World Gone By: A Novel Read Free Page B

contract?”
    “I’m afraid so,” he said.
    That went against two decades of King Lucius policy.
    “Why?” she asked.
    “It must be someone the target knows. No one else could get close enough.” He uncrossed his ankles and fanned himself with his hat. “If you think Kovich is the man for the job, I’ll make inquiries.”
    She said, “Does the target have reason to suspect his life could be in danger?”
    Jimmy Arnold thought about it and eventually nodded. “He works in our business. Don’t we all sleep with one eye open?”
    Theresa nodded. “Then, yeah, Kovich is your man. Everybody likes him, even if no one can understand why.”
    “Let’s next consider the question of police jurisdiction and the character of the detectives who are working on the day in question.”
    “What day?”
    “A Wednesday.”
    She ratcheted through a series of names, shifts, and scenarios.
    “Ideally,” she said, “you would want Kovich to do it between noon and eight in either Ybor, Port Tampa, or Hyde Park. That would ensure a high likelihood that Detectives Feeney and Boatman respond to the call.”
    His lips moved silently over the names as he fussed with the crease in his trouser leg, his brow furrowing a bit. “Do policemen observe holy days?”
    “If they’re Catholic, I suppose. Which holy day?”
    “Ash Wednesday.”
    “There’s not much to observing Ash Wednesday.”
    “No?” He seemed genuinely perplexed. “It’s been so long since I’ve practiced the faith myself.”
    She said, “You go to mass, the priest makes the sign of the cross on your forehead with damp ash, you leave. That’s it.”
    “That’s it,” he repeated in a soft whisper. He gave his surroundings a kind of distracted smile, like he was a bit surprised to find himself here. He stood. “Good luck, Mrs. Del Fresco. We’ll be seeing you.”
    She watched Jimmy Arnold lift his briefcase off the floor, and she knew she shouldn’t ask the question but she couldn’t help it.
    “Who’s the target?” she said.
    He looked through the bars at her. Just as she’d known she shouldn’t ask the question, he knew he shouldn’t answer it. But Jimmy Arnold was famous in their circles for an interesting paradox at his center—ask him the most innocuous question about any of his clients and he wouldn’t answer if you set fire to his scrotum. Ask him the most salacious details about anything else, however, and he was all hen.
    “Are you sure you want to know?” he asked.
    She nodded.
    He gave the dark green hallway a glance both ways before he leaned back into the bars, put his lips between them, and said the name.
    “Joe Coughlin.”
    IN THE MORNING SHE BOARDED the bus and it carried her northeast for two hundred miles. Inland Florida was not the Florida of blue ocean, white sand, and crushed-white-shell parking lots. It was a land sun bleached and sickened after too many droughts and wildfires. For six and a half hours they bumped along back roads and bad roads, and most of the people they saw, white or colored or Indian, looked too thin.
    The woman chained to Theresa’s left wrist didn’t talk for fifty miles and then introduced herself as Mrs. Sarah Nez of Zephyrhills. She shook Theresa’s hand, assured her she was innocent of all the crimes for which she’d been convicted, and went another twenty-five miles before she moved again. Theresa rested her forehead against the window and looked out at the broiled land through the dust the tires kicked up. Beyond fields so dry the grass resembled paper, she could identify swampland by the smell and the green fog that rose from the far edges of the blanched fields. She thought about her son and the money she was owed to provide for his future, and she hoped King Lucius would make good on his debt because she had no one who could collect if he didn’t.
    Speaking of debt, she’d been stunned last night when District Attorney Archibald Boll failed to show up at her cell. She’d lain awake with