World Gone By: A Novel (Joe Coughlin Series)

  Dedication

  For Keeks

  Of the blue eyes and the billion-dollar smile

  Epigraph

  . . . I’m driving a stolen car

  On a pitch black night

  And I’m telling myself I’m gonna be alright.

  —BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, “STOLEN CAR”

  Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One: In the Matter of Mrs. Del Fresco

  Chapter Two: The Runner

  Chapter Three: Father and Son

  Chapter Four: Absence

  Chapter Five: Negotiations

  Chapter Six: Names on the Wind

  Chapter Seven: Room 107

  Chapter Eight: A Resemblance

  Chapter Nine: In the Pines, In the Pines

  Chapter Ten: A Verdict

  Chapter Eleven: Infinite Capacity

  Chapter Twelve: Bone Valley

  Chapter Thirteen: An Absence of Illness

  Chapter Fourteen: Crosshairs

  Chapter Fifteen: Fix Yourself

  Chapter Sixteen: This Time

  Chapter Seventeen: Archipelagos

  Chapter Eighteen: Men Leave

  Chapter Nineteen: Right to Life

  Chapter Twenty: The Bakery

  Chapter Twenty-one: Lighting Out

  Chapter Twenty-two: Flight

  Chapter Twenty-three: A Matter of Recompense

  Chapter Twenty-four: Send You a Postcard

  Chapter Twenty-five: Cane

  Chapter Twenty-six: Orphans

  About the Author

  Also by Dennis Lehane

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  December 1942

  BEFORE THE SMALL WAR BROKE THEM APART, they all gathered to support the big war. It had been a year since Pearl Harbor, and they came together in the Versailles Ballroom of the Palace Hotel on Bayshore Drive in Tampa, Florida, to raise money for troops stationed in the European Theater. It was a catered affair, black tie, and the evening was mild and dry.

  Six months later, on a muggy evening in early May, one of the crime beat reporters for the Tampa Tribune would come across photographs from the event. He would be struck by how many of the people who’d been in the local news lately for either killing or being killed had attended the fund-raiser that night.

  He thought there was a story in it; his editor disagreed. But look, the reporter said, look. That’s Dion Bartolo standing at the bar with Rico DiGiacomo. And over here? I’m pretty sure that little guy in the hat is Meyer Lansky himself. Here—you see that guy talking to the pregnant woman? He ended up in the morgue back in March. And there—that’s the mayor and his wife talking to Joe Coughlin. Joe Coughlin again, in this one, shaking hands with the Negro gangster Montooth Dix. Boston Joe, rarely photographed his entire life, but that night, he was photographed twice. This guy smoking a cigarette by the dame in white? He’s dead. So’s that guy. The guy out on the dance floor in the white dinner jacket? He’s crippled.

  Boss, the reporter said, they were all together that night.

  The editor mentioned that Tampa was a small town disguised as a medium-size city. People crossed paths all the time. It was a fund-raiser for the war effort; those were the causes de rigueur for the idle rich; they drew everyone who was anyone. He pointed out to his young, excitable reporter that plenty of other people who attended that night—two famous singers, one baseball player, three voice actors from the city’s most popular radio soap operas, the president of First Florida Bank, the CEO of Gramercy Pewter, and P. Edson Haffe, the publisher of this very newspaper—were all quite unconnected to the bloodshed that had erupted back in March and stained the city’s good name.

  The reporter protested a bit longer but found the editor intractable on the subject and so went back to researching rumors of German spies infiltrating the Port Tampa waterfront. A month later he was drafted into the army. The pictures remained in the photo morgue of the Tampa Tribune long after anyone who was in them had passed from the earth.

  The reporter, who would die two years later on the beach at Anzio, had no way of knowing that the editor, who would outlive him by thirty years before succumbing to heart disease, was under orders to end the paper’s coverage of anything to do with the Bartolo Crime Family; Joseph Coughlin; or the mayor of Tampa, a fine young man from a fine Tampa family. The city, the editor was told, had already been tarnished aplenty.

  The participants that night back in December had all been engaged, as far as they understood it, in a wholly innocent union of people who supported the soldiers overseas.

  Joseph Coughlin, the businessman, had organized the event because so many of his former employees had enlisted or been drafted.

  Vincent Imbruglia, who had two brothers in the fight—one in the Pacific and one somewhere in Europe, no one would confirm where—ran the raffle. The grand prize was two front-row tickets to a Sinatra concert at the Paramount in New York at the end of the month and first-class carriage on the Tamiami Champion. Everyone bought rafts of tickets even though most assumed the wheel was rigged so the mayor’s wife, a huge Sinatra fan, would win.

  The boss of bosses, Dion Bartolo, showed off the kind of dance moves that had won him prizes in his adolescence. In the process, he gave the mothers and daughters of some of Tampa’s most respectable families stories to tell their grandchildren. (“No man who dances with such grace can be as bad as some have claimed.”)

  Rico DiGiacomo, the brightest star in the Tampa underworld, showed up with his brother, Freddy, and their beloved mother, and his dangerous glamour was outdone only by the arrival of Montooth Dix, an exceptionally tall Negro made taller by the top hat that matched his tuxedo. Most members of the Tampa elite had never seen a Negro pass through a party without a serving tray on his palm, but Montooth Dix moved through the crowd of white people like he expected them to serve him.

  The party was just respectable enough to be attended without regret and just dangerous enough to be worth remarking on for the rest of the season. Joe Coughlin had a gift for bringing the beacons of the city into contact with her demons and making it all seem like a lark. It helped that Coughlin himself, once rumored to have been a gangster and quite a powerful one, had clearly evolved past the street. He was one of the biggest charity supporters in all of West Central Florida, a friend to numerous hospitals, soup kitchens, libraries, and shelters. And if the other rumors were true—that he hadn’t fully left his criminal past behind—well, one couldn’t fault a man for a bit of loyalty to those he’d known on the way up. Certainly if some of the assembled tycoons, factory owners, and builders wished to settle any labor unrest or unclog their supply routes, they knew who to call. Joe Coughlin was the bridge in this town between what was proclaimed in public and how it was achieved in private. When he threw a party, you came just to see who’d show up.

  Joe himself conferred upon the festivities no further significance than that. When a man threw a party where the upper crust mingled with street thugs and judges chatted with capos as if they’d never met before, either in court or in a back room, when the Sacred Heart pastor showed up and blessed the room before imbibing with the same gusto as everyone else, when Vanessa Belgrave, the pretty but icy wife of the mayor raised a glass of thanks in Joe’s direction, and a Negro as fearsome as Montooth Dix could regale a group of stuffy old white men with tales of his exploits in the Great War, and not a cross word or drunken faux pas was witnessed by anyone, well, that party was not only a success, it was quite possibly the success of the season.

  The onl
y sign of trouble occurred after Joe stepped out on the back lawn to get some air and saw the little boy. He moved in and out of the darkness at the far edge of the back lawn. He zigzagged back and forth, as if he were playing tag with other boys. But there were no other boys. Judging by his height and build, he was about six or seven years old. He spread his arms wide and made the sound of a propeller and then of a plane engine. He made wings of his arms and careened along the fringe of the tree line, shouting, “Va-rooooom. Va-roooom.”

  Joe couldn’t put his finger on what else was odd about the kid, other than being a child alone at an adult party, until he realized his clothes were a good ten years out of date. More like twenty, actually, the kid was wearing knickerbockers, Joe was pretty sure, and one of those oversize golf caps boys wore way back when Joe himself had been a boy.

  The kid was too far away for Joe to get a good look at his face, but he had the odd sensation that even if he were closer, it wouldn’t have made a difference. Even from this far away he could tell the boy’s face was irrevocably indistinct.

  Joe walked off the flagstone patio and crossed the lawn. The boy kept making airplane sounds and ran into the darkness beyond the lawn, vanishing into the stand of trees. Joe heard him buzzing, somewhere back in all that darkness.

  Joe was halfway across the lawn when someone off to his right whispered, “Psst. Mr. Coughlin, sir? Joe?”

  Joe slipped a hand a few inches from the Derringer nestled at the small of his back, not his normal gun of choice but one he’d found suitable for black-tie events.

  “It’s me,” Bobo Frechetti said as he came out from behind the great banyan tree along the side of the lawn.

  Joe dropped his hand back in front of himself. “Bobo, how’s the kid?”

  “I’m okay, Joe. You?”

  “Tip-top.” Joe looked at the tree line, saw only darkness. He couldn’t hear the kid back in there anymore. He said to Bobo, “Who brought a kid?”

  “What?”

  “The kid.” Joe pointed. “The one who was acting like an airplane.”

  Bobo stared at him.

  “You didn’t see a kid over there?” Again, Joe pointed.

  Bobo shook his head. Bobo, a guy so small no one had much trouble believing he’d once been a jockey, took off his hat and held it in his hands. “You heard about that safe got opened at that rock-crushing place in Lutz?”

  Joe shook his head even though he knew Bobo was talking about the safe that had been robbed of six thousand dollars at Bay Palms Aggregate, a subsidiary of one of the Family’s transport companies.

  “Me and my partner had no idea it was owned by Vincent Imbruglia.” Bobo waved his arms like an umpire calling a guy safe at home. “None.”

  Joe knew the feeling. His entire path in this life had been determined when he and Dion Bartolo, barely out of diapers, unknowingly robbed a gangster’s casino.

  “So, then, no big deal.” Joe lit a cigarette, offered the pack to the little safecracker. “Give the money back.”

  “We tried.” Bobo took a cigarette and a light from Joe, nodded his thanks. “My partner—you know Phil?”

  Phil Cantor. Phil the Bill because of the size of his nose. Joe nodded.

  “Phil went to Vincent. Told him about our mistake. Said we had the money and were gonna bring it right back. Know what Vincent did?”

  Joe shook his head, though he had an idea.

  “Chucked Phil into traffic. Right on Lafayette, middle of the fucking day. Phil bounced off the grille of a Chevy like the one ball off a hard break. Hip’s shattered, knees all fucked up, jaw’s wired shut. Vincent tells him, as he’s lying in the middle of Lafayette, ‘You owe us double. You got one week.’ And spits on him. What kind of animal spits on a man? Any man, Joe? I’m asking. Never mind one lying on the street with parts of him broken?”

  Joe shook his head, then held out his hands. “What can I do?”

  Bobo handed Joe a paper bag. “It’s all there.”

  “The original amount or the double Vincent asked for?”

  Bobo fidgeted, looking around at the trees before he looked back at Joe. “You can talk to these people. You’re not some animal. You can tell them we made a mistake and now my partner’s in the hospital for, I dunno, a month? And that seems a high price. Could you float that?”

  Joe smoked for a bit. “If I get you out of this soup—”

  Bobo grabbed Joe’s hand and kissed it, most of his lips landing on Joe’s watch.

  “If. ” Joe took his hand back. “What’ll you do for me?”

  “You name it.”

  Joe looked at the bag. “Every dollar is in here?”

  “Every single one.”

  Joe took a drag and then loosed a slow exhale. He kept waiting for the kid to return or at least the sound of him, but it was clear those trees were empty.

  He looked at Bobo and said, “All right.”

  “All right? Jesus. All right?”

  Joe nodded. “Nothing’s free, though, Bobo.”

  “I know it. I know it. Thank you, thank you.”

  “If I ever ask you for anything”— he stepped in close—“fucking anything, you hop right to. We clear?”

  “As a bell, Joe. As a bell.”

  “If you welsh on me?”

  “I won’t, I won’t.”

  “I’ll have a curse put on you. And not any curse. Witch doctor I know in Havana? Motherfucker never misses.”

  Bobo, like a lot of guys who’d grown up around racetracks, was highly superstitious. He showed Joe his palms. “You won’t have to worry about that.”

  “I’m not talking about some garden-variety hex, kind you get from an Italian grandmother and her mustache in New Jersey.”

  “You do not have to worry about me. I will honor my debt.”

  “I’m talking a Cuba-by-way-of-Hispaniola curse. Haunt your descendents.”

  “I promise.” He looked at Joe with a fresh coat of sweat on his forehead and eyelids. “May God strike me dead.”

  “Well, we wouldn’t want that, Bobo.” Joe patted his face. “Then you wouldn’t be able to pay me back.”

  VINCENT IMBRUGLIA WAS SET to get bumped up to captain, even though he didn’t know it yet and even though Joe didn’t think it was a great idea. But times were tough, strong earners were getting rare, some of their best off in the war, so Vincent was getting his promotion next month. Until then, though, he still worked for Enrico “Rico” DiGiacomo, which meant the money that had been stolen from his stone-crushing company front was really Rico’s.

  Joe found Rico at the bar. He slid him the money and explained the situation.

  Rico sipped his drink and frowned when Joe told him what had happened to poor Phil the Bill.

  “Tossed him in front of a fucking car?”

  “Indeed.” Joe took a sip of his own drink.

  “There’s just no style to a move like that.”

  “I agree.”

  “I mean, have a little fucking class.”

  “No argument.”

  Rico gave it some thought as he bought them another round. “Seems to me the punishment’s already fit the crime and then some. You tell Bobo he’s off the hook but not to show his face in any of our bars for a little while. Let everyone cool down. Broke the poor fuck’s jaw, huh?”

  Joe nodded. “What the man said, yeah.”

  “Too bad it wasn’t his nose. Maybe it could have got, I dunno, restructured, stop looking like God got drunk, put Phil’s elbow where his nose was supposed to go.” His voice trailed off as he looked around the room. “This is some party, boss.”

  He told Rico, “Ain’t your boss anymore. Ain’t anyone’s.”

  Rico acknowledged that with a flick of his eyebrow, looked around the room some more. “Still a hell of a bash, sir. Salud.”

  Joe looked out on the dance floor, at all the swells dancing with all the former debs, everyone polished to a shine. He saw the kid again, or thought he did, the boy appearing between the swirl of
gowns and ruffled hoop dresses. The boy’s face was turned away, the back of his head sporting a small cowlick, no hat on him anymore but still wearing the knickerbocker pants.

  And then he wasn’t there anymore.

  Joe placed his drink aside and vowed not to have another for the rest of the evening.

  In retrospect, he would look back on it as the Last Party, the final free ride before everything slipped toward that heartless March.

  But at the time, it was just a great party.

  CHAPTER ONE

  In the Matter of Mrs. Del Fresco

  IN THE SPRING OF 1941, a man named Tony Del Fresco married a woman named Theresa Del Frisco in Tampa, Florida. This was, unfortunately, the only slightly amusing thing anyone could remember about their marriage. He once hit her with a bottle; she once hit him with a croquet mallet. The mallet belonged to Tony, who’d brought it over from Arezzo some years before and had placed wickets and stakes in the Del Frescos’ swampy backyard on the west side of Tampa. Tony repaired clocks by day and cracked safes by night. He claimed croquet was the only thing that settled his mind, which, by his own admission, was filled with a permanent rage made all the blacker for being inexplicable. Tony had two good jobs, after all, a pretty wife, time on weekends for croquet.

  However black the thoughts in Tony’s head may have been, they all leaked out when Theresa caved in the side of his skull with the mallet early in the winter of 1943. Detectives concluded that after delivering the initial, incapacitating blow, Theresa had stepped on her husband’s cheekbone, fixed his head to the kitchen floor, and swung the mallet into the back of his skull until it looked like a pie that fell off a window ledge.

  By trade, Theresa was a florist, but most of her true income derived from robbery and the occasional murder, both crimes usually committed on behalf of her boss, Lucius Brozjuola, whom everyone called King Lucius. King Lucius paid the necessary tribute to the Bartolo Family but otherwise ran an independent organization with the illicit profits laundered through the phosphate empire he’d amassed along the Peace River and the wholesale flower business he owned in the Port of Tampa. It had been King Lucius who had trained Theresa as a florist in the first place and King Lucius who financed the flower shop she opened downtown on Lafayette. King Lucius ran a crew of thieves, fences, arsonists, and contract killers who operated under only one concrete rule—no jobs performed in their home state. So Theresa, over the years, had killed five men and one woman, all strangers—two in Kansas City, one in Des Moines, another in Dearborn, one in Philadelphia, and finally, the woman in Washington, D.C., Theresa turning to shoot her in the back of the head two steps after passing her on a soft spring evening in Georgetown, on a tree-lined street that ticked with the remnants of an afternoon shower.