White Shadow (46 page)

“Perhaps,” he said. “But not under his own name.”

Dodge nodded. The room was painted a bright yellow and the floors were a speckled terrazzo. Everything was clean and patterned in sharp geometric angles. Fluorescent lights glowed underneath the black top of the bar, making the room seem space-age.

“Would you like to go to the Shanghai again?” Gonzalez asked. He smiled and took a sip of some dark rum.

Dodge shook his head.

“Do you have a family?”

“Yes.”

“Married?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s get drunk,” Gonzalez said. “Let’s stay out all night and find women. I want to get you laid.”

Dodge didn’t smile.

“Hey,” Gonzalez said. “We’re doing all we can.” He smiled some more. And he drank some.

Dodge didn’t answer him. He walked back out of the bar and into the thick gardens, listening to Perez Prado’s big band and that frantic bongo pushing him on. Dodge mopped his face with a white handkerchief and checked for his gun clipped on his belt. He walked back to a washroom and splashed cold water on his face. He drank some of the water and splashed his face again.

The toilet flushed and out walked Johnny Rivera, hobbling on crutches.

Dodge watched him in the mirror as he dried his hands.

“Hey, Johnny,” Dodge said. “Nice show.”

IT WAS MIDNIGHT at Santa Maria del Mar, maybe twenty minutes outside Havana, and you could see the twinkling lights of the city from the beach. Jimmy Longo had parked the orange Caddy up by the boardwalk, and he and Santo Trafficante walked the length with Charlie Wall’s files and paper, a bottle of rum, and two books of matches from the Sans Souci. Santo hadn’t spoken the whole drive out of the Vedado, as they rolled down the highway along the Playa de Estes. Jimmy Longo understood the mood and just let the man think. It was a clear night out on the beach as the sharp-dressed men took off their handmade Italian shoes and rolled off their socks and made their way in the cooling breeze. Under a heavy moon, the water was clear, with a steady roll of waves. Coconut and palm trees wavered in the wind, and the beach was littered with palm fronds and broken coconut husks. Soft shadows of lovers walking hand in hand lined the beach for as far as they could see.

Longo dug a hole with his hands and began to collect the dry palm fronds. When he had a good stack, Santo poured the rum over them, and Longo threw in a match, kicking up a sweet, strong purple flame. Santo got to one knee and shook his head. He hated the wet sand, he hated the way the grains would work into the suit and into his shirt and would make him go back to the apartment and change before they drove back out to the Sans Souci.

“Goddamned lousy son of a bitch,” he said again. He tossed the first file on the flame. He poured out more of the rum. He stood up, the fire was cooking now, and the pages bent and curled in the heat and the sweetness mixed with what smelled like something ancient and forgotten, the last play of a bitter old man whom Santo’s father had bested during the Shotgun Wars.

Longo threw on a couple more files and a box of receipts.

More rum. The fire was a decent glow now.

“What was he after?” Longo asked, his face gentle and soft, kind of wistful, in the campfire glow.

“He’d lost his fucking mind,” Santo said. “He wanted to push my buttons and to make a play. I don’t know what he wanted. A cut of the bolita. Maybe some kind of investment in a crazy scheme. You never knew with Charlie Wall. He thought enough of his plan to keep it all down here. Locked away safe.”

Longo nodded. He poured out the remaining rum, and the fire kicked up hard and the men stepped back. There was more smoke than fire now, and Longo turned his head and began to cough.

“You think there’s more?” Longo asked, choking in some air.

Santo shrugged. He wadded up the sales receipt for the Merc and tossed it into the makeshift pit.

“How’d Charlie get this stuff?”

“Paid off some bookmakers,” Santo said. “We’ll find out.”

“What about the newspapers?”

“You think Charlie tipped them off on this?”

“Nick got a tip,” Longo said. “Says Charlie Wall was about to go public.”

“With who?”

Longo shrugged and repeated the names Scaglione had given him.

Santo nodded. He let out a long breath.

“Just take care of it,” Santo said. “I’m sick of this goddamned mess.”

The fire had eaten away the files, and now there were just black curls and orange embers smoking up the little bare place on the beach. Santo kicked sand over the fire and more smoke bellowed out, and he and Longo kept kicking until the fire, smoke, and any trace of them being there had been washed clean.

“It’s all changed,” Santo said. “You can’t be a man and conduct business anymore.”

“Wall’s gone.”

“I’m not talking about Charlie Wall,” he said. “I’m talking about Tampa. I’m talking about the States. Everyone is out to get everybody.”

As they walked back to the car, clouds returned to the coast, covering up the moon, and a light rain began to fall. Out on the beach, the patter erased their footprints, and soon the tide would roll forward and smooth over the place they dug.

On the ride to the Sans Souci, Santo announced he wanted to send his wife a dozen red roses for being such a goddamned terrific wife and mother.

Longo said he liked that idea a lot.

RIVERA STOPPED in midstride with his crutches and turned back to Dodge. Dodge didn’t rush toweling off his hands. He placed the towel into the dirty clothes bin and tipped the attendant a few pesos.

“What do you want, Dodge?”

“I want to talk.”

“I’m on vacation.”

“Glad to see you’re okay,” Dodge said. “We were worried about you after you took off from the Fish Camp in Gibtown.”

Rivera turned full around. He nodded and kind of smiled. “Okay,” he said. “What do you want to talk about?”

“The girl,” he said. “Santo. Charlie Wall. A lot of things.”

“I’ll talk to you when I get back to Tampa,” he said. “I said I was on vacation.”

Dodge smiled. “I have half a dozen Cuban cops out there who are looking for you. They believe you killed their buddies. You can get arrested and you can fight extradition, but you won’t win. If you do, you’re locked out of Tampa. How ’bout we just talk?”

“You’re fucking nuts, Dodge. Coming down here like that? Do you know where you are?”

“Let’s talk, Johnny.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Tell me why you were after the girl,” Dodge said. “She’s connected to Charlie Wall. But how? This is Santo’s show. Everyone knows that. You give me something I can work with and I’ll let you go.”

“Great idea.”

Dodge walked close. “Come on, work with me.”

“What part of ‘fuck you’ don’t you understand? This has nothing to do with Santo. The girl worked for me at the Boston Bar. We got into a lovers’ quarrel because she didn’t want to give it up. So what?”

“I have witnesses to put you there when it all went down.”

“Bullshit.”

“Whatever you think. I have a signed warrant.”

Rivera smiled. “Great. Arrest me again. I think you’re sweet on me, Dodge.”

“I know you killed Charlie Wall, and I know this girl saw it. I know Carl Walker and those cops were dirty, and I know the job became a big fucking mess. But I need you to help me. I need for you to tell me who gave the order on Charlie Wall and on the girl. If you don’t, you’ll take the heat for every ounce of shit on this. Work with me and don’t get left holding the bag.”

Rivera smiled. “Really? That’s going to be a hell of a magic trick with no evidence. No weapon. And witnesses. Like I said, I got nothing to do with this. The girl was just some cooze. She worked for me. She used to blow me in the back room, and I went to see her. What happened was between her and those cops.”

“So you know.”

“I can read a fucking paper,” Rivera said. “I’m telling you, Dodge, for the last time, I didn’t kill Charlie Wall. Now, get out of my way. ”

Gonzalez and Navarro stood in the door, dressed in their black linen suits and black knit ties. They looked at Dodge and Dodge nodded, and they grabbed Johnny Rivera by the arms. The crutches fell to the floor, and they let Rivera drop with them.

Navarro leaned back and kicked Rivera in the side and he rolled to his face, and Gonzalez kicked him hard in the jaw.

But Dodge launched between them and pulled them both back. He wrapped his forearm around Navarro’s throat and threw him against the tiled wall.

“Enough,” he shouted. He shouted some more until they stopped.

He helped Rivera to his crutches.

Rivera straightened himself out and combed his hair. He leaned in and spit blood in the sink. He looked hard at Dodge and hobbled slowly away.

The Cuban cops followed and pushed him hard with the flat of their hands.

NICK SCAGLIONE braced me as I walked from the Hillsborough County Jail after checking the morning arrest log. I spent my mornings there looking to see who’d been arrested and booked overnight in hopes we’d find the mayor or a councilman or somebody famous or known who’d slipped through our sources at the sheriff’s office or at TPD. I knew Nick, but not very well. I knew he was the son of one of the old Sicilians in town, and that he ran a bar called The Dream. I knew he’d been the last person to see Charlie Wall alive and had been questioned by Dodge and McEwen.

He stopped me as I tucked my notebook into my back pocket and made my way over to my Chevy. It was shaded close to the cemetery, and he waited in a cool shadow under an enormous oak, wearing a bright yellow short-sleeved shirt and black-framed glasses. His hair was blondish and slicked back, and a cigarette hung from his mouth when he said hello. He looked like an old greaser.

I told him hello. And then I waited awkwardly. Whatever he wanted to say wasn’t coming out too easy, and it all sort of rushed out as we talked.

“Baby Joe tells me that you and Wall were tight.”

I looked at him. I looked over his shoulder to make sure his car was empty. I looked out for other cars to see if a shotgun barrel was balancing out a back window. I looked down at his hands.

I stepped back.

He laughed out some smoke. “No,” he said. “It’s fine. I just needed to talk to a newspaperman, is all. Joe says you can be trusted.”

I stared at him some more.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I have a guy that wants to talk to you.”

“Who?”

“I need to know you’ll follow through, you know,” he said. His voice was kind of shaky, and he took off his glasses to wipe the lenses on his shirttail.

“Sure,” I said. “About?”

“Charlie,” he said. “This guy says Charlie Wall told him not to go to the cops. He said he’d been talking to this newspaperman and that if anything happened to him, go to him. He said the cops were all dirty and they’d kill him.”

I looked at him. I tilted my head. “What’s going on, Nick?”

“Are you in?” he asked.

“Why don’t you call me later?” I said. “I got to go.”

He stepped in front of me. I tried to step around. It was an awkward dance.

“But you’re the one, right?” he said. “You’re the man that Charlie trusted?”

I shook my head. “You got the wrong fella,” I said. “I knew Charlie Wall, and we talked a few times. But it was all bullshit. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Nick smiled at me and kind of seemed genuinely relieved.

“I was just asking, is all,” he said.

“But if this guy really wants to talk,” I said, “tell him to call me.”

“You sure?”

“If I knew some more about Charlie Wall, then why wouldn’t I have put it into the papers?”

He pumped my hand for a few seconds and then took off in a jalopy Olds station wagon with a coat hanger holding on the muffler. I sat in my car a few moments and listened to the rattling and screaming coming out of the jail, and then I looked into the twisted oaks in the cemetery and the way the Spanish moss made patterns like jigsaws and I thought.