Live by Night by Dennis Lehane Read Free Book Online

into the casino and he and Tim got to talking and then Tim snapped the electric cord off one of the green banker’s lamps and wrapped it around Harvey’s neck. Harvey was a huge guy and he carried Tim around the casino floor for about a minute, all the whores running for cover, all of Hickey’s gun monkeys pointing their guns right at Harvey. Joe watched the realization dawn in Harvey Boule’s eyes—even if he got Tim to stop strangling him, Tim’s goons would empty four revolvers and one automatic into him. He dropped to his knees and soiled himself with a loud venting sound. He lay on his stomach, gasping, as Tim pressed his knee between his shoulder blades and wrapped the excess cord tight around one hand. He twisted and pulled back all the harder and Harvey kicked hard enough to knock off both shoes.
    Tim snapped his fingers. One of his gun monkeys handed him a pistol and Tim put it to Harvey’s ear. A whore said, “Oh, God,” but just as Tim went to pull the trigger, Harvey’s eyes turned hopeless and confused, and he moaned his final breath into the imitation Oriental. Tim sat back on Harvey’s spine and handed the gun back to his goon. He peered at the profile of the man he’d killed.
    Joe had never seen anyone die before. Less than two minutes before, Harvey had asked the girl who brought him his martini to get him the score of the Sox game. Tipped her good too. Checked his watch and slipped it back into his vest. Took a sip of his martini. Less than two minutes before, and now he was fucking gone ? To where? No one knew. To God, to the devil, to purgatory, or worse, maybe to nowhere. Tim stood and smoothed his snow-white hair and pointed in a vague way at the casino manager. “Freshen everyone’s drinks. On Harvey.”
    A couple of people laughed nervously but most everyone else looked sick.
    That wasn’t the only person Tim had killed or ordered killed in the last four years, but it had been the one Joe witnessed.
    And now Tim himself. Gone. Not coming back. As if he’d never been.
    â€œYou ever see anyone killed?” Joe asked Emma.
    She looked back at him steadily for a bit, smoking the cigarette, chewing a hangnail. “Yeah.”
    â€œWhere do you think they go?”
    â€œThe funeral home.”
    He stared at her until she smiled that tiny smile of hers, her curls dangling in front of her eyes.
    â€œI think they go nowhere,” she said.
    â€œI’m starting to think that too,” Joe said. He sat up and gave her a hard kiss and she returned it just as hard. Her ankles crossed at his back. She ran her hand through his hair and he looked into her, feeling if he stopped looking at her, he’d miss something, something important that would happen in her face, something he’d never forget.
    â€œWhat if there is no After? And this ”—she ground herself down on him—“is all we get?”
    â€œI love this,” he said.
    She laughed. “I love this too.”
    â€œIn general? Or with me?”
    She put her cigarette out. She took his face in her hands when she kissed him. She rocked back and forth. “With you.”
    But he wasn’t the only one she did this with, was he?
    There was still Albert. Still Albert.
    A couple days later, in the billiards room off the casino, Joe was shooting pool alone when Albert White walked in with the confidence of someone who expected an obstacle to be removed before he reached it. Walking in beside him was his chief gun monkey, Brenny Loomis, Loomis looking right at Joe like he’d looked at him from the floor of the gaming room.
    Joe’s heart folded itself around the blade of a knife. And stopped.
    Albert White said, “You must be Joe.”
    Joe willed himself to move. He met Albert’s outstretched hand. “Joe Coughlin, yeah. Nice to meet you.”
    â€œGood to put a face to a name, Joe.” Albert pumped his hand like the pumping