White Shadow (42 page)

“She file charges?”

“She left town,” Bender said. “I heard the whole story as a big joke because Walker had told her that he’d gut her like a fish.”

“I have Allison watching Rivera’s house, and I have a bulletin out for his car. Where can I find you?”

He smiled at the ladies around his piano. He gave them all a polite little wave and winked.

“Why, here,” Bender said. “Of course.”

Dodge checked back in with Dispatch and there had been nothing.

Soon, he found himself driving down by the Floridan and catching a glimpse of the back of a woman he thought was Edy Parkhill. He slowed and looked back, and there she was in a red dress and red lipstick, tripping along with some skinny blond man and a blond woman, and they were all laughing gaily as if the world was one big joke. Dodge parked about a block away down by the big toy store and walked toward her, acting as if he’d just run into her on the street. Edy saw him—he saw the look of recognition—but kept her head down and kept walking. The blond man put his arm around her, and she put her arm around his waist. The blond woman said something they thought was funny and they all laughed.

Dodge turned and called her name. Out on the sidewalk, Edy Parkhill turned. She looked back and tilted her head with an expression of: Why in the world would you want to do that?

Dodge just stood there. And the man loosened his grip from around her waist. They all stopped laughing, and then it looked as if Edy would start crying as she walked quickly over to Dodge, Dodge almost expecting to be punched in the jaw, but instead she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him hard on the lips.

“Get me out of here.”

IT WAS THE SHOWDOWN IN SHOWTOWN in all the
Times
racks across town. The paper ran it big across the top of 1-A, with a picture of the Giant with his .44, and a quote from Blackburn saying it looked like a bunch of bolita business. He said there were “known Ybor City figures” in the area. And back then, that kind of said it all, because it meant you were Latin and a hoodlum, and people in Tampa were very good at the coded talk.

I ate a Swanson’s TV dinner at my apartment (turkey and stuffing with gravy and an apple pie), read the paper for a while, and made it through a couple chapters of
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
before I checked the times for movie shows. I took a shower and shaved. I dressed.

I wanted to go to the bars.

I wanted to see Eleanor.

I didn’t call her.

I headed down the marble steps past the mail slots and then turned and walked back to my apartment. I wanted to change my necktie.

I called Eleanor.

I let it ring twice and was about to hang up.

She answered.

I asked if she wanted to join me for a drink and talk shop.

She was already drinking, and told me to come to the island and we’d drink gin and tonics and not talk shop and listen to her new Dave Brubeck album. I told her I thought I could handle it.

She left the door open to her second-floor apartment.

Her place was one of those little buildings that opened out onto a courtyard and pool, and she’d set a couple of sun chairs outside to sit and watch some kids playing out in the water.

She walked inside to make another drink and to flip the album over.

It was
Jazz Goes to College
. I soon was on my third gin and tonic, and I marveled at the clear water showing bright green from the pool’s concrete bottom. I marveled at the little lights shining in the deep end and how much fun the kids were having. They weren’t even five years old, a boy and a girl.

They ran around the pool and shot at each other with water pistols. Both just had on little swim trunks, and the boy wore a Davy Crockett coonskin cap that his mother kept telling him to take off or he was going to ruin it.

Round and round they went. Eleanor came back and watched with me.

The girl fell and got up. The boy fell.

He skinned his knees and cried.

I liked the gin and tonics very much.

When the album ended, we took a walk. We crossed over Davis Boulevard, near the little downtown, and walked toward the channel where poor whites and a few negroes would bottom-fish on the jagged rocks protecting the shore.

“Did Dodge tell you why he was in Gibtown?”

She shook her head.

“Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

“Sure.”

“He said he was looking for a robbery suspect,” I said.

“But you don’t believe him.”

I shook my head. “Dodge has no love for reporters.”

“That’s true.”

“Has he ever tried—” I asked. “You know?”

“To get into my pants?” she asked. Eleanor could be heroically profane.

I didn’t say anything. We kept walking down the narrow road and could see the channel open up in front of us and all the rust-bucket barges and tugboats with their lights winking in the darkness. You could hear the wind in the palms and the sound of the tugs. The water broke and crashed against the jagged rocks.

We found one of the green benches that looked out onto the channel and took a seat. Eleanor sat hard.

She was tired and a little drunk.

She had on a small black knit sweater and a big flowered dress with pockets. She put her hands in her pockets and let out some air. We looked out onto the ships down at the Banana Docks and out on the scrubby pines and palmettos on Seddon Island. Railroad cars sat abandoned and rusting on the small twin island.

She pulled out a pack of Chesterfields from her purse and a box of matches. I lit her cigarette, and we watched the channel.

“You think I’m too young for you,” I said. “Don’t you?”

“You’re only a few years younger,” she said. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you think I’m just a kid.”

“A kid?” she said, laughing. “You are many things, L.B., but not a kid.”

“Do you mind if I ask you about your boyfriend from the other night?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she said, blowing the smoke out in the air. “And no, you may not.”

I liked her black glasses and glamorous clothes and how they made absolutely no sense together. Her hair was very soft and very blond, and she’d gotten some sun on her arms and face. I wanted to put my hand on her shoulder and pull her into me like in the movies.

I could see us both there in Technicolor and in VistaVision. The director would frame the little green bench, the rocky shore, and the ships across from us. It would be a big goddamned heartbreaking moment. I would tell her that I loved her, really loved her, and she would crush her head to my chest and sob softly, and then I’d take her off to bed.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

She tossed the cigarette onto the rocks.

“The ships.”

“I like it here,” she said. “Sometimes it stinks.”

I shrugged.

“Sometimes it smells like garbage and oil,” she said.

“Do you want to go to the Stable Room?” I asked. “I’ll buy you dinner at Tibbet’s Corner.”

She patted my face and leaned back into the chair. “I just want to sit here all night.”

I felt my face flush and she noticed it, and that embarrassed me and I turned away from her.

She smiled, just a small, cracked grin.

I smiled back at her.

We sat in silence for a while, just watching the big goddamned boats being pushed by the tugs.

A beaten-up Chevy Apache truck rambled down the road and parked a block away from us. Two negroes got out and pulled out some cane poles and a big flashlight. They found a place on the rocks and dropped in a line and lit cigars and drank beer. I wondered if some housewife down the row of houses would call the cops to roust them.

Without warning, while I was telling her another odd story about Wilton Martin, Eleanor turned my head toward her using the tips of her fingers, and just planted one on me.

Just like that. She kissed me.

It was slow and delicate, but not really sweet, and lasted at least ten seconds.

I looked into her brown eyes and couldn’t talk.

“Now, would you please walk me back to my apartment?”

“How about dinner?” I asked.

She smiled at me. “Not tonight,” she said.

I dropped my head and walked, and we crossed through the little downtown and soon found the gate back to Eleanor’s pool. The children were gone.

“Don’t you get it now, L.B.?” she asked.

I shook my head.

She winked at me and closed the gate behind her.

I was aggravated, confused, and elated.

I had to think. I had to make it into something.

I passed on the Stable Room and just drove over to the Peter O. Knight airstrip and parked in the little vacant lot by the runway. I turned on the radio and listened to a late-night broadcast of an orchestra out of Miami and thought of Eleanor as I lay on the warm hood of my car.

The Cessnas buzzed and choked and glided down. I watched a couple planes accelerate hard down the runway and take off. I liked the red and blue lights just blinking on the tarmac in the quiet and black night.

I stayed there for a few hours.

I drove back past Eleanor’s apartment. Her car was gone, but I noticed a new one, a simple two-door Plymouth sedan. A man sat inside smoking a cigarette, but I could not see his face. I could only see the pinprick of orange light as he inhaled.

It was strange times and I was feeling a bit paranoid, so I slowed and stopped down the street and parked. The Plymouth stayed.

I waited five minutes. I waited ten.

Nothing.

I got out of my car and walked toward the black Plymouth. Within ten feet, the car started, knocked into gear, and peeled out. The red taillights glowed down the street until the car turned and sped away.

A FEW HOURS EARLIER, Jimmy Longo helped Johnny Rivera out onto the Tampa International tarmac. Rivera had a pair of crutches now, and he’d changed into some fresh black pants and a bright pink Hawaiian shirt. He kept a pair of sunglasses in his pocket, just so they didn’t get crushed in the bag he packed. He let Longo get his bags, glad to see the lug from Pennsylvania being his porter for a while. Santo Trafficante boarded before any of them, and they got Rivera a seat in the back. Johnny passed Santo up by the cabin reading an issue of
Time
magazine with a picture of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse on the cover. Santo had his legs crossed and an open briefcase in the seat next to him with a small office inside: staples, pins, envelopes, and paper clips.

Rivera shook his head, got a big-titted stewardess to feel sorry for him and to bring him a pillow and a Scotch, and he knew pretty soon it would be Snoozeville.

They took off and landed in Miami, where they changed planes and had a few drinks in the cocktail bar. At midnight, they were up again—packed in like sardines with a group of tourists from Toledo who applauded when the plane took off and then stared out the windows like a bunch of dopes—and headed over the Keys and then down to the big island of Cuba.

Rivera leaned into the aisle and looked up front and saw Longo talking to his boss and he wondered why in the world Santo wanted him to come along. Why didn’t he just take the ledger and kick his ass to the side? Maybe it was all payback for a phone call that he’d made to Joe Antinori two years back that settled the street wars that were ripping the Sicilians apart. He’d like to think it was respect, but Santo wasn’t his old man. He was all business. The more Rivera kicked it around, the more he realized that Santo didn’t want him running loose around Tampa with blood on his hands. Santo wouldn’t want him pulled in by the cops to be asked questions about missing Cuban girls and dirty cops and the Old Man’s ledger.

And maybe that’s what had gotten him a ride to Havana and maybe a cut of whatever crazy old Charlie Wall had squirreled away in one of his many pussy-hunting adventures in old Havana.