the night country of their own final hour and crossed dark fields toward the fog bank of whatever world lay beyond this one, could take one last look over their shoulders and say, I once sabotaged a ten-thousand-ton transport ship?

Joe met Dion’s eyes again and chuckled.

“He never came back out.” Graciela stood beside him, looking at the ship, which was now almost completely obscured by the smoke.

Joe said nothing.

“Manny,” she said, though she didn’t have to.

Joe nodded.

“Is he dead?”

“I don’t know,” Joe said, but what he thought was: I certainly hope so.

Chapter fifteen His Daughter’s Eyes

At dawn, the sailors off-loaded the weapons and placed them on the pier. The crates sat in the rising sun, beaded with dew that turned to steam as it evaporated. Several smaller boats arrived, and sailors got off them followed by officers, and they all took a look at the hole in the hull. Joe, Esteban, and Dion wandered among the crowd behind the cordons set up by the Tampa Police and heard that the ship had settled at the bottom of the bay and there was some question as to whether she could be salvaged. The navy was purportedly sending a crane on a barge down from Jacksonville to answer that question. As for the weapons, they were looking into getting a ship to Tampa that could handle the load. In the meantime, they’d have to stow them someplace.

Joe walked back off the pier. He met Graciela at a café on Ninth. They sat outdoors under a stone portico and watched a streetcar clack along the tracks in the center of the avenue and come to a stop in front of them. A few passengers got on, a few got off, and the streetcar rattled away again.

“Did you see any sign of him?” Graciela asked.

Joe shook his head. “But Dion’s watching. And he put a couple of his guys in the crowd, so…” He shrugged and sipped his Cuban coffee. He’d been up all night and hadn’t slept much the previous night, but as long as the Cuban coffee kept coming, he assumed he could stay awake for a week.

“What do they put in this stuff? Cocaine?”

Graciela said, “It’s just coffee.”

“That’s like saying vodka is just potato juice.” He finished it and returned the cup to the saucer. “Do you miss it?”

“Cuba?”

“Yeah.”

She nodded. “Very much.”

“Then why are you here?”

She looked off at the street as if she could see Havana on the other side of it. “You don’t like the heat.”

“What?”

“You,” she said. “You are always waving your hand at the air, your hat. I see you make faces and look up at the sun, as if you want to tell it to set faster.”

“I didn’t realize it was that obvious.”

“You’re doing it now.”

She was right. He’d been waving his hat by the side of his head. “This kinda heat? Some people would say it’s like living on the sun. I say it’s like living in the sun. Christ. How do you people function down here?”

She leaned back in her chair, lovely brown neck arching against the wrought iron. “It can never get too warm for me.”

“Then you’re insane.”