Live by Night Page 0,75

Dion's flask and passed it back to him. "Gotta be some rocks around here."

It had started to rain, which did nothing to cool things off. Down here, rain felt like more sweat. It was close to midnight, and things just seemed hotter, the humidity a woolen embrace around everything you did. Joe got into the driver's seat and kept the engine idling while Dion shattered both of the druggist windows and then hopped into the car and they drove back into Ybor. Dion explained that the Italians lived around here, in the higher-numbered streets between Fifteenth and Twenty-third. The lighter spics were between Tenth and Fifteenth, the nigger spics below Tenth Street and west of Twelfth Avenue, where most of the cigar factories were.

They found a joint down there at the end of an almost-road that went past the Vayo Cigar Factory and vanished into a cowl of mangrove and cypress. It was nothing more than a shotgun shack on stilts overlooking a swamp. They'd strung netting from the trees along the banks, and the netting covered the shack and the cheap wood tables beside it and the porch out back.

They played some music in there. Joe had never heard anything quite like it - Cuban rumba, he guessed, but brassier and more dangerous, and the people on the dance floor were doing something that looked far more like fucking than dancing. Most everyone in there was colored - some American black, mostly Cuban black, though - and those who were merely brown didn't have the Indian features of the highborn Cubans or the Spaniards. Their faces were rounder, their hair more wiry. Half the people knew Dion. The bartender, an older woman, gave him a jug of rum and two glasses without him asking.

"You the new boss?" she asked Joe.

"I guess I am," Joe said. "I'm Joe. And you are?"

"Phyllis." She slipped a dry hand into his. "This is my place."

"It's nice. What's it called?"

"Phyllis's Place."

"Of course."

"What do you think of him?" Dion asked Phyllis.

"He too pretty," she said and looked at Joe. "Someone need to mess you up."

"We'll get to work on that."

"See you do," she said and went to serve another customer.

They took the bottle out onto the back porch and set it on a small table and took residence in two rocking chairs. They looked out through the netting at the swamp as the rain stopped falling and the dragonflies returned. Joe heard something heavy moving through the brush. And something else, just as heavy, moved underneath the porch.

"Reptiles," Dion said.

Joe lifted his feet off the porch. "What?"

"Alligators," Dion repeated.

"You're pulling my leg."

"No," Dion said, "but they will."

Joe raised his knees higher. "What the fuck are we doing in a place with alligators?"

Dion shrugged. "You can't escape 'em down here. They're everywhere. You see water, there's ten of 'em in there, big eyes watching." He wiggled his fingers and bugged his eyes. "Waiting for dumb Yankees to come take a dip."

Joe heard the one below him slither away and then crash through the mangrove again. He didn't know what to say.

Dion chuckled. "Just don't go in the water."

"Or near it," Joe said.

"That too."

They sat on the porch and drank and the last of the rain clouds drifted off. The moon returned and Joe could see Dion as clearly as if they were inside. He found his old friend staring at him, so he stared back. For quite a while, neither of them said a word, but Joe felt a whole conversation pass between them nonetheless. He was relieved, and he knew Dion was too, to finally get on with it.

Dion took a swig of the rotgut rum, wiped his lips with the back of his hand. "How'd you know it was me?"

Joe said, "Because I knew it wasn't me."

"Could've been my brother."

"May he rest in peace," Joe said, "but your brother wasn't smart enough to double-cross a street."

Dion nodded and looked down at his shoes for a bit. "It'd be a blessing."

"What's that?"

"Dying." Dion looked at him. "I got my brother killed, Joe. You know what living with that's like?"

"I have some idea."

"How could you?"

"Trust me," Joe said. "I do."

"He was older than me by two years," Dion said, "but I was the older brother, get me? I was supposed to look out for him. 'Member when we all first started palling around, knocking over newsstands, Paolo and me had that other little brother, called him Seppi?"

Joe nodded. Funny, he hadn't thought of the kid in