Live by Night

Soon as he sat down, Joe saw it in his face clear as a stream — fear. It lived back behind his eyes, leaked out of his pores. Most people didn’t see it because they mistook its public faces — hatred and ill temper — for rage. But Joe had studied it for two years in Charlestown, and he’d discovered that the worst of the men in there were also the most terrified — terrified of being found out as cowards or, worse, victims, themselves, of other terrible and terrified men. Terrified someone was going to infect them with more poison and terrified someone might come and take their poison away. This terror moved through their eyes like quicksilver; you had to catch it on your first meeting, in the first minute, or you’d never see it again. But in that moment of original contact, they were still assembling themselves for you, so you could spy the fear animal as it dashed back into its cave, and Joe was sad to see that RD Pruitt’s animal was as big as a boar, which meant he’d be twice as mean and twice as unreasonable because he was twice as scared.

As RD sat, Joe offered his hand.

RD shook his head. “Don’t shake hands with papists.” He smiled and showed Joe his palms. “I mean no offense.”

“None taken.” Joe left the hand out there. “Help if I said I haven’t been in church for half my life?”

RD chuckled and shook his head some more.

Joe took his hand back and settled into his seat.

Chief Figgis said, “RD, word around the fire is you’ve taken to your old ways down here in Ybor.”

RD looked at his brother-in-law, eyes wide and innocent. “And how’s that?”

“We hear you’re sticking up places,” Figgis said.

“What kind of places?”

“Speakeasies.”

“Oh,” RD said, his eyes suddenly dark and small. “Mean them places don’t exist in a law-abiding town?”

“Yes.”

“Mean them places that are illegal and should therefore be shuttered?”

“That would be them,” Figgis said, “yes.”

RD shook his small head and his face returned to its cherubic innocence. “I just don’t know anything about that.”

Joe and Figgis exchanged a look, and Joe got the impression both of them were trying hard not to sigh.

“Ha-ha,” RD said. “Ha-ha.” He pointed at the two of them. “I’m just playing with you all. And you know that.”

Chief Figgis indicated Joe with a tilt of his head. “RD, this is a businessman who’s come to do business. I’m here to suggest you do it with him.”

“You do know that, right?” RD asked Joe.

“Sure.”

“What am I playing at?” RD said.

“You’re just joking around,” Joe said.

“I am. You know. You know.” He smiled at Chief Figgis. “He knows.”

“Okay, then,” Figgis said. “So we’re all friends.”

RD gave them a vaudevillian roll of the eyes. “I didn’t say that.”

Figgis blinked a few times. “Either case, we all understand one another.”

“This man” — RD pointed his finger in Joe’s face — “is a bootlegger and a fornicator with niggers. He needs to be tarred and feathered, not done business with.”

Joe smiled at the finger and considered snatching it out of the air, slamming it on the table, and snapping it at the knuckle.

Before he could, RD removed it and said, “I’m just joshing!” very loudly. “You take a joke, right?”

Joe said nothing.

RD reached across the table and chucked his fist off Joe’s shoulder. “You take a joke? Huh? Huh?”

Joe looked across at possibly the friendliest face he’d ever come across. A face that wished only the best of things for you. Kept looking until he saw the fear animal make a dash through RD’s sick and friendly eyes.

“I can take a joke.”

“Long as you don’t become one, right?” RD said.

Joe nodded. “My friends tell me you frequent the Parisian.”

RD narrowed his eyes like he was trying to recall the place.

Joe said, “I hear you’re fond of the French seventy-five they serve.”

RD hitched his trouser leg. “And if I was?”

“I’d say you should become more than a regular.”

“What’s more than a regular?”

“A partner.”

“What’s the stake?”

“Cut you in for ten percent of the house take.”

“You’d do that?”

“Sure.”

“Why?”

“Let’s say I respect ambition.”

“That all?”

“And I recognize talent.”

“Well, that ought to be worth more than ten percent.”

“What were you thinking?”

RD’s face went as blandly beautiful as a wheat field. “I was thinking sixty.”

“You want sixty percent of the take of one of the most successful clubs in the city?”

RD nodded, blithe and bland.

“For doing what, exactly?”

“You give me my sixty percent, my friends might look on you less unkindly.”

“Who are your friends?” Joe asked.

“Sixty percent,” RD said, as if for the first time.

“Son,” Joe said, “I’m not giving you sixty percent.”

“Ain’t your son,” RD said mildly. “Ain’t nobody’s son.”

“Much to your father’s relief.”

“What’s that?”

“Fifteen percent,” Joe said.

“Beat you to death,” RD whispered.

At least that’s what Joe thought he whispered. He said, “What?”

RD rubbed his jaw hard enough Joe could hear the stubble bristle. He fixed Joe with eyes that were blank and too bright at the same time. “You know, that sounds like a right fair arrangement.”

“What does?”

“Fifteen percent. You wouldn’t go to twenty?”