Live by Night Page 0,69

the door for him and Joe climbed inside.
Chapter Twelve
Music and Guns

Joe had asked Maso to put him up in a hotel. His first month here, he didn't want to think about anything but business - that included where his next meal was coming from, how his sheets and clothes got washed, and how long the fella who'd gotten to the bathroom ahead of him was going to stay there. Maso said he'd put him up at the Tampa Bay Hotel, which sounded fine to Joe, if a little unimaginative. He assumed it was a middle-of-the-road place with decent beds, bland but serviceable food, and flat pillows.

Instead, Dion pulled up in front of a lakefront palace. When Joe spoke the thought aloud, Dion said, "That's actually what they call it - Plant's Palace." Henry Plant had built the place, much like he'd built most of Florida, to entice land speculators who'd come down over the past two decades in swarms.

Before Dion could pull up to the front door, a train crossed their path. Not a toy train, though he'd bet they had those here too, but a transcontinental locomotive, a quarter mile long. Joe and Dion sat just short of the parking lot and watched the train disgorge rich men and rich women and their rich children. While they waited, Joe counted more than a hundred windows in the building. At the top of the redbrick walls were several dormers Joe assumed housed the suites. Six minarets rose even higher than the dormers, pointing toward the hard white sky - a Russian winter palace in the middle of dredged Florida swampland.

A swank couple in starched whites left the train. Their three nannies and three swank children followed. Fast on their heels two Negro porters pushed luggage carts piled high with steamer trunks.

"Let's come back," Joe said.

"What?" Dion said. "We can park here and walk your bags over. Get you - "

"We'll come back." Joe watched the couple stroll inside like they'd grown up in places twice this size. "I don't want to wait in line."

Dion looked like he was about to say more on the subject, but then he sighed softly, and they drove back down the road and over small wooden bridges and past a golf course. An older couple sat in a rickshaw pulled by a small Latin guy in a white long-sleeve shirt and white pants. Small wooden signs pointed to the shuffleboard courts, the hunting preserve, canoes, tennis courts, and a racetrack. They drove past the golf course, greener than Joe would have bet in all this heat, and most people they saw wore white and carried parasols, even the men, and their laughter was dry and distant on the air.

He and Dion drove onto Lafayette and into downtown. Dion told Joe the Suarezes went back and forth from Cuba and few knew much about them. Ivelia, it was rumored, had been married to a man who'd died during the sugar workers' rebellion back in '12. It was also rumored that the story was a front to disguise her lesbian tendencies.

"Esteban," Dion said, "owns a lot of companies, both here and over there. Young guy, way younger than his sister. But smart. His father was in business with Ybor himself when Ybor - "

"Wait a minute," Joe said, "this city's named after one guy?"

"Yeah," Dion said, "Vicente Ybor. He was a cigar guy."

"Now, that," Joe said, "is power." He looked out the window and saw Ybor City to the east, handsome from a distance, reminding Joe again of New Orleans, but a much smaller version.

"I dunno," Dion said, "Coughlin City?" He shook his head. "Doesn't have a ring to it."

"No," Joe agreed, "but Coughlin County?"

Dion chuckled. "You know? That's not bad."

"Sounds good, doesn't it?"

"How many sizes your hat go up when you were in prison?" Dion asked.

"Suit yourself," Joe said, "dream small."

"How about Coughlin Country? No, hold it, Coughlin Conti-nent."

Joe laughed and Dion roared and slapped the wheel and Joe was surprised to realize how much he'd missed his friend and how much it would break his heart if he had to order his murder by the end of the week.

Dion drove them down Jefferson toward the courthouses and government buildings. They ran into a snarl of traffic and the heat found the car again.

"Next on the agenda?" Joe asked.

"You want heroin? Morphine? Cocaine?"

Joe shook his head. "Gave them all up for Lent."

Dion said, "Well, if you ever decide to get hooked, this is the place to