Gumbo Limbo

by Tom Corcoran

  One message at the house: Claire Cahill, looking for “any news, even bad.” Resignation in her words—with a few rays of sunlight, wisps of hope, under the cloud cover. A friend in need of a friend. Once more I envisioned myself stumbling over wording, cursing the fact that I couldn’t talk to her in person. I decided, for the moment, not to pass along bad news.

  I dialed Dr. Larry Riley, Monroe County’s medical examiner. I couldn’t call Larry a confidant, but he understood my quasi-official nosiness. We shared similar views regarding good guys and bad guys. He’d completed his prelim autopsy of Omar “Joe Blow” Boudreau. He didn’t have time to discuss it and wasn’t sure he wanted to. We agreed to meet for lunch the next day.

  One more call: to Sam Wheeler’s answering machine. I said, “If you get this call before cocktail hour, let’s try again for beers at Louie’s. The plot fattens.”

  I quit the phone and stepped wide around El Turd to approach the glass-enclosed duty nurse. Into the maw: two hundred pounds of bad bureaucratic hassle. Her face locked into the frown of a born combatant. A tiny name tag atop the bosom expanse: LADENE SUMTER. I knew she wanted to wait at least sixty seconds before acknowledging me. She got bored and broke down after a half minute.

  “Help ya?” More challenge than offer.

  “I wanted to check on the shooting victim’s condition.”

  My concern launched a fresh pissoff. “You family?”

  “Nope.”

  Scowling: “Roommate?”

  “No.” I pulled out my wallet.

  “I can’t give out—”

  I showed her my city ID card.

  More pissed, now. I’d dealt Ms. Sumter the worst fate, loss of power. I felt no compulsion to tell her that, in spite of my ID, the law didn’t allow her to divulge any information at all. She thumbed a stack of file pockets. “You know her identity?”

  These folks would beat you to death with jargon.

  I fought back: “Don’t even know her domicile.”

  What had I just said? It made sense that Abby hadn’t carried identification on her bike ride, but I couldn’t recall a wallet or purse at Louie’s or in the cab. For that matter, I couldn’t recall her having a cellular telephone. No purse, no phone, and, the previous evening, no mention of her hotel.

  For now, though, in the hospital, better she remain anonymous. No reason to make it easier for her attacker to locate her and finish the job.

  Ladene Sumter’s slow, deliberate manner said I’d have to suffer stupidity or hostility, whichever she felt best suited the moment. She located the file. “Condition ‘fair’ is all it says.”

  “Thank you, ma‘am.” I ran for my life.

  Marnie and Teresa still stood outside under the canopy. I hoped Marnie wouldn’t push me again to reveal Abby’s name. She didn’t ask, perhaps more concerned about going home for a nap than collecting details for the Citizen. She mumbled something about Liska brown-nosing the press for the duration of his upcoming election campaign, promising to tell her every little thing he learned. She bid good-bye, then almost stepped in front of a slowly moving Monroe County patrol car. She glared at the deputy, blaming him for her misstep, and hurried to her Jeep.

  The uniformed officer, a ten-year man named Sweet, parked in an official spot next to the canopy. He recognized me and asked if I knew anyone who might want to buy four Canon lenses and a hundred-dollar tripod. I didn’t. He’d been assigned to guard Trauma Room 7.

  “The city pass jurisdiction?” I said.

  “No way we’d take it. They got their messes, we got ours. Course, heavy ones, sure as shit, the sheriff’ll put his claim on the sucker, get the job done right. This one, the hospital’s in the county. Any deal on the premises is ours. Short-term preventive, all that happy malarkey. We keep this place clean. The investigation still belongs to the disco fruit.”

  The campaign was under way with a vengeance. With job preservation foremost, deputies rarely chanced favoring their bosses’ opponents. Deputy Sweet sauntered into the hospital, a rolled-up copy of Southern Boating in his rear pocket. Little something to pass the hours of tight surveillance.

  Teresa Barga offered to spring for lunch. I suggested B.O.’s Fish Wagon, an open-air place on Caroline where the eats were always fresh. Her lunch, my breakfast. We walked side-by-side to her cop-blatant Taurus, and she used her cell phone to cancel another luncheon date. My guilty conscience played with my head. Or else she actually made a point of not letting me walk behind her.

  We got into the car. “Liska’s abrupt departure,” I said. “Any …?”

  “He’s been pissed all day. It started this morning at the office, a call came through for him. He said, ‘What a crock,’ about six times, hung up and said, ‘A fifry percent whack for hurry-up. Now they’re illegal. My printer’s working for the other side.’ Marnie just told me he was talking about election posters.” She started the car and drove out the Emergency Services access road. “The dirty tricks begin. I thought all that bullshit stopped in the seventies.”

  I said, “If election zingers ever stopped, Monroe County would lose its flavor. You should know that if you grew up here.”

  “What makes you think I grew up here?”

  I should have wondered about her not having a Conch accent. “I heard you were related to Paulie Cottrell. If you didn’t grow up here, how do you know about the seventies?”

  She tightened her jaw, began to breathe through her nose, firmed her eyes on the road ahead. I had crossed an unseen line. I envisioned her testing the “tilt” function of her patience, counting to ten. We rode North Roosevelt in silence, We passed the bus stop where Abby Womack had been shot. One six-foot clear plastic panel was missing. Someone had ripped down the yellow “police line” tape. Three people stood in the small shelter, out of the wind. The police department’s white Econoline Crime Scene Unit was parked across the street at the Pizza Hut. No officers in sight.

  Teresa had had time to count to fifty.

  “You didn’t finish telling me why Liska left the hospital.”

  “He was talking with your friend Marnie, watching you chat with the man over by that ratty car. He was mad because the doctors had put what he called ‘an apothecary’ into the woman, put her into La-La Land before he could interview her. Then his cell phone rang. He slid it out of his pocket like Mr. Cool palming a cash roll. Snapped it open like hotshots used to do with Zippos.”

  She’d spent time with American Movie Classics.

  “Sometimes he carries it in his holster,” I said.

  “Anyway, he said, ‘Oh, fuck,’ four times, snapped his phone shut, slammed his hand against his car roof—I mean, hard enough to warp it—and he drove away. Marnie made a call to the city. What that deputy just said about heavy cases? The sheriff claimed jurisdiction on the Boudreau investigation.”

  Zack Cahill’s problems had ratcheted ten notches higher.

  Teresa stared through the windshield, waited for the light near the Key West Yacht Club. She began to talk in a tone she hadn’t used when discussing police business. On the day she graduated from high school in Red Bank, New Jersey, her mother, Estelle Barga, had flown from Newark to Vegas to obtain a divorce from her natural father. Then Estelle had gone directly to Key West to indulge herself in sunshine and rum and Coca-Cola. She’d met Paulie Cottrell on the airplane down from Miami. Four months later, during a hurricane alert on a Saturday morning, Estelle and Paulie were married on the Casa Marina Beach.

  “So you came for the wedding?”

  “And I visited Mother four or five times after the wedding. I flew down for short trips. Then I applied to get on with the police department.”

  She knew the town had a “fascinating history.” She had heard stories from Paulie Cottrell and his political friends with the weird nicknames. Names like Coochie and Little Dick and Water Pickle.

  “So now you’ll be part of the town’s history.”

  She winced, not sure whether to be happy about the idea.
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br />   The morning storm had blown over. Monotone clouds remained. Broken sidewalks, weathered buildings and cars, chipped and faded business signs, rusted trash cans, all normally forgiven their tawdry appearance and called “funky” in bright sunlight under a cyan sky, were simply ugly in the blue-gray light. I fought to keep the weather from slam-dunking my frame of mind. I wanted my lunch date to go well.

  I also wanted to sit in the open at B.O.’s Fish Wagon. If the sun came out, it might replenish my energy. Teresa argued it was too hot to eat outside in the first place. I offered to go to another restaurant, but she selected a table in the shade. My seat gave me a clear view of the Taurus parked next to the Red Doors Inn. I’d left the prints and negatives under the front seat and wanted to be sure they didn’t vanish. We shared a plastic-sleeved menu, picked at our damp clothing, played bump-knee, and ordered mahi-mahi sandwiches, aka dolphin. Restaurant owners, years ago, opted for the fish’s Hawaiian name so customers would think the dish more exotic and not accuse chefs of serving Flipper fillets. A Rolling Stones song on an invisible stereo lauded emotional rescue. Rock and roll again provided an accurate sound track for my life.

  Teresa studied my face. “You’ve got the worry wrinkles of a hundred-and-fifty-year-old man. This lady you met last night almost took a bullet through her face. I hope her luck didn’t rub off on you.”

  I couldn’t imagine how to explain Abby. “Nothing of hers rubbed off on me,” I said. “But there’s another problem.”

  “I heard. A fingerprint on a murder weapon?”

  “His worst previous offense was over-celebrating a Chicago Cubs doubleheader sweep. He wore a team ball cap to the arraignment hearing. The judge dismissed the charges.”

  “When’s the last time a case got solved by one perfect print?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Teresa regarded me as the dumbest frog in the pond. “First off, they’re rarely perfect. But this print is too thin. It reeks of third-generation imagery. A copy of a copy of an actual print.”

  “A setup.”

  “Or a complicated cover to indicate a setup.”

  “He’s not a murderer.”

  She eased off. “I’m sure you’re right. I was extrapolating out to the worst possible case. Did Liska identify him as a genuine suspect?”

  “He said a lot of people wanted to talk to Zack.”

  “See?”

  She wanted to win, so I clammed up. After a few moments of silence I said, “You called me last night.”

  “I hate to drink alone.”

  “Lonely becomes lonelier?”

  She flipped her hair to one side of her face. Her eyes locked on mine as if she were about to accuse me of something. Then they softened. “Lonely has too much to drink and picks up strangers. A bad habit from college, at least in my first two years. I could do just as well playing Russian roulette with half the chambers loaded.”

  “My being there would keep you from drinking too much?”

  She smiled and weighed her response. “I don’t drink that much anymore. But you would keep me from knowing I’m lonely.”

  “So you’d still be lonely, but I’d distract you. My being there wouldn’t change your basic problem.”

  She looked surprised, then pensive. She put her hand on mine. “I didn’t mean that to sound like it did.”

  The breeze rustled the thin dark hair on her forearm. Suddenly I felt less alone, too. I regarded her face. She looked away. “Well, I didn’t mean to come on so harsh. If Lonely needs a hand to hold …”

  She stared at the table and didn’t answer. I looked around the restaurant. Our waitress rolled flatware into paper napkins. A total of six people sat at two other tables. A note on a huge chalkboard said, THE NEXT PERSON TO BITCH ABOUT THE WEATHER BUYS A ROUND OF CHEER. I took a sip of my iced tea and called to the chef: “Nasty damn storm this morning, Buddy. I can’t wait for this shit to stop. How about you?”

  I got an Amstel Light, Teresa held with her tea, and the whole round cost me only eighteen dollars. I probably would get an extra-large portion, as well.

  “Last night,” I said, “did you call once or twice?”

  “Once. Why?”

  “I had two calls. Yours and a hang-up.”

  She waved her hand as if to shoo a bug. The bracelets on her arm rattled together. “I’m too old to play phone games.”

  “I wasn’t accusing. Did you make it out to the bars?”

  “Shit, no. I stayed at the office, working late, pulling investigative material off the Internet.”

  Our food arrived and she didn’t offer any more information. A huge truck turned the corner, shook our table, almost rattled the food onto the floor. Even the quaint Waterfront Market had its own tractor-trailer to transport supplies from Miami. Our talk stopped while we attacked our meals. I finished mine and received permission to attack her unfinished sandwich. Buddy, the owner of B.O.’s, placed another beer next to my empty plate, put his finger to his chest before he walked away. On the house.

  “Now that you’ve finished your meal …” Teresa looked me in the eye. A seductive look. “Is there anything else you need?”

  I didn’t want to bite too hard, in case it wasn’t meant to be seductive. I sidestepped: “Could I get a ride home?”

  The woman’s face showed a trace of affront.

  “I didn’t mean that to sound like it did.”

  “That’s okay. I mean, I wasn’t offering you a kiss good-bye.”

  We walked to the car in bright sunlight. I didn’t have my sunglasses. Even dark things were too bright to look at. Puddles evaporated as we watched. Dust swirled behind vehicles on Caroline. The bumper sticker on the car parked ahead of the Taurus read: MORE SHIT HAPPENS IN KEY WEST. After sitting downwind from B.O.’s deep-fat fryer, I still smelled like the inside of Spence’s Sunbird.

  Teresa drove on Fleming Street, turned east, slowed near Dredgers Lane, and pulled to the left curbing. “Liska wants you in his office at three o’clock.”

  I answered her with a questioning look. Why this news now?

  “Well, you told me you didn’t have plans for the afternoon. I didn’t want to spoil our lunch.”

  Just riding the four blocks from B.O.’s, I’d thought of at least six things to do during the afternoon. “Okay,” I said.

  “Liska said, ‘Three P.M. exactly.’”

  “Will you kiss me good-bye?”

  “What’s he going to do, put you on Death Row?”

  I laughed. “Let’s leave Liska out of this, for a moment.”

  She laughed, too. She leaned across the front seat and quickly kissed my lips. She smelled of faint perspiration and shampoo rinse. She tasted like the sweetness and lemon of her iced tea.

  Her eyes caught mine, and they smiled.

  8

  “It’s not as bad as it smells.”

  I allowed Duffy Lee Hall his moment of nonsense.

  I stood thirty feet from the burned building, but my hair and clothing had already absorbed the stench of charred wood and plastic. The weight of the firefighters’ water had caved in the pharmacy roof. Long pink strands of attic insulation, tangled in electrical wiring, hung against warped drywall. Support beams had settled at odd angles. Ash layered exposed surfaces. No question, the building would be bulldozed.

  If Hall had meant to compare the extent of ruin to his personal odor, I’d buy into the idea. The sweat of emotion and exertion had drenched his blue denim work shirt. He’d been packing sooty boxes out of the ashes, wrapping them in garbage bags, hoping they wouldn’t ruin the interior of his vintage Volvo station wagon. He’d wasted his money with the plastic bags. I could swim off South Beach or shower for an hour. The Volvo would never lose the residual stink.

  Hall had insisted that he needed no help. “No reason for both of us to ruin our clothes. This is my second carload. It ought to cover it.” He leaned into the Volvo to organize the boxes. His belly, a testament to the nation’s microbreweries, restricted his movem
ent. He gave up and backed away. His round wire-rimmed glasses slid down his nose. “The darkroom used to be a walk-in refrigerator.” He wagged his arm at the north wall of the gutted pharmacy. “The lunch counter used to be over here. They built new coolers when they moved the serving area to the United Street side. They couldn’t afford to rip down the old walk-in, so I got a perfect space. No light leaks, no temperature shifts. I mean … before this. Anyway, the steel walls and thick insulation saved my equipment.”

  “Open for business somewhere else?”

  A dejected exhale: “With a full house of jack-jawed customers …”

  “ … who will understand the circumstances.”

  He slid out of the car, headed back into the rubble for more. “But not their missing film. Be glad you didn’t leave yours last night.”

  “You can’t wash the film, try to salvage it?”

  “Nothing to wash. It’s gone. Somebody took it all.”

  “Took your clients’ film … ?”

  “ … and finished prints.”

  “And burned it down, too?”

  Duffy Lee slid a box of developing trays into the car. He barely nodded.

  Theft and vandalism. A crime and an overkill cover-up. The deed and the distraction. It had gone down that way at Jesse Spence’s apartment.

  Coincidence bites again. It clicked almost immediately. The phone bug in the Ziploc. Strike two had hit Duffy Lee Hall’s darkroom.

  Someone had wanted my film and knew from eavesdropping Spence’s phone line that I’d deliver the film to Hall before six the night before. They didn’t need the film I’d shot at Spence’s. Those pictures were documents, not evidence. They held no clues and, unless Jesse had performed a miracle of cleaning and restoration, that film could be re-shot easily. That left only one possibility. Someone had wanted my Conch Train pictures. And not the detail shots of Omar “Joe Blow” Boudreau, either, because I could easily reproduce those, inside a different kind of walk-in fridge. They’d wanted my shots of the Front Street crime-scene onlookers.