Live by Night Read Free

moll. He’d already had visions of them racing across the country in a stolen car, unencumbered by a past or a future, chasing a red sky and a setting sun all the way to Mexico.
    â€œI seen them together three times,” Paolo said.
    â€œSo now it’s three times.”
    Paolo looked down at his fingers for confirmation. “Yeah.”
    â€œWhat’s she doing fetching drinks at his poker games then?”
    â€œWhat else she going to do?” Dion said. “Retire?”
    â€œNo, but . . .”
    â€œAlbert’s married,” Dion said. “Who’s to say how long a party gal lasts on his arm?”
    â€œShe strike you as a party gal?”
    Dion slowly thumbed the cap off a bottle of Canadian gin, his flat eyes on Joe. “She didn’t strike me as anything but a gal bagged up our money. I couldn’t even tell you what color her hair was. I couldn’t—”
    â€œDark blond. Almost light brown, but not quite.”
    â€œShe’s Albert’s girl.” Dion poured them all a drink.
    â€œSo she is,” Joe said.
    â€œBad enough we just knocked over the man’s joint. Don’t go getting any ideas about taking anything else from him. All right?”
    Joe didn’t say anything.
    â€œAll right?” Dion repeated.
    â€œAll right.” Joe reached for his drink. “Fine.”
    S he didn’t come into The Shoelace for the next three nights. Joe was sure of it—he’d been there, open to close, every night.
    Albert came in, wearing one of his signature pinstripe off-white suits. Like he was in Lisbon or something. He wore them with brown fedoras that matched his brown shoes which matched the brown pinstripes. When the snow came, he wore brown suits with off-white pinstripes, an off-white hat, and white-and-brown spats. When February rolled around, he went in for dark brown suits and dark brown shoes with a black hat, but Joe imagined, for the most part, he’d be easy to gun down at night. Shoot him in an alley from twenty yards away with a cheap pistol. You wouldn’t even need a streetlamp to see that white turn red.
    Albert, Albert, Joe thought as Albert glided past his bar stool in The Shoelace on the third night, I could kill you if I knew the first thing about killing.
    Problem was, Albert didn’t go into alleys much, and when he did he had four bodyguards with him. And even if you did get through them and you did kill him—and Joe, no killer, wondered why the fuck he found himself thinking about killing Albert White in the first place—all you’d manage to do would be to derail a business empire for Albert White’s partners, who included the police, the Italians, the Jew mobs in Mattapan, and several legitimate businessmen, including bankers and investors with interests in Cuban and Florida sugarcane. Derailing business like that in a city this small would be like feeding zoo animals with fresh cuts on your hand.
    Albert looked at him once. Looked at him in such a way that Joe thought, He knows, he knows. He knows I robbed him. Knows I want his girl. He knows.
    But Albert said, “Got a light?”
    Joe struck a match off the bar and lit Albert White’s cigarette.
    When Albert blew out the match, he blew smoke into Joe’s face. He said, “Thanks, kid,” and walked away, the man’s flesh as white as his suit, the man’s lips as red as the blood that flowed in and out of his heart.
    T he fourth day after the robbery, Joe played a hunch and went back to the furniture warehouse. He almost missed her; apparently the secretaries ended their shift the same time as the laborers, and the secretaries ran small while the forklift operators and stevedores cast wider shadows. The men came out with their longshoremen’s hooks hanging from the shoulders of their dirty jackets, talking loud and swarming the young women, whistling and telling jokes only they laughed at. The women