Live by Night

He watched her come as the Bartolo brothers relieved the cardplayers of their weapons. The pistols made heavy thumps as they tossed them onto a nearby blackjack table, but the girl didn’t even flinch. In her eyes, firelights danced behind the gray.

She stepped up to his gun and said, “And what will the gentleman be having with his robbery this morning?”

Joe handed her one of the two canvas sacks he’d carried in. “The money on the table, please.”

“Coming right up, sir.”

As she crossed back to the table, he pulled one pair of handcuffs from the other sack, then tossed the sack to Paolo. Paolo bent by the first cardplayer and handcuffed his wrists at the small of his back, then moved on to the next.

The girl swept the pot off the center of the table — Joe noting not just bills but watches and jewelry in there too — then gathered up everyone’s stakes. Paolo finished cuffing the men on the floor and went to work gagging them.

Joe scanned the room — the roulette wheel behind him, the craps table against the wall under the stairs. He counted three blackjack tables and one baccarat table. Six slot machines took up the rear wall. A low table with a dozen phones on top constituted the wire service, a board behind it listing the horses from last night’s twelfth race at Readville. The only other door besides the one they’d come through was chalk-marked with a T for

toilet, which made sense, because people had to piss when they drank.

Except that when Joe had come through the bar, he’d seen two bathrooms, which would certainly suffice. And this bathroom had a padlock on it.

He looked over at Brenny Loomis, lying on the floor with a gag in his mouth but watching the wheels turn in Joe’s head. Joe watched the wheels in Loomis’s head do their own turning. And he knew what he’d known the moment he saw that padlock — the bathroom wasn’t a bathroom.

It was the counting room.

Albert White’s counting room.

Judging by the business Hickey casinos had done the past two days — the first chilly weekend of October — Joe suspected a small fortune sat behind that door.

Albert White’s small fortune.

The girl came back to him with the bag of poker swag. “Your dessert, sir,” she said and handed him the bag. He couldn’t get over how level her gaze was. She didn’t just stare at him, she stared through him. He was certain she could see his face behind the handkerchief and the low hat. Some morning he’d pass her walking to get cigarettes, hear her yell, “That’s him!” He wouldn’t even have time to close his eyes before the bullets hit him.

He took the sack and dangled the set of cuffs from his finger. “Turn around.”

“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.” She turned her back to him and crossed her arms behind her. Her knuckles pressed against the small of her back, the fingertips dangling over her ass, Joe realizing the last thing he should be doing was concentrating on anyone’s ass, period.

He snapped the first cuff around her wrist. “I’ll be gentle.”

“Don’t put yourself out on my account.” She looked back over her shoulder at him. “Just try not to leave marks.”

Jesus.

“What’s your name?”

“Emma Gould,” she said. “What’s yours?”

“Wanted.”

“By all the girls or just the law?”

He couldn’t keep up with her and cover the room at the same time, so he turned her to him and pulled the gag out of his pocket. The gags were men’s socks that Paolo Bartolo had stolen from the Woolworth’s where he worked.

“You’re going to put a sock in my mouth.”

“Yes.”

“A sock. In my mouth.”

“Never been used before,” Joe said. “I promise.”

She cocked one eyebrow. It was the same tarnished-brass color as her hair and soft and shiny as ermine.

“I wouldn’t lie to you,” Joe said and felt, in that moment, as if he were telling the truth.

“That’s usually what liars say.” She opened her mouth like a child resigned to a spoonful of medicine, and he thought of saying something else to her but couldn’t think of what. He thought of asking her something, just so he could hear her voice again.

Her eyes pulsed a bit when he pushed the sock into her mouth and then she tried to spit it out — they usually did — shaking her head as she saw the twine in his hand, but he was ready for her. He drew it tight across her mouth and back along the sides of her face. As he tied it off at the back of her head, she looked at him as if, until this point, the whole transaction had been perfectly honorable — a kick, even — but now he’d gone and sullied it.

“It’s half silk,” he said.

Another arch of her eyebrow.

“The sock,” he said. “Go join your friends.”

She knelt by Brendan Loomis, who’d never taken his eyes off Joe, not once the whole time.

Joe looked at the door to the counting room, looked at the padlock on the door. He let Loomis follow his gaze and then he looked Loomis in the eyes. Loomis’s eyes went dull as he waited to see what the next move would be.

Joe held his gaze and said, “Let’s go, boys. We’re done.”