Free White Shadow by Ace Atkins Page A

at Rivera.
    “You think because you got slick clothes and a greasy smile that you’re the man,” Wainright said. “You’re old, Rivera.”
    “Have a nice fucking day, Dodge,” Rivera said. “Take your wife with you.”
    Dodge turned and saw Rivera’s shit-eating grin in a side glance along the bar mirror. He grabbed Wainright by the arm and was leading him away from the bar when Rivera yelled out, “Get that little faggot out of my bar.”
    Davy, Davy Crockett, choice of the whole frontier!
    Wainright pulled his arm free of Dodge and jumped over the bar and on top of Johnny Rivera, knocking the man sideways with his body, pummeling him with fists, before Rivera gripped Wainright by the arm and tossed him over his shoulder and onto his back, and Dodge heard a giant woosh, as if all the air in a giant balloon was escaping.
    Rivera stood and pulled a sawed-off 12-gauge from beneath the register and had it aimed at Wainright’s head, sweat all over Rivera’s pudgy face as he sucked in air like a dying fish, his face heated with blood and anger.
    Dodge whipped his Smith .38 from his leather and had it in Rivera’s ear, and Rivera knew the routine.
    He dropped the 12-gauge and hovered his hands over the bar, Wainright getting to his feet and pulling his .38 about ten seconds too late.
    “I wish you hadn’t done that,” Dodge said, out of breath. “You need to think about your next step, Johnny. I just want to talk, but everyone in this city thinks you slit that old man’s throat. I want you to study on that for a while, and then decide what you want to tell me. I may be the best goddamned friend you ever had.”
    Dodge wiped his brow with his free hand and then reached for his cuffs. He tossed them to Wainright and said: “Cuff him and bring him along. If you ever pull that kind of shit again, I’ll shoot you myself.”

    SHE WAS filthy and tired and hungry and asleep on the couch of her cousin, Muriel. The cousin had a child, a lost husband, and laundry washed in a pot and hung to dry through the middle of the casita. Through the night, the baby kept crying, and sometimes Muriel woke up and walked with him, loose and aimless, across the beaten floor, while Lucrezia lay on the tattered couch and stared up at the leaking ceiling, listening to the rain coming in off the bay.
    The splattering rain sounded like tiny fingers drumming in the darkness. By the time the storm hit, she wondered if she’d make it out of Ybor City alive.
    She studied the ledger for a long time by candlelight but tucked it back under the couch when she heard Muriel stir once again, because, after all, it was Muriel who’d gotten her the job at Johnny Rivera’s Boston Bar, and the one who would hide her in the small, cramped attic when he came looking. But Lucrezia didn’t know how much longer that would last as she stared up at the ceiling of the casita, her clothes still smelling of the tobacco she rolled, and of the smoke from the men she’d shot and probably killed.
    She’d bathed in Muriel’s sink twice to get off the smell of the man, washing herself with a cloth, as a soldier would dress wounds in the field, before slipping back into her dress and finding some bread to eat. She had done it. It was over, and thinking and acting as a child would do nothing for her.
    It was the same way last year with Gomez. She’d known where he’d go and about his man, the driver who would roll down the Malecón—even on the rainiest of nights—to find young whores fresh in from the country to take to the Nacional, where the gangster Lansky kept a room for all the generals. And she watched, as this would happen for several nights last year, until the car, that long black car, stopped before her, she in a dress that her father had bought her for church with lace and ruffles and matching white gloves, and the man let her in the back of the car with the mustached general, who allowed Lucrezia to hold his hat while he kissed her neck and pulled