Chapter Two: Blind Otto and the Ripe Papaya

In a case like this, it’s always best to follow the money. I planned to start with the insurance company that had paid off the claim, Victory Life. But first I wanted to find out what my friend Otto knew about EQ Edmunds and Lola Flores, the dame rumored to be the only witness to his death.

You don’t need to read the paper if you stop by Otto’s newsstand in City Hall. He can tell you everything that’s going on, most of which never gets into the papers. But you give him your nickel, and he gives you the lowdown, and you take the paper for form’s sake. And, of course, to read the official party line, as my father would say. I buy the Tampa Herald, never the Chronicle, for reasons of my own.

“Lola Flores,” he said when I asked. A sly smile snaked up the left side of his face. He had a way of pointing his dark glasses at you as if he could look right through you even though he’d been blind since birth. “A succulent little papaya. I believe you’ll find she has a lifetime rent-free lease on a penthouse in Edmunds Towers.”

Sounded like a convenient way to keep a mistress. “What do you know about her?”

“Word has it she was a taxi dancer in Cuba. Edmunds added her to his entourage when he was down there before his first marriage.”

“He was married before?”

Otto nodded. “The first Mrs. Edmunds died. Some sort of swamp fever, I think.” He paused and seemed to study me for a moment. “Tell me you’re not investigating Edmunds’ disappearance.”

“Maybe.”

“Dangerous waters, Corazon. You go fishing there, you’re liable to lose a lot more than your pole.”

Otto’s warning didn’t do much to stir up my gusto for the case, but it was too late now. I had given my word to a lady in tears. Damn that Corazon blood.

I took a Herald and flipped him a nickel, which he caught in mid-air and felt with his thumb. “Brand new Indian head,” he said with a smile. “You’ve been to the bank this morning.”

Not much gets by Otto.

Victory Life was closer, but Lola sounded more interesting, so I hopped the Bayshore streetcar headed south out of town. Tampa sits on a fat finger of land surrounded by Hillsborough Bay to the east and Tampa Bay to the west and south. Bayshore Boulevard runs south along Hillsborough Bay from downtown to the tip of the peninsula. Tampa’s wealthiest citizens live in columned mansions along this stretch of road with views of blue water meeting bluer sky, interrupted only by a couple of grassy keys where snowy egrets and great blue herons nest.

It was on those keys that Edmunds originally planned to place his development. But Tampa’s best didn’t want their view obstructed, so they pressured City Council members not to grant the needed permits. They had underestimated Edmunds, though.

He managed to bribe, charm and probably blackmail a four-to-three decision in his favor. The mayor, who lives on Bayshore, was none too happy, so Edmunds made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Edmunds had quietly bought up another key off the southern tip of the peninsula a couple miles south of the end of Bayshore Boulevard. He told the mayor he would put his development on this island on two conditions. One was that the city would extend Bayshore Boulevard and the streetcar line all the way to his island, and build a bridge to it. The second condition was that the city would purchase the other two keys at three times the price he had paid and pledge in writing never to develop them. The mayor haggled on the price a little, but otherwise pretty much gave in.

I had the streetcar almost to myself this morning. The only people headed south on a weekday morning were a few Cuban and Negro women on their way to do laundry, cook, clean and tend children in the sparkling bayside homes. They eyed me curiously. A Latin man, especially one in a suit, is a rarity on the Bayshore streetcar.

It was ten a.m. by the time the streetcar stopped at Edmunds Towers. The whole island was done in a new style called Mediterranean Revival with textured stucco facades, deep colonnaded porches, arched windows, cool, hand-painted tile courtyards and lots of fancy turrets that made the houses look like castles. The place was supposed to look like the Italian Riviera, and I suppose it did, minus of course the Italians. We stayed in Ybor City where there were none of the signs common in Tampa that said, “No Dagos Allowed.”

Edmunds Towers was the first building on the island, and Edmunds had spared no expense on its opulence. It was, after all, the model he used for selling plots. It looked like a twelve-story-high wedding cake with frosting the rosy tint of a tropical sunrise. Brilliant scarlet bougainvillea draped over the central arch that led to the inner courtyard replete with fountains spilling into a deep blue pool.

I entered the lobby and found Lola’s apartment listed as penthouse two. The white-gloved negro elevator operator eyed me with suspicion when I told him my destination but said nothing. On the ride up, I noticed a small, gnarled bit of tree root with a piece of fabric tied around it fixed over the door. A Haitian root doll, put there no doubt by the operator to keep evil from crossing the threshold of his elevator. I wondered if it had done its work.

I knocked on the door of penthouse two and waited a long time for an answer. Lola Flores opened the door wearing a purple satin robe and matching high-heeled slippers. Even fresh out of bed with her glossy black hair not yet combed, she was a delectable dish. She dish with coppery skin as smooth and flawless as the satin of her robe, and fine, high bones. But it was her eyes that made her beauty most arresting. They were the most startling shade of gold, a color seen more in cats than in people. They held not a trace of warmth as she looked me up and down.

“Salesman are not allowed in this building.”

“I’m a private investigator. My name is William Heart.” I handed her my card, which she inspected briefly. “I wonder if I might ask you a few questions.”

“You don’t look like a Heart, guarjiro.” The word means something like Italian hillbilly. It’s no compliment, but I needed answers. I had to let it slide.

“May I ask you some questions?”

She made no move to let me in. “What’s your real name?”

“Corazon.”

“Spanish?”

I nodded. “My mother’s Italian.”

“Why’d you change it?”

“It’s a long sad story, Miss Flores. I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

“About what?”

“The disappearance of EQ Edmunds.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Who are you working for?”

“Mr. Edmunds’ wife.”

She rolled her eyes and let out an exaggerated sigh as she gestured me in. I followed her through the luxuriously appointed apartment, stuffed full of brocade furniture and huge potted palms. Shimmery bits of clothing were draped about amid overflowing ashtrays and half-empty glasses with lipstick smudges on their rims. The place had the musky smell of an overripe papaya. Her fluid movements, like her eyes, reminded me of a cat. Otto had been right about her.

Lola draped herself across a chair on the terrace and lit a cigarette. I took in the magnificent view of the bay, the bridge and the tail end of Bayshore. From here its houses looked dwarfed and inconsequential. It was a view that could give a person a false sense of power. Her voice cut through my musings.

“So what is it this week, did I push him, or did he jump overboard and swim to Europe?”

I turned to face her as she poured herself a demitasse of strong black Cuban café solo. She threw it back like a shot of whisky, the way that men in Ybor made no offer to me. I gestured to a chair.

“May I?”

She shrugged and I sat.

“Tell me what happened the night Edmunds disappeared.”

“I told it all to the insurance company investigator.”

“Do you remember his name?”

“Usually I’m not good with names, but his was so stupid.”

“What was it?”

“Les Moore. Do you believe it? Who would name a kid Les Moore?”

“So what did you tell him?”

“Can’t you just get it from his report? He wrote it all down, and then he made me sign it.”

“I’d rather hear it from you.”

She sighed and fingered her cup. “Eddie liked to show off. He was dancing on the table. I told him he would fall and hurt himself. He said nothing could hurt him, he could fly like an angel.”

She rolled her eyes and sighed. A vivid scarlet flush stole over the smooth curves of her breasts and up her neck. Some people blush when they’re embarrassed, some in anger, and some when they lie. I didn’t know Lola Flores well enough yet to guess which one applied to her.

“You were alone with him?”

“No, this was earlier. Everyone was there. He flapped his arms like wings and ran around the room pretending to fly. He climbed into the window. He said he would fly around the ship. We had to pull him out. He was kicking and waving his arms. He kicked Dom right in the mouth.”

“Who else was there?”

“Dom’s wife, Hedda, and Mrs. Conti.” The scarlet flush mottled the flesh of her face now.

“The papers said your mother was there.”

“The papers never get anything right. Mrs. Conti is my duenna.”

I couldn’t help it; my eyebrows shot up at the thought of this former taxi dancer traveling with an old-fashioned Latin chaperon. She noticed my surprise and smiled.

“A Spanish lady always travels with a duenna.”

“You’re Spanish?”

She lifted her chin, defying me to contradict her. “Of course. What did you think?”

I shrugged. I knew she was Cuban, but we all had our reasons to alter history.

“Was Edmunds drunk that night?”

She laughed. The sound came from deep in her throat like a growl. I could feel my blood surging in response. “Very drunk. He stayed up all the night before drinking and he drank all that day.”

“Any particular reason?”

She shrugged. The flush was gone from that magnificent chest. “He liked to drink. He was not a large man, but he could drink until everyone else was crawling on the floor.”

“Then what happened?”

“Everyone left to go to bed. But he wanted me to stay.”

“You stayed without your chaperon?”

Her nostrils flared. “Listen, Linguini Boy, I don’t have to talk to you at all, you know.” The flush again. It was definitely anger that brought it out.

Our eyes locked. Linguini Boy? This was one tough cookie, and she wasn’t about to crumble under a little pressure. “Look, Miss Flores. I’m afraid we got off on the wrong foot. I’m just a poor paesan with no manners. I’m not used to questioning a Spanish princess. Forgive me if I was rude.” I dropped my head in obeisance.

“Don’t overdo it,” she muttered.

“What happened next?”

“He kept saying he could fly. He got in the window again. I couldn’t pull him out by myself. And then…” She stared at the bottom of her empty cup. I waited. “He just…slipped out.”

“What did you do?”

“At first I was stunned. I couldn’t believe he was gone. And then I guess I started screaming. The steward came. I couldn’t stop screaming. Then a doctor was there. He gave me a shot. That’s all I remember until…”

“Until what?”

“Many days later in London. They said he was dead. She was there. She called me a liar and a whore.”

“Mrs. Edmunds?”

“Yes.”

The flush rose to her face again, and I stood. She looked at me as if just remembering my presence.

“Thank you, Miss Flores.”

“That’s all?”

“For now.”

She made no move to rise. “She must not be paying you very much. Les Moore asked many more questions.”

“I’ll see myself out.”

The day was beginning to heat up as the streetcar passed over the bridge from the island. The sluggish breeze stirred up by our movement was too warm and damp to be cooling, too heavy to remove the musky smell that clung to my nostrils. On the ride back to town I thought about Lola. Women who make their living pleasing men could lie without the usual telltale signs, but a woman of passion cannot hide other emotions. She hated Nesta Edmunds. That much was clear and not surprising. But she’d had the same red-faced response when she described the others in the room. Which one did she hate, her chaperon, Edmunds’ lawyer or Hedda Boudreaux?

Chapter One: Tears and Red High Heels

There is something lonely about a city after a parade. The people are gone, but their smell, the echoes of their laughter remain, blowing around the empty streets along with torn paper streamers, a child’s straw hat and discarded bits of lunch.

The Gasparilla Parade began as usual this year when Tampa’s most influential men, dressed as pirates and already high on Voodoo Brew, stormed City Hall. As usual, the mayor gave up the keys to the city without a fight to this year’s pirate king who led his bawdy mates down the main street of town shooting pistols and tossing candy, cheap beads and fake coins to the cheering crowd.

My father always hated Gasparilla Day. He took us to the parade every year for a civics lesson. To him, Tampa’s city fathers didn’t have to dress up as pirates to pillage this town. He believed these bankers, lawyers and factory owners did their plundering every day of the year in board meetings and backroom deals. To my father, the charade was when they wore double-breasted business suits and sipped brandy from snifters behind closed doors. He never doubted that they were dangerous men. Ten years ago, he found out how dangerous.

Dad devoted his short life to workers’ rights. Words were his stock in trade. He used them the way a pirate uses a sword, with fury and swashbuckling confidence. He never let me catch the booty that the pirates tossed from their floats. No son of Ramon Corazon would scramble in the streets for cheap baubles, he said. In those days I couldn’t wait to grow up and go to the parade without him. Now it only makes me miss him more.

Uniformed cops keep the peace on the parade route, breaking up fights and dragging kids and drunks out from under the horses’ hooves. Plainclothes detectives and private dicks like me work the backs of the crowds, watching mostly for pickpockets and bootleg liquor. People seem to get drunker now than they ever did before Prohibition. Especially on Gasparilla Day when all of Tampa toasts the merry pirate Jose Gaspar, sacker of towns and ravager of captive women.

This year’s Gasparilla had an Egyptian motif, so King Quattlebaum brought in camels to draw the queen’s float. He discovered too late that camels are foul-tempered beasts, and unlike horses, will not work in teams. They bit and spat and squalled like angry demons. The queen plastered a smile over gritted teeth as the camels pulled in all directions and nearly tore the float apart. By the end of the parade, her Cleopatra wig was lopsided, and the tears had turned the kohl around her eyes to mud.

After the queen’s float came the mounted Rough Riders, prancing in their dress blues. Some of them had actually fought alongside Teddy Roosevelt in the Spanish-American War. The rest just like to dress up and play soldier on this one day of the year. I watched them lead their horses through military drills. It would all be over soon. Then I could write up my report and be done with Gasparilla for another year. I didn’t know then that my troubles with pirates were just beginning.

The evening was turning cool as I walked the nine blocks to my office. I passed the monstrous Tampa Bay Hotel with its silver minarets. Negro men drew rickshaws bearing white hotel guests on a sunset tour of the grounds. I drew up my collar against the wind coming off the Hillsborough River as I crossed the bridge into downtown. It was dark by the time I rounded the corner onto Zack Street. The light in my office window told me I had a visitor. It wasn’t a good sign. Decent men were already home hugging porcelain pots and renewing their pledges to obey Prohibition laws.

I took the back stairs in the dark and slipped up to the open door of my office. What I saw made me want to sneak back down the stairs and out into the night. But whatever else I am, I’m no coward. I stiffened my spine and went in.

She had made herself at home in my chair with her feet up on my desk. She was smoking one of my handmade Cuban Belvedere cigars and had even poured herself two fingers of the rum I keep in a drawer for medicinal purposes. She didn’t introduce herself—she didn’t have to. Everyone knew Nesta Edmunds was the daughter of one of the most prominent Tampa families, that she had been the Gasparilla Pirate Queen four years ago in 1924 and later that year she had married the infamous EQ Edmunds.

The happy couple had divorced and remarried, and generally kept society matrons fueled with enough gossip to drive their luncheons until about a year ago. That’s when Edmunds disappeared from an ocean liner bound for England. The official story was accidental death. The insurance company had made a great show of promptly paying off the million-dollar policy on his life.

“Drink?” asked Nesta Edmunds, like she owned the place.

I never agreed with my father’s politics, but I did inherit his mistrust of a whole class of people. This dame was definitely one of them.

“Parade’s over, lady. Your float left without you.”

“You always treat your clients so politely?”

I pointed to the chair on the other side of the desk. “My clients usually sit there.” She took her time, but she moved. I settled in behind my desk and surveyed the drawers to see what else she might have filched. Everything was there, but the mess told me she had gone through it without the slightest finesse.

“Now, am I to understand you’re looking for a private investigator?”

“Yes.” She crossed her legs and took out a compact. She inspected her face in the mirror and started to powder her nose. She wasn’t what you’d call a doll. Her unpainted features were large and horsey, but she was handsome and well-groomed in an unadorned navy blue tailored suit and hair pulled back into a neat bun at the nape of her neck. Her buffed, unpolished fingernails had never touched dishwater. Her one vanity was a pair of red high heels. “I want you to find my husband,” she said.

“You’re remarried?”

She stopped powdering and shot me a look that could have withered a water oak. “No. I want you to find Mr. Edmunds.”

I wondered why she would want to bring him back from the dead. By all accounts he had been a hard-drinking, womanizing little braggart and bully. “What makes you think he’s alive?”

Her mouth tightened and drew into a hard, straight line. “My husband is a con and a liar, Mr. Heart. This wouldn’t be the first time he tried to trick me.”

“Leaving you with a million dollars in life insurance money hardly seems like a dirty trick.”

The line of her mouth curled into a bitter smile. “Everyone assumes I was the beneficiary of that policy, but the truth is, I didn’t get a dime.”

“Who did?”

“My husband.”

“Kinda tough for a corpse to spend a million bucks.”

“Oh, he spent it long before he disappeared.”

She dangled it out there like bait on a hook. I wasn’t about to bite. I waited, stone-faced, for her to go on.

“It was a neat little sting, actually. Edward so loved the art of the sting.”

“That’s what land speculation is all about, isn’t it?” I ignored the look she shot me, cold and sharp as a shark’s tooth. “Please continue,” I said.

“When the bottom started falling out of the real estate market here, Edward sold Edmunds Island for one million dollars to a real estate syndicate called Liberty Limited. A tiny fraction of its value. He held the contract and title, and they made monthly payments to him. Liberty took out a one-million-dollar insurance policy on his life. The deal was if Edward died, I would inherit the contract and title. Liberty Limited would sign the insurance check over to me in exchange for the papers. They’d own Edmunds Island, and I’d be a rich widow.”

I took my time digesting that. I had to hand it to the Anglos. They knew how to work a buck. One thing I didn’t understand though. “So how did your husband end up with the money?”

“You can use a life insurance policy as collateral for bank loans up to the limit of the benefit. After Edward disappeared, we discovered that he had borrowed a million dollars against the policy. The benefit paid off his loan.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“The bank placed a lien on the policy. They had to be paid before anyone else.”

“So Edmunds got his million, the bank got its million and you and Liberty were left out in the cold.”

“Mostly me. It turned out Edward had also run up over five million dollars in debt claims against Edmunds Island. The property can’t be sold until the debtors are paid. When Liberty Limited found that out, they pointed to some fine print in their contract and bailed out of the purchase. I now own a development that’s over five million dollars in debt. I’m broke, Mr. Heart. Worse than broke. I’m personally liable for all those debts.”

I poured myself a stiff dose of island tonic and downed it. I didn’t have to ask who owned stock in Liberty Limited. The same handful of men owned everything in this town. This case would have me nosing around some pretty powerful closets, and I didn’t like the smell of it.

“Why don’t you talk to Meade and Barkin up on Franklin Street? This is more up their alley than mine.”

“I can’t. They won’t—” She stopped, and the look on her face told me I hadn’t been her first choice. Probably not her third or fourth either. It made sense that the uptown dicks would sit this one out. They wouldn’t want to uncover the dirty laundry of their best customers.

“I have no one else to turn to, Mr. Heart.” Something about a woman’s tears brings out the Corazon in me. No Corazon man could stand by while a woman cried. My father couldn’t, and neither could his. It’s one of the reasons women love us. Even though I didn’t much like her, Nesta Edmunds’ tears worked on me.

“Why don’t you tell me what you think happened to your husband.”

“I was in London at the time.” She dabbed at her nose with a monogrammed hankie. “Edward was supposed to meet me there, and we were going to go on to Italy. He wanted to look into doing some developments on the Riviera.”

“What was the date of Mr. Edmunds’ disappearance?”

“September 27, 1927. It was my twenty-seventh birthday. I think he picked that day on purpose.” That made her six months younger than me. She looked older than twenty-eight. Bitterness will do that to a person.

“How did you hear of his disappearance?”

“I got a wire from Saul Stone the next morning. It said that Edward had fallen overboard and that the ship had circled for five hours before giving up the search.”

“Saul Stone?”

“Saul was the business manager for Edmunds Enterprises. He was Edward’s right hand.”

“Was Stone on the ship with Edmunds?”

“No. The steamship company notified him at the Edmunds Island office.”

“I seem to remember reading that there was a witness who said he fell out a porthole.”

Dark petals of crimson bloomed on her face, and her mouth drew into a hard line. “Lola Flores.”

“And you don’t believe her?”

One side of Mrs. Edmunds’ mouth rose in a smirk. “Lola Flores is a prostitute, Mr. Heart. She could easily have been bribed to say what she did.”

“Your husband was traveling with other people, was he not?”

“Yes. His lawyer, Dominic Boudreaux, and Dom’s wife, Hedda.”

“And what do they have to say about the disappearance?”

“They seem to believe he fell.”

“Why don’t you think he fell, Mrs. Edmunds?”

“My husband was broke, Mr. Heart, and deeply in debt. He was being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service for tax evasion.”

“Maybe he committed suicide.”

“That’s not his style. This is just the kind of stunt Edward would pull to get out of a spot like that. The only one who saw him go overboard was a gold-digging harlot. And I happen to know he had at least fifty thousand dollars in cash on his person when he disappeared.”

“Where was the ship when he disappeared?”

“Just about midway between the States and Europe.”

“How does someone disappear off a ship in the middle of the Atlantic ocean?”

“That’s what I want you to find out.”

This case was about as inviting as a pond full of alligators. But I, like everyone else in this town, was curious about what really happened to EQ Edmunds. The papers and radio stations had been full of contradictory stories at first. Then the official report from the insurance investigator and steamship line had come out in the Tampa Chronicle, the favorite paper of Anglo Tampa.

Edmunds had accidentally fallen from a porthole and been lost at sea. Case closed.

The only problem was that the porthole was four feet off the floor and only three and a half feet in diameter. At just over five feet tall, Edmunds would had been hard pressed to simply fall out of it. The Chronicle article had suggested that Edmunds had been showing off when the incident occurred.

Coverage had stopped abruptly after that although people continued to gossip for some time, especially about the mysterious female witness. Some had suggested a hoax or publicity stunt at the time to boost sagging sales. Edmunds had often staged grandiose events to call attention to himself and his developments. But eventually, life had gone on for most of us, and the disappearance of EQ Edmunds had faded from our minds.

For Edmunds’ wife, however, the question still gnawed. “Please, Mr. Heart. You’re my only hope of finding the truth.” Her tears were beginning again.

I knew I should walk away from this one. The last time a Corazon had taken on the Anglos, he’d left a bereaved widow and an angry son behind. I felt the cycle beginning again.

“Twenty-five dollars a day plus expenses.” I usually get ten, but I figured she could afford the Meade and Barkin rate.

“All I can afford is fifteen, including expenses.”

“Is that what you offered Meade and Barkin? Or is fifteen just the Dago price?”

Her eyes grew wide under arched eyebrows. “I wasn’t lying when I told you I was broke. I’m selling my jewelry to pay you. It’s all I have left.” She began to sob.

We settled on twenty, including expenses. Twice my usual, but not much for the trouble I was about to stir up.

Cigar City Magazine Smokes!

Cigar City magazine is so cool. And I'm not just saying that because they published an excerpt of my book Man Overboard in the May/June issue. The cover story, by Editor Emanuel Leto is about our very own roller derby jammers, the Cigar City Darlins. I saw them a couple of years ago at a roller rink in West Tampa with my pal, Cosmic Cowgirl Susan Cain. Even though they have cheeky names (and often cheek-baring costumes), these are some tough contenders. There's also an interesting piece about Naviera coffee mill and cafe by USF food historian Andy Huse and lots of info about local cigar smokers.

The mag's website is cool, too, with old photos, a nice Spanish guitar solo, and some great features about historical tidbits, like the guayabera shirt. But my favorite feature of all is Mama Knows, a hysterical advice column from a saucy old lady who can tell you a thing or two about the town you think you know. For example, do you know where Guolmar, Besbai, and El Pobli are? If not, check out Mama Knows.

Speaking of wonderful Latin things, if you're looking for something fun to do tomorrow night at 8, you might check out the Tango show at La Pollera Colorada restaurant at 2315 Linebaugh Ave. The dancers, Victoria and Frederico, are Argentinians who live in Tampa, and La Pollera has the best fried yucca on the planet.

Poets and Pineapples

Geez, it's been four months since I posted anything on my brand spankin' new blog. Four months I'd be happy to just completely wipe from my memory banks. There have been some bright points, though. Seeing poets Gianna Russo and Silvia Curbelo read again at David Audet's word fest Deep Carnivale. Discovering Emanuel Leto. His reading was so good, so evocative of Ybor's angsty history, it almost made me cry. In addition to being a spoken word star around these parts, he has been managing editor of the wonderful Cigar City magazine, but recently moved to a position as outreach program coordinator at the Tampa Bay History Center.

Ah, the other bright point? Growing these outrageous pineapples all over my yard.

I'll pull out of this malaise soon and start posting regularly about stuff you might not know about Florida and the Tampa Bay area.

A More Romantic View

I still can't figure out how to place photos in blogger, but here's how El Pasaje looks at night. See post below for a little more about the building.

A Building With a Past

One of my favorite historic buildings in all of Tampa is El Pasaje, (1310 E. Ninth Ave.) at the corner of Ninth Avenue and Avenida Republica de Cuba in Tampa's Ybor City. For five years, I spent most of my waking hours in that creaky and cantakerous old dame of a building when I worked first as managing editor and eventually as editor of the local alt weekly newspaper. But despite the long years and hard miles on her, she was always be beautiful and fascinating to me -- and worth all the trouble she could be.

Built in 1886 and modeled after an Italian Renaissance villa, El Pasaje was the second brick building in Ybor and remains one of the loveliest and most evocative spots in all of Tampa with its shady scalloped arcade in front and lush courtyard in back.

El Pasaje once housed a hotel and The Cherokee Club, a private gentlemen's enclave for the power elite. For 50 years, men announced their candidacy for governor in the club's second-floor ballroom. Teddy Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Jose Marti were among the hotel's guests. Marti is Cuba's most beloved revolutionary martyr. The apostle of Cuban independence from Spain, he spent a lot of time in Ybor City, working with labor leaders, lectors and newspaper editors to organize the resistance and raise funds and support for war. He was even poisoned here by Spanish loyalists, but survived to die fighting in one of the early battles of the war.

By the time I came to occupy the building, more than 100 years later in the 1990s the building was suffering from many years of disuse and neglect. The heating and air conditioning never worked very well. On especially cold winter mornings, I could see my breath while I typed away in my office. In storms, the electricity often blinked off, sending waves of cursing throughout the building as we lost whatever we were working on. As for the plumbing, you'd be lucky if the only problem was that the toilet wouldn't flush. If you weren't lucky, the bowl would overflow, and you'd have to hot foot it out of the bathroom before your shoes got soaked.

There were strange noises in the walls that I always thought were bats, and one particularly wet year, the entire first floor flooded, water seeping in through windows and under doors.
Some offices were dark and dank; others blinding heat boxes in the afternoon. But they also had exposed brick walls, huge arched windows and exquisitely crafted tile floors.

We shared the second floor with a lesbian bar called, in a delicious stroke of irony, The Cherokee Club. We had our staff meetings in the club's Bordello Room, a garish purple parlor with burgundy velvet settees, a pool table and chairs made to look like giant leopard high heel shoes. It was not a place for being conventional or pretentious. It reminded us that we had escaped the world of generic cubicles and fluorescent lighting, of lockstep thinking and rigid rules. It was a place to live up to, a perfect home for an alternative newspaper.

Staff Writer Dave Jasper spent the night once, in hopes of meeting El Pasaje's resident ghost and writing about the encounter for a Halloween issue. Other staffers sometimes stayed overnight in the offices rather than drive home after partying late in Ybor. Events Editor Cooper Cruz was robbed at gunpoint in the parking lot one night. Once we found a condom in the scrofulous old orange sofa in the editorial suite. It was the same sofa Janet Reno sat on when she visited during her campaign for governor.

The balcony overlooking our parking lot was the place to be during WMNF’s annual tribal music gathering Tropical Heatwave. In addition to having a great view of the action, we had our own keg and bathrooms that, cranky as they were, still smelled better than the Port-o-Lets cooking in the sun. One year, a stranger managed to sneak in. We let him stay until we found him in the archive closet, peeing into a plastic cup.

I occupied three different offices in El Pasaje as I climbed up the corporate ladder and back down. My favorite was a corner room with windows on the east and north sides overlooking a wrought iron balcony and inner courtyard. To me, it was one of the best rooms in the building, and I liked imagining Winston Churchill reading the paper and smoking a cigar, or Jose Marti planning Cuba libre, the liberation of Cuba, in the very spot where I sat.

Friday nights I usually worked late, and often, I'd be hunched over my computer, trying to figure out how to squeeze 32 pages of copy into 28 pages of paper while handsome lesbians toasted the weekend on the terrace outside my windows, and yuppies whooped it up in the courtyard below.

That's when I'd pour a shot of rum into my little china teacup and toast my fellow warriors: that ragtag band of oddballs, freethinkers and contrarians who worked so hard to put out a paper with an independent voice every week -- and the editors of those long-ago firebrand newspapers of Ybor City. I pictured them working late into the night 100 years ago so that the lectors could read to factory workers in the morning as they rolled cigars and planned a revolution.

El Pasaje is empty now and forlorn. No revolutionaries, no prostitutes, no musicians or lesbians or powerbrokers or journalists or bartenders ply their trades here now. It's just an old brick building that smells faintly of piss and history.

The Criminal Mind

Author Terry Odell is doing a great series on her blog about the criminal mind. She's sharing her notes on a class she's taking called "Inside the Criminal Mind." One of the speakers was David Malinowski, Regional Transition Coordinator for the Florida Department of Corrections. His job is to help incarcerated people transition out of prison. The information on Terry's blog is fascinating and well worth a visit.

Terry writes romance and suspense books for Cerridwen Press, the publisher that published Man Overboard. I haven't read her books yet, but now that I know what a great researcher she is, I'm going to check them out.