Gumbo Limbo (5 page)
Her mouth slammed shut. All I heard were sounds of cicadas and tree frogs. If I was going to get an answer, I’d have to extract it gradually. The first thing she did inside the house was kick off her shoes.
We talked for three hours, stopping only to eat, pour more rum, and use the bathroom. I offered to close up the house and run the air-conditioning, but Abby insisted I keep things as I usually have them, twin ceiling fans at slow speed in the living room, single fans in the kitchen and bedroom.
Admiring my house plants, rearranging my furniture, occasionally wiping perspiration from her forehead with paper towels, Abby Womack related her history with Cahill. She had initiated the liaison after meeting him at a tax seminar. It had been a yearlong fling, with mid-week sex in a dozen different hotel rooms, friends’ apartments, even parked cars. Zack had rolled with the affair until Claire, after seven years of marriage, suddenly became pregnant. Unsure how to deal with the new development and the illicit relationship, Zack had waffled. In the end Abby had
ended things. “I didn’t mind busting up a shaky marriage. That was just business, as they say. But I wasn’t going to break up a family, good or bad.”
ended things. “I didn’t mind busting up a shaky marriage. That was just business, as they say. But I wasn’t going to break up a family, good or bad.”
“This is a part of Zack’s life I knew nothing about.”
She looked away and said, “I knew I made the right decision when I left him. But all these years there’s been this half-full, half-empty feeling. I once called it the five-percent loneliness factor. How’s that for business jargon?” She laughed at herself and glanced over for my reaction. “I’ve been happy, in general. But my memory of Zack has been a perpetual rain cloud hovering a mile west of the picnic.”
I abbreviated the tale of my morning bicycle search. Then Abby wanted details, exact times, wanted to see the Rolex watch, wanted to know more about how I’d met Zack, and how often we’d been in touch, both over the years and recently. She asked for the exact wording of the call from Sloppy Joe’s, then asked if I’d write down a list of hotels I had called.
I was bothered by her reluctance to explain the equity placement. Hoping that the Mount Gay rum had inspired a loosening of professional ethics, I took another tack. I began telling her about the days when I first bought my house, when Zack and Claire, before the twins were born, used to visit five or six times a year. I suggested that, when the Eagles were singing “Life in the Fast Lane,” and every maniac on the island was acting it out, significant capital had only one likely source in Key West. Abby hemmed and hawed but said nothing. I pushed, perhaps too hard. She declined to identify the investors or to give details on how the investment task had been accomplished.
We both stopped talking, exhausted, booze-drunk but energy-sober. She walked to the kitchen to refill our glasses. I observed her figure, the tone of her thighs and calves, the prominent tendons at the backs of her knees and ankles. Without question, I understood the attraction Zack must have felt. But not his willingness to deceive Claire.
“So there’s a chance your lover included you in a criminal conspiracy,” I said when she returned to the living room. “Did you see that as a favor or an opportunity?”
She looked away from me. “Zack was a gentleman. I knew nothing about a conspiracy. I still know nothing … if there was one. I received a check drawn on a trust account and a copy of the trust agreement. All up-and-up.”
“But you knew.”
She turned back toward me. “Are you taping this?”
“Is Zack’s involvement in this conspiracy the reason you fear danger?”
“I don’t think the danger is coming from law enforcement, if that’s what you mean.”
“Why was he hired in the first place?”
She looked off again, toward the ceiling. “The impression I got, my take on it, some people had a windfall and wanted to invest for the future.” Her eyes came back to me. “Or do you mean … Why did they pick Zack?”
I nodded.
“I don’t know.”
It was eleven-thirty when Abby returned from a trip to the bathroom and said, “Why did he call you from a bar? If he wanted to drink at nine in the morning, why didn’t he just show up at your door with a six-pack?”
I had no answer for that.
“Do you have a pool?”
“Not even a Jacuzzi.”
“I’m not used to feeling so sticky. I feel like I’ve got tiny grains of sand all over my face and my arms and my legs. I even smell fishy.”
“It’s dried salt. Ocean humidity. The wind picked up around sunset. Put mist in the air.” Rum talk: I added, “There’s a shower in the yard. Go for it.”
She didn’t flinch. “Soap, shampoo, towel? Already out there?”
“The first two, yes. There’s a low-watt light on a motion detector.”
“Bring me a towel in three minutes, okay?” She began to unbutton her blouse as she walked toward the side porch. “And a fresh tall one of what we’ve been having.”
Abby faced away and dropped her blouse and bra on the porcelain table. The bra had put red marks just under her shoulder blades. I saw what would happen next. I wished that time would slow, that her next moves would take hours. I wanted to memorize every curve and follicle and tuck. I wanted it to be wide-screen, with high-volume Surround-Sound so I could hear the elastic separate from skin, hear whispers as inner thighs softly rubbed. I wanted to know the moisture, inhale the air that had touched her. Instead, I watched through a fog of alcohol, the unfocused, harsh rush of adrenaline. Her shorts and panties hit the porch deck. I felt a wrenching in my lap. My heartbeat became a compression hammer in my chest. She straightened, stepped away from the shorts, dropped her bracelet on the table, and went out the door. I sat as if paralyzed. In the eighty-degree heat of the evening, I shivered.
Pulling a fresh towel from the bathroom shelf, I suddenly realized that, all evening, I’d neglected to check my machine for messages. There were two. The tape rewound, then kicked in: “Teresa Barga, here. It’s twenty after six and it’s too hot to go running, so I’m going to go back to the office to catch up on work, and then I’m going out for a drink. I was looking for company. If you get this message, call me at the city. Otherwise, some other time soon, okay?” The second message was a dud. I got to hear someone exhale and hang up.
I mixed two new drinks, then sat under the ceiling fan I’d installed on the porch. Moth wings flapped against the screens. Somewhere in the neighborhood a television played at high volume.
Jay Leno. Two or three mopeds ran the stop sign at Fleming and Frances. Tree frogs croaked in the dark as my close friend’s ex-lover splashed in my open-air shower. Her story had thrown a wrench at my image of Cahill. I’d rehashed the day’s events enough times to finally, mercifully, draw a blank. It hadn’t broken my heart to stand in my own house and gawk at a naked woman, especially since it had been four months since I had parted ways with my lover of three years.
Jay Leno. Two or three mopeds ran the stop sign at Fleming and Frances. Tree frogs croaked in the dark as my close friend’s ex-lover splashed in my open-air shower. Her story had thrown a wrench at my image of Cahill. I’d rehashed the day’s events enough times to finally, mercifully, draw a blank. It hadn’t broken my heart to stand in my own house and gawk at a naked woman, especially since it had been four months since I had parted ways with my lover of three years.
The sound of the shower diminished. Abby cried out in a long exhalation. I surmised that a palmetto bug had invaded her space; I doubted that anything as serious as a scorpion had attacked. She moaned again. Concerned, I opened the screen door and almost fell into the yard. Another gasp. For the sake of propriety—or some other reason, in near drunkenness—I hesitated to barge in. Another shuddering moan. As I hurried toward the shower door, the rush of water sounded even more muffled. I saw only one foot on the teak grate flooring. The other must have been on the shower stall’s narrow seat. As I reached for the door a blissful wail filled the yard.
She had reached a magnificent orgasm.
I retreated to the porch. Louder splashing resumed. After a minute the water shut off. Abby called to ask for the towel. I dangled it over the shower door and again retreated. A minute later, with her hair slicked back, the towel around her waist, she walked onto the porch, picked up her clothing and her fresh drink, and glided past me into the living room.
“Feel better?” I immediately regretted my choice of words.
She turned to look back and said, “The wind makes the palm fronds sound like waves hitting a beach.” She wadded her bra and stuffed it into her purse. Her breasts were classically lovely, the right one slightly larger, her nipples puckered from the coolness under the fans. “I know. I sound like I live on the mainland.” She stuck her arms into her blouse, pulled her bracelet onto her wrist, and, still facing me, dropped the towel so she
could pull on her panties. She had trimmed her dark, coppertinged pubic hair to a rectangle the size of a pack of matches. She knotted the blouse’s loose hem corners, folded her shorts, and laid them across the top of a chair. “Also,” she added, “I’m a fool for pulsating shower heads on flexible hoses.” For a moment she gave in to melancholy, then flashed a quick smile. “The price one pays for being attracted to men who are already taken.” She peered into the kitchen. “I didn’t finish my dinner. Can I stick those plates in the microwave?”
could pull on her panties. She had trimmed her dark, coppertinged pubic hair to a rectangle the size of a pack of matches. She knotted the blouse’s loose hem corners, folded her shorts, and laid them across the top of a chair. “Also,” she added, “I’m a fool for pulsating shower heads on flexible hoses.” For a moment she gave in to melancholy, then flashed a quick smile. “The price one pays for being attracted to men who are already taken.” She peered into the kitchen. “I didn’t finish my dinner. Can I stick those plates in the microwave?”
I tried to answer but slurred my first two or three words. I’d attained the state Sam’s fishing friend Norman Wood called “drunk, sexy, and harmless.” Not that I had been invited to partake. Not that I would try. She had said that her romance with Zack was history; I knew that history has a way of doubling back on us. It was his affair, not mine. Somehow, Abby and I had silently agreed on traditional hot-tub rules: see all, think what you want, but touch not. Her manner invited observation, nothing more. That was fine with me.
She punched the microwave buttons. “I love your place. It makes me miss my cats. That motel room I’m in smells like fifteen years’ worth of roach spray and Lemon Pledge.” She opened the oven and stuck her finger into the food to assess temperature. “Do you have a futon?”
“The frame fell apart. You’ll have to use it on the floor.”
Her eyes locked onto mine. “Will you help me find him?”
“He could be on a Greyhound Bus in Orlando by now.”
“That doesn’t answer my question. I don’t know why I feel so compelled to help the bastard …” She smiled wistfully and looked away, then turned and held out her hand. “Team?”
I shook it. “Team.”
She asked how to unlock my bicycle in case she woke early and felt like a ride. I opened a fresh toothbrush for her before she took her shift in the bathroom. Later I heard her rustling around in the kitchen, getting a glass of water, then moving
around in the living room. I fell asleep before she hit the futon.
around in the living room. I fell asleep before she hit the futon.
In the middle of the night I got up to use the john. In the glow of outside illumination—a neighbor’s crime light and a street lamp over on Fleming—I saw Abby Womack with the top sheet pushed off the futon, my old Full Moon Saloon T-shirt hiked up to expose her smooth pale belly, her right hand inside her underpants, comforting more than five percent of her loneliness.
G
ray light hung behind slits in the blinds the next time I got up. Distant lightning launched a roll of growling thunder. I needed to get my tail in gear. I didn’t know what time Duffy Lee Hall might arrive in his darkroom. I wanted to connect as early as possible. I half-expected Cahill to call with a bizarre tale or booze-logic explanation.
ray light hung behind slits in the blinds the next time I got up. Distant lightning launched a roll of growling thunder. I needed to get my tail in gear. I didn’t know what time Duffy Lee Hall might arrive in his darkroom. I wanted to connect as early as possible. I half-expected Cahill to call with a bizarre tale or booze-logic explanation.
Abby Womack had stacked the rolled-up futon and folded T-shirt on the rocking chair. For some reason the house smelled of cinnamon. I checked at the kitchen window. She had borrowed the Cannondale. Low clouds hovered, more violet than gray. Shrub leaves reflected dark, gloomy blues, bleak tones not shown on postcards. I sensed a strange neighborhood quiet. The peace put me on edge until I realized that the weather had chased away sunny-day industry, the hammer ensembles, Skil saws, and backup beepers employed by property renovators and the city’s perpetual water main and sewer repair crews.
Rain makes for long days in Key West. Streets flood, sidewalks crumble, electric power becomes intermittent. Pervasive humidity promotes mildew, and mildew spreads across exposed surfaces like creeping weed. Craziness flourishes, tropical cabin fever sets in. After three days of no sunlight, normal people tended to join the island’s whacko majority. The longer the spate of inclemency, the larger the yachts in divorce lawyers’ dreams.
Another lightning flash. Sharp thunder banged the windowpanes, echoed off the hardwood floor. So much for quiet.
The wall clock said six-forty. Cuba called: I scooped Bustelo and toggled the machine that ruled my mornings. I felt no hangover pain, though after rum I deserved both varieties: sharp neck tightness and deep cranial ache. No pain, but a certain fog. I hoped my mental haze would burn off by noon. I didn’t need a full day of dumbness.
For damn sure I didn’t need to hear my brass doorbell. Two minutes into the day, too early for business. Jesse Spence stuck his head past the screen door. He looked like he hadn’t slept. He looked like he’d just witnessed a car wreck, or participated in one.
“Coffee?” I waved him in.
“I got a problem.”
“I photographed that yesterday.”
He stepped inside and sank into the closest chair. “My place was creeped by somebody good. A pro.”
I already knew that. “Well, the alarm thing …”
“All that crash boom bang was a diversion to cover spook shit. No fucking way it was teenybopper vandalism. The bastards went into sealed boxes on my closet shelves, through all my old files. They retaped it all, so I wouldn’t notice what they’d done. I can’t even tell if anything’s missing.” Spence stuck out his leg so he could reach into a front pocket. He slid out a Ziploc bag. It held a small metallic object. “Here’s the frosting. From the phone.”
A miniature listening device. I had used Spence’s phone to call home for my messages. I’d also called Duffy Lee Hall to schedule the film drop-off. “You sure you want to keep this under your hat? Who’s to say these pros won’t be back for a second helping?”
“Right now, it needs to stay close to home.”
“So we can have an ingrown investigation …”
“So I can think about this a day or two. Make some calls.”
I slowly poured two cups. “You mind if I ask a couple of questions about the old days?”
Spence averted his eyes. “That could get off-limits real quick.”
“Oh, come on. It’s ancient history.”
“Best forgotten. For twenty years I’ve specialized in forgetful.”
I handed Spence a mug and sat opposite him. “Listen to yourself, man. Your house just got tossed. Somebody’s trying to slap your memory.”
His mouth formed a tight slit. His eyes lost focus as he juggled those years of secrets, shifted them to the present, readjusted his tolerance for instant profits and worldly adventure.
I gave it a shot: “You privy to an old investment partnership?”
His trancelike expression remained. “I never thought your Chicago friend would blab. I talked to him last week. Everything was cool. He was going to meet me in the restaurant yesterday. I gotta tell you, I got the heebie-jeebies when you showed instead of him.”
Bingo. Zack’s important lunch, a meeting with Spence.
“You didn’t get the heebie-jeebs when that player walked in, the one I asked you about?”
Jesse turned and looked me in the eye. “What’s he got to do with it?”
“Probably nothing.”
“This sudden interest … What’s in it for you?”
I shook my head. “Zack didn’t blab. He called me from Sloppy’s yesterday morning. He said three things. He asked me to join him there. He had a lunch date at Mangoes. And he wanted me to help him celebrate something, but he didn’t say what. By the time I got to Sloppy’s, he’d disappeared. I don’t know if he meant to vanish, or if somebody spooked him, or somebody forced him into something.”
“How do you know about this stuff from the past?”
“Adding two and two. A lady who helped him invest that money found me last night at Louie’s. She’s looking, too. Worried because she can’t find him. She offered a sketchy outline of the arrangement, but no names. She wouldn’t let loose any details.”
Spence looked stunned. He wise-toned: “Ethics are important.”
“Hey, the partnership’s not my concern. I’ve got no opinion, other than I don’t want my friend in a jam. But this woman thinks something’s gone weird. She thinks somebody’s trying to toss a wrench in the works.”
I shut up and let Spence bat the facts around. I hoped he’d weigh the false safety of silence against the concept of teamwork.
Jesse stirred. “I’ve been patient so many fucking years … Now it turns into cowboys and Indians.” He looked up. “So you came into Mangoes looking for Cahill?”
I nodded, then added conjecture to prime the pump. “The person from back then that I associate with you is Buzz Burch. How much does he stand to get out of this?”
“We were fraternity brothers at the University of Georgia. We shared a farmhouse outside Athens. The Watergate era. Party central. Moonshine and LSD and the Allman Brothers. We worshiped the fucking Allman Brothers.”
“Where’s Burch these days?”
“Behind bars at Marianna, up near Tallahassee, last I heard. They’ve bounced him around the system. Talladega; someplace in Kentucky; another time in Missouri. The last fifteen years, he’s traveled more than I have, and I’m a free man. He’s due out sometime in the next couple of weeks.”
“Long time to spend at camp.”
“They threw him the whole menu. Started out, he paid off a DEA boy in West Palm to tip him when the net was about to fall. He and the wife—I don’t know if you knew Katie—and
their little daughter were living in a beach house up in St. Augustine. He got the warning call and chartered a Lear. Next thing you know he’s drinking Perrier Jou
t on a beach in Barbados. Fucker left so quick he forgot a shoe box of money in his kitchen cabinet. A quarter million. The feds had their own beach party on that lump. They reported it as sixty-five thousand.”
their little daughter were living in a beach house up in St. Augustine. He got the warning call and chartered a Lear. Next thing you know he’s drinking Perrier Jou
t on a beach in Barbados. Fucker left so quick he forgot a shoe box of money in his kitchen cabinet. A quarter million. The feds had their own beach party on that lump. They reported it as sixty-five thousand.”“A lot of money to kiss off because it slipped your mind.”
“This doesn’t blow up in our faces, he oughta be okay.”
I recalled two times when Buzzy Burch had done me favors. I’d accepted a short-notice photo job in the late seventies, a series of brochure shots for a sailboat manufacturer in Port Orange, south of Daytona Beach. I’d chartered a plane to Miami so I could catch a connecting flight to Daytona. My pilot had failed to show. I learned later that he’d been drunk for two days in the Boca Chica Bar. I was grateful for his having missed our appointment. Burch had spotted me waiting at Flying Fish Aviation and asked why I was hanging out at the flight facility. He offered me a ride. He was being picked up and taken to Charleston for a business meeting.
Three hours later the twin Beechcraft dropped me in Daytona. The pilot had even called ahead to arrange my rental car. I hadn’t inquired about the nature of Burch’s meeting. I also chose not to share the Marley-sized spliff that he’d sucked down during the flight; I recalled that the stereo had blasted the Marshall Tucker Band, over and over again, from takeoff to landing. Two weeks later I bought Buzzy a couple beers in the Full Moon Saloon, and he declared us even, debt repaid.
The other favor, perhaps the same year, followed my failing to buy tickets for a Mose Allison concert at the Harbor Docks. They’d gone on sale when I was out of town and had sold out in a day. For weeks beforehand, I’d counted on making the concert. Somehow Burch had found me two front-row seats.
“Why didn’t he stay in Barbados?” I said.
“The feds were pissed that they’d missed him. They sicced
Interpol on his butt. He got word of that, too, and he skipped around the islands, partying like a zombie on a mission. He sent the wife and kid back to the States. The cops finally knocked on his hotel room door in Singapore. They confiscated four million in bank-deposit slips from his suitcase, kept him in some shithole prison for a year before the extradition got straightened out.”
Interpol on his butt. He got word of that, too, and he skipped around the islands, partying like a zombie on a mission. He sent the wife and kid back to the States. The cops finally knocked on his hotel room door in Singapore. They confiscated four million in bank-deposit slips from his suitcase, kept him in some shithole prison for a year before the extradition got straightened out.”
“A blaze of glory. Where’s the family these days?”
“Katie’s always stayed nearby, wherever they sent him. She rents a house, gets a job, does all this networking with other jailhouse widows. Gotta give her credit. All these years, she’s waited for him. I think Samantha’s in college, up in Gainesville, last I—”
The phone rang. I’d forgotten about Duffy Lee Hall. I got it on the second ring. Chicken Neck Liska, pumped: “Yesterday, in my office, you asked did a name cross my desk.”
“You blew me off. Abe Lincoln wouldn’t mean squat.”
“My one-liners come back and bite me in the ass. What was that name?”
I flashed on telling something awful to Claire Cahill. “Another body?”
“Not today.” A two-beat pause. “Not yet, at least.”
I couldn’t think of a way to dodge. I said Zack’s full name. Spence’s head snapped around, but he didn’t look directly at me.
“How you know him?” said Liska. “Something pertains to your sideline?”
“He’s an old Navy chum. We go back twenty-five years. Why do you ask?”
“None of your business. You’re a picture taker … Wait a sec …” He put me on hold.
Why none of my business? At least Liska hadn’t asked me to name next of kin. Spence stood, walked slowly to the porch without looking at me.
Liska came back on. “Unless you missed your darkroom ace … You there?”
“Barely.”
“We’re screwed on that crime-scene film. A fire on Simonton last night, in the pharmacy. My guess, Duffy Hall’s out of business.”
“I missed him. The film’s still here at the house.”
“When you fuck up, bubba, your timing’s perfect. Take it to Publix at Searstown. Ask for Marshall Hoff, the manager. Tell him it’s police work, and tell him I sent you. Then stand there while they run it. Don’t let that friggin’ film out of your sight.”
I’ve always preferred pressing the shutter button to working a darkroom. I’ve never pretended to have the patience. But it can take years to build rapport with a dependable darkroom technician. Turning photos into quality negatives and decent prints takes teamwork, mutual respect, expertise, and a certain amount of telepathy. If Duffy Lee Hall was out of business, my job had just become a huge pain.
Two sucker punches in sixty seconds. Good goddamned morning.
Third problem. The lightning had become more intense. Rubber tires are supposed to provide insulation for vehicles, but I’ve never felt compelled to prove the concept aboard a Kawasaki. Spence stuck his head back in the door. “You drive over?” I said.
“You were talking to who?”
“Detective Liska at the city. I asked him yesterday—after I left your bar—if he’d seen Cahill’s name come across his desk. He blew me off.”
“And now he’s suddenly interested?”
“He wouldn’t say why.”
“Lemme ask once more.” Spence’s voice was firm, but he grinned slowly as if to imply that he wouldn’t be angry if I admitted to a scheme. “No bullshit, now. What’s in it for you?”
“Zip,” I said, “for the same reason I didn’t climb aboard a pot-smuggling sailboat twenty years ago. The old cliché, ‘If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.’ I couldn’t have functioned
in prison. Not so much for being inside, but the mental confinement …” It spooked me even to consider the risk. “Back then I was just like I am now. Not rich, but comfortable. Happy making money snapping pictures.”
in prison. Not so much for being inside, but the mental confinement …” It spooked me even to consider the risk. “Back then I was just like I am now. Not rich, but comfortable. Happy making money snapping pictures.”
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