Live by Night Page 0,86

tell them. No matter what they did to him." Her jaw was extended, her eyes flashing in a way that reminded Joe of the slim bolts of lightning they'd seen last night. "I don't send money home to my family because I don't have a family. I send it to Adan's family so they can get him out of that shithole prison and home to me."

Was it just lust he felt or something he hadn't been able to define yet? Maybe it was his exhaustion and two years in prison and the heat. Maybe so. Probably so. Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was drawn to a part of her he suspected was deeply broken, something frightened and angry and hopeful all at the same time. Something at her core that struck at something at his.

"He's a lucky man," Joe said.

Her mouth opened before she realized there was nothing to retort to.

"A very lucky man." Joe stood and placed some coins on the table. "Time to make that phone call."

They made the call from a phone in the back of a bankrupt cigar factory on the east side of Ybor. They sat on a dusty floor in the empty office and Joe dialed while Graciela took one last glance over the message he'd typed up last night around midnight.

"City desk," the guy on the other end said, and Joe handed the phone to Graciela.

Graciela said, "I take responsibility for last night's triumph over American imperialism. You know of the bombing of the USS Mercy?"

Joe could hear the guy's voice. "Yes, yes, I do."

"The United Peoples of Andalusia claim responsibility. We further pledge a direct attack on the sailors themselves and all American armed forces until Cuba is returned to its rightful owners, the people of Espana. Good-bye."

"Wait, wait. The sailors. Tell me about the attack on the - "

"By the time I hang up this phone, they will already be dead."

She hung up, looked at Joe.

"That should get things moving," he said.

Joe got back there in time to see them run the convoy trucks down the pier. The crew came off in groups of about fifty, moving fast, eyes scanning the rooftops.

The convoy trucks barreled off the pier one after another and then immediately split up, each truck carrying about twenty sailors, the first one heading east, the next heading southwest, the next north, and so on.

"You see any sign of Manny?" Joe asked Dion.

Dion gave him a grim nod and pointed, and Joe looked through the crowd and past the crates of weapons. There, on the edge of the pier, lay a canvas body bag tied off at the legs, the chest, and the neck. After a while, a white van arrived and picked up the corpse and drove it off the pier with a Shore Patrol escort.

Not long after that, the last convoy truck on the pier rumbled to life. It made a U-turn, then stopped, its gears grinding with the high pitch of gulls, and then it backed up to the crates. A sailor hopped out and opened its rear gate. The few sailors left on the USS Mercy started filing off then, all carrying BARs and most wearing sidearms. A chief warrant officer waited on the pier for them as they mustered by the gangplank.

Sal Urso, who worked in the central office of the Pescatore sports book in South Tampa, sidled up and handed Dion some keys.

Dion introduced him to Joe, and they shook hands.

Sal said, "She's about twenty yards behind us. Full tank of gas, uniforms on the seat." He looked Dion up and down. "You weren't an easy fit, mister."

Dion slapped the side of his head but not too hard. "What's it like out there?"

"The laws are everywhere. They're looking for Spaniards, though."

"Not Cubans?"

Sal shook his head. "You got this city riled up, son."

The last of the sailors had mustered and the chief was giving them orders, pointing at the crates.

"Time to move," Joe said. "Good to meet you, Sal."

"You too, sir. I'll see you there."

They left the edge of the crowd and found the truck where Sal had said it would be. It was a two-ton flatbed with a steel bed and steel roll bars covered by a canvas tarp. They hopped up front, and Joe ground the shifter into first and they lurched out onto Nineteenth Street.

Twenty minutes later, they pulled over along the side of Route 41. There was a forest here, longleaf pines taller than Joe had imagined