World Gone By: A Novel (13 page)

Lucius dropped his knife and extended his hand across the table.

Joe had to lean forward to shake it.

“I, for one, hope you are among the living, Joe, at least as long as I am.”

They broke the handshake.

Along the shoreline, several Negro children fished from a canted pier in waters turned chalky with phosphorous debris. Behind the Negro children, the green and yellow jungle was pocked with small shacks. Back behind the shacks, a white cross rose from the local church, which didn’t appear much bigger or much better than the shacks. On the opposite shoreline, the trees had all been cut away and the road ran close to the riverbank and Joe saw Al Butters, clear as day, puttering along in his car.

“What about you?” Lucius said to Rico.

“What about me?”

“Are you your brother’s keeper?”

“Not that I’m aware.”

“Then why are you here?”

Rico gave Lucius a befuddled smile. “Wanted to get out of the city for a day, see some country. You know how it is.”

“Not really.” Lucius wasn’t smiling. “You’re a crew boss, aren’t you?”

“Yup.”

“Youngest in the organization.”

“I guess.”

“A prodigy like your mentor here was.”

“Just a guy, Lucius, going about his business.”

“So this is business? You’re here on business.”

Rico lit a cigarette, trying hard to look casual. “No. Just came to lend support.”

Lucius gestured at Joe. “Support for him?”

“Yeah.”

“But why does he need support?”

“He doesn’t.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I told you.”

“Tell me again.”

“I felt like taking a ride.”

Lucius’s face was very still. “Or did you want to bear witness?”

“To what?”

“To whatever occurs here today.”

Rico squared himself a bit and his eyes grew smaller. “All that’s occurring here today is a few business associates catching up.”

“And one associate bribing another to protect a third party.”

“And that.”

Lucius poured himself a third glass of wine. “I think you came out here to bear witness to my promises, in which case you presume I could renege at a later date. Either that, or you came in the futile hopes of protecting your friend, in which case you take me for the kind of man who would offer his guests food, wine, and shelter and then hurt them. Which would be a disgraceful transgression. In either proposition, Enrico, your presence here is an insult.” He turned to Joe. “And you, you’re even worse. You think those snipers out in the trees escaped my notice? Those are my trees. This is my water. Avilka.”

The yellow-haired
Androphagi
appeared. He knelt by Lucius and
Lucius spoke into his ear. Avilka nodded several times and then stood. He left his boss’s side and headed down to the lower deck.

Lucius smiled at Joe. “You send a troll from the fucking Bunsford Mob to keep watch? Where’s the respect, Joe? The common courtesy?”

“I wasn’t showing disrespect to you, Lucius. I was showing respect to the Bunsfords because I landed my plane in their territory last week.”

“And then brought their stink into mine?” Lucius drank more wine, his jaw working, his eyes moving from side to side, out toward the water, in toward himself. “Lucky for you,” he said, “I’m not easily offended.”

Ogden Semple and Avilka appeared by the bow. Ogden came to their table with a large manila envelope that he handed to Lucius.

Lucius tossed the envelope onto Joe’s lap. “Her ten percent. Count it if you want.”

“No need,” Joe said.

The boat veered toward the shoreline before it angled right and completed its turn in the river. They were headed back, the heavy motors working harder now, growing louder.

“You’re not playing me for a fool, are you, Joe?”

“I can’t even imagine how a fella would go about that, Lucius.”

“People have tried. Would that surprise you to hear?”

“Yes,” Joe said.

Lucius opened his cigarette case and before he had the cigarette to his lips, Ogden Semple held a lighter underneath it.

“Would that surprise you to hear, Ogden?”

Ogden snapped the lighter closed. “Very much, sir.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because no one plays you for a fool.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a king.”

Lucius nodded. At first it appeared to Joe as if he were simply nodding in agreement with Ogden, but then two of the
Androphagi
stepped out of the group and one stabbed Ogden in the back while the other stabbed his chest. They worked quickly, putting sixteen or seventeen holes in the man within as many seconds. Sharp yelps left his mouth, then small grunts. When his killers stepped away from him, his blood splattered their bare chests. Ogden fell to his knees on the deck. He looked up at Lucius, confused, one arm trying to hold on to parts of him that kept slithering from the holes in his belly.

Lucius told Ogden, “Don’t you ever tell anyone—in this life or the next—that I’m unwell.”

Ogden started to respond, but Avilka knelt behind him and used the curved blade to open his throat. It spilled its contents down onto the mess that was the rest of him and he lay on the deck and closed his one good eye.

Out on the river, a white heron flapped its large white wings and glided past the houseboat.

Lucius locked eyes with Joe and gestured at the corpse. “How do you think I
feel
about that? Good or bad?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Guess.”

“Bad.”

“Why?”

“He worked for you for a long time.”

Lucius shrugged. “The truth is, I don’t feel anything at all. For him. For any living thing. And I can’t remember the last time I did. Yet, under the watchful eyes of God,” he said, and squinted up at the sun, “I thrive.”

“THINK THEY ATE HIM?” Rico asked as he drove them west on 32.

“I have no opinion on the subject.” Joe took a swig from the pint of rye they’d bought at a roadside fruit stand manned by two Indian children and an old woman. He passed it across the seat to Rico, who took a swig of his own.

“What is
wrong
with that guy?”

“Another thing I couldn’t begin to guess at.”

They drove in silence for a bit and passed the bottle back and forth enough times that the flora around them grew sharper and greener.

“I mean, all right, look, I’ve killed guys,” Rico said. “Never killed a woman or a kid.”

Joe looked at him.

“Not intentionally,” Rico said. “That Chinese kid was just bad luck. You killed guys, right?”

“Of course.”

“But there was a reason.”

“I thought so at the time.”

“There was no
reason
here. Fucking guy let slip to us that his boss had a cold, and now he’s fucking
dead
? What kind of standards are these?”

Joe could feel that boat in his pores, wished he could scrub it from his scalp.

“I recognized the girl from somewhere,” Rico said. “Was that the one used to bump uglies with Georgie B?”

Joe shook his head. “Bobby O.”

Rico snapped his fingers. “Right, right.”

“Used to come into the Calypso Club.”

“Yeah, no, now I remember her. Shit. She’d set knees to knocking, that one.”

“Not anymore.”

“Not anymore.”

Rico let loose a low, slow whistle. “Girl had some
power
.”

Joe nodded and then they looked at each other and said it together: “Not anymore.”

“Girl thinks she has power in her pussy, and maybe sometimes she’s right, for a while. We think we have it in our balls and our muscle. And maybe we’re right. For a while.” Rico shook his head ruefully. “A little, little while.”

Joe nodded. Power—most power anyway, certainly Vidalia’s brand of it—was the fly that called itself a hawk. It could only govern those who agreed to call it a hawk instead of a fly, a tiger instead of a cat, a king instead of a man.

They drove the steaming white road under the white sun, the cypress spilling, wilting, and surging on either side of them. No one had developed this stretch of the state yet. It teemed with
unchecked jungle growth, gators, panthers, and oily swamps that glistened under thin layers of green fog.

Rico said, “You got, what, a week until Ash Wednesday?”

“Yup.”

“Christ, Joe. Christ.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No. Spit it out.”

“It’ll insult your intelligence.”

“Insult away.”

Rico chewed on it for a few moments, his eyes hard on the road. “I wasn’t a believer until I got a whiff of Lucius again and remembered what a demented fucking twist he is. If he hadn’t killed Ogden today, he would have killed Al Butters. Or that girl. Or one of us. Point was, he was going to kill someone today. And just because. No better reason than that. So if he’s anywhere near this contract that’s out on you, you gotta vamoose until the smoke clears. Shit, just lay low at your farm for a week or two. Let me and my guys find out who’s holding the paper on you, find out why, and cancel their fucking check.” He looked over at Joe. “Be a pleasure, believe me.”

Joe said, “I appreciate the offer.”

Rico slapped the wheel. “Don’t give me a ‘but’ here. Don’t you do it, Joe.”

“But I got things to attend to in town.”

“They’ll
keep
.” He looked over at him. “I don’t like the way this feels. That’s all I’m saying. Been a thug my whole life. Built up a pretty good instinct in that time, and my instinct says you fucking duck out.”

Joe looked out the window.

“There’s no shame in it, Joe. You’re not running. You’re taking a vacation.”

“We’ll see,” Joe said. “See what it takes to tidy up my affairs.”

“All right, look, promise me one thing then—let me or Dion, your pick, put some guards on your house.”

“On my house,” Joe agreed. “Not me. If I feel like moving without them, I’m moving. Deal?”

“Yeah. Fine.” He looked over at Joe and smiled.

“What?”

“Now, I
know
you’re fucking someone local. Who is she?”

“Just drive.”

“Okay, okay.” He chuckled softly. “Knew it.”

They drove for a bit without saying anything and then Rico exhaled through pursed lips and Joe knew who he was thinking about.

Rico’s fingers were white against the wheel. “I mean, again, I’ve killed people. But that guy? He’s a fucking savage.”

Joe stared out at all the prehistoric flora and told himself that’s exactly what was troubling him, that’s what was gnawing at his soul—the difference between him and a savage.

He told himself—and then he pledged to himself—that there was a difference.

There was.

There was.

A couple more snorts of rye, and he almost believed it.

AT RAIFORD, Rico waited in the car while Joe and the warden again shook hands on the dirt path that ringed the prison. The warden stood watch while Joe walked up the hill to the fence line. Theresa approached the chain-link and Joe opened the envelope so she could see inside.

“There’s your ten. I’ll bank it in the morning.”

She nodded and looked through the fence at him. “You drunk?”

“What gives you that impression?”

“The careful way you walked up here.”

“I’ve had a few.” Joe lit a cigarette. “All right, let’s get to it.”

She laced her fingers through the fence. “Billy Kovich. And the hit’s going to happen in Ybor, so I presume while you’re at home.”

“I’d never let Billy Kovich enter my house.”

“He’ll use a rifle then. He’s a hell of a sniper. What he did in the Great War is what I heard.”

Gone were the days Joe would be sitting by the window in his study.

“Or,” Theresa said, “he’ll take you on the street, maybe near that coffee shop you like or anyplace you do something on a regular basis. And if you stop your routines, he’ll know you’re onto him.”

“And go away?”

She let loose a cold, sharp laugh and shook her head. “He’ll accelerate the timetable. I would, anyway.”

Joe nodded. He looked down and noticed his shoes were heavily scuffed from his day in the boonies.

“Why don’t you take a vacation?” Theresa asked.

Joe stared back at her for a bit. “Because I think someone wants me out of town. All these pieces just fell into place too neatly.”

“So you don’t think anyone’s trying to kill you?”

“Rationally speaking, I think the odds are about two-to-one.”

“And you’re comfy with those odds?”

“You kidding?” he said. “I’m scared shitless.”

“Then run.”

He shrugged. “Lived my whole life on the theory that my brains are more helpful than my balls. But this is the first time I can’t tell which of them is making the decisions.”

“So you’re gonna stick around.”

He nodded.

“Well, it’s been nice knowing you.” She indicated the bag in his
hand. “If you don’t mind, make that deposit sooner rather than later.”

He smiled. “First thing in the morning.”

“Good-bye, Joe.”

“ ’Bye, Theresa.”

He walked back down the hill, imagining crosshairs on his spine, on his chest, on the center of his forehead.

VANESSA WASN’T IN ROOM 107 WHEN HE ARRIVED, she was down on the dock. It creaked when he stepped onto it, and he flashed on the boy waiting for him here the last time, but he kept his stride even and a smile on his face and sat down across from her.

“If I said I didn’t feel like it today,” she said, “would you be offended?”

“No,” he said and was surprised to realize he was telling the truth.

“You could sit beside me, though.” She patted the wood by her hip.

He crab-walked over and sat so that their hips touched and he took her hand in his and they sat looking out at the water.

“Something bothering you?” he asked.

“Oh,” she said, “everything and nothing.”

“Want to talk about it?”

She shook her head. “Not particularly, no. You?”

“Hmm?”

“Want to talk about your problems?”

“Who says I have problems?”

She gave that a soft chuckle and squeezed his hand. “So let’s just sit here and not talk.”

They did.

After a while, he said, “This is nice.”

“It is,” she said with mournful surprise, “isn’t it?”