White Shadow (41 page)

THE SHERIFF and the deputies left Giant’s Fish Camp at three-fifteen on Saturday afternoon. Al tried not to talk to reporters, but so many of them were so nice that he had to give them the blow-by-blow on the shooting. They especially liked his cowboy hat and his boots, and one of the reporters asked who his favorite movie star was and he told them that he was partial to Gary Cooper because he believed that Cooper really knew how to handle a gun. He told them he didn’t know the men or what they were doing at his motel, and the reporters asked a lot about the bolita business and wondered if he had many Cubans out here.

“Not many in Gibsonton,” he said.

Some asked how he’d come to this area, and Al talked about how he and some other carnies decided they thought this swampland was pretty. Some of them asked about the others in Gibsonton like Priscilla the Monkey Woman and the Alligator Man, and Melvin Burkhart had them all in stitches as he did the trick with the railroad spike in the nose.

But it all quieted down into a dark-colored day as if it were summer and not April. A four o’clock thundershower rolled in from the Gulf, and there was gentle thunder and a soft rain as he walked down to the bait shack and filled up a rusted outboard with gas.

He hugged the coast for a while in the flat-bottom boat, keeping close to the shore but out of reach of the mangroves. The mangroves had bled muddy red into the water, and a few large fish darted into the protective roots. A mile away, he found the old tin-roof cabin and slowed the motor and tied up to the broken, sun-bleached piling.

He lumbered onto the dock and followed the crooked wooden planks to the old house.

Lucrezia was inside. Awake and folding her things on the floor.

Al handed her a sack of biscuits and a bottle of Coke he’d brought from Giant’s. She ate and listened to him.

“I didn’t tell them,” he said.

She nodded.

“I figured you’re in some kind of trouble.”

She nodded again and kept eating her biscuits.

“You run bolita?”

She shook her head no. The room was dark and rain pinged on the tin roof. More thunder grumbled from the Gulf.

“Why were they looking for you?”

“They want to bring me back to Cuba,” she said.

“By way of Pasco County,” Al said, and laughed. He took off his cowboy hat and twirled it in his fingers.

“They’re working for the government,” she said. “I killed a man in Cuba.”

Al stopped twirling.

“He killed my father, and now they want to kill me.”

“Are you sure there isn’t something else?”

She shook her head.

He watched her in the soft gray light, the door open. The rain sounded like little bells on the metal roof.

“You will help me?”

“I think that’s what I’m doing,” he said. He smiled.

She finished packing her things and stood. She patted his hand, and the Giant put his arm around the little Cuban girl, not yet twenty.

“What can I do?” he asked.

“I need to get to Mexico,” she said. “I must get to Mexico.”

Al took away his hand from her shoulder and stooped back under the doorframe and walked back out the crooked path to the boat. She followed, and he pulled his sodden cowboy hat down on his head. In the rain, she squinted and said, “It’s too much. I can’t ask that. I will leave.”

He shook his head.

“Get ready,” he said. “I’ll come for you tonight. I know a way.”

He ambled his big body into the long old boat and pulled the cord to the motor. He drove slow and careful in the thunder and rain around the mangrove branches and followed his way back home.

He sat for three hours reading to his little girl, Judy, and tried to get her to calm her excitement about kicking the dead man and seeing the man speak who had only half a head.

THERE WAS an out-of-tune piano and the clatter of a million marching soldiers and Johnny Rivera’s head hurt with each
tap-tap-tap
that went in time with the music. He lolled his head to the side and he saw the old men come into focus, all wearing black suits and ties and smoking cigars. They had drinks within reach of their fingers, and he could smell their cologne even though he was seated in a school desk in the middle of the room. The floor was a black-and-white marble checkerboard, and he didn’t say anything until they studied him the way you would a monkey at the zoo and the Hammer asked him if he was feeling better. Bedami was gone, but Bedami wouldn’t be invited to a party like this. This was only for the top capos, for the Two Grocers, the Jukebox Salesman, the Bolita King, and Santo.

But he didn’t see Santo; he saw only the old men. The Bolita King asked if he wanted a drink and he said that he’d like a double shot of bourbon, and the Bolita King called out to the Hammer, who guarded the door. It seemed like two seconds later he had that drink in his hand, taking away the sickly sweetness of the peach schnapps.

“What they got goin’ on up there?” Rivera asked. “Elephants dancing?”

“Little girls,” the Bolita King said. “My granddaughter is up there. They’re tap-dancing.”

“Oh.”

The men were quiet, and by the door he saw the Hammer light up a cigarette and wave away the smoke. No one spoke.

“Any particular reason I’m here?” Rivera asked.

“We have some questions,” one of the Grocers said.

“Okay,” Rivera said.

“Not yet,” said the Hammer.

The door opened and in came Santo Trafficante Jr. He smiled and shook Johnny’s hand like an old friend and took a seat between the Bolita King and the Jukebox Salesman. He wore a light khaki suit and blue tie. He was tan and fresh-shaven, his balding gray hair newly shorn in a crew cut. He smiled at Johnny some more and asked him how he’d been.

Rivera drained the bourbon and set down the glass on the cold marble floor.

Santo kept smiling. “We been friends for how long?”

“All our life,” Rivera said.

“And you and my father were friends,” he said.

“We were.”

“And my father was friends with Charlie Wall.”

“I don’t know if I’d say that,” Rivera said, and grinned.

“But he wouldn’t have wanted him dead.”

“Hey,” Rivera said, and held up a hand. “That’s not what this is about.”

“What are we supposed to think, Johnny? We hear you’re in some kind of Wild West show in the county, and then we come to help you, because we all help our own, and in your sickness we find a book that belonged to Charlie Wall.”

“How’d you know I was in trouble?” Rivera said. Jimmy Longo offered him a cigarette. He took one and Longo lit it for him.

No one said anything.

“You know what it is?”

Rivera let out a lot of air and smoke and ground the heel of his hand in his eye socket. “Yep.”

“Ybor City is a bad place to keep secrets.”

“Really, Santo? I’m just starting to find that out.”

Rivera looked at the Grocers, the Bolita King, the Hammer, and then to Santo Jr. He never thought he’d see all of them sitting down at the same table and harassing the same guy.

“Charlie Wall gave me that ledger and that little twat stole it out of my bar. I don’t mean any disrespect, but that book is mine.”

Santo looked to the Bolita King. He leaned forward and clasped his hands together. His tie hung forward, hovering over the ground, and Santo leaned back and slipped it into a gold clip.

“We all share here,” Santo said. “So, we figured when you got this thing worked out, you’d come to us. Right?”

“First place I would’ve gone,” Rivera said, and frowned.

“How’s your leg?”

“Fine and dandy. Can I go home now?”

“Sure.”

“Can I have my book?”

He shook his head. Santo said: “Don’t you want to see where it leads?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re taking the ten o’clock to Havana. You’ll go with me and Jimmy. We’ll put you up and take care of you, and we’ll get to figure out what Charlie was keeping there.”

Rivera tried to stand, but the painkiller had begun to wear off and a sharp pain bit into his leg. “I don’t need to go. You got what you wanted. Take the money. Okay?”

“Money?” Santo said. He laughed. The other men, in their funeral black suits, laughed, too, and started mumbling in Sicilian. One Grocer downed a cold Pepsi and the other wiped his brow. There was a storm of tapping above them, and Johnny wanted to tell all those little girls to shut the fuck up so he could think straight. “What makes you think Charlie left you money?”

“What else could it be?” Rivera asked.

“If it’s only money,” Santo said, “you can keep your cut. We’re not trying to muscle you out. You know that.”

Rivera was confused and he held his head in his hands. He rubbed his temples and asked Jimmy Longo for another cigarette and a light. He hadn’t slept all day, and when he almost passed out he could still hear the men in between having cold sweats and a headache so bad that it made him puke on himself.

“Jimmy will take you back home,” Trafficante said. “I’ll see you at the airport.”

The men stood and shook hands and hugged, and Johnny Rivera thought to himself: When did Ybor City become a fucking political boardroom? It was still nothing but cutthroat immigrants trying to prove they never left a worthless, dry little island. In their suits, they acted like the chamber of commerce, not shakedown men making a living in the way it had always been.

Rivera stood and Longo helped him back to the Cadillac.

This wasn’t the way he imagined seeing Havana.

DODGE RAN back by Ybor City and drove by Johnny’s casita. The lights were off and the car was gone. It must’ve been about nine thirty or ten o’clock. He called in to the desk sergeant using his radio and asked to put a bulletin out on Johnny Rivera, giving him the information on Johnny’s Olds and plate number. 3-53566. He stopped at the Silver Ring Café on Broadway and ordered a Cuban sandwich and a draft beer and used the pay phone back by the toilets to call Al Wainright at home. He put him on Rivera’s house and told him not even to sneeze until he called in.

It was ten thirty, and he didn’t want to go home.

Dodge drove down to the Tampa Terrace and walked into the bar and saw Fred Bender playing the piano.

Bender wore a herringbone suit and a tie, and his tanned face was flushed as he played a melancholy song to a group of people surrounding the piano and setting their drinks on the lid. They were mainly ladies, and when Bender finished up the last notes they leaned over the piano and shoved dollar bills into his brandy glass, giving him an even bigger treat by giving him a clear view of their open blouses and loose brassieres.

Bender gave a pleasant little nod and saw Dodge, and told the ladies he’d be right back.

Dodge ordered a Miller at the main bar, and a bartender in a tuxedo shirt and black bow tie pulled one from the ice chest. Bender sidled up beside Dodge and asked the bartender—he just called him Mike—for a very, very, very dry martini.

Mike nodded. Bender asked what was Dodge doing hitting the bars on a Saturday night.

“You know about the shoot-out in the county.”

“Sure,” Bender said. He lit a cigarette. His face was flushed, but his hair was Brylcreem-perfect.

“Rivera was there.”

“You get an ID?”

“From the Giant himself.”

Bender played with the cigarette in his hands. “You picked him up yet?”

“Can’t find him.”

“Was he with those cops?”

Dodge shook his head. “He killed one of them.”

“I heard the name Carl Walker.”

Dodge nodded. “You know him.”

“I’ve met him,” he said. “He had the reputation of being meaner than the devil himself. He beat up a mermaid at Weeki Wachee a few years back. He’d been beating her for a while, and I guess she fought back. He broke one of her arms and dislocated her jaw.”