The Cuban Who Paid Dearly Read online

  The Cuban Who

  Paid Dearly

  Daytona Beach Book 3

  By Frank W. Butterfield

  Books By Frank W. Butterfield

  Nick Williams Mysteries

  The Unexpected Heiress

  The Amorous Attorney

  The Sartorial Senator

  The Laconic Lumberjack

  The Perplexed Pumpkin

  The Savage Son

  The Mangled Mobster

  The Iniquitous Investigator

  The Voluptuous Vixen

  The Timid Traitor

  The Sodden Sailor

  The Excluded Exile

  The Paradoxical Parent

  The Pitiful Player

  The Childish Churl

  The Rotten Rancher

  A Happy Holiday

  The Adroit Alien

  The Leaping Lord

  The Constant Caprese

  The Shameless Sodomite

  The Harried Husband

  The Stymied Star

  The Roving Refugee

  The Perfidious Parolee

  The Derelict Dad

  Nick & Carter Stories

  An Enchanted Beginning

  Golden Gate Love Stories

  The One He Waited For

  Their Own Hidden Island

  Metaphysical Novels

  This Morning, Over Here

  Daytona Beach Books

  The Sailor Who Washed Ashore

  The Lawyer Who Leapt

  The Cuban Who Paid Dearly

  © 2018 by Frank W. Butterfield. All rights reserved.

  No part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express written permission of the copyright holder.

  This book contains explicit language and suggestive situations.

  This is a work of fiction that refers to historical figures, locales, and events, along with many completely fictional ones. The primary characters are utterly fictional and do not resemble anyone that I have ever met or known of.

  DB03-K-20181222

  Stay In Touch!

  Be the first to know about new releases and receive special offers just for subscribers:

  http://frankwbutterfield.com/subscribe

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Author's Note

  Acknowledgments

  Historical Notes

  More Information

  "I like to sing love songs."

  "The happiest times in my life were when I was traveling with Les Brown and his band."

  —Doris Day

  "Unrequited love differs from mutual love, just like delusion differs from the truth."

  —George Sand (allegedly)

  "...my family's going to eat as long as anybody eats. What they're trying to do is starve you Conchs out of here so they can burn down the shacks and put up apartments and make this a tourist town. That's what I hear. I hear they're buying up lots, and then after the poor people are starved out and gone somewhere else to starve some more they're going to come in and make it into a beauty spot for tourists."

  —Ernest Hemingway

  To Have and Have Not

  "He would always be remembered as the failed dictator who fled in the middle of the night."

  —Frank Argote-Freyre

  Fulgencio Batista: The Making of a Dictator

  Chapter 1

  761 S. Palmetto Avenue

  Daytona Beach, Fla.

  Thursday, October 2, 1947

  A few minutes past 7 in the morning

  Alice bent over to pick up the morning paper as she walked across the front yard of Mr. Tom Jarrell's house, but she had no need to open it. Ever since the first person had knocked on her front door over on Washington Street the night before, she'd been on the receiving end of a steady stream of news mixed with gossip.

  Not only had Eugene Mayer, just about the meanest lawyer in town, passed away from a coma in the county hospital around 3 yesterday afternoon, but his law partner, L.O. Thornton had been found murdered in his bedroom on the top floor of his house at University and Peninsula over beachside.

  Alice hated to think ill of the dead but none of her neighbors, including one of the professors from Bethune-Cookman, had anything good to say about Eugene Mayer. He was certainly no friend to the colored folks in town. Every person in her sitting room had some story to tell about how he had been involved in some sort of trickery. The consensus was that it was good riddance to bad rubbish, even as everyone looked abashed when they would say that, or something similar.

  Mr. Thornton, on the other hand, hadn't been a bad man although most everyone was at a loss to understand why he'd been in business with Mr. Mayer for as long as he had.

  One of her neighbors, Mary Johnson, had once cleaned house and cooked for the Thorntons when his wife had been alive. Mary had hinted that the elderly lawyer was driven to drink by Mr. Mayer and the reason he'd stayed in place was because he was often drunk at work and everyone knew it. The long and the short of it was that there was no one else who would hire him and he was too old to start his own practice. His drinking had gotten much worse after his wife passed, of course.

  Alice sighed to herself as she walked up the back steps. At least that awful Leland Johnson (owner of Fidelity Trust Bank and no known relation to Mary) was gone and gone for good. At around 8 last night, Ronnie Grisham had called over to her house and given her the news. After swearing her to secrecy, he told her all about the letter Mr. Johnson had sent to Mr. Jarrell, detailing how he was the one who'd murdered L.O. Thornton. It had to do with the large sum of money that Mr. Johnson had been getting together so he could skip town and skip he did. No one knew where he'd gone and it wasn't likely anyone was looking, either. After all, his wife had gone back to New York City to live with her people and Mr. Johnson had also murdered his only other living relation, his son, Roland, known to all as Skipper.

  So what was left for him in Daytona Beach other than a long stretch in jail and a well-deserved infamy? He'd skipped on the first and, for as long as there were folks in town who remembered his name, he would always be tarred with the second.

  In order to open the back door, Alice put down the big box of fried chicken she'd brought from home. Ronnie Grisham had asked her to bring enough for four and whatever else she could throw into a box lunch that she thought they might like. Apparently, Mr. Tom and Ronnie Grisham were getting on the train to Miami that morning and would be gone for a few days.

  As she pushed the back door opened, she was surprised to find Ronnie Grisham, himself, sitting at her kitchen table, sipping from a cup of coffee.

  He looked up at her, his grin missing for once. He looked like he hadn't slept all night. His eyes were bloodshot with dark circles. And he was sitting there in his undershirt and underpants, which was more than he'd been wearing the last time he surprised her in the morning when trying to make his own cup of coffee. That day, he'd only been in his underpants.

  "Good morning, Alice."

  She glanced over at the percolator which looked like it was working unlike that last time.

  "Good morning, Mr. Ronnie. I see you made your own coffee this time."

  He offered her a small grin, which made her feel a little sad. She was certain it must have been an awf
ul night.

  "Have a seat and I'll pour you a cup," offered the big man as he stood.

  . . .

  To Ronnie's surprise, Alice sat, putting her grease-stained box on the table. As she watched him carefully, he poured out a mug of coffee.

  "How do you like yours?" he asked.

  "Black is fine, Mr. Ronnie."

  He handed off the cup and took his seat across from her.

  She took a sip and seemed to be surprised. "This is good." He couldn't help grinning a little, even though he felt like hell.

  Looking across the mug, she asked, "Was it a bad night?"

  Ronnie took a sip of his coffee and replied, "Yep. Tom was up most of the night." He sighed. "He and I found Thornton's body. It was pretty bad. I don't think Tom has ever seen a dead body before."

  "Not even during the war?"

  "Nope. He was behind the lines, working as a lawyer. I've never heard him mention anything about combat, leastways."

  She nodded. With a small frown, she asked, "But how are you, Mr. Ronnie?"

  He shrugged, not sure how to answer. It wasn't fair to anyone for them to hear him talk about how he really felt. So, he changed the subject. Looking at the box, he asked, "Is that your fried chicken?"

  "Mmm, hmm. I made some biscuits and included a little jar of honey since I know you both like that with your chicken." She looked at him closely. "I'm curious about something, though."

  "What?" asked Ronnie, pretty sure he knew what was coming.

  "Why enough for four?"

  He'd been right. With a sigh, he said, "There are two reasons for us to get out of town right now." He glanced down at the box and studied the pattern the grease had left on the sides. It reminded him of how the clouds looked down around Miami—big and fluffy. With another sigh, he continued, "Tom needs a break from everything that's happened in the last few days." Taking another sip of his coffee, Ronnie felt himself blushing, which surprised him. "And, of course, we need to make a show of taking a honeymoon."

  Alice watched him closely but didn't say anything.

  "Everyone in town knows by now that Tom and I got married on Monday night."

  Alice giggled a little.

  "What?"

  "You're gonna have to find a better way to talk about all this, Mr. Ronnie."

  "You're the English teacher, Alice. How would you say it?"

  "If it were me, and thank the Lord it isn't, I would send in a note to the morning paper that says, 'On Monday, September 29th, Mr. Thomas Jarrell married the former Pauline Thompson and Mr. Ronald Grisham married the former Elizabeth Newkirk, known as Bessie to her friends. The nuptials were performed in...'" She looked at Ronnie expectantly.

  "Waycross, Georgia," he said, feeling a little more relaxed about the whole mess of beans.

  "'The nuptials were performed in Waycross, Georgia, by a justice of the peace. The two couples will spend their respective honeymoons in Miami and are expected back in Daytona Beach on...?"

  "Friday, October 9th," finished Ronnie.

  She smiled at him. "That's a nice long time to be away."

  He nodded. "Gives us plenty of time to figure out a good story about why Pauline and Bessie will be leaving Miami for somewhere else and not coming back here."

  "That so?"

  "Yep. We gotta find a way outta this act of charity."

  Alice nodded over her mug. "I read a novel a couple of years ago where a man murdered his wife by taking her out onto the ocean and then claimed she ran away."

  Ronnie felt himself grinning like he normally did. "That's a good story but a little too close to what really happened to Skipper Johnson."

  Frowning, Alice said, "You're right about that." She pressed her lips together. "How about the four of you go over to Havana for a day or two and come back and tell everyone they were kidnapped?"

  "White slavery?" asked Ronnie with a laugh.

  "Sure. If this was 1925, that would be exactly what would happen in a novel."

  Shaking his head, Ronnie drained his coffee cup. "But this is modern times, Alice. White slavery doesn't happen anymore."

  Alice stood and held out her hand for his coffee cup. As he handed it to her, she said, "And I don't think it ever happened back then. Or, if it did, it was a rare thing. It was just good advertising for the Kluxers."

  He laughed and said, "I think you're right about that. Any other ideas?" He was beginning to feel, more and more, that the future wasn't going to be nearly as grim as he'd been worrying it would be.

  "Well, the simplest thing would be for the four of you to come back to town and for you and Bessie to move into the house next door." She handed him his cup and took her seat.

  "That's what I've been thinking. They've been trying to sell that house for a couple of months." He gingerly sipped his coffee, trying not to burn his tongue. "I'm sure Tom could get it pretty cheap."

  "Pardon me for asking, but why don't you buy it?"

  He laughed to cover his embarrassment. "I can't afford to buy a sofa, much less a house. I got all of seventy bucks to my name."

  Alice nodded. "If you two hadn't married, what were you going to do?"

  "You mean, where was I gonna live?"

  "Yes, sir, that's exactly what I mean."

  "I was plannin' on movin' in here—" He suddenly stood. "Jesus Christ! I need to go move out of Mabel Baum's boarding house." He downed as much of his coffee as he could and then ran back into Tom's bedroom to quickly get dressed.

  . . .

  Tom Jarrell had spent half of the night outside on the back porch listening to the frogs that were singing out by the river a block away. He'd watched the full moon pass overhead and tried to sort out the events of the day.

  The night air had been thick but not too warm and he'd enjoyed the quiet time alone under the big live oak and its swaying Spanish moss, even if it had been hard to get the brutal images of seeing a murdered man out of his mind.

  Eventually, around 3 or so, he'd made his way back into the house. He drank half a glass of cold milk and then headed back to the bedroom. There he found Ronnie splayed out in every direction, taking up the whole of the double bed.

  After spending a minute or two contemplating the nature of such a big man taking up such a small bed, he'd finally poked Ronnie between the ribs a couple of times to wake him.

  "Huh?"

  "I'm coming to bed. Move over."

  Ronnie did just that. Tom slid into bed next to him and let the man pull him into a warm embrace.

  The next thing he knew, it was morning and Ronnie was in the bedroom, jumping around and getting dressed. Tom sat up in the bed and looked around for his pack of Pall Mall cigarettes. Finding it on the night stand next to the lamp, right where he'd left it the night before, he took one out of the pack and stuck it in his mouth. "Where are you going?"

  Ronnie turned, his eyes wide open. "Mabel Baum's. I never paid her for October and she's a real stickler. She might have thrown all my stuff out in the street by now." By that time, he was buttoning up his trousers.

  "Have any matches?" asked Tom.

  Ronnie reached into his left pocket, pulled out a box, and lit one. Walking it over to the bed, he reached down. Tom leaned in and, once it got going, took a deep morning drag, letting the thing wake him up.

  Ronnie blew out the match, dropped it in the bedside ashtray, and walked back over to the chair and picked up his shirt from the day before. He shook it out a couple of times and then pulled it on over his undershirt.

  "What time will Pauline and Bessie be here?" asked Tom.

  "Half past 10. Marveen will meet us at the station. She's calling a taxi so she can drive your car back here." Ronnie buttoned up his shirt and then quickly stuffed it in his trousers. He reached over and grabbed his diamond-pattern navy tie. As he put it on, he added, "I'll take a shower as soon as I get back."

  Tom looked at his watch. It was a quarter until 8. "I think we'll have plenty of time. The train doesn't leave until 10:50, right?"
/>
  Ronnie nodded.

  "Why the Champion and not the Streamliner or the Gulf Stream?"

  "I figured that would give us plenty of time. There are five trains that roar through here to Miami every morning and it seemed like the one right in the middle would be best in case there's trouble on the line. Besides, I like the name."

  Tom laughed. "Well, I still have to go to Commercial Bank to withdraw some money. I'll do that when you get back. Is Alice here?"

  "Yep."

  "I'll ask her to make you a fried-egg sandwich."

  Ronnie nodded. "Don't forget that I don't like as much pepper as you do."

  Tom smiled at his friend. "I won't forget."

  Pulling on his coat and then his hat, Ronnie leaned down and kissed Tom on the lips, his tie brushing Tom on the chin as he stood. With a big grin, he said, "I'll be back in a jiffy."

  . . .

  Tom, having showered, shaved, and dressed, sat down at the kitchen table. Before him was a plate consisting of two fried eggs, a thick piece of ham, hash-brown potatoes, and a buttered biscuit. He was spooning some of Alice's peach preserves on one half of his biscuit while she took a bite out of her breakfast which was a thin slice of ham between two halves of her own biscuit.

  "What are you going to do while we're gone?" asked Tom.

  "I'm taking a little trip myself."

  Looking up, Tom asked, "Where to?"

  "First, to DeLand. I'm going to catch the bus this afternoon. Betsy is expecting me."

  "Then where?"

  "Then to Tampa. I called the Central Hotel on Central Avenue last night and reserved us a room for Friday and Saturday nights. I'll sleep at her place this evening and then we'll drive over in the morning. We'll be back by Sunday, of course. Betsy can't take too much time off from work."

  "Isn't Central Avenue where all the jazz nightclubs are in Tampa?"

  Alice smiled. "Yes, sir, Mr. Tom." She walked over to the counter and poured herself another cup of coffee from the percolator. "It's been a year or so since we were there."

  Tom smiled. "Do you like going out to the nightclubs?"

  Alice grinned at him. "Now, neither of us drink more than a glass of beer or two but we both enjoy a good singer and there are plenty of those over on Central." She took a drink from her coffee mug and then asked, "What are you going to do about you and Mr. Ronnie being married to those two young ladies?"