Dion chuckled softly. “In our thing, kid, you don’t get fired.”
“Our thing,” Tomas repeated carefully, his voice still shaky. “Are you and Father gangsters?”
Another soft chuckle. “Well, we were.”
Joe and a colored man in a white smock came back out through the door pushing a gurney. It was a short gurney, maybe only as long as Tomas, but Joe and the colored man got Dion out of the car and onto it. His legs dangled off the end as they pushed him up the walk and inside.
The veterinarian was Dr. Carl Blake, and he’d been a practicing physician at a colored clinic in Jacksonville before he’d lost his license and arrived in Tampa to work for Montooth Dix. He patched up Montooth’s men and kept his whores healthy and clean, and Montooth had paid him in the opium he’d lost his license over in the first place.
Dr. Blake smacked his lips a lot and moved with a strange stilted grace, like a dancer trying not to knock over the furniture. Tomas noticed that his father always called him Doctor, while Dion, before they knocked him out, called him Blake.
After Dion passed out, Joe said, “I’m going to need a lot of morphine. Probably clean you out, Doctor.”
Dr. Blake nodded and poured water over the gash in Dion’s arm. “Nicked his brachial. Man should be dead. Is that your tie?”
Joe nodded.
“Well, you saved his life with it.”
Joe said, “I’m going to need something stronger than sulfur.”
Dr. Blake looked across Dion at him. “With the war? Son, good luck.”
“Come on. What can you give me?”
“Prontosil’s all I got.”
“Then Prontosil will have to do. Thank you, Doctor.”
“Hold that light right there, would you?”
Joe moved the lamp over the exam table so the doctor could get a closer look at Dion’s arm.
“Boy going to be okay?”
Joe looked over at Tomas. “You want to go in another room?”
Tomas shook his head.
“You’re sure? This could make you sick.”
“I won’t get sick.”
“No?”
Tomas shook his head again, thinking, I’m your son.
Dr. Blake poked around inside Dion’s arm until he said, “It’s a clean cut. Nothing foreign in there. Let’s put this artery back together.”
They worked for a while in silence, Joe handing the doctor instruments as he asked for them or adjusting the lamp or wiping the doctor’s forehead with a cloth when the doctor requested it.
Tomas grew certain of one thing—he would never be as calm under strain as his father. He flashed on his father’s face as he’d backed the bullet-riddled car out onto Twenty-Fourth Street, the sirens growing louder in the background, Dion groaning in the backseat, and his father squinting at the nearest street sign like a man out for a Sunday drive who found himself slightly turned around.
“Did you hear about Montooth?” Dr. Blake asked Joe.
“No,” Joe said lightly. “What about him?”
“Took out Little Lamar and three guns. Didn’t get a scratch.”
Joe laughed. “He what?”
“Not a scratch. Maybe that voodoo shit’s true.” Dr. Blake finished sewing up Dion’s arm.
“What’d you say?” Joe asked sharply.
“Huh? Oh, you know, all those rumors over the years that Montooth practices voodoo in a special room somewhere in that fortress of his, puts hexes on his enemies, all that. Man walks into that barbershop and walks back out the only survivor, maybe there’s some truth to it.”
A curious look passed over Joe’s face. “Can I use your phone?”
“Sure. Right over there.”
Joe removed the plastic gloves he’d been wearing and made his phone call as Dr. Blake moved on to the wounds in Uncle Dion’s chest. Tomas heard his father say, “You get over here in fifteen, okay?”
He hung up, put on a fresh pair of gloves, and rejoined the doctor.
Dr. Blake asked, “How much time you think you have?”
Joe’s face grew dark. “A couple of hours at best.”
The door to the exam room opened and another colored man dressed in dungaree overalls stuck his head in. “All set.”
“Thank you, Marlo.”
“Sure thing, Doctor.”
“Thank you, Marlo,” Joe said.
When he was gone, Joe turned to Tomas. “There’s some pants and underpants for you in the car. Why don’t you go get them?”
“Where?”
“In the car,” Joe said.
Tomas left the exam room and went back down the hall where the caged dogs barked at his scent. He opened the back door onto the white day and walked back up the path to where they’d left the car. It was still in the same place but it wasn’t the same car. It was a Plymouth four-door sedan from the late ’30s, no paint, just primer, as forgettable as a car got. On the front seat, Tomas found a pair of black trousers in his size and a pair of underpants and he remembered only now that he’d wet himself just before his father shot the man with the foul breath and the milky eyes. He wondered how he could have forgotten because he could smell himself suddenly, and he could feel the cold stickiness of his own urine turning his thighs raw. But he’d sat in it for over an hour without realizing it.
When he exited the car, he saw his father speaking to a very small man in the alley. The man was nodding over and over as his father talked. As Tomas neared them he heard his father say, “You still related to Boch?”
“Ernie?” The little man nodded. “Married my older sister, divorced her, and married my younger sister. They’re happy.”
“He still a master?”
“There’s a Monet been hanging in the Tate in London since ’35 that Ernie painted in a weekend.”
“Well, you’re gonna need him on this. I’m paying premium.”
“You don’t pay me anything. Just don’t call that witch doctor.”
“I’m not paying you, but I am paying your brother-in-law. He doesn’t owe me shit. So you make sure he knows, he’s getting full market value. But this is a rush order.”
“Got it. That your boy?”
They turned and looked at Tomas, and something sad passed through his father’s eyes, a leaden regret. “Yeah. Don’t worry. He’s seen the world today. Tomas, say hi to Bobo.”
“Hi, Bobo.”
“Hey, kid.”
“I gotta change,” Tomas said.
His father nodded. “Go on then.”
He changed into the clothes in a bathroom at the back of the clinic. He wet the lower leg of his old pants in the sink and cleaned his thighs as best he could. He rolled up the piss-stained pants and underpants and brought them back into the exam room with him, found his father pressing a stack of bills into Dr. Blake’s hands.
“Just throw them away,” his father said when he saw the old clothes. Tomas found the barrel in the corner of the room, tossed the clothes in with the bloody gauze and scraps of Dion’s bloody shirt.
He heard Dr. Blake tell his father that Dion had a collapsed lung and that his arm should remain immobile for at least a week.
“By immobile you mean he shouldn’t move?”
“He can move, but I wouldn’t want him bouncing around much.”
“What if I can’t control how much bouncing he does in the next few hours?”
“Then the suture in the artery could tear.”
“And he could die.”
“No.”
“No?”
Dr. Blake shook his head. “He will die.”
Dion was still out when they put him in the backseat and filled the foot wells with old dog blankets so he couldn’t roll off and hurt himself. They kept the windows rolled down, but even so the car smelled like dog hair and dog piss and sick dog.
Tomas said, “Where are we going?”
“Airport.”
“We’re going home?”
“We’re going to try to get to Cuba, ye
ah.”
“And the men will stop trying to hurt you?”
“I don’t know about that,” Joe said. “But they won’t have any reason to hurt you.”
“Are you afraid?”
Joe smiled at his son. “Little bit.”
“How come you don’t show it?”
“Because this is one of those times when thinking is more important than feeling.”
“So what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking we’ve got to get out of the country. And I’m thinking the man who tried to hurt us, he embarrassed himself. He tried to kill Uncle Dion and he failed. He planned to kill another friend of mine, but that friend got the advantage over him too. And the police are going to be very angry about what happened at the bakery today. The mayor and the chamber of commerce too. I’m thinking if I can get us to Cuba, this man might be willing to negotiate a peace.”
“What about his cake?”
“Huh?”
Tomas was kneeling on the front seat, looking at the dog blankets in back. “Uncle Dion’s torta al cappuccino?”
“What about it?”
“It was in the backseat.”
“I thought he got shot in the bakery.”
“He did.”
“So . . . Wait a minute, what?” Joe looked over at his son.
“But he put the cake in the car.”
“After the shooting started?”
“Um, yeah. He came over to tell me to get down. He yelled at me. He said get on the floor.”
“Okay,” Joe said, “okay. But, but this was during the shootout?”
“Yeah.”
“And then what?”
“And then he put the cake on the floor of the car and went back outside.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Joe said. “You’re sure you’re remembering it right? There was a lot going on and you were—”
“Father,” Tomas said, “I’m sure.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Flight
COUGHLIN-SUAREZ IMPORT/EXPORT transported much of its product on a Grumman Goose seaplane. Back in the late 1930s, Esteban Suarez had purchased the plane from Joseph Kennedy, the banker, ambassador, and movie producer, after Kennedy decided to distance himself from the illegal liquor business that built his fortune.
Joe had met Kennedy on a couple of occasions. They were both Irishmen named Joseph from Boston, Joe from the south side of the city, Kennedy from the east. They were both hustlers and bootleggers. Both ambitious men.
They hated each other on sight.
Kennedy, Joe assumed, hated Joe because he embodied the worst stereotypes of the Irish bootlegger and made no attempts to hide it. Joe disliked Kennedy for precisely the opposite reason—because he’d embraced the street life when it suited his greed but now that he wanted respectability, he acted as if the fortune he’d amassed had been bequeathed from on high as reward for his piety and moral fiber.
His plane had served them well for five years now, though, aided by the aeronautic gifts of Farruco Diaz, one the most insane men to ever put on a pair of pants but a pilot so talented he could thread the Goose through a waterfall without getting wet.
Farruco was waiting for them at Knight Airfield on Davis Islands, a ten-minute drive out of downtown and over a squeaky bridge that swayed in the softest breeze. Knight Airfield, like most airfields in the country right now, had leased a lot of its land and its runways to the government, in this case as an auxiliary landing field for the Third Army Air Force Group out of Drew and MacDill. Unlike those airfields, however, Knight remained primarily under civilian authority, although that authority could be superseded on a dime by Uncle Sam, something Joe was unfortunately reminded of when he pulled down the main road and saw Farruco on the other side of the fence standing by the Goose.
Joe pulled over and got out. He and Farruco met at the fence.
“Why isn’t the engine warming?”
“Can’t do it, boss. They won’t let me.”
“Who?”
Farruco pointed at the control tower, which rose from behind the single-story Quonset hut where the passengers waited. “Guy up there. Grammers.”
Lester Grammers had taken at least a hundred bribes from Joe or Esteban over the years, particularly when they picked up marijuana loads in Hispaniola or Jamaica. But since the war started, Lester had started spouting off at the mouth a bit too much about his patriotic responsibilities as an air warden, a neighborhood watch captain, and a reborn believer in the racial superiority of Anglo-Saxons.
He still took their money, of course, but he showed more contempt as he did.
Joe found him up in the tower with the two traffic controllers, and thankfully no uniformed personnel in sight.
“Is there a weather front I don’t know about?” Joe asked.
“Not at all. Weather’s fine.”
“So, Lester . . . ?”
Lester dropped his heels off the edge of his desk and stood. He was a tall man and Joe was not, so Joe had to look up at him, which was probably Lester’s intention.
“So,” Lester said, “you can’t leave. Good weather or bad.”
Joe reached into his pocket, careful to keep the flaps of his trench coat closed over his bloody shirt. “What’ll it take?”
Lester held up his hands. “I wouldn’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you would.” Joe kicked himself for not asking Blake’s guy, Marlo, to grab him a clean shirt when he’d gotten the fresh clothes for Tomas.
“I sure would not, sir,” Lester said.
“Lester, listen.” Joe didn’t like the smug pleasure he saw in Lester’s eyes. Didn’t like it one bit. “Please. I need to fly out right now. Name a price.”
“There is no price, sir.”
“Stop calling me sir.”
Lester shook his head. “I don’t take orders from you, sir.”
“Who do you take orders from?”
“The United States of America. And they don’t want you flying tonight, sir.”
Shit, Joe thought. Matthew Biel of Naval Intelligence. You vengeful motherfucker.
“Fine.” Joe looked Lester up and down, took his time about it.
“What?” Lester said eventually.
“Sizing you up for an infantryman’s uniform, Lester.”
“I’m not joining any infantry. I serve the war effort right here.”
“But after I take your job, Lester? You’ll be serving the war effort on the front fucking lines.”
Joe gave him a clap on the shoulder and left the tower.
VANESSA EXITED THE HOTEL SERVICE DOOR into the alley. Joe had pushed back the flap of his trench coat to fish for his lighter and she saw the blood on his shirt and suit jacket.
“You’re hurt. Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Oh my God. The blood.”
Joe crossed the alley to her, took her hands in his. “It’s not mine. It’s his.”
She looked over his shoulder at Dion slumped in the backseat. “Is he alive?”
“At the moment.”
She dropped his hands and scratched nervously at the base of her throat. “There are dead people all over the city.”
“I know.”
“A group of Negroes shot in a barbershop. And six—I heard six?—men shot in Ybor. Maybe more.”
Joe nodded.
“You were involved?” She looked up at him.
No point in lying. “Yup.”
“The blood is—”
“I don’t have much time here, Vanessa. They’re gonna kill me and my friend and maybe even my son if they decide he saw too much. I can’t stay another hour in the United States.”
“Go to the police.”
Joe laughed.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t talk to cops. And even if I did, some of them are on his payroll.”
“Whose?”
“The guy trying to kill me.”
“Did you kill p
eople today, Joe?”
“Vanessa, look—”
She wrung her hands. “Tell me. Did you?”
“Yes. My son was in the middle of that shootout. I did what I had to do to pull him out. Kill a dozen more men if they were threatening my son.”
“You say that with pride.”
“It’s not pride. It’s will.” He exhaled a long slow breath. “I need your help. And I need it now. Sand’s almost out of the hourglass.”
She looked past him at his son kneeling on the front seat and Dion slumped in the back.
When she looked back at him, her eyes were bitter and sad. “What’ll it cost me?”
“Everything.”
UP IN THE TOWER, Joe kept his trench coat belted as Mrs. Vanessa Belgrave asked Lester Grammers to consider his options.
“That plane isn’t just carrying corn and wheat,” she said. “It’s carrying a personal gift from the mayor of Tampa to the mayor of Havana. A private gift, Mr. Grammers.”
Lester looked anxious and pained. “The government man was explicit, ma’am.”
“Can you get him on the phone?”
“Ma’am?”
“Right now. Can you get him on the phone?”
“Not this time of night.”
“Well, I can get the mayor on the phone. Would you like to explain to him your hostility toward his wife?”
“It’s not hos— Jesus.”
“No?” She sat on the edge of the desk and removed her right earring as she lifted the receiver off the cradle. “Could I have an outside line, please?”
“Mrs. Mayor, please listen to—”
“Hyde Park 789,” she told the operator.
“I need this job, Mrs. Mayor. I—three kids, all in high school.”
She patted his knee in agreement, crinkled her nose at him. “It’s ringing.”
“I’m not a soldier.”
“Brrring,” Vanessa said. “Brrring.”
“My wife, she . . .”
Vanessa raised her eyebrows, then turned back to the phone.
Lester reached across her lap and depressed the cradle.
She looked at him, at his arm hovering over her lap.
He removed the arm. “We’ll clear Runway Two.”
“Stellar choice, Lester,” she said. “Thank you.”
“SO WHAT IS THIS?” Vanessa stood in front of Joe at the base of the runway, both of them shouting over the clack and roar of the propellers.
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