Tampa Star (Blackfox Chronicles Book 1) (7 page)

“Carla, wait a minute, will you?” Char shouted from the door of his trailer. She had been a ghost lately and Char suspected he knew the reason, but wanted to hear it from her lips.  She stopped as she was about to get in her car, looked at it and visibly slumped her shoulders—as if resigning herself to a discussion she didn’t want to have. 

Char was in work clothes
—having just gotten off shift and was surprised to find her car in her carport as it had been absent for over a week. He ran up to her and tried to make eye contact. She was wearing sunglasses and had a halter top with a short white skirt—a tennis outfit. Even with the sunglasses on, she avoided his stare.

“Do we have to do this now?  I am late for a game,” she said finally.

“I guess I just wanted to hear it from you is all,” he said.

“Oh, come on Char, did you think what we had was going any place? But the bedroom!” she added as an afterthought.

“It could have and it still can,” he said, almost pleading, wanting to keep her from driving off. He reached for her arm, not thinking, just wanting to keep her from leaving.  She avoided his grasp and opened the door of her convertible.

“Listen Char, we’ll talk when I get back, “she said as she slipped into the car and started the engine before he could even offer a response.  The car was facing the street; she had backed in—no doubt in the event she needed to make a quick getaway. 
Fait accompli
thought Char, as he wandered back to his trailer to begin drinking.

After downing five beers he started to feel better—albeit in a chemically induced way.  The bastard Block had gotten to her,
Char was now sure.  He had been deluding himself to think she would be happy living in a trailer with a guy with a gimp leg and a pick-up truck.  All that was missing was a hound dog sleeping on the front porch and his life could be a country music song.

Char headed over to the yacht brokerage to see Tommy—he sped along Gulf Boulevard like he owned the road, a half-full beer can nestled against his crotch.  It was Saturday afternoon and he
figured Tommy would be tying one on and Char wanted some company.

“Hey, Char, what the hell are you doing here?” Tommy asked as he reclined on a weathered aluminum chaise lounge that sat out in front of his apartment.

“Drinking,” said Char. “And since I did not want to do it alone, I figured I’d come over here and we would kill a few brain cells together.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Tommy.  He looked at Char for a minute and then a sly grin came across his face; he jumped up from the lounge chair and ran inside, returning a minute later with a bottle of A. H. Hirsch Reserve Straight Bourbon Whiskey and a package wrapped in butcher paper.

“Look what I got here, old son! I did some work on that Bertram over there, unofficially, of course as the guy was taking some buddies out fishing and his engine crapped out before he even left the dock.  I worked a little magic and lo and behold, we have a bottle of A.H. Hirsch, which is one of the smoothest whiskeys out there, by the way, and two nice Ahi tuna steaks!”

“Nicely done, Tommy,” replied Char. 

Tommy built a charcoal fire on the brick barbeque grill that the old man had installed to host employee gatherings. He threw a couple of aluminum foil clad potatoes into the coals and waited for them to cook, opened up a can of Del Monte French cut string beans and placed the can on the grill. Finally, he placed the tuna steaks on top for a short braising. They ate off old porcelain plates that came with Tommy’s apartment. 

Char took a bite of the rare
Ahi, smiled and clicked his beer bottle with Tommy’s.

“High living,” he toasted. Tommy smiled and nodded his head in agreement.    

They finished eating and then got down to serious drinking as the sun cast long shadows over the parking lot in front of Tommy’s apartment. They both smoked; Tommy a Winston and Char, a Lucky Strike, non-filter.   

Char took a drink of whiskey from a plastic glass, took a drag on his smoke, looked at Tommy, and said “I’m in.”

“You’re in?” Questioned Tommy, as a smile spread slowly across his face.

“Yeah, fuck that asshole and the ship he rode in on,” replied Char.  He went on to explain seeing Carla leaving for her tennis game and how she had all but admitted she was seeing Block.

“Why that Aussie cocksucker!” replied Tommy.     

They drank into the night, too drunk to seriously plan any details, but Tommy figured Char would not back out, not with the real motivation of wanting revenge for getting his girl stolen. Tommy would have just stabbed the guy!

Char slept in the chaise lounge and woke up with a hangover. Tommy was already in the kitchen brewing coffee and pulling packages out of the refrigerator. Char smelled bacon frying and figured some grease might quiet his sour stomach.  Tommy fried up a dozen eggs, added a pound of bacon, and half a loaf of French bread Tommy bought at the brokerage’s grocery store.

The place was a wonder, run by an old Frenchman, who had sailed around the world until he tired and then decided to own one of the best equipped marina groceries around.  The fact that he was able to shoehorn a fully equipped grocery, bakery and liquor store into the space of a one car garage was a testament to his ingenuity, pride, but mostly a near fanatical desire to keep his customers from going to the Publix Supermarket located a mere half mile away.    

They ate ravenously, but in silence, trying to staunch the queasy feeling in their stomachs and the pounding in their heads by shoveling the breakfast fare in and washing it all down with strong black coffee. Breakfast finished, Tommy suggested they move inside to discuss things in private as customers were starting to drift into the yard.

Tommy instinctively figured that Char would change his mind now that he was sober and was surprised when he said, “Gold is about
thirty five dollars an ounce right now and that means that they have about 28,571 coins give or take and they weigh a grand total of 1812 pounds.”

“
You’ve really done your homework!” Exclaimed Tommy as he disappeared into the small bedroom and returned with a rolled up document which he spread out on the linoleum kitchen table.

“But so did I,” he continued.  “This is a floor plan of the casino floor on the ship. The bastard himself showed it to me while giving me a tour.”

“How the hell did you manage that?”

“It was easy,
Cuz, the old Aussie bought a yacht with a Mack ENDM 405 engine—probably one of the most obscure and temperamental engines around—built in the early 40s. I think they

made
about 20 of them all told. Nobody on his staff could tune it.  He called and talked to the old man yesterday and he sent me over there. The next thing you know, I had that engine purring like a Bengal Tiger after eating a local peasant. See, one of the boats at the shipyard where I worked in Louisiana had the same type engine.  You could say I cut my teeth on it. The Aussie was so grateful he gave me the grand tour of his soon to be launched floating casino and I swiped the old marked up floor plan from a trashcan and stuffed it down my pant leg.”

Char laughed
and Tommy continued detailing his tour of the Star. “The bastard was so happy to get the engine on his yacht running, he was hard to shut up.  He told me the plan is to take all his investors and some other high rollers out on a trial run, feed them a high priced dinner, let them gamble a little on the cuff,  drink some high end booze, and try to wrench a few more thousand dollars out of them.”

Tommy smiled impishly, but here is the best part, he continued, he is definitely going to display a million dollars in gold double eagles on the top of a slot machine in the center of the casino to lure in gamblers hoping for a whack at it!” 

“Yeah, but how do you know the gold will be there for the trial run?” asked Char.

“He told me that showing off the gold to his investors and to the high rollers was the key to a successful launch and that if they saw that he had that much just on show
, he could easily convince them to kick in a few more thousand dollars!”

Tommy pointed out the various areas on the floor plan—the card tables for Blackjack the private room for poker, the roulette wheels, and where the one armed bandits would be located.

“But the real area of our interest is where they will hold the gold and that is right here,” he said, pointing to an area that seemed to be the focal point of the room— a raised area located in the center of the casino, so it would be visible from everywhere. “It will sit on a large one armed bandit that customers can play for a silver dollar.” 

“So, they play with silver to win gold?”

“Hey, don’t ask me, I didn’t design the payoff scheme, I think he just wants it there as a lure.  I wouldn’t be surprised that he set the odds so that the machine never pays off,” replied Tommy. He then brought out acetate covered nautical chart of the Florida Gulf Coast and spread it on the dining table. Tommy took a grease pencil and drew the probable course of the ship from Tampa Bay under the steel cantilever Sunshine Skyway Bridge, out through the straits and presumably, into deep water in the center of the Gulf.

The two lane bridge was built in the early fifties, replacing a ferry from Point Pinellas to Piney Point. Loads of people had died jumping from that bridge since it was completed. Tommy figured that this was one of the worst ways to go as you had a few seconds to rethink that decision on the way down and from a height of over 150 feet; they must have hit like bags of sausages landing on concrete. He figured if this venture went wrong, he would choose another method to end his life rather than go back to prison.

Tommy used the grease pencil to circle several inlets and bays to the north and south of the Tampa Bay Inlet.

“I am thinking that John’s Pass might be the place to use to get in and out of the gulf” said Tommy. 
John’s Pass, a cut into Boca Ciega Bay made by the hurricane of September 1848. It occurred from September 25th through the 27th and was the most destructive storm ever to hit the Tampa Bay area while scattering destruction along sixty miles of along Florida’s Gulf coast. 

Tommy was a virtual fountain of information concerning the ship and floating casinos
. “The Star of Tampa displaced about 50,000 tons,” he told Char. The passengers would not be allowed to gamble until they were seven miles out, so they would at least go out that far, but they would want to avoid rough water and conserve fuel.”

Other than that, Tommy was unsure of what course the ship would take. It didn’t really matter as long as they had a good boat to shadow them and they did: the banker’s 60 foot Hatteras.  It was powered by two 275 horse V8 diesels with a fuel capacity of over three hundred gallons.  She had the range and speed to shadow the ship, and handle rough seas.

Even better, the owner was never around, but the marina crew maintained it at the ready should he appear and being that the owner was from New York and it was still hot and muggy in Tampa—the lack of his presence was virtually assured. 

Char would be the gunman for the robbery, Finnegan would pilot the boat and he had a few ideas as to where they might recruit
some possible co-conspirators—his brother and a couple of knuckle draggers who worked at the club. Tommy had met Guy Handley at

the
Ybor City Burlesque club where his brother worked. Handley was an ex-cop who had been fired off from the Tampa police force for shaking down prostitutes for money and blow-jobs. He now worked as a bouncer who would crack a skull without a second’s hesitation to protect the soiled virtues of the dancing debutantes.

Tommy introduced Char to Handley on one of their thunder runs through various Tampa Strip Clubs.  Char had seen this type before during his time in the army—some asshole hiding behind a Drill Sergeant’s Smokey, an MP brassard or some other veil of authority—looking for any opportunity to fuck over their fellow man. The world was full of dickheads—no reason they should be lonely. He had serious reservations about involving malignant bastards like this in the business at hand—he hoped there was a better way.  

The first cruise of the casino boat would service the high rollers of Tampa and St. Pete along with a few high rollers that would be flying in from Miami. Between the gold and the cash on board, both in the cashier’s booth and among the passengers, he figured they could in theory net over a million and whatever else they could loot from the cashiers and passengers. 

Char had his sights set on an
Armalite AR-15, a weapon he had used in Viet Nam while working as an Advisor on his second tour.  He liked it because it was light, yet had a high rate of fire and could be intimidating.  Still, he would settle for an M1A1 or M2 carbine, the selective fire version of the M1 carbine, a shorter, lighter version of the original M1 Garand that fired a thirty caliber pistol cartridge. It would be almost as effective as the AR-15, given the close range and he really did not intend on killing anyone, but if everything went to shit, the fully automatic feature would come in handy.

He wanted to avoid something like a grease gun, the M3, a .45 caliber submachine gun designed as a cost effective substitute for the Thompson submachine gun, which was visually similar to a mechanic’s tool for applying grease to the hubs and axle of a car.
The weapon might have a good intimidation factor, but Char figured it could prove difficult if he had to take out one point target such as a hero who wanted to challenge them during the robbery, as the weapon was notoriously inaccurate and could only fire on full automatic.  Still, this feature might prove a good tool should the crowd of assembled patrons decide to rush them. Char sincerely hoped it would not come to that.  Aside from that, he had a Colt Model 911 .45 that he was issued in route to Viet Nam that no one asked for and therefore he never bothered to return. He mailed it home from an Army Post Office in Saigon while he was awaiting a flight out of theater at the end of his tour.