Mangrove Squeeze (36 page)

Stubbs braced his trigger hand and pivoted, facing full into the living room, and screaming
"Freeze!"

His eye detected motion and he aimed his gun at a ghostly white chihuahua spinning in futile little pirouettes, its paws making tiny ticking tap-dance sounds against the tiled floor. Blind, the dog yet turned its milky eyes toward the barrel of the cop's revolver, its dry nose sniffing for a friend.

Stubbs plucked his wet shirt from his skin and looked around. The phone was pulled out of the wall. There were some magazines and a yellow Walkman on the floor right near the dog. Those were the only signs of a struggle.

He checked the bedrooms, the bathrooms, the closets. Nothing. He gave the dog a bowl of water and a scratch behind the ears, and left.

Next they drove to Markov's house.

The house was closed up tight. Stubbs parked in the shade of the porte cochere and went up to the front door. He listened, heard silence. He knocked and rang the bell, sang out, "Open up. Police." Even to himself, the challenge sounded thin.

There was no response and he decided to do some peeping. He stepped back around the shrubbery and soon found Aaron's footprints, still clearly etched in the moist soil of the beds. He retraced the other man's journey past the dining room, the master suite, down the long and narrow guest wing to where the lab was. He stopped where Aaron's steps had stalled and blurred and doubled back, and he peered intently through the slats of the not quite snug-fitting blinds.

He saw a small guest bedroom.

There was a Murphy bed, complete with fancy spread and flounce. A small nightstand held a reading lamp. There was even a book on the stand. There was no sign whatsoever of a lab.

Stubbs stood there for a moment. His shirt was soaked and sun was clawing at his neck. Suddenly it seemed like he had been away from Whitehead Street for far too long, and at the bottom of his stomach there formed a pulsing knot that had the weight and bitterness of a big mistake.

He ran across the lawn to his unmarked car and headed back to town.

The banyan tree had clustered trunks all squeezed together like organ pipes, and it threw a blanket of shade that covered a quarter acre. Once Pineapple had settled into that lake of shadow, he could keep the same position for hours at a time, only slightly shifting his butt against the curb so that his legs wouldn't fall asleep. He was sitting there, insignificant and loyal, when a blue Camaro came popping and growling down the street and parked outside the Mangrove Arms.

He watched. The driver got out without bothering to turn the motor off. He had big shoulders and narrow eyes and wore just suspenders, not a shirt. Then two older men stepped out. One of them was thin and brittle, a sick and sour pallor on his crescent face. The other was fat and sweaty. He was the man who'd brought the red wagon back into the mangroves, the man with the limestone dust on his expensive shoes.

The three of them hesitated just a moment by the car, then they headed toward the front porch steps. There was something in the stiff and sneaky way they walked that Piney didn't like. He waited for them to vanish through the picket gate, then, without bothering to stand, he slid his butt along the curb, closer to the entryway, and he watched and listened as he twirled his
PARKING
sign.

Bert the Shirt rolled over on the floor a couple times, until he collided with a heavy cardboard box that he could brace himself against. Straining so hard that he felt it in his bowels, he jerked and shimmied to something like a sitting position, and then he coughed and took a rest. When he had his breath back, he looked at Sam—the wild hair, the pin-wheel eyes, the blotchy trousers. He said to him, "You look like hell."

Sam smiled at that. "And you look like a broken puppet. Like someone got your strings all twisted."

Hellish music hammered through from the shop, acid light streamed from the single naked bulb. Sam made a great effort to arch his back, pointed with his chin at the piles of T-shirts, the dusty floor. He went on, "What a way for it to end, huh, Bert?"

"It ends," said Bert, with just a suggestion of a shrug. "What's the difference how?"

Sam thought that over for a while. The music changed to some insane disco cha-cha.

Bert continued, "Somethin' that y'oughta know."

"Lotta things I oughta know."

"Your Walkman," said the Shirt. "It picked up a conversation."

There was a pause, then Sam Katz sat bolt upright on his stool, moved so briskly that the stool's feet chattered on the floor. He'd almost forgotten about the Walkman. All that fooling with the tape machine, the hearing aid, it seemed a long, long time ago. "It worked?" he said at last

"Worked good enough," said Bert, "that anybody finds the tape, those bastards're goin' to the chair."

"It worked," said Sam, with wonder. "It worked. Ya see, I could still think up a gizmo."

Bert wriggled higher against the cardboard box. "How'd ya plant it, Sam?"

Sam started to answer, then stopped. He'd been smiling but now the smile went away and he fell back into his Sshaped slump. "Was supposed to help, though," he finally said. "Help Aaron and his lady-friend. Who'd it help? Wha'did it accomplish?"

"Sam, hey, the gizmo worked," said Bert." Ya can't ask more than that."

"Why not?"

Bert considered. He missed his dog, didn't seem to think as clearly without the small quivering creature in his lap. He wondered vaguely how long the dog could live after he himself was dead. He said at last, "'Cause sometimes ya do your very best and still it don't accomplish nothin'. That's just how it is."

Sam opined, "That stinks."

Bert squirmed like he was set to disagree. But he couldn't disagree. "Okay," he said. "It stinks."

They sat there a moment. The hideous music throbbed like a clot.

Bert couldn't disagree but he couldn't leave it right there either. "Stinks," he said again. "But still, ya gotta try."

Sam kept a pouty silence.

"Am I right, Sam?" Bert kept on. "Can ya tell me I'm wrong? I'm sayin' it stinks sometimes, but still, ya gotta try-."

Sam just fixed him with his soupy eyes that turned down at the outside corners.

Aaron Katz had been posted at the front desk like everything was hunky-dory, as if it were a normal business day.

He sat among the potted palms and promotional brochures, shuffling papers, sorting keys, trying to keep his hands from trembling as the three invaders came trundling up the stairs; trying not to glance at Carol Lopez, who was crouched on a low stool below the level of the counter, her revolver in her hand; trying not to be furious with Gary Stubbs, who hadn't made it back in time.

The Russians came up single file, the shirtless Abramowitz leading. He moved thickly through the office door, took a couple steps along the sisal rug. Almost shyly, Markov and Cherkassky slipped in behind him and for a breathless moment no one spoke.

Aaron tried to swallow back the quaver in his voice. "May I help you?"

The Russians stalled, took time to get their bearings. Narrowed eyes flashed toward the doorway to the kitchen. "Please," said Markov, "you have a room?" The h spent a long while in his throat.

Aaron, compelled by some grotesque logic, answered the question straight. "For three?"

Then the brief charade was over and Abramowitz had pulled the gun from the back waistband of his pants. No one saw him draw it; it was just there in his hairy hand. It was pointed at Aaron's chest. He said, "Where is she, Katz?"

A bubble of sweat broke at the nape of Aaron's neck and trickled down his back. "Who?"

"Who," Cherkassky mocked. "Lazslo's whore. Where?"

In the kitchen, Suki heard it all. In her mind she fled; in her heart she surged to Aaron's side, offering up herself to save him; in fact she didn't, couldn't, move at all. She looked at the new cop, her protector; his gun was shaking in his hand like he was mixing paint.

Aaron said, "I don't know what you're—"

"Tell us or you die," said Tarzan.

"Look—" said Aaron.

And Carol Lopez picked that instant to spring up behind the counter. Her revolver cocked and poised, her shoulders broke the counter's plane the way a leaping dolphin breaks the surface of the water, and she yelled out, "Drop it!"

Tarzan Abramowitz didn't drop it. He wheeled toward the motion and he fired. The shot cracked and whistled and Carol Lopez crumpled, a red stain wicking through torn threads at the front of her shirt.

Time stopped for an instant. In that silent and airless hiatus, Aaron Katz had somehow gotten to his feet. He'd reached out for the silver service bell atop the counter. Grabbing it, he'd slung his arm back, coiled every sinew in his gut, then rocked forward, hips and chest pulling through the average arm; mechanics and control, things learned from his father, standing in for strength. The bell sprang from his hand, turning like a satellite, ringing softly as it flew. It hit Tarzan Abramowitz in the triangle between his eyebrows and the bridge of his nose, wedged briefly in a soft seam of the skull. Sinus bones knifed inward at the impact, and the huge and hairy man was stunned.

He fell back half a step, his narrow eyes lost focus behind a wall of reflex tears; and the trembling rookie ventured into the doorway from the kitchen and shot him through the heart.

He would have been a hero if he had kept on shooting but he didn't. Amazement at his own boldness made him indecisive. He watched the dead man fall, and by the time his furry back had hit the rug, Markov and Cherkassky had drawn out pistols of their own.

"Bravo," said an unshaken Cherkassky to the rookie. "Now throw the gun away."

The new cop blinked, counted weapons, blanched at the arithmetic, and did as he was told.

Cherkassky turned to Aaron. "Enough. Give us the girl or everybody dies."

Aaron looked down at his hands. He could faintly hear that Carol Lopez was still breathing. She was breathing through the hole in her shirt, and the wet sound of it made Aaron want to vomit. He looked up at Cherkassky. "Go fuck yourself."

Markov's flubbery lips were working, he licked them with a hound-like tongue. "Is only a woman. You cannot save her anyway."

"Where's my father?" Aaron said.

Cherkassky wagged his pistol. With his other hand he tugged his lumpy face. "Your father. Ah," he said. "Perhaps you like to trade? Your father for the whore."

The rookie trembled in the doorway. To get to Suki they would have to go through him, and he had no doubt that they would.

"Where is he?" Aaron said.

Markov smiled a salesman's smile. "Fifteen minutes you could see him, have reunion."

There was a pause. Carol Lopez gurgled softly from deep down in her punctured lung. Tarzan Abramowitz's right foot gave a slight but ghastly flick as some dead nerve finally shut down.

"A trade would be just fine."

It was Suki talking. She was standing barefoot at the bottom of the front porch steps. She'd slipped out the back door of the kitchen and come down the walkway with its ranks of new shrubs still waiting to be planted. No one saw her till she spoke. She could have kept on going—through the gate, onto the street, out of town, to the ends of the world. But she didn't. She stood there. Her voice was calm and her face serene.

The Russians wheeled cautiously at the words.

Aaron said, "Suki, please—"

She put a foot on the bottom stair and looked at him, her gaze slicing in between the Russians. Her hair was black and coarse, her eyes an unlikely violet. Her upper lip, disconcertingly, was lusher than the lower. She said, "Aaron, it's the only way. We should've seen that long ago."

"It's not the only way," cried Aaron, though he didn't see another.

To the Russians, Suki said, "I'm ready."

Markov and Cherkassky shared a glance. There still were witnesses to be disposed of.

Aaron, desperate, stalling, searching for a way to be by Suki's side, said, "Wait. You said a trade..."

A mocking twitch pulled at one end of Cherkassky's mouth. He quickly erased it. So trusting, these Americans. So stupid. A trade. Of course. A most convenient way to get all these insufferable and meddling people together to be killed.

Solemnly he said to Aaron, "We will bring you to your father, yes." With a gracious Old World sweep of his arm, he gestured for the man behind the counter to come join them.

"Aaron, don't," said Suki.

But Aaron's feet were moving. They didn't feel like his own feet and they didn't recognize the texture of the sisal rug, but they carried him around the counter and past the sprawling body of Abramowitz.

When he was close enough to grab, Markov seized his arm. And Cherkassky opened fire on the disarmed rookie, making, he believed, for two dead cops.

The Russians ushered Aaron through the office door and down the stairs. The sun was shining. Fronds were gently rustling. Suki waited patiently. Aaron could see the freckles on her neck, the rise of muscle in her shoulder. He wondered if the murderers would let them touch.