Tampa Bay Noir

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Ask most people what the Tampa Bay area is famous for, and they might mention sparkling beaches and sleek urban centers and contented retirees strolling the golf courses year-round. But it’s always had a dark side. Just look at its signature event: a giant pirate parade.

Not only does Gasparilla honor the buccaneer traditions of theft, debauchery, and violence; its namesake pirate captain, José Gaspar, is a fake who probably never existed. And if there’s any variety of crime baked into Florida’s history, it’s fraud. From the indigenous residents who supposedly conned Spanish explorers seeking the Fountain of Youth through the rolling cycles of real estate scams that have shaped the Sunshine State for the last century or so, the place is a grifter’s native habitat.

For a large chunk of the twentieth century, Tampa had a reputation as a Mafia town. Santo Trafficante Jr. and his family ran assorted extralegal operations in west Florida and, for a while — until Fidel Castro threw them out — in Havana. Mob killings were standard newspaper fodder in the 1950s and ’60s, and oddly went unsolved even when they happened in public.

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