by SKLA
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.
"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.
Chapter 32
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 paper
s 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."
Chapter 33
"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 partner."
"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.
Cherkassky smoothed his shirt and headed for the entryway, determined to be as conciliatory and gracious as his old comrade would let him be. Opening th
e door, he slightly raised his hands in a gesture that was for him expansive, and said, "Gennady Petrovich, how good to see you up and out."
Markov stood in the doorway and did an absurd little pantomime of a man just freed from prison or the hospital, flared nostrils gulping in air, fat spread arms embracing the landscape, wattly chin quivering as it turned up toward the sky.
Reassured by these fresh signs of buffoonery, Cherkassky said, "Come in, come in. Tell me how you have been."
"How I have been?" said Markov, when he'd moved into the living room and settled deeply into the softest chair. "I've been drunk. I've been weeping. I've been angry. Maybe I am better now."
Cherkassky studied him. But Markov didn't want to be studied, and a buffoonish yet melancholy grin was as good a mask as any. The thin man said, "Maybe?"
Markov shrugged, lightly drummed his fingers on the chair arms.
Cherkassky studied him some more. He wanted to be delicate but he did not believe in coddling. He said, "So you are ready to get back to work?"
Markov flashed a bland and fleeting smirk, and shrugged again.
Cherkassky squirmed in response. He was accustomed to hearing Markov talk too much, blab out whatever was on his mind or in his sloppy sentimental heart. These inscrutable smiles, these stubborn silences unsettled him, as Markov knew they would.
"A new shipment needs preparing," Cherkassky said. "Libya. Twenty kilos, oxide form. Sent in pigment canisters. You can do?"
Yet again the fat man shrugged and smiled. Yes, he could do it. Take metallic plutonium, bind it to oxygen with strong acid and electric current. Easy, if you knew how. And that was his edge. He was on terms with the atom. Plutonium—people feared it like they feared whatever they did not understand. Science fiction and propaganda made them think it was much more mysterious and dangerous than it was. In fact you could carry plutonium in your briefcase; you could hold it in your hand. Do anything but breathe it in. Markov's special knowledge made him serene; his serenity made the other man fretful and fidgety.