World Gone By: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

guys?”
    Biel closed his eyes for a second, took a breath, opened them. “Fine. Your friend, Dion Bartolo’s guys. Longshoremen’s Local 126. That ring a bell?”
    Those were Dion’s guys all right.
    “So some swabbie of yours got the snot kicked out of him. You want me to pay for his dry cleaning?”
    “No. He’ll recover, thank you.”
    “Help me sleep, knowing that.”
    “Thing is,” Lieutenant Biel said, “we’ve got stories like that allover the country—Portland, Boston, New York, Miami, Tampa, New Orleans. Hell, our guy in New Orleans almost died. As it was, he lost an eye.”
    “Yeah, well,” Joe said, “I wouldn’t fuck with New Orleans. You tell your guy he’s lucky he’s not blind and dead.”
    “We can’t infiltrate the docks,” Biel said. “Every time we get a guy in, he gets his head beat in and sent back to us. We understand now—you own the docks, you rule the waterfront. We’re not arguing. But we’re not after you. Any of you.”
    “Who am I?” Joe said. “Who are we ? I’m a legitimate businessman.”
    Biel grimaced. “You’re the consigliere—did I pronounce that right?—for the Bartolo Family, Mr. Coughlin. You’re the fixer for the entire Florida criminal syndicate. On top of that, you and Meyer Lansky control Cuba and the narcotics pipeline that begins somewhere in South America and ends somewhere in Maine. So do we really have to play this game where you’re ‘retired’ and I’m a fucking dunce?”
    Joe stared across the desk at him until the silence grew uncomfortable. At the moment when Biel couldn’t take it any longer, when he’d opened his mouth to speak, Joe said, “Who’re you after then?”
    “Nazi saboteurs, Jap saboteurs, anybody who could infiltrate the waterfront and commit violence against the government.”
    “Well, I’d say you can stop worrying about any Jap infiltration. They tend to stick out, even in San Francisco.”
    “Fair enough.”
    “I’d worry about a homegrown Kraut,” Joe said, “one who could pass himself off as having mick parents or Swede parents. He’d be a problem.”
    “Could he infiltrate you?”
    “I just said he could. Didn’t say it was likely, but it could happen.”
    “Well, then Uncle Sam needs your help.”
    “And what’s Uncle Sam giving in return?”
    “The thanks of a grateful nation and a lack of harassment.”
    “That’s what you call harassment—your men getting their heads handed to them on a regular basis? Well, feel free to harass me any day of the week.”
    “Your legitimate businesses survive on government contracts right now, Mr. Coughlin.”
    “Some of them do, yeah.”
    “We could make that relationship a bit more unwieldy.”
    “Half an hour after you leave this office, Lieutenant, I’m meeting with a gentleman from the War Department, which wants to increase its orders with me, not decrease them. So, if you’re going to play a bluff, son, do it from a more informed place, would you?”
    Biel said, “Fine. Tell us what you want.”
    “You know what we want.”
    “No,” Biel said, “I’m not sure we do.”
    “We want Charlie Luciano released. Simple as that.”
    Biel’s apple-pie face darkened. “It’s out of the question. Lucky Luciano’s going to rot in Dannemora for the rest of his natural life.”
    “Okay. He prefers ‘Charlie,’ by the way. Only his closest friends call him Lucky.”
    “Whatever he calls himself, we’re not giving him amnesty.”
    “We’re not asking for amnesty,” Joe said. “After the war—if, that is, you guys don’t fuck it up and we actually win—you deport him. He never steps foot on these shores again.”
    “But.”
    “But,” Joe said, “he’s otherwise free to go where he wants and earn a living however he wants.”
    Biel shook his head. “FDR’ll never go for it.”
    “It’s not his decision, is it?”
    “At a public relations level? Sure it is. Luciano ran the most violent criminal syndicate this country’s ever