Free Gumbo Limbo by Tom Corcoran Page B

I’d never known about Scotty Auguie. It made sense, in retrospect, but he’d never been flamboyant, never broadcast his wealth, never acted the pirate.
    The storm had worn itself out. The rain let up slightly. Palms still tossed in the Blockbuster parking lot. Smells of Pizza Hut mixed with the Sunbird’s musty stench. Though my mind was wandering in the past, something across the street caught my eye: Abby Womack, inside a Plexiglas bus-stop shelter in front of the Howard Johnson Motel, straddling my bike in tight bicycle pants, talking into a cellular phone. Thigh and bun with a dancer’s tone. Managing her accounts from my two-wheeler, I assumed. The dampness patterns in her shirt suggested perspiration as well as having been caught in the rain.
    Zack, how could you?
    Zack, how could you resist?
    I couldn’t ask Spence to stop. We were wedged into the far right-hand lane. Traffic in both directions was bumper-tobumper, pushing forty. She hadn’t told me where she was staying. I didn’t know how to reach her.
    Jesse parked fifty yards from the grocery’s door. At nine A.M., the smell of fried chicken hung heavy in the damp air of the parking lot. We fought our way up the access ramp, then inside to the photo-processing counter. Supermarkets have become the three-ring circus of the Modern Age, performers jockeying their carts for position as if each aisle were its own stock-car race, each purchase decision a high-wire act. The types were universal: blue-haired women terrorizing other blue-haired women with overfilled buggies; straggling husbands lost in a maze of soaps and cereals; toddlers whining for candies; befuddled men looking for short lines to check out their cold cuts and razor blades.
    I told Marshall Hoff exactly what Liska had ordered. Hoff was all business. He’d personally supervise the film. Spence and I stood aside to escape the hubbub—people scratching lottery
tickets, contemplating carpet shampoo rental, the Rand McNally map display, the Duracells, the Omni-Copy machine. A few perusing sunglasses on a rainy day.
    I nudged again: “You come up with a recollection of how Cahill came to be included in this money deal?”
    Spence stared off at the magazine racks. “I’ve got this picture in my mind: the three of them and me sitting at that cable-reel table that was outside the Chart Room. You and your friend wander out of the bar and sit in the two empty chairs, those ugly olive-colored vinyl jobs. It’s around lunchtime. Your friend’s wife had gone home that morning, I think to Illinois. He was leaving that afternoon for a business meeting in Texas. We all shoot the shit awhile, we all knew him from other times he’d come to visit you. Then you leave to go someplace. Were you working for the radio station?”
    “I don’t even know what year you’re talking about.”
    “We knew he was legitimate. We knew he’d spent money for charter boats, hotel rooms, and all. For some reason, some other visit, he’d given one of the boys his business card. The bank logo. We understood he was the real thing. Not a cop, and not likely to run to the DEA even if he declined to play a part.”
    “You’re saying, the reason they approached him, he was a friend of mine?”
    “You were the silent stamp of approval. After you left, I left, too. The three of them went up to your buddy’s room and hatched the deal.”
    “Did Cahill agree that day? Or did he think it over?”
    “That, I don’t know. Looks like we got here just before the rush.”
    The hubbub intensified around the checkout lanes and photo-processing area. People were talking like crazy, indignant and worried. I watched several women hurry outside without bothering to raise their umbrellas. I wondered if a purse had been
snatched in the lot, or someone had spotted a waterspout between the highway and Sigsbee Park.
    “We’re all set, here.” Marshall Hoff waved a packet in my direction. Even Hoff appeared agitated.
    I scoped my watch.