Tampa Star (Blackfox Chronicles Book 1)

by T. S. O'Neil

  “Would Eddie mind helping them out,” was how the Sheriff put the order.

  He stopped to get coffee and an egg sandwich at a drive thru on the way, figuring they weren’t going to get any deader if he arrived a few minutes later.

  The new detective, Marcus Ryerson, was already busily engaged in examining the crime scene.

  “Not much in the wallet, a driver’s license from Virginia and identification card both in the name Michael Stanley Peters. The identification card is for Four Oaks Consulting Services.”

  “That’s a front company for the C.I.A,” remarked Eddie offhandedly as he examined several nine millimeter shell casings littered on the cement floor.

  “How do you know that? Marcus asked skeptically.

  “Read it somewhere when there were all the media reports about flying suspected terrorists to third countries to torture them.”“Oh yeah, I heard about you. You’re the detective with the photographic memory.” Eddie was sick of correcting people, so he just nodded.

  In truth, there were many cops that did not know about Eddie’s freakish ability to remember every minute detail of all the cases he had investigated, conversations, reports, newspaper articles; if it was said, written or read, it was indelibly etched into Eddie’s head.

  This was the first murder that Ryerson had ever investigated. He was a young twenty eight years old, but looked much younger—a real fast burner, as they said in the military.

  Eddie stepped over to the body and looked at it closely—one hole in the forehead, and one in the belly and the other body had two in the chest, but the groupings were different. The guy with the ventilated chest had two entrance wounds so close together they could be covered up with a quarter, leading Eddie to surmise that a trained shooter had fired those rounds.

  The other guy was a truly horrible mess. He was shot twice as well, but once in the forehead, which probably killed him as it took off the back of his head and the next shot was in the stomach as an afterthought or maybe it happened the other way around. He would leave it to the medical examiner to figure that one out.

  A different killer shot the second stiff and going by his dental work, his original name wasn’t Peters—it was more likely something like Petrov or Putin, thought Eddie, but he kept his opinion to himself for the time being. Then there was the whole matter of the adjustable table—someone had elevated one of the shop’s metal tables so it was on an angle and it appeared that someone was tied to it. Several empty buckets stood scattered around the table.

  The District Six Medical Examiner was in route and Eddie did not want to do anything to contaminate the crime scene. He was curious however, as to the identity of the other man. The wallet had a membership card for the Louisiana State Bar Association—a lawyer, thought Eddie, and not just any lawyer, but Gus Thompson Jr. from the firm who represented one Jimmy O’Brien whose last known address was the Angola State Prison; current whereabouts unknown.

  Welcome back to Pinellas County Jimmy,” said Eddie quietly.

  After the medical examiner arrived, Eddie called the law firm of Thompson, Antoine & Henri and notified one of the other partners, Andre Henri, of Thompson’s probable death. He asked for a next of kin and found that to be his father as Thompson was divorced. The father, however, was an invalid and so Eddie asked Henri to fly to St. Pete and identify the body.

  “You know what he was doing here?” he asked.

  “He had taken a few days off to go fishing,” the man told Eddie.

  Henri agreed to fly down the following day and Eddie gave him the address of the ME’s office.

  In more normal times, Eddie probably would have picked him up at the airport and picked his brain about why Thompson was here, but Eddie already knew that Thompson had to have been involved in Jimmy’s escape—it was not something a con that had been on the inside for thirty five years could coordinate from inside. Nope, the lawyer wanted to win the lottery and decided to enter the name “Jimmy O’Brien” in the drawing.

  Back at the office, Eddie did a search on the law firm and brought up their website. Lawyers normally want you to know how damn good they are, so they like to post grandiose bios. Eddie found Thompson’s biography, beneath a picture taken in better times. The picture was a dead-on match for the corpse in the warehouse.

  Eddie started reading and stopped when he got to the second paragraph detailing his military exploits during Operation Iraqi Freedom. If you weren’t the pilot of the bird that picked up Jimmy, I’ll bet you knew the guy, he thought.

  Eddie headed over to the offices of the Tampa Bay Beacon. Most of their older archives weren’t on line. He was directed to a musty archival room and with the assistance of a clerk quickly found what he was looking for—microfiche detailing the list of passenger on the ill-fated voyage. It seemed that it was difficult to ascertain who was among the passengers even up to a week after the disaster. Various articles mentioned that one million dollars in gold coins went down with the ship. Perhaps not, thought Eddie. There was no problem finding a crew list—they were all carried on the roles of the now defunct company owned by Simon Block, the immodestly named Block Shipbuilding & Cruise Lines.

  There was a passenger list drawn from a handwritten manifest that was compiled as the passengers boarded. Most of the names belonged to some of the better heeled residents of the Greater Tampa Bay area—Tampa, St. Pete and Clearwater. Presumably, all of the wealthy had been accounted as their heirs rapidly clamored for any inheritance. Eddie wondered about the others—the less well-heeled had property as well and presumably next of kin that would wonder what had happened to them. What happens when your average working stiff goes missing?

  Every once in a while, a corpse will be discovered decayed or mummified in a house because the man or woman had no close personal relations and so, no one to look in on them should they fail to show up for some appointment or job. Eddie felt in danger of being one of those, but he figured that the Sherriff would at least care enough to come by if one day he didn’t show up for work. But what happens when the person simply vanishes and nothing remains? A loved one notifies the authorities, they fill out a missing persons report and that usually gets reported in the local news sometime after the fact. What if there are no loved ones? And if that missing person was a man or woman of means, they would have beaten a fast path back to Tampa—at the very least to avoid being declared dead and having their assets surrendered to the state.

  He checked archival copies of the paper for the next ten days and two cases of local residents reported as missing and speculating that they might have been among the passengers on the ill-fated voyage of the Star. One detailed the case of T.J Mulroney and wife, the owner of a large sporting goods store in Clearwater. The other a November 5th 1974 edition of the Tribune detailed the strange case of one Carla Rodgers, owner and general manager of the Happy Dolphin Trailer Park in Madeira Beach.

  It seemed that the trailer park had been without its owner for the last six days and the residents had finally taken it upon themselves to notify the police. There was some speculation that a former boyfriend and resident of the trailer park were being sought for questioning. There was no speculation that she might be among the passengers of the Star.

  Eddie had driven by the Happy Dolphin Trailer Park many times—it was still in business after all these years. He wasn’t sure what the current owners would be able to tell him about the demise of Carla Rodgers, but he figured he would never know until he asked.

  Chapter 27 - Mavis

  “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.

  “Okay, 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 un
dercover 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.