Mangrove Squeeze (34 page)

He watched Tarzan Abramowitz read, wondered vaguely what he was reading.

The young man's hips moved as he read, and he seemed to gain momentum as he went, lips moving faster, thick fingers fumbling to turn the soggy page. After a time he slapped the paper down and climbed into his pants, clamped suspenders to the waistband. He moved toward Sam's stool, but only to make sure the tape was still secure around his ankles and across his mouth.

Then he left, the paper underneath his arm. Sam sat there, slumped and patient, removed already from the world, the bare light bulb shining yellow on his brittle tufts of sparse white hair.

"You see?" hissed Ivan Cherkassky, pointing at the paper, slapping it. "You see?"

Gennady Markov didn't answer. He'd been roused out from under his satin quilts for this emergency, had barely taken time for coffee. He was still mulling over what he'd been told to read. He tried to settle deeper into Cherkassky's sofa, but the cushions lacked the squishy thickness of his own, and he found that he could not get comfortable. He squirmed.

Cherkassky was perched on the very edge of an austere and narrow chair. His lumpy face was blanched and taut, the lumps were shiny as boils. "Your nephew," he said disgustedly. "With his big mouth and his
schwantz
for a brain."

Tarzan Abramowitz was doing laps behind the sofa. Without breaking stride he snickered.

"His
schwantz
," Cherkassky hammered, "what it makes him tell that woman, it brings the FBI."

Markov winced by reflex at his colleague's words but then found to his surprise that they no longer hurt He could say what he wanted about Lazslo; the nerve had died. Caring was finished, and what was left was stubbornness and spite and a pointless insistence on the last word.

"No, Ivan," he said, "what he tells that woman, this is not what brings the FBI. What brings the FBI is that you murdered him. His body, dead—this is why the FBI is coming here."

Cherkassky crossed his skinny legs. He did not take offense but he wanted to be logical, precise. "Here you are wrong," he pronounced. "The death of Lazslo—one death only. Burglary. Coincidence. Nothing here for FBI. Only for useless local cops. Two deaths, pattern. Your silly revenge, Gennady—this is what makes case for FBI."

Markov looked away. He squirmed, his fingers fretted between the cushions of the sofa. Then he smiled. It was the mean pathetic smile of an unhappy child who has succeeded in spoiling a game for everyone. He said nothing.

"The housekeeper," Cherkassky murmured disapprovingly. "This peasant cow Ludmila." He tisked. "Cowardly, Gennady. Idiotic."

There was a pause, then the fat man broke into a hoarse laugh that had tears in it, a keening giggle deranged enough to stop Tarzan Abramowitz from pacing. He rocked forward on the sofa, put fingers over his runny eyes. "When she goes into the water," he spluttered, gasping, "her legs, so far apart. Knees lifting up like she is ready to be fucked."

He laughed his baleful asylum laugh a moment longer then fell abruptly silent. Abramowitz resumed his pacing.

Cherkassky, immune to bedlam, calculated. The paper said the FBI was coming down. Coming down, it said. That meant not here yet That meant maybe there was time. Time to silence people who could hurt them, time to hide the most incriminating things. But they would have to act quickly and they would have to work together. The thin man cleared his throat. "Gennady," he said soothingly, "whatever has happened—"

His old lieutenant cut him off. "Have we always hated each other, you think, Ivan? Or is it something new?"

Cherkassky let the question pass. It didn't matter. "Gennady, listen, what we have to do—"

"Because," the fat man interrupted once again, "I think maybe is not so unusual for friends to hate each other. Life throws them together, they have need of each other. They have dinner, tell stories, jokes, and hate each other for years and years."

"Gennady, please, what must be done—"

"Yes, yes. Is clear, is clear. What must be done, we have to kill this woman."

"And everyone who helps her," Abramowitz put in. "Old man Katz. Old man Katz's friend with worthless dog—"

"Who is Katz?" said Markov.

The other two ignored him.

"Local guest house," Cherkassky said. "Paper says that FBI comes to interview woman who is hidden away in local guest house."

Abramowitz pivoted, thrust a triumphant hairy finger in the air. "All along I'm saying this! I know this guest house. Owned by younger Katz. This thing, you wouldn't let me, I could have done this days before."

"We do it now," Cherkassky said. "All three together."

There was a brief silence marred only by the whisper of Abramowitz's relentless shoes against the carpet.

"And then?" said Markov. He said it tauntingly.

"And then the FBI has no one they can talk to."

Markov snorted. "You kid yourself, Ivan. Plenty people they can talk to. Busboys. Clerks. They will turn on us to save themselves. You know they will."

Cherkassky said nothing. Abramowitz stalled, plucked at his suspender as at a twisted bra strap.

"And the shops?" Markov went on, taking bleak delight in tracing out the contours of their doom. "There is time to hide the jewelry? The paintings—where we put them? The dollars? How you explain all this, Ivan?"

To Markov's disappointment, Cherkassky didn't rattle. He sighed patiently, leaned forward, spoke softly. "Gennady," he said, "you think I am a child? I have thought of these things of course."

Reassured, Abramowitz eased back into motion once again.

Cherkassky pulled his long and pitted face, and wondered vaguely why it was that the more he hated his life, the more desperately compelled he felt to preserve it. He inhaled deeply then went on. "And the solution is that of certain minor things—smuggling, washing money—of certain minor things, though it is sad, we will be guilty."

"Guilty?!" said Abramowitz, shocked and grievously offended.

"Guilty," said Cherkassky, with serenity. "These are things the underlings know of us, will tell. And on these things the authorities must win. Why? Because these are things the authorities do not care about. Smugglers.
Pfuh!
Deportation only. There are plenty other countries! Worst will happen, perhaps we have a short stay in a prison where we can buy ourselves some comfort."

Markov squirmed. So—Cherkassky had it thought out to the last lie and wriggle, was going to save them from the FBI. He should have been glad but he was desolate. Spite had carried him the insane way around to the side of justice. He said, "But—"

"The things they care about," Cherkassky implacably went on, "these things they will never find. The deaths? No witnesses to deaths. Our true business? Break down your lab, Gennady, the instant you get home. Equipment, throw it in the ocean, the tide carries it away. The pyramid—they will never know to look inside the pyramid."

Abramowitz smiled.

Markov rocked on the sofa. His thick lips flubbered as he sought for more objections to puncture his old friend's plan, tried to persuade himself that the skinny bastard would not win. He thought and his fingers fidgeted between the cushions of the sofa. They came up against something hard and cool, and he plucked it out.

It was a hearing aid. He held it in the air, stared at it a moment Then he smiled snidely at Cherkassky. If he couldn't top his old comrade at tactics, he might at least annoy his vanity. He said, "Your ears are going bad, Ivan? Ashamed to wear your hearing aid?"

Cherkassky said nothing, just squinted at the small device.

"Must be the old man's," said Abramowitz. "He mutters something he lost it"

The muscular young man held his hand out and Markov passed the hearing aid to him. He crushed it in his fist. It made a high-pitched whistle then faded into silence like a dying bird.

Abramowitz cackled. "He doesn't need it anymore. Now I'll go to get his friend."

Aaron had dreamed of his father.

In the dream, Sam was dead and then he wasn't. Nonchalantly, he came back after what seemed to be a long, long absence. He was young when he came back. His hair was dark and wavy; his step had bounce in it, momentum, as a step must have when proceeding toward a future. It was wonderful to see him in the prime of life, but at some point Aaron knew the dream was fooling him. The man with the dark hair and the purpose in his stride was not his father but himself. His father's absence was the future he could not deflect himself from striding toward. So be it. Resignation made a secret progress in the damp dark of sleep, and lost ground again in the unyielding hopefulness of daytime.

He smelled salt air and coffee, realized that his cheek was pressed against Suki's shoulder, and jolted himself awake. His swimming eyes saw the wall of newsprint that was propped against her knees. He said, "What time is it? How long did I sleep?"

She kissed him on the forehead, said, "You were exhausted."

Impatient, he wrestled with the sheet. He had no idea what he needed to be ready for, yet he couldn't bear to be unready. "But—"

She stroked his hair. "There's nothing to be done right now," she said. "Have a little coffee."

He drank from her cup and she gestured toward the paper. "You know, he's really a good journalist."

Aaron grunted, got his eyes to focus. "But it's a made-up story."

Suki said, "Made-up stories change lives too."

For that Aaron had no answer. But he stopped fighting against the bedclothes, settled back against her shoulder.

"Cops'll be here soon," she said.

"Wish I had more faith in them." His knees and ankles twitched. There was more he should be doing and there was nothing to be done.

"That would be a comfort," Suki said. She said it blithely, but then her breathing changed. A hitch came into it, it was like a whimper but without the sound. "Aaron," she said, "whatever happens today—"

She broke off, swallowed, tried again to speak but couldn't

Aaron came up on an elbow, looked down at her rare blue eyes, the joyful mouth with its disconcerting upper lip. Her face had shown him moxie and humor and passion and caring, and now for the first and only time, it let him see just how afraid she was.

Her face unmasked the fear in him as well. "Whatever happens," he echoed, and took her in his arms.

In the rented tile house, Bert the Shirt had already been awake for what felt like half a day.

He'd heard amorous doves cooing in the dark and woodpeckers probing the soft bark of dead and headless palms. He'd stood at a window to watch the sky lose its blackness and lift off from the horizon. He'd showered, put on a chartreuse shirt with a forest green monogram, and made his oatmeal, all the while wallowing in remorse.

He'd failed Sam, and Sam was suddenly his dearest friend, practically his brother. That's what happened in old age. The lusts and ambitions that made men separate fell away, and they regained the easy fraternity of childhood, when anyone could eat at anybody's table, join in anybody's game. And where it was the unquestioned role of the stronger to look out for the weaker. That was Bert's responsibility, to look out for doddering, slipping Sam, and he'd blown it.

An awful thought had occurred to him: Maybe that meant he wasn't the stronger anymore.

He'd finished his cereal and sat there at the tiled table. His blind chihuahua looked up at him and sniffed at the sand in the cuffs of his trousers. The forbidden notion that perhaps his strength was failing made him weak; he could barely muster the energy to walk the dog. They took a short walk only, and once back home, Bert moped.

He moped from the living room to the bedroom. He wandered to the kitchen and then outside through the sliding doors. Standing in hot sunshine on the patio, he looked out at the milky green canal, the mute gray house across the way.

Absently, he'd sat down at the patio table. Sam's sporty yellow Walkman was out there still; the sight of it was unspeakably depressing, like the favorite toy of a child who has died. Bert picked up his dog, scratched it behind the ears, and tried to ignore the thing.

Then he heard a whirring sound, and then a click. He couldn't place the noise, and by the time he looked around it had stopped.

It happened again: Click; whirr; click; whirr; click.

It was not a bird noise or an insect noise. It didn't seem to be coming from the kitchen behind him or the canal at the end of the lawn. He focused his ears, narrowed his eyes, and saw a tiny red indicator gleaming on Sam's Walkman. Then the light went out.

Click.

It was odd. It was spooky. With a not quite steady hand, Bert reached out and picked up the small machine. It started to whir and he almost threw it on the lawn. He looked through the little smoked plastic window and saw that tape was turning.

When the tape stopped, Bert put the Walkman down. He looked at the gray house across the way. The machine clicked on again.