There is something lonely about a city after a parade. The After the queen's float, came the mounted Rough Riders, people are gone, but their smell, the echoes of their laughter prancing in their dress blues. Some of them had actually fought remain, blowing around the empty streets along with torn paper alongside Teddy Roosevelt in the Spanish-American War. The streamers, a child's straw hat and discarded bits of lunch. rest just like to dress up and play soldier on this one day of the The Gasparilla Parade began as usual this year when Tampa's year. I watched them lead their horses through military drills. It most influential men, dressed as pirates and already high on would all be over soon. Then I could write up my report and be Voodoo Brew, stormed City Hall. As usual, the mayor gave up the done with Gasparilla for another year. I didn't know then that my keys to the city without a fight to this year's pirate king who led troubles with pirates were just beginning. his bawdy mates down the main street of town shooting pistols The evening was turning cool as I walked the nine blocks to and tossing candy, cheap beads and fake coins to the cheering my office. I passed the monstrous Tampa Bay Hotel with its silcrowd. ver minarets. Negro men drew rickshaws beaing white hotel My father always hated Gasparilla Day. He took us to the guests on a sunset tour of the grounds. I drew up my collar parade every year for a civics lesson. To him, Tampa's city fathers against the wind coming off the Hillsborough River as I crossed didn't have to dress up as pirates to pillage this town. He believed the bridge into downtown. It was dark by the time I rounded the these bankers, lawyers and corner onto Zack factory owners did their Street. The light in plundering every day of my office window told out of the real estate market the year in board meetings me I had a visitor. It washere, and backroom deals. To n't a good sign. Decent my father, the charade to a men were already home real estate syndicate called was when they wore douhugging porcelain pots ble-breasted business and renewing their pledges to A tiny fraction of its value. He he ld th e co nt ra ct suits and sipped brandy obey Prohibition laws. and title, and they made mo nthly payments to him. from snifters behind I took the back stairs closed doors. He never in the dark and slipped up doubted that they were to the open door of my dangerous men. Ten years ago, office. What I saw made he found out how dangerous. me want to sneak back down Dad devoted his short life to workers' rights. Words were his the stairs and out into the night. But whatever else am, I'm no stock in trade. He used them the way a pirate uses a sword, with coward. I stiffened my spine and went in. fury and swashbuckling confidence. He never let me catch the She had made herself at home in my chair with her feet up booty that the pirates tossed from their floats. No son of Ramon on my desk. She was smoking one of my handmade Cuban Corazon would scramble in the streets for cheap baubles, he said. Belvedere cigars and had even poured herself two fingers of the In those days I couldn't wait to grow up and go to the parade rum I keep in a drawer for medicinal purposes. She didn't introwithout him. Now it only makes me miss him more. duce herself-she didn't have to. Everyone knew Nesta Edmunds Uniformed cops keep the peace on the parade route, break- was the daughter of one of the most prominent Tampa families, ing up fights and dragging kids and drunks out from under the that she had been the Gasparilla Pirate Queen four years ago in horses' hooves. Plainclothes detectives and private dicks like me 1924 and later that year she had married the infamous E.Q. work the backs of the crowds, watching mostly for pickpockets Edmunds. and bootleg liquor. People seem to get drunker now than they The happy couple had divorced and remarried, and generalever did before Prohibition. Especially on Gasparilla Day when all ly kept society matrons fueled with enough gossip to drive their of Tampa toasts the merry pirate Jose Gaspar, sacker of towns and luncheons until about a year ago. That's when Edmunds disapravager of captive women. peared from an ocean liner bound for England. The official story This year's Gasparilla had an Egyptian motif, so King was accidental death. The insurance company had made a great Quattlebaum brought in camels to draw the queen's float. He dis- show of promptly paying off the million-dollar policy on his life. covered too late that camels are foul-tempered beasts, and unlike “Drink?” asked Nesta Edmunds, like she owned the place. horses, will not work in teams. They bit and spat and squealed I never agreed with my father's politics, but I did inherit his like angry demons. The queen plastered a smile over gritted teeth mistrust of a whole class of people. This dame was definitely one as the camels pulled in all directions and nearly tore the float of them. apart. By the end of the parade, her Cleopatra wig was lopsided, “Parade's over, lady. Your float left without you.” and the tears had turned the kohl around her eyes to mud. “You always treat your clients so politely?”
When the bottom started fall ing
Edward sold Edmunds Island for one mill ion dollars
Liberty Limited.
Liberty took out a one-millio n-dollar insurance policy on his life.
MAY/JUNE 2009
23