Live by Night Page 0,85

them on the pier. The crates sat in the rising sun, beaded with dew that turned to steam as it evaporated. Several smaller boats arrived, and sailors got off them followed by officers, and they all took a look at the hole in the hull. Joe, Esteban, and Dion wandered among the crowd behind the cordons set up by the Tampa Police and heard that the ship had settled at the bottom of the bay and there was some question as to whether she could be salvaged. The navy was purportedly sending a crane on a barge down from Jacksonville to answer that question. As for the weapons, they were looking into getting a ship to Tampa that could handle the load. In the meantime, they'd have to stow them someplace.

Joe walked back off the pier. He met Graciela at a cafe on Ninth. They sat outdoors under a stone portico and watched a streetcar clack along the tracks in the center of the avenue and come to a stop in front of them. A few passengers got on, a few got off, and the streetcar rattled away again.

"Did you see any sign of him?" Graciela asked.

Joe shook his head. "But Dion's watching. And he put a couple of his guys in the crowd, so . . ." He shrugged and sipped his Cuban coffee. He'd been up all night and hadn't slept much the previous night, but as long as the Cuban coffee kept coming, he assumed he could stay awake for a week.

"What do they put in this stuff? Cocaine?"

Graciela said, "It's just coffee."

"That's like saying vodka is just potato juice." He finished it and returned the cup to the saucer. "Do you miss it?"

"Cuba?"

"Yeah."

She nodded. "Very much."

"Then why are you here?"

She looked off at the street as if she could see Havana on the other side of it. "You don't like the heat."

"What?"

"You," she said. "You are always waving your hand at the air, your hat. I see you make faces and look up at the sun, as if you want to tell it to set faster."

"I didn't realize it was that obvious."

"You're doing it now."

She was right. He'd been waving his hat by the side of his head. "This kinda heat? Some people would say it's like living on the sun. I say it's like living in the sun. Christ. How do you people function down here?"

She leaned back in her chair, lovely brown neck arching against the wrought iron. "It can never get too warm for me."

"Then you're insane."

She laughed and he watched the laugh run up her throat. She closed her eyes. "So you hate the heat but you are here."

"Yes."

She opened her eyes, tilted her head, looked at him. "Why?"

He suspected - no, he knew - that what he'd felt for Emma was love. It was love. So the feeling Graciela Corrales stirred in him had to be lust. But a lust unlike any he'd ever encountered. Had he ever seen eyes that dark? There was something so languid in everything she did - from walking, to smoking her cigars, to picking up a pencil - that it was easy to imagine that languid motion in play as her body draped over his, took him inside her while she exhaled a long breath into his ear. The languor in her didn't resemble laziness but precision. Time didn't bend it; it bent time to uncoil as she desired.

No wonder the nuns had railed so vehemently against the sins of lust and covetousness. They could possess you surer than a cancer. Kill you twice as quick.

"Why?" he said, not even sure where he was in the conversation for a moment.

She was looking at him curiously. "Yes, why?"

"A job," he said.

"I come for the same reason."

"To roll cigars?"

She straightened in her chair and nodded. "The pay is much better than anything in Havana. I send it home to family, most of it. When my husband is released, we will decide where to live."

"Oh," Joe said, "you're married."

"Yes."

He saw a flash of triumph in her eyes, or did he imagine it?

"But your husband's in prison."

Another nod. "But not for what you do."

"What do I do?"

She waved at the air. "Little dirty crimes."

"Oh, that's what I do." He nodded. "I'd been wondering."

"Adan fights for something bigger than himself."

"What kinda sentence they hand out for that?"

Her face darkened, the joking over. "He was tortured to tell them who his accomplices were - myself and Esteban. But he did not