Live by Night (23 page)

“You leave her where you found her?”

“Left a sailor with her. Pick him up on the way back if you ever give us a chance to unload these weapons.”

“Fair enough,” Joe said and stepped back.

C
raddick may have eased up a notch, but he was still a man on the alert. His eyes soaked up everything. Joe stuck with him, taking one end of a crate while Craddick took the other, lifting by the rope handles built into the ends. As they walked the loading bay corridor to the hold, they could see through the windows to the next corridor over and the offices beyond. Dion had placed all the fair-skinned Cubans in the offices with their backs to the windows, all of them typing gibberish on their Underwoods or crooking receivers to their ears with thumbs pressed down on the cradles. Even so, on their second trip down the corridor it occurred to Joe that every head they saw over there had black hair. Not a blond or a sandy dome in the bunch.

Craddick's eyes were on the windows as they walked, so far unaware that the corridor between theirs and those offices had just played host to an armed assault and the death of one man.

“Where'd you serve overseas?” Joe asked.

Craddick kept his eyes on the window. “How'd you know I was overseas?”

Bullet holes, Joe thought. Those fucking itchy-fingered Cubans would have left bullet holes behind in the walls. “You have the look of a man seen some action.”

Craddick looked over at Joe. “You recognize men who've been in battle?”

“I do today,” Joe said. “With you, anyway.”

“Almost shot that spic woman by the side of the road,” Craddick said mildly.

“Really?”

He nodded. “It was spics tried to blow us up last night. And these boys with me don't know it yet, but spics called in a threat against the whole crew, said we were all going to die today.”

“I hadn't heard that.”

“That's 'cause it ain't for hearing yet,” Craddick said. “So I see a spic girl waving us down in the middle of Highway 41? I think, Walter? Shoot that bitch between the tits.”

They reached the hold and stacked the crate on top of the first stack to the left. They stepped aside and Craddick took a handkerchief to his forehead in the hot hallway and they watched the last of the crates come to them as the sailors filed down the corridor.

“Woulda done it too but that she had my daughter's eyes.”

“Who?”

“The spic girl. Got me a daughter from my time in the DR. Don't see her or nothing, but her mama sends me pictures every now and then. She got them big dark eyes most Carib' women have? I see those eyes in this gal today, I holstered my weapon.”

“It was already out?”

“Halfway.” He nodded. “I already had it in my head, you know? Why take chances? Put the bitch down. White men don't get much more'n a tongue-lashing for that around here. But . . .” He shrugged. “My daughter's eyes.”

Joe said nothing, his blood loud in his ears.

“Sent a boy to do it.”

“What?”

He nodded. “One of the boys we got, Cyrus, I believe. Looking for a war but he can't find one right now. Spic woman saw the look in his eyes, she took off running. Cyrus is part coon hound though, grew up in swampland near the Alabama border. Should find her without breaking him a sweat.”

“Where will you take her?”

“There's no taking her anywhere. She attacked us, boy. Her people did anyway. Cyrus will do what he will with her, leave the rest for the reptiles.” He put the stub of a cigar in his mouth and struck a match off his boot. He squinted over the flame at Joe. “Confirm your assumption—I seen battle, son, yeah. Killed me one Dominican, killed me Haitians by the bushel, point of fact. Few years later, I took out three Panamanians with one Thompson burst on account they were all bunched together, praying I wouldn't. The truth of it all and don't let no one ever tell you different?” He got the cigar going and flicked the match over his shoulder. “It was some fun.”

Chapter Sixteen

Gangster

A
s soon as the sailors left, Esteban ran to the motor pool to grab a vehicle. Joe changed out of his uniform as Dion backed the truck over to the ramp and the Cubans began pulling the crates right back out of the hold.

“You got this?” Joe asked Dion.

Dion beamed. “Got it? We
own
it. You go get her. We'll see you at the spot in an hour.”

Esteban pulled up in a scout car and Joe hopped in and they took off down Highway 41. Within five minutes they saw the transport truck about a half mile ahead rumbling down a road so straight and flat you could practically see Alabama at the other end.

“If we can see them,” Joe said, “they can see us.”

“Not for long,” Esteban said.

The road appeared to their left. It cut through the palmettos and across the crushed-shell highway and back into the scrub and palmettos on the other side. Esteban turned left, and they bounced onto it. It was gravel and dirt and half the dirt was mud. Esteban drove like Joe felt—harried and reckless.

“What was his name?” Joe said. “The boy who died?”

“Guillermo.”

Joe could see the boy's eyes as they'd closed, and he didn't want to find Graciela's looking the same.

“We shouldn't have left her out there,” Esteban said.

“I know.”

“We should have assumed they'd have left someone behind with her.”

“I
know
.”

“We should have had somebody waiting with her, hiding.”

“I fucking
know,
” Joe said. “How is this helping us now?”

Esteban goosed the gas and they soared over a dip in the road and hit the ground on the other side so hard Joe feared the scout would rise onto its front wheels, flip them onto their fucking heads.

But he didn't tell Esteban to slow down.

“I've known her since we were no taller than the dogs on my family farm.”

Joe didn't say anything. A swamp lay off to their left through the pines. Cypress and sweet gum trees and plants Joe couldn't begin to identify raced by on either side of them, blurring until the greens and yellows were the greens and yellows of a painting.

“Her family were migrant farmers. You should see the village she called ‘home' a few months every year. America has not seen poverty until it's seen that village. My father realized how bright she was and asked her family if he could hire her as a maid-in-training, yes? What he was really doing was hiring me a friend. I had none, just the horses and the cattle.”

Another bump in the road.

“Strange time to be telling me this,” Joe said.

“I loved her,” Esteban said, speaking loudly over the engine. “Now, I love somebody else, but for many years, I thought I was in love with Graciela.”

He turned to look at Joe and Joe shook his head and pointed. “Eyes on the road, Esteban.”

Another bump, this one lifting them both out of their seats and then back down again.

“She says she's doing all this for her husband?” Talking helped put the fear in a manageable place, made Joe feel less helpless.

“Ach,” Esteban said. “He's no husband. He's no man.”

“I thought he was a revolutionary?”

This time Esteban spat. “He is a thief, a . . . a . . .
estafador
. You call them con men. Yes? He dresses the part of the revolutionary, he recites the poetry, and she fell for him. She lost everything for this man—her family, all her money and she never had much, most of her friends but me.” He shook his head. “She doesn't even know where he is.”

“I thought he was in jail.”

“He's been out for two years.”

Another bump. This time they went sideways and the rear quarter panel on Joe's side slapped a pine sapling before they bounced back into the road.

“But she still pays his family.”

“They lie to her. They tell her he escaped, that he's hiding in the hills and a gang of
los chacales
from Nieves Morejón prison are hunting him and Machado's men are hunting him. They tell her she cannot return to Cuba to see him or they will both be in danger. No one, Joseph, is hunting this man, except for those he owes money. But you cannot tell Graciela that; she does not hear when it comes to him.”

“Why? She's a smart woman.”

He gave Joe a quick glance and shrugged. “We all believe lies that bring us more comfort than the truth. She's no different. Her lie is just bigger.”

They missed the turnoff, but Joe caught it out of the corner of his eye and told Esteban to stop. He braked and they slid twenty yards before they finally stopped. He backed up and they turned onto the road.

“How many men have you killed?” Esteban asked.

“None,” Joe said.

“But you're a gangster.”

Joe didn't see the point in arguing the distinction between gangster and outlaw because he wasn't sure there was one anymore. “Not all gangsters kill people.”

“But you must be willing to.”

Joe nodded. “Just like you.”

“I'm a businessman. I provide a product people want. I kill no one.”

“You're arming Cuban revolutionaries.”

“That's a cause.”

“In which people will die.”

“There's a difference,” Esteban said. “I kill
for
something.”

“What? A fucking ideal?” Joe said.

“Exactly.”

“And what ideal is that, Esteban?”

“That no man should rule another's life.”

“Funny,” Joe said, “outlaws kill for the same reason.”

S
he wasn't there.

They came out of the pine forest and approached Route 41, and there was no sign of Graciela or the sailor who'd been left behind to hunt her. Nothing but the heat and the hum of dragonflies and the white road.

They drove down the road half a mile and then back up to the dirt road and then north another half mile. When they drove back again, Joe heard something he thought was a crow or a hawk.

“Kill the engine, kill the engine.”

Esteban did, and they both stood in the scout car and looked out at the road and the pines and the cypress swamp beyond and the hard white sky that matched the road.

Nothing. Nothing but the dragonfly buzz Joe now suspected never stopped—morning, noon, or night, like living with your ear to a train track just after the train had passed over it.

Esteban sat back down and Joe went to but stopped.

He thought he saw something just to the east, back the way they'd come, something that—

“There.” He pointed, and as he did she ran out from behind a stand of pines. She didn't run in their direction and Joe realized she was too smart for that. If she had, she would have been running full out for fifty yards through low palmettos and pine saplings.

Esteban gunned the engine and they dropped down the shoulder and through a ditch and then back out again, Joe holding on to the top of the windshield and hearing the shots now—hard cracks strangely muted even out here with nothing around them. From his vantage point, he still couldn't see the shooter, but he could see the swamp and he knew she was headed for it. He nudged Esteban with his foot and waved his arm to the left, a little farther southwest than the line they were on.

Esteban turned the wheel and Joe got a sudden glimpse of dark blue, just a flash of it, and saw the man's head and heard his rifle. Up ahead, Graciela fell to her knees in the swamp and Joe couldn't tell whether she'd fallen because she'd tripped or because she'd been shot. They ran out of firm land, the shooter just off to their right. Esteban slowed as he entered the swamp and Joe jumped out of the scout.

It was like jumping out onto the moon if the moon was green. The bald cypress rose like great eggs from the milky green water, and prehistoric banyan trees with a dozen or more trunks stood watch like palace guards. Esteban drove to his right just as Joe saw Graciela dart between two of the bald cypress trees to his left. Something uncomfortably heavy crawled over his feet just as he heard a rifle report, the shot much closer now. The bullet tore a chunk from the cypress tree where Graciela was hiding.

The young seaman stepped out from behind a cypress ten feet away. He was about Joe's height and build, his hair quite red, his face very lean. His Springfield was raised to his shoulder, the sight raised to his eye, the barrel pointed at the cypress. Joe extended his .32 automatic and exhaled a long breath as he shot the man from ten feet. The rifle jerked and spun in the air so erratically Joe assumed it was all he'd hit. But as it fell to the tea-colored water, the young man fell with it, and the blood spilled from under his left armpit and darkened the water as he landed with a splash.

“Graciela,” he called, “it's Joe. Are you okay?”

She peeked out from behind the tree and Joe nodded. Esteban came around behind her in the scout car and she climbed in it and they drove over to Joe.

He picked up the rifle and looked down at the sailor. He sat in the water with his arms draped over his knees and his head down, like a man trying to catch his breath.

Graciela climbed out of the scout. Actually, she half fell out, half reeled into Joe. He put his arm around her to right her and felt the adrenaline racking her body as if she'd been hit with a cattle prod.

Behind the sailor, something moved through the mangroves. Something long and so dark green it was almost black.

The sailor looked up at Joe, his mouth open as he drew shallow breaths. “You're white.”

“Yeah,” Joe said.

“Fuck you shoot me for then?”

Joe looked at Esteban and then at Graciela. “If we leave him here, something's gonna eat him within a couple minutes. So we either take him with us or . . .”

He could hear more of them out there as the sailor's blood continued to spill into the green swamp.

Joe said, “So we either take him with us . . .”

Esteban said, “He's gotten too good a look at her.”

“I know it,” Joe said.

Graciela said, “He turned it into a game.”

“What?”

“Hunting me. He kept laughing like a girl.”

Joe looked at the sailor and the kid looked back at him. The fear lived far back in the young man's eyes, but the rest of him was pure defiance and backwoods grit.

“You want me to beg, you barking up the wrong—”

Joe shot him in the face and the exit hole splattered pink all over the ferns, and the alligators thrashed in anticipation.

Graciela let out a small involuntary cry and Joe might have as well. Esteban caught his eye and nodded, thanks, Joe realized, for doing what they all knew had to be done but which none had been willing to do. Hell, Joe—standing in the sound of the gunshot, the cordite smell of it, a wisp of smoke trailing from the barrel of the .32 no more substantial than the smoke from one of his cigarettes—couldn't believe he'd actually done it.

A man lay dead at his feet. Dead, on some fundamental level, only because Joe had been born.

They climbed into the scout without another word. As if they'd been waiting for permission, two alligators came at the body at once—one walking out of the mangroves with the steady waddle of an overweight dog and the other gliding up through the water and the lily pads beside the scout's tires.

Esteban drove away as both reptiles reached the body at the same time. One took an arm, the other went for a leg.

Back in the pines, Esteban drove southeast along the edge of the swamp, running parallel to the road, but not turning toward it yet.

Joe and Graciela sat in the backseat. Alligators and humans weren't the only predators in the swamp that day: a panther stood at the edge of the waterline, lapping up the copper water. It was the same tan color as some of the trees, and Joe might have missed it altogether if it didn't look up as they passed from twenty yards away. It was at least five feet long, wet limbs all grace and muscle. Its underbelly and throat were creamy white, and steam rose off its wet fur as it considered the car. Actually, it wasn't considering the car, it was considering him. Joe met its liquid eyes, as ancient, yellow, and pitiless as the sun. For a moment, in his jagged exhaustion he thought he heard its voice in his head.

You can't outrun this
.

What's
this
? he wanted to ask, but Esteban turned the wheel and they left the edge of the swamp and bounced violently over the roots of a fallen tree, and when Joe looked again the panther was gone. He scanned the trees to catch another glimpse but he never saw it again.

“You see that cat?”

Graciela stared at him.

“The panther,” he said, holding his arms wide.

Her eyes narrowed like she worried he might have sunstroke. She shook her head. She was a mess—more scratches on her body than skin it seemed. Her face was swollen from where he'd hit her, of course, and the mosquitoes and deerflies had feasted on her—and not just them but the fire ants as well, leaving behind their white welts with red rings all over her feet and calves. Her dress was torn at the shoulder and over her left hip and the hem was shredded. Her shoes were gone.

“You can put it away,” she said.

Joe followed her gaze, saw that he still held the gun in his right hand. He thumbed the safety on and placed it in the holster behind his back.

Esteban pulled out onto 41 and stomped the gas so hard the scout shuddered in place before streaking down the road. Joe looked out at the crushed-shell pavement racing away from them, at the merciless sun in the merciless sky.

“He would have killed me.” Her wet hair blew across her face and neck.

“I know.”

“He hunted me like a squirrel for his lunch. He kept saying, ‘Honey, honey, I will put one in your leg, honey, and then have at you.' Does ‘have at you' mean . . . ?”