Mangrove Squeeze

by SKLA

  Next morning, very early, too early for most people to be having conversations, Piney said, "Fred, ya know what I sometimes wonder about?"

  The first yellow sun was starting to dry the nighttime dampness of the mangrove leaves. In the clearing by the hot dog, the flat cracked stones were beginning to get warm; lethargic lizards crawled up on them to bask. Fred, his eyes half-closed, was drinking coffee from a dented tin cup. He didn't answer.

  Piney looked down at his rubbed-up hands, said, "Time."

  "Oh Christ," said Fred. He lit a cigarette, squinted against the phosphorous that smarted in his eyes, and wondered if he'd go to work that day, if he'd bother with the seven-thirty shape-up. He glanced over at his shovel. It was leaning against the service window of the hot dog, next to Piney's PARKING sign. Tools of the trade.

  "Think about it," Pineapple went on.

  "Why?" said Fred, and picked tobacco off his tongue.

  "Say there was no such thing as time," Piney said, undaunted in the sunshine that grew whiter every moment "Does that mean nothing would happen or everything would happen all at once?"

  Fred sucked his cigarette. "Who gives a rat's ass?"

  "You in a bad mood, Fred?"

  "'Bout like usual."

  "I'm goin' downtown then," Piney said. "Take my sign, make a little money."

  "'Bout time," Fred opined.

  "Ya see?" said Piney.

  "See what?"

  "Time. Ya can't help but think about it."

  Fred shook his head, looked off at an osprey circling over Cow Key Channel.

  "At work, where I sit, there on the curb," said Piney, "I can lean back and look around the banyan tree, see Suki's balcony... Last couple days I haven't seen her though."

  Fred gave a crude guffaw. "Course you haven't, Piney. Betcha anything she's shacked up with the rich guy, the owner, by now."

  As blandly as he could, Piney said, "Think so?"

  "Waya the world, friend," said Fred, and sucked deeply on his cigarette. "Rich guy gets the broad."

  "Don't call her that," said Piney, and he looked away.

  Fred chased his eyes to needle him. "You got a crush on her," he said. "Ain't this what I been sayin' all along?" He took a last drag on his smoke then doused it in a shrinking puddle, savoring the sizzle as the small fire was extinguished.

  Donald Egan—his staff on indefinite leave, his publication schedule suspended due to vandalism—had worked through the night to write and lay out and print and fold a four-page special edition.

  Not long after dawn, he bundled the papers with heavy plastic strapping, and horsed them into the trunk and the backseat of his car. The ink was still fresh; it smelled of acetone, you could almost see it seeping deeper into the newsprint.

  Egan sucked a stogie as he drove the quiet morning streets of a town that stayed up late and slept late too. His pulse pounded with unaccustomed exertion as he carried the papers into empty grocery stores, guest houses that smelled achingly of coffee, laundromats with one lone dryer spinning.

  He was bleary-eyed and unshaven and happier than he'd been for as long as he could remember. There was ink in the folds of his knuckles, and he'd written something that maybe could matter. He felt like a newspaperman again.

  Not that most people got excited about his banner headline: "A Russian Mafia on Duval Street???"

  Who cared? Not the tourists, as long as the sun was still hot, the beer cold and the music loud. And even the locals, glutted with malfeasance, weary of greed and scandal, mostly shrugged and snorted. More crooks; a next wave of carpetbaggers. What else was new?

  In certain places, though, the Frigate's special edition was very major news. One of those places was the T-shirt shop, at the back of which Sam Katz was being held.

  The young man who opened the store at nine a.m. had found the papers leaning up against the door. He picked them up as he undid the double locks. He did not read English very well and he didn't care for reading anyway. He was about to throw the bundle in the trash when the headline caught his eye. "Russian Mafia" he could understand. The headline made him feel momentarily important and he could not suppress a stupid smile.

  He went to the back of the store and knocked three times, then twice more after pausing, on the door that led to the stock room.

  Tarzan Abramowitz opened up. He'd slept on the cot surrounded by leaning stacks of cardboard boxes, and he was standing in his underwear. Muscles twitched in his legs though his eyes were still narrow with sleep. Scratching his hairy stomach, he took the paper back to his cot and haltingly he read.

  Sam Katz watched him read.

  Sam's ankles were still taped to the high and backless stool. His spine had gone through several phases of pain, cramping, and fatigue, and by now he had caved into an S-shaped slump that hardly hurt at all. His sunken chest had compressed down onto his old man's little paunch; somewhere along the way he'd wet his pants. He'd known when he was doing it and he didn't care that much; squeamishness was a luxury that only the young and healthy could afford.

  Through the night he'd dozed and awakened, dozed and awakened, feverish dreams resolving into no less feverish thoughts. At some point he understood that, no matter what he said or didn't say, his captors had to kill him. Obviously they did. He tried to get his mind around the idea of being killed. It seemed a crazy way to go. Old Jews, if they made it past the years when the driven ones dropped dead at their desks from heart attacks, died of cancer, diabetes. What kind of mishegoss was kidnapping and murder? Nothing in his life had pointed that way, not that it mattered.

  If he could believe in an afterlife he would be quite content. He didn't ask for harp music, wings, nothing like that. He'd only like to be able to look down now and then and see how things were going for his son. Did things work out with Suki? The guest house—did he ever manage to turn it around? Sam wanted to keep track of those things. His own story was over. That was fine, fair enough. It had been an okay story. But it made him sad to leave Aaron's story in the middle.

  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.

  Chapter 48

  "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."

  Chapter 49

  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 m
outh 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.