World Gone By: A Novel (7 page)

He’d chosen the alley for its Dumpsters. There were a full dozen of them on either side, and even if you could make it past them—and no car Montooth was aware of could—two-thirds of the way down the alley, Little Bo’s flophouse backed its ass another ten feet deeper into the alley than any of its neighbors. Couldn’t slide a fart through that end of the alley without cutting it in half first.

Ping ping ping ping ping ping.

And then nothing but the revving of an engine, the white boys trying to wrap their heads around the fact that there’d be no driving through this alley. Not tonight, not any night.

Montooth was halfway down the alley, behind the Dumpster shared by the eye doctor and the butcher, when the Plymouth peeled out in reverse. He heard it out on Tenth Street, racing around the block, hoping to catch him coming out by the flophouse. Instead, he went back up the alley the way he’d come, took a left at the end and stepped into the first doorway on his left, doorway of a place had gone belly-up like so many others during the prior decade and never found its second wind. The windows had been replaced by dark green metal sheets, and the light socket above the doorway had been empty since 1938. Unless you were standing two feet away with a lighthouse beam on your shoulder, you wouldn’t see a man standing in this doorway until he wanted you to, until, perhaps, it was too fucking late to do anything about it.

The Plymouth came around the block for another look. When it was maybe ten feet short of the alley, Montooth stepped out into the street, took a long breath and careful aim, and fired straight through the windshield.

AS THEY CAME BACK around the block and Wyatt, sitting in the backseat with his Thompson, got a good look at all the cars he’d
strafed in the first pass, he couldn’t connect the damage to himself. It seemed impossible that little Wyatt Pettigrue, of Slausen Avenue, could have grown up to be a man who fired a machine gun at other men. But it was a strange world. If Wyatt was overseas doing this very thing because his government had ordered him to, he’d be a hero. But he was doing it on the streets of Ybor because his boss had ordered him to. Wyatt failed to see any distinction, even if the world probably would.

Kermit, the driver, never even saw Montooth Dix step into the street. The soft rain had returned and Kermit was reaching for the wiper switch when Wyatt saw—actually, just sensed—movement to their left. He only saw Montooth’s face in the muzzle flash, it appeared out of the darkness like something disconnected from the man’s body, like a death mask in a fun house, and then the windshield spiderwebbed. Kermit grunted and wet pieces of him splashed onto Wyatt’s face. Kermit slumped forward, his head spraying itself all over the car, a clogged-drain sound coming from him, but the car actually accelerating. Wyatt pulled Kermit’s shoulder to get his foot off the gas, but they hit the curb and then a pole. Wyatt’s nose broke against the back of the seat, and he was thrown into the back of the car again, where he rattled around for a bit.

His hair caught fire. It felt like that anyway. But when he slapped at his head he found a hand there instead of flame. A big hand, its fingers sunk deep in his hair as it settled into its grip and pulled. Wyatt was lifted off the backseat of the Plymouth and pulled through the window, his spine bump-bump-bumping off the sill. As his feet cleared the window, Montooth Dix twisted his body and dropped him. Wyatt found himself on his knees in the middle of Tenth Street, looking up at the barrel of a .44 Smith.

“My uncle gave me this gun,” Montooth Dix said. “Said it’d never fail me, and it never has. What I’m telling you, white boy, is I
don’t need a hundred rounds to hit my target and every fucking car on the street. Who sent you?”

Wyatt knew the moment he answered the question he was a dead man. But if he could keep Montooth talking, maybe the police—fuck,
somebody
—would come. He’d made an awful racket on these streets in the last few minutes.

“Ain’t gonna ask you twice,” Montooth Dix said.

“Your uncle gave you that gun?” Wyatt said.

Dix nodded, the impatience in his eyes as clear as day.

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen.”

“I saw you visit his grave a couple times,” Wyatt said. “Your parents’ too. Family’s important.”

“That so?” Montooth said.

Wyatt nodded solemnly. He could feel the wet street soaking into his knees. He was pretty sure his left forearm was fractured. Was that a siren in the distance?

“I became a father today,” Wyatt told the man.

“Yeah?” Montooth shot Wyatt twice in the chest. He put another round in the man’s forehead to be sure, then looked into the dead man’s eyes and spit on the street. “Who’s to say you would’ve been any good at it?”

THE SUNDOWNER MOTOR LODGE in St. Petersburg had closed to the public in the mid-1930s. Its two low-slung, white stucco main buildings and small front office formed a horseshoe around a flat oval of dirt where grass declined to grow or palms to take root. The buildings had remained sitting behind a bait and tackle shop on Gandy Boulevard for seven or eight years now, the weeds allowed to grow tall around the edges of the property. The owners of the bait shop, two brothers, Patrick and Andrew Cantillon, also owned the sandwich shop next door and the boatyard behind the motel. The Cantillon brothers owned most of the small piers that jutted off the edge of the shoreline into Tampa Bay and made a comfortable profit selling blocks of ice and cold beer to the fishermen who left their spit of shoreline every morning before the light had licked the sky. They’d return around midday, redder
than rubies, skin as rough as the rope they used to tie off their boats.

The Cantillons had been in business with Joe back when they all were running rum across the Florida Straits. Joe was responsible for the lion’s share of their personal fortune. As a small token of their gratitude, Patrick and Andrew blocked off the best room in the former Sundowner for Joe’s use and Joe’s use only. The rest of the rooms were kept just as clean and fresh and were mostly used by old friends of the brothers who’d hit a patch of trouble—anything from a failed marriage to a trip on the lam.

Room 107, though, which faced the bay, was Joe’s. It was there that he made love to Vanessa Belgrave late Monday morning on sheets that smelled of bleach and starch and sea salt. Outside, the gulls fought over shrimp tails and fish bones. Inside, a black iron table fan squeaked and clacked.

Sometimes when he and Vanessa made love it felt like being wrapped in an undertow, spinning softly in a warm dark world with no guarantee he’d resurface. And in those moments, as long as he didn’t think of his son, he’d find himself happy at the prospect of never seeing this world again.

The Vanessa Belgrave the public saw—cool, imperious, so well bred that anything interesting or spontaneous had been bred out of her—was far from the truth of the woman. Behind closed doors, she was an explosion of carnal curiosity and goofy observations, hands down the funniest woman Joe had ever met. Sometimes she laughed so hard she snorted, a loud, wet, honking sound that was even more delightful because it emanated from such an otherwise graceful source.

Her parents didn’t approve of that laugh or an adolescent affinity for trousers, but they were never able to produce another child. Seven miscarriages, no sons, no more daughters. So once they
passed on, Sloane Amalgamated Industries—a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old company—would pass to their daughter.

She’d told Joe, “If the southern-gentlemen shareholders see a ditzy woman who would rather read Emily Dickinson than a trade confirmation summary, the war to steal the company from me will be declared immediately. And it’ll be over before it begins. But if they think I’m my father with slightly different appendages, and if they’re as afraid of me as they are of him, then the business runs another hundred years, as long as I have a son at some point.”

“And that’s what you want, to run the family business?”

“No. God, no. But what’s my choice—to let a multimillion-dollar corporation fade into insignificance on my watch? Only a child thinks life is about her wants.”

“But what
do
you want? If you could have it.”

“Gosh, Joe,” she’d said, batting her eyelashes, “just you, you big lug.” And then she’d jumped on him and covered his face in a pillow. “Admit it—that’s what you wanted to hear.”

He’d shaken his head, tried to let loose a very muffled “No.”

She’d given his head a few more rough shakes and then removed the pillow. Straddling him, slightly out of breath, she’d taken a drink of wine. “I want an end to irreconcilable wants.” She’d widened her eyes and mouth at him. “Drive that around the block, smarty-pants.” And then she’d poured the rest of her wine on his chest and licked it up.

That had been three months ago on a cool and rainy afternoon.

Now, on a warm, bright day with humidity in the air but not yet stultifying, Vanessa stood at the window with the sheet wrapped around her lower half and peeked outside through the crack in the curtains.

Joe joined her and looked out at the boatyard with its forlorn engine blocks blackening in the sun, its peeling iceboxes and flaking
diesel pumps. And beyond, the wobbly dock and the ever-present swarm of dark insects that hovered over this fetid end of the bay in shimmering fists.

Joe dropped his hand from the curtain and ran both palms along the sides of Vanessa’s torso, reintoxicated with her already, just minutes after he’d spent himself. He grew harder, if not hard, as he removed the sheet from around her waist and pressed himself to her. That’s as far as he went for the moment, content to feel her back against his chest, her ass against his thigh as he ran his palms lightly over her abdomen and buried his nose in her hair.

“Do you think we overdid it yesterday?” Vanessa asked.

“Overdid what?”

“Our alleged distaste for each other?”

“No.” Joe shook his head. “This is the beginning of our ‘thaw’ period. Next step— a ‘grudging respect’ will surely crop up between us. We’ll never be each other’s cup of tea, but people will admire our professionalism when we lay aside our clear distaste for each other to make a success of your foundation.” He slid one hand down over her pubic bone and ran his fingers through the hair there.

She leaned her head back and groaned into his neck. “I’m getting so tired of this.”

“Of this?” He removed his hand.

She grabbed the hand and placed it back in position. She let loose a small gasp as he found the magic spot with his middle finger. “No. Definitely not this. I’m sick of playing the role. The stuck-up bitch, the rich daddy’s girl.” Another small gasp. “Yes. Right there would be great.”

“Right there?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Her rib cage expanded as she sucked the air in through her nostrils. She exhaled through her mouth in one long slow breath.

“If you’re sick of the role,” he whispered in her ear, “stop playing it.”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, my lug, you know why.”

“Ah, yes, the family business.”

She spun in his arms. She gripped his wrist and put his hand right back where it had been, her eyes on his as she sat back on the windowsill and thrust against his fingers. A challenge rose in her blue eyes now. He’d tripped one of her wires, which reminded him that you couldn’t be as good at faking a persona as Vanessa was unless some of that persona wasn’t faked.

“Would
you
walk away from
your
career?” Her breath came quicker now, eyes still flashing with a complicated mix of indignation and desire.

“Depends.”

She dug her fingernails into his ass. “Bullshit.”

“For the right reason, I’d walk away.”

“Bull
shit,
” she repeated. She winced and bit her lip, and her fingernails, up by his hip now, dug deeper into his flesh. “You . . .” She puffed her cheeks and exhaled. “Never assume I’d give up something you wouldn’t give up yourself.”

She threw her head to the side and clutched his shoulder at the same time. When he entered her, her eyes widened and she bit his lips softly as he lifted her off the windowsill. At no point in the seven years since Graciela had died would he have imagined it possible, but he had no desire to ever shed himself of this woman. He had no desire to ever leave this room.

They fell back to the bed. Her orgasm took the form of a series of small shudders and one long low groan. Her eyes cleared and she smiled and looked down at him as she continued to move up and down on him.

“Smile,” she said.

“I thought I was smiling.”

“Give me all thousand watts.”

He did.

“God,” she said, “you put that smile together with your eyes and it’s a marvel you were ever convicted of anything. I bet it got you out of a hundred jams when you were a kid.”

“Ah, no,” Joe said.

“Bullshit.”

Joe shook his head. “Didn’t have it then. When I was a kid one of my brother’s called me the Cumberland Gap.”

She laughed. “Whatever for?”

“My two front teeth were gone. Seriously. I knocked ’em out when I was, like, not even three? I don’t remember doing it, but my brother said I took a spill and went face-first into a curb. So, yeah, Cumberland Gap.”

Vanessa said, “I truly cannot imagine you hideous.”

“Oh, I was hideous. And here’s the kicker—most kids’ real teeth come in at six, right? ’Round then? My others did. Not the front ones. They didn’t show up till I was almost eight.”

“No!”

“Yeah. Fucking embarrassing, I tell ya. I didn’t smile with an open mouth till I was about twenty.”

“Are we in love?” she asked him.

“
What
?” He went to move her off him.

She ground herself into him. “Or just very good at this part?”

“The latter,” he said.

“Even if we were in love—”

“Are you in love?”

“With you?” Her eyes widened. “Heavens, no.”

“Well, all right then.”

“But even if I were—”

“Which you’re not—”

“And neither are you.”

“Correct.”

“But if we
were
”—she took his hands and placed them on her hips and her smile was soft and sad—“it wouldn’t save us, would it?”

“From what?”

“From what the world out there wants of us.”

He said nothing. She lowered her chest to his.

“There was another shooting.” Vanessa’s fingers crept back and forth along his clavicle, her breath warm on his neck.

“What do you mean, another?”

“Well, those men the night before last. Those drug dealers shot by police. The man who committed suicide in his cell.”

“Uh-huh . . .”

“And then this morning, I heard it on the radio as I was pulling in, some Negro shot two white men in Ybor.”

Montooth Dix, Joe thought. Shit. Freddy Fucking DiGiacomo probably left the powwow at the church and went right into Brown Town to stir shit up.

Mother. Fucker.

“When was this?” he asked.

“Jonathan was called to the scene around . . .” She gave it some thought. “Two in the morning?”

“In Brown Town?”

She nodded. “He wants to be known as a hands-on mayor.”

And now Joe had his hands on his wife. He went to remove them but changed his mind and ran them over her hips in slow circles. Whatever was going on in the black section of Ybor right now, there wasn’t a damn thing Joe could do about it at the moment.

“When you sit for a haircut,” Vanessa asked, “which door do you watch? Front or back?”

Shit. The old fight. The one that had started five minutes after the first time they’d made love.

“I’m not the kind of guy who gets shot,” Joe said.

“No?” Her voice was bright and curious. “What are you?”

“I’m a businessman who’s slightly more corrupt than average.” He ran his palms over her rib cage.

“The newspapers keep calling you a gangster.”

“That’s because they lack imagination. You really want to talk about this?”

She rolled off him. “Yes.”

“I’ve never lied to you.”

“As far as I know.”

“Hey,” he said softly.

She closed her eyes, opened them. “Okay, you’ve never lied to me.”

“So
was
I a gangster?” He nodded. “Yes. Now I’m an advisor to people.”

“Criminals.”

He shrugged. “A friend of mine was Public Enemy Number Three about six years ago—”

She sat up quickly. “See, that’s what I’m saying. Who could begin a sentence, ‘A friend of mine was Public Enemy’ anything?”

Joe spoke evenly. “Guy who lived in the mansion next door? Threw people out of their homes for a living because they couldn’t pay their mortgages. The reason they couldn’t is because all the banks played fast and loose with their money on margin in ’29 and lost it all. So these people had no savings and no jobs because either their employers or the banks pissed away their savings and their houses. The people who threw other people out
of their houses, though, they thrived. As for my friend? He fixed horse races and sold narcotics. The FBI shot him to death as he was off-loading a boat down by Pass-a-Grille. His next-door neighbor? Bought his house. Also got his picture in the paper last week when your husband gave him a good citizen award. So, about the only difference I see between a thief and a banker most times is a college degree.”

She shook her head. “Bankers don’t shoot each other in the streets, Joe.”

“Because they don’t like wrinkling their suits, Vanessa. Just because they do their dirt with a pen doesn’t make them cleaner.”

She searched his face, her eyes wide and unsettled. “You really believe this.”

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

Neither of them said anything for a bit.

She reached over him and lifted her watch off the table. “It’s getting late.”

He found her bra and then her underwear in the sheets, handed them to her.

“Trade you.” She handed him his briefs.

As soon as she’d slipped into her underwear and slid her arms into her bra straps, he wanted to strip her naked. Once again, he felt that irrational urge to never leave this room.

She smiled at him. “Every time we do this, we get in deeper to each other.”

“And that’s a problem?”

“Oh,
no
. Whatever would put that thought in your pretty little head?” She laughed and looked around the bed. “You see my blouse, sweetness?”

He found it behind a chair. “And we are, as you said, very good at this.”

She took her blouse from him. “We are, aren’t we? But you know that fades.”

“The regard or the sex?”

“That’s what we’re calling it—‘regard’?”

He nodded.

“Well, in that case, both at times. And what could ever bind us together if those two things went on vacation? Not our shared upbringing.”