World Gone By: A Novel (2 page)

And then he wasn’t there anymore.

Joe placed his drink aside and vowed not to have another for the rest of the evening.

In retrospect, he would look back on it as the Last Party, the final free ride before everything slipped toward that heartless March.

But at the time, it was just a great party.

IN THE SPRING OF 1941, a man named Tony Del Fresco married a woman named Theresa Del Frisco in Tampa, Florida. This was, unfortunately, the only slightly amusing thing anyone could remember about their marriage. He once hit her with a bottle; she once hit him with a croquet mallet. The mallet belonged to Tony, who’d brought it over from Arezzo some years before and had placed wickets and stakes in the Del Frescos’ swampy backyard on the west side of Tampa. Tony repaired clocks by day and cracked safes by night. He claimed croquet was the only thing that settled his mind, which, by his own admission, was filled with a permanent rage made all the blacker for being inexplicable. Tony had two good jobs, after all, a pretty wife, time on weekends for croquet.

However black the thoughts in Tony’s head may have been, they all leaked out when Theresa caved in the side of his skull
with the mallet early in the winter of 1943. Detectives concluded that after delivering the initial, incapacitating blow, Theresa had stepped on her husband’s cheekbone, fixed his head to the kitchen floor, and swung the mallet into the back of his skull until it looked like a pie that fell off a window ledge.

By trade, Theresa was a florist, but most of her true income derived from robbery and the occasional murder, both crimes usually committed on behalf of her boss, Lucius Brozjuola, whom everyone called King Lucius. King Lucius paid the necessary tribute to the Bartolo Family but otherwise ran an independent organization with the illicit profits laundered through the phosphate empire he’d amassed along the Peace River and the wholesale flower business he owned in the Port of Tampa. It had been King Lucius who had trained Theresa as a florist in the first place and King Lucius who financed the flower shop she opened downtown on Lafayette. King Lucius ran a crew of thieves, fences, arsonists, and contract killers who operated under only one concrete rule—no jobs performed in their home state. So Theresa, over the years, had killed five men and one woman, all strangers—two in Kansas City, one in Des Moines, another in Dearborn, one in Philadelphia, and finally, the woman in Washington, D.C., Theresa turning to shoot her in the back of the head two steps after passing her on a soft spring evening in Georgetown, on a tree-lined street that ticked with the remnants of an afternoon shower.

In one way or another, all those killings haunted her. The man in Des Moines had held a picture of his family in front of his face, forcing her to fire the bullet through it to reach his brain; the one in Philly kept saying “Just tell me why”; the woman in Georgetown had let out a plaintive sigh before she’d crumpled to the wet pavement.

The one killing that didn’t haunt Theresa was Tony’s. She only wished she’d done it sooner, before Peter was old enough to miss his
parents. He’d been staying with her sister in Lutz that fateful weekend because Theresa had wanted him out of the line of fire when she kicked Tony out of his own house. His drinking, whoring, and black moods had been spiraling out of control since the summer, and Theresa had finally reached her limit. Tony hadn’t reached his, though, which is how he came to hit her with a wine bottle and how she came to crush his fucking head with a mallet.

At the Tampa City jail, she called King Lucius. Half an hour later, Jimmy Arnold, house counsel to King Lucius and his various corporations, was sitting across from her. Theresa was worried about two things—going to the chair and finding herself unable to provide for Peter. Her control over whether she was electrocuted up in the state penitentiary at Raiford ended with her husband’s life. As for securing Peter’s future comfort, however, she’d been waiting on payment for a job from King Lucius himself, a job that had harvested so bountiful a profit margin that her 5 percent stake would ensure that the stomachs of Peter, Peter’s children, and Peter’s grandchildren never rumbled for anything but a second helping.

Jimmy Arnold assured her that on both counts the outlook was rosier than she presumed. In the first matter, he’d already informed the Hillsborough County district attorney Archibald Boll of her history of being beaten by her deceased husband, beatings that had been documented on the two occasions Tony’s fury had put her in the hospital. The DA, a very smart and politically conscious man, would not send an abused wife to the death chamber when there were plenty of German and Jap spies Old Sparky would be glad to host first. As for the monies due her from the Savannah job, Jimmy Arnold was authorized to say that King Lucius was still in the process of finding a buyer for the merchandise in question but as soon as he’d done so and the monies had been received, she would be the second participant to get her cut, after King Lucius himself, of course.

Three days after the arrest, Archibald Boll dropped by to offer her a deal. A handsome middle-aged man in a coarse linen suit and matching half-fedora, Archibald Boll’s eyes carried the playful light of a grade school mischief maker. Theresa concluded fairly quickly that he was attracted to her, but he was all business when it came to discussing her plea. She would agree before the court that she had committed voluntary manslaughter with extenuating circumstances, a plea that would normally ensure someone with a criminal record as extensive as her own twelve years in prison. But today and today only, Archibald Boll assured her, the district attorney’s office of the city of Tampa was offering sixty-two months, to be served at the women’s wing of the state prison in Raiford. Which was the location, yes, of Old Sparky, but Archibald Boll promised Theresa she’d never see it.

“Five years.” Theresa couldn’t believe it.

“And two months,” Archibald Boll said, his moony gaze gliding up from her waist to her breasts. “You make the plea tomorrow, we’ll have you on the bus out the next morning.”

So tomorrow night, Theresa knew, you’ll pay your visit.

But she didn’t care—for five years and a chance to be out in time for Peter’s eighth birthday, she’d fuck not only Archibald Boll but every ADA in his office and still consider herself lucky not to have a metal cap placed to her skull and ten thousand volts of electricity sent surging through her veins.

“Do we have a deal?” Archibald Boll asked, eyes on her legs now.

“We have a deal.”

In court, when the judge asked how she pled, Theresa answered, “Guilty,” and the judge conferred upon her a sentence of “not more than one thousand eight hundred and ninety days, less time served.” They took Theresa back to the jail to await the morning bus to Raiford. Early that evening, when her first visitor was
announced, she expected to see Archibald Boll enter the gloamy corridor outside her cell, the tent already pitched in his linen trousers.

Instead it was Jimmy Arnold. He brought her a meal of cold fried chicken and potato salad, better than any meal she’d have for the next sixty-two months, and she wolfed down the chicken and sucked the grease off her fingers without any pretense of dignity. Jimmy Arnold took no interest in any of this. When she handed the plate back to him, he handed her the photograph of her and Peter that had sat atop her dresser. He also handed her the drawing Peter had made of her—a featureless and misshapen oval on top of an askew triangle with a single stick arm, no feet. He’d drawn it shortly after his second birthday, however, and by those standards it was a Rembrandt. Theresa looked down at Jimmy Arnold’s two gifts and tried to keep the emotion from her eyes and her throat.

Jimmy Arnold crossed his legs at the ankles and stretched in his chair. He let out a loud yawn and dry-coughed into his fist. He said, “We’ll miss you, Theresa.”

She ate the last of the potato salad. “Back before you know it.”

“There’re just so few with your talents.”

“In floral arrangement?”

He watched her carefully as his chuckle died. “No, the other thing.”

“That just takes a gray heart.”

“There’s more to it.” He waved a finger at her. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

She shrugged and looked back at the picture her son had drawn.

“Now that you’re on the shelf for a while,” he said, “who would you say is the best?”

She looked up at the ceiling and out at the other cells. “At floral arrangements.”

He smiled. “Yeah, let’s call it that. Who’s the best florist in Tampa now that you’re no longer in the running for the title?”

She didn’t have to think long on the subject. “Billy.”

“Kovich?”

She nodded.

Jimmy Arnold took that into consideration. “You consider him better than Mank?”

She nodded. “You see Mank coming.”

“And on whose shift should this happen?”

She didn’t follow the question. “Shift?”

“Detectives,” he said.

“You mean locally?”

He nodded.

“You . . .” She looked around the cell, as if to assure herself she was still in it and of this earth. “You want a local contractor to handle a local contract?”

“I’m afraid so,” he said.

That went against two decades of King Lucius policy.

“Why?” she asked.

“It must be someone the target knows. No one else could get close enough.” He uncrossed his ankles and fanned himself with his hat. “If you think Kovich is the man for the job, I’ll make inquiries.”

She said, “Does the target have reason to suspect his life could be in danger?”

Jimmy Arnold thought about it and eventually nodded. “He works in our business. Don’t we all sleep with one eye open?”

Theresa nodded. “Then, yeah, Kovich is your man. Everybody likes him, even if no one can understand why.”

“Let’s next consider the question of police jurisdiction and the character of the detectives who are working on the day in question.”

“What day?”

“A Wednesday.”

She ratcheted through a series of names, shifts, and scenarios.

“Ideally,” she said, “you would want Kovich to do it between noon and eight in either Ybor, Port Tampa, or Hyde Park. That would ensure a high likelihood that Detectives Feeney and Boatman respond to the call.”

His lips moved silently over the names as he fussed with the crease in his trouser leg, his brow furrowing a bit. “Do policemen observe holy days?”

“If they’re Catholic, I suppose. Which holy day?”

“Ash Wednesday.”

“There’s not much to observing Ash Wednesday.”

“No?” He seemed genuinely perplexed. “It’s been so long since I’ve practiced the faith myself.”

She said, “You go to mass, the priest makes the sign of the cross on your forehead with damp ash, you leave. That’s it.”

“That’s it,” he repeated in a soft whisper. He gave his surroundings a kind of distracted smile, like he was a bit surprised to find himself here. He stood. “Good luck, Mrs. Del Fresco. We’ll be seeing you.”

She watched Jimmy Arnold lift his briefcase off the floor, and she knew she shouldn’t ask the question but she couldn’t help it.

“Who’s the target?” she said.

He looked through the bars at her. Just as she’d known she shouldn’t ask the question, he knew he shouldn’t answer it. But Jimmy Arnold was famous in their circles for an interesting paradox at his center—ask him the most innocuous question about any of his clients and he wouldn’t answer if you set fire to his scrotum. Ask him the most salacious details about anything else, however, and he was all hen.

“Are you sure you want to know?” he asked.

She nodded.

He gave the dark green hallway a glance both ways before he leaned back into the bars, put his lips between them, and said the name.

“Joe Coughlin.”

IN THE MORNING SHE BOARDED the bus and it carried her northeast for two hundred miles. Inland Florida was not the Florida of blue ocean, white sand, and crushed-white-shell parking lots. It was a land sun bleached and sickened after too many droughts and wildfires. For six and a half hours they bumped along back roads and bad roads, and most of the people they saw, white or colored or Indian, looked too thin.

The woman chained to Theresa’s left wrist didn’t talk for fifty miles and then introduced herself as Mrs. Sarah Nez of Zephyrhills. She shook Theresa’s hand, assured her she was innocent of all the crimes for which she’d been convicted, and went another twenty-five miles before she moved again. Theresa rested her forehead against the window and looked out at the broiled land through the dust the tires kicked up. Beyond fields so dry the grass resembled paper, she could identify swampland by the smell and the green fog that rose from the far edges of the blanched fields. She thought about her son and the money she was owed to provide for his future, and she hoped King Lucius would make good on his debt because she had no one who could collect if he didn’t.

Speaking of debt, she’d been stunned last night when District Attorney Archibald Boll failed to show up at her cell. She’d lain awake with a grateful body but a racing mind. If he hadn’t expected her to repay him sexually, why had he offered such a sweetheart deal
in the first place? There were no acts of kindness in her business, only acts of cunning; no gifts, only delayed bills. So if Archibald Boll hadn’t wanted money from her—and he certainly hadn’t given any indication he expected any—then that left sex or information.

Maybe, she told herself, he’d softened her up with the light sentence and now he’d let her stew on it a bit, let her sense of obligation grow. Then he’d come visit her at Raiford sometime this summer to collect on the debt. Except that DAs didn’t work that way—they dangled the easy sentence in front of your eyes, but didn’t give it to you
until
you’d done their bidding. They never gave you the easy sentence up front. Made no sense.

What made even less sense was the contract on Joe Coughlin. No matter how hard she tried—and she’d been trying all night—Theresa couldn’t wrap her head around it. Since he’d stepped down as boss ten years ago, Joe Coughlin had proved a bigger asset to the Bartolo Family and all the other families and crews in town than he’d been when he’d run things. He embodied the highest ideal of a man in their business—he made money for his friends. Therefore, he had a lot of friends.