Free Gumbo Limbo by Tom Corcoran

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.”
    “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