Homeless Tony

Homeless Tony

Tony was only a year old when the ‘depression’ hit the country and Key West already fighting for economic survival, turned into one of the poorest coastal cities in Florida. The collapse of the real-estate boom in the big cities dragged Florida into the Great Depression several years earlier than other parts of the country. That was 1929 and by the time he was six years old, he and his brothers were as poor as the poorest kid growing in the one prosperous island. When jobs didn’t exist anywhere, his father left to fight the depression and employment outside of Key West, but never returned. Tony was only seven then. He cried along with his mother holding his sister in her arms and his little brother on another hand. He sank his head between his knees as his father walked away. Tony hoped and hoped in vain; he waited for his father, but he never returned.
His father departure threw Tony into a world of misery, hunger and painful hopelessness. The wooden hut built by his father and his uncle in a homestead outside the city limits, was all he knew as his family home. There was nothing else, but the simple wooden hut that put a roof over their heads; there was nothing else besides a charcoal or wooden stove, two bunkers and table were more than often had no food on it. For all his misery and hunger, the ‘depression’ was the culprit. He knew that early in life and grew knowing that depression, though he had seen it or met it, it existed everywhere for adults spoke of it with surfeit familiarity.
The depression was the culprit for not going for reading and writing instruction, he thought. The teacher wanted a nickel for him and his brother. His mom didn’t have the two nickels and spoke to him why. The ‘depression’, she mentioned everyday as if the depression lived with them, ate and wake up with the everyday like an invisible ghastly intruder everywhere. Work was the only way to hide or run away from the depression, but that was impossible he soon learned. He knew it from his father. He had gone to fight the depression and had never returned. So, armed with creativity and hunger pains attacking his stomach, he made himself a good sling shot, ran to nearby creek for the roundest pebbles and bird hunting we went forewarning his mother that he would put meat on their table every day.
Within weeks he had honed his sling shot skills to perfection and as promised to his mother, a bird or two, if nothing else adorned their table with meat and soup for the family along with wild berries. Thus, Tony grew along the depression and became a teenager of creative survival skills. At twelve, seven years after his father’s trip nowhere, he was fortune to come with across plenty of easy money when his cousin as poor as him and in hut as poor as his and only hundred yards from him recruited him for his first job; real job. Rick, his cousin was sixteen and Tony going into thirteen when the opportunity knocked on his door opening a long destiny that would take him to unexpected places.
A unique opportunity that would shape his life in unimaginable ways. The job, as his cousin Rick referred to, was work they needed to in secrecy for the Chief of Police, but nobody could know ever for if they did, he cousin never said the word.
“Well, you know,” his cousin rasped his throat again.
Tony understood. He knew that meant something real bad could come after them, like a curse. When his cousin explained, Tony heard him flabbergasted at first and then his brain produces a few questions his cousin answered correctly and the two signed their compact by shaking hands and swearing never to tell their mother or anybody else.
Their first job would take them away from the depression and that meant never to be hungry again, never to cold again and put food on their table for their mothers and siblings. They shook hand again and agree to meet that evening after supper to do their job. Having closed its stores in 1942 in Havana Cuba, the Sears company opened its first store in Key West just when Tony and his cousin the same year they were commissioned for their first job. The depression was behind and prosperity had come down to Florida as people from the North discovered warmer climes, but for Tony and his cousin warmer climes were not enough; born and raised in Key West, more than good weather they needed prosperity and they were about to get exactly that from the newly opened Sears store thanks to the city Chief of Police. Their job was easy. Get over the fence behind the building, break in through the backdoor with a crowbar and reach for the save.
The job seemed simple, but to the young boys unaccustomed to big jobs like this, the logistics of carrying a two-hundred pounds save represented a challenge unless they could provide themselves of vehicle. That also represented a challenge for none had ever driven a truck or any other vehicle except the ice-cart of the negro Tobias who delivered ice to the Key West establishments with his old cart and even older horse. The idea came out for Tony’s creative mind and within minutes after pushing the save to the backyard, he ran to the ice-man house only a few blocks from the Sears. Tobias in Louisiana to attend his mother funeral solved the transport of the safe. Tony, his helper for a nickel a day delivering their ice blocks with the negro, ran to Tobias’s home for the ice-cart to finish the job.
When Tony returned, his cousin Rick was holding a bat and not too far from him, the guard dog they thought dead laid on the ground; the animal’s brains had oozed to the dirt in a pool of blood.
“What happened?
“The damned dog woke from the dead and came after me all over the store. When I ran into sports and tackle I found myself a bat and broke his brain,” his cousin said and on describing the unexpected duel with the dog they have feed a bird with rat poison enough to kill a whale.
“Did you get the negro’s ice-cart?
“Yeah, it’s around the corner behind the bush.”
“Drive the horse over here, by the gate. I’ll to cut the chain and the push the car to here to load the safe,” Rick said and Tone left with alacrity to fetch the ice-cart hidden bb some bushes not too far from the gate.
When the boys finally managed to upload the heavy metal safe onto the cart, and drove away with cart loaded with the safe, the horse hooves barely touched the ground and as the horse went it way out of the Sears back patio the animal half trotted and half floated as the weight of the save kept lifting the horse and cart up and down on a dirt road leading to the bush. Once there, the two boys mustered the strength to drop the safe and as planned hide it by the creek covering it with bush vegetation until they could crack it open. The first phase of their job was done. Opening the safe demanded a welding torch or a fifty-pound sledgehammer head and Herculean power to break the door’s hinges.
“I have to go and see the Chief tomorrow for we’ve done the job,” his cousin Richard said with a grin crossing his face, but Tony seemed pensive.
“Now what’s inside your bird-brain and what’s with the curled lip? His cousin asked seeing Tony’s worry in his face.
“Well, how about he’s doesn’t want to pay us?
“He will, I wager my pecker, he’ll pay us, he’s a police, doesn’t he?
“Exactly, but he’s more like a crook, I would say, but he found you and me to be crooks for him, but he’s still a crook,” Tony added shrewdly thinking like his father always said.
“What now?
“Good Jesus Christ only and he was hung on the cross and went to heaven, right? That’s what my father always told my mom,” Tony argued.
“But he’s a good cop or he wouldn’t be a Chief, right? He cousin argued again.
“You better go and get us our money, but don’t tell him where the safe is ‘cause he is a good crook too,” Tony pleaded intelligently. Rick agree to hide the safe and let the Chief know where the safe was and get their job money before.
“I’ll do that, but he’ll be mad.”
“Better that than his cupboard of love for us, what he wants is his money and who knows how much more rich than us he’s gonna get?
Tony added his brain thinking hard. If anything about his dad, he had taught him all about other humans and he remembered.
“You’re too suspicious like your old dad, but he’s the Chief and won’t double cross us Tony,” his cousin insisted, but Tony had made his mind about the Chief.
“Well, like my father always said, you’ll turn into a bad penny after he get his, right?
“Okay, okay, we’ll hide the damned safe here until we open it and don’t tell anything, okay,” his cousin said and the two boys went to work to cover and hide the safe in the bush and keep it from prying eyes.
As predicted by Tony and expected by Rick, the Chief of Police wanted the safe, before paying the boys a wooden penny. After strong threats from the Chief, Rick began thinking more like Tony and returned the threat to the Chief.
“If you don’t pay us for the job, then the safe belongs to us,” Rick dare saying empowered by his cousin advise.
“If you don’t tell me where the safe is I can’t pay you and I could arrest you as a suspect and put your ass and that of your cousin along too, right? The Chief said threateningly but the boys were prepared for the argument and their replies worried the Chief.
“Fine, but we need the money for the sledge-hammer,” Rick demanded. The Chief left the room, went into the Florida room in the back of the house and came back with a sledge-hammer.
“Use this, this thing should do the hinges and bring me the money wrapped in plastic bags only; then throw the safe into the creek and don’t think to take it on the lam ‘cause I’ll look for you under the rocks,” the Chief menacingly.
“Fine, fine,” Rick replied pestered by the Chief voice.
“And don’t come here until you have packages, don’t come at day time, night only you hear boy?
The Chief ordered and opened the door. He pushed his head outside the door and shoved Rick out the house. That night under the light of a kerosene lamp, and more will than physical strength, both boys pounded on the safe hinges until dawn when one broke and then the other cracked until the door felt opened to one side.
“Wow, were rich now, Tony, we’re rich!
“Not yet,” Tony replied unenthused.
“Look at all this money, there must a thousand of them!
“I don’t know how to count it, but it ain’t matter for this is his money, Rick,” Tony said degage.
“What your mean? He’s going to pay us, you’ll see!
“Yeah, exactly, he’ll pay us whatever he wants to and keep it all if he wants it all too, right? And me and you can’t do a shit nothing, cause he’s a big wheel and he can say anything, people believe him,” Tony replied hopeless.
“We’ll ask him to pay us fairly.”
“Only if he wants to, right? Tony added thinking.
“Three packages must have at least a thousand dollars each, Tony, listen up you dummy, I’ll ask him for one package for us and two for him and he’ll wiggle happy like a worm in wet soil,” Rick suggested, but Tony’s wasn’t convinced.
“No, we won’t ask him, ‘cause he won’t give us crap and then if he knpws where the safe is he can look for us to wiggle on a hook, right? We’ll keep two, one for you and one for me. He won’t ever know how many wrapped packages were in the safe,” Tony replied his eyes wandering, his mind working his thoughts.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re right, you smart midget, the freaking cop won’t know, right?
“No, he won’t unless one of us tell him and he kill me if wants to but won’t tell him ‘cause I’ll stand above the salt and keep my word and you have to keep your honor too like me. He’s a crook, I know, look at this marking at the sledge-hammer,” Tony said pointing to the black letter on the hilt of the sledge-hammer.
“What this shitty letter got to do with anything, you crazy pipsqueak? Rick asked vexed.
“I’ve seen them on a hatchet and a hammer the negro uses to cut and break ice blocks. He’s gotten the tools from a man that steals them from the city works, he tells me. You damned Chief possibly is buying stolen tools from the same men, right? Tony said engaging his shrew eyes on his cousin’s.
“Maybe, don’t know about that and now only know we’re rich. Hold to your package until I tell you to open it. Can’t be buying or going crazy with coins, people will know and we’ll end up pissing and shitting in a can you know where, right? Remember that, Tony,” Rick admonished his cousin as they walk home to hide their treasure.
“What we going to tell our mothers?
“Tell you mom we went with some fishermen and gave a quarter each; I tell my mom the same,” Rick told Tony.
Tony nodded a yes. He wanted to give his mother a quarter from his first wages, form his first job, he thought and walked next to Richard feeling as tall as him.
When the two boys left the bush that morning, the birds chipped and flew everywhere, but that morning the birds never motivated him to pull his slingshot and try to kill one. He was rich for the first time in his life. They have counted the money in each package and repackaged it again; both packages were made of exactly $1000 each and they had collected about forty more in quarters, dimes and nickels in the safe which they shared equally. Their future looked brighter than ever, but now they needed to wait for the night to come. Rick would take then the Chief a package and stone-faced lie to the big-wheel, even under threats from the Chief, Rick promised Tony.
Tony waited late into the night for Rick’s bird whistling call, but he never heard him and just before dawn, he felt asleep. The next morning, Tony walked to his cousin’s house to find out from his mother that Rick had not been there to sleep and the worse crossed Tony’s mind. He had seen Rick walking with the package on him to the Chief house west od Duval, the main street running to the ocean.
The nice wooden, white house from the 1889’s, when Key West got to be prosperous as an important port between coastal USA and Cuba, was home to the Chief a bachelor of ten years after the death of his wife. I knew that because the negro Tobias drop ice for them had repeated the story of the Chief and his wife. For the negro Tobias, the Chief was a killer. He had drowned his wife when she discovered her maid also his mistress. Afraid that he would be tie to a pick-up truck and drag throughout the city like his white-cracker deputy who was found with a black mistress, the Chief had taken his wife to fish and returned alone. She had drowned, but nobody investigated the Chief and that’s why Tobias, a deeply religious man, didn’t like the Chief. Tony remember all that when Rick didn’t return to whistle him.
Three days later after the disappearance of Ricky, the Chief and his deputy drove to see Tony at his house. The sun was dying out on West by the creek and its bush. The news sunk Tony into the deepest fear ever. He had told Ricky what Tobias’ story about the Chief of Police and his wife. Tony had no doubt, the Chief had killed Rick.
We found his body by the Miracle Creek a mile up the ocean. Do you anything about that Tony? The Chief asked the question and his eyes fell on Tony as if digging into his head beyond his eyes.
“No, sir. I was here with my mom and my brother and sister sleeping,” Tony whispered the answer as his eye got wet and glowed.
“Is that right Tony?
“You can ask my mom and my brother and sister that I was here.”
“Where were you the night before?
“Fishing sir, fishing, my mom can tell you that two, right mom?
“Yes, Chief Williamson, he was fishing and they paid him a quarter to help them too, right Tony?
“Yes,” Tony said swallowing hard as rock saliva down his suddenly too narrow throat for the fluid to pass down.
“Under the circumstances, Mrs. Ambrosiano I’ll have to take Tony with down the station for some questions, routine question, hope you don’t mind; my deputy Rudolph will drop him here later,’ the Chief say opening the door for Tony to go through. Outside deputy Rudolf waited by patrol car with a leg perched over the front bumper puffing smoke from a Camel. The investigation as Tony suspected was about the money and the Chief threats, but Tony held himself and now that Rick was found dead, or rather had been killed by the Chief or his deputy, he needed to act fast and be shrew.
“Where is the money, Tony? We know that you killed your cousin for his money and then you hid it, right. I’m a long, long tooth, Tony, you can’t trick me and better spit the truth out before you end up like Rick, dead, but in the electric chair. We have the sledge-hammer with your prints on it boy,” the Chief said with grin across his face.
“I promise my cousin to stay above the salt no matter what! You can kill me if you want to Chief, but you’ll never see the money ‘cause Rick hid it and not me. He suspected you would play a ruse on him and he didn’t want me to know about the hiding of the money, he only gave a few coins,” Tony said defiantly and the slap across his face snapped like a fire crack.
“Don’t you dare messing with me boy, I’ll kill you if I have to, you hear! I’ll bury next to your cousin and nobody is going to miss you, you hear!
I know you’re a crook and I’ll tell everybody that we broke into the Sears store for you! Tony was about to say, but then he thought it better and bit his tongue. Saying that would put an end to his freedom if the Chief wanted and then kill him later without witnesses. Shooting him, perhaps, and claim he had tried to escape, he told himself.
“I’m telling you, Ricky never told where he took the money; he said he was coming to you here, and asked to wait and that he would pay me when you paid him, I swear he said that,” Tony said with eyes of a hurt puppy. His crossed eyed shifted to one side like when was under pressure and pretended crying.
Okay, shut your crying! Where would he hide the money? Where you hide it if you had he money with you, Toni, where, think where Tony!
“Don’t know, the creek maybe, where he left the safe, maybe,” Tony answered shrewdly not looking at the Chief and running his arm over his nose to cleanse the snot running. He let the nasal mucus run and drip to the floor and pretended crying again. The Chief pulled his hair and lifted his face to see into his eyes.
“You son of bitch, you’re like your fucking father who burnt the cigars factory! I’ll kill you if I have god damned hillbilly! Get out of here. You have a day, only a day, to come and tell me the truth or I’ll send you to the boys school in Marianna until you get the electric chair for killing your crooked cousin!
“I didn’t kill Rick, somebody else did, somebody that knew about the money,” Tony protested and the firecrack of the slap on his face by the Chief filled the air again.
Tony cried again and clean the snot running from his nose again. He stood from the chair and walk out of the police two-rooms station.
“Just find the money, Tony,” the deputy said to him on his way out.
Outside, darkness covered the city when Tony walked away from the police station on Duval. He knew by then what he wanted to do. He wanted to burn down the damned Chief’s house; that’s want he wanted to do and had made up his mind to do. The sooner, the better, he told himself. Nis mom set food for Tony and sat with him wanting to know about the Chief questioning, but Tony kept the session to himself and sugar coated the truth for his mother instead.
“I’ll have to go out with fishermen tonight, I need to show the Chief I’m been working with the fisherman, mom, please don’t say no. I have or the Chief will think I had something to do with Rick’s death, ok” Tony said and his mom agreed.
“My sister will starve to death without that boy; it was her only hope after the death of your uncle Manny,” his mother added.
“He wasn’t my uncle, only aunt’s husband my dad said, remember?
“Yes, we won’t make a fuzz about it. Go and get yourself some wages helping the fishermen, I won’t be worried if you tell me where you’re,” his mom said picking his plate and walking to the outside sink.
“You and the kids hit the sac mom, early. I’ll leave you sleeping before nine, and be here in the morning. I’ll have a quarter or two, but now I have to go into the shithouse, thanks, mom,” Tony said smiling and taking the only kerosene lamp after his mom lit a wax candle and cuddled in bed with Tony’ siblings.
Once on the back of the house and sat on the latrine shithole keeping an eye on his mother. When the candle light was put off, he finished, went outside the latrine and dig for the powder milk can where he had hidden his coins along with Rick’s coins and put a four and a dime in his pocket, covered the can again and took a couple of the shitty papers in the metal drum hiding the plastic wrapped paper money from the safe. He was ready, he told himself and blew off the wick on the Kerosene lamp and walked away.
Half an hour later, he was behind the Chief’s house. The hatred for the Chief had turned into fear and concern. He didn’t want burnt the black maid along with Chief and pondered about that in indecision until he came up with a plan and minutes later he crossed the backyard of the wooden house and set a ball of shitted newspapers with brush under the house’s crawling space and lit the paper with fire and left. When the fire spread, he broke the maid’s window with a rock and ran away. Half a block away he stopped to the house in flames and few minutes later heard the clanking of the bells of one or two fire engines going to snuff out the flames.
Before running away from Key West, he ran into his house, woke up his mom and confessed his crimes. Then, he ran outside, dumped the drum with shit papers threw the sand, grabbed the two plastic wrapped packages and went inside. His mother dumfounded and wide eyed didn’t words to says and when Tony asked her swear under God’s oath that she would never reveal where the money came from, showed her the money.
“With this money, you help yourself and aunt Audrey and her kids; this is Rick’s money and I’m sure the Chief killed him when he went up to his house to take him his money. With package, you live off this money and my brothers,” he said whispering careful not awake his siblings.
“Where you going, son? How you going to eat? She asked almost crying.
“I’ll survive. I take a hundred dollars and the coins and go far where he cannot catch me and kill me, mom, he’s a killer, mom. Hide the money in the milk cans; put the bills inside and the milk on top always and keep them under your bed, mom.” Tony said.
“I’m afraid they will come and look, Tony.”
“They’ll come and look by the creek and sniff around, but won’t come inside. Roll cigars, you know how to do it, but the tobacco and roll cigars and sell and even if you don’t sell them nobody will get suspicious about you spending money, mom, listen to me, mom,” Tony instructed his mother.
He pocketed some bills, some coins, kissed his mother and left. By midmorning the next day, he was fifty miles away from Key West. Walking and hitchhiking he got to Isla Morada and then that afternoon he walked into Miami while Chief Williamson and Deputy Rudolph went on a hunt for the teenager without finding a trace of Tony. His mother, like his had suggested, kept her silence and to the truth, she simply didn’t where Tony had gone. She prayed for him blessing her son who had put food on her table for his siblings for a long, long time. Luck was her side when the cigr factory opened and she went to make cigars again. Life on Key West had returned to happier times with war. The Navy and the Airforce had brought their bases to Key West and that prosperity had returned.
Life for Tony on the lam, put him face to face with the reality of homelessness. When he was picked the last time before getting out from Key West, a horse trainer offered him more than he could refuse. Breeding horse owner and trainer Wilbur Wilson had gone fishing and was driving back to Ocala when he saw the skinny runaway hitchhiking and stop for the wiry, blonde kid with the thump up.
”Hey, were you’re heading partner,” Wilbur Wilson yelled from behind the wheel and puff his cigar inspecting the teenager from top to bottom.
“Well, anywhere except Key West, need to work, my dad left us behind and things’ are rough at home, mom and my brothers need my help and left to seek a job; there aren’t any jobs for boys like me back at the island except cleaning fish and even they want women better,” Tony said quickly intertwining present and past to make a point a get a ride.
“I’ll drop anywhere you want to, but if you come with me to Ocala I’ll get you room and board in my ranch for honest work. Are you a crook on the run or something?
“No, no sir, straight as an arrow kept in a good hiver, both mom is good Baptists honest to God and my pop was until he left us behind during the depression; never came home,” Tony shared convincing his future boss.
“Well, I’ll tell you what blondie, listen up, you’re hired, it’s up to you come to Ocala, you hear. I’m a good Christian man and I see tell you ain’t no crook,” Wilbur said with good Alabama’s drawl.
“Thanks. Where is Ocalala at?
“Ocala, kid, Ocala, just one L, but don’t worry up north of Miami about three or four hours, you’ll like once you my farm and my horses. Know anything about horse? Bet my head you don’t but you sound smart to learn all about horses and forget about fish, right?
“Yes, but know some. My dad played the horses in Tampa; he traveled there. Cubans ove the horses he just to say and go up there and come with good cash home, I swear, he was good at betting,” Tony shared almost naively.
“I don’t bet, but I owned horses, running breeds, that’s where you come, if you loyal, honest and take care of my horses I can always use you, you hear?
Ocala was then a far, too far from the main Florida’s cities when they arrived and Tony found the horses’ farm the perfect place to hide Chief Williamson. Along with Tartan, the biggest horse farm, Ocala was home two more and if anything, Tony thought, he could always look for a job at the other two, but he was happy already and felt safe out from the eyes of the Chief of police and killer in Key West, he thought adapting Tartan horse farms as his new home four hundred miles from his childhood home.
However, with time, two of Tartan’s horses won the Belmont and the Kentucky Derby putting Ocala’s on the American map; the winning horses brought success to the horses farm and journalist and that changed Tony’s life again.
After a few years of guarding his whereabouts from his cousin’s killer in Key West, came the picture Needles winning the classics races; Tony’s picture on the background alerted Chief Williamson and within days he headed north to Ocala with a warrant for the arrest of Anthony Ambrosiano for the killing of his cousin Richard Hills and the death of his black mistress Willmina Gabon burnt along with his house. It was 1945, just a few months before his eighteenth birth day and two after hitchhiking from Key West to Ocala when Tony entered Marianna Reformatory School for Boys while waiting to become and adult to finish his twenty-six years of concurrent sentence for the murder of his cousin, and the involuntary murder of the Chief’s maid and mistress. In a gesture of good will and mercy, the Florida’s Governor commuted his death sentence keeping him alive.
But Tony’s life changed forever. The harsh sentence for crimes he hadn’t committed turned into a bitter and quiet guy for a couple years until he understood that was in front of him now was the only thing; nothing more, nothing less. His failed escaped added six more years for a total of thirty years of imprisonment he had spent mostly in solitary confinement. Life in a penitentiary harder and harder as life went on, but he learned to accept his fate. The only happiness in his heart came from those he loved, but they became simply sad memories, and with time, each memory ebbed away vanishing into nothing; something so distant that recreating the faces of his mother and siblings in his head got confused a bit.
When he regained his freedom, he couldn’t remember the faces of his mother and his sibling. The faces of his family even when he wanted. They lived buried in a memory three decades old. When he walked free at fifty-two, he didn’t know where to begin living his freedom; his options were few and soon his freedom led him into the darker side of a world familiar to him from the experiences of inmates. Realizing Ocala didn’t offer him a option, he thought about Orlando and the hotel business developing around the Walt Disney park opening in Kissimmee. Hotels offered plenty of opportunities for employment and a lot more, he told himself as he remembered his old cellmate.
After a day of hitchhiking from Ocala, Tony found himself across the Davis Park hotel in Orlando. The newly opened hotel posted a red sign for Openings. The housekeeper and laundry position offered him a new beginning in the lucrative business. After six months as an apprentice and having learned all he needed to put his skills to work, he graduated from apprentice to master by mere observation. With certainty from his own experience, he learned that patrons staying in hotels were careless about securing their rooms for possible burglars and in most cases seven out of ten rooms were left unlocked while patrons enjoyed the beauty of the sunshine State. When on his days off he traveled to nearby cities and put his know-how in practice, he found making a lot more money than doing laundry by simply walking into unlocked rooms and getting away with money and jewelry.
A year after Tony called himself a ‘hotel cat-burglar’ and his new trade kept growing and it demanded a look-out; soon he found a partner to work with him and from that moment on, he climbed the ladder of prosperity working only a few hours of the clock and traveling from city to city and then investing his money where he knew more than others. He got into horse racing bets visiting most of the famous Florida horse track and soon his bets led to bribing jockeys and horse fixing following his father’s steps Tony ventured in the Tampa Bay Downs just outside Tampa and that’s when trouble began; this time, deadly troubles with the horse fixing mafia who sent out its men and Tony found himself lying in the middle of an alley unconscious thank to his visitors. He left Tampa and move permanently to Miami from where he traveled around Florida on is hotel business.
Tony was over ninety-one when I met him on a bench outside Publix in 2017. He charmed people with his bon vivant looks and his sharp intelligent mind and bon-vivant neat dressing; white shirt and tie and many times a red swede blazer. A survivor of the depression and of his own fate, he managed to survive close to a century without going to school and never learning how to read or write. His approach to life perfected on the streets. He smiled to life despite the many vicissitudes he lived and never heard him complaint even when night fell over him and had no roof over his head. He walked to his car, dropped on the front seat and close his eyes when it was time. Food, no problem. He toddled into Publix, bought a large French bread lay in a banana inside the flute of bread and nibble at his bread with gusto and offered anybody a piece.
Then, if you sat next to him to chat, he could hold your attention for hours telling you about the many episodes of his life; from his teen years in Key West and his sling shot to his undeserved imprisonment for one third of a century to his senility; all that adorned with his escape from the Chief of Police in Key West, his cousin killer, then his trip life Ocala horse farms. That would follow attempted escapes from the reformatory and then his final Odyssey as a free man specialized as a hotel cat-burglar that pushed him to LA and from there to Nevada, then Chicago, the New York and from there Florida and many other cities in between hitchhiking his way through America. But the most serendipitous of one of his many stories began with visit to the Fountain Bleu Hotel in Miami and he loved to tell you about it.
“Listen up, this is funny, he said and went on to tell me more, “I’ve come to Miami and have my eyes in some shitty motels and hotels. After the mafia broke all my bones for cheating and fixing their races, I wanted to hit a few hotels and then get lost and go up the Tampa, Tallahassee and come down to Orlando and then keep going up to Atlanta or then Chicago or New York just doing my thing when I heard the news about the Fountain Bleu.” He stopped to recollect his thoughts and a grin crossed his face and swinging his head side to side, he glared into sky recollecting the images of long time memories.
“It’s freaking funny, man.”
“What is it Tony? What’s in your brains?
‘Like I said man, I was going to do my business when the Fountain Blue thing came about. I’m walking out of the $1 a day motel, one dollar a day, man, when the front-desk woman tells me Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton came to the Fountain Blue and there is a buzz about; everybody seems to be talking about their romance and Hollywood gigs, etc., you what I mean while I thinking how to walk into their room and clean her jewels.” Tony stopped again and again a grin draws across his face and I wait.
“Aren’t you gonna ask me, kid?
“What happened? Did you go up there and cleaned her room?
“Oh, man does the bear shits in the woods? Of course, I did. It was Friday, never would forget because it was my birthday in March 1988, man when she came down to Miami for something they movie foxes called the “An Evening With Elizabeth Taylor and Friends” at the Fontainebleau Hotel or something like that, no, I’m sure, the whole thing was for queers, yeah,yeah, the show was to raise moola for the University of Miami for fagots, queers, like we called them in my time, queers, man. Money when get sick from humping men, those queers! Anyway, when I heard that, it was Friday, man I dressed to kill and left the motel on Biscayne here I go to the hotel with a plan of my mind.”
“Ohh, you son-of-a-gun, you broke into her room while she was doing her presentation, right?
“No, man, listen up. When I get to the hotel, the taxi drop me at door. My plan is walk into the kitchen grab me one of those short blazers for the head waiters they used to wear in those days and I sneaked into their room with food and drinks pretending they’ve ordered to the room. I knew how to pick a lock, but as I expected when I’m ready and go to the room, guess what?
“What? Security was there, right?
“The damned room is unlocked. I pushed my way into the living room and then I walk into the “letto matrimoniale”; the matrimonial room. That’s what my girlfriend call the spouses bed. The room is very, very rich like a palace, all in reddish furniture and carpets and curtains falling from the ceiling to the rugs, the chairs, the flowers, there are dozens of dozens of roses of all colors the damn thing looks like a botanic garden, a greenhouse filled with flowers. And I feel like an idiot. I’ve never seen something so, don’t have the words for it, man –
“Spectacular, fantastic?
“Yeah, that…spectacular I guess and then I move around in the “letto matrimoniale”, like my girlfriend would have said, the sleeping suite beautiful and the large bed, but when I walked to bathroom, a damned bathroom with golden shitholes and showers and seats and gold plated faucets and gowns and to one side a closet, large, larger than a horse stall filled with hundreds of shoes, hats and to one side, men’s garments, oh man my eyes can’t believe it. For a few seconds, I forget why I’m there until I see it. A small, woman’s valise, as “Necessaire” woman call it. It was pinkish outside and riveted with golden laces, but the best part of it, man, it’s there opened, showing all her jewelry!
“What came to your mind Tony in that moment? What did you think? I’m a millionaire, right?
“Well, yeah, hell yes, but her rings, man, were simply beautiful and especially one which I didn’t know it existed. When I saw the ring my eye went crooked to one side, took the ring and I left the room. I pulled off my red blazer and walked of the building quickly. I didn’t call a taxi. I walked and walked and walked thinking what to do next. I knew the ring was worth a bunch of money and the police would send their dogs sniffing for the ring,” Tony said almost regretfully and stopped again.
“And, then what Tony what did you do with the ring?
“Giulia, my dago girlfriend comes to the rescue. I imagine that investigators would be all over Miami, PI’s and those from the Miami police department. Guess what I did?
“What Tony, tell me what did you do, you pawned it for a few hundred? I ask impatiently already.
“No, I gave it to my girlfriend saying that if one day we marry she would keep it, but if not I wanted the ring back ‘cause it was my mother ring. A fake, I said to her, but from my mother before she died. She almost cried. She loved the ring. It’s fake, but I never gave a ring for marriage to a girl, I told her and she loved the ring from day one. She was such a good cunt man! Beautiful legs, great tits and ass; she was pretty, as pretty as Elizabeth Taylor, I swear and she was in love with me from day one,” Tony reminisced about her on and on for some time and I let him without asking more questions.
“Is that it, Tony? That’s the end? Did you marry her and she kept the ring and then she dumped you for sure you were an old man already, right?
“No, hell no, man. She hated me for a few days because she thought that I wanted to marry her right away. When again I said wasn’t sure, she almost killed me that day, she cried and cried,” Tony replied and his eyes wandered seeking the images of their quarrel over the ring. He went on. “In July of that year I was at the dog track, the Flagler track when I saw the guys closing on me; one coming from the left and one from the right. Almost like mafia killers, but I knew they were investigators the moment I saw them. They corralled me right there. There were two more behind I never saw until I look behind, man, the Son-of-Bitches got me trapped,” Tony whispered as if regretting that moment.
And? What Tony? They arrested you? Wat about Giulia and the ring? Where was she while they were following your around, Tony?
“She was a real Italian, good old fashion girl getting old, in her forties, but thinking I really would marry her, guess what? She left and went to Chicago to see her dad and get the blessing to marry me and then she flew to New York to do the same visiting her mother. So, the cops brought me to the station; they had enough to arrest me and keep me there until trial. Yes, they pulled some tapes on me and there I was; entering her room, wandering around and digging into her ‘necessaire’ and taking the ring and walking out; they got the entire tape on my moves that day. Of course, I was a nobody it took them almost two months to find me. When they did the followed me around and arrested me at the dog track. No way to escape, man,” Tony said sighting as if reliving the whole thing all over again.
“They wanted the ring and not you, of course and they realized you didn’t have the ring and it wasn’t pawned and cut to pieces yet, they thought they had a chance to save the city a scandal, and let you free following you, but got nothing about the ring because Giulia went to her parents, right?
“Exactly, I understood that later. When I tell the PD investigators that I didn’t remember where the ring was and was suffering dementia, they wanted me dead. One of them went berserk; he puffed and fumed fire. They reminded my bones had been broken once for cheating the mafia of their money and if I wanted other twenty in the can or that perhaps someone could break my bones again for Elizabeth Taylor was in the heart of one or two Mafiosi in Hollywood. We went back and forth for several days while they kept me in jail without charges yet. Burglary, was all they had, and possibly breaking and entry, at their best. One day they told me miss Taylor wanted to speak to me in private and the PD arrange for my trip. Two gorillas from the PD drove me to a beautiful mansion facing the ocean in Miami Beach where she was staying with her honey Burton. I was sixty-two, man, I didn’t give a shit about nothing, not even my own pecker, but I’ve fallen in love with Giulia and I didn’t want to hurt her,” Toni added.
I listened taking some mental notes for my stories, but doubting most of what he was telling me. He’s feeding me bullshit, I thought when I asked him about this and that to corroborate his story, but he didn’t remember much. What really transpired in that conversation between Liz and Tony we’ll never know for sure, but this is what he told me when I press him for the truth.
“Man, I told you, stop bugging with that shit, man. She asked why I’ve robbed her and I said that’s what I do for living every day,” I replied.
“Why you never worked Tony? She asked and went to tell her how I had ended up running and then in jail for thirty-two years. She cried, her eyes got wet. When I finished my story, she could not believe it. She asked me about my mother, about my brother and sister, about my family and I could read the sadness in her heart; real sadness, no acting sadness. I’ll tell you Tony, she said looking at me with those beautiful. Perfectly blue eyes reflecting the violet in the glow of her eyes. I won’t press any charges, I’ll put that in writing and the Captain her will honor my wishes, right Captain? The Captain nodded a yes with hard eyes on me. Then, she said, “will make you a ring just like my ring, and you switch Giulia’s ring, my ring, for the fake and everyone is happy. What you say to that Tony? And to let you go happy and I’ll help you with five thousand dollars. It’s going to be a loan, if you can pay it someday; is that a deal,” she asked me and threw a hand forward and we shook hands.
I thought it was a great idea. We did exactly as she said and a few days later when Giulia was back from New York getting her mama’s blessing, and we’re in bed she pulled her ring, placed it on the night table and I switched her real ring for my fake ring. She never noticed the difference. We never married and after several years later, she died of breast cancer taking the fake ring with her. She asked me if she could have it.
“I’ll think like you married me Tony. I’ll never lose it where I’m going,” she said and closed her eyes.
Elizabeth Taylor died when she was seventy-nine and I never had the five G’s to call her and pay her, but for me she was Elizabeth Taylor was the most beautiful woman in the world. And with all that beauty, she was a down-to-earth, salt-of-the-earth broad, man, she worth more than that 69-carat diamond ring, much more,” Tony added and I think a glow of wetness gleamed in his eyes.
After having Tony sleeping in my couch for several months, showering with him and preparing a piece of bread and cheese with orange juice at night for several weeks, left a feeling that I’ve done something human. When I learned he had passed away in the county hospital, taken there by Fire Rescue, I thought of him feeling glad I’ve given him a hand, but mostly I felt proud he had called me once his true and best friend.