Mangrove Squeeze (21 page)

A pack of motorcycles roared up Whitehead Street, a plane banked low and clattered in its final approach to the airport. The din reached a harsh crescendo then subsided, and a soft whoosh of fronds soon erased the memory of it; in Key West, peace and quiet were shattered and restored a thousand times a day.

"And say they're lookin' for you," the Shirt said to Suki. "Where they gonna look? They got no reason to look here. Not so far at least. Who they gonna squeeze? How hard they gonna squeeze 'em? These are things I think we gotta find 'em out."

Suki bit her upper lip, looked down.

Aaron rubbed his forehead. He'd always been taught that an enterprise could not succeed without a plan, that you didn't just embark on a journey without a strand of logic laid out like breadcrumbs in the forest. He said, "Bert, so say we figure out those things. Then what?"

"Then what
what?
" the old man fired back.

"Do we know where we're going with all this? Longer term, I mean?"

Bert the Shirt scratched his dog behind the ears. "Longer term?" he echoed.

The phrase coaxed his lips into a rueful smile. He was seventy-eight years old. He'd been dead once. He kept thinking he was retired, then life would throw some caper or crusade across his path, and he would realize that retirement was a ludicrous concept. No one breathing was retired. Life didn't work the way young people thought it did. It didn't go in one straight line, with stages and events notched out like inches on a ruler. Results didn't squirt out clean and parallel from causes like jet trails from an airplane. Life was crazier and richer and less fair than that. But how did you explain that to someone young enough to hold sacred the idea of future, a person in thrall to a fascination with what would happen next?

"Longer term," he said again, "I guess we'll just have to see what happens in a bunch of shorter terms."

It was over a late lunch that day—cold lamb and potato pancakes, eaten at the shaded table on his patio—that Gennady Markov decided on a victim. His choice satisfied him in every way, and he celebrated with an extra Key lime tart.

First and foremost, this victim would be easy. Second, the killing would be one whose significance would be lost on everyone except Ivan Cherkassky. Finally, Markov might even be able to work up a bit of moral umbrage to underpin his questionably sane resolve, since this person had played an undeniable role in the death of Lazslo.

Excited but not impatient, he finished his meal and blotted his flubbery lips on a napkin. Not without difficulty, he pushed back from the table, then strolled through his garden, past oleanders and lemon trees and palmettos, to the seawall. Sharp western light was skidding off the Gulf, little tufts of mangrove dotted the horizon, and Markov reflected that, of all of humankind's gizmos and contraptions, the seawall was among the saddest and the most futile. A tissue of cement against a universe of seep and surge; a draughtsman's tracing of hard edge sketched atop a ceaseless maelstrom. Blink an eye, your seawall is gone, a coastline rearranged, your attempt at a boundary mocked and undone. So much for security.

He moved to the very edge of the wall and looked down through the clear green water. Tiny fish with needle noses were sucking algae off the concrete. Old storms and the tug of the moon had raised miniature dunes in the sandy bottom, six feet from the surface. He tore a few leaves from a buttonwood shrub and threw them into the water, studying the tide.

It seemed to be near the end of its oozing ebb from gulf to ocean. Soon the water would be slack, stalled so utterly as to make it seem impossible that the machinery of tides would ever start again. But the flood would come, softly at first, like drizzle before a hammering downpour, then swelling in volume and lurching in pace, becoming a gale of water that would shred the tops of seaweeds and pull the anchor lines of boats as taut as cables on a bridge, and would carry unmoored things—bottles, branches, bodies—miles to the north and west, deep into the Gulf, among the coiling shallows and the nameless knots of mangrove.

The peak of it, Gennady Markov figured, would come the hour after dark. He went inside and told his housekeeper to take the evening off. Then he composed himself and made a phone call, summoning his victim to Key Haven.

On another seawall, this one near the airport, facing south and east across the straits, Pineapple and Fred were sitting, dimly and mysteriously depressed.

Until just recently, their lives had been ticking along, basically rock-steady, not like a heartbeat but a watch. You wouldn't say they were terrific lives, but Piney and Fred were used to them, they fit. Then Suki came along and rippled everything, and then she left and the ripples started to subside, and the exact same mild flatness that had suited them before no longer seemed to satisfy.

So they sat there on the seawall and they didn't talk. Fred smoked, his inhaling powered by frustration, a gruff wistfulness being vented on the out-breath. Piney dangled his bare feet close enough to the water to feel its coolness reaching up between his toes. Finally, apropos of nothing, he said, "Ya think he really meant it?"

Fred welcomed the opportunity to get grumpy. He said, "You always fuckin' start a conversation in the middle. You realize 'at?"

Piney didn't answer, just watched a small barracuda, implausibly motionless as a school of pinfish wafted toward him.

Fred gave in, said, "Do I think that who meant what?"

Piney watched the school of fish, the extraordinary way they banked and turned as one. There was a certain distance from the 'cuda inside of which the little guys were doomed. If they didn't see or smell him before they swam into that circle, one or two of them would disappear so fast that no human eye could ever track them being swallowed. Without looking up, Piney said, "Aaron. He said that we could visit."

Fred sucked hard on his cigarette, his whole face scrunched up with the fury of the puff. "Yeah. He said that."

"You don't think he meant it?"

Fred blew exhaust from both nostrils. "Piney, " he said, "say you're a rich guy owns a hotel. Guests come in—credit cards, matching luggage. 'Ah, welcome, Mr. Fuckface, Mrs. Tit.' You want guys like us around?"

Piney looked up. A second later there was a splash from where the 'cuda had been lurking. Probably a fish or two had gotten scarfed, but he would never know for sure. He said, "What's so bad about us?"

Fred just kept on smoking.

"We wash," Pineapple said. "We don't ask for money."

Fred shook his head and looked toward the horizon. Grudgingly he admitted to himself that it was nice to look east when the sun was in the west. The sky just glowed, it didn't burn; the ripples in the water shone an even green with a cool white filament on top.

After a silence Piney softly said, "I miss her."

Fred took a long moment to swivel first his hips, then his shoulders, and finally his head toward his friend. He broke into a taunting smile that made parts of his face look twelve years old. "I think you got a crush on 'er," he said.

Piney looked down at his dangling feet. "I just think maybe there's more that we should do."

Fred hadn't quite got over feeling guilty about taking money to sink a car with a woman in the trunk. But he wouldn't admit it, and unadmitted guilt was making him feisty. He said, "More? Fuck should we do more?"

Piney raised his face again. Sun came over his shoulder and sliced through his scraggly beard like a golden comb. "Because we've done some stuff already."

"Now that don't make no sense," said Fred.

"Course it does. Ya help somebody once, ya got a obligation. Ya don't just stop."

Fred found this line of thought exasperating. "Piney," he said, "we saved this woman's life. She owes
us
. We don't owe her."

Piney gave a little shrug and said with infuriating calm, "I guess this is just exactly where we disagree."

"Bullshit," said Fred, and sucked so hard on his cigarette that the paper almost flamed. Expelling smoke along with words, he said, "You got a crush on her. That's the only explanation."

There was something uncanny, witchlike, about the sight of Ludmila the Belorussian housekeeper on her red motor scooter.

She wore square black shoes that looked absurd against the shifter pedal. Her wide coarse skirt was gathered up and bunched between her squat and parted thighs. Beneath a pilled and shapeless sweater, her flaccid breasts quaked with every bump and shiver of the noisy little machine. Random bundles of chopped gray hair poked out of the helmet that framed bulbous cheeks and a fleshy nose as she rode to meet her death.

She pulled into Gennady Markov's curving gravel driveway, cut the engine on the scooter, took her helmet off. She started walking toward the big front door behind its porte cochere, then stopped, unsure whether she should use the main entrance. It was dusk and she scanned the dimness for some lesser portal, a servants' wing maybe. She was still standing there, her square shoes and stocky legs uneasy on the stones, when Markov appeared in the doorway and greeted her.

Tentatively, she greeted him in return.

Moving toward her, he said, "Is beautiful evening. Perhaps we talk outside."

Obedient, the housekeeper nodded, and followed him as he moved around the corner of the house, past trellises and hedges and fragrant citrus trees. To the smell of powdery lemon was added the smarting tang of iodine as they moved closer to the seawall. A table stood very near the water's boundary, a bottle of vodka and two glasses on it. Gennady Markov sidled toward the seat on the landward end of the table. Casually, he motioned Ludmila toward a chair whose back legs stood several inches from the man-made edge of the thirsty Gulf that was drinking deeply of the ocean.

He poured vodka for both of them and then studied her a moment. She had a mole that seemed to bind the edge of her left nostril to her cheek. Her thick forearms were flat on the table and there were creases of fat at her wrists. She didn't touch her glass till he touched his. Then, when Markov tossed his vodka back, she tossed back hers as well, tossed it back in one good swallow.

He refilled their glasses and spoke at last. "You like it here, Ludmila?"

Ludmila was a very cautious person. She hated to answer any question, especially a question she wasn't absolutely sure she understood. "Here?"

"In America," he said. "Key West."

She thought about it. She cleaned houses. She lived alone in a trailer on Stock Island, next to an auto body shop. She did what people told her and she lived in fear. She'd carried the fear from Russia to America and would carry it all the way to heaven because she simply couldn't imagine that things might ever be different anywhere. But the bread was fresh here and the weather was good. "Is better, yes," she said.

Markov drank his vodka. Ludmila drank hers. Her chin shook as she swallowed and then her face regained its doughy impassivity.

He looked past her to starlight on the water. Current was invisible and silent and yet it had a weight and a presence; somewhere very deep people were aware when the tides were running strong. Markov smiled, said, "You go to beach? You swim?"

Maybe it was the vodka or maybe the chance to complain. Ludmila grew briefly talkative. "Beach? Who has time for beach? Swim? No. No place swim in Belorusse."

"Ah," said Markov, and refilled the glasses. Offhandedly he added, "You have more time, now you don't clean for Lazslo."

Ludmila had been waiting patiently, obediently for some indication of why she'd been called here. Now she understood. She said, "So you want I clean for you?"

Instead of answering, Markov said, "Very sad what happened to Lazslo." He emptied his glass.

Ludmila left hers alone. She lowered her flat gray eyes and became aware that the air was cooler at her back than on her face.

"Now you do not drink?" he said.

She didn't answer. Secretly she tried to scoot her chair a little forward. Its legs were pegged in small white decorative stones. It didn't budge.

Markov poured himself more vodka. "Still," he went on, "what Lazslo did, the things he said. .. Ivan Fyodorovich played the tapes for me, of course."

Ludmila reached for her glass, stopped her hand midway. For her there were many kinds of fear and each sent a different flavor climbing up her throat. Ordinary fear, the kind she felt every day, tasted of salt and bile. Now she tasted curdled milk and vinegar. She tried to choke it back then grabbed her vodka after all in an attempt to wash it down.

The liquor was still in her gullet when Markov softly asked, "How did you plant the tapes, Ludmila?"

She said nothing and he stared at her. Her eyes were blank, her cheeks a doughy graceless blur, her mouth weak and loose and stupid. Markov tried to feel hatred for her but could manage no more than a disgust that splattered filthily and stained himself as well. He stared, and fixed her in the stare like an animal in headlights. Behind Ludmila the water was flat, and yet the very starlight seemed swept up by the tide, there was an illusion of reflections stretched and smeared by the current's northward rush.