White Shadow (35 page)

“An hour.”

The line went dead.

Dodge tried home again and the phone rang.

He walked over to Al Wainright’s desk and thought about checking through his notes and files. He didn’t.

What bothered him most was that he just didn’t care.

Dodge grabbed his coat and some cigarettes and walked down the stairs into the early evening.

AT A LITTLE after nine, just as the thunderheads were beginning to roll across downtown, Dodge drove north to Lowry Park, where he parked away from the streetlamps and moved on foot to a place called Fairyland. Fairyland was a new civic project for the kids to come and play in little Germanic cottages: the house where Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother lived, the little houses of the Three Little Pigs, and a squat house that Snow White shared with the Seven Dwarfs.

Dodge took a jagged stone path through the little village and past the little homes complete with mailboxes and hand-drawn wooden signs pointing to the next attraction or the petting zoo, where Dodge could hear the goats bleating. The little houses were constructed out of concrete and didn’t have doors or windows, so the kids could crawl around them and raise some hell while their parents sucked on a Coke or ate an ice-cream cone under the huge oaks and pine trees filling the park.

Dodge crossed a narrow bridge over a lagoon and saw the shape of a man at the bridge’s apex, smoking. He was dressed in a tight-cut black suit with a white shirt and black knit tie, and despite its being nine and dark as hell he wore thin, black sunglasses like he was a negro musician.

He was Joe “Pelusa” Diaz. Not to be confused with “Baby Joe” Diez. Joe Diez or Diaz was kind of like the Ybor City version of John Smith and the reason why so many people had nicknames. Pelusa was the biggest bolita banker since Charlie Wall, only he didn’t work with the Sicilians. He was an old Ybor Cuban/Spaniard to the core and worked only with one other banker, Eddie “El Gordo” Blanco. The Fat Man.

“Put me down for 13,” Dodge said, giving the hottest number played every week.

“Bank’s big this week,” Pelusa said, finishing off the cigarette. “We’ll be pulling numbers all night long.”

“How you been?” Dodge asked.

“Living,” Pelusa said. “You know.”

“Your kids?”

“Fine, thanks.”

There was a few seconds of silence, and Dodge knew Pelusa wanted him to get on with it, because being one of the few independent operators in Tampa and a police informant wouldn’t exactly make him a popular man.

“What’s going on?” Dodge asked.

“What?”

“Charlie Wall.”

“Oh, no—” he said.

Behind Pelusa, the moon shone off the fake thatched roofs of the cottages. More thunder grumbled from the city in the south. It would be here soon.

“Just the right direction, Joe.”

He shook his head and cupped his hand to his mouth to light another cigarette. He clicked off his lighter. “This place gives me the creeps.”

There was a shuffling in the moonlight and the sound of scattering feet. Dodge pulled out a .38 from his holster and Pelusa pulled out a .45, aiming it into the woods. More shuffling and Pelusa squeezed off a round with a sharp report echoing through the little park.

A white cat trotted out from the woods, ran up onto the bridge, and began to rub against Pelusa’s legs.

Dodge laughed and holstered his gun.

Pelusa holstered his gun. The cat kept rubbing.

“Johnny,” Pelusa said. “That’s what I’m hearing.”

“Why?”

“I heard on pretty good authority that Charlie Wall called up Johnny. This was the night he was killed. When was that? Last Tuesday or Monday. Hell. Anyway, the Old Man was cussing out Johnny and calling him a worthless son of a bitch and all that.”

“I’ve heard that,” Dodge said. “But that doesn’t make sense. What about the Sicilians?”

“Well, you know. Even you cops don’t like to talk about them. But they’re there, as much as you try to ignore it.”

Dodge nodded. “Anything?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Because Charlie Wall was talking again.”

“You don’t talk about the Old Men. That’s just the rule.” Dodge let out his breath.

Little splatters of rain began to dent the pond. Thunder boomed and the lightning cracked.

“We got nothin’, Joe.”

Pelusa turned up his collar. “Okay?”

“Listen,” Dodge said, holding up his hand. “I’m going to let everyone spin their wheels on this one. But if Rivera did do it, I think he had help.”

“Two men?”

Dodge nodded.

“No kiddin’.”

“So, let me ask you this. If you needed help from a dirty cop, who would you turn to?”

“A cop? Why do you think a cop’s in on this?”

The two men followed the crooked path past the storybook houses as the tropical rain opened up and soaked their backs.

“Who?”

“You really got time to listen to me name all the crooked cops in this town? I’d start with Chief B. J. Roberts on down. No offense.”

“Not crooked,” Dodge said. “Someone who’d kill for money.”

“Who would I use?” Pelusa asked at the end of the path looking over where he’d parked his still-open convertible. “Shit.”

“Come on.”

“Listen, Dodge. I don’t even like saying this son of a bitch’s name.”

“But he’s good.”

“For a job like Charlie?”

“Yeah.”

“Goddammit,” Pelusa said, as he finally removed his sunglasses and stuck them into his pocket, his suit soaked. “I’m sending you a dry-cleaning bill.”

“Fine.”

“You’re going to get me killed,” Pelusa said.

“You’re too smart for that, Joe.”

Pelusa smiled. “You ever heard the initials C.W.?”

AFTER SHE slid down a big plate of bacon and eggs at the Silver Coach Diner, Jake Maloof’s daughter asked me about my dwindling future in the newspaper business. She wanted to know how long I thought the
Times
could stay afloat after getting beaten by the
Tribune
every damned day.

I put down my waiting fork and smiled.

“I hope it’s not by Wednesday,” I said. “I get paid on Wednesday.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I hope you guys don’t quit, either. The
Tribune
doesn’t run
Donald Duck
.”

I shrugged and agreed and started into my eggs and was working on the bacon when Ed Dodge walked through the door and slid into a seat across from me. He set his hat on the table. I remember noticing how the straw was frayed at the edges, and how the arms of his suit coat were a little too short.

“Julio Sanchez told me this was where you hung out.”

“I have expensive taste.”

“We need to talk.”

I reached for my notepad and Dodge shook his head and I dropped it back on the table. The morning sun was very bright inside the large bank windows of the diner and shone hard off the white Formica tabletops.

“You got a lot of play on that birdseed story,” he said.

“I got a lot of grief, too,” I said. “My editor thinks you were pulling my leg.”

“I’d never do that.”

“What happened?”

“With what?”

“The birdseed?”

He shook his head and looked down at his folded hands. He looked up and shrugged. “It was birdseed. Nothing came of it.”

“Come on.”

“Look,” he said. “That’s not going anywhere.”

I noticed his new partner, Al Wainright, pacing outside on the sidewalk and tipping his hat at the secretaries who were passing in and out of the shadows on Franklin Street. I wondered why he wasn’t allowed to come inside with Dodge.

“You tie up Wainright on a post?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“He’s not house-trained?”

“You helped me out with that story,” Dodge said, getting to the point. “I appreciated that.”

“Come again?”

“I said I wanted to thank you, L.B.”

He clasped his hands together and slipped his beaten straw hat back on his head. His face showed the tan of someone who’d been outside for a long time. He smiled a big-toothed Hollywood smile, and said: “By the way, are you still in contact with Victor Arroyo?”

“Huh?”

“Victor Arroyo? Or is it Rolando? I think Rolando is his middle name.”

“Come again?”

“I think he’s friends with Ricardo Gomez and Gabriel Carrillo. Those guys.”

I shook my head. “What are you driving at, Dodge?”

“Nothing,” he said, and looked at me for a good solid moment and then slid across a lined sheet of notebook paper. There was a list of the names he mentioned with a scrawled note at the bottom of the page.

 

 

 

 

“The key to what?” Dodge asked.

“You tell me.”

“Did Charlie Wall give you anything before he died?”

“Not that I know of.”

Dodge nodded. He kept looking at me.

“Dodge,” I said. “You’re giving me the creeps.”

“I just would hope you’d come to me if you knew anything about Mr. Wall’s death.”

“Sure.”

“And we keep this between us.”

“What?”

He snatched up the paper, folded it in three sections, and held it up. “This.”

“Why?”

“I kind of like you, L.B.,” he said. “For a newspaperman, you ain’t half bad.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“And,” he said, leaning in, “I’ll keep this close. Because if it was known you were having little pity parties for Charlie Wall and he was shooting his mouth off to you, I’d hate to think what could come of it.”

I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

He winked, and said: “See you around, sport.”

At the front of the diner, Jake Maloof watched Dodge leave, the door’s bell jangling behind him, and then he grunted from his perch by the great green cash register.

“I don’t care for that man,” he said.

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know,” Jake said. “He looks shifty. What did he want?”

“Newsman business.”

“You’re no newsman, L.B. You’re just a reporter.”

From the back of the little stainless steel diner, I heard the growing laughter of the cook as he worked those thin metal spatulas against the grill.

IN THE PARKING lot of the Hillsborough County Jail, Dodge made Al Wainright wait in the car and walked across the lot toward Oaklawn cemetery, stopping in front of a two-door black Chevy sedan that was parked under a twisted old oak. Dodge leaned in the car and said hello to Ellis Clifton, who was listening to a ball game. Both windows down. His hat and leather satchel in the passenger’s seat.

“You hanging in there?” Dodge asked, looking into the cemetery and watching the way the moss bent in the cool afternoon breezes over the headstones. He couldn’t quite make out where Charlie was buried but knew it was in the far southeast corner.

“I don’t know,” Clifton said in his rough Georgia voice. “I got an offer to go back to work as a newsman in St. Pete.”

“Cop work isn’t for everyone.”

Clifton shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

“Money?”

“You bet.”

Dodge looked back in the sheriff’s office parking lot and could see the hood of his car. Wainright had stayed where he was told, and Dodge was pretty sure he couldn’t see him.

“Ellis, you ever hear of a deputy in Pasco named Carl Walker?” Clifton shook his head.

“But you know some folks up there?”

“Sure.”

“Can you ask around for me?”

“Without anyone knowing I’m asking.”

Dodge nodded.

“Funny how you’re always asking us county people for help,” Clifton said. “It almost seems like you don’t trust anyone in your department.”