World Gone By: A Novel (Joe Coughlin Series) by Lehane Dennis

Author:Lehane, Dennis [Lehane, Dennis]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-03-09T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Crosshairs

“THINK THEY ATE HIM?” Rico asked as he drove them west on 32.

“I have no opinion on the subject.” Joe took a swig from the pint of rye they’d bought at a roadside fruit stand manned by two Indian children and an old woman. He passed it across the seat to Rico, who took a swig of his own.

“What is wrong with that guy?”

“Another thing I couldn’t begin to guess at.”

They drove in silence for a bit and passed the bottle back and forth enough times that the flora around them grew sharper and greener.

“I mean, all right, look, I’ve killed guys,” Rico said. “Never killed a woman or a kid.”

Joe looked at him.

“Not intentionally,” Rico said. “That Chinese kid was just bad luck. You killed guys, right?”

“Of course.”

“But there was a reason.”

“I thought so at the time.”

“There was no reason here. Fucking guy let slip to us that his boss had a cold, and now he’s fucking dead? What kind of standards are these?”

Joe could feel that boat in his pores, wished he could scrub it from his scalp.

“I recognized the girl from somewhere,” Rico said. “Was that the one used to bump uglies with Georgie B?”

Joe shook his head. “Bobby O.”

Rico snapped his fingers. “Right, right.”

“Used to come into the Calypso Club.”

“Yeah, no, now I remember her. Shit. She’d set knees to knocking, that one.”

“Not anymore.”

“Not anymore.”

Rico let loose a low, slow whistle. “Girl had some power.”

Joe nodded and then they looked at each other and said it together: “Not anymore.”

“Girl thinks she has power in her pussy, and maybe sometimes she’s right, for a while. We think we have it in our balls and our muscle. And maybe we’re right. For a while.” Rico shook his head ruefully. “A little, little while.”

Joe nodded. Power—most power anyway, certainly Vidalia’s brand of it—was the fly that called itself a hawk. It could only govern those who agreed to call it a hawk instead of a fly, a tiger instead of a cat, a king instead of a man.

They drove the steaming white road under the white sun, the cypress spilling, wilting, and surging on either side of them. No one had developed this stretch of the state yet. It teemed with unchecked jungle growth, gators, panthers, and oily swamps that glistened under thin layers of green fog.

Rico said, “You got, what, a week until Ash Wednesday?”

“Yup.”

“Christ, Joe. Christ.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No. Spit it out.”

“It’ll insult your intelligence.”

“Insult away.”

Rico chewed on it for a few moments, his eyes hard on the road. “I wasn’t a believer until I got a whiff of Lucius again and remembered what a demented fucking twist he is. If he hadn’t killed Ogden today, he would have killed Al Butters. Or that girl. Or one of us. Point was, he was going to kill someone today. And just because. No better reason than that. So if he’s anywhere near this contract that’s out on you, you gotta vamoose until the smoke clears. Shit, just lay low at your farm for a week or two.

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