Tampa Star (Blackfox Chronicles Book 1) (18 page)

“I was originally a receptionist for an orthodontist in Hinsdale, Illinois— started there when I was just
twenty three years old.  Ever been there?” Mavis Pritchard asked and then continued without waiting for a reply, “lots of old money—they tear down a two million dollar house to put up a five million dollar one. Anyway, one day, the orthodontist and I started going at it and it lasted for five years—until his wife found out.  She was old money—the daughter of a family in the meat packing industry going back to the mid eighteen hundreds.  He was worth a small fortune, but she was worth a large one.  He begged her forgiveness and I was sent packing albeit with a nice unofficial settlement.”   

Eddie was seated on a crushed velvet davenport in the living room of a highly customized, double wide mobile home drinking a tall Arnold Palmer from a frosted glass. She had offered him something harder, but Eddie figured that might lead to places he didn’t want to go—so he settled for iced tea and lemonade. 

Mavis wasn’t a bad looking broad. Based on what she had told him, she was in her early or mid-fifties, about five feet tall, with a lithe figure that supported a huge set of tits. Her head was topped with a highly coifed loaf of blond hair that made her at least six inches taller. She wore a jewelry box full of gold—bracelets, rings, necklaces and even an ankle chain and smelled like he imagined a hooker at the Nevada cathouse smelled. It was apparent that she was doing all that she could to, if not turn back the proverbial tide, at least slow it down a little.

Her most striking feature was a set of large breasts that looked much bigger due to her small stature.  They seemed to defy gravity—either they were surgically enhanced or she was wearing a suspension bridge of a bra.  Either way, Eddie couldn’t help but stare.

“You like them?” She asked, catching his stare then running both hands along the outside arc of her breasts—as if presenting them for his inspection. Eddie looked away embarrassed.  He felt something stir in his loins and most of him desperately wanted her to change the subject, lest he become involved in a career threatening situation.

“Don’t worry detective, it’s hard not to look—even women stare. They were originally bigger,
thirty six double E, but I had them cut down to a D cup—didn’t want to go much smaller than that, as these babies have paid a lot of bills.  Before I was a receptionist, I had a feature show at the Body Shop in downtown Chicago.”  

“You were saying you knew Carla Rodgers?” 

“All business, aren’t you,” she replied, standing in front of him with a martini glass in one hand and a long skinny cigarette in the other—looking a bit disappointed that he had changed the subject.

“I know Carla—we’ve been friends for years.” Eddie picked up the present verb tense she used, but decided to let her talk.  “She and I were quite the pair or should I say two pair?  She smiled coyly and winked at Eddie.

“I moved in here after leaving Hinsdale and finagled a job as a weekend manager in order pay for what my tits couldn’t cover. I always told Carla that if she ever wanted to sell out, I would buy the business from her. One day, she called me and asked me to manage the business for a while as she was unexpectedly called away—she said someone in her family had unexpectedly passed away.”

“When was that?”

She thought for a minute and replied; “It was sometime in late 1974. She instructed me not to say anything about her whereabouts, as she was worried by some old boyfriend who was stalking her. Two detectives even came here looking for her one time.”

“Did you tell them you were in contact with her?”

“No, I played dumb like she asked,” she answered with a contrite look on her face. “Can I get in trouble for that?”

Eddie nodded, “Probably when it happened, but that was a long time ago.”

She looked visibly relieved. “I managed the place for a few weeks and she called me back and asked me if I wanted to buy her out. She sold me this place back in early 1975 on the condition that I would arrange the shipment of her goods and never talk about where she moved.  I have been here ever since.”

“Do you know where she currently
resides?”“Sure, we still exchange Christmas cards, but I promised her I wouldn’t tell.”

“Well, Mavis, she may be the witness to a crime and if you don’t tell me where she lives, you could be charged with obstruction,” said Eddie dryly—hoping the neutral tone of his voice would soften the blow.  Mavis sat down hard on the couch, finished her drink in one gulp and then took three deep drags on her cigarette—its tip glowed brightly and Eddie figured he had conveyed the correct level of authoritarian menace.

“She lives in Carrolton, Georgia, I even visited her once.  She has a nice house on about an acre of land.” She tore off the return address on an envelope and handed it to Eddie.   

“One last question, Mrs. Pritchard”

“Mavis,” she corrected him.

“O
kay, Mavis,” he smiled shyly. “What was the name of the boyfriend?”

“Well, it was a long time ago, but it sounded like the name of a fish.”

“A fish? Salmon? Tuna? Trout?” asked Eddie, half-jokingly.

She shook her head. “I even met him once—a tall athletic looking guy with short black hair and a slight limp.  He even rented a place here for a while around the same time.” 

She thought for a minute and then her face became animated with the sudden memory, she pointed the Martini glass at him—“The name of the fish was Atlantic Char and his name was Charlie—but everyone called him Char for short.” 

She managed to find the original registration card tucked away in an old metal filing cabinet located in a wooden shed behind her mobile home. The card was yellowed and frayed with age, but Eddie could still make out the name of Char Blackfox printed clearly in block letters and signed underneath. The date recorded at the top was August 1st 1974.  

Now, thanks to a conversation with the buxom little minx, Mavis, Eddie had the name of Jimmy’s accomplice and that of a still-breathing witness to the crime.

All he had to do is get her to testify and he could charge them all with Felony Murder. Under Florida criminal law statutes, armed robbery was a predicate crime, so that any killing carried out in the furtherance of a predicate crime is elevated and makes any participant in such an act criminally
liable for any deaths that occur during the conduct or furtherance of the crime.  And better still, there was no statute of limitations on the crime of felony murder.

***

Gilchrist County Jail was at over two hundred percent capacity so they were only too happy to transfer Vito south. He was currently residing comfortably in an administrative segregation cell in the Pinellas County Jail. Eddie even brought him Italian delicacies from Sardos when he needed some additional piece of information.

Vito had secured Eddie’s promise that he would not be returned to Massachusetts—at least until he was able to assist Eddie to close this long dormant case.  But, everything Vito knew about what happened on Halloween Night in 1974, he knew third hand—Eddie needed a witness.  

Eddie appeared in the cell with a plastic bottle of Coca Cola and a Styrofoam box containing one Sardo’s Italian Special— a proverbial gut bomb of salami, peperoni, cured ham, provolone cheese and all the trimmings served on their own freshly baked bread.

He pulled the container back out of reach. “Ever heard the name Char Blackfox?”

“Not sure,” said Vito, anxiously trying to take the Styrofoam container from him.  He squinted and visibly tried to remember for a minute as he really wanted the sandwich—most of the crap they served him in jail was inedible.

“I think that was might have been the last name of the father and son team me and Handley tried to mess up in that motel near Gainesville.”

“So, why didn’t you bother mentioning it until now?”

“I didn’t have a chance to ask their last name as one of them was kicking the shit outta of me at the time.” 

Eddie smiled, handed him the sandwich and drink through the bars.  Vito retreated to the table bolted to the wall and opened his prize.

In between bites he said, “I remember hearing Handley mention the last name “Blackfox,” but I thought he was talking about some black stripper he was banging or something.” 

Vito had rolled over on Guy Handley—The corrupt cop told him that he was involved in a heist and that at least one murder was committed during its commission, but he had never shared his particular level of involvement and had actually implied that he was conducting an undercover investigation.

That shit didn’t wash, thought Eddie.  Handley was a corrupt cop and little more.  Being a dirty cop was like being pregnant—no one is a little bit pregnant.  Dirty cops spend all their efforts earning ill-gotten gain whether by collecting bribes to look the other way or directly by ripping off people who would be hesitant to call the real authorities- like dealers and pimps.  No, Handley was neck deep in the long forgotten heist, except that Eddie couldn’t forget. 

And all paths lead back to Sally Boots—the infamous capo of a loose gang of criminal associates that committed crimes with relative impunity throughout North Florida.  That was the one guy Vito had thus far refused to implicate as he was sure that doing so would mean a death sentence or spending the rest of his life in Witness Protection.  He left the prisoner with his sandwich and headed for his vehicle, a non-descript county supplied brown sedan, as he mulled over recent developments.  

Maybe Eddie would get lucky this time. He had started numerous cases that he thought would lead back to Sally Boots— a murdered stripper, several kilos of cocaine seized from one of his associates, and once even a truck full of liquor seized from a wholesaler off Rt. 19, found parked in the back of his strip club. But, each time, with the help of his scummy lawyer, that slippery old gangster was able to escape being convicted. 

They eventually managed to convict John Gotti, the supposed Teflon Don, so stranger things were possible.  But how strange would it be to solve a crime that no one knew about after almost 30 years?  These were the things that Eddie lived for. 

There was no statute of limitations on murder.  If Sally participated in the Star Heist and someone was murdered, then everyone who had a hand in the crime, including one fat ass Italian Capo—could be charged with Felony Murder.

He looked at his watch—it was five thirty Tuesday evening.  Eddie called the Sheriff on his Blackberry and got a verbal approval to fly up to Atlanta.  He booked a flight from Tampa to Atlanta on AirTrans for the following morning and called Hertz to book a compact car, per departmental regulations.

Shit, how was he supposed to impress a potential witness with the gravitas he represented when he showed up at their door driving a Ford Fiesta? From what Mavis told him, Carla was even
better looking than she was. Eddie stared at his mug in the rearview mirror and decided he would shave closely tomorrow morning and put on his best suit.

Eddie remembered Carrollton from his time at Fort McClellan—the former home of the Army’s Military Police School and the Criminal Investigator’s Course, which marked Eddie’s entrance into the field. Carrollton was about the last chance to get a drink on Sunday if you were headed back to the base after a weekend pass taken in Hot-lanta.

For some reason there were a lot of strip clubs in Carrollton and back in the day, Eddie usually ended up hitting one or two on the way back to the fort.
Eddie liked his Bourbon—Maker’s Mark on payday and special occasions and Jack Daniels at all other times. Must have been loose zoning laws in this part of Georgia, but whatever the case, it normally made the trip back to the base a little less miserable, as all of Alabama was dry on Sunday.

So, Carrollton brought back a sense of nostalgia and Eddie though he might even stop by one of his old watering holes to see if there were any sweet young things disrobing to throbbing music. He was an old dog, but even an old dog occasionally gets a bone. 

He found Carla’s house easy enough, on first glance it looked like a smaller version of Tara, a white plantation style house, complete with Greek pillars, set back from the main road on about an acre of land. 

He never asked Mavis how much she had paid for the mobile home park, but he assumed it wasn’t enough money to purchase this house
—outright at least.

Eddie stopped at the gate, lowered the window of his white Ford Fiesta, touched the intercom button and waited for a response.  The gate opened without comment from the intercom and Eddie proceeded up the long winding driveway and parked in front of a brick four car garage.

A maid led him into a large living room paneled in dark wood, probably cherry.  The furnishings consisted of a large sofa and two classic button-tufted arm chairs—all of a deep rich caramel brown leather.  At one end of the room stood a stone fireplace and what appeared to be a white bear skin rug lying in front of the hearth and an elk head hanging over the mantle.  Off to the side stood an ornately carved mahogany wet bar topped with a row of elegantly designed cut crystal bottles filled with variously colored liquids.
Definitely a man’s room
, thought Eddie as he took a seat at one end of the sofa.  

Carla entered a short time later
—she truly was as striking a beauty as Mavis had described, even after all this time. She was dressed in a tight black skirt and sheer white blouse that left little to Eddie’s imagination. Tall and voluptuous, even in her mid-fifties, the top didn’t just showcase her breasts as much as offer them up for inspection.  The years had been kind to Carla, either that or she had a hell of a plastic surgeon.

“Ah, yes the room!
She said as if reading his mind. My husband was a real man’s man and felt that this room should reflect that.” 

“Well, it certainly does,” replied Eddie.
“Detective Eddie Doyle, Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department.”  

“Please have a seat, Detective. May I offer you a drink?” She asked while smiling through a set of perfectly aligned bright white teeth.

“Sure,” he heard himself saying. There were lots of reasons to say no, departmental policy being foremost in his mind, but her statuesque beauty immediately caused him to be nervous and he needed something to steady his nerves—bourbon would serve that purpose. “Maker’s Mark, neat, if you have it—any whiskey if you don’t.” 

“Oh, we have it. Helena, two Marker’s Mark, one without ice, she ordered. I used to own a club in Atlanta
—just sold it a few weeks ago in fact and brought most of the inventory home with me. Hence, I now have an extremely well stocked bar,” said Carla as she sat down very close to him on the couch.

The maid appeared a short time later carrying a silver platter with two drinks in crystal tumblers and a bowl of smoked almonds and set them on the coffee table. 

They picked up their drinks and Carla clicked his glass, “to new friends.”

“I suppose you’re wondering about all this?”  She asked, indicating
the luxuriously furnished home. “I married the earliest purveyor of strip clubs in Georgia. He was the original owner of the Pink Pony, maybe you heard of it?” Eddie nodded, having spent many a weekend pass stuffing dollars into G-strings, while stationed at Fort McClellan.  He even got lucky a time or two there.

“I arrived in Atlanta with no money and no friends, Ira
Slotzman gave me a job and became a lover, a mentor and a friend,” she smiled sadly. He was forty-eight when we met and I started dancing for him at twenty four.  I made a lot of money in tips in those days, but a dollar bought you a lot more,” she winked slightly.  “He was a sweet man and he died about a year ago, leaving me a pretty substantial amount of money and a very lucrative strip club that I have since divested.”

Eddie sipped his drink and figured he better begin driving the conversation otherwise he would be here all night, which admittedly appealed to him as Carla oozed sex appeal.

“Mrs. Rodgers” 

“
Slotzman,” she corrected, “but you can call me Carla.”

“The reason I am here is to ask you a few questions about being on the
Star of Tampa the night it sank.”

She stopped smiling, “Yeah, Mavis called me and I don’t know anything about the sinking of that ship, I was in Atlanta stripping at the time.” If she was going to take this tack, it was g
oing to be a fruitless journey. Eddie figured it might be advisable to adjust fire, as they say in the artillery. He stopped talking about the case and began talking to her. 

He surmised that her relative loquaciousness meant she was lonely and perhaps he could gain mor
e trust by just being friendly. He changed the subject and began to tell her about himself, his time in the Army and the many times he had visited Atlanta, without detailing how many of the visits included a trip to the Pink Pony. They had another drink and by the time it was finished, Eddie had marshaled his liquid courage.

“You know, I was just going to finish up here, grab a quick bite and then head back to the airport, but I would love to have some company. Know where we can get a good steak?” He asked. 

“Sure, Detective, There is a place just downtown called Blue, I’ve never been, but they tell me it’s nice.” She smiled at him, again.

“Well, then Carla, how about you let me take you out for a bottle of wine and nice petit filet?”

They took Carla’s black Cadillac Escalade down town. Eddie was truly smitten having the pleasure of the company of this statuesque blond haired beauty accompanying him. He continued to bury the cop questions for the evening and just did what he could to be charming—it wasn’t hard—Eddie knew every witty or romantic line from every movie he ever watched.

He ordered a Georges
Duboeuf MOULIN-À-VENT flower label as he liked- he had actually visited the winery while in France on his honeymoon a long time ago. They ordered Shrimp Cocktail as the waiter recommended and were pleasantly surprised with a half dozen large tiger shrimp—fresh from the gulf, served with a side of homemade cocktail sauce that smacked of newly ground horseradish. 

This was followed by a petit filet of beef for Carla and a Porterhouse for Eddie.
They shared a slice of cheese cake accompanied by a nice tawny port and Carla invited him back for a brandy in front of a fire.

If I didn’t know any better, I would think I was getting laid,
he thought—this was confirmed when Carla stood in front of the fireplace, stripped out of her skirt and let it drop to the floor. The blouse was actually a body suit that snapped at the crotch and Eddie watched in fascination as she unsnapped it and pulled it over her head—revealing a body that would look appropriate on a taunt twenty five year old.

“It’s more comfortable like this,” she said as she bent over to turn on the gas jet of the fireplace while revealing a beautifully shaped ass.  

Eddie took her in his arms and her hands immediately went to his belt which she unbuckled with a frantic, but expert motion. His trousers fell to his knees and he felt her grab his cock with a firm and practiced motion and mounted it by guiding his cock into her hot wetness. After a few moments, he gently guided her to the rug and continued thrusting deep inside her tight pussy.  Damn, it had been a long time, he thought.

They made l
ove twice more before morning. He awoke in front of the simmering fire and she was gone. He heard noise coming from the back of the house and found her in a huge kitchen where she was busily engaged in cooking what appeared to be an omelet.

“Coffee?”
She asked.

He nodded and she pointed to a mug that sat next to a
Kuerig coffee maker.  He made coffee and sat at the table. They ate in silence.  After finishing she looked at him and said, “I lied to you last night. I was on board the Star of Tampa the night it went down.”

“So, why are you telling me now?”

“Well, detective, Eddie, I guess you fucked the truth right out of me!” she said and they both laughed. “That was the plan all along, I bet,” she added as an afterthought.

She detailed the story of the robbery, her escape and rescue by the Zip who had killed her fiancé, Simon Block.

“His name was Giuseppe. I never learned his last name.  He raped me when the sun went down—when I was too tired and sunburned to resist him.”
That explained the panties
, thought Eddie, but he said nothing. 

“We were picked up early the following morning by some
Marijuanistas using a Mexican fishing boat to smuggle marijuana to some locals who picked up the load in the mangroves off of Tarpon Springs. They were heading back to Tampico after the delivery and they rescued us. Giuseppe could speak Spanish, he told them I was his wife and threatened he would kill anyone of them who touched me. There were six in the crew, including the Captain—a tough looking guy named Lopez with one eye. Giuseppe talked him into hiring him for the next run. I was brought along as a cook and sex slave.” 

Eddie suspected he knew what was coming next. The Mafiosi figured he would go into business for himself—steal the marijuana, sell it and either kill or abandon the crew.

She looked at him as if reading his mind and nodded.

“We were going to slip into Tarpon Springs under the cover of darkness, so the Captain slowed us down in order to arrive well after sunset.  Giuseppe tried to hijack the boat when we were still at least about a mile from shore. He came at Lopez with a butcher knife he had gotten from the galley. All I heard were the sound of gunshots— so apparently they were expecting him to try something. 

After what I had already been through, I sure wasn’t going to let a bunch of Mexican Marijuanistas gang rape me. I decided that I would take my chances in the sea, as luck would have it the tide was going in and it sped me to shore.  I bummed some spare change from some hippie on the beach, called Mavis and she came to get me. The rest you know.”

“Maybe not,” replied Eddie. “How does Char Blackfox fit into all of this?”

Carla heard the name she hadn’t heard in over thirty years and it caused a cold chill to run up her spine. “Damn that bastard! He was the one who led the robbery of the Star. Part of the reason I went into hiding was that I was the only survivor who knew that he, his buddy, Tommy and a couple other scumbags pulled off the robbery—apparently with help from some mobbed up people in Tampa.”

“Would you testify to that in a court of law?” Eddie asked. 

“After all this time, can you even prosecute him?” Eddie was waiting for this question. He explained the concept of a felony murder and how it applied to the killing of Simon Block during the commission of a robbery.

“What happened to the gold and money?” Carla asked.

“Nobody knows. The theory is that one of the robbers hid it somewhere near where their boat went aground during the storm.”

“That would make sense. Otherwise, it might be a misdemeanor murder.” Eddie looked at her quizzically and she replied. “Simon was a wheeler dealer, but he wasn’t as rich as he would have you believe. Refurbishing the Star took nearly every cent he had.  Up until just a few days before the first sailing of the Star, he was scrambling to try and fill that jackpot with real gold.”  

Given the sudden revelation, Eddie decided he would bring her to complete an affidavit and they would seek an arrest warrant for everyone he knew to be involved in the felony murder of Simon Block. Eddie knew it was going to be a stretch getting a judge to sign off on the charges, but at the very least, he figured he could get a grand jury to convene, once they apprehended the assorted scumbags.

Eddie had gotten what he had come for and a whole lot more. He watched her clear the table dressed only in her body sock and an apron. It was Saturday and he had missed his flight, but
that was not a problem, there would be another one tomorrow afternoon for them both. For right now, Eddie was going to live a little—he thought as he slipped up behind her, reached down and unsnapped the crotch of her body suit.