Live by Night by Dennis Lehane

every room. Marble from Italy.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œAnd if I go to that, he’ll be with his wife. He just wants me there ’cuz, I dunno, ’cuz it excites him to see me when his wife’s on his arm. And after that, I know for a fact he’s going to Detroit for a few days to talk to new suppliers.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œSo, it’ll buy us all the time we need. By the time he comes looking for me again, we’ll have a three- or four-day head start.”
    Joe thought it through. “Not bad.”
    â€œI know,” she said with another smile. “You think you can clean yourself up, get over to the Statler Saturday? Say, about seven?”
    â€œAbsolutely.”
    â€œThen we’re gone,” she said and looked over her shoulder at him. “But no more talk about Albert being a bad guy. My brother’s got a job ’cuz of him. Last winter, he bought my mother a coat.”
    â€œWell, then.”
    â€œI don’t want to fight.”
    Joe didn’t want to fight either. Every time they did, he lost, found himself apologizing for things he hadn’t even done, hadn’t even thought of doing, found himself apologizing for not doing them, for not thinking of doing them. It hurt his fucking head.
    He kissed her shoulder. “So we won’t fight.”
    She gave him a flutter of eyelashes. “Hooray.”
    L eaving the First National job in Pittsfield, Dion and Paolo had just jumped in the car when Joe backed into the lamppost because he’d been thinking about the birthmark. The wet sand color of it and the way it moved between her shoulder blades when she looked back at him and told him she might love him, how it did the same thing when she said Albert White wasn’t such a bad guy. A fucking peach actually was ol’ Albert. Friend of the common man, buy your mother a winter coat as long as you used your body to keep him warm. The birthmark was the shape of a butterfly but jagged and sharp around the edges, Joe thinking that might sum up Emma too, and then telling himself forget it, they were leaving town tonight, all their problems solved. She loved him. Wasn’t that the point? Everything else was heading for the rearview mirror. Whatever Emma Gould had, he wanted it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. He wanted it for the rest of his life—the freckles along her collarbone and the bridge of her nose, the hum that left her throat after she’d finished laughing, the way she turned “four” into a two-syllable word.
    Dion and Paolo ran out of the bank.
    They climbed in the back.
    â€œDrive,” Dion said.
    A tall, bald guy with a gray shirt and black suspenders came out of the bank, armed with a club. A club wasn’t a gun, but it could still cause trouble if the guy got close enough.
    Joe rammed the gearshift into first with the heel of his hand and hit the gas, but the car went backward instead of forward. Fifteen feet backward. The eyes of the guy with the club popped in surprise.
    Dion shouted, “Whoa! Whoa!”
    Joe stomped the brake and the clutch. He rammed the shift out of reverse and into first, but they still hit the lamppost. The impact wasn’t bad, just embarrassing. The yokel with the suspenders would tell his wife and friends for the rest of his life how he’d scared three gun thugs so bad they’d reversed a getaway car to get away from him .
    When the car lurched forward, the tires kicked dust and small rocks off the dirt road and into the face of the man with the club. By now, another guy stood in front of the bank. He wore a white shirt and brown pants. He extended his arm. Joe saw the guy in the rearview mirror, his arm jumping. For a moment, Joe couldn’t comprehend why, and then he understood. He said, “Get down,” and Dion and Paolo dropped in the backseat. The guy’s arm jerked up again, then jerked a third or fourth time, and the side-view mirror