Gumbo Limbo

by Tom Corcoran

  “She was planning on a nap at lunchtime.”

  “Then I’m looking at a slosh performance at the restaurant of her choice. At least I can look forward to peaches-and-cream, shaped like a dream. This charter’s the prettiest thing aboard Fancy Fool since my buddy Doyle hooked that granddaddy tarpon two years ago. She’s on for three more days, starting in the morning.”

  “She talks like money. Is she as impressed with herself as we are?”

  “She’s focused. She takes her fishing seriously. When she was fourteen she asked her mother to stop wasting money on gifts that she never used. Her mother told her to pick her own gifts after that. Once she got a set of floor mats for her car. Last year, I think up in Naples, she learned to use light tackle and read the water. Now I’ve got her for five trips total, paid in advance, in cash. Here’s to rich mommies. The best part, with the name Sammy, we’re a perfect match.”

  “What happened to your rule, ‘No one less than half your age’? Keep your eye on the water’s surface, Captain.”

  Sam pretended to wipe sweat from his forehead. “Except for the problem of vino, this thing with Marnie’s been the best in years. But I’m in a weakened state right now. I can’t be held responsible.”

  “My point of view is that she deserves more than a comparison with a fish, even if Doyle caught it. Make sure the hook doesn’t catch your ass.”

  Sam put on his shoes as daylight began to fade, and collected his shades and cap. I made it to the living room rocking chair.

  Hours later a forceful rainstorm awakened me. The downpour ceased almost immediately. In the post-squall stillness I listened to water dripping from trees to the cottage roof, heard two men talking as they walked down Fleming. The telephone rang in the Eden House lobby, a hundred yards away. Other night sounds, muffled by vegetation and wet air, shouted at me and echoed. The walls of the darkened room felt taller, farther apart, and they amplified my solitude, made me tiny in vast surroundings. I hadn’t felt this alone in months. My head had listed to starboard. My neck had stiffened. I’d left my windows and door open.

  The clock in the kitchen said twelve thirty-five. I turned on the lamp near the phone and slipped the paper from my wallet. I dialed the number she’d given me.

  She answered with a drowsy, “I hope it’s you.”

  “I was going to say something stupid, like ‘Guess who.’”

  “Lemme guess. Does your name start with an L?”

  “No, that’s your name,” I said. “Mine starts with an H.”

  “Is that for ‘happy-go-lucky,’ or ‘heartbroken,’ or ‘horny’?”

  “Maybe all three.”

  “Why don’t you come over here and we’ll figure it out?”

  She gave me her address.

  9

  My intentions were reasonably honorable.

  I knocked back a beer, for carbo energy, I assured myself, closed up the house, and headed out the porch’s rear door to unlock the Cannondale.

  In my post-nap fog I’d forgotten I’d left the bike in Chicken Neck Liska’s office. Decision time. I chose foot power. Better than cranking the Kawasaki after midnight, rapping the exhaust, disrupting the neighborhood.

  I jumped gutter puddles to cross Fleming, dodged a drunk bicyclist who lighted her way with a quivering flashlight, and angled down Grinnell, weaving around root-heaved sidewalks and low-hanging foliage. Thick orange jasmine permeated the air. Window-mounted air conditioners roared from every third house. Trees formed canopies dense with cicada chirps, frog grunts, crickets, whispers of rubbing limbs and fronds. Near Lowe’s Lane I wondered how old-time carpenters, the shipbuilders of a century ago, would react to seeing decorative gingerbread illuminated by the chemical glow of crime-fighting streetlights, the lights that turned palm trees a sickly burnt yellow at night. A television’s pale blue glow lighted the window of a darkened house. A woman laughed loudly, hidden behind jalousie shutters in a single-story cottage. On Southard, in front of 5 Brothers Grocery, two middle-aged men cursed and shouted. Accusations, denials, revised accusations. A down-and-dirty lovers’ spat. I stayed on my side of the street, surprised by the number of people out walking dogs.

  Near William a clutch of six or eight cats scampered across the street and into a dark, leafy yard. Made tipsy by frangipani smells, I almost walked into a taxi that scooted the stop sign at Elizabeth. I flashed on the possibility that the car had meant to hit me—a fearful association-connection with the past days’ events. Not a chance. No way a Key West cab would discount valuable meter time for a penny-ante hit-and-run.

  For a moment I felt that I should remember something about a taxi. But I couldn’t generate an analytical idea to save my soul. I barely had the mental grip to consider what lay ahead. I knew that I needed whatever it would be, part for the touch of skin against skin, part for the possibility of a closer friendship. It had been years since I’d walked night patrol, and twenty weeks since the breakup of a three-year affair. Some of the weeks had been longer than others. Sometimes, for days, I’d not think of her. Some days I’d ponder the encompassing, near-dominating “What if …”

  I caught myself humming a melody, walking toward Teresa’s in time with the beat, repeating the old rock lyric: “Watch out, boys, she’ll chew you up …” At Duval three jokers on mopeds waited for the green, obvious believers that constant revving hurries a signal’s timing sequence. Music floated from a side street saloon. Some hoarse guitar picker segued from one Buffett song to another. A passable performance. One hoped that the entertainer dreamed of losing the copycat routine and someday doing a passable version of himself. Even Jimmy Buffett would still be doing bar gigs if he’d stuck with “Tell Laura I Love Her” and “Danny’s Song.”

  Teresa Barga lived in the Shipyard on Truman Annex, the houses and apartments built in the late eighties and early nineties on old Navy property. She answered my knock in a short terry-cloth robe, ushered me inside, and closed the door before removing her robe and giving me a warm hug. She smelled of face soap and toothpaste. She wore a flimsy tank top with MADE IN AMERICA across her chest in red lettering. Baggy white boxer briefs rode low on her hips. I detected scents of eucalyptus and new carpet, recognized a selection from a vintage Earl Klugh album.

  “I fell asleep tonight thinking you might call.” Teresa lifted an oversized snifter from a coffee table and offered a sip. Amaretto. “You seemed full of odd information after lunch. How did the rest of your day go?”

  I kicked off my shoes. “I did a bunch of stuff and wound up in your living room.”

  “Message received.” She kissed me lightly, flicked off a small lamp, and led me to her bedroom. Two slim candles flickered on the dresser. An oak-paddle ceiling fan twirled lazily. Her box spring and mattress were four feet off the floor, atop a hefty framework of shelving and drawers.

  We shared the Amaretto again. She carefully placed the drink on a bedside table. I lifted the tank top, moved my hands to the soft, cool skin of her back. The faint touch of her breasts against my forearms sent electric punches to my midsection. Somehow the boxers made it to the carpet, as did my shorts. The tank top went airborne. My shirt went over my head. We fell sideways. I began to sample flavors of the woman.

  A minute or two later her breathing slowed. “Can I ask a favor?”

  “Anything.”

  “The good old-fashioned missionary position. It’s what Lonely likes best.”

  “I’m a traditionalist.”

  “And no Olympic speed record?”

  “I’m a conservationist.”

  “I’m glad you’re principled.” She rubbed my back. “I’m glad you called.”

  But I turned into a glutton, acting the sailor on his last night of shore leave. I requested at one point that she hook her ankles behind my knees. I tried to load up, to memorize every square inch, to stockpile every caress and nuzzle and taste, every compound curve until my brain had imprinted an entire landscape for future recall. It never had worked, that recall busin
ess. But I hoped, one more time, that my concentration would allow me to split the hard shell of reality and, down the road, pull off a miracle.

  We finally took a break. She had turned liquid; she gave off a wonderful air of sex and perspiration. I immediately, silently, congratulated myself for not having indulged thoughts of my ex-lover’s body, the sweet-stale flavors of the woman who had shared my house those three years.

  Teresa whispered, “There’s something to be said for basic lovemaking.”

  “There’s more to be said about doing it twice.”

  She sighed. “Are you going to make a pig of yourself?”

  “It’s called biting off more than I can chew.”

  After a while I did, with reasonable success. Midway through the night I got up to use the bathroom. Dazed and depleted, my brain made vacant by our exertions, I forgot that we’d been punishing an elevated mattress. I almost broke my ankle when the floor wasn’t where I’d expected it to be. I spun, banged my tailbone against a windowsill, and woke Teresa. Out of embarrassment I admitted no injury. Then I heard sirens in the distance, a multiple-unit call, as the badges called it. Some unfortunate soul battered or mugged or sucker-punched in Old Town, or a tourist’s motor scooter banged into a utility pole or parked car. I wondered if the island had been this crazy when Ernest Hemingway had lived here.

  Ask not for whom the sirens wail.

  The pain kept me awake until daybreak. I left so Teresa could have her apartment to herself without worrying about waking the slug who’d made a pig of himself. Her boxer-style underpants were on the floor, decorated with tiny pastel flowers. I sorted my garments, dressed quickly, and kissed her cheek. She didn’t open her eyes, but showed a big grin before she turned her face into her pillow and briefly wiggled her bottom under the top sheet.

  Typical time-share-deluxe furniture in her living room. Twin lithographs showed California-Spanish architecture, palm trees, simplistic sailboats. A bookcase near the door held an impressive assortment of hardcovers, Florida mysteries by the usual suspects, the Miami mafia, even a Pedrazas, and two by Garcia-Aguilera. I set the lock and heard it snap shut behind me.

  The temperature felt like eighty-five, the sun’s heat its anger over having risen to another dead-slow August ordeal of humidity and sloth. The ache in my ankle reminded me that I’d let intelligence take the night off. Also, I had broken the Old Rule of Key West Nightlife: Always take sunglasses. You never know when you might get home. I paid the price, walking east, face-toface with the sunrise, brightness drilling holes in my eyes. In a vending box at Southard and Thomas, twin Citizen headlines: DRIVE-BY SHOT WOUNDS WOMAN and MYSTERY FIRE CLAIMS PHARMACY. The farther I walked, the more I wished I’d stayed longer at Teresa Barga’s apartment. A daybreak encore, or an illuminated study of the territory.

  There, I’d done it again. Tried to jury-rig that instant replay.

  Day laborers crowded Fausto’s, stocking up on bottled water, packaged pastries, single cans of low-priced beer. I picked out a quart of OJ, a box of cereal, two yogurts, and, for some reason, a quart of chocolate milk. In the checkout line I attempted to sort the weirdness, the problems at hand, my priorities. By the time I’d started up Fleming, drinking milk as I walked, two ideas had popped into my head. Two errands to run, after my shower.

  Children carried lunch containers and book bags past me, their faces alternately jubilant or fearful. My neighbor and sweet confidante, Carmen Sosa, had mentioned getting her daughter, Maria Rolley, ready for the first day of school. Near the library I passed an elderly woman with a red shawl about her shoulders, the shawl luminous as a hibiscus blossom in the hazy morning light, the frail woman tacking against the light west wind.

  A car horn startled me. Chicken Neck Liska’s burgundy Lexus, his civilian car, pulled abruptly to the curb. A tinted electric window descended. “This is great,” growled the detective. “What a beautiful fuckin’ picture, in yesterday’s clothes, dragging your hung-over butt down the sidewalk. All the kids walking to the elementary.”

  I had a mouthful of milk.

  He kept with it: “A fine example of Key West grown-up, bubba. You breathe on any toddlers?”

  Cootie Ortega, the city’s full-time crime-scene photographer, sat in the front passenger seat. Ortega was a dunce, a screw-up, a conniver, and a slob. He viewed workdays as speed bumps in his career. He’d keep his municipal job until death, thanks to generations-old traditions of island nepotism and political patronage. Ortega kept his eyes forward. I represented an incursion to his professional turf. He preferred to believe that I didn’t exist.

  “Been up all night with a sick friend,” I said. “You out campaigning for elective office? Shaking hands with the early birds?”

  “Nope.”

  “You on a run for doughnuts?”

  “I’m on my way back to a crime scene. This one might interest you.”

  Not with Cootie in the car. “Will it wait until we have coffee?”

  Liska released the rear-door locks. “Get in. We’re going to your house.”

  I closed the chocolate milk and slid into the backseat. The car’s interior smelled of stale cigarette residue and florid aftershave.

  Liska waited for a bicycle to pass, then pulled from the curb and drove slowly up Fleming. “An attempted B and E and a vigilante shooting,” he said. “About two hours ago. The perp-victim split the scene. We need your door key to scope the house.” Speaking into a radio mike attached to his sun visor, Liska requested that the crime-scene van return to Dredgers Lane.

  The pre-dawn sirens had wailed for me. I feared a repeat of the damage done to Jesse Spence’s apartment. On second impulse, I could kiss good-bye the prints and original negs from the Conch Train murder scene, as well as my camera equipment and Zack Cahill’s Rolex. My stomach felt upside-down. The chocolate milk wanted out. I stooped immediately to Spence’s post-crime level: I began to picture short vignettes of perp-victim revenge, open wounds, salt water, branding irons, bare-wired electrical cords.

  Two city police vehicles blocked the lane by the stop sign at Fleming—a white Crown Victoria with a shift supervisor badge on the driver’s door, and an old Ford Explorer. A veteran officer, bored but alert, rested his butt against the Crown Vic’s front fender. Liska squeezed past and rolled another sixty feet before skidding to a stop, adding the drama of a Dragnet rerun. They had looped ominous mango-colored crime-scene perimeter tape across my croton bushes. On the side of the cottage opposite my porch, a double-hung window had been knocked inward. Jagged glass lined the remaining frame sections. In the space of two minutes, the morning air had given up the battle to the day’s heat. My yard felt like a blast furnace. I fought to hold down the chocolate milk. My brain wanted an “off” switch.

  Liska motioned Ortega to the ruined window, to photograph the damage. Ortega appeared pissed at the prospect of work.

  Carmen Sosa and her father, Hector Ayusa, sat silently with a uniformed lieutenant on my porch. The empty beer bottles that Sam and I had left the previous evening were on the porcelain-top table. Hector, who lived across the lane, midway between Carmen’s home and mine, dozed in a pale blue pajama top and checkered Bermudas. Carmen wore her post office uniform. She had the morning Citizen spread across her lap. She glanced up and gave me a look. Equal parts sympathetic and where-the-hell-have-you-been?

  The lieutenant stood, opened the screen door for Liska. “The crime-scene team said to call when you got here. They don’t think the perp got inside.”

  My mood improved. “Is this our vigilante?”

  Carmen looked at her father as a mother would regard an injured child. “He was outside, shooing cats,” she said. “He saw the man messing with your window.”

  “Shooing away cats?” I said.

  “Well, not really. Gas pains keep him awake. And my mother, too.”

  Hector made a snoring sound, actually a snort. He awoke, and his foot kicked down on the wood floor.

  Liska said: “Russell, you take
a statement here?”

  The man in uniform feigned frustrated bewilderment. “I didn’t hear it too good …” He turned to Hector Ayusa. “You said the man pointed something at you?”

  Hector, still drowsy, shook his head.

  Liska turned to Carmen. “I see we got a communication problem here. A language thing. Would you translate for us, and be real careful? Please ask your father if the prowler pointed anything at him. Like a gun.” He paused for emphasis. “His answer is very important. Okay?”

  Carmen hesitated, a welling of concern in her eyes, then asked in Spanish if Hector had been threatened. Hector began to answer but she cut him off, pleading against stubbornness. Hector began again. We stood aside, not out of earshot but conceivably so. The father and daughter htuldled. Carmen struck a pose of confidentiality.

  Liska jerked his head toward the still-locked door. “Open. Don’t go in.”

  I fished out my keys. “How about the OJ into the refrigerator? Maybe use the bathroom?”

  “It’ll be twenty minutes. Why don’t you piss in the yard, then sit tight?”

  Tight as a man connected to Zack, Abby, Jesse’s mess, Duffy Lee Hall’s ruined darkroom, and what Sam described as the delivery of wealth to some sorry characters. Tight as a crime victim about to become an accessory to one or more felonies.

  I looked inside. Hector’s single bullet had kicked ass. Shards on the sagging sofa, dark copper stains on the windowsill. Wood splinters strewn from the sofa to the side of the room nearer the kitchen. Small suction cups on the floor. The prowler had been trying to excise a center section of window so he could reach inward and flip the latch.

  Liska leaned past me. “Not too bad.” He studied the room a moment. “The bullet passed through him, probably through muscle tissue in his shoulder, or his upper arm. The force knocked him halfway through the window. Bullet stopped over there.” I followed his gaze. A bottle-cap-sized hole in the plaster, two inches above my answering machine.