White Shadow (2 page)

When I think of Tampa, I remember the tunnels winding their way under the old Latin District of Ybor City; unlit, partially caved-in airless holes beneath Seventh Avenue, where the steady stream of Buicks and Hudsons overhead has become the pounding bass music from flashy sedans and tricked-out trucks. Most people will tell you the caves are the stuff of urban legend. Others will tell you they were, without doubt, the passageways for bootlegger Charlie Wall to run his liquor to bars during Prohibition. In back booths of West Tampa Cuban cafés, you still might hear hushed conversations about Charlie: the white linen suit, the silver dollars he threw to poor orphans, the old bolita racket, and the jokes he told to U.S. senators during the Kefauver hearings of 1950. (That’s when every elected official was on the take and right before I got out of the army and headed out to work for Hampton Dunn at the
Times
with a single gray suit, a studio apartment, and barely enough change for cabs.)

All those stories we wrote about Charlie were cut into clips and have turned yellow and brittle if they exist at all. Maybe they are in landfills or stacked in forgotten warehouses or rotting barns among the molded dung heaps or wrapping Christmas ornaments or just disintegrated into the dirt. But I still remember putting out those tales, and how the energy and pulse of the
Times
newsroom was like nothing I’d ever known.

Being someone who sits and talks in cafés, I know how the conversation always winds back to Charlie Wall, Mafia boss Santo Trafficante, and the murders during what we called the Era of Blood. Shotgun attacks in back alleys, restaurants, and palm tree-lined streets.
You were there? Weren’t you?

The
Times
newsroom is open and clicking with the sound of a dozen Royals and L.C. Smiths, and you are only minutes away from deadline and meeting Eleanor down at the Stable Room at the Thomas Jefferson Hotel to talk about Nietzsche, poor Charlie Parker, or the Tampa Smokers’ new pitcher, and thinking of her fifty years later still makes you hurt inside.

CHARLIE WALL LAID OUT the crisp white suit on his bed and wiped off his wingtips with a hand towel he’d used to dry his face after shaving with a straight razor. It was early evening and dark in the house, but the setting sun broke through the curtains and blinds and gave it all such a nice glow. He combed his hair with a silver brush, watching his eyes in the circular mirror above his dresser, and removed his bathrobe and slippers and dressed in a newly laundered shirt and pants and slipped into his coat and shoes. He checked his face for an even shave, splashed a bit of Old Spice across his sagging jowls, and decided that for a man fast approaching seventy-five he wasn’t a bad-looking character.

His last touch before closing the front door to his big, sprawling bungalow in Ybor City was to slip a straw boater on his head and check its angle in the window’s reflection.

The metal gate closed behind him with a
click,
and he opened the door to the waiting cab.

Charlie Wall, retired gangster, was ready to hold court.

Monday night was a slow night in downtown Tampa, and Charlie met the usual crew at The Turf.

The Turf was a solid bar at the foot of the old Knight and Wall dry goods warehouse. He talked local politics with adman Jack Lacey and women with Frank Cooper, who’d closed up shop at Knight and Wall. And Charlie opened up his money clip to hand the bartender, Babe Antuono, a twenty for the drinks. But Jack told him to put his money away, because Jack Lacey was a class guy and remembered that old Charlie had paid for the last round on Friday.

The plate-glass windows looked out onto Jackson Avenue, and it had grown dark during the conversation and dirty jokes, and pretty soon Frank had to meet his wife for a show and then Jack had to get home for dinner. The paddles of ceiling fans broke apart the smoke left from the men’s cigarettes.

Pretty soon Charlie Wall was alone. He had another Canadian Club highball, his fourth in an hour, and talked boxing with Babe. Babe used to run a tobacco stand across the street, and they talked a little about Ybor City and some of the characters they all knew.

“How’s Scarface Johnny?” Babe asked.

“Don’t ask,” Charlie said. He sipped some more drink.

“Baby Joe?”

“He’s fine.”

Soon four young women walked into the bar with a giggle, their eyes all made up with mascara and false lashes, and they sat across from Charlie at the bar. One dropped a dime into the jukebox and played Hank Williams singing “Kaw-Liga,” and the women chatted and giggled and squealed. Babe beat out the song’s rhythm on the wooden bar.

Charlie bought the women a round and toasted them with an empty highball that was soon refilled. They came over and talked to him for a while and they liked him. They liked the funny old man in the white suit with the white straw hat and they liked his Cracker drawl and the harmless way he flirted and stared at their chests. And they stayed for a while, listening to him talk about the places to find the juiciest steaks.

One of the girls tried on his hat.

They laughed but soon disappeared.

“You used to have a few of them,” Babe said, cleaning off a glass with a towel and checking it against the light. Almost reading his mind. “I bet you couldn’t keep them straight.”

“I had a few.”

“When did you get started? You know, in the business?”

“Before the war.”

“The first big one,” Babe said. “Wow.”

“No,” Charlie said. “The war with Spain. I took bets for soldiers who’d come down with Teddy Roosevelt. I ran crap games and took twenty-five percent off the whores I’d sneak into camp.”