Sometimes being in the middle of nowhere has its advantages, and you can’t find many places as in middle of nowhere as Bowling Green, Florida, which isn’t even a real town and barely a spot on the state’s midsection. Tampa is an hour northwest and Sarasota an hour-plus to the southwest. Driving in the area is largely on unlighted dirt roads.
      Even more remote is the sprawling resort spread over 16,000 acres called Streamsong, whose isolation is part of its charm, a place unharried by traffic, fast food joints and auto parts stores. You’re more likely to spot a deer or alligator in the grass than a human being in a pick-up truck.
      Which makes Streamsong very, very quiet, aside from the sound of golf balls being whacked over three state-of-the-art courses, called Blue, Red and Black. According to Golf Digest,  “Blue has bigger greens. Red has more roll-offs. Blue has the deeper bunkers. Red has more intricate bunker edges. Blue has more gambling water carries off the tee.” (The Black course [left] was added after that article came out.)
        The whole enterprise is very much committed to harmonizing with its natural surroundings, and, since Central Florida is as flat as a tortilla, the courses ramble over scruff, tall grasses and sand dunes whose slopes make them some of the highest elevations in the state. The courses were designed by top architects Tom Doak, Gil Hanse and the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw and all three have been ranked among the 100 best in the world, according to both GOLF and Golfweek magazines. Both the resort’s Fall Classic (October 24-27) and Holiday Cup (December 11-13) are already sold out.
        The land, once far greener and home to mastodons, hornless rhinos, humpless camels and 30-foot crocodiles, was discovered to have massive phosphate rock deposits— its abundant fossils gave it the name Bone Valley—providing Central Florida with a highly profitable industry, with the Mosaic Company a major player (as well as one of Florida’s largest landowners). When the phosphate was depleted, Mosaic reclaimed the land with the help of biologists, botanists and environmental engineers.
        Me, I don’t play golf (I agree with Mark Twain, who said, “Golf is a good walk spoiled.”), but, as with any top resort, there were plenty of alternatives at Streamsong for me to indulge, including a modern spa, bass fishing and clay pigeon shooting at various skill levels. And if one truly craves quietude and isolation, where the whir of a golf cart is the loudest sound on campus, Streamsong is ideal.
      Simply taking an unspoiled walk around the grounds and courses is to put one into a kind of discoverer’s trance of a terrain that seems like a verdant, well mowed inhabitable planet. The sunrises and sunsets can be spectacular, with storks and other birds waking up, so that strolling in the morning, before the fierce Florida heat takes hold, is almost as refreshing as a dip in the infinity pool. The lakes on the property are quite beautifully laid out and landscaped, so if even if you don’t fish, it is well worth going out on a boat with a guide to meander in a mazy motion through the murky waters. 
      Alfonso Architects have given Streamsong a uniquely modern look, in contrast to so many southern golf resorts that look like Disneyworld hotels or ersatz Southern mansions. The façade is not particularly appealing, looking more like a corporate headquarters than an inviting resort, but the rear of the building has some Mondrian-like panels and an adjacent very fine, minimalist banquet hall (left) that overlooks the pool area. Inside, the lobby and hallways are exceptionally spacious with a ceiling hanging said to resemble a giant leaf. The landscaping could use some flower beds for color, as could the rooms.
      I found the desk staff very cordial, and they helped out at a moment’s notice with a snafu when I needed to get back to catch a plane at Tampa.
     There are 216 rooms, of very good size with California-style bathrooms, and a centered desk with two TV screens. Happily, the books on the shelf, which in most places are whatever James Patterson paperback the last guest left, are applaudable classics, from Moby-Dick to the poetry of Wallace Stevens.
      There are four outstanding and very different restaurants at Streamsong, along with taco and BBQ stands on the golf courses, all of which deserve a full-scale report, which I will provide in an upcoming article.
        As noted, the AcquaPietra Spa (below) is a remarkable and beautifully blue-lighted grotto-like space with nine treatment rooms.  I was scheduled for a massage, but upon arriving I found reason to decline, and it is a caveat worth relaying to those who, like myself, find the counter-productive machinations of Florida’s governor in the throes of the state’s pandemic to be troubling for the traveler. His raging against vaccination and mask mandates has prohibited establishments like Streamsong from even asking if its employees are vaccinated, although most of management wear pins signifying they were vaccinated. The rest of the staff, whom one assumes have chosen not to be vaccinated, wear masks.

           Ex-captain Giovanni Lucadamo lived in Spaccanapoli, whose name means “split Naples,” because it cuts like a black ribbon in a straight line through the most ancient part of the city center.  Though lined with churches and urban palaces, it had a long reputation for being dirty, cramped and dangerous. As well known for its inhabitants’ clotheslines as for its barbarous graffiti, the street was dark, its buildings facing each other across a narrow walkway. A degree of gentrification had set in by the late 1990s, drawing young people and artists first and the street was cleaned up in time for the 1994 G7 Summit.  And even though Giovanni Lucadamo’s liberal pension would have allowed him to live elsewhere, he had grown up in and been a resident of Spaccanapoli for decades and saw no reason to live elsewhere.
         His apartment on the Via Tribunali (left) was on the third floor of an ancient building, overlooking the narrow street and open to the sounds of the sing-song Neapolitan dialect, rich in open vowels and clipped word endings.  David rang the bell and was buzzed in, greeted by his old associate with a powerful embrace. The apartment was spacious, with a high wooden ceiling, its windows open to the street, its walls lined with paperback books.  On one shelf sat the traditional ceremonial hat of the Carabinieri, a bicorne called the lucerna (below).  The mustachioed Lucadamo was about David’s age, quite tall for a Neapolitan and noticeably gallant in his gestures.
         “And this must be Signorina Cavuto,” said Giovanni Lucadamo, putting his lips close to but not kissing her hand. “You are every bit as beautiful as David said you were.”
         Katie thanked him in Italian, with a Neapolitan accent, which delighted Lucadamo.  She asked if she might use her voice recorder.
         “You speak Neapolitan?” he asked. “That’s wonderful. I always told David he’s a disgrace for not speaking better Italian. Any kind of Italian.”
         David nodded that he was not proud of his lack of language skills.
         “Well, if you two are going to speak in dialect, Giovanni, we’re not going to accomplish anything.”
         “Okay, okay,” said Lucadamo, “we speak Americano, like you.”
         After a few more pleasantries and the requisite espresso, Lucadamo said, “So you come all the way to Naples to find Al Capone’s gold?”
         “Well, we came all the way to Naples to find out where it might be,” answered David.  “We have a strong suspicion that at least a third of the gold he stole ended up in Italy.”  He then went through what he and Katie had found out so far, and Lucadamo stayed quiet, soaking up every word.
         “Ah, David, you’ve done good homework” he said. “I understand why you think the gold might have come to Italy. But why Naples?”
         Kate said, “Well, the ships Rex and Conte di Savoia sailed out of Naples.”
         “Si, but Mussolini could have moved it anywhere once it got here.”
         “Well,” said David, “then, this would be a good starting point.”
         “We also got a lead on a mobster here in Naples who bragged he knew the gold was here,” said Katie.
         Lucadamo looked at David and asked, “Who?”
         “A low-level guy named Frank Iacobello, nicknamed `Frankie Switch,’ out of Philadelphia.”
         “Ah, I know that name.  He was extradited here many years ago.  He’s harmless.”
         “Maybe, but do you think he’d know anything worth knowing?”
         Lucadamo shook his head. “I doubt it, but if he did know where the gold is, he certainly has not spent any of it on himself.  He lives very modestly down by the marina.”
         “So, then, Signore Lucadamo, what do you know about the gold?” asked Katie, who then thought she should have addressed him as “Capitano.”
         “Please,” he said, “call me Giovanni, if you let me call you Caterina.  I can tell you this: Your research about Mussolini needing gold is correct, and since he was as big a gangster as Capone—what do you say? ‘birds of a feather?’—he would certainly accept Capone’s offer.   At the very least Mussolini would agree to safeguard the gold while using it to prop up the Fascist economy.  Remember, this was long before the war began and before Il Duce got in cahoots with Der Fuhrer.  Eh, David, you use that word ‘cahoots?’”
         “Haven’t heard that in a while,” said David. “We should bring it back.”
         “Allora, so let’s assume that Mussolini took Capone’s gold and held onto it.  You say that Capone wanted to embarrass the people who put him in jail, but he did not do it while he was in jail?”
         “That’s a big part of the mystery. We think he wanted to wait till he was out of prison to do that, at a time when he could use the money from the reward. The gold was only part of his ploy.”
         “But he would have been released from prison when?”
         “Nineteen-forty.  But because of his illness he got out a year early.”
         “The year after the war began,” noted Lucadamo. “And then Capone could no longer get hold of the gold.  Even if he just told the American officials where it was, it would be difficult to prove it.”
         “Close to impossible, if Mussolini had hold of it,” said Katie.
         “Si, so Capone had to wait and hope that the war would end and then he could get his gold back from Mussolini—that is, assuming Mussolini won the war.”
         “So you’re saying you believe Mussolini did have Capone’s gold at one time?” asked David.
         “Allora, there is a little more to the story. And you Americani are part of it.”  Lucadamo got up and went to a bookshelf to grab an old folder.