Tampa Star (Blackfox Chronicles Book 1) (12 page)

Sally Boots was an old gangster.  But, he still had his health, thank God. He sold out of the club back in 2003 to a guy who wanted to build a venue to rival the top clubs, like the Mons Venus. The interesting thing about Sally’s club was it had great potential to expand, although he chose to run it like little more than a “Jack Shack.”

Sally owned a lot of over one half acre, but his club took up only 2000 square feet. He didn’t care; at the time, the club provided pussy for him and his friends—he pimped out the girls he didn’t like and kept the best for himself. But, the thought of a lucrative deal with a deep pockets investor who specialized in the development of high dollar clubs was too good of an offer to pass up.

With the proceeds from the sale of his club Sally purchased his house on Westshore outright and had enough left over to buy a boat, a barely used Hatteras 80 that sat moored to the dock to the rear of his expansive back lawn. 

The yacht had been heavily discounted by the seller
—a yacht broker, who had a cocaine, gambling and pussy problem—a triple threat. Sally had supplied all his addictions, until he started losing big and the boat was surrendered to alleviate the debt.  

He sat in his kitchen contemplating making a sandwich of hot Italian sausage and peppers on hard roll—It usually gave him terrible heartburn, but he’d be dammed if that would keep him from indulging in one of the few pleasures he had left.  He had the sausage and pickled peppers shipped via UPS from his favorite deli in North Providence, as Tampa lacked a properly hot Italian sausage.  If he had his druthers and a few more years, he might open a proper Italian grocery and teach these gators how to eat.

***

Handley logged on to the secure website and the tracking device showed the location of Michael’s vehicle in the long term parking lot at Tampa International Airport.  He had placed the device under the rear bumper of Michael’s pick-up, which he identified with the kind assistance of the Manager at Hooters.

Handley called to one of his contacts at the Transportation Security Administration office at Tampa International Airport and eventually got what he was looking for. He called Sally Boots to discuss his next course of action.

“He’s in New Orleans, probably looking to visit Jimmy in Angola.” 

Sally didn’t like talking on the telephone, his cautious nature being developed by decades of watching a parade of wise guys being confronted with incriminating evidence gathered from wire taps.

“Meet me at Carmine’s,” he ordered.  Sally figured he would postpone his date with heartburn for a more palatable lunch at his favorite restaurant.   

He and Handley had discussed the scenario many times over the years.  Given the time he was picked up, it was doubtful that Jimmy knew where the gold was hidden as it was logical to assume that he would have tried to negotiate a deal and
eighty five years of incarceration in Angola was pretty solid evidence that he hadn’t struck one. It was doubtful he would ever see the light of day otherwise, so if Jimmy knew the location of the gold, it seemed logical that he would trade it for his freedom.

Sally knew some guys inside, a couple of Wise Guys that had gotten into trouble running drugs into New Orleans, and they were willing to soften Jimmy up in order to find out where his buddy, Char, might be hiding, but just as they were ready to move on him, Jimmy got himself thrown in segregation and the plan was put on hold. Still, perhaps Char’s kid could learn something while there and he should at least have a little talk with the lad.

Sally Boots was an old gangster—he had just turned eighty five this past March. But, he still had his health, thank God.  Sure, his prostate seemed to be the size of a bowling ball, but he could still get a hard-on and was regularly had his nob copped whenever a dancer from his old club needed a few bucks—which was pretty much always. His wife had left him when he decided he never wanted to return to Providence.

He still drove his Cadillac El Dorado to the Italian Club in
Ybor City regularly to play dominos, eat a good lunch of Italian pasta or chicken masala at Carmine’s on the veranda and then finish up with a nice grappa, a cigar and perhaps a nap back at the club.

They sat on the second floor veranda away from the business lunch crowd. Guy Handley ordered mussels in garlic clam sauce and a bottle of Peroni Crystal beer.

“What did I tell you about talking on the phone?” Sally asked between mouthfuls of Fettuccini Alfredo.

“The kid is looking for his old man, just like us,” replied Handley. It was his day off and Handley was enjoying the sun on his face during an unseasonable cool October. 

“Think he knows about the gold?”

“Not sure. I put a tracking device on his vehicle and he headed across the bridge and stopped at the public library.”

“Tracking device? Who the
fuck are you? James Bond?”

“It’s nothing, the narcs use them all the time, it’s a magnetic cellular signal generator that sends a cell signal to different towers and you log into a website to see where the guy is going or has been.”

“Fucking brilliant” commented Sally as he washed down the masala with a swig of Chianti.     

Once Sally glommed on to something, he stayed there and after all these years, he stayed glommed on to the 28,
000 odd gold coins in the load they stole from the Star. At today’s prices, the shipment was worth about 40 million dollars and that was a lot of hay.

The night of the job as he waited for the ship to arrive, meteorological forces were at work that he had little inkling of.  The
Star of Tampa
was probably hit by a rogue wave caused by the hurricane, he learned later.  The remnants of that same wave hit the
Bull Market
just as she was approaching the dock.  Sally walked down the dock to meet the boat assuming that the Zips he had hired had dispatched the three musketeers; the two Micks and Char. Ligio or Handley would be at the helm. After that, he figured he would do the Zips and Handley. Since Ligio was a relative, he would be spared.

He would never forget as he walked down the dock, he could see a wall of what he originally took to be sky rapidly rolling in toward shore. A moment later, he realized in horror that it was actually a huge wall of water, headed directly for him.  

The wave made a thunderous noise that reverberated from his immediate front, so strong that it rattled the fat on his ample belly.  He reached the end of the dock and watched the approaching boat perhaps 300 yards away, suddenly rise up and ride the surf towards the dock.

Sally turned to run, but it was too late. He was nothing if not a survivor, so he turned and dove into the wall of water just as it was set to wash over him and he was swept away into darkness. He awoke some time later, in a mangrove swamp across the road, about a half mile away from the dock. Other than some cuts and bruises, he was unscathed and felt glad to be alive. 

He immediately returned to the vicinity of the beached yacht, but the area was crawling with park vehicles, local sheriff cars, even a Coast Guard boat sat off shore. He ran doubled over to the parking lot, got into his Cadillac, and quickly drove away, half expecting to hear sirens in the background, but he slipped out of the park unmolested. 

There was no report of any gold recovered from the boat, Jimmy was caught crossing the causeway to St. Pete Beach the following morning, but Tommy and Char had disappeared, as had the gold.

Sally sent Jimmy comfort packages in Angola, and went to see him once, but if the kid knew anything, he wasn’t talking, at least to Sally. Ligio was dead and so were the Zips.  Ligio’s body had never been found and that pained Sally a little bit.

Handley was the only ally Sally had from the robbery.  He kept him around and through connections got him a job with the Pinellas County Sheriff’s department
—figuring that eventually Char would turn up around his old haunts.  If he did, Handley was in a good position to birddog him.  Sally also had other ears and eyes, most notably with the Ranger’s Office at Fort Desoto.  If they stashed 2000 pounds of gold somewhere, it was probably somewhere in the park. He once hired three guys with metal detectors to crisscross every square inch of the park. Aside from some old shell casings from the turn of the last century, they found very little.   

Handley remembered little after the wave struck.  He held a gun to Tommy’s back and remembered pulling the trigger just as something struck him on the side of his face and then the surreal feeling of the whole boat rising up so fast that he felt his body hit the roof of the cabin and then fall to the floor.  He remembered waking up sometime later in the cabin of the boat, in a great amount of pain
—it turned out he broke three ribs in the fall. The gold was gone and so were all the others.               

Angola got its start as a slave Plantation sometime in the 1800s and was converted to a prison farm at the end of the Civil War. The majority of the inmates have a life sentence. Ninety five percent of the prisoners at the Louisiana State prison at Angola will never leave there, at least alive.  After a prisoner dies, whether by the hand of the state or through other causes, few of them natural, the state considers his debt to society as being paid in full.  Just over 5000 prisoners are incarcerated there. 

Michael looked up the firm on the Internet and reviewed the biographies of all the attorneys and was surprised when he recognized one of the photographs. He vaguely remembered Gus telling him if he ever got busted on Bourbon Street to give him a call, but had no idea that he worked for one of the more prestigious firms in New Orleans. 

He grabbed an early morning flight out of Tampa International bound for New Orleans.  He had looked up Jimmy’s law firm in the court papers filed as records of his trial for Bank Robbery, Theft, Assault, Escape from Custody and Theft of a narcotic substance, among other charges. Jimmy was originally represented by one of the partners, Augustine Thompson.

Thompson, Antoine & Henri, was a long established Legal Firm with a history of doing pro bono work for indigent defendants within the Louisiana System of Criminal Justice.  According to the court filings, Jimmy received a speedy trail and was subsequently convicted by a jury of his peers. The judge had little sympathy for an escaped bank robber who had managed to stay free for three years while living in the State of Florida.  He received an
eighty-five year sentence.

The same law firm continued to represent Jimmy through a series of appeals that had eventually resulted in a pending review of the case by the U.S. Court of Appeals. It was based on the precedent that Jimmy’s right to a speedy trial had been rigorously adhered to in such an accelerated manner that defense counsel was not allowed an appropriate amount of time to prepare his case.

Bubba’s Boil was a ramshackle wooden building with peeling white paint that was as much an institution as Angola Prison.  It had been around since the 1920s and was known for preparing humungous and sumptuous boils of Shrimp and Crawfish. It was also tradition for the law firms’ attorneys providing pro bono work to clients incarnated in Angola to stop for a meal and a few cold Abita beers before heading back to the office in New Orleans.

It was easy to recognize him, as he was the only guy wearing a tie, having shed his jacket and slung it on the back of an unoccupied chair. The attorney occupied a large round wooden table in the far corner of the room, strategically located under an ancient belt-driven ceiling fan.

Gus got up and bear hugged Michael, “How you have been ole son,” he exclaimed loudly, while motioning him to sit and calling for the waitress.  Gus Thompson was the son of the firm’s founder, Edmund, who had originally defended Jimmy when he was unceremoniously returned to Louisiana to stand trial for escape and armed robbery in 1974.

In those days, aspiring attorneys took cases representing indigent defendants under contract from the Public Defender’s Office. The case paid next to nothing, but it was a good way for an up and comer to quickly get public recognition, especially if the case was high-profile.

Gus had been a star quarterback at LSU about four years ago and although he had gained a few pounds, he still looked like the guy that brought LSU Tigers to victory over Georgia Tech in the Peach Bowl.  After college he had served a couple years as a marine gunship pilot and went into the reserves upon discharge from active duty.

While at LSU during a summer break between semesters, Gus attended the Basic Course at Camp Pendleton.  While some of his fellow students were celebrating Spring Break at the bars and strip clubs in Panama City, FL, Gus was taking his first steps towards earning the Marine Corps Helicopter Wings attending the Aviation Preflight Indoctrination at Pensacola NAS.

Upon graduation he immediately went on to Rotary-Wing flight school and graduated near the top of his class.

From there he was granted a coveted slot in a Reserve Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron headquartered at the New Orleans’s Naval Air Station. When Michael met him, Gus was piloting a Bell AH-1W Whiskey Cobra gun ship that was busily trying to save Michael’s ass from getting whacked by about thirty insurgents that had ambushed his platoon while they were conducting operations in Fallujah.

The insurgents were easily routed thanks to the intervention of a few AGM-114 Hellfire missiles and a couple hundred rounds of
twenty millimeter cannon rounds. Michael and his fellow Recon Marines were so thankful that they sought out the pilot and gunner to personally thank them for saving their highly trained asses from getting whacked. One of Michael’s teammates had been on temporary duty at the embassy in the Green Zone and had purchased a few bottles of Jack Daniels from the Embassy commissary.

Due to the Commanding Generals’ fear of offending Muslim sensibilities and need to exhibit the highest form of caution in career management, alcohol had been outlawed in war zones since the first Gulf War. Most generals were colossal hypocrites who exempted themselves from most of the regulations and orders they shoved down the throats of lesser mortals. There were a few good ones that Michael respected, but for the most part they acted like a grenade had gone off in their helmets about the time they pinned on their first star.   

Michael presented the bottle to Gus and his gunner, a tall gaunt Warrant Officer from Natchez, Mississippi named Antoine Pembo. They all quickly retreated to Gus’ CHU, which stood for Coalition Housing Unit, opened the bottle and toasted their mutual good fortune multiple times.    

Although they had met only fleetingly, Recon was a tight knit group that operated well beyond the forward edge of the battle area and they were often dependent on rotary and fixed wing attack aircraft to pull their fat from the fire.  The two had fought in the same battle, albeit at different altitudes; Michael on the deck and Gus above it all in the sky. They knew some of the same marines and mourned some of the same fallen heroes. 

He would see Gus later in the war, when the fight wasn’t going so well and extraordinary steps were being taken to gain intelligence about all the vehicle born improvised explosive devices, explosively formed penetrators and the host of other evils being used to kill and horribly maim U.S. troops. The U.S. decided to dance with the devil and employ a set of extraordinary means to stop, or at least minimize, the horrible attacks.

A waitress appeared and wordlessly delivered Michael a cold Abita beer. He ordered the mixed boil and was assured it would be delivered with the other order. The two former Marines drank beer

and exchanged small talk about Recon, “the war”—meaning both Afghanistan and Iraq, Marines they both knew that had been killed or wounded and of course, LSU football.  The food arrived after fifteen minutes and all speaking stopped as they devoted their efforts to devouring the heaping load of shrimp, crawfish, potatoes and corn.

After the remnants of the meal of were cleared away and most of the customers had exited the eatery, Thompson got down to cases. “So, how can I help you,
Captain Blackfox?” asked Gus with mock formality.

“Well, for one thing, you call me Michael.”

Thompson nodded. Congratulations on the promotion, by the way.

“Thanks, I think it’s just the Corps way of keeping you in the reserves, in case they need some cannon fodder.”

“The active reserve is a good gig, you should give it a try. Double the pay for only one weekend a month.”

“You could be a recruiter,” said Michael.

“They pay me a bonus for everyone I pull in and they have a Recon Battalion.”

“I think I need some time as a civilian, it’s almost as good as getting promoted.”

Thompson, laughed. “Okay, so if joining the reserves is not on the agenda, what can I do for you?”

“
I need to talk with Jimmy O’Brien, outside earshot of the guards at Angola.”

Thompson drained his can of Abita, signaled the waitress for another and addressed Michael, “That’s quite a tall order. The only ones allowed to have confidential conversations with a client are his attorneys and that conversation is to be solely about his case.  Mind if I ask you why you want to talk with him?”

“I’m looking for my dad and Jimmy may know how to get in contact with him.”

“What’s the problem? Is he wanted by the law?”

“That’s the thing—as far as I know, he is not being sought as a fugitive, but there may be people actively seeking to get to him in

order
to obtain information. Those same people may be trying to do the same thing with Jimmy,” speculated Michael.  

“That might explain a few things. 
Like why Jimmy is in the heavy discipline unit and segregated from the other prisoners. You couldn’t visit him if you wanted to. My initial feeling was he wasn’t coping too well as it seemed like he was fighting the system, but based on what you told me, he’s probably just trying to stay alive,” said Thompson. He took a sip from the beer bottle as sipped his beer and seemed to be mulling over something.

“If
your old man is not wanted by the law, as far as you know and you haven’t seen him in ten years or more, a jury would think you had an ulterior motive in seeking him out. Mind if I ask you what that is?”

He’s my dad, I just want to make sure he’s all right” replied Michael.

Thompson looked at Michael with a cocked eyebrow, took a swig from his beer can and replied, “That dog don’t hunt, ole son! Why don’t you stop trying to bullshit an old bull shitter and tell me the truth!”

Michael, thought for a minute, took a long drink from his beer and said, “All right, what you know about a ship called “The
Star of Tampa?” Gus’s look told him he didn’t know much.  Michael gave him some background on what he knew about what might have happened to the floating casino known as the Star  of Tampa—a probable robbery of a million dollars in gold coins, a rogue wave that sank the ship at sea with the loss of all on board.

He concluded with the odd fact that because the ship had been lost, what had transpired on board had never been reported as a crime. “Well, yeah, to have a crime, you have to have a victim, if all your victims died in a freak act of nature, you no longer have victims or witnesses to the crime; sort of like the whole if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it fall,” concluded Thompson.  

Gus suddenly looked at his watch and sighed.

“I
gotta go. I have a late meeting and it’s a bit of a drive back to the office.” Michael offered to pay and Thompson waved him away. “Allow me the honor of buying a Recon Marine a meal.”

They exited Bubba’s Boil and headed to their separate vehicles.  Thompson pulled up to the side of Michael’s vehicle, signaled him to lower his window and said, “It was a crying shame what they did to Jimmy.  He may have been guilty of a lot, but they

sped him through the trial process faster than shit goes through a goose. My dad tried like hell to slow it down, impeach witnesses and generally raise the specter of reasonable doubt with the jury, but the state just outmuscled him.”

Michael nodded and asked if there was anything to do to help. Thompson shook his head to indicate no.

“I can’t get you in to see him without credentials from the State Bar, but I can take him a message.  Tell me what to ask him and meet me here tomorrow and I will have your answer.” 

Michael nodded, “ask him to tell you if he knows where my dad is holding up.” 

Thompson nodded. “Are you staying nearby?” Michael nodded, but didn’t say where.

“OK, I will swing back by Angola tomorrow morning and speak with him. Meet me back here at noon and I will let you know what he tells me.”

* * *

“Good morning counselor,” said Jimmy as he was led into the interview room at Angola.  He looked every bit of his
fifty-six years of age, except that he looked thin, but not frail—his arms had a lean, ropelike appearance to them, almost like he had been working out hard enough to lose weight and gain upper body strength; it reminded Thompson on how recruits slimmed down during boot camp, but gained upper body strength by doing lots of pull-ups.

Jimmy was pale, due to his current extended stint in segregation, but his salt and pepper hair was closely cropped, probably due to the fact he was only allowed to shower once a week. The guard left and Jimmy sat down in an interview chair.  They sat and discussed Jimmy’s case
—the pending appeal had been working its way through the system for years and had been defeated at each stage until now.

The appeal currently sat before the United States Court of Appeals. Fifth Circuit, where Gus thought that had a better than average chance of winning. But, they had already had that conversation and although Jimmy welcomed any interruption into the tedious regime that prisoners live, especially for a prisoner in disciplinary segregation, he was perplexed by Gus’ presence. 

“I had a meeting with Michael Blackfox” said Thompson. “He’s looking for his dad, Char.”

“Yeah, I heard old Char had a kid, I wish I knew where he was.” Jimmy wouldn’t make eye contact, so Gus expected he might be lying.