Mangrove Squeeze (13 page)

Piney shook water off his clothes, caught his breath, knelt down near her swollen face. He brushed wet and tangled hair back from her forehead, and murmured nervously, "You're gonna be okay, you're gonna be okay."

Her eyes opened. They didn't open very wide this time, but there was sense in them, they tracked. Very softly, through a ravaged voice box that felt like it had been pummeled with a bat, she said, "Tried to kill me."

Pineapple shushed her, stroked her hair.

"Lazslo." She swallowed. Swallowing burned and ached like she was choking down a jagged piece of gravel. "Tried to strangle me."

Piney nodded, kept his hand against her forehead. "He muffed it."

Fred had moved close again, was standing over them. "We'll put that sonofabitch in jail," he said.

"Rest now," Piney said.

She let her eyes fall closed. What came was not exactly sleep but some blessed suspension of fear and pain. Her body weighed nothing. The air was no temperature. She heard the crickets and frogs and the two men talking nervously, but the sounds came from some other world. Time passed, was measured not in minutes but in tiny increments of healing, of remembering how to be alive.

At some point she heard somebody say, "Doesn't matter if it gets us in trouble. We have to get her to the hospital."

Through her stupor she understood that there was danger in the words. She moaned. When she remembered how to open her eyes, Piney was crouching next to her again, his face was close. She turned toward him, said, "No."

"But—"

She reached out weakly, seized his wrist. "There's more of them," she rasped.

"More of who?" asked Fred.

Suki moved a little. She whispered: "Russians." Sensation was slowly coming back to her. She realized that the ground was hard and that her clothes were wet. She said, "I'm cold."

Fred and Piney looked at one another. They had no food or water; there were no blankets. It was late at night; they were miles from the highway or a phone. They'd been hired by a killer to lose a corpse, and now the intended victim was talking crazy and didn't want to go to the hospital.

"Cold," Suki said again, and closed her eyes.

Piney stroked her head and looked at the friend who'd thought this was a good idea, a lot of fun. Fred threw down his cigarette and started gathering driftwood for a fire.

Aaron Katz did not sleep well that night.

He'd strolled home from his humiliating evening at Lucia's doubting that this dinky little town would suit him, after all. Too few choices. One straight, attractive woman turned out to be a liar or a flake, and your chances of ever finding romance were significantly reduced. Made a fool of in one good restaurant, your options for a decent meal shrank radically. For some brief moments he almost missed New York, where you could fall out with three-quarters of your friends, end your marriage, write off entire neighborhoods and whole sectors of the economy, and still have plenty to do. That was the glory of the city, and for several moments on that glum walk home he almost missed it—until he remembered it was January, and he was strolling in shirtsleeves, and not looking over his shoulder as he strolled, and that he hadn't had a headache or a bellyache in months.

He sucked in some mild salty air, listened to the rustling of the fronds, and reminded himself this was simply one bad evening, and you didn't go sour on a whole new life because of one bad evening.

He reached the Mangrove Arms, walked through the dark office and the kitchen to his father's back apartment. He found the old man asleep in a chair with his Walkman on. Aaron eased off his headphones, reedy Big Band clarinets still singing through the tiny speakers. Sam didn't wake up so Aaron tossed a blanket over him, kissed him on the forehead, and let him be.

In his own room he undressed and washed, and propped up his pillows to read in bed. Even as his eyes grew heavy he understood that sleep was going to elude him, but after half an hour he put down his book and switched off the light.

Soon he gave in to twisting the sheet, tormenting the pillow. But, though his body was restless and twitchy, his ego, at least, was gradually going to sleep. His embarrassment at Lucia's shrank down to its rightful size as something trivial, his disappointment revealed itself as off the mark. And as those things receded, concern for Suki came forward and grew.

That was what mattered; of course it was. This concern for her, stunning in its plainness, came to him unbidden and surprised him by its potency. Why hadn't she appeared? He removed himself from the question, and discovered an unselfish interest that perhaps was no more than common decency, but could stand equally well as the start of real affection. Like his father said: I don't worry; I care. There's a difference.

He rolled over and looked at the clock. It was 12:51, much too late to call. But caring had prerogatives that went far beyond issues of pique and jealousy and proper form. He switched on the bedside lamp, found the scrap of paper with her numbers on it, dialed.

The phone rang four times, five, then Suki's answering machine picked up. The sound of her voice made Aaron swallow now. He left a message. He just wanted to know she was okay. She didn't owe him any explanations or apologies. He just needed to hear she was all right.

Fred and Piney slept a little bit but by first light they were wide awake.

The black sky turned lavender and seemed to take on roundness, billowed like a vast balloon and floated off the ocean. Detail came back into the world, and Fred saw to his surprise that Lazslo's Caddy had continued settling after all. By now it was sunk entirely except for the gleaming chrome peaks of its tail fins and the very last pleat of its folded-down top. "Whaddya know," he said by way of eulogy: "It died like a convertible."

Piney said nothing, just glanced over at the sleeping woman who was supposed to have been buried with the car.

After a while the sun rose. The sky exploded yellow and heat uncoiled like a snapped rug across the surface of the water. Suki squirmed against the ground, blinked herself more or less awake, struggled up onto her elbows. Piney, vigilant, crouched down to reassure her.

"How are you today?" he asked.

By way of answer she reached up carefully to touch her discolored neck, then nodded. "Who are you?" she said.

"No one special," he admitted. "Name's Pineapple."

"Pineapple," rasped Suki. She was hurt and she was lying on the ground. She was helpless. Helplessness bred either blind trust or utter terror, trust used up less strength. But she wanted more convincing. She looked harder at Pineapple, the ascetic face, the scraggly no-color beard. "I've seen you," she said, "where?"

"Whitehead Street," he said. "I hold a sign."

She closed her eyes. Pieces of the world were reforming for her. She saw Whitehead Street behind her eyelids, the banyan trees and Bahama shutters. "Whitehead and Rebecca. You sit there on the curb."

"I've seen you too," said Piney. "Usually you're on your bike."

Suki half-smiled at that. On her bike. The idea reminded her that there were such things as simple joy and safety. On her bike in sunshine with a whole universe of air to breathe.

Fred was standing a little ways away, pacing and smoking. Now he moved closer. "We just happened to end up with the car," he said. "Shouldn't have done it but I did it. Didn't mean no harm. No hard feelings, right?"

It was a pretty feeble explanation, but Suki said, "I guess."

Piney said, "Do you remember what happened, how you got here?"

Suki looked away. She bit her lip, the upper one. She nodded.

Piney said, "You should really see a doctor, go to the police."

Suki wriggled on the ground. Her violet eyes got wild. "Maybe," she said. "Might be too big for the police."

Fred threw down his cigarette. "Too big?"

"A Mafia. They're everywhere. Hong Kong. Libya. Stolen jewels. Plutonium."

Fred looked at Piney. Piney looked at Fred.

"You think I'm crazy," Suki said. It was not a question.

There was a silence. The tide was coming in. Their clearing was shrinking at the edges and Lazslo's Caddy was totally submerged.

"Think it if you want," Suki went on. "I don't blame you. But look, I'm supposed to be dead. I'm safer if they think I am. That much makes sense, right?"

The two men looked at one another. They weren't betting if it made sense or it didn't.

"Can you hide me for a day or two?" said Suki.

"Hide you?" Piney said.

"Till I think things through a little."

Piney looked over at his roommate. Fred had the guilty lump of fifties in his pocket and they both knew that they owed her.

"Well, sure," said Piney. "But we don't exactly have a home."

"We have a home," corrected Fred. "But it's a hot dog."

"A hot dog," Suki said. She reached up and gently touched her ravaged throat. She laughed weakly and it felt like a fist was pushing up her gullet. "They'd never think of looking for me there."

Around ten o'clock that morning, when Ludmila the Belorussian housekeeper let herself into Lazslo's apartment to clean, the first thing she noticed was a meaty smell. It was somewhat strong and gamy, but not at all unpleasant. It smelled like salt and iron, like a butcher shop in the old country, where the refrigeration wasn't very good, and streaks of blood and smears of fat would collect at the low edges of dented pans. She thought, with vague surprise, that Lazslo had been cooking without her help, feeding some pointy-breasted American tramp to get her into bed. But when she went into the kitchen she found no pots on the stove, no dirty dishes on the counter, except for one tall glass with a stain of bourbon at the bottom.

Curious, she looked around the living room. No rumples in the sofa, no pillows on the floor; no lipstick-covered filters in the ashtrays.

She moved into the hallway that led to the bedroom. The meaty smell got more insinuating as she went, though the corridor was as it always was, save for the crookedness of the sports prints and Harley posters on the walls.

The bedroom, on the other hand, was a housekeeper's hell.

Bureau drawers had been yanked open, they gushed out sleeves and cuffs and collars. The dresser top had been swept clean of change and papers and souvenirs, all of which were strewn along the carpet. In the master bathroom, the medicine chest mirror hung askew on flaccid hinges, jars and bottles had been smashed against the tiled floor. Through the open closet door, Ludmila saw anarchic twisted piles of silk and linen clothes, tormented hangers poking through them.

And on the bed, wearing tight jeans and a mostly open shirt, lay Lazslo, his throat cut ear to ear.

The blood had all drained out of him. Some of it was matted in his chest hair but most had spilled onto the sheet, giving its folds the engorged and spongy look of springtime moss. His eyes were open, the irises rolled up toward the brows. It was an expression that in old church paintings suggested ecstasy, but Lazslo didn't look ecstatic. He looked confused, affronted, his shattered arrogance still unbelieving that things were turning out so badly. The two sections of his neck were stretched into a ghastly smile by the weight of his head; his gold chain had found its way into the appalling slot and was lodged against a notch in his windpipe.

Ludmila looked at him a while. She didn't scream, her stomach didn't turn. She was neither glad nor sorry he was dead. His dying, probably, had something to do with the false-bottom vases with the little tape machines inside, but that was not Ludmila's problem. She did what she was told, she didn't have to understand what happened.

She went to the telephone and called Ivan Fyodorovich Cherkassky. She told him what she'd found.

Cherkassky expressed his shock and sorrow. A violent country, barbaric, he complained. A terrible crime, a tragedy. Lazslo's uncle would be devastated. But in the meantime, Ludmila, as a good citizen, must call the police, and only the police. Did she understand?

She understood. She called the cops. And by the time the lady officer arrived with her clipboard and her walkie-talkie, Ludmila had forgotten most of the little English she could speak. She was sent home, having been told she might be asked more questions later. She got back on her scooter and she gave the dead man no more thought.

The taxi driver took one look at the three of them and demanded payment in advance.

Two dirtbags, one with shoes, and a beat-up barefoot woman in a torn and filthy dress, calling from a pay phone on the highway late on a weekday morning. God knew what the story was. Coke-whore, maybe. Some wacko triangle with sex rights in dispute. No concern of his. This was the Keys, where lost souls were free to travel their chosen route to hell, as long as they could pay the fare. The driver looked surprised when Fred handed him a new if somewhat soggy fifty.

They drove from Big Coppitt past the Navy base at Boca Chica, past the rancid clutter of Stock Island, retracing the path that Fred had driven, barely twelve hours before, in Lazslo's Cadillac. At the top of Key West they turned left, toward the ocean side, and when they'd passed the houseboats but before they'd reached the airport, at a stretch where there was nothing but mangroves on one side and Cow Key Channel on the other, Fred leaned over the backseat and said, "Here's good."