on his forehead put his hands on Emma's arm.
"You said you wouldn't kill him," Emma said to Albert.
Albert shrugged.
"Albert," Emma said. "That was the deal."
"And I'll honor it," Albert said. "Don't you worry."
"Albert," she said, her voice catching in her throat.
"Dear?" Albert's voice was far too calm.
"I never would have led him here if - "
Albert slapped her face with one hand and smoothed his shirt with the other. Slapped her hard enough to split her lips.
He looked down at his shirt. "You think you're safe? You think I'm going to be humiliated by a whore? You're under the impression I'm mush for you. Maybe I was yesterday, but I've been up all night. And I've already replaced you. Get me? You'll see."
"You said - "
Albert wiped her blood off his hand with a kerchief. "Put her in the fucking car, Donnie. Now, Donnie."
The beefy guy wrapped Emma in a bear hug and started walking backward. "Joe! Please don't hurt him anymore! Joe, I'm sorry. I'm sorry." She screamed and kicked and scratched Donnie's head. "Joe, I love you! I love you!"
The elevator gate slammed shut and the car rose out of the basement.
Albert squatted beside him and put a cigarette between his lips. A match flared and the tobacco cackled and he said, "Inhale. You'll get your wits back faster."
Joe did. For a minute, he sat on the floor and smoked and Albert crouched beside him and smoked his own cigarette and Brendan Loomis stood there watching.
"What're you going to do with her?" Joe asked once he trusted himself to speak.
"With her? She just sold you down the river."
"For a good reason, I bet." He looked at Albert. "There was a good reason, right?"
Albert chuckled. "You're some kind of rube, aren't you?"
Joe raised a split eyebrow and the blood fell in his eye. He wiped at it. "What're you going to do with her?"
"You should be more worried about what I'm going to do to you."
"I am," Joe admitted, "but I'm asking what you're going to do with her."
"Don't know yet." Albert shrugged and pulled a speck of tobacco off his tongue, flicked it away. "But you, Joe, you're going to be the message." He turned to Brendan. "Get him up."
"What message?" Joe said as Brendan Loomis slipped his arms under him from behind and hoisted him to his feet.
"What happened to Joe Coughlin is what will happen to you if you cross Albert White and his crew."
Joe said nothing. Nothing occurred to him. He was twenty years old. That's all he was going to get in this world - twenty years. He hadn't wept since he was fourteen but it was all he could do, looking into Albert's eyes, not to break down and beg for his life.
Albert's face softened. "I can't let you live, Joe. If I could see any way I could, I'd try to make it work. And it's not about the girl, if that helps. I can get whores anywhere. Got a pretty new one waiting for me as soon as I'm done with you." He studied his hands for a moment. "But you shot up a small town and stole sixty thousand dollars without my permission and left three cops dead. That brings a shit-brown rain down on all of us. Because now every cop in New England thinks Boston gangsters are mad dogs to be put down like mad dogs. And I need to make everyone understand that's just not true." He said to Loomis. "Where's Bones?"
Bones was Julian Bones, another of Albert's gun monkeys.
"In the alley, engine running."
"Let's go."
Albert led the way to the elevator and opened the gate and Brendan Loomis dragged Joe into the car.
"Turn him around."
Joe was spun in place and the cigarette fell from his lips when Loomis gripped the back of his head and pushed his face into the wall. They pulled his hands behind his back. Coarse rope snaked around his wrists, Loomis pulling it tight with every loop before he tied off the ends. Joe, something of an expert on the subject, knew a secure knot when he felt one. They could leave him alone in this elevator and not come back till April and he still wouldn't have freed himself.
Loomis spun him back around, then went to work the crank, and Albert pulled a fresh cigarette from a pewter case and put it between Joe's lips and lit it for him. In the flare of the match, Joe could see that Albert took