World Gone By: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

seen.” Biel gave it a little more thought and then shook his head emphatically. “Ask for something else. Anything.”
    Just like the government. So used to paying for what it wanted with free money that it had no idea how to forge a real business deal. We’d like something for nothing, please; so give it to us, fuck off, and thank us for the privilege.
    Joe studied Lieutenant Biel’s open, all-American face. A quarterback in high school to be sure. All the girls had wanted to wear his letter sweater.
    “There’s nothing else we want,” Joe said.
    “So that’s it ?” Biel seemed authentically dumbfounded.
    “That’s it.” Joe leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette.
    Biel stood. “You won’t like what we do next then.”
    “You’re the government. Liking what you do has never been one of my weaknesses.”
    “Don’t say you weren’t warned.”
    “You’ve heard our price,” Joe said.
    Biel stopped at the door, his head down. “We have a file on you, Mr. Coughlin.”
    “I would have assumed.”
    “It’s not as thick as most because you are very, very good at hiding in plain sight. Never came across anyone who does it as slickly as you. Around the office, know what they call you?”
    Joe shrugged.
    “The Runner. Because you’ve been running the table for longer than anyone can remember. But you own a casino in Havana, don’t you?”
    Joe nodded.
    “So you know that luck ends.”
    Joe smiled. “Message received, Lieutenant.”
    “Was it?” Biel asked and let himself out.
    TEN MINUTES AFTER BIEL LEFT, Joe’s intercom buzzed.
    He depressed the send button. “Yes, Margaret.”
    Margaret Toomey, his secretary, said, “There’s a gentleman out here to see you. He says he’s a guard at the prison in Raiford. He claims it’s urgent you speak to him.”
    Joe lifted the receiver off the cradle. “Tell him to fuck off,” he said kindly.
    “I tried,” Margaret said, “in so many words.”
    “Then use the exact ones.”
    “He said to tell you ‘Theresa Del Fresco asks for an audience.’”
    “Shit, really?” Joe said.
    “Shit really,” Margaret said.
    Joe gave it some thought for a bit and eventually sighed. “Send him in. He a yokel or an operator?”
    “The former, sir. He’s on his way.”
    The boy who came through the door looked like he’d climbed out of a playpen. His hair was so blond it was almost white and a sprig of it rose like a crooked finger from the crown. His skin was so unblemished it appeared he’d put it on for the first time this afternoon. His eyes were green and clear as a baby’s, and his teeth were as white as his hair.
    This child was a guard ? In the women’s wing?
    Theresa Del Fresco would have zeroed in on this kid like a town cat on a country mouse.
    Joe shook the boy’s hand and gestured toward a chair. The boy took it, hitching his trousers at the knees.
    The boy explained that he was, in fact, a guard at the Women’sCorrectional Wing of the State Prison at Raiford and that Female Prisoner 4773, or Theresa Del Fresco as she’d been known in free society, had asked him to visit Mr. Coughlin, sir, because she believed his life—and her own—was in danger.
    “Your life?” Joe asked.
    The boy was befuddled. “No, no, sir. Yours.”
    Joe laughed.
    The boy said, “Sir?”
    Joe laughed harder. The idea became funnier the more he thought about it.
    “That’s her play?” he said as the chuckles began to die away.
    “Her play, sir? I’m not following.”
    Joe wiped his eye with the heel of his hand. “Ah, Jesus. So, yes, yes, Mrs. Del Fresco thinks my life is in grave danger?”
    “And her own.”
    “Well, at least she’s not trying to sell it as a selfless act.”
    “I’m confused, Mr. Coughlin, and I’m not afraid to say so. Mrs. Del Fresco has asked me to drive a great distance to tell you your life is in danger and hers as well, and you act like it’s all some kind of big joke. Well, it’s not a very funny one, sir, I’ll tell you