Live by Night by Dennis Lehane Read Free Book Online Page B

for the Pittsfield job.
    â€œNo,” Joe said. “Nothing lined up.”
    â€œYou need money?”
    â€œMr. White, sir?”
    â€œMoney.” Albert reached into his pocket with a hand that had run over Emma’s pubic bone. Gripped her hair. He peeled two ten spots off his wad and slapped them into Joe’s palm. “I don’t want you thinking on an empty stomach.”
    â€œThanks.”
    Albert patted Joe’s cheek with that same hand. “I hope this ends well.”
    W e could leave,” Emma said.
    â€œLeave?” he said. “Like together?”
    They were in her bedroom in the middle of the day, the only time her house was empty of the three sisters and the three brothers and the bitter mother and angry father.
    â€œWe could leave,” she said again, as if she didn’t believe it herself.
    â€œAnd go where? Live on what? And do you mean together?”
    She didn’t say anything. Twice he’d asked the question, twice she’d ignored it.
    â€œI don’t know much about honest work,” he said.
    â€œWho said it needs to be honest?”
    He looked around the grim room she shared with two sisters. The wallpaper had come off the horsehair plaster by the window and two of the panes were cracked. They could see their breath in here.
    â€œWe’d have to go pretty far,” he said. “New York’s a closed town. Philly too. Detroit, forget about it. Chicago, KC, Milwaukee—all shut to a guy like me unless I want to join a mob as low man on the totem.”
    â€œSo we go west, as the man said. Or down south.” She nuzzled her nose into the side of his neck and took a deep breath, a softness seeming to grow in her. “We’ll need stake money.”
    â€œWe got this job lined up for Saturday. You free Saturday?”
    â€œTo leave?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œI’ve got to see You Know Who Saturday night.”
    â€œFuck him.”
    â€œWell, yeah,” she said, “that’s the general plan.”
    â€œNo, I mean—”
    â€œI know what you mean.”
    â€œHe’s a bad fucking guy,” Joe said, his eyes on her back, on that birthmark the color of wet sand.
    She looked at him with a mild disappointment that was all the more dismissive for being so mild. “No, he’s not.”
    â€œYou stick up for him?”
    â€œI’ll tell you he’s not a bad guy. He’s not my guy. He’s not someone I love or admire or anything. But he’s not bad . Don’t always try to make things so simple.”
    â€œHe killed Tim. Or ordered him killed.”
    â€œAnd Tim, he, what, he made his living handing out turkeys to orphans?”
    â€œNo, but—”
    â€œBut what? No one’s good, no one’s bad. Everyone’s just trying to make their way.” She lit a cigarette and shook the match until it was black and smoldering. “Stop fucking judging everyone.”
    He couldn’t stop looking at her birthmark, getting lost in its sand, swirling with it. “You’re still going to see him.”
    â€œDon’t start. If we’re truly leaving town, then—”
    â€œWe’re leaving town.” Joe would leave the country if it meant no man ever touched her again.
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œBiloxi,” he said, realizing as he said it that it actually wasn’t a bad idea. “Tim had a lot of friends there. Guys I met. Rum guys. Albert gets his supply from Canada. He’s a whiskey guy. So if we get to the Gulf Coast—Biloxi, Mobile, maybe even New Orleans, if we buy off the right people—we might be okay. That’s rum country.”
    She thought about it a bit, that birthmark rippling every time she stretched up the bed to tap ash off her cigarette. “I’m supposed to see him for that new hotel opening. The one on Providence Street?”
    â€œThe Statler?”
    She nodded. “Supposed to have radios in