Tampa Bay Noir

by Colette Bancroft

  Table of Contents

  ___________________

  Introduction

  PART I: SUBURB SINISTER

  The Guardian

  Michael Connelly

  Hyde Park

  Chum in the Water

  Lori Roy

  Tierra Verde

  I Get the Same Old Feeling

  Karen Brown

  Davis Islands

  Triggerfish Lane

  Tim Dorsey

  Palma Ceia

  PART II: BLOOD IN THE WATER

  Only You

  Lisa Unger

  Clearwater Beach

  Extraordinary Things

  Sterling Watson

  Pass-a-Grille

  Local Waters

  Luis Castillo

  Indian Rocks Beach

  PART III: GRIFTERS’ PARADISE

  Tall, Dark, and Handsome

  Ace Atkins

  Westshore

  The Midnight Preacher

  Sarah Gerard

  34th Street

  Jackknife

  Danny López

  Gibsonton

  PART IV: FAMILY SECRETS

  It’s Not Locked Because It Don’t Lock

  Ladee Hubbard

  Lake Maggiore

  Marked

  Gale Massey

  Pinellas Park

  Pablo Escobar

  Yuly Restrepo Garcés

  Largo

  Wings Beating

  Eliot Schrefer

  Safety Harbor

  The Bite

  Colette Bancroft

  Rattlesnake

  About the Contributors

  Bonus Materials

  Excerpt from USA NOIR edited by Johnny Temple

  Also in Akashic Noir Series

  Akashic Noir Series Awards & Recognition

  About Akashic Books

  Copyrights & Credits

  In memory of John Bancroft, my partner in crime

  INTRODUCTION

  Shady Stuff in the Sunshine

  Ask most people what the Tampa Bay area is famous for, and they might mention sparkling beaches and sleek urban centers and contented retirees strolling the golf courses year-round. But it’s always had a dark side. Just look at its signature event: a giant pirate parade.

  Not only does Gasparilla honor the buccaneer traditions of theft, debauchery, and violence; its namesake pirate captain, José Gaspar, is a fake who probably never existed. And if there’s any variety of crime baked into Florida’s history, it’s fraud. From the indigenous residents who supposedly conned Spanish explorers seeking the Fountain of Youth through the rolling cycles of real estate scams that have shaped the Sunshine State for the last century or so, the place is a grifter’s native habitat.

  For a large chunk of the twentieth century, Tampa had a reputation as a Mafia town. Santo Trafficante Jr. and his family ran assorted extralegal operations in west Florida and, for a while—until Fidel Castro threw them out—in Havana. Mob killings were standard newspaper fodder in the 1950s and ’60s, and oddly went unsolved even when they happened in public.

  In the twenty-first century, the “Florida Man” meme has found its ground zero around Tampa Bay, a metro area of about three million people that includes Tampa, St. Petersburg, and several other cities and towns. A website dedicated to it calls Florida Man “the worst superhero ever,” but Florida Man stories are real. A guy impersonating a cop pulling over a real cop? A naked man caught on video stealing hot dogs from a concession stand? A small-town mayor who is charged with drug dealing and medical fraud—and shoots at the SWAT guys when they come to arrest him? All real, all arrested around Tampa Bay—in the span of a few months.

  With that kind of real crime, it can be tough to make anything up. But the fifteen writers who contributed to Tampa Bay Noir (myself included) found inspiration in its darker corners. Florida is the kind of place where almost everybody is from someplace else, where people come to make themselves over. Sometimes they make themselves into victims—or very bad people.

  In the stories in Part I: Suburb Sinister, the authors take us into some of the elegant Tampa Bay neighborhoods where the hibiscus bloom and the mockingbirds sing and, occasionally, blood flows. In “The Guardian,” Michael Connelly brings his iconic LAPD detective Harry Bosch to town to help a former lover, and Bosch finds he still plays an unexpected role in her life. Lori Roy’s “Chum in the Water” pits a real estate flipper against a rumored mob guy on Tierra Verde. A woman buys a house on posh Davis Islands and finds it has an eerie connection to a man from her past in Karen Brown’s “I Get the Same Old Feeling.” In Tim Dorsey’s “Triggerfish Lane,” a nice Midwestern family relocates to sunny Palma Ceia only to find Florida-history enthusiast and occasional killer Serge Storms living across the street.

  The beaches of Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico are world-famous. In Part II: Blood in the Water, writers take their characters to the yacht clubs, waterfront restaurants, and island neighborhoods for some bad times. In Lisa Unger’s “Only You,” a rich girl and a bartender’s son who were once in love reunite on Clearwater Beach years later, now that he’s a millionaire. Sterling Watson sends an ordinary guy to the Hurricane’s rooftop bar in Pass-a-Grille for a sunset drink and a serving of “Extraordinary Things.” In Luis Castillo’s “Local Waters,” a surfing high school teacher in Indian Rocks Beach has a run-in with a student and finds out more than he wants to know about himself.

  Cons and fraudsters work their marks in Part III: Grifters’ Paradise. Ace Atkins writes about a middle-aged woman (another migrant from the Midwest) who thinks she’s found the man of her dreams at a Westshore hotel in “Tall, Dark, and Handsome.” Sarah Gerard sends a journalist living in a seedy 34th Street motel in St. Petersburg on the trail of a sketchy Internet evangelist in “The Midnight Preacher.” In “Jackknife” by Danny López, an ex-cop pursues the stripper who dumped him to Gibsonton, the town known for its population of circus sideshow performers—in the middle of a hurricane.

  Part IV: Family Secrets explores some of the area’s darkest neighborhoods. Ladee Hubbard’s “It’s Not Locked Because It Don’t Lock” reunites two high school friends in Lake Maggiore, and one of them knows what the other did to his relative. In Gale Massey’s “Marked,” a teenage girl struggles to deal with her parents’ sudden death and finds comfort on a gun range in Pinellas Park. The young narrator of Yuly Restrepo Garcés’s “Pablo Escobar,” newly arrived in Largo from Colombia, encounters the image of the Virgin Mary on the windows of an office building and a happy American family that might not be. A divorced father takes his son on a resort vacation in Safety Harbor, which might belie its name, in Eliot Schrefer’s “Wings Beating.” And in my story, “The Bite,” a girl growing up in the neighborhood of Rattlesnake learns that even a dead snake can bite.

  Add it all up and it’s not a Tampa Bay postcard. But these noir stories will draw you in with the shady stuff people get up to in the sunshine.

  Colette Bancroft

  St. Petersburg, Florida

  June 2020

  PART I

  Suburb Sinister

  THE GUARDIAN

  by Michael Connelly

  Hyde Park

  It had been almost twenty-five years. Years that had taken a toll on Bosch, both inside and out. He was hesitant and drove by the house twice, working a wide loop around it by taking Swann to Bayshore to Howard and then back to Swann. He knew he was invited. His presence was, in fact, requested. But he had never been in such a position; revealing himself to an old lover after so long. And she revealing herself to him.

  But that wasn’t what this was about. They lived different lives now. And her request was not based on their past as lovers but on his past as a detective. Her ca
ll had gone to the detective bureau of the Hollywood Division of the Los Angeles Police Department. It had been years since he had worked there but that was the number she had on an old business card he had given her on the first day they had met. The person at that number and Bosch’s old desk knew of Bosch and knew how to get in touch. And Bosch got the message: “Something has happened. I need a detective. I need you.”

  Bosch would not have traveled from Los Angeles to Tampa on such a mysterious message from Jasmine Corian. He called and in the conversation the mystery deepened. So did the hook she had planted in him so long ago. A damaged woman and a damaged man longing for a connection. He had come to Florida on an investigation and had met her by happenstance. She was an artist and at first he was as equally enamored of her paintings as he was of her. Back then, she lived in the guest quarters above a garage behind a stately old house at the corner of Swann and Willow. They spent a weekend in her rooms, Bosch studying her work in the adjoining studio while she slept and he roamed about, firmly set on Pacific Standard Time. He then had to go back to his work and his home. He came back to Florida several more times and she came to LA once. She loved the light but didn’t like the city. The geographic distance ultimately put distance into their relationship. It was Jasmine who ended it, telling Bosch to stop coming unless it was to stay.

  Now she needed him.

  After his second loop he finally turned at Swann and stopped in front of the house. The neighborhood was called Hyde Park, close to downtown and one of the oldest in the city. The houses were built at a time when there was no air-conditioning. Large covered porches fronted most of them while up above there were screened porches for sleeping on warm summer nights. Her house was clad in yellow brick with large windows behind the full-length porch. She had told him she now owned the house. The garage apartment was still her studio.

  Years earlier, when Bosch had first learned how to use the Internet to search for people, he had put her name into Google. Their relationship was long over but he thought about her often. He plugged in her name and found that she had become a successful artist both critically and commercially and her work was sold in galleries across the country, including New York, and she had her own gallery on MacDill Avenue in Tampa.

  She had painted him once. He didn’t sit for it. It was a surprise he found on an easel in the studio. It was a dark, brooding painting, abstract and exacting about his character at the same time. She had depicted his eyes as piercing and haunting.

  She had never sold the painting, nor had she given it to him. And now it was gone, stolen from a wall from inside her home. She had tried to explain to Bosch on the phone that the painting was vital to her, that she could not complete another painting until she had it back and knew it was safe.

  Bosch parked at the curb in front and looked into the house through the windows. He could see an empty wall and could make out the nail and hook from which the stolen painting had hung.

  He got out of the car and looked down the street, through a tunnel created by the canopy of the hundred-year-old live oak trees that lined the sidewalks. Down at the end he saw sparkling sunshine on the surface of the bay.

  She answered the door before he could press the button below the brass No Solicitors sign and they engaged in an awkward hug. She was wearing a long white tunic over pale-green slacks. Like Bosch’s, her hair was gray with dark streaks through it. She kept it long and braided in a tail.

  “Harry, I’m so glad you came,” she said.

  “Not a problem,” he said. “It’s good to see you, Jasmine.”

  She told him to come in. The entry area split a wide space with living room and grand fireplace to the left and a formal dining area to the right. Directly in front of Bosch was a curving staircase to the second floor.

  “I know,” Jasmine said. “It’s a long way from when I lived in the back.”

  Bosch nodded. “Congratulations. You deserve it.”

  “I’m not so sure,” she said. “In the art world, it sometimes seems to be more about luck than craft or anything else.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. From way back your paintings had a power. They held people. They held me.” He glanced at the blank wall where the missing painting had hung. She followed his gaze.

  “It was the first thing I put up when I bought the house thirteen years ago.”

  Bosch nodded and turned his eyes to the fireplace. Another painting with her distinctive style hung above it. He could tell that paintings on other walls in his view were not her work. That would have been too narcissistic. He looked back at the painting over the fireplace. It was of a man with a face turned away from the painter. He had a sharp jaw and an almost cruel look, as if he was almost intentionally holding something back from the painter.

  “My father,” Jasmine said. “I worked on that one for twenty years before finishing.”

  Bosch’s memory was fuzzy but he remembered her telling him something about her fraught relationship with her father. He had died just before Bosch had met her. “So,” he said, “why did they only take the one painting?” He pointed to the blank wall, and then to the painting of her father. “Isn’t that one just as valuable?”

  “A painting is valued at what it sells for,” Jasmine said. “I never attempted to sell either painting. They were not for sale. The Guardian was one of my oldest pieces.”

  “How much are we talking about here?”

  “My more recent pieces sell in the twenty to thirty thousand range. My commission fee is twenty-five. My agent told me in the past that The Guardian could sell for as high as fifty but I said no. I did not want to part with it.”

  Bosch glanced at her for a moment, then nodded and looked away. He didn’t know she called the painting The Guardian. “What did the Tampa police say?”

  “That they’re investigating,” she said. “Detective Stone said they’re watching the art markets to see if someone tries to sell it.”

  “That’s a long shot. Whoever stole it will know not to do that. Who else wanted the painting besides your agent?” Bosch knew that someone coming in and taking one of the paintings and not the other put this on a different path. He didn’t think it was a crime motivated by money.

  “I can’t think of anyone,” Jasmine said. “Very few people have seen it. I don’t entertain very often. I keep to myself. I didn’t realize it was gone until someone came to the front door and when I turned I saw it was gone.”

  “You’re saying you don’t know exactly when it was taken?”

  “Right. I knew it was there and then it was just gone, you know? I don’t use the living room that often. I’m in the studio in the back and I use the kitchen here and then the upstairs. My bedroom.”

  Bosch gestured to the grand staircase. “When you go upstairs to your bedroom, don’t you glance in here? Just to check things out?”

  “I don’t use those stairs,” she said. “There is a set of back stairs off the kitchen. All of these old houses in the neighborhood have back stairs for the help.”

  “Got it. What did Detective Stone say about when the burglary happened?”

  “Nothing. They can’t pinpoint it either.”

  “No sign of break-in?”

  “Not that the police found. They think it’s my fault.”

  “How so?”

  “I go back and forth between the house and the studio. Sometimes several times a day. I don’t lock the back door every time. Sometimes I just don’t because I think I’ll be right back and then I get caught up in the studio. I sometimes work into the night. Anyway, the police said this may have been how the painting was taken. It was opportunistic. Somebody came off Swann, went through the gate into the yard, and found the back door unlocked. They went in and grabbed the painting.”

  “You don’t keep the gate locked?”

  “It’s locked from the outside but you can reach over and release the lock.”

  Bosch took in the information but found himself disagreeing with the conclusions of th
e local police. The painting seemed targeted, not something that was grabbed in a random burglary of opportunity. “Nothing else was taken?” he asked.

  “No. I mean, nothing that I’ve noticed missing.”

  “Where do you leave your car keys and your purse on a regular day of work?”

  “Well, the keys are in the purse and sometimes I leave it upstairs, sometimes in the kitchen. It all depends.”

  “Do you take it with you to the studio?”

  “No, almost never. I don’t need it. I don’t even take my cell phone to the studio.”

  “And it wasn’t taken or touched.”

  “No, only the painting.”

  Bosch thought about that for a moment.

  “Do you want to sit down, Harry?” Jasmine asked. “Or . . .”

  “I want to see the backyard,” he said. “And the studio.”

  Jasmine led the way. They walked down a hallway and through a kitchen to a back door. Outside, there was a stone path across a lush green lawn to a wooden staircase leading to the studio over the garage. Bosch paused and took in the yard. It was perfectly manicured and protected by a six-foot wall that ran the length of the property and connected to the walls of the garage. Bosch remembered that the garage was accessed by the alley behind it.

  He stepped over to a wooden gate set in the wall. It had a flip latch located about six inches from the top on the inside of the door. Anybody who stood at least five and a half feet could easily reach over, flip the latch, and allow themselves entry. Besides that, the wall itself would be easy enough to scale. The security measures protecting the backyard were deterrents to entry, not denials.

  “Let’s go up,” he said.

  Once again Jasmine led the way. Bosch took the steps to the studio slowly, his knees extra sore from being cramped in the airline seat for the five-hour flight.

  The place where Jasmine painted was much as Bosch remembered it. An apartment living room converted into an artist’s studio. With a workbench—Jasmine stretched her own canvas—and paint and brush station on the right, and her easel and painting area at the far end of the room where there were windows that allowed the morning light to hit the surface she was painting. There was a work underway on the easel. It was in the sketch stage and was clearly going to be a portrait of a child—a girl with dark circles under her eyes. Bosch recognized Jasmine as a child.