Gumbo Limbo (16 page)

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Authors: Tom Corcoran

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General

BOOK: Gumbo Limbo
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“But it wasn’t.”
“No. I’m tired of being alone.”
“I never thought I’d ever hear these words.”
“Don’t start on me.”
“I would like to help. But I have a houseguest and a new lover, and my home has been a recent target of burglary.”
“You don’t have to
do
anything. I just want a human in the bed with me.”
When it rains it pours.
Carmen changed the topic. “This is none of my business. But Sam told me last night the details, all the intrigue.”
I shrugged. “I got a problem.”
“Maria’s got a book, supposed to help kids understand nightmares. My viewpoint, it’s low-rent psychology. But it makes one
good point. It says, ‘You can’t fight back if you don’t know the enemy.’”
“But they’re not
my
enemy.”
“So who did my father shoot? Some junkie prowler picked your house at random?”
She was right. I’d been an inquisitive spectator, but I’d graduated. “I don’t know what all these people are after. All I know is, they’re slick at covering tracks and destroying evidence.”
“Well, it’s bound to be one of three things: an item of value, information of value, or a person. Can you think of any other category?”
“Where did you get all this analytical expertise?”
She said, “Trying to figure out your social calendar.”
“Yuk city.”
“Sorry.”
“Think criminal,” I said. “If we cross out revenge, cross out hatred, what’s the rule? The money trail’s the superhighway. A person leads to information that leads to money. The other way around, information leads to a person who leads to money. Either way, money rules.”
“Now you’re thinking with your upstairs brain.”
“And the amount of money we’re talking about probably can’t be carried around by one person. So they’re after the person who has access to the money. That’s Zack. We’ve analyzed ourselves back to the obvious.”
“But Sam said his objective was to distribute the money. Those old dope smugglers are going to get their payoff.”
“Someone outside the original group knows about the agreement and wants to snarf the money before it gets passed around.”
“Hypothetical,” said Carmen. “Who could know about the agreement?”
“I suppose, members of the original group, their family members, friends. There’s cell mates and lawyers. Of course, telling lawyers about money gives them too good a reason to raise their
fees. Outside the original trio, there’s Zack and Abby and Jesse Spence.”
“Okay. Now the same list, in order of probability.”
“Lemme think. Leave out the lawyers. Leave out family members, because they’ll benefit sooner or later.”
“Leave out your friend Zack. He wouldn’t be hiding from himself.”
“That leaves Jesse and Abby, and old cell mates of Makksy, Auguie, and Burch. Cell mates of Jesse Spence, too. There’s no way to know anything about their friends. That could be any one.”
Carmen opened the screen door and stepped off the porch. “Glad I could help. Come over if you want arroz con pollo, anytime after six.”
I’d been ambushed by the close-to-home syndrome. Slamdunked by the reasoning of a woman of above-average intelligence whose résumé highlight was “Mother of a ten-year-old.” Which made sense. Because anyone who can keep up with the whims and inventions of a ten-year-old ought to be able to second-guess crooks.
My gut told me that Jesse, the victim of a thorough search, classified as a person who could lead to information that could lead to money. That put him on the defensive squad, not the offense. The attack on Abby forced a different question. If someone after the money considered her a source of information, why would they want to kill her?
 
Two messages waited for me. Kim, from Louie’s Backyard: “Probably not important. If you get a chance, call me at work after setup time. Six-ten, six-fifteen’d be perfect.”
Then a surprise. Abby Womack: “How can we be a team if I don’t tell you how to reach me? I’m way at the end of Simonton, at the Green Dolphin, room 443. Say hi to Claire. Can you two join me for dinner tonight? Call.”
D
inner invitations were stacking up. So were the odds that my next decent meal would be in Louisiana. Gumbo, for the soul.
It made no sense to surprise Ernest Makksy, aka Tazzy Gucci. I opened my false cabinet to check the page Claire had found in the Cahill home safe. Based on the address, New Orleans information gave me a home number. An answering machine invited me to try another number. I’d have to convince the man of my friendship with Zack Cahill, retell the four-day saga for the hundredth time, express my intentions regarding their retirement fund.
He answered on ring two. “Imperial Limo; Ernest here to help you.”
“Alex Rutledge, in Key West.”
“Rutledge. I picture you on this gold-colored bicycle, uphigh handlebar, khaki shorts, Staniel Key Yacht Club T-shirt, and a camera around your neck.” Makksy’s southern accent was overlaid with a New Orleans twang. “Always, that camera. What’s going on down there?”
“I’m not sure.” I could hear a sax-trumpet combo. Easy to suspect that the Chamber of Commerce required background jazz on all calls into the “504” area code.
“For sure, I got no idea, mon ami. Four FBI dickweeds in ten-dollar ties knocking at my place of business, interrogating
me on the death of my former employee. Boy named Omar the Hun. Very ugly man. Got himself zipped down there in Key West. I’ve been sayin‘, like, maybe Omar hooked up with an old friend of ours. What’s up with that?”
“An old friend of yours, or mine?”
“Mostly yours, I’d say.”
Even the co-conspirators suspected Zack of the murder. “So, we’re talking about …”
“Banker.”
“Gotcha,” I said. Old smugglers still don’t say names on the phone.
“Like I say, what’s going on down there?”
“I’m not sure where to start.”
“You wanna come up here, we talk about it on the sidelines?”
“That’s what I had in mind.”
“How about that. You call when you get in, awright.” He clicked off.
The only flights from Key West to New Orleans connect in Orlando, and the next day’s flights to Orlando were booked. My only choice was Key West to Orlando at eight-fifteen P.M., spend the night, and connect to New Orleans on any of four flights during the day. I booked the ticket, open return, and made a crapshoot reservation at a motel that the airline ticketing agent recommended.
Welcome to the outside world. I returned the Shelby to its garage and packed a duffel before I rode the bicycle to Schooner Wharf. No surprise: no Dubbie Tanner. The cocktail hour crowd had shaped up for fun. A full bar, the usual maniacs, not a tourist in sight. The folksinger performed a perfect version of Danny O‘Keefe’s “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues.” I sat back with a Mount Gay and soda and tried to run a pre-travel check-off list through my brain—not so much things to accomplish on the trip, but things to get done in the two hours before I left. I
wasn’t swamped with loose ends, but wanted to assure myself that I hadn’t missed any angles.
After five minutes, I’d drained the drink. No revelations had visited. The entertainer took a short break. I blanked my brain and paid attention, for a moment or two, to the still air, the subtle sounds of the docks. Automatic bilge pumps called into action, spouting for ten seconds, going silent. Soft slaps of the water’s surface displaced by rolling lapstrake hulls, dull clicks of shrouds going tight, then slack with sailboat motion in dozens of slips. Deck shoes patting wood planks, the squeaks of cylindrical PVC boat fenders, muffled VHF radio traffic. I even heard a train whistle, then calculated that the last train had pulled out of Key West in 1935. The cruise ship leaving the harbor reminded me that Claire and Marnie had gone to Miami. I couldn’t begin to speculate on what success they may have had. I hoped they’d return before I left to catch my flight. On the other hand, I felt more comfortable knowing that Claire was out of town. The picker, back onstage, began a lazy version of J. J. Cale’s “Crazy Mama.”
“New in town, sailor?” Olivia Jones stepped off the boardwalk, a letter-sized Federal Express packet under her arm.
“You sit with me, sweetie, because I’m your authentic Key West pirate. I will tell you stories from the Seven Seas.”
“More like Tales of Thirty Thousand Fruitcakes. This goddamn island.” She took the slat chair next to mine, and the last sip of my drink.
“Look at you, with a rush package. Hustling out hurry jobs for wealthy and anxious clients.”
“I wish. This is my off-season briefcase, for just that reason. I keep it with me all the time. Makes me look important. Helps me drum up business.”
“Soon the season will begin. Money will flow again.”
“Well, speakin’ of pirate activities … I’ll take one of these. Paybacks are hell.”
I signaled two more to the bartender.
“Your phone number came up,” she said. “Weirdest damned job, paid in advance. It’ll cover a year’s worth of Yellow Pages.”
“My phone?”
“This lady got my number from the book and left me a message yesterday afternoon. I called back and she had me come to the Green Dolphin to pick up a picture. I designed this thing.”
Olivia pulled a “Wanted” poster from the FedEx envelope. In its center, a black-and-white head shot of Zack Cahill. A formal portrait, perhaps clipped from a corporation annual report. Under the picture, the phrase HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? A short paragraph explained that he may be disoriented, fotgetful, fantastical, or depressed. A two-hundred-dollar reward was offered, with a phone number to call in case of a sighting.
“She wants me to print a hundred and tack them up all over town. If anyone claims the reward, I get a hundred-dollar bonus.”
I stood to get our drinks. “Whose phone number is that?”
“Mine. She gave me an extra hundred to take messages. Not bad for the off-season.”
“Where does my number come in?”
“She said to call you if someone has a tip and I can’t reach her.” Olivia put her glass to her lips. “I can almost feel that bonus money in my hand.”
Maybe Abby was a team player, after all. But I didn’t want to risk missing out. “I know how you can double it.”
She said, “Call you first?”
“You’re a genius.”
“It’s easy in the off-season.”
I finished my drink and started toward Louie’s Backyard. Olivia wanted to stick around for a while. Crossing Eaton, I felt several fat raindrops, the kind that announce a downpour capable
of lifting sea level. I hurried back to the house, dodged the squall, and made two phone calls. Kim, at Louie’s, was still in the chefs meeting, the mandatory daily menu-and-specials preview for servers and bartenders. I requested that she call me back, if possible, before seven forty-five.
I dialed Teresa Barga, caught her just getting home, drenched. The squall was moving west-to-east. She made me wait while she took off her shoes and wet slacks. “I’m back.”
“Person-to-person from the doghouse,” I said.
“No shit.”
“Where do I start?”
“I’m not in a position to script your futile apology. You can start by jumping off the roof at La Concha.”
“Did you have as much fun as I did?”
“Tell me again about the thing between you and the reporter.”
“My love life for the past six months consists of our night together.”
“Right. And the nameless woman who was shot off your bike failed to rub anything off on you.”
“Right.”
“And, at the café, there’s another woman, your friend’s wife, your newest houseguest. Then, last night, I come by on my bike, the Jeep is at your place.”
“Are you keeping a watch on my house?”
“I had a bottle of wine with me. Stupid me had romantic intentions.”
“Even though I had a houseguest?”
Huge silence. “I was hoping she’d found a motel. No sign of the suspect?”
“No sign of the suspect. Look, I’ve been rude. I’ve also been preoccupied.”
“No need to explain. Get back to me when you can.”
“That’s one reason I’m calling. I’m out of town for a day or two. I’m leaving in an hour, the only plane I could get. I’d like to see you as soon as I get back.”
“Your pal Liska got the rug pulled out from under him.”
“I already got visited by a green-and-white.”
“He acts like he expected it to happen, but it’s hit him like a belly punch. Can I ask where you’re going?”
“It doesn’t involve another woman, I assure you.”
Dead silence. Then: “I don’t have to know. I was just making talk. What you do, women or no women, is your business.”
“I want the part with women to be yours. I want you to be it. How about dinner when I get back? Tomorrow, or lunch the next day. A bowl of conch chowder at Margaritaville.”
Another silence. Then: “We’ll see. Thanks for the call.”
I hung up and the phone rang. How did it know?
Kim said, “You left the restaurant with a new friend the other night.”
She meant Abby, the night I met her. “Friend of a friend.”
“You get in trouble over it?”
“Why would I get in trouble?”
“She had a friend, too.”
“How so?”
“Right after you came into Louie’s, a guy walked up from the deck and sat at my bar inside. He sipped a Courvoisier and stared out the window. When you and the lady took that cab with your bike on the trunk rack, he went out and took the next taxi. I got the impression he wanted to follow you.”
“It’s possible.”
“I even called your house. I got your answering machine. I figured you’d gone to another restaurant. I know how you complain about the food prices at Louie’s.”
The non-message on my machine, while Abby was in the shower.
“I would’ve left you a warning, but then you might have been home, doing something that would make it hard to answer your phone. I didn’t want to broadcast the fact that I was worried about you. Then I forgot about it until two hours ago, when I saw that lady walk in.”
“Alone?”
“Near as I could tell. She shot the breeze with Alain for a while, then left.”
I thanked Kim for the call, dialed Sam’s number, woke him from a nap. I asked him to put up Claire for the night so she wouldn’t have to stay in my house alone. I packed a nylon computer case with my shaving kit, a couple extra shirts, two pair of skivvies, and the small zoom-lens idiot-proof camera that, twenty-four hours earlier, I had neglected to return to its hiding spot. I walked up to Carmen’s to beg a ride to the airport.
With Maria in the car, Carmen and I chose not to review our earlier talk; our hypothetical speculation. Carmen got out of the car at the airport to give me a hug and a kiss and the simple admonition “Be careful.”
The flight crossed Florida Bay toward Naples, then traced the coastline past the western Everglades that, four decades ago, had been surveyed and subdivided for development. There’d been no takers. The developers had gone broke. Nature one, encroachment zero. It happened too seldom. Nearing Orlando, the pilot alerted us to the fact that we were flying over Lakeland. The darkness made it difficult to appreciate the scenery. It must have been their daytime speech. I could see a ten-mile, northsouth string of streetlights intersected by a five-mile, east-west business strip. A cruciform glow rising from the central Florida landscape. Lightning danced in the distance.
I took a cab from the Orlando airport to a classic no-tell motel called the Citrus Blossom Suites. The ten-foot chain-link fence around the parking lot gave me my first warning. The key
deposit gave a second warning. I felt too tired to argue, too wiped out to run off in search of a decent place. I needed a pillow. Throw in a shower, I’d be overjoyed.
I would regret my decision. Efficiencies only, a kitchenette with a two-burner stove, a sink the size of an ice bucket, towels that felt like absorbent sandpaper, art prints of spindly herons in Dollar General frames, one Formica table. Smells of dirt, mildew, old soap that had failed to eradicate dirt and mildew, a musty bedspread. The plumbing would provide nonstop, all-night sound effects: creaking and screeches from pipes and neighboring faucets. Abby Womack, the night I’d met her, had said that her motel room smelled like fifteen years’ worth of roach spray and Lemon Pledge. I pictured the motel owners, out back each morning, mixing a noxious maintenance brew in a fifty-five-gallon drum. On my way back to Key West I would track down the ticketing agent and strangle him with the cord to his goddamn headset.
I risked a four-minute walk to a convenience store for a can of beer. The poor man’s sleeping pill. Killer selection: fifteen versions of Budweiser and ten different brands of malt liquor. Cheese snacks, bear claws, sugar bombs, chips. I paid for a plastic container of Sprite and a quart of Busch Light, then called home from a coin phone in front of the store. A message from Claire: “Sam said he told you about our idea. Marnie’s hot after something, and I’m lukewarm on the trail. I may have to fly back to Chicago for a day. Good luck, amigo.”

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