Gumbo Limbo

by Tom Corcoran

  Teresa Barga gave me a lift back to the Angela Street station so I could retrieve my bicycle. “You know that reporter?” she said.

  “Friend of a friend.”

  “Why did I think she looked more than that?”

  “More than friendly?”

  “ … or one of you wants it that way.”

  Ever since I’d met Marnie, I had admired her, thought of her as intelligent, good-natured, attractive, even sexy—especially in an eye-patch bikini one afternoon when Sam had given the three of us a holiday on his flats skiff in the Snipe Keys. When Sam hooked up with her, I was glad that he had finally connected with a worthwhile woman. I had never considered making a run on her, never taken anything she’d said or done as a come-on. I decided on the spot to blow off Teresa’s speculation.

  “She’s in love with my friend, and he’s wild about her,” I said. “I wouldn’t even consider fouling the status quo.” Then I wondered if it was the other way around, if Teresa had found Marnie to her liking.

  “How long have you been doing crime-scene work? There are better places to point a camera.”

  I wasn’t sure how much of my answer might be repeated inside the police station. “Eight years,” I said. “But not much for the sheriff’s department, the last few months. The money helps make sure I don’t get some tight-ass, pen-pushing bank dork screwing with my mortgage. I get a few ad-agency shoots, informal portraits of authors and recording stars. I’m in and out of town a lot, working for magazines. Eight weeks ago I did brochure shots for a resort in Jamaica. Last month I did seven days in St. Maarten. A travel article.”

  “So you’re not a closet detective. Trying to rub up against the action.”

  “Weird figure of speech.”

  “Damn near Freudian.” She laughed at herself, then turned her head.

  She’d wound me in a circle. “Yes, to the Freudian,” I said. “And, yes, you’re correct. I’m not a wanna-be detective. I get by, doing what I’m doing. I got eats and the mortgage covered through Thanksgiving.”

  Daylight reflected blue and cool in the lowest level of the parking garage next to the police station. Silty dust devils swirled around concrete columns. Two street kids of the Deadhead persuasion brazenly shared a joint eighty feet from the police station doorway. Teresa circled, started up the ramp to the second level, then angled the Taurus between a pair of newer, and uglier, Chevy Caprice detective units. She let the engine run, trying to coax the air conditioner.

  She said, “You seeing anybody?”

  “I see a lot of my Cuban neighbors. I’m not dating anyone, if that’s what you meant.”

  “Of course that’s what I meant.” She gritted her teeth as if regretting her fast come-back. Her voice softened: “I’m new at this, I don’t know. Do we work together often?”

  “Depends on which detective gets the case. If something’s newsworthy, I usually get called. Other stuff, the staff guy goes on scene.

  “In case it doesn’t happen that way, let’s don’t let this be the last time we get together.” She yanked the ignition key and popped open her door. Fumes from a passing city bus wafted into the car.

  “Fine with me,” I said.

  She looked ahead, smiled a moment, and got out.

  A mountain bike is not such an odd choice on an island where the highest elevation is seventeen feet. It’s the best way to deal with chuckholes and brick streets, the washboard pavement and patches atop sewer excavations. I rode to the pharmacy at the south end of Simonton where Duffy Lee Hall, my dependable darkroom man, housed his processing gear. Hall wasn’t around.

  I never trusted anyone else with my film. The city wouldn’t need photos of John Doe on his concrete deathbed for at least twenty-four hours. I could catch Duffy Lee later in the day.

  I rode against the wind to Dredgers Lane and chained my bike behind the house. After a minute’s play through the fence with the neighbor’s spaniel, I took another minute to survey my rebellious foliage. From time to time the yard had provided wonderful solitude. I had inherited a few shrubs and trees when I bought the place. I had planted plenty more, yanked some, granted clemency during manic redesigns, and let hard-to-get areas go berserk rather than trim with no plan. Lately the place had run amok.

  I returned the tools to their storage crate. Yard work would have to wait.

  Again, no messages. I could wait all afternoon for the phone to ring, Cahill with a story about dozing in a rental car and sleeping off the morning’s beers. Or else I’d hear from him in three days, a contrite call from Illinois, back in his North Shore home. I knew Zack well. This time I had no feel for the situation. If this were like the days when he was single, I’d get a call for a last-minute ride. I’d have eight minutes to pick him up somewhere and drop him at the airport. I’d get a hurried, nearplausible explanation for his lunatic behavior, his whereabouts for the limited time he’d been in town. We’d laugh it off, joke about it for a few years, until other episodes took its place.

  As far as I knew, those days were long gone.

  Our twenty-year friendship had begun with our assignment to the same Navy Anti-Submarine Warfare class in Key West. I was Ensign Rutledge, the rookie officer who’d arrived nearly broke, scrounged per diem for a bicycle, rented a cheap apartment, and lived a military approximation of island life. Lieutenant Junior Grade Zachary Cahill had zoomed into town towing a ski boat behind a Corvette roadster, had billeted himself in Bachelor Officers Quarters, had eaten his evening meals at Logun’s Lobster House.

  Our school had lasted only eight weeks. Somehow it had fostered a great friendship. After my three-year hitch I returned to Key West to live in the slow lane. Zack owed the Navy five years because of his ROTC scholarship. He marked time, passed up a command assignment, got out, went straight to business graduate school, married the daughter of a former CIA agent, and took a position with a Chicago bank. He and his wife had moved to Winnetka to raise their family, and by the mid-eighties Zack was earning salaries well into six figures. By that time my primary measures of success were having an erratic income flow, a mortgage, a fantastic music collection, a year-round tan, and good health. All along we’d stayed in touch. The friendship grew. We had visited each other, traded tips on books and places to travel. We had long ago reached the point of communicating in partial sentences, sensing each other’s thoughts, expressing concerns and moods with single words.

  It made no sense to wait for a call. I gambled on American, found their local listing, and punched in the number. Posing as Zachary Cahill, I was able to confirm my ticket for the four-thirty flight and to change my seat assignment to an aisle seat. “No, Miami to Chicago is okay,” I said. “My agent got that part right. Thanks.”

  I hung up. The phone rang. Finally.

  “Rutledge.”

  “Jesse Spence here, Alex. Got a sec?”

  The wrong call. The bartender from Mangoes. “Is this about that slick who was in the restaurant?”

  “That guy who looked like a possum? No. This is about the fuckheads who trashed my apartment. I need a favor. Pictures for the insurance claim, done right. Cash under the table.”

  I explained that my day had been hectic and promised to stay that way. Spence told me that he’d come home from work to find his place vandalized. He sounded distraught.

  “You call in a report?”

  “Given my history, Alex, I take Bob Dylan’s advice. ‘The cops, they don’t need you and, man, they expect the same.’ Let’s just say ‘911’ is not in my vocabulary.”

  Fifteen years ago Spence had served a hand-slap federal sentence. He’d been a money courier for a short-lived smuggling operation, marijuana by sailboat from Colombia to the U.S. East Coast. Somehow the prosecutors had excluded him from the conspiracy indictment. He’d managed to avoid testifying against his employers, one of whom had been a fraternity brother at the University of Georgia. These days, Jesse Spence could pass for a mid-level executive. To my knowledge, he had remained low-key and leg
it since his problems.

  “It’s 820 Seminary, near Grinnell,” he said.

  I’d started the morning with nothing on the calendar. My day had filled up like a shoal draft dinghy on a rainy night.

  “I’ll get there when I can. It might be a while.”

  3

  A tropical island is a small world unto itself. Coincidence rules.

  I mulled the chance of a link: the Front Street murder and Cahill’s failure to appear at Mangoes. Too far-fetched, even in a small world.

  Second question. Did Zack’s vanishing act warrant my sounding a general alarm or minding my own business? I wasn’t inclined toward either choice. Yelling “wolf” with no evidence wouldn’t cut it. Burying my head in the sand, ostrich-style, could get me whacked in the rear end by some other surprise. Whatever I did, I wanted to be a respectful visitor to this coincidental wilderness: I wanted to leave no evidence of my having been around.

  I hate scraping embarrassment off my shoes.

  I pissed away forry-five minutes pacing the cottage, restacking piles of “to do” and “to file” crap on my desk and on the corners of tables. I threw away a sugar bowl that had drawn ants. I refilled a salt shaker, adding a teaspoon of rice to absorb humidity. I chewed my lower lip to shreds. I conjured up one less-thanbrilliant idea, but watching passengers board the four-thirty flight promised no better than break-even results. If Zack showed, no matter what I learned about his seven-hour absence, I’d be pissed off. On the other hand, if he didn’t show up, I’d still be pissed.

  I found it difficult to believe that he’d been kidnapped out of Sloppy Joe’s.

  My phone remained quiet.

  I called Claire Cahill in Winnetka, reminding myself not to reveal concern or stick my nose too far astray. I had always enjoyed talking with Claire. Our relationship had been solid and trusting since the first time Zack brought her to Key West. It also had been flirtatious and mischievous. Over the years, Claire had taken as her duty the analysis and review of the women I’d dated and lived with. Her accuracy as to which would turn out heartbreakers or losers or keepers had helped me survive. Her intelligence fed her refreshing outlook.

  “Your voice in the afternoon, Alex.” She sounded upbeat. “It’s odd to hear it. Usually you call evenings.”

  “I still have a crush on you.”

  She chuckled. “You always say that, but you never do anything about it.”

  “It’s that nagging old rule, ‘Do a married man a favor. Don’t screw his wife for him.’”

  A tapping at the screen door. My buena amiga, dear neighbor, Carmen Sosa, waved as she entered. She wore navy-blue shorts and a white blouse, an approximation of her U.S. Postal Service uniform. The exaggerated, frozen disgust on her face told me that she’d overheard my recitation of the nagging old rule. Carmen curtsied and headed for the kitchen.

  Claire said, “I wish Zack didn’t travel so much. I caught myself yesterday checking out the paper boy.”

  “And he’s traveling now …?” Or is he somewhere on the island, sleeping off a pre-noon binge?

  “Yes, and I usually forgive St. Louis and Charlotte. But I never forgive San Francisco or New Orleans. Right now he’s in New Orleans. I’m jealous.”

  Confirmed: a nose in somebody’s business. Roll with it. “Has he been there long enough to make a pig of himself?”

  “Four days. Two usually does it.” Mock disgust in her tone. “He’s due back tonight, if he can still manage to walk. You know his ritual tour of restaurants. He feels it’s cultural duty to sample every establishment with four stars. The last time I visited the doctor, I picked up literature. How to Combat Gout.”

  I wanted to stall, to think this one through. Zack hadn’t told Claire that he’d come to Key West. I had to keep my trap shut. Carmen made a display of sniffing the cold coffee dregs. I forced my mind back to Claire: “The kids?”

  “The twins are being athletic. Jack’s at hockey camp in Champaign and Matt’s at basketball camp in Wisconsin. This is the first summer they’ve been apart. Kathryn’s spending the summer at Zack’s mother’s, helping her volunteer at a retirement home.”

  “So you’re all alone in the mansion.”

  “Alex, it’s the drudgery of suburbia. Tennis and wallpapering, gardening, lunches with the ladies, each of us trying to eat healthier than the other. I, for one, sneak home and pillage the fridge. I should have gone with Zack.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “My friend Pamela opened a French fabric store the day before yesterday. I helped decorate the shop. I organized the grand opening, hired the caterer, all that.”

  “Any chance he was coming home via Key West?”

  Shit. Why the hell did I say that?

  “He wouldn’t visit without me. I wish I were there right now. I saw on TV it’s hotter in downtown Chicago than it is in South Florida.” She paused. I could almost see her in thought. “Why did you ask?”

  “No reason. Just his typical cryptic crap on my answering machine. Could you get him to call me when he gets home?”

  “Alex, is something wrong?”

  Shit, again. She’d heard it in my voice. “No, but something’s different. I might actually have money to invest, the next month or two. I need advice.”

  “He always tells me: oil, guns, and butter.”

  “You misunderstood,” I said. “That’s party supplies.”

  “You’ll never change, Alex. I hope we see you soon. But, look. We know our boy can get wacky behind a couple of beers in the tropics. If Zachary shows his face down there, promise me you’ll be his guardian angel.”

  “Only as a favor to you, my love. I hate baby-sitting, but I promise.”

  “I’ll take that. You’re always good about promises.”

  I was suddenly an accomplice to something. I had just bullshitted a friend for no explainable reason. Zack had pulled a stunt and I didn’t know why. But my indignation, my moralistic high ground, had skidded into the sewer.

  Carmen had made fresh coffee. She poured herself a cup and waited until I hung up. “So, whose wife you going to boink now?”

  “I don’t boink wives. Where the hell did you get that word?”

  “The morning ‘raunch jocks’ out of Tampa.”

  “Surely you can find better purveyors of vocabulary and entertainment.”

  “They play that station at work. We ladies figure if we complain long enough, we might get a sex-harassment case out of it. If all the guys can go postal, at least we should get to sue.”

  “You work in a hazardous environment, in the first place …”

  “You ever wonder why so may post office employees go batshit?”

  “You hear whacko stories, but no theories, no reasons.”

  Carmen took small sips, as if drinking a high-test Cuban buche. “We all know why it happens. But nobody’s got the guts to say it in public. Too afraid of the PCP.”

  I waited.

  “Political Correctness Police. It’s like this. Three people, two guys and me, we take the post office job-app test. Each of us gets a ninety-five. We all have equal chances of being hired. But John Smith was in the military. He gets an extra five points. He gets hired before me. Bill Jones is a Vietnam combat veteran with a Purple Heart. He gets ten bonus points, and he gets my job. Do that enough times, Alex, the post offices across the country are staffed by people trained in hand-to-hand combat, small arms, semiautomatic, and automatic weapons. They got a problem, they solve it the way the government trained them, thirty years ago.”

  “Pretty tough line of thought. I can see why the PCP would stay alert.”

  “So whose wife you going to … ?”

  “Please, dear raunch radio fan. Give your old lover a break.” I explained my day, so far.

  Carmen had known Zack and Claire for years. She chilled and expressed sympathy. She then lodged tongue in cheek: “When are you going to give me another chance?”

  “Honey, I saw that man leave the other morning.
Is he the one from the bug-spray company or the pool-cleaning service? I’m just trying to find a break in the traffic.”

  Carmen laughed at the words, then at herself. She rinsed her coffee cup and turned off the machine before hurrying out the door. “Love to stay, but I gotta go to Eckerd’s. Last-minute school supplies. We’re counting down. The first day of fourth grade. Maria’s driving me postal.”

  For years, the Key West International Airport’s inbound gate, fabricated of plywood and a twenty-foot strip of rubber matting, barely kept arrivals separate from outbound security. The outbound depended on ratty velvet cordons to herd passengers through the X ray and magnetic arch checkpoint. Recently renovated, the place is still your basic two-holer: inbound gate, outbound gate, Welcome to Paradise, watch out for pickpockets. We suffer progress.

  I arrived on my Kawasaki at three-thirty and inquired about a standby seat. Georgette, the counter agent, told me I’d be third on the list. But she also said I shouldn’t get my hopes up. She hadn’t seen five vacant slots for this flight in over a month.

  The waiting room began to fill. Two men and a woman in business attire sipped from plastic cups near the lounge entrance. In the glassed-in gift shop a man with unkempt hair wore a coat and tie. He also wore penny loafers and chewed his gum rapidly enough to generate electricity. A bone-thin Whitney Houston look-alike in a khaki-colored shirt and tight Levi’s stood against a wall reading a paperback romance. Everyone else in the place looked black-socks touristy, or one-hundred-percent-cotton, laid-back local.