Hard Rain (35 page)

“Maybe none,” Zyzmchuk said.

Leaves lay thick on the narrow track. Trees rose on all sides. Jessie was acutely conscious that they were living things, and this was their domain.

“Did Pat ever go to Russia?”

“No. Not as long as I knew him. He didn't like traveling.”

“Did he have a passport?”

“No. Not that I ever saw. Who is Colonel Grushin?”

“It's a long story.”

“I'm listening.”

Jessie watched Zyzmchuk's face. He seemed to be gazing into the trees. For a while she thought he was formulating his reply. Then she realized he wasn't going to say anything.

Davey followed the track for another mile, maybe two. Then the track forked. The main branch led to the left. Davey took the other one, more a space between the trees than a track. He crept along for about ten minutes, then stopped at the bottom of a short rise.

He pointed. “It's just up there.”

They got out and walked up the rise. It ended in a flat shelf of rock. The night opened in a circle all around. The moon, now less than full, shone on a still sheet of water twenty feet below, black water with a broken silver line shimmering across to the other side.

“Little Pond,” Davey said. He took a flashlight from his pocket and walked, crouching, to the end of the rock. “Here,” he said. “See?”

A thin layer of earth and gravel covered the rock. Davey's light shone on the impression of a lone tire tread, a few inches from the edge.

“I see,” Zyzmchuk said. He looked down. “Got your gear?”

“My gear?” Davey said. “You want me to go in now? I was just in this afternoon, and I told the chief what I saw.”

“Not you,” Zyzmchuk told him. “I want to see for myself.”

“In that case …” Davey went silent. He was looking at the broken silver line; Jessie saw its pattern repeated in his eyes. “Are you certified?”

“What?”

“Have you had much experience with scuba?”

“Some,” Zyzmchuk said.

“It's deep. I hit fifty feet on my gauge, and I wasn't on the bottom.”

“I'll be all right. I'll pay for any damaged equipment.”

“It's not that,” Davey said. He sounded hurt.

“Good,” Zyzmchuk said. “Let's get started.”

They returned to the pickup. Davey laid out the equipment: mask, snorkel, fins, regulator, tank, wet suit, weights, light.

“You'll never get in that wet suit,” Jessie said.

“She's right,” Davey said. “I think I can find you a bigger one by tomorrow.”

Zyzmchuk shook his head. “We'll have to manage without.”

“Are you kidding? It's November. You wouldn't last three minutes in there.”

“Have you got any Vaseline? For lubricating the zippers and stuff?”

“Yes,” Davey admitted.

“That'll do.”

Davey found the Vaseline. Then, carrying the dive bag, he led them along a path around the base of the rock to a small, stony beach.

Zyzmchuk stripped off his clothes. Jessie thought of going back to the pickup or averting her eyes, like some Victorian damsel. That seemed silly, so she just looked.

Zyzmchuk's body was white and hard in the moonlight, like stone, except for the scars. He rubbed Vaseline all over it: polished stone. If he was conscious of her watching, he gave no sign.

“Here,” Jessie said. She stepped forward, took the jar and rubbed Vaseline on the part of his back he couldn't reach. His skin felt warm, much warmer than hers.

He lifted the tank over his head, wincing slightly—Jessie noticed only because she was watching for it—and strapped it on. He put on the fins; spat into the mask, rinsed it in the pond; donned the weight belt; turned on the light.

Then he walked into the water. “Jesus Christ,” he said. He laughed.

“Why not wait until morning?” Jessie asked.

But he had put the regulator in his mouth and slipped below the surface before the last word was out. The moment he was gone Jessie remembered her dream: diving down to the deep place where Kate was crying. A horrible thought germinated in her mind.

Silver bubbles broke nearby on the black water. A trail of them led steadily toward the base of the rock, shrinking smaller and smaller and finally vanishing.

“Did he used to be a football player or something?” Davey asked.

“I don't think so,” Jessie said.

She and Davey stood on the stony beach. Jessie, in her wool sweater and suede jacket, still felt cold. She wanted to hug herself warmer, but didn't because of Zyzmchuk down in the pond.

“Five minutes,” Davey said. Then there was silence until he said, “Ten.”

“Have you got another tank?” Jessie asked.

“Not here. There'd be nothing—”

Yellow light glowed up through the water near the base of the rock. “Here he comes,” Davey said.

Jessie saw silver bubbles. They grew bigger. Zyzmchuk stood up in the water, a few yards from the beach. The polished stone had turned from white to blue. He raised his mask and spat out the regulator.

“I'd like to open that trunk,” he said. His words were slurred, as though his lips and tongue had thickened. “What have you got?”

“Like a torch?” Davey said. “I left it at home. The chief said this was just for—”

“A crowbar will do.”

“I don't have that either. I've got a screwdriver.”

“We'll try it.”

Davey ran to the pickup.

“Ivan?” Jessie said.

“Yeah?”

She'd been about to say, Why not come out now? Or, Leave it till tomorrow. Something in his eyes told her not to. So instead she said, “How's the water?”

He laughed. He was still laughing when Davey returned with the screwdriver. Davey tossed it to him, and he dipped out of sight.

“Is he okay?” Davey said.

“Seems like it.”

They watched the silver bubbles. The bubbles had lost some of their luster; the moon was slipping down the sky. An unbroken line of cloud was closing behind it like a sliding door.

“Five minutes,” Davey said. “I hope he's watching his air. A big guy like that can go through a lot of air.”

Time passed. It seemed like a long time to Jessie.

Davey said, “Six minutes. Shit. Does he know how to make a free ascent?”

“What's that?”

“Jesus.” Davey started to pace, up and down on the stony beach, checking his watch every few seconds. “Why couldn't he wait till morning? Nothing's going to change. It's only a few hours, for God's sake.”

Jessie thought about that. Was it that Ivan Zyzmchuk was a driven man, like some Type A executive who had to have things done his way and when he wanted? Or did it have to do with something else, such as losing the fight in the barnyard and letting Mr. Mickey and the real estate man get away? Was he punishing himself down there? Or just getting his licks in?

Jessie didn't have time to think it through. Underwater, yellow glowed again, and silver bubbles grew bigger. “Here he comes,” Davey said.

“Have you got a blanket?”

“In the truck.”

“Get it.”

Davey ran off.

Zyzmchuk rose in the water, just a few yards away. He was shaking. He didn't come forward. Jessie realized that he was shaking so hard he couldn't manage the last few steps to the beach. Jessie went in and got him.

Davey wrapped the blanket around the hard blue body. Together he and Jessie pounded on it. “Here,” Davey said, holding out a cup of steaming coffee from the Thermos. Zyzmchuk couldn't hold it. Jessie tipped it up to his lips. His teeth were chattering; Jessie could hear them. She held the back of his head to steady it. He no longer felt warm, but icy cold.

Some of the coffee went in. Then more. “Okay,” Zyzmchuk said. “I'm all right.” His speech was so slurred Jessie could hardly understand him.

He said something else. She put her ear close to his mouth. “Couldn't open the trunk,” he said.

“They'll do that tomorrow.”

“But I found something else.”

“What?”

He looked away, across the pond.

“Tell me.”

Zyzmchuk licked his lips. “Another car.”

“Another car?” Davey said. “I didn't see another car.”

“It was under the Corvette. They must have been pushed off the same spot.”

“What kind of car?” Jessie said. “Tell me.”

Zyzmchuk opened his shaking hand. On his palm lay a metal disk with the letters BMW printed on it.

32

It took longer than the police chief had expected. The Corvette didn't come up until three o'clock, the BMW until after four. Both cars gushed water as they swung over Little Pond, up onto the big rock: white water from the Corvette, muddy water from the BMW.

The two cars, sitting side by side, had some things in common—low mileage: the BMW had seven thousand miles on the odometer, the Corvette one hundred and three, sixteen more than when Jessie had seen it under the tarpaulin; color: they were the same shade of blue; ownership: soggy papers taken from the glove compartments showed that both cars were in Pat Rodney's name.

But there were differences. The BMW had a current sticker on the license plate. The Corvette's vanity plate—PAT 69—read 1969 and hadn't been updated. And the trunk of the BMW was empty. That wasn't true of the Corvette. A body, jammed into fetal position, lay in the Corvette's trunk—a woman's body with a big gold hoop dangling from one mushroom-colored ear.

It was Blue Rodney.

She was fully dressed—jeans, Birkenstock sandals, an embroidered Mexican shirt—but the shirt buttons had popped open, so it was easy to see the round, bloodless hole between her breasts. That made Jessie remember the red fingerpainting around the light switch at Spacious Skies and the taste of blood—Blue's blood—in her mouth.

An ambulance arrived. The attendants laid Blue on a stretcher and carried her inside. As they set her down, her head flopped to one side. Brown water ran from her slack mouth and down the white bodywork of the ambulance.

“Oh God,” Jessie said. The words made almost no sound. She was so rigid with tension she could barely speak.

Then Davey, in a bright orange wet suit, surfaced from his last dive. He swam to shore. It seemed to take a long time. Jessie's eyes were glued to him, straining to pick out some body movement that would reveal the news he carried. At last he stood up in shallow water, pulled off his mask, let go his regulator, wiped the snot from his nose and stepped onto the stony beach. Jessie was waiting for him.

“That's it,” he said and shivered like a dog.

No more bodies.

Jessie's worst fears weren't realized, but they'd grown more palpable, less abstract, fed by hours of watching the work at Little Pond. Now they didn't go away, but merely receded a little, like an army biding its time.

Two tow trucks came. They towed away the Corvette and the BMW. The ambulance left. Then the police chief, the fire chief, Davey. Cold drizzle drifted down from the sky.

Jessie turned from the pond to find Zyzmchuk watching her. “I could use a drink,” he said. “How about you?”

She nodded.

They stopped at a little inn off Route 9 and sat before a fire. It hissed and crackled in the grate, but it didn't warm Jessie. She felt cold, almost as cold as mushroom-colored skin.

“What'll it be?” Zyzmchuk asked.

“Anything.”

“Two brandies,” Zyzmchuk said to the innkeeper. He didn't look like the kind of innkeeper who came from a family of innkeepers; he looked like the kind of innkeeper who'd abandoned a high-paying city job in pursuit of some country squire dream.

“Will that be genuine Cognac from France or Spanish brandy?”

“Genuine Cognac for the lady,” Zyzmchuk said. “Rotgut for me.”

“I assure you,” the innkeeper began, reluctantly adding, “sir. Our Spanish brandy is rather—”

“Make that rotgut all around,” Jessie interjected. The words came out unbidden.

Zyzmchuk laughed. The innkeeper closed his mouth and went away.

Spanish brandy came. Zyzmchuk raised his glass. “To picadors,” he said.

The Spanish brandy burned Jessie's throat and radiated heat through her body, as though it had distilled the power of the Spanish sun.

“Sometimes Spanish brandy's just the thing,” Zyzmchuk said. “Especially the kind with ten or twelve stars on the bottle.”

They sat on a couch, not at opposite ends, not touching. Blue-tipped flames nipped at each other in the grate. A Vermont yellow pages lay on a side table. Zyzmchuk picked it up, leafed through.

“That's funny,” he said. “They're not listed.”

“Who's not listed?”

“Big-Top Motors in Bennington.”

“Who are they?”

“The dealership that sold the Corvette, according to the chrome writing on the trunk.”

“Why do you want to talk to them?” Jessie was aware of the note of irritation in her voice, but was too tired, too worried to overcome it.

Zyzmchuk ignored it. “Someone—the man you call Mr. Mickey—went to a—”

“I don't call him Mr. Mickey. He calls himself Mr. Mickey.”

“I meant it's unlikely to be his name. There aren't a lot of Mickeys in Russia.”

Jessie and Zyzmchuk looked at each other. Anger sparked between them, like electricity between two terminals. Zyzmchuk switched it off by raising his hand, palm out, and saying, “Peace, Bazak?”

Jessie laughed, not hard, not long, but a laugh. “Peace, Vaclav.”

They ordered more brandy. “I knew you'd like it,” the innkeeper said. He poked the fire, emptied an ashtray, straightened his ascot and went away.

“The man who calls himself Mr. Mickey,” Zyzmchuk resumed, “went to some trouble not just to hide the body, but to hide the Corvette as well.”

“Why?”

“That's what we have to find out.”