A Mighty Fortress Read online

  Hector’s eyes rounded, and his lips puckered to attention. “Milo, this is some good stuff.”

  “If I may say so myself.”

  “You may, sir. You may.”

  We downed our samples, and Hector set his cup down. “I’m telling you, man, you need to expand your operations. Entering beer shows is one thing, but this stuff could give Cigar City a run for its money.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not a businessman. Just a home brewer.” And I had no interest in giving Cigar City, Tampa’s premier craft brewery, a run for its money… although it certainly had taken a significant amount of mine since I’d started calling Tampa home. Still, I considered it money well spent. “So how’s your work going?”

  He shrugged. “Oh, the joys of being a cable guy in Tampa. If it’s not an old lady who doesn’t know how to plug in her cable box, it’s an irate asshole blaming me when lightning strikes his house because I didn’t hold a gun to his head and make him buy a damn surge protector.” Hector grew up in Tampa. His grandparents had migrated here from Cuba when Castro took over, which made him a second-generation native Tampanian. A rare breed, but someone who just might recognize the name Chad Anthony Scalzo.

  I showed him the subpoena. “This name mean anything to you?” I pointed to the name in question. “Chad Scalzo?”

  He thought for a moment. “He any relation to Alfonse Scalzo?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Well, bud, you better find out.”

  “Why?”

  “You don’t know about Alfonse Scalzo? The Scalzo family? Only the most notorious Tampa crime family after Santos Trafficante?”

  I shook my head. “I thought the mob had been out of Tampa for decades.”

  “Maybe the mob, but not the mobsters.”

  I sealed the lid to the carboy. We’d get another sample tonight.

  Hector wasn’t ready to change the topic of conversation. “Tell you what, Milo. You ever listen to anything I tell you, you listen to this. If this guy has anything to do with Alfonse Scalzo’s family, do yourself a favor and stay the hell away.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  Hector nodded and kept talking. I knew he was summarizing the long list of misdeeds committed by the Scalzo family, and the crimes they’d gotten away with, but I wasn’t paying him much attention. I was already thinking ahead to how I’d get started on this job, wondering if I might finish before Val got off work.

  Then the tremor hit. It took only the slightest rattle outside to get it going. It might have been a muffler backfiring a block away, or kids lighting firecrackers in the neighborhood. Whatever it was, it sounded enough like an explosion to set me off—and there I was, back in Fallujah. My vision blurred, and bright lights started flashing randomly in my field of vision. The rise in blood pressure and drop in blood sugar seemed to go in tandem. The shortness of breath followed.

  I closed my eyes and took deep breaths, just as Dr. J had taught me to do, and next thing I knew, it was gone and my breathing eased back to normal.

  I opened my eyes and realized that Hector was still lecturing me.

  “I’m serious, Milo. Are you listening to me?” His voice had turned stern. “I’d stay the hell away from this Scalzo guy.”

  I nodded a warm smile to my good friend, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Minarets of Tampa Bay

  After Hector went home, I warmed up a bowl of leftover ropa vieja and poured half a pint of a chilled German hefeweizen. The sweetness of the wheat paired perfectly with the cumin and capers in the shredded beef. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a beer with breakfast, but the combination reminded me of my favorite Johnny Cash song, so I had an obligatory second one for dessert.

  I finished breakfast at the computer in my office, otherwise known as the spare bedroom. My iMac seemed happy to see me, and purred like a lonely kitten. I considered working on the book I was always telling myself and Dr. J I was going to write, but always found a reason not to. At least I had a decent reason today.

  So I got busy. I figured tracking down Scalzo would be routine. I started, as I did most jobs, by running a skip trace. My CC license gives me access to a few different databases. I usually start with Accurint, out of habit as much as any other reason. I entered the information I had and hit return. While I waited for the search results, I pulled out my phone and called my old pal Sal Barton.

  “Porter, shouldn’t you be at church today?”

  “Very funny, Sal. Mattie Wilcox just stopped by.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Said you had some kind of conflict of interest and couldn’t serve this Scalzo guy.”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Really, Sal? A conflict of interest?”

  “Let’s just say I’m not a disinterested person.”

  I gazed ahead as dozens of names and addresses and dates and numbers started populating the screen. “You mind telling me why not?”

  “None of your business now, is it?”

  I sighed.

  “Be careful, Porter. This Scalzo guy, I hope Mattie warned you about him.”

  I stared at the search results now displayed on my computer screen. Time to see what I could find out myself. “Yeah, thanks, Sal. Thanks for nothing.”

  We hung up, and I went back to work. The skip trace confirmed that the address Mattie put on the subpoena was in fact the most recent address of record for Chad Anthony Scalzo. It looked like Scalzo owned one of the three penthouse units at SkyGate. Based on his DOB, he was a few months older than me, both of us being born in 1978. He had no criminal or military record, and no consumer debts other than an American Express account he paid in full every month. He was named in about a dozen civil lawsuits starting around 2009, but had no judgments or liens. Most of the lawsuits involved a bank of some sort, which told me he’d probably caught the real estate bug when the bubble was booming. All pretty innocuous stuff. Ideally, I would catch him sleeping in on a Sunday morning, and this would be an easy six grand.

  I didn’t want to disrespect or discount Hector’s warning, though, so I returned to Google. I had the bones on Scalzo; now I needed some flesh, and I needed to satisfy my interest about the Alfonse Scalzo connection. So I searched that name first. I found news reports about an Alfonse Sr. and an Art Scalzo, his son. The former was an associate of Santos Trafficante, Jr., the reputed leader of the Tampa mafia through the late seventies. Trafficante was a name I’d recognized earlier when Hector mentioned him. He’d evaded arrest for decades. Alfonse Sr. had not been so lucky. He’d spent most of the eighties in prison, where he died. Art Scalzo, it seemed, didn’t have the stomach for the family business, and moved to Jersey after the turn of the century.

  I wasn’t finding anything on Art’s progeny. But then a search for “Alfonse Art Chad Scalzo” returned a St. Pete Times article from 2006: “Mafioso Grandchild Doing Good Business in Bay Area.” It was about a Chad Scalzo who was thriving in local real estate investment. The grandson of the legendary Alfonse Scalzo, he didn’t shy away from his family’s past, but had vowed he’d learned from his grandfather’s mistakes. He purportedly had nothing to do with the family business and was committed to being a legitimate businessman. He started from scratch with a little money he had saved up while majoring in finance at the University of Tampa. It was an impressive story, the kind that made you feel there might be some hope for humanity. Until you turned the page and read the next article.

  My research put me somewhat at ease about Hector’s warning. Scalzo’s grandfather was long buried, connections with the family business appeared to have been retired with the father, and Chad seemed on the straight and narrow. I pulled a copy of Florida Statutes Section 48.031, just in case I needed to educate SkyGate security about my rights as a licensed process server. I finished my breakfast, rinsed my bowl and beer mug, and set out to earn my pay.

  SkyGate was the first high-rise condo built downt
own during the housing boom of 2005. By the time I arrived in Tampa, most developers were having a hard time selling units in downtown and nearby Channelside, so they’d turned to renting their vacancies as apartments. SkyGate was finished early enough that it didn’t suffer much from the market crash. It’s one of the first buildings you see upon entering downtown from I-275. There’s nothing spectacular about it: about forty stories of green mirrored glass, industrial gray steel and concrete, and narrow spires protruding like horns from the roof. The building overlooks Curtis Hixon Park across Ashley Street, and beyond that you can see the Hillsborough River running alongside the University of Tampa campus.

  The university was housed in a converted hotel built by Henry Plant, an early twentieth-century developer whose name appears all over Tampa. The older buildings on campus were of Moorish architecture, and brightened the otherwise dull scenery around UT. I hoped Scalzo’s penthouse would offer a good view of the dazzling silver minarets lining the UT campus that always reminded me of the mosques I’d seen throughout Iraq.

  Downtown was pretty dead at 10:00 o’clock on a Sunday morning. Downtown Tampa is never really bustling unless there’s something going on at the convention center, but Sunday mornings are especially quiet. I parked in one of a dozen empty spaces along Polk Street on the northern side of SkyGate. I crossed the street and passed Taps, an upscale bar that served a good selection of brews to a crowd that probably didn’t appreciate what they were drinking but had the money to pay ten bucks a goblet. The bar was closed, but I caught a whiff of fried food carried in the wind along the empty street, and again thought of the Man in Black. There is indeed something sad and lonely about Sunday mornings.

  I found the lobby entrance on the Ashley side, and held the door open for a young lady dressed for a run in spandex shorts and a lycra sports bra. But she hadn’t been out on a run yet. She was walking a toy dog and carrying a rumpled plastic bag, presumably for little Phydeaux’s droppings.

  The lobby was sleek and clean. The mounted LED monitors played CNN. I’ve always wondered who makes the decision on whether to play CNN or Fox News in such public places, and what goes into that thought process. I would have taken SkyGate residents to be more of a Fox News crowd, but what did I know?

  Regardless, the kid at the information desk was clearly more in the MSNBC mold: wire-rimmed glasses with dark bangs that covered most of his forehead. The hair was cut to a short fade on the sides, and a nascent goatee blemished his pale chin. I figured he was an aspiring hipster who supported every NPR fundraising drive; probably majoring in Art History at UT and dreaming about being interviewed by Terry Gross one day (hell, I wanted to be interviewed by Terry Gross one day). He looked me up and down and asked how he could help me, all the while seemingly scowling on the inside.

  I showed him my license to serve process in Hillsborough County. It used to be that only county sheriff deputies could serve papers in civil and criminal actions. But as society grew more litigious, the sheriffs couldn’t keep up with the volume of papers, so the legislature allowed the sheriff of each county to approve and appoint special process servers. That’s where I come in and do what I do six days a week or, on this occasion, seven. “I’m here to serve one of your residents. You know the drill?”

  He frowned at the license. “You a biker or something?”

  “If it’s any consolation, I drive a station wagon.”

  He smirked. “You live in it?”

  I took a deep breath. I reviewed the cues Dr. J always told me to use to control my anger and anxiety. I took another breath, counted to ten in four seconds, and asked him his name.

  “Stewart.”

  “Last name?”

  He rolled his eyes. “What’s it matter?”

  “It matters, Stewart, because I’m not getting your cooperation. I’m authorized by the sheriff of Hillsborough County to effect service of process within this jurisdiction. It means that as far as you’re concerned, I’m an officer of the law for purposes of serving this document in my hand. You don’t want to interfere with the business of the sheriff, do you?”

  He shrugged. “Who’s getting foreclosed now?”

  I showed him the subpoena and pointed to Scalzo’s name. “You know him?”

  He read it and buried his face in his hands. “Fuck me. Anyone but him.”

  I didn’t like the reaction Scalzo’s name continued to garner. “Is he home?”

  “I’ll call and check.” Stewart reached for the phone, but I grabbed his arm. I guess I gripped too hard, because he winced and cried, “Ouch!”

  “Don’t call him, Stewart.”

  “Okay! Just tell me what you want me to do.”

  I pulled out my handy statute and handed it to him. “I want you to read this.”

  “The whole thing?”

  I shook my head. “Just subsection 7.” He looked at it blankly. “Read it aloud, Stewart, so I know you read it.”

  “A gated residential community—”

  “You’re mumbling, Stewart.”

  He raised his voice: “A gated residential community, including a condominium association or a cooperative, shall grant unannounced entry into the community, including its common areas and common elements, to a person who is attempting to serve process on a defendant or witness who resides within or is known to be within the community.”

  “Thank you, Stewart. There’s a word in there I would have emphasized if I were reading. It was ‘unannounced.’ You know what that means?”

  The question seemed below him.

  “It means you don’t call Mr. Scalzo, Stewart. You don’t call him now, and you don’t call him after you put me on that elevator up to the penthouse.”

  He chuckled. “No way in hell I’m putting you on that elevator.”

  I turned his gaze back to the statute. “Read it again, Stewart. What’s it say I’m to get access to?”

  He nodded without reading again. “I know, common areas. That’s this.” He pointed to the lobby around us. “These are the common areas.”

  “As is the elevator.”

  “But not the area outside his door.”

  “Yes it is,” I said. “It’s common to the people who live on that floor.” He gave it some thought but didn’t come up with a quick reply. “Trust me, Stewart. It’s a common area.”

  “Why should I trust you? You write the statute?”

  I felt like I was talking to a future lawyer. “So who owns it, Stewart? Who owns that hallway? Are you allowed to go up there whenever you want?”

  Stewart sighed. “I don’t see where the statute says I have to answer your questions.”

  “Okay, Stewart, then final question: are you ready to grant me access to that elevator?”

  “Be my guest. But it won’t go to his floor. It’s a penthouse.”

  “Then I guess you’re gonna have to put your key in the elevator and give me access to that penthouse.”

  He read the statute again. “It says I have to give you access to the community, including its common areas and common elements.”

  “Is that your final answer, Stewart? Because if it is, I can assure you the attorney who signed this subpoena will have you in front of the chief judge for Hillsborough County first thing tomorrow morning, quicker than you can say ‘I’m a wannabe hipster.’ Now listen, kid, I know you think you got it all figured out with the two years of college under your belt and the class you took on epistemology. I hate to break your ego, but you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Judges see things in black and white. They don’t like semantics unless you have a license to practice law and fund their campaigns, which I assume does not apply to you.”

  He looked like he wanted to cry. “Can I at least call my manager?”

  “No calls, Stewart. Time is of the essence here.” I thought of the howling bowels of Mattie Wilcox.

  “I’m quitting this job. As soon as I see you leave in an ambulance, I quit.”

  Urban jazz played softly in t
he elevator. The ride up gave me enough time to reflect on the propriety of the exchange I’d just shared with Mr. Stewart. I didn’t recall anything that would invalidate service, assuming I was about to tag Mr. Scalzo.

  The elevator door opened to a hallway of polished stone walls and marble flooring and three iron doors. I spotted the number for Scalzo’s unit, the master suite facing the river and UT. I leaned against the door and listened. I was sure I heard music inside. I knocked gently. There was no way that knock would be heard over the music. So I knocked louder, but figured a battering ram couldn’t announce my presence over the music inside.

  So I grabbed the doorknob. Here went nothing: I turned the knob, and the door opened.

  The music instantly boomed louder and fuller. Treble and vocals now complemented the bass I’d heard from the hallway. The music was some kind of hip-hop electronica, full of anticipation and building, a perfect soundtrack to how I felt entering the living area.

  I called out and asked if anyone was home. No one answered. Not that anyone there would have heard me, or I them.

  In the living room, a long leather charcoal couch with squared edges faced a sixty-inch LCD TV on a stand. The TV was surrounded by a wall of shelves housing receivers and what looked like computer hard drives. On the shelves, I located the machine that most resembled a receiver: a high-end Dennon box with all the bells and whistles. I hit the power button, and the music died. My ears rang as silence settled across the room.

  I called out another hello, but still no one answered. No signs of pets or photographs or human life for that matter. In the far corner there was a sleek steel desk housing two hard-drive towers and three monitors. Two video cameras on pods rounded out the room, and made me wonder if Scalzo was an aspiring filmmaker or day trader or both. As my ears recovered from the techno, I thought I heard a woman’s voice. I followed it.

  This took me across the room to another living area that was empty. To the left it led to a hallway opening to the kitchen, and on the right there was a sliding glass door that opened to a balcony overlooking the park and river. The voice was clearer now. Definitely female.