Mangrove Squeeze (24 page)

"Wait! You never showed me yours!" protested Donald Egan.

Gary Stubbs kept going, and his footsteps were heavy on the metal stairs on the outside of the building.

Suki had no patience for sitting still, lacked the prudent meekness to stay hidden in her turret. At the Mangrove Arms that afternoon, she and Aaron were planting shrubs out in the courtyard.

They were working side by side and on their knees. Suki's hair was tied up in a red bandanna, her shoulders were covered by a big work-shirt knotted at the midriff. She wore gardening gloves, and where they ended the sinews of her wrists were flickering. Dirt flew from her trowel as if kicked back by a terrier, and her forehead was pebbled with sweat at the hairline.

Aaron's shovel bit in next to hers, and when the hole was ready, he lifted the shrub by the base of its stem, the hairs of its roots protruding from the shredding burlap, and Suki helped to center it and nestle it in. Leaning across to tamp down the soil, their faces were very close, they smelled each other's skin, and they pretended that the closeness was an accident, nothing but a circumstance of labor, a gesture from some archaic time when life was tenuous and basic and people didn't speak of love, but rather sowed it, pruned it, proclaimed connection with muscles not with words. Suki dragged an arm across her forehead. Aaron stared an instant at her mouth. They scuttled side by side to the next place in the line of shrubs.

They were tamping dirt, serene, cares put aside, when a squat distorted shadow slashed suddenly between them.

The shadow stained the upturned soil the brickish brown of drying liver, and in a heartbeat it brought an unnatural and unwholesome coolness to the air. The wheeze of labored breathing scratched through the whisper of the palms; some sinister note in the rasp of it sent adrenaline squirting into Aaron's blood.

On some dormant heroic impulse that lived not in the brain but the spine, he clutched his shovel harder, ready for defense. His haunches tightened, set to spring. From under resolute brows he raised his eyes.

He saw Fred standing there, breathing hard and sweating through his ragged shirt.

Fred said, "Biked down pretty fast. Thought I'd better talk to you."

Aaron exhaled, dropped the shovel, muttered, "Jesus Christ."

Suki rolled off her knees, sat down on the ground. "What is it, Fred?"

"That cop guy, Stubbs," Fred wheezed, "he came up to the hot dog. Looking for you. I didn't know if I should tell him where you were. Told him I could get a message to you."

"So what's the message?" she asked.

Fred gestured for time-out. He patted his damp pockets, looking for a cigarette. Still trying to catch his breath, he lit up, filtered vapor through his nicotine-colored moustache. "Said a woman got murdered. Seems to be a Russian. And the
Frigate
office got all busted up. Whoever did it took papers from your desk. He thinks they're looking for you. He thinks you oughta talk to him."

Suki bit her lip, the upper one. "
Now
he thinks that."

Fred blew smoke out of his nose. "Said he's sorry. He believes you now. Unofficially, he said."

Suki shook her head, looked along the ground at the line of shrubs they'd just put in, the churned and reworked earth. Life was supposed to be much simpler than it was turning out to be. Plant shrubs, cook meals. Sip wine and watch the sun go down. She said, "I just don't know anymore what I should do."

Aaron started getting to his feet. He stood up too fast and blood drained from his skull. His vision went blank silver at the edges and the solid earth felt like batter underneath him. He said, "You know, it's very strange. I'm a law-abiding person, I believed what I was taught in civics class. But my gut is saying that before we talk to the police, we really ought to talk with Bert the Shirt."

On Key Haven, in a study with narrow windows and snug-fitting blinds, Ivan Cherkassky and Tarzan Abramowitz were trying to make sense of Suki's pilfered papers.

"A mess," Cherkassky said disgustedly. "Here she puts a circle, there she puts an arrow. Over here she draws a line goes right off the page. Where it goes, this line? Is disorganized. I see nothing here."

Tarzan Abramowitz, leaning on a thick bare arm, was looking over his boss's shoulder. "A doodler," he said.

"Doodler?" said Cherkassky. "What is doodler?" He didn't like the nearness of the other man, the dampness of his armpit near his face. He tried to shrink down lower in his chair.

"Doodler. Squiggles she makes. Airplanes. Little men."

"Disorganized," Cherkassky said again, and elbowed the most recent batch of papers to the edge of his desk blotter, where they shuffled in with many others. Unpaid invoices that were three months old. Mechanicals from ads for sunglass shops, porno stores. A Rolodex written in the various hands of half a dozen people who'd come to understand that they couldn't make a living selling space for
Island Frigate
. Nothing so far about the sentenced woman's private life, who she saw, where she went, nothing that might give a hint as to her hiding place.

Cherkassky reached into the leather satchel for another handful of papers. The two men, mystified, pored through them. Wands of light squeezed through the small gaps at the edges of the blinds; motes of golden dust floated in the air.

At length Abramowitz, his massive jaw almost nuzzling his boss's ear, pointed at a paper not unlike the hundred others that had gone before, and said, "Aha!"

"Aha?" Cherkassky said.

Tarzan pointed with a thick and hairy finger. "Look! A small thing only, but perhaps ... This paper is, how you call, paste-down for an ad."

"Paste-down," Cherkassky echoed. "Yes."

"Copy of what goes to printer," Tarzan said.

"I understand."

"But look the date," said Abramowitz. "Day before she goes with Lazslo."

"Ah," Cherkassky said. "Only one day. Good."

"Now here," said the assassin. "You see here she doodles the circles, arrows, little fish? Here she writes 'Lucia's 8."'

Cherkassky bit his knuckles. "We know who this Lucia is?"

"Is restaurant," said Abramowitz. "Nice restaurant. Perhaps she is going there for dinner."

"But by dinner time she is—"

"She does not arrive. No dinner, very sad ... But perhaps there is someone waits for her. Friend. Boyfriend. Someone she tells things to."

Cherkassky swiveled in his seat. "We have busboy at Lucia's?"

"Of course," said Tarzan Abramowitz.

Cherkassky sighed. "Is how you say long chance."

"Long shot," said Abramowitz. "But okay, is a start."

"Cops ain't subtle is the problem," Bert the Shirt was saying.

Aaron had fetched him from poolside at the Paradiso, and now he was sitting poolside at the Mangrove Arms. Life in Florida—largely a matter of moving from pool to pool, staying within the radius of the waft of chlorine. He was wearing an ice-blue guayabera and stroking the hard and bound-up belly of his comatose chihuahua.

"The whole idea," the old mobster went on, "is layin' low, right?—and wit' the cops right away it's flashing lights and sirens, motorcades and tear gas. No patience. No subtlety. All 'ey do, they draw attention. The cops, I seen 'em protect a person right ta death ... Guess I shouldn't say that. But hey, wha' do I know? Face it, when it comes to cops, I'm like prejudice."

The others, daunted and inexpert at tactics, moped around the wire mesh table. Aaron rubbed soil from the creases in his knuckles. Suki looked with yearning toward the fresh half-finished plantings. Fred plucked at his damp shirt and lit another cigarette.

Somewhere a motorcycle revved. Then Sam Katz matter-of-factly said, "Sounds to me like the time has come we gotta infiltrate."

It was sometimes hard to tell if Sam was listening. It was always hard to tell if he was following what was said. No one had expected him to weigh in with an opinion. After a baffled pause, Aaron said, "What?"

Sam said, "Infiltrate. Like get inside."

Aaron said, "I know what infiltrate—"

Bert said, "Hol' on. Didn't I say this days ago?"

Suki said, "Now let's not get any—"

But Sam Katz leaned down on his elbows, tugged his Einstein hair and moved slowly, resolutely forward. "Look. Going to the police—no good. Just sitting here—no good. They're going after Suki, we're going after them."

"And who's this
we
?" said Aaron.

Sam hadn't gotten quite that far. He fiddled with his hearing aid.

Fred surprised himself by speaking up. "Me and Piney. I guess that we could do it."

"Do
what?
" said Suki. "Am I missing something or is this all a little—"

"No offense," Bert said to Fred, "but no, ya couldn't do it. 'S gotta be somebody that could blend."

Aaron pulled his hair, was abashed to realize it was his father's gesture. "Look, these are killers. There's no one that could blend. Forget about it."

Sam Katz said, "Like us. Like me and Bert."

"Forget it, Sam," said Suki, "it isn't your—"

Sam just then remembered something very stirring that he had heard or read many decades before. He raised his finger grandly and intoned:" 'If I am only for myself, what am I?' I think that's from the Talmud."

"Pop, it just isn't realistic."

Sam Katz shook his head and looked at Bert. "Kids," he said. "They think they have a lock on realistic. Like realistic stops when Medicare starts? They think they're the only ones can accomplish anything."

Bert stroked his fading dog, watched as ghostly hairs came unstuck and fluttered through the table's wire mesh.

"The uncle," he said at last. "Probably an old guy. Maybe near as old as we are."

"But with young guys," Aaron pointed out, "to do the murdering."

Bert and Sam ignored him. Friends, coevals, they were now on a circuit of their own. Sam said, "'S'okay. We find out where he lives—"

"He lives up on Key Haven," blurted Suki, then wished at once she hadn't said it.

"Key Haven," said Fred, picking a tobacco fleck from his tongue. "People up there, they see you hanging around, they call the cops. Me and Piney, we couldn't blend so good up there."

Bert finished Sam's thought for him. "... And we rent a house nearby."

"Bert, Pop," said Aaron, "don't even start—"

"We need a cover," Bert went on.

"Cover?" said Sam. His brain was itching and he was leaning so far forward that his nose was almost on the table.

"A story. Ya know, who we are . .. How 'bout... How 'bout we're a coupla old gay guys."

"Gay?" said Sam. "We gotta be gay?"

"Gotta blend," said Bert. "Dignified old gay guys. Like a sweet old married couple. Partners a long, long time."

Sam Katz thought it over, wound a finger through a tuft of sun-shot hair, and shrugged. "Okay, podnah."

"Not podnah," said the Shirt. "Podnah, that's cowboys. Gay guys, it's
part
ner."

"Look," said Aaron, "there is not a chance in hell—"

His father wasn't listening. He'd stood up from his chair, his fingertips, for balance, splayed across the table. He said, "Okay. Gay guys. Partners. So much planning, I'm exhausted."

Aaron went on even though he was no longer sure who he was talking to. "This is absolutely out of the question."

"Totally," said Suki. "Totally."

Bert the Shirt was scratching his dog like the dog was his own chin. "Infiltrate," he said. "Check 'em out. Me and Sam. Anyone got a better idea, I'm listening."

Not long after Tarzan Abramowitz left Ivan Cherkassky's house, there was a knock at the scoop-faced Russian's door.

The door was double-locked, of course, and the old Soviet's impulse was to ignore the visitor—a brat selling cookies, most likely, or a cheaply dressed fanatic handing out religious leaflets. But the knock was repeated, then again more loudly, and finally a familiar voice boomed through. "Ivan Fyodorovich! Ivan Fyodorovich!"

Cherkassky cocked his head. His pinched-in face stretched outward just a notch, and for a second he nearly smiled.

So—Gennady was coming out of his week-long sulk and was ready to resume his role of clown and figurehead and scientist and payer-out of bribes. This was a relief, though it only confirmed what Cherkassky had long known: that people, however whipped and humiliated and badly used, would come limping, crawling back to the life they knew, because being mortified, spat upon, was less appalling than the chore of finding a different life.