White Shadow (49 page)

He bought a drink to steady his nerves and walked under little canopies and past Chinese paper lanterns that made the street glow red. It smelled of incense and garbage. A Chinese man with a ponytail tried to hustle him into a theater to see a woman making love to a mule.

He saw a man getting laid in a back alley.

He saw an old geezer masturbating in his car.

Dodge kept walking toward the big pagoda-looking entrance to the street.

He left everything at the Ambos Mundos and took a cab to the airport. Four hours later, he flew away from Havana. When he landed in Miami, he called Franks and relayed what had happened.

Two hours later, he was back in Tampa.

Fred Bender and Buddy Gore met him at the airport and told him about the killing of that good-looking gal who worked for the
Tribune
.

IN JUNE, HAMPTON DUNN fired me. I’d turned in a story about a downtown businessman who’d been robbed and shot dead at gun-point, and my story pointed out that the businessman hadn’t been all that great to begin with. I sourced witnesses who knew him at bars as a cheap lothario with possible homosexual tendencies.

The story never ran.

In July, Dunn hired me back.

He said I’d been burned out and had gone a little nutty, and he gave me a job on the desk where I edited copy but did not write it and would stay long after I was needed to make calls to Dodge and Fred Bender or Pete Franks or anyone who would listen about theories I had. They all knew about the man with the low hairline and the heavy brow and how I’d seen the cigarette burns on Eleanor’s arms. They knew that we’d been competitors and friends, and I’d kept the true story as tight to me as those highballs I’d shared with Charlie Wall.

Some nights, I’d see the bastard who’d killed Eleanor. One night, I followed a man into the bathroom and nearly struck him from behind at the urinal. I confronted him about seeing Eleanor Charles and the man backed up against the tile wall, seeing something in me that I didn’t see in myself.

I called pretty much every day. I developed suspects and leads and names. I gave them all to Franks. When Franks quit calling me back, I called Fred Bender. When Bender quit the department, I called Ed Dodge.

I slept late every day. I stayed at the paper until seven or eight most nights and then would take in a movie. Every night. I watched James Dean and Richard Widmark and Spencer Tracy. I watched
Bad Day at Black Rock
fifteen times.

I thought there was some kind of coded message inside.

I spent hours after the movies at The Hub on Florida Avenue with the whores and the pimps and thieves. I drank Canadian highballs and would toast Charlie Wall’s health. I’d ask the bartender absently if he knew how to make gin and tonics and would leave the bar if some moron started playing a song with saxophone that reminded me remotely of Charlie Parker.

I liked to sleep.

I liked to get drunk.

I saw two women during that time and did not sleep with either of them. They found me dull and boring and angry.

I walked the streets and learned to ignore the sounds of police sirens and fire calls without jumping to my feet and looking for my notebook. I spent more time with
Merriam-Webster’s,
and could play with words and their meanings and their structure like a mechanic taking apart a car.

In August, Hampton Dunn warned me about not showering. He told me he wanted me to press my shirts and ties before coming to work and told me to get a haircut.

On weekends, I’d buy a pint and drive over to Davis Islands and lie on my car and watch the planes. I’d stay there for hours watching them dip and land, or listening to them rev up and take off into the night. I counted the blue lights on the black landing strip and felt the beating of the red light on the end of the jetty. I would drive home absolutely blind, pull down my Murphy bed, and fall fast asleep.

On the first of September, Dunn told me there was a job open as a court reporter and to this day I have no idea why. Maybe he felt sorry for me or wanted me to shape up, or maybe I was just the only poor bastard he knew who’d take the job in a hurry.

He asked me: “Why’d you want to be a newspaperman?”

“Just naturally curious, I guess.”

He kind of nodded at that, and asked: “But what really set you on the course?”

“My father was a Linotype operator,” I said. “My uncle still works at the
Tribune
. You know, he wears the paper hats.”

“Then why didn’t you do that?”

I shrugged. “Just always liked the news business.”

“But what was it?”

I let out some air, not about to beg for the job. I was goddamned happy dissecting words and hiding at my desk.

“There was an airplane crash when I was young,” I said.

“You see it?”

I nodded.

“What happened?”

“It was one of those old Stinsons. High-wing monoplane.”

Dunn smiled.

“Anyone killed?”

“No.”

His smile dropped.

“I just remember when it was going down, I saw it trailing smoke and sputtering and seeing it falling over the crest. Why do you want to know?”

“You see it crash?”

“It crashed into the Hermitage Country Club,” I said. “In Richmond.”

“And that made you want to be a newspaperman.”

I nodded and looked at Dunn, his freshly shaved jowly face and his black hair slicked back against his head. He watched me.

“I saw in the newspaper,” I said. “I was six, and my father brought home the afternoon paper and there was a big picture on the front page of the
Richmond News Leader
of that Stinson. It had a picture of the pilot and some onlookers and all that.”

Dunn nodded some more. He leaned back into his chair and reached into his pocket.

He tossed me a quarter.

“Go get your shoes shined,” he said. “You look like shit.”

ED DODGE lost his virginity at eighteen to a Parris Island whore named Anita who made him fall in love in exchange for an extra pair of dog tags and a piece of his monthly check. He met her at a jarhead bar not far from the base and they ended up screwing in the hallway of the apartment she shared with her four sisters and mother. For three weeks, Dodge thought he was in love, and every hour of leave was spent holding her hand and stroking her hair and saying things to her that he’d learned by watching films at the Rialto Theatre. But he soon learned she was just a whore and not someone you loved when he spotted her in a back alley giving one of his buddies in his unit a blow job while flying high on shots of tequila.

His buddy had given him the “O.K.” sign while she worked on him. Dodge had broken the Marine’s jaw and arm and spent three weeks cleaning shithouse toilets and spit-shining floors.

And now he sat here, standing again like a stranger—or a Peeping Tom—looking into the back windows of his own home and only seeing the vacant breakfast table and the old-fashioned pendulum clock swinging off time. He had his hands in his pockets and the night had turned breezy, a sign of that light cool that Tampa would get in Florida’s version of fall.

He knew Janet from high school, and on his first leave back home started pursuing her. He didn’t know if he ever loved her as much as the whore, Anita, that kind of cracking feeling he got in his throat didn’t happen with her. But she told him she wanted to be a wife of a Marine and a mother and all the things that a nineteen-year-old in a hurry to be a man wanted to hear.

He stood there for another five minutes and walked behind his daughter’s bedroom and outside his own and heard muffled talk through the jalousie windows, although he couldn’t understand what was being said. He heard jangling, as if of keys or change or a belt buckle, and light feet, and he followed with his eyes back to the kitchen, where he saw Al Wainright kiss his wife and head for the door.

Dodge shrugged. After all, he was a little drunk.

He’d seen this little play act out for months, and in some way, he kind of enjoyed being able to watch what was going on in his own home and under his own roof without any malice or hatred for either. It was just a dead place inside. But at least he knew about it, and that was worth something.

After Wainright pulled away, Dodge walked back to his car and thought about his days in the Corps and how he wished he was back there now in that tight family unit that never let you down. You always knew where you stood in the Corps; it was a family that would break bread with you, watch you sleep, and love you with such stern hatred that you never felt alone.

He wished there’d be another war to call him back so he could escape all this but hold on to it, too. He wished he’d be called back and that he could send his checks home and be together with his family unit and get back to cleaning guns and running and fighting and some kind of purpose.

Dodge opened the car door and slid inside and he cranked the ignition.

It was midnight, and he’d told Janet that he was going to be out all night on surveillance. He’d told Al Wainright the same thing.

“You get it?” asked the girl sitting next to him.

“Sure.”

“Can we go now?” she asked, and laughed.

He’d just met her down at the Chatterbox, and she was young and pretty under the soft blue lights of the bar and she’d never asked what he did or if he was married despite the ring. He said he had to run by his house to get some money so they could keep the party going, and she said that sounded grand, because she knew the best jukebox in town.

They found a little bar, not far from the drawbridge over the river. A hollow place filled with workers from the Switchyards covered in phosphate and cattle blood. The workers watched the pretty young girl, because not many pretty young girls came into the bar, and Dodge loaded the jukebox with dimes and they listened to Frank Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney and the Four Aces and the Five Satins.

He held her close, and her skin had that young, soft glow. Her face felt soft and warm as it brushed his cheek, and he danced with her slow, his scuffed wingtips working awkwardly off the floor and for several moments, he hadn’t realized that he was holding her so close that her feet hung off the ground.

He let her back down slow and apologized, and the young girl smiled and kissed him. And Dodge smelled the sweetness of her hair and skin and of her youth. All the malice and nervous energy and tightness of his wife was gone.

The woman wore her hair up and soft gold hairs fell off her neck, and Dodge felt them against his forearm, pulling her closer and kissing her mouth again.

When they left the bar, the sun was coming up over the river, the silver minaret of the old Tampa Bay Hotel looking like a Byzantine palace from a storybook.

CAPTAIN FRANKS called Ed Dodge into Ozzie Beynon’s office the next morning. Ellis Clifton from the sheriff’s office was there with Oz and Pete Franks and shook Dodge’s hand when he entered. Oz watered his marijuana plant with his coffee mug, opened up his shades, and sat down in the little semicircle with the rest of the men. Clifton straightened his tie and sat with his back rigid in the wooden chair and waited.

Pete Franks stood and closed the big wooden door with the frosted-glass pane. A black metal fan swept the room. He sat back down. Oz cleared his throat.

“What now?” Dodge said.

There was silence, and Oz nodded to Clifton.

“There’s a hit out on you for ten thousand bucks,” Clifton said. “I got a call last night.”

“The Trafficante brothers?” Dodge said.

“Jesus Christ,” Ozzie said. “If the Trafficantes wanted to kill you, they would’ve already done it. You’ve interviewed them a half-dozen times. Hell, Santo hasn’t spent six days in Tampa all year.”

“They weren’t trying to teach me the mambo in Cuba, Oz.”