Gumbo Limbo (29 page)

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Authors: Tom Corcoran

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

BOOK: Gumbo Limbo
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I recognized a Bonnie Raitt song from the seventies. Her strong voice, her slide guitar. Without moving my arms or camera, I turned my head left.
Eight feet away and closing. The self-absorbed Heidi Norquist.
Diamond earrings blazed just below the headset’s pink foam cushions. Tiny diamonds for a Sunday morning jog. The hair fell to one side, five-toned butterscotch and gold. She stopped advancing but pumped her slender legs, ran in place, paced the music. A loose black tank top, tight vermilion shorts, sculpted running shoes fresh from the box. Inch-wide neonpink wristbands. Next to the Walkman, a small belly-pack—sized, I guessed, for lip gloss, a cell phone, a fifty-dollar bill. A hint of trendy, expensive perfume. A discreet gold neck chain. A million dollars wrapped in a suntan. Or a fine approximation.
In direct sunlight, no evidence of sweat. Was it the cool January air or spontaneous evaporation?
Butler Dunwoody, the younger brother of my friend Marnie Dunwoody, had brought Heidi to town six weeks ago. The evening we’d first met, within a week of her arrival, Heidi had impressed me as a woman who’d done time at the mirror, long enough to understand her power. Her conversation at times plainly mocked Dunwoody. I recall speculating silently that
she viewed the man as a brief layover on her health-conscious journey to more lofty playgrounds. Marnie had assured me that her brother worshiped the young woman’s shadow. With Heidi’s slender frame, the late morning sun almost straight up, there wasn’t much shadow to worship. I wondered if, given an alternative situation, I might act the fool equal to Butler Dunwoody.
With my wallet there would never be an alternative situation.
“What’re you shooting?” She breathed in and out, a separate aerobic exercise.
Two cars on Caroline slowed to check her out.
I waved my free arm toward the site. “Construction.” A large white sign bolted to the eight-foot fence listed architects, structural engineers, and consulting engineers. Appleby-Florida, Inc., General Contractor. A nearby sign listed four law firms, three local banks as financiers, a security outfit, and a waste management consultant. The sign did not mention Butler Dunwoody, the project developer.
“For the newspaper?” said Heidi.
I laughed. “I don’t do news.”
She pushed her hair behind one ear, fiddled to park it there. It fell when she removed her finger. Fifty yards away, in the old shrimp dock area, an offshore sportsman cranked an unmuffled V-8 marine engine, then a second one. Cubic decibels. She fiddled with the hair again, turned her attention to the waterfront.
When the noise died, Heidi faked a coy face. “You from zoning?”
She didn’t recognize me. A slap to the ego, but no surprise. I shook my head.
“Some kind of protester?” Still jogging in place. Her face going harder.
The construction site had received heavy news coverage
regarding the disapproval of island residents, a call-to-arms to discover how the project had survived variance, had slid through the approval process. The public wanted to know which politicians had sold out. I said, “Nope. No protest.”
Heidi jogged to the fence. A foot-square DANGER sign loomed above her head. She said, “Why don’t you mind your own fucking business?”
My question, too. I stared at her without speaking, hoping her message would turn around. It did not.
With the first step of her departure sprint, she muttered, “Jerk-off.”
Some flirtation. I flat-toned: “Have a nice day.” Then, for some reason, I took a photograph of the woman’s departure.
A female voice behind me: “That should be a good shot, Alex Rutledge.”
I turned. Same flavor, better quality. Traci Hodges, lovely without undue effort, heiress to half the island, stopped gracefully on her Rollerblades. She also wore a tank top and shorts. A coral-colored elastic ribbon held her dark brown hair to a neat ponytail. My first impulse was to lift my camera, to document the tan glow on her cheeks, the sparkles in sunlit peach fuzz.
“What was that about?” She gave me a co-conspirator’s grin.
“It’s her boyfriend’s construction project. She saw me snapping photos, she stopped to vent her curiosity. She didn’t want me here. Her suspicions outran her manners.”
“Suspicions?”
“Bad press, I suppose. Zoning pressures, typical hassles.”
“This town,” said Traci, “not exactly unknown factors.”
“Sure. For newcomers, they’re promises. Except, this case, with Marnie at the
Citizen,
he’s probably received a few breaks with the bad press. Public ovinion, we know about that. Zoning’s
negotiable. The banks and the permit people and progress inspectors shape rules as they go.”
Traci looked northward, pondered the waterfront development area. “It’s happened to my family, too,” she said softly.
“But not recently.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“How are things at home?”
Traci shrugged. “Hasn’t been great.”
“It’s been a third of your life. Same old outlook?”
She looked me in the eye. “He still thinks you’re hot for my bod.”
She’d met David Hodges at Key West High School. They’d dated for two years, then she’d gone off to Tulane. After six years, her undergrad and post-graduate studies, she’d returned to Key West, begun dating him again. Within a year they were married. “I thought you might’ve settled that before you rang the church bell,” I said. “Or else he’d chill out, all this time.”
She turned away. “David thinks expressing jealousy is showing his love. I mean, you’re not the only one.” Her eyes returned to me. “He suspects every man on the island. I thought a long time ago about going to Atlanta, where his folks moved. But he’d have the same attitude there.”
“How does he pat you on the ass, with a paddle?”
She angled her eye at me. “It’s not quite that bad.”
A silver Infiniti drove past and honked. Traci recognized it. She waved. The windshield reflected blue sky. I couldn’t see through the tinted glass.
Traci’s father, Mercer Holloway, had been our representative in Congress for three decades. He’d brought in the military when the Keys’ economy most needed help, mothballed the Navy base once tourism regained its strength. With the economy at rock bottom, he had methodically acquired real estate in the Lower Keys. When growth and inflation arrived, his foresight became evident. His white elephants became
prime property. He had sent his daughters, Traci and Suzanne, to law school. Divorced before he left Washington, he’d retired to Key West to manage his holdings. His son Richard had died four years ago at age twenty-six. Tequila and speedballs, and a widely acknowledged death wish. In the old days I’d felt comfortable with Suzanne, ill at ease around Traci. These days, the opposite was true. I’d never felt comfortable around David Hodges.
“You keeping busy?” she said.
“Paying the bills. I did a magazine piece up in Alabama, a photo essay on the last year-around waterborne mail route in the country. Beautiful river in Magnolia Springs. I did eight days in the Exumas, shooting fashion for some Boston department store. Skinny, snotty models, but fresh fish three meals a day.”
“Did you stay at the Grand Hotel?”
Way out of my price range. “My friend, Sam Wheeler, the fishing …”
“I know Sam.”
“He’s had a camp for years on Weeks Bay, where the Magnolia flows into Mobile Bay. I stayed in his cabin.”
“Weren’t you doing crime scene work?”
“Part-time. Not much since last summer. I did a couple minor things for Sheriff Liska in December. The city hasn’t called since Liska took office at the county. I don’t think anyone at City Hall remembers me. How about you?”
“The last six weeks, I’ve been slamming deals. Thank goodness, because I ruined October. I sold a condo to three twenty-four-year-old boys. Twenty percent down on a $220,000 party pad. They turned it into a crank factory with an ocean view, making the modern equivalent of bathtub gin. They used the tub to mix methamphetamine. And, stink? The ammonia chemicals could have blown the whole complex out to Sand Key.”
“They part of the justice system now?”
“I don’t know about justice. They’re neck-deep in the legal system. We managed to annul the sale. Of course, my commission flew out the window. I’d already spent the money.”
We stared at the new version of Caroline Street, the threestory shopping arcade about to fill the last “vacant” lot between William and Duval. I didn’t begrudge Traci Hodges’s livelihood, the real estate business. But real estate and cooperative, sometimes crooked, city officials had redefined the island since the Nixon years, the buying, selling, and expansions, the teardowns and the new developments.
“So,” she said, “why
are
you taking pictures?”
“My unending documentation. The island. The changes.”
Traci looked through the chain-link. “By changes, you mean progress?”
“Some people don’t use that word.”
“When’s your expose hit the papers?”
“The people who’d care already left town.”
“Why shoot the pictures?”
“Habit. I’ve got boxes full, packed away in closets. I keep them for me. It helps me put everything in perspective, the twenty-odd years I’ve lived here. Someday, off in the future, maybe I’ll do a slide show at the San Carlos. A one-night excuse for old-timers to drink wine and laugh.”
Traci rolled backward, poised to skate away. “Or else cry. Put me on your invitation list, okay?”
Ninety seconds later Traci came back around the block, down Peacon Lane past swing chairs on porches, railings and cacti, stubby driveways and trash cans. Turning toward Simonton, she grinned and shook her head: “You bastard. You upset that poor girl’s exercise regimen. Now she’s over to the Laundromat on Eaton, leaning into the wall, intent as all hell, gabbing on her cell phone. Probably her therapist.”
Traci Hodges’s departing wave suggested some great secret
between us. If one existed, it fell within the realm of ten or twelve years’ flirting, a great promise of attraction, and a handful of innocent hello or good-bye kisses at parties or in restaurants.
I earned my living recording scenes and people that clients asked me to put on film. I didn’t always enjoy my work. I always enjoyed photography. Away from assignments it had been my habit to wander the island’s back alleys, secondary streets, the waterfront, to take photos that didn’t promise income. The color of daylight inspired me most often, primarily early morning and late afternoon. I’d never known ahead of time what might become a significant shot. Often the best were surprises, details seen while setting up unrelated photos, or luck, by timing, trying a different angle or focal length. Over the years I’d often felt like the kiss of death. I’d photograph a building one day, a funky Conch relic, an old sign or something that probably had looked the same for fifty years. Then I’d come back a month later to find it “renovated,” or gone. I knew to blame the nature of change in Key West, not my camera. I knew also that I didn’t like it.
I went back to shooting the progress and impact of the new arcade. The site between the old Carlos Market and a multiunit rental property had been a parking lot. It had provided access to a wood shop, a sculptor’s studio, and another small business. With the start of construction, each outfit had been offered square footage in the new “complex,” complete with an advertising package, common signage, prorated insurance and utility bills, and upscale rent. Each had drawn the shutters and packed it up.
I repositioned myself two or three times, trying to minimize the maze of overhead wires. There are no buried electrical cables on the island. In some locations the water table’s a foot below the pavement.
I let my mind wander as I shot. This version of Caroline
Street inspired memories of the seventies, like “Curly and Lil—Tonite!” in Magic Marker on the front wall of the Mascot Bar. I’d wandered into the Mascot one night, in 1976. Forty or fifty representatives of the shrimping profession were packed into the tiny bar. Curly had little hair, a constant smile. He played a beautiful double-neck hollow-body sunburst guitar. With a voice as tough and lovely and big league as Dolly or Reba or Loretta, Lil had belted, “Has anybody here seen Sweet Thing?” Curly’s solos rang of Les Paul, with a touch of Scotty, Moore. I’d left the Mascot in a hurry after a grizzled, staggering fisherman in rolled-down rubber work boots pointed out my huarache sandals to two or three compadres. They hadn’t approved. Time to go.
There’d been two other tough saloons: The Big Fleet, an unofhcial petty officers’ club, and the Red Doors Inn, with its all-day smells of stale beer and the previous night’s cigarette smoke. Winos in piss-stained trousers slept on wood benches in front of the shuttered Fisherman’s Café. At the east end of the street, people lived in cars and vans buried under mounds of fish nets and nautical gear. There’d been Friday night bloodbaths, shrimpers in pointless frenzy, cops on the offense, pot smoke in the air. A different world.

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