White Shadow (45 page)

The music sounded like nursery rhymes and old things from Placetas. White gloves and silly girls in love and an old man who died with only his faith.

Someone knocked a sledgehammer and rang the bell and people cheered. The air still smelled of the cotton candy and roasting peanuts, and everywhere people were gay and laughing.

Al smiled. A part of him was home.

He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a crisp twenty-dollar bill. He handed it down to her.

She took it and then hugged his leg. He patted her on the head and then walked through the crowd.

Children stopped cold in his presence, and parents laughed and pointed and would sometimes hold their hands over their mouths in astonishment. She watched the big cowboy hat until it was swallowed deep into the midway.

The light scattered on the sandy earth and the carousel slowed. The calliope music wound down like a tired record.

NICK SCAGLIONE shook a cold gin martini and danced along to “Mambo Italiano” on the jukebox as Detective Mark Winchester walked through the door of The Dream. It was Thursday night and the place was hopping, and Nick had three barmaids on a full shift. There was a councilman at the table by the front door, a county commissioner near the back, and two off-duty cops drinking beer and shooting pool by the bathrooms.

Winchester was a solidly built man with a square jaw and crew cut. He chewed gum and took in the dark room as he entered. He watched Scaglione work the martini shaker and talk a little trash to two blond stewardesses who’d just flown in from Atlanta. Scaglione topped them off with double olives and told them how much he liked their hats.

“Mambo Italiano” finished and then came on again. Someone screamed. The cop threw a pool cue. “Come on, Nick,” one of the cops yelled. “This is the fifth fucking time.”

“Hey,” Scaglione said. “I like this song.”

Winchester took a seat by the cash register and ordered a Coca-Cola, and Scaglione pumped it out of the fountain and watched Winchester as he stared above the booze bottles behind the bar and took in more of the scene. He clenched his jaw and worked the fingers on his right hand. He chewed gum.

As he moved, his jacket opened, and Scaglione saw the silver .38 on his right side.

Scaglione started to sweat.

He poured Winchester another Coke.

“What’s wrong with this one?”

“Thought you might need another.”

Winchester looked at him like he might be a fool.

Scaglione moved down the bar and leaned into the stewardesses. He asked them how long of a layover they got and if they wanted to go dancing after he closed, and they giggled and said they didn’t know what they wanted to do. Scaglione raised his eyebrows and said he had the key to the city and could open up Tampa to them. They giggled some more.

He smiled and then looked over at Winchester. He hadn’t touched either Coke.

He watched the detective walk back to the bathroom and then reappear a few minutes later. Winchester laid a dollar on the bar.

“No charge,” Scaglione said.

“Sure there is,” Winchester said. “Are you trying to fuck me?”

“No, sir.”

“Then charge me.”

Scaglione ran off to make change. One of the stewardesses grabbed his arm and asked him if he knew where to get some reefer. He shook his head hard and kind of stumbled away. He tripped over an empty beer bottle and Winchester’s change scattered across the concrete floor.

He righted himself and looked out into the bar. The stewardesses laughed. Winchester had turned his head.

Scaglione was sweating a lot now as he picked up the change and then laid it down. “What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing much,” Winchester said. “How’s your old man?”

“Good.” Scaglione nodded.

Winchester took a sip of Coke. He straightened his tie. He looked back at the cops shooting pool and then over at the councilman. The councilman waved. Winchester waved over his shoulder.

“Were you really the last person to see Charlie Wall alive?”

“I been through all that already. I got interviewed by Red McEwen. I told him everything.”

“And you vouched for Rivera, too.”

He nodded.

“You guys make me laugh.”

Scaglione felt dizzy. He steadied his hand on the bar. He heard the
crack
of the balls on the pool table, and the jukebox stopped cold. The stewardesses asked for some change and he gave it to them. They played some old Ink Spots.

Scaglione began to wipe down the bar.

Winchester motioned him over. He said: “Rivera’s got Charlie’s ledger.”

Scaglione’s heart was pounding so hard he could hear the blood flushing through his ears.

“I know that,” Winchester said. “But we all know how Charlie liked to talk.”

He crooked a finger to Scaglione and Scaglione leaned in. Winchester whispered: “Charlie Wall wrote a letter to a reporter before he died. We got it, but it makes you wonder.”

“Who?”

Winchester shrugged. “Dodge won’t say. He keeps it with him.”

Scaglione began to wipe down the bar again and moved down the line.

Winchester drank the Coke. He wrote down two names on the cocktail napkin and handed it to him.

“You sure?”

“One of the two,” he said. “My bet.”

Scaglione nodded and nodded.

“God, that old man loved to talk,” Winchester said, before finishing the Coke and walking out of the bar. “Could make a person real nervous.”

THE VEDADO neighborhood was very green and very rich. It was all gardens and manicured lawns and hedges and palm trees and hibiscus flowers. There were embassies and big stucco mansions for millionaires, and the air smelled sweet and sickly like walking through a greenhouse. It was night and humid, and Jimmy Longo parked the Cadillac along the curb near the Necropolis cemetery. One of the embassies was having a party, and they heard the music and laughter as they hit the sidewalk. The place was Beverly Hills with a Spanish accent.

Trafficante checked his watch.

After most of Havana had closed, the president of this bank opened his doors.

Trafficante and Jimmy Longo met the bank president and made the customary introductions, and there was much handshaking and compliments and discussion of the weather and general all-around bullshit until the bank president suddenly stood and walked them into the big steel vault. The bank wasn’t one of the largest in the city, and the vault was really no bigger than Santo’s living room back in Tampa.

They soon found a place to sit at a long table in the vault, where keys were turned and boxes slid from their slots.

Three names. Three accounts. This was the third bank they’d hit.

The first bank was a bust, and the second only had a thousand bucks that the Old Man had squirreled away.

The bank president gave his regards to President Batista and left them. The carpet in the vault was red and blue with big tropical flowers.

Trafficante opened one lid. Jimmy Longo opened the other.

Inside each were a dozen or so files held together with a rubber band. All of the files were different sizes. One appeared new, the others beaten and worn.

Trafficante opened the first and ran his index finger down a column of names and numbers.

Longo watched.

Trafficante opened another and skimmed through the pages.

“It’s our goddamned bolita records,” Trafficante said. “Jesus. That rotten goddamned son of a bitch.”

“What?” Longo said. He tilted his head.

Trafficante flipped over both boxes and out came envelopes and more files and loose letters. Trafficante got to his knees and opened an envelope. A pink slip of paper fell to his hands. It was a sales receipt from a St. Petersburg car dealer to his brother, Henry, for a ’54 canary yellow Merc. Henry had signed his name just as big as shit before handing the keys over to that two-faced cop.

Trafficante went back to the table and the papers, the fluorescent lights buzzing over his head in the still silence of the vault. He read over the names of the bettors and then down another column to the bankers.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “That rotten goddamned son of a bitch.”

Longo smiled. “So you got what you want?”

Trafficante said: “Yes.”

“So what now?”

“Put all of this shit in a bag,” he said. “Leave nothing.”

Trafficante and Longo walked out of the vault and past the bank president, who held out his hand, the grin on his face falling as they pushed past.

THE COPS DRANK Hatuey at the bar of the Tropicana nightclub for three hours until the show for the colored dancers came on, and Dodge walked out into the open gardens and watched the Amazon women shaking their firm, brown fannies and breasts like their entire bodies were on fire. Red, blue, green, and yellow lights lit up the gardens and giant plants that seemed to come from another era. The plants grew wild here and tall and thick like a jungle. Along the arches of the old estate, hundreds, maybe a thousand, of tourists wandered through the grounds and drank at the several bars spread throughout the nightclub and deep in the casino to gamble and drink and gawk at the long-legged women.

Dodge searched the crowd for Rivera. But there were so many. Navarro and Gonzalez both had a picture of Johnny’s mug and had given it out to four other detectives who were walking the Tropicana grounds. Every so often, he’d catch one of the men, and they’d acknowledge each other and then keep their dance around the grounds of the old estate.

The place glowed in the Hollywood lighting. Big windows with plantation shutters and plenty of colonnades and big, thick, columned balconies looked down onto the stage where the orchestra had struck up.

Perez Prado directed his orchestra through “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White,” and the long-legged women flitted and turned and shook, showing off their long legs and bare midriffs. Prado wore a tan suit and tie, his curly black hair slicked back and his mustache perfectly trimmed. He smiled and mock-danced with the women, as he kept the mambo beat, the congas and the saxophones and trumpets working the women into a frenzy.

A spotlight shone on the bongo player, and he knocked out a lone, solid beat until the band and horns broke in with him and the polite Americanos clapped from the hundreds of small linen-topped tables and the brown women began to sweat under the stage lights.

Dodge followed a path through the banana trees, rubber plants, and palm and elephant’s ears and yucca. There were big banyan trees and old oaks. He scanned the faces that passed him and checked his watch. Soon, he found Gonzalez, who was sitting at one of the dozens of bars on the grounds talking to a silver-haired bartender in a white shirt and black tie.

Dodge joined him. He ordered another Hatuey.

“Not tonight, my friend,” Gonzalez said.

“Could he have flown back?”