World Gone By: A Novel (Joe Coughlin Series)
Page 19
“Cuba.”
“This was a sweet town when you ran it. Hummed along like it’s never hummed since. Why can’t you run it again?”
Joe pointed to the freckles on his cheeks. “Wrong race.”
“Tell you what,” Montooth said, “you grab all the spics and micks you know, join up with me and my niggers, we take this town back.”
“It’s a nice dream.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“We’re mom-and-pop, they’re Sears and Roebuck. We’d get a week—two, tops—before they’d come down here and crush us. Turn our bones to gravel.”
Montooth poured himself a drink, nodded at Joe’s bottle so Joe would know if he wanted some, he’d have to pour his own. Montooth waited as Joe did, and they raised the glasses.
“What’re we toasting?” Montooth asked.
“Whatever you want.”
Montooth considered the liquor in his glass and then the room around him. “To the ocean.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I always liked looking at it.”
“Good enough for me.” Joe met Montooth’s glass with his own and they drank.
“You look out at it,” Montooth said, “it makes you feel like whatever’s on the other side of it—all those worlds—are better places. Places you’ll be welcome and treated like a man.”
“Never quite works out that way, though,” Joe said.
“Nah. But I still feel it. All that water,” he said and took another drink, “all those worlds could be got to, but now they just gone by. Like anything, I guess.”
“I thought you were done traveling.”
“I am. ’Cause I know the truth—all those worlds ain’t nothing but this one. Still, when you look at all that blue stretching to forever.” He chuckled softly to himself.
“What?” Joe said.
Montooth waved it off. “You think I’m crazy.”
“Try me.”
Montooth squared himself, his eyes suddenly clear. “You heard the earth’s mostly water, right?”
Joe nodded.
“And people think God lives up in the sky, but that don’t never make much sense to me because the sky is way, way up there, not part of us, you know?”
“But the ocean?” Joe said.
“That’s the skin of the world. And I think God lives in the drops. Moves through a wave like the foam itself. I look in the ocean, I see Him looking back.”
“Well, shit,” Joe said, “I’ll drink to it a second time, then.”
They did and Montooth returned his empty glass to the table. “You know I’d choose Breezy as my successor.”
Joe nodded. Breezy, the second of Montooth’s children, was as smart as a roomful of bankers. “I figured.”
“What’s the knock on him?”
Joe shrugged. “There ain’t much. Same as the knock on me.”
“He don’t got the stomach for blood.”
Joe nodded. “If Freddy had to deal with him, though, he would. But if he thought he could push him off the perch, take over everything with his own man running the Negro side of things, he’d do that faster.”
“And Freddy’s nigger is?”
Joe frowned. “Montooth, come on.”
Montooth poured himself another drink. Put down the bottle, lifted Joe’s and poured him one too.
“Little Lamar,” he said.
Joe nodded. Little Lamar was a Negro version, some said, of Freddy DiGiacomo. They were both native sons of the area, and both had started their careers taking the jobs no one else wanted; in Little Lamar’s case, he’d handled a lot of the heroin trade; he also cut his teeth double-crossing all the illegal Chinese who came over, turning half the women into opium-addicted whores working out of casitas on the east side. By the time Montooth Dix figured out Little Lamar wasn’t satisfied working for him anymore, Lamar had built up too strong a gang to muscle. He’d been given his walking papers three years ago and a very shaky truce had existed ever since.
“Shit,” Montooth said. “Freddy gone steal my book, cut off my head, take what I built, and give it to that high yellow shit stain?”
“ ’Bout the size of it.”
“Then I die, they come after my son?”
“Yes.”
“Aw now,” Montooth said, “that’s not right.”
“I agree,” Joe said. “But it’s a hard world.”
“I know it’s a fucking hard world. Ain’t have to be evil, though.” He finished his drink. “They’ll really kill my boy?”
Joe took a sip of rum. “I think so, yeah. Unless they have no choice but to deal with him.”
Montooth looked across the table at him, said nothing.
“West Tampa don’t run without Negroes,” Joe said. “So Freddy has to deal with somebody. Right now, his plan probably is—kill you, then kill your son, and put Little Lamar on the throne. But can I ask you, Montooth, who could take the throne if Lamar, you, and Breezy were all dead?”
“No one. It’d be fucking chaos down here. Lord, would the blood spill.”
“And the product would go in the toilet, and the whores would take off, and people would stop playing the bolita because they were too shit scared.”
“All that.”
Joe nodded. “Which Freddy understands.”
“So if all three of us are gone . . .”
Joe held out his hands. “Disaster.”
“But me, I’m dead no matter what.”
Joe nodded, letting him see it now.
Montooth leaned back in his throne, stared at Joe with a stony face that grew flatter and deader by the second until the softest of smiles transformed it. “The question ain’t whether I live or die. It’s which other motherfucker goes down—my own son or Little Lamar.”
Joe crossed his hands on his lap. “Anyone know where Lamar’s at right now?”
“Up the same place as always this time of the morning.”
Joe tipped his head toward the windows. “Barbershop on Twelfth?”
“Yeah.”
“No civilians?”
Montooth shook his head. “Barber goes for coffee. Little Lamar take his counsel from his boys there every morning while one of them gives him a shave.”
“How many of his boys?”
“Three,” Montooth said. “Everyone gunned up to the chinny-chins.”
“Well, Little Lamar’s in a chair, and one of his men is busy shaving him. So that leaves two gunners at the front door.”
Montooth gave that some thought. Eventually he nodded, seeing it.
“You send your wives away?”
“Why you say that?”
“Normally I’d have heard at least one of them by now.”
Montooth stared over his pipe at him for a bit before nodding.
“Why’d you send them away?” Joe asked.
“Figured you’d find a way to kill me. If anyone could, I figured it’d be you this A.M.”
Joe lied. “I haven’t killed anyone since 1933.”
“Yeah, but you killed a king that day. A king started out his morning with twenty men.”
“Twenty-five,” Joe said. “Now you know I’m not here to kill you, you want to call your women back?”
Montooth scowled. “I ain’t saying good-bye to anybody but once.”
“So you’ve said your good-byes.”
“I said most of them.” Muffled footsteps passed overhead, and Montooth looked up at the ceiling. Small footsteps, a child’s. “I’ll say a few more and then—”
“Little Lamar’s got business this week in Jacksonville. He’s on a train at noon. Gone.” Joe shook his head. “Time he’s back, who knows how the wind will have blown?”
Montooth looked up at the ceiling again, his jaw working, those footsteps gone. “You done your homework.”
“I always do.”
“So it’s now.”
“Or it’s never.” Joe sat back. “Which case, you sit around the rest of your days waiting for some
one to come end them. No control in it, no choice in the matter.”
Montooth sucked a great breath up through his nostrils and his eyes grew to the size of silver dollars. He clapped his hands on his thighs several times and stretched his neck until Joe could hear the cracks.
Then he stood and crossed to the dark green wardrobe.
He removed his bathrobe and hung it on a hanger, smoothing a wrinkle from the side. He removed his slippers and placed them inside, took off his pajama pants and folded them. Did the same with the top. He stood in his underwear for a moment, staring into the wardrobe, deciding something. “Gonna go with the brown,” he said. “Brown man in a brown suit makes a harder target.”
He removed a tan shirt so stiff with starch it would have stood upright if he’d dropped it to the floor. As he put it on, he looked over his shoulder at Joe. “How old’s your boy now?”
“Nine.”
“Needs a mother.”
“You think so.”
“Fact, man. All boys need mommas. Otherwise they grow up wolves, treat their ladies like shit, have no appreciation for nuance.”
“Nuance, uh?”
Montooth Dix fed a dark blue tie under his collar and went to work tying it off. “You love your boy?”
“More than anything.”
“Stop thinking about yourself then and give him a momma.”
Joe watched him pull a pair of brown pants from the wardrobe and step into them.
“He’ll leave you someday.” Montooth threaded a belt through the pant loops. “It’s what they do. Sit in the same room with you the rest of your life, they’ll still be gone on you.”
“I was the same with my father.” Joe took another sip of rum. “You?”
Montooth slipped his arms into a pair of leather shoulder holsters. “Pretty much. It’s the process, how you become a man. Boys cling; men leave.” He added a .44 revolver to the left holster and then another one to the right.
“You ain’t going to be slipping those past anyone,” Joe said.
“Ain’t fixing to.” Montooth added a .45 automatic to the base of his spine. He donned his suit coat. He added a tan raincoat and matching hat, smoothed the brim. He pulled out two more pistols and added them to the pockets of the raincoat, then removed a shotgun from the highest shelf, turned and looked across the room at Joe. “How do I look?”
“Like the last thing Little Lamar’s going to see on this earth.”
“Son,” Montooth Dix said, “you got that fucking right.”
THEY TOOK THE BACK STAIRS down to the alley. The guy who’d frisked Joe was standing down there with another guard, and there were two guards across the alley in a car. Their heads all spun on a swivel when they saw their boss exit the building armed for another world war.
Montooth called out to the one who’d frisked Joe. “Chester.”
Chester couldn’t stop staring at his boss, that big shotgun dangling by his side, the butts of the .44s sticking out of his coat.
“Yeah, boss.”
“What at the end of this alley?”
“Cortlan’s Barbershop, boss.”
Montooth nodded.
His four men exchanged wild, desperate looks.
“Gonna get a bit messy in there about three minutes from now. Follow?”
“Boss, look, we—”
“I asked if you follow.”
Chester blinked several times, took a breath. “Yes. I follow.”
“Good. About four minutes from now, a few of you need to head down there after me, finish off anything still moving. Hear?”
Chester’s eyes filled and damn near spilled. But he looked to his right and then his left and they cleared. And he nodded. “Won’t nothing be left alive, Mr. Dix.”
Montooth patted his cheek and nodded at the other three. “When this is over, you listen to Breezy. Any you got a problem working for my son?”
The men shook their heads.
“Good. He gonna run a good ship, my boy. And ya’ll know he’s fair.”
“He just ain’t you,” Chester said.
“Shit, boy, ain’t none of us our fathers.”
Chester hung his head and busied himself checking the load on his pistol.
Montooth held out his hand to Joe. Joe shook it.
“Freddy gonna know you gave me this option.”
“He’ll know,” Joe said, “and he won’t know.”
Montooth held his gaze a long time, his hand still gripping Joe’s. “Gonna see you on the other side someday. Teach you how to drink brandy like a civilized man.”
“I look forward to it.”
Montooth dropped his hand and turned without a word.
He walked up the alley, his strides growing longer, faster, the shotgun rising to port position in his hands.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Right to Life
JOE DROVE OUT OF BROWN TOWN with some part of him wishing he could have followed Montooth Dix into that barbershop, just to see the look on Little Lamar’s face if Montooth made it past his bodyguards with the shotgun. But if Joe was caught anywhere near that mess, Freddy DiGiacomo could cry foul and take up arms against the entire Bartolo Family.
Which may have been the play all along. Except that Freddy was incapable of the long game. He thought small, always had. He’d wanted to take over Montooth’s policy racket, and now he was about to. If he’d had the smarts to go after the whole kingdom, Joe would have almost had to respect the asshole. Instead, he was going to wreck a dozen lives—minimum—for chump change.
Unless, as Montooth suspected, Freddy wasn’t alone in this play.
But, Jesus, if Joe could pick one guy in this entire racket besides Dion he’d call a true friend, it would be Rico. Then again, if he had to pick one guy who had the smarts and the brass to have orchestrated Montooth’s downfall, it too would be Rico. But pushing out Montooth was too small a move for a guy like Rico. And pushing out Dion was a little too big.
Was it?
He’s too young, Joe told the voice in his head. Charlie Luciano was young when he formed this whole thing. So was Meyer Lansky. Joe himself ran the entire Tampa operation by the time he was twenty-five.
But those were different days. Different times.
Times may change, the voice whispered, but men don’t.
Joe crossed Eleventh and found the pair of Dion’s bodyguards waiting for him. It was Bruno Caruso and Chappi Carpino. Joe pulled alongside them, rolling his window down while Chappi did the same from the passenger seat of the other car.
Joe said. “Weren’t there two cars?”
“Mike and the Finn went back after we checked in with the boss.”
“Trouble?”
Chappi yawned. “Nah. Angelo took a sick day, so the boss figured you’d still want muscle with him and your boy.”
Joe nodded. “And that’s where you should be too.”
“We’re following you.”
Joe shook his head slowly. “I got a private meeting. You can’t come.”
Bruno Caruso leaned forward and looked across the seat at Joe. “We got orders.”
“Bruno, you’ve seen me drive. When I put this car in gear, I’ll be at the corner before you’ve come off the clutch. Then you gotta U-turn with all those delivery trucks double-parked over there? You really want to play cops ’n’ robbers with me?”
“But, Joe—”
“I got a private thing, ya know? Man-woman kinda thing. Very hush-hush. And I’d rather you and Chappi go where you’ll be useful. Tell the boss I made you say yes and I’ll see him back at his house in two hours.”
They exchanged looks. Joe revved his engine, shot them a smile.
Bruno rolled his eyes. “You call the boss and tell him?”
“You got it.”
Joe put the car in gear.
“Oh,” Chappi said, “the boss said Rico’s been trying to get ahold of you. He’s at his office.”
“Which one?”
“The docks.”
“Thanks.”
He pulled away before they could change their minds, banged an immediate left on Tenth, and headed across town.
PULLING DOWN THE BACK ROAD behind the Sundowner Motel, he didn’t have a clue what to think. She’d called him last night, all business, and said he was to meet her at noon. Then she hung up. He couldn’t help feel he’d been summoned. That for all their playful lovemaking and postcoital banter, she was still a woman of considerable power and she expected those she called to appear before her without question.
Funny how power worked. Hers extended no farther than the city of Tampa and the county of Hillsborough. But that’s the ground his shoes touched at the moment, so her power trumped his. Montooth Dix’s power had seemed impenetrable until he killed two men to defend it, and those men were represented by an octopus of an organization far more powerful than himself. Poland, France, England, Russia—all had probably thought themselves powerful enough not to fear the ridiculous tyrant now giving them a humbling lesson in power that had sucked in most of the free world. Japan thought it was powerful enough to bomb the United States. The United States thought it was powerful enough to retaliate and then open a second front in Europe and a third in Africa. And always in such struggles, one truth overrode all others—one side had grossly miscalculated.
Joe knocked on the door to 107, and the woman who opened it was not Vanessa, it was Mrs. Mayor. She wore a stiff business suit and her hair was tied back severely, which only accentuated the ashen cross on her forehead. Her face was tight, eyes distant, as if he were delivering room service and she suspected he’d gotten the order wrong.
“Come in.”
He removed his hat as he entered, stood by the wrought-iron bed where they’d so often made love.
“Drink?” she asked in a tone that suggested she didn’t care how he answered.
“No, I’m fine.”
She poured him one anyway and freshened her own. She handed him his glass. She raised hers in toast and clinked it off his.
“What’re we toasting?”
“What we’ve already passed by.”
“And that is?”
“Us.”
She drank, but he put his glass on the edge of the dresser.