Double Plays and Double Crosses, Paperback/Croix Ben Lazzara

When Casey Cassidy, the hard-drinking manager of the Tampa Smokers baseball team goes missing days before the final game of the championship series with the Havana Cubans, his girlfriend, Veronica Baird, is frantic. The black sheep beauty of her blueblood family, she is certain that he is in serious danger of bodily harm. But no one believes her. The police think Casey is just out on a binge, so she hires Ybor City private eye, Benjamin Blanc, and his sidekick Chino, to find her sweetheart. Blanc has his doubts about her story too, but he takes the case anyway. Then Blanc and Chino start poking around asking questions but not getting any good answers. Things rapidly heat up, sending Blanc on a perilous and deadly trail as he tries to unravel the mystery and solve the case. Along the way he crosses paths with an assortment of off -beat characters; including baseball aficionados, treacherous Mafi a dons, crooked cops, menacing Latin thugs in linen suits, die-hard gamblers, flamenco dancers, charter boat captains, bush pilots, Cuban revolutionaries, ex-spies, Papa Hemingway, and a number of intriguing but dangerous women. Battling against the deadline of the start of the championship game, the dangers deepen. Blanc finds himself dodging bullets. He calls on all his powers to try to find Casey, save his own skin, and the lives of Veronica and Chino.