Mangrove Squeeze (23 page)

Officer Lopez frowned. People tended not to take her as seriously as she thought she should be taken, and she didn't know if it was because she was a woman, or because she was only a patrol cop, or because she was a woman patrol cop in a town where people didn't take much seriously. She sighed and raised a clipboard.

She started filling out a form. Egan smoked. He narrowed his eyes, clamped his throat shut to hold the precious cargo in his chest. The universe shrank down to that wet red horizon where the welcome poisons rubbed against his membranes.

"A report," said Lopez, tearing the top sheet off a triplicate and handing it to him. "You'll need it for insurance."

Egan blinked at dead computers, battered furniture. "I don't have insurance."

"Boy, you really should." She reached into a back pocket and came out with a pamphlet. She handed it to Egan.

"Victims Rights," he read. He spit a fleck of tobacco onto the littered floor. "Bet you hand out more of these than I distribute papers."

"Better reading maybe," Carol Lopez said. "I'll ask Lieutenant Stubbs to stop by later."

Pineapple had never been to a hotel before, and he didn't know how to act.

That, and his shoeless-ness, and the fact that he was carrying his sign with
parking
written on it, was making him extremely self-conscious. But he was determined to visit Suki, to see how she was and to ask if there was any more that he could do for her. So he screwed up his courage and climbed the porch steps of the Mangrove Arms.

He hoped to see Aaron before he had to talk to anybody else, but, instead, there was an old man sitting at the desk. Piney considered fleeing, but fought the impulse. He hesitated just an instant then shuffled quickly toward the counter, trying to hide his crusty feet before the old man saw them. "Hi," he said. "My name's Pineapple."

Sam Katz looked up and smiled.

His own life had changed invisibly but dramatically over the past few days. The guest house finally had some customers; they were harboring a refugee; and he felt that Aaron needed him. This belief was bracing beyond words, more galvanizing than some exotic medication. So Sam had been begging his brain to concentrate, pleading with his circuitry to carry messages truly, so that he might be of help. He was determined to be alert and businesslike behind the desk. He said, "Ah, Mr. Pineapple, welcome. You have a reservation?"

This flustered Piney, he changed the angle of his
parking
sign. "First name," he mumbled. "First name's Pineapple."

Sam smiled benignly. "How interesting. Were all the children in your family named for fruits?"

"Didn't really have a family," Piney said.

"Ah," said Sam. He tried to give comfort. "Sometimes, ya know, it's really just as well. So. What can I do for you?"

Piney's feet were damp against the sisal rug. He leaned across the counter with an elbow very near the little silver bell. Softly he said, "I'd like to please see Suki for a minute if I could."

Sam froze. His heart bounced around inside his skinny chest. His eyeballs itched. Suki wasn't there. That was the first, main, most important thing he had to remember. No Suki. Never heard of her. Now here's this person asking for her. Either it was some kind of a crazy test or it was big-time trouble. He tugged a tuft of hair, fiddled with his hearing aid. "Suki?"

" Ya know," said Piney. "Aaron's friend."

Sam thought fast. "Aaron?"

"The owner. He brought her here. She stayed with us before. Me and Fred."

"Oh yeah? And where do you live?"

"In a hot dog."

"Hot dog?"

"In the mangroves. Old military property. By the airport."

Sam remembered, sort of, driving past the airport on the morning they picked Suki up. But he wasn't quite convinced. He narrowed his eyes, said, "
Shkulski pudenska
."

Piney said, "Wha'?"

"I called you a filthy name in Russian. You didn't flinch."

"Why would I?" Piney said.

Slowly, Sam got up from his chair. "Wait here a minute. But I have to tell you, Cantaloupe, you scared the shit outa me."

"Found the car?" said Piney. "I kept telling Fred we oughta find a better swamp."

"Better swamp," said Suki, "I would've drowned."

"God. I didn't think of that."

They were standing on the widow's walk outside of Suki's room. The fig tree threw a dappled shade, leaves scratched dryly at the railing when the breeze blew. Piney leaned far over, craned his neck toward Whitehead Street. "I change the place I sit a little ways," he said, "we could wave to each other."

"I'd like that," Suki said.

There was a pause. A plane went by. Piney said, "So I guess you're sort of stuck here, huh?"

"Looks that way."

"I'd do anything to help, ya know."

"I know you would. Thank you."

Piney looked away, grabbed a little dangling branch and let the leaves rub on his shoulder. "Fred says it's 'cause I got a crush on you, but it isn't. It's philosophy."

For that Suki had no answer. A breeze moved the shadow she was standing in and sunshine warmed her face.

Piney went on, "Fred'll help too. He says he won't but he will. That's just Fred."

Suki nodded and Piney turned around to face her. He met her eyes for just a second and then he dropped his head a little and looked beneath her chin. Thin strands of muscle were moving in her neck, and watching very closely he could see the pulse surging underneath her skin. "Healin' up nice," he said.

"Coming along," said Suki.

"Well, gotta go," said Piney, and he gathered up the
parking
sign that he'd leaned against the railing. "I'll wave to you."

"I'll wave back," Suki said.

"You need anything," he said, "I'm sitting there."

"'Nother donut?" said Dunkin' Dave.

"Fuck yourself another donut," said the thickly built Lieutenant Gary Stubbs. Since Dunkin' Donuts moved to Southard Street, just around the corner from the station, the waistband of his pants had started folding down across the top half of his belt, his thighs had filled in the last pucker of his boxer shorts, and he walked around all day with an oily feeling at the corners of his mouth.

"Come on," said Dave. "'Sa last one onna tray."

Stubbs looked at the donut. Hot grease had pocked its surface beautifully, it had a perfect mix of sheen and craters. He took it. "Only 'cause I'm having such a shitty day."

It was a slow time, just around eleven in the morning. Cops had crazy schedules, that's why Dave could talk to them. He rested the corner of the tray against the counter. "How come shitty?"

Stubbs had dunked his donut, coffee dripped back out of its honeycombed insides. "Ever had a cat sleep in your motor?"

"Huh?"

"Cool nights like lately," said Stubbs, "the strays, they climb up underneath your car and sleep on top the motor."

Dave rearranged the angle of his paper hat. " Whaddya know."

"'Cept this morning," Stubbs went on, "some asshole cat, he's sleeping in the fan. Go to start 'er up..."

"Oh shit," said Dave.

Stubbs made a clattering but glutted sound.

"Cut'im right in half?"

"Thirds," said the lieutenant. "His tail was wrapped around. Some fuckin' way to start the day, huh? Pieces a cat glued to the radiator. Then they find a body out around Cottrell."

"Cottrell? Way out in the Gulf?"

"Fishermen found 'er. Thought she was a bundle a rags. Red sweater, gray skirt. One black shoe. Ever seen a body been drowned a coupla days?"

Dave shook his head. Making donuts all night long wasn't any picnic but it was better than a lot of jobs.

"'S weird," the cop went on. "No two are alike. Sometimes the skin pops open. Ya know, like a plum that's overripe. Usually there's pieces missing. Shark eats a leg, the nose is nibbled off. Eyes, the gulls sometimes—"

Dave hadn't eaten since last night, he had a lot of acid in his stomach. He raised a hand. "Accident or someone killed her?"

"Hard to say," said Stubbs. "Had one big bruise across her chest. Narrow, even—not like from a punch. Too high up to be a gunwale. Coulda been a boom swinging across, but she wasn't dressed for sailing. No other signs of struggle and she was breathing when she hit the water."

"Any idea who she was?"

"No ID," said Stubbs. "Not much face to tell the truth. One little kinda crazy clue."

"What's that?" asked Dunkin' Dave.

"Her underpants."

"Underpants?"

"The label," said the cop. "Seems to be in Russian."

Dave had been at work since midnight, sweating under bare light bulbs, tending fryers big as kiddie pools, squirting jelly, squirting cream. By late morning he sometimes got a little giddy. "Exhibit A," he said. "The victim's underpants."

"Not funny," said Stubbs. He dunked his donut deep down in his tepid coffee, and then his cell phone started ringing.

Dunkin' Dave picked up his tray and moved discreetly toward the kitchen, going slow enough to hear the homicide detective curse then drop some money on the counter.

Gary Stubbs and Donald Egan knew each other vaguely, in the way that cops and newspaper guys were acquainted. They were usually cordial and they didn't trust each other worth a damn; they traded information and if the swap was even someone felt like he had lost. Cops were big on order; editors made their livings from freedom; they were dogs latched on to opposite ends of the gristly bone of power, and neither dog was programmed to let go.

Now Stubbs stood in the wrecked old classroom as Egan began his story, and after listening for a while the cop said, "Is the Cold War back or what? I am all of a sudden hearing altogether too much bullshit about Russians."

Egan was sucking a cigar. Smoke was painting his lungs like a satin roller on a wall. "Oh yeah? What else are you hearing?"

"First you show me yours," said Stubbs.

The editor picked tobacco off his tongue. He was sitting on a rolling chair in the middle of the room, and he gestured at the mess around him. "My desk," he said. "Vandalized. Nothing taken." He pointed to his right. "Reporters' desks. Ditto." He pointed to his left. "Ad sales desk. Suki Sperakis, woman's name is. Drawers rifled. Stuff taken. Names, addresses."

Stubbs said, "So?"

"She was playing journalist. Wanted to do an article on the T-shirt shops. Russian Mafia, she said. Went out with Lazslo Kalynin. Hasn't been seen since the night he died."

Egan thought he was being pretty damned forthright and informative. He expected a show of interest. Take a notebook out. Lean closer. Something. Stubbs just stood there. Then he said, "Now tell me something I don't already know."

The editor got flustered, his cigar made circles in the air. "How d'you—"

"Like for starters," the cop interrupted, "she's been missing, what, almost a week now, and you don't think to report her missing?"

"I didn't think..." Egan began. "I didn't want—"

"Didn't want to get involved," said Stubbs. "Didn't want the inconvenience. I know the type ... But now you're being inconvenienced and maybe now you're scared, and now that it's not just a question of the ad person being dead or not, but your papers being dumped out on the floor, now you're starting to believe there really is a Russian Mob."

Egan didn't take offense. He smoked instead. Then he said, "Well, yeah, I sort of am. Aren't you?"

Stubbs started pacing through the rubble. "Doesn't seem to matter much, what I believe."

Quite suddenly he was thoroughly pissed off. He couldn't put his finger on just why. He catalogued the day's annoyances. The trisected cat, its neck vertebrae protruding like something meant for soup. The drowned woman with her nose-less nostrils. The second donut he should not have eaten, and now this typical solid citizen who didn't want to get involved.

Irritations all—but with each step Stubbs took in his futile little march around the ancient classroom, he realized that none of them was to the point. He was pissed off because he too was at fault. Egan's guilt was his guilt. He hadn't wanted to believe, either. He pictured the battered Suki holed up in the vending truck. Why was she there? Because she cared about the town, tried to fight back against something that was ruining it; and when the whole thing blew up in her face, no one wanted to get involved. Bad for business at the
Island Frigate
. Bad PR for the police department, a headache for the tourism flacks ...

Now there was a dead woman with a Russian label in her panties. That seemed to make it two dead Russians and someone nearly strangled
by
a Russian. Money laundering probably. Plutonium dealing, just maybe. How much weirdness made a Mafia? And if there was a Mafia in town, what then? Stubbs didn't have the manpower or the knowledge to fight it, and the thought of killers that he could not fight frustrated him to the point of tantrums. So he paced, and he glared at the hangdog editor sitting in his wreath of smoke, and then without a word he kicked aside some Playbills and some broken glass and headed for the door.