Mangrove Squeeze (12 page)

"Fred," said Pineapple, "I'm not so sure this is a good idea." They were cruising past the incongruities of Houseboat Row—the gangways festooned with flower boxes, gingerbread trim carved in the shapes of anchors and compass roses. Fred had stopped off at the hot dog to pick up his roommate; he couldn't resist showing off the doomed car. Together, they'd figured out how to put the top down; Lazslo's Fleetwood was now open to the stars.

Fred drummed lightly on the steering wheel. "Not a good idea?" he said. "Why not?"

Piney didn't answer.

Fred said, "Piney, how many times in your life you get to ride in a Caddy? Lotta people, they get to do it once. They get a bigass Caddy hearse with that chrome thing like a baby carriage. Guys like us, would we even get that one fancy ride? In a pig's eye, we would."

They reached the intersection of South Roosevelt and the highway. Fred was having a splendid time savoring the car. He snuggled his butt against the cushy, low-slung seat, squinted with pleasure at the softly glowing numbers on the speedometer. He steered with one hand while the other absently fondled the curves and knobs and swellings of the dashboard.

Pineapple said, "Fred, you got a license?"

He didn't answer. He was having some second thoughts about picking Piney up. If he was only gonna be a killjoy...

"What if a cop stops us? What then, Fred?"

"Fuck 'em if 'ey can't take a joke," said the driver.

But Pineapple was not impressed and Fred tempered his bravado.

"Look, I'm not even going the speed limit," he said. He turned north, the same way he turned on his rusty bike to get to the seven-thirty shape-up on Stock Island. He wished it was morning now and the whole crew could see him roll in behind the wheel.

"The guy whose car it is," Piney chipped away. "What if he reports it stolen?"

"Why would he report it stolen?" answered Fred. "He wants it lost, not found."

"What if he changes his mind?"

Fred kept driving but his enjoyment of it was already starting to erode. After a moment he said, "Why would he tell me lose it if he wasn't pretty fucking sure?"

"This guy says sink his car and I'm supposed to follow his logic?" Piney said. "All I'm saying, I'm saying it's a little strange a guy pays you money to sink his car. I'm not sure it's such a good idea is all I'm saying."

Fred pushed in the cigarette lighter, told himself he was having a better time than in fact he was by now. It was just a car, after all; all he was doing was pressing on the gas pedal and holding the wheel, and no one but Piney was there to see him do it. Besides, his sober friend's worry was infecting him, he was beginning to feel a little spooked himself. He said, "I guess I shouldn't've taken you along."

Piney didn't respond to that. He'd found the button that made his seat recline; he was leaning way back and looking at the constellations. After a moment, he said, "What if this guy did something really bad, I mean really, really bad, and we're helping him get away with it?"

It was Fred's turn not to answer. He crossed from Stock Island onto Boca Chica; the ugly riot of down-market commerce yielded to the fenced-off bleakness of military property. Up ahead, driving in the opposite direction and weaving lane to lane, was a cop car with its blue lights flashing. Fred held his breath until he was good and sure the cop was after some other jerk. But now he was hardly enjoying the drive at all.

"Long ways off," he said, "the fucking Everglades."

"A deal's a deal," said Piney.

"Ya just said," Fred reminded him, "we shouldn't help this guy get away with something bad."

Pineapple kept looking at the stars. "Just as possible, I guess, he's a good guy that's in trouble."

"Piney," said Fred, "fuck we gonna get home from the Everglades?"

"Bus or something," said his friend. He didn't sound concerned. "Not like we're in a hurry."

"Look," said Fred. "I said I'd lose the car. Sink it. In a swamp." They were leaving Boca Chica and entering Big Coppitt; cinder-block taverns hunkered lower than the roadway between convenience stores and signs for RV hookups. Fred gestured broadly through the windshield. "Plenny a fucking swamps right here."

Pineapple said nothing.

"Lose it here as good as anywhere," Fred said.

"Better swamps up north," said Piney.

But Fred's mind was made up. His eyes were tired. His beer buzz had faded and left him paranoid about police. "What's good about a swamp?" he said, and he started looking for a turnoff that seemed promising.

He found one barely a mile farther on than Lazslo had driven with Suki, earlier that evening, and he steered the Caddy toward the mangroves.

"How's this look to you?" asked Fred.

They'd gotten out of the car at a spot that was like a thousand others in the Keys. A narrow dusty road, utterly flat, had petered out at a vague frontier between land and sea. On either side, mangroves grew so thick that it was impossible to see if their roots were sunk in dirt or water. Ahead, though, scattered shoots were pegged in what was clearly a last gasp, a lonely stranding of the overreaching ocean. Moonlight gleamed unwholesomely on that stagnant water, and with the car's engine finally switched off, the place was busy with tiny furtive sounds: scratching, lapping, dripping.

Pineapple said, "Looks a lot like where we live."

Fred gestured toward the liquid part. "Bet it's good and mucky under there."

"Hard to know," said Piney.

Fred stepped back, eyeballed the moonlit Fleetwood like an artist sizing up a painting. Suddenly the car looked huge and very tall, its tires like something off a tractor, its tail fins high as masts. Hopefully he said, "Just need a couple feet of water and then some good soft muck."

The thing about a swamp is that you could only see the top of it, but something was telling Pineapple that this place wasn't deep enough. "We could go a little farther north," he said.

Fred ignored him. He didn't want to get on the highway again. He said, "Trick's gonna be we gotta build up some momentum. Back up down the road, floor that sonofabitch, skate it in there good and hard."

Pineapple said, "We?"

Fred rubbed his walrus moustache, tossed his cigarettes and matches on the ground. "Chickenshit," he said.

He got back in the car, started up the engine once again. Absurdly, he turned the headlights on. He put it in reverse, slowly backed up maybe fifty yards. He shifted into neutral then paused a moment to stoke his courage. Pineapple had moved off to the side, giving his friend plenty of leeway. Above the idling motor, Fred called over to him, "Here goes nothin'."

Gradually he pushed the accelerator to the floor. The big V-8 rumbled, then whined, then bellowed in a clattering roar that seemed composed of shredding fan belts and sundering rotors and pistons slamming home like the devil's own dildos. At the height of the din Fred threw the Caddy into drive.

For an instant nothing happened, it was like the heartbeat's delay as a whipped horse connects the pain with something being demanded of it. Startled gears and rods engaged; the huge tires bit into the coral dust, spitting stones and screeching. With the slow momentousness of a rocket lifting off, the Caddy leaned back then started humping forward.

Inertia overcome, it took off fast. Dust billowed; rocks flew. Pineapple saw his friend streak past, terrified, saw that his elbows were locked as he squeezed the wheel, his lips pasted back against his teeth.

The roaring auto barreled through the contested boundary of earth and sea, mowed down some baby mangroves and squashed a frog or two. Tepid water splashed against its grille, the enormous tires grabbed for purchase in the muck, spun like eggbeaters in batter.

For a time the car became a fat unwieldy boat, confused wakes spreading from its bulky hull as it churned and labored onward, the exhaust pipes shooting forth twin geysers. Then water shorted out the lights and turned the fuel to poison, and with a deflating suddenness the engine died, the ripples calmed, and the wild ride was over.

The car had traveled maybe fifty feet from shore and was immersed not much deeper than the bottom of its doors.

Even so, Fred's knees were shaky when he climbed out and stepped cautiously into the mild water. Sure enough, the muck was soft and swirly beneath his feet; his leg spiked through to mid-thigh and he trudged ashore with the dazed gait of the sole survivor of some dreadful wreck.

Pineapple met him at the water's edge and, together, they gazed out at the car. Moonlight played on its windshield and on the pleats of its folded-down top.

After a moment's contemplation Piney said, "Not exactly what I'd call sunk."

Fred said, "It'll settle. Give it time to settle."

They gave it time.

Fred wanted to believe he saw the car subsiding. He thought the top of the back fender had been exposed at first, and now it wasn't. The water made a short horizon that was just at the seam where the trunk opened.

Piney was strolling back and forth around the clearing. After a while he said, "Fred, people who live in houses, you think they do things half-ass?"

Fred reclaimed his smokes and lit one up. Match light played off his cupped hand. "You saying I did this half-ass?"

"I didn't say that. I was just wondering."

They watched the car some more. Crickets rasped. The mangroves gave off a waxy smell.

Pineapple said, "Better swamps up north."

"You keep saying that," said Fred. "What the fuck's a better swamp?"

"Deeper."

"Deeper," said Fred. "Now you say deeper. You could've said that before."

Piney shrugged. "Deeper's better. Kind of obvious I thought."

They watched the car. Sometimes it seemed to be settling lower and other times it didn't. Then it started making noises.

"D'ya hear that?" asked Fred.

It was a faint scratching sound, but then it stopped. Soon it started in again.

"Chassis rubbing through the muck," Fred theorized. "Wait and see, once it breaks that crust on top, it's gonna settle good and quick."

But the Caddy didn't settle noticeably faster, and after a time the scratching changed to a weak but rhythmic thump that carried with it just a hint of metallic ring. Pineapple looked at Fred. "That sound is dry," he said. "That's not an underwater sound."

Fred said nothing, listened hard. The car seemed finally to be diving slowly downward. The thumping got just slightly louder, took on the insistence of a pleading knock. Then there was a sound that could only have come from a human throat, a whimper.

The hair stood up on the back of Piney's neck and he was wading out before he'd stopped to think.

"The trunk," Fred hollered at his back, "I think it opens underneath the dash."

Piney plodded on. He sank knee-deep, thigh-deep, crotch-deep in the muck. His puny and heroic steps seemed to break some stalemate between gravity and friction, and the Caddy started sinking faster. Water gurgled as the bottom bubbled under it like cooking oatmeal. By the time he reached the car, the door was sealed by marl. He propped his hands against the bottom of the window frame and, straining with his skinny arms, he lifted and wriggled free of the mud and managed to flop over the door, landing face-first in the driver's seat. He found the lever, yanked it

The trunk latch opened, the lid popped up.

Fred saw water cascading over the lip of the trunk as if it were a failing dam. The weight of the intruding sea made the Caddy's stern tilt downward, it groaned with the shift in its balance. Water flooded in, little eddies twisted around the tail fins.

Fred sensed a different kind of movement too, sensed it before he saw it. A human being was struggling toward the air; he knew it. A moment passed; breath stalled but the water didn't rest.

Then, ghostly white as they emerged into the moonlight, a pair of hands came groping forward, waved at nothing then found a flange of metal to hold on to. The fragile fingers clenched down hard and, with the stunning purity of effort that brings a baby bird to the high edge of its nest, Suki Sperakis, her hair wild, her eyes wide-open but unseeing, raised her bruised and ashen face.

Pineapple half-dragged, half-carried her ashore. His knees finally buckled at the last couple of gummy sloshing steps, and he deposited her, wet and tattered, as gently as he could at the vague edge of the land.

Fred leaned down, clutched her underneath the arms, and pulled her farther up the clearing. He looked down at her as he moved her. Her eyes had closed though the lids were twitching in the moonlight. Her dress had a pattern of apples and pears. It was torn here and there, and streaked with an oily dust that the water couldn't wash away. Bruises were beginning to ripen on her arms; one cheek was red with shallow nicks, pitted like a strawberry. Her neck was stamped with the handprints of her failed murderer, the smeared outlines of fingers and thumbs could be read in a ghastly pink just starting to take on tinges of sickly green and purple. "Jesus Christ," he muttered.

He became aware of the obscene wet lump of fifties in his pocket. He moved off to light a cigarette.