World Gone By: A Novel Read Free

florist, but most of her true income derived from robbery and the occasional murder, both crimes usually committed on behalf of her boss, Lucius Brozjuola, whom everyone called King Lucius. King Lucius paid the necessary tribute to the Bartolo Family but otherwise ran an independent organization with the illicit profits laundered through the phosphate empire he’d amassed along the Peace River and the wholesale flower business he owned in the Port of Tampa. It had been King Lucius who had trained Theresa as a florist in the first place and King Lucius who financed the flower shop she opened downtown on Lafayette. King Lucius ran a crew of thieves, fences, arsonists, and contract killers who operated under only one concrete rule—no jobs performed in their home state. So Theresa, over the years, had killed five men and one woman, all strangers—two in Kansas City, one in Des Moines, another in Dearborn, one in Philadelphia, and finally, the woman in Washington, D.C., Theresa turning to shoot her in the back of the head two steps after passing her on a soft spring evening in Georgetown, on a tree-lined street that ticked with the remnants of an afternoon shower.
    In one way or another, all those killings haunted her. The man in Des Moines had held a picture of his family in front of his face, forcing her to fire the bullet through it to reach his brain; the one in Philly kept saying “Just tell me why”; the woman in Georgetown had let out a plaintive sigh before she’d crumpled to the wet pavement.
    The one killing that didn’t haunt Theresa was Tony’s. She only wished she’d done it sooner, before Peter was old enough to miss hisparents. He’d been staying with her sister in Lutz that fateful weekend because Theresa had wanted him out of the line of fire when she kicked Tony out of his own house. His drinking, whoring, and black moods had been spiraling out of control since the summer, and Theresa had finally reached her limit. Tony hadn’t reached his, though, which is how he came to hit her with a wine bottle and how she came to crush his fucking head with a mallet.
    At the Tampa City jail, she called King Lucius. Half an hour later, Jimmy Arnold, house counsel to King Lucius and his various corporations, was sitting across from her. Theresa was worried about two things—going to the chair and finding herself unable to provide for Peter. Her control over whether she was electrocuted up in the state penitentiary at Raiford ended with her husband’s life. As for securing Peter’s future comfort, however, she’d been waiting on payment for a job from King Lucius himself, a job that had harvested so bountiful a profit margin that her 5 percent stake would ensure that the stomachs of Peter, Peter’s children, and Peter’s grandchildren never rumbled for anything but a second helping.
    Jimmy Arnold assured her that on both counts the outlook was rosier than she presumed. In the first matter, he’d already informed the Hillsborough County district attorney Archibald Boll of her history of being beaten by her deceased husband, beatings that had been documented on the two occasions Tony’s fury had put her in the hospital. The DA, a very smart and politically conscious man, would not send an abused wife to the death chamber when there were plenty of German and Jap spies Old Sparky would be glad to host first. As for the monies due her from the Savannah job, Jimmy Arnold was authorized to say that King Lucius was still in the process of finding a buyer for the merchandise in question but as soon as he’d done so and the monies had been received, she would be the second participant to get her cut, after King Lucius himself, of course.
    Three days after the arrest, Archibald Boll dropped by to offer her a deal. A handsome middle-aged man in a coarse linen suit and matching half-fedora, Archibald Boll’s eyes carried the playful light of a grade school mischief maker. Theresa concluded fairly quickly that he was