World Gone By: A Novel (15 page)

“In that case, take consolation—there’s a God.”

Joe frowned. “Excuse me?”

“If there is such a thing as ghosts, that means there’s an afterlife. Of some kind anyway. If there’s an afterlife, then it stands to reason there’s a supreme being. Ergo, ghosts are proof of God.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts.”

“I don’t. Hence, I don’t believe in God.”

WHEN GRETA BEGAN TO SCREAM TOO LOUDLY, Ned gagged her. He tied her to the bed, tied her ankles as well. She was feverish by this point, delirious and babbling, and he wiped her forehead, whispered his hatred into her ears and rattled off every statistic he’d ever learned in med school about the incidence levels of retardation, mongolism, suicidal tendencies, and severe depression in children of incest.

“The line must be broken,” he whispered while nibbling on the outer edge of her ear. He fondled her engorged breasts and slapped her face or pinched her throat to keep her awake while the eclampsia first took hold and then took root. And he was certain he’d never seen a more beautiful woman than this one who died three hours and eleven minutes into labor.

Her child, product of a sin so unholy that it was the only sin outlawed by every civilization known on this earth, entered the world stillborn, its eyes scrunched tight against the horrors that would have awaited it.

LENOX LEANED BACK ON HIS STOOL and straightened his trouser crease at the knee. “Here’s why I don’t believe in ghosts—it’s boring.”

“Sorry?”

“It’s boring,” Lenox said. “To be a ghost. I mean, what do you do with your time? You walk through places where you don’t belong at three in the morning, scare the hell out of the cat or, I
dunno, the missus, and then you vanish into a wall. What’s that take—a minute tops? What’re you doing with the rest of your time? Because, as I said, if you believe in ghosts, then you believe in an afterlife. You have to. The two go together. No afterlife, no ghosts, we’re all just decayed meat for the worms. But if ghosts, then an afterlife, a spirit world. And whatever’s going on in the rest of the spirit world or heaven or limbo or wherever you are, I have to assume it’s at least slightly more interesting than hanging around your house all day, waiting for you to come home so it can stare at you and say nothing.”

Joe chuckled. “When you put it that way . . .”

Lenox scribbled on his prescription pad. “Take that to the pharmacist on Seventh.”

Joe pocketed the prescription. “What is it?”

“Chloral hydrate drops. Don’t exceed the dosage or you’ll sleep for a month. But it’ll help you at night.”

“What about during the day?”

“If you’re well rested, you won’t be seeing visions, day or night.” Lenox’s glasses slipped down his nose. “If the visions or the sleeplessness persist, call me and I’ll prescribe something stronger.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “I will. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

After Joe left, Ned Lenox lit a cigarette and noticed, not for the first time, how yellow the nicotine had made the flesh between the index and middle fingers of his right hand. The nails too. He ignored the baby who sat shivering under the examining table. She’d sat there the whole of Joe Coughlin’s visit, rocking and shivering in place, even as her father had lied about the afterlife being too boring a place for a ghost to live. Unlike in life, however, her eyes were open, her face unscrunched. She looked a
bit like her mother, around the jawline mostly, but the rest of her was all Lenox.

Ned Lenox got down on the floor across from her because he had no idea how long she’d stay and he liked her company. In the first few years after he’d killed her and killed her mother, she had come to him nightly, crawling around the floor and the bed and even the walls a few times. For the first year, she made no noise, but by the second she was squawking, letting loose high-pitched and hungry cries. To avoid going home, Ned worked himself to the bone in his office, making house calls, and finally as the field medic to the Bartolo Family and their friends in the underworld. He enjoyed the latter the most. He had no romantic notions about men like Joe Coughlin and the life they lived—it was steeped in greed and penalty; the men who lived it died bloody or made sure others did. No overriding principle or moral code was at work except those that served self-interest while reinforcing the illusion of the opposite—that all was done for the greater good of the family.

Still, Ned found an honesty in this world that he found lacking most other places. All the men he met in this world were prisoners to their sins, hostages to their own broken parts. You didn’t become a Joe Coughlin or a Dion Bartolo or an Enrico DiGiacomo because your soul was whole and your heart was untethered. You became part of this world because your sins and your sorrows had multiplied so prodigiously you weren’t fit for any other type of life.

On the bloodiest day of the Tampa Rum War, March 15, 1933, twenty-five men died. Some had been shot, others hung, stabbed, or run over by automobiles. They’d been soldiers, yes, adult men who’d made their choices to live this life, but some had died screaming and others begging to live on behalf of their wives and their children.
Twelve had been massacred on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico and then kicked overboard to be consumed by sharks. When Ned Lenox had heard of the feeding frenzy, he’d prayed all twelve of those men had actually been dead by the time their bodies hit the water. Joe Coughlin had ordered their deaths. The same reasonable, kind-eyed, impeccably tailored Joe Coughlin who’d come to this office complaining of visions.

If the sins were big enough, Ned knew, the guilt didn’t recede. It grew stronger. It took other forms. Sometimes, when outrage begat outrage with enough frequency, it threatened the fabric of the universe, and the universe pushed back.

Ned crossed his legs and watched his baby stare back at him, a gnarled and malignant almost-infant. When she opened her toothless mouth and spoke for the first time in twenty-four years, he wasn’t surprised. Nor was he surprised that her voice was her mother’s.

“I’m in your lungs,” she told him.

AFTER HE CLOCKED OUT OF HIS JOB as a dispatcher at Bay Palms Taxi Service, Billy Kovich stopped at the Tiny Tap on Morrison for a shot and a beer. The shot was always Old Thompson, the beer was always Schlitz, and Billy Kovich never had more than one of each. From the Tiny Tap, he drove over to Gorrie Elementary and picked up his son, Walter, after band practice. Walter played the tenor drum, not so well he’d get a scholarship but not so poorly his place in the band was ever in jeopardy. With his grades, he wouldn’t need a music scholarship anyway. Walter, twelve years old and nearsighted, was the biggest surprise in Billy Kovich’s life. His other two children, Ethel and Willie, were in high school when Penelope became pregnant with Walter. She was forty-two at the time and Billy and the doctors had worried about a woman so small and frail delivering a child at that age. Privately, one of the doctors
warned Billy the baby would probably never come to term. But come to term he did, and the delivery went quite smoothly. If Walter had been born just two months later, however, they probably would have discovered the tumor on her ovary.

She passed when Walter was barely a year old, just starting to walk, teetering from side to side like a drunken Indian at his mother’s wake, a quiet boy even then, not so much introspective as insular. Smart as a whip, though. He’d already skipped a grade—third—and his teacher this year, a young man named Artemis Gayle, freshly arrived from Vanderbilt, told Billy that he might want to think about sending the boy to Tampa Catholic next fall if he thought Walter was ready for it. Intellectually there was no question he was, Gayle promised, they only had to question whether he was emotionally capable of handling the transition.

“Boy doesn’t show much emotion,” Billy said. “Never has.”

“Well, there’s not much left we can teach him here.”

Driving home to the Dutch colonial on Obispo where all three of his children had grown up, Billy asked Walter how he felt about the possibility of entering high school in the fall. His son looked up from the textbook on his lap and adjusted his glasses. “That would be fine, Billy.”

Walter had stopped calling Billy “Dad” when he was nine. He’d made a perfectly reasonable argument concerning the disadvantage at which a child found himself by the presumption of paternal superiority. If either Ethel or Willie had made the same argument, Billy would have told them they’d call him “Dad” for the rest of their lives and like it or he’d tan their hides. But those threats never worked on Walter; the one time Billy had spanked his son, the look of stunned outrage followed by bewildered contempt that had overtaken the boy’s features had haunted Billy, haunted him still, far more than the faces of all the men he’d killed over the years.

They pulled into the carport of the house on Obispo and went inside. Walter put his drum and books upstairs while Billy fried up liver and onions and sautéed green beans and slices of potato. Billy loved to cook. Had since the army. He’d joined up in 1916, and was assigned to the kitchen at Camp Custer his first years in the military, but then war broke out and they sent him over to France, where his unit commander discovered just how good Corporal William Kovich was at killing men from great distances with a rifle.

After the war, Billy drifted to New Orleans, where he killed a man in a bar fight with his thumb. It was the kind of bar where men were often maimed, though this was the first one in six years who’d gotten himself killed. When the police arrived, every patron in the place told them the murderer of poor Delson Mitchelson there was a crazed Cajun name of Boudreaux who’d hightailed it out of there, probably right back to Algiers. Billy found out later that the Cajun in question, Phillippe Boudreaux, had been killed months before, after a card game when he’d been caught with a fifth jack. Some boys fed him to the gators during a full moon. Ever since, he’d been blamed for just about every homicide in the Quarter and two in Storyville. The owner of the bar was sitting at a table in the corner that night; he introduced himself as Lucius Brozjuola (“My friends call me King Lucius”). He told Billy he’d heard the country would be going dry soon and he had an idea how to make some money off that farther south in Tampa, was looking for a few men who knew how to handle themselves to join him.

So Billy ended up in Tampa, where he lived a quiet and respectably lower-middle-class life except when he was ordered to kill people for money. The money went into land in which he invested during the Florida Land Boom of the early 1920s. But whereas others bought swampland and oceanfront, Billy bought all his parcels in downtown Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Clearwater. He always
bought near courthouses, police stations, and hospitals because he’d noticed that’s where communities tended to sprout up. At some point, the community would expand and need to buy one of Billy Kovich’s small plots, which were usually waiting undeveloped though properly maintained for the day someone would make an offer. Billy never made a killing on any of these deals, but he always made a sound profit and one which, most important, explained how a dispatcher for Bay Palms Taxi Service could send a daughter to Hunter Teachers College in Miami, a son to Emory University, and put himself into a fresh new Dodge every three years. No one in the cities Billy transacted with was going to look too closely into the finances of a man who gave them a fair shake on a good piece of land.

After dinner, Billy and Walter washed the dishes and discussed, as everyone did, the war Over There and how long it might take to win it.

Drying the last dish, Walter asked, “What if we don’t win?”

With that Kraut asshole bogging down in Russia, Billy didn’t see how the Nazis could sustain their efforts more than a few years. It was a simple matter of oil—the more they wasted in Russia, the less they could protect their supplies of the same in North Africa and Romania.

He explained this to his youngest, and Walter chewed on it thoughtfully as he did all things.

“But if Hitler takes the Soviet oil fields in Baku?”

“Well, sure,” Billy said. “Then, yes, the Soviets could lose and Europe would probably fall. But what would it mean to us? It’s not like they’re going to head right over here.”

“Why not?” the boy said.

And Billy didn’t have an answer for that.

So those were the worries of young boys right now. The great
boogeyman, Adolf, was on the march and willing to cross the sea eventually.

He gave the back of his son’s neck a light squeeze. “Guess we’ll fall off that bridge if we come to it, but that’s a big
if,
and you still have homework to do.”

They went upstairs together. Walter went to his room and straight to his desk, one textbook butterflied on his desk, three others stacked beside it.

“Don’t read too late,” Billy told his son, and the boy nodded in a way that indicated he’d ignore the advice.

Billy went down the hall to the room where all three of his children had been conceived and where Penelope had breathed her last. He had a much deeper acquaintanceship with death than most men. By his own count, he’d killed twenty-eight men in his life for sure, possibly as high as fifty, if you wanted to get picky about which bullets were his and which belonged to other members of the company during the four-day bloodbath in Soissons. His cheeks and nose had been the recipients of a half dozen final breaths. He’d watched over a dozen lights leave the eyes of other men. He’d watched it leave his wife’s eyes.

And all he could tell anyone about death is that you were smart to fear it. He’d seen no indication of a world beyond this one. Never seen peace settle into the gaze of the dying nor the relief of a man whose questions were about to be answered. Just the end. Always too soon, always both a surprise and a grim confirmation of a lifelong suspicion.

In the bedroom he’d shared with his wife, he changed into an old sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off and a pair of paint-stained trousers and went downstairs to hit the bag.

It hung from a chain just past the carport and Billy hit it without finesse, though with a small measure of fluidity. He didn’t hit
it particularly hard or particularly fast but after half an hour his arms felt like they were filled with wet sand and his heart scampered madly in his chest and his sweatshirt was soaked through with sweat.

He showered quickly, the only way one could shower these days, and changed into his pajamas. He checked in on Walter and Walter assured him he wouldn’t stay up much later and asked him to close the door behind him. He left his son to his geography textbook and went downstairs for the two beers he allowed himself after hitting the bag.

Joe Coughlin sat in his kitchen, a gun in his hand. The gun had a Maxim silencer attached. Joe had removed two beers from the icebox and placed them beside a can opener on the table in front of an empty chair so Billy would not only know where to sit but be aware that Joe had been studying his nightly routine. Joe flicked his eye at the chair and Billy sat in it.

“Open a beer,” Joe said.

Billy popped a hole in the top of the can and another opposite it to help with the flow and he took a pull from it before setting it down again.

Joe Coughlin said, “We don’t need to play the game where you ask why I’m here, do we?”

Billy thought about it and shook his head. Just above his right knee, strapped to the underside of the table, was a knife. It wouldn’t do him much good from where he was sitting, but if he could slip it up his sleeve and then get close enough in a few minutes, keep the conversation easy, he might have a chance.

“I’m here,” Joe said, “because I know you were offered the contract on me.”

Billy said, “I wasn’t offered it. I did hear about it, though.”

“If you weren’t offered it, who was?”

“My guess? Mank.”

“He’s in a sanitarium in Pensacola.”

“So it’s not him.”

“Looks highly unlikely.”

“Why me?”

“They wanted someone who could get close to me.”

Billy snorted. “No one gets close to you. You don’t think you’d have been a little suspicious if I popped into your liquor company one day or ran into you at that coffee shop you like in Ybor? You’re not a get-in-close kind of hit. You’re a distance kill.”

“But you have long-range skills, Billy, don’t you?”

They heard a soft scraping from above as Walter shifted the position of his chair. When they both looked up toward the sound, Billy dropped his right hand below the table.

“My son.”

“I know,” Joe said.

“What if he comes down for a glass of milk or something? You thought of that?”

Joe nodded. “We’ll hear him on the stairs. They creak, particularly at the top.”

If he knew that much about the house, what else did he know?

“And if you hear him coming?”

Joe rolled his shoulders slightly. “If I think you’re still a danger, I’ll shoot you in the face and let myself out that side door.”

“And if you don’t?”

“Then your son will come down and find two fellas talking.”

“About what?”

“The cab business.”

“You’re wearing an eighty-dollar suit.”

“Hundred and ten,” Joe said. “We’ll say I’m the owner.”

Another scrape followed by footsteps. They heard the telltale
squeak of Walter’s door as he left the bedroom. Then his footsteps were in the hallway, heading toward the stairs.

Billy reached up for the knife.

Upstairs, Walter entered the bathroom and closed the door behind him.

Billy found nothing under the table but wood. He raised the hand and lifted his beer with it, saw Joe watching him.

“It’s in your toolshed.” Joe crossed his right ankle over his left knee. “So’s the .22 that was behind the icebox, the other .22 on the shelf above the plates, the .38 under the living room couch, the .32 in your bedroom, and the Springfield in your closet.”

Upstairs, the toilet flushed.

“If I failed to mention any weapons,” Joe said, “you might want to consider whether that was on purpose. All in all, I think this would go a lot quicker if you stopped thinking about getting to a gun or a knife and just answered my questions.”

Billy took a sip of beer as Walter left the bathroom and walked past the stairs. Again, the squeak of his door, this time as he closed it, followed by another scrape of his chair.

Billy said, “Ask away, Mr. Coughlin.”

“Joe.”

“Ask away, Joe.”

“Who hired you?”

“I told you I wasn’t hired. I just heard about it. Mank’s the guy you should be worried about.”

“Who did the hiring?”

“King Lucius, but I suspect he was subcontracting.”

“For who?”

“No idea.”

“And you were supposed to do it Wednesday?”

Billy cocked his head at that.

“No?” Joe said.

“No,” Billy said. “First off, I didn’t take the contract. I wasn’t even offered it. Second, why would you have heard the date?”

“Beats me,” Joe said. “But I heard the contract was supposed to go down on Ash Wednesday.”

Billy laughed and drank some more beer.

“What’s funny?”

“Nothing.” Billy shrugged. “It’s just ridiculous. Ash Wednesday? Why not Palm Sunday or Arbor Day? We want someone dead, we just kill him on It’s Your Worst Wednesday Werner Day or Farewell to Fucking Freddy Friday. Christ, Joe, you’re on the Commission. You know how this works.”

Joe watched Billy Kovich drain his first Schlitz and use the can opener on the second. He had the most open face, Billy. A look at that face and you immediately relaxed. It was boyish and rugged at the same time, the face of a solid Working-Class Everyman. Guy who’d help you change a flat and take you up on the offer of a beer afterward, end up paying for the second and third rounds himself. If he said he was the high school football coach or the town mechanic or managed the hardware store, you’d nod and think,
Of course
.

When King Lucius wanted to send a message back in ’37, Billy Kovich took Edwin Musante out on a boat, tied his hands behind his back, trussed his legs, sliced parts of both legs and his abdomen with a razor, and then tied a chain off under his armpits. Edwin Musante was alive and fully conscious when Billy Kovich tossed him into the water, played out the chain, and began motoring slowly through Tampa Bay. Paudric Dean, who five years later would himself become a victim of Billy, was also on the boat that day and would speak in a voice hushed with shock about what it had sounded like after the first two sharks showed up. How they took tentative bites
at first, given some pause by the pitch of Edwin Musante’s screams. But when the other three sharks appeared a hundred yards away, the first two went for bigger bites. Once all five had met for the feeding frenzy, Billy calmly cut the line to the boat and motored back to port.