Live by Night by Dennis Lehane

pillow at night the same way.” He straightened Joe’s collar. “You?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œEver wanted to be anything else?”
    â€œNo.”
    Albert picked something off Joe’s shoulder, flicked it away with his finger. “I told her if she delivered you to us, I wouldn’t kill you. Nobody else believed you’d be stupid enough to show up tonight, but I hedged my bets. So she agreed to lead you to me to save you. Or so she told herself. But you and I know I have to kill you, don’t we, Joe?” He looked at Joe with heartbroken eyes, glassy with moisture. “Don’t we?”
    Joe nodded.
    Albert nodded as well. He leaned in and whispered in Joe’s ear, “And then I’m going to kill her too.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œBecause I loved her too.” Albert raised his eyebrows up and down. “And because the only way you could have known to knock over my poker game on that particular morning? Would be if she tipped you.”
    Joe said, “Wait.” He said, “Look. She didn’t tip me to anything.”
    â€œWhat else would you say?” Albert fixed his collar, smoothed his shirt. “Look at it this way—if what you sweethearts have is true love? Then you’ll meet tonight in heaven.”
    He buried a fist in Joe’s stomach, driving it up to the solar plexus. Joe doubled over and lost all his oxygen again. He jerked at the rope around his wrists and tried to butt Albert with his head, but Albert merely slapped his face away and opened the door to the alley.
    He grabbed Joe by the hair and straightened him up, so Joe could see the car waiting for him, the back door open, Julian Bones standing by it. Loomis crossed the alley and grabbed Joe’s elbow, and they dragged him over the threshold. Joe could smell the backseat foot wells now. He could smell the oil rags and dirt.
    Just as they were about to hoist him in, they dropped him. He fell to his knees on the cobblestones and he heard Albert yell, “Go! Go! Go!” and their footsteps on the cobblestones. Maybe they’d already shot him in the back of the head because the heavens descended in bars of light.
    His face was saturated in white, and the buildings along the alley erupted in blue and red, and tires squealed and somebody shouted something through a megaphone and someone fired a gun and then another gun.
    A man walked through the white light toward Joe, a trim and confident man, a man who wore command like a birthmark.
    His father.
    More men walked out of the white behind him, and Joe was soon surrounded by a dozen members of the Boston Police Department.
    His father cocked his head. “So you’re a cop killer now, Joseph.”
    Joe said, “I didn’t kill anybody.”
    His father ignored that. “Looks like your accomplices were about to take you on the dead man’s drive. Did they decide you were too much of a liability?”
    Several of the policemen had removed their billy clubs.
    â€œEmma’s in the back of a car. They’re going to kill her.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œAlbert White, Brendan Loomis, Julian Bones, and some guy named Donnie.”
    On the streets beyond the alley, several women screamed. A car horn blared, followed by the solid thump of a crash. More screams. In the alley, the rain turned from a drizzle to a heavy downpour.
    His father looked at his men, then back at Joe. “Fine company you keep, son. Any other fairy tales you have for me?”
    â€œIt’s not a fairy tale.” Joe spit blood from his mouth. “They’re going to kill her, Dad.”
    â€œWell, we won’t kill you, Joseph. In fact, I won’t touch you a’tall. But some of my coworkers would like a word.”
    Thomas Coughlin leaned forward, hands on his knees, and stared at his son.
    Somewhere behind that gaze of iron lived a man who’d slept on the floor of Joe’s hospital room for three days