Windward Passage

by Jim Nisbet

  Wicked! Quentin squirmed away from Vassily and writhed ineffectually, most wicked and to be avoided, even if his nightie were a leaden foil to go with his leaden feet and the leaden credit card that guaranteed enough bonus miles to medevac him the fuck out of here.

  Stroke, repeated the cop’s mouth. Massive coronary, repeated the orderly’s labial choreography. Why not both, Officer Ventana asked in his most reasonable mime.

  Wicked, Quentin chalked up to experience one more time, chalked onto the slate held by the clown who waited at the cable car turnaround, a guy he used to tip twice a week after he finished rowing at the Bay Club, when he could still row, two decades ago. Row, row your decades ago. …

  “Baby,” bi-valved the orderly, his eyes brimming with silent tears.

  A baby? Quentin drew himself up, as it were, though he remained supine. An infant? What happened to the prefix and suffix? His strength evaporated like a blister of water in a heated wok. He hadn’t realized he’d been trying to sit up. Okay then, let’s sit up. Follow through. Slippery when wet. Slight alarm: when’s the last time I took my medicine? Yesterday? Day before? Panic. An expired meter. Stuff got me this far. Yesterday. That far. Needle goes to red. I got quarters. Gentle hands restrained him, increasing their strength as he increased his. He gave up the struggle and fell back to the floor, fetal. Full-body pronation. Someone rolled the gurney out of the way. If we’re clearing the decks, he thought, let’s turn off this disgusting television, too. He reached in his pocket for his key-chain Quietus. Won’t they think I’m clever, conspiring to achieve peace and quiet in an emergency bistro in which they think it’s totally beyond my ability to order. Doesn’t bistro mean quick? Except he wasn’t wearing a pocket, no more than he was wearing trousers, and he pinched between thumb and forefinger and middle finger an old man’s cold and fearful penis, wrinkled and diminuendoed, not standing up to all and sundry circumstances as of yore, we’re talking regression, cradle to realtor-of-the-year to cradle again, perigee apogee perigee, el señor character arc, mostly a fold of skin and tinier than ever because he was wearing a disposable puce paper smock with off-white centime-sized quadrifoliate pansies printed on it and a great slit all the way up the back so it was cold on the emergency room floor, cold in more ways than one. And pockets on these things are not covered by your insurance? Maybe your deductible? Don’t get hysterical. They get you coming and going. Russian for quick. Oh, Quentin thought, as he lay back on the publicly traded frigid linoleum, this stuff will never last, can you short stock in managed care linoleum? Better yet, how about a breath of fresh air? Ye merchant could charge at least as much as ye merchant charges for water. Whatever the traffic will bear. Oh it’s wickedness, a wicked world infested by State TV and latex gloves, which means I still have a sense of smell and a long-dead family propagating wicked aggrandizement. I could learn the Russian for almost anything, starting with get me out of here, I could readily exchange rubles for Euros, forget the dollar, the dollar is toast, and why must I think about money just now? Now, when a man might mistake wicked for a wicket, wicket through which a forgotten mallet might sleekly facilitate a wooden ball’s exit, a graceful soughing amble through whispering long grass . . .

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THE RUSSIAN HELD OUT A BURLY PALM, FACE UP. RED DROPPED THE KEY onto it.

  The Russian closely inspected the key, as if it were an earring or broach with a valuable stone. He dangled its flotation fob as if to hypnotize himself. He looked past it at Red. Red looked past it at him. The Russian let the key drop out of his hand onto the table.

  A waiter appeared. “Would either of you gentlemen like a cocktail before dinner?” He leaned over the table to light a pair of candles in a sconce on the wall.

  The Russian didn’t wait for Red. “I’ll have a double shot of the cheapest vodka in the house, ice-cold, neat.”

  “Shall we make that a vodka martini, sir?” the waiter suggested. “That’s cold and neat.”

  The Russian smiled. “Only if it’s in—how do you say—a nervous glass?”

  “Very good,” the waiter said.

  “You’ve mastered the vernacular,” Red observed.

  “Vernacular focuses the mind,” the Russian declared.

  “No vermouth, no olive, no ice?” the waiter asked.

  “No fruit,” Vassily said. But he was looking at Red.

  The waiter turned to Red. “Sir?”

  “I’ll wait for the wine.”

  “Very well. And may I run down tonight’s specials for you?”

  “First the vodka,” said the Russian. “And a wine list.”

  “Very well, sir. You’ll find the wine list under your menu.”

  “So it is,” said the Russian, not looking at it. “What do you have from the valley of the Rhône?”

  “Red or white?”

  “Red.”

  The waiter opened the wine list to its seventh or eighth page and ran a finger down it. “These are all from the Rhône, sir. Do you have a specific preference?”

  “Vaqueras, St. Emillion, Châteauneuf du Pape, St. Joseph—but only if it’s really, how you say … top shelf? And, by the way.” The Russian shifted his eyes from Red to the waiter. “None of this fifteen percent alcohol bullshit—capiche? When I say I want to drink French wine,” the Russian touched a fingertip to the tablecloth, “I expect to drink French wine.”

  The waiter’s eyes slid toward Red, then back onto the Russian. “Very good, sir.”

  Red smiled thinly. Red knew the Russian knew that Red knew that the Russian spoke better English than Red did. So how long did they need to stay cute on the subject of vernacular?

  The waiter smiled and touched a marque. “An excellent Hermitage. …”

  “Done,” said the Russian. “We’ll order entrées when you return.” He did not look at the price.

  “Very good, sir.” The waiter went away.

  “They say this place has the best steaks in San Francisco,” the Russian said.

  “I don’t give a shit,” said Red.

  “You are welcome,” the Russian said. “But, of course, I don’t care that you don’t, as you put it, give a shit. We came here because I like a good steak. Have a salad, if you like. Or drink an entire bottle of expensive wine for yourself. Tonight, you are my guest.”

  “I couldn’t be more thrilled if I was an astronaut and this was Venus.”

  “Cosmonaut.” The Russian folded his hands on the place setting in front if him. Diamond chips in the form of the letter P, embossed on a gold ring on the pinky of his left hand, glinted in the candlelight. “Does she have it?”

  “No,” Red said. “She doesn’t have it.”

  “Gee.” The Russian sat against the back of the booth. “That makes two of you.”

  “Three, if you count Charley. Four, if you count the poor motherfucker who installed it in the bottom of Charley’s boat.”

  The Russian opened one hand. “He was really, really difficult, that guy.”

  “His name was Arnauld.”

  The Russian covered one hand with the other. “All he had to do was tell us the truth.”

  “Like you’d know from the truth.”

  “I’ll know it when I hear it,” the Russian assured him.

  “He put it in the keel—right?”

  “Yes. He convinced us of that much.”

  “With his last breath, no doubt.”

  “There’s no better certificate of authenticity. Although, as regards certificates?” Vassily smiled. “The head was a stroke of genius.”

  Red made no reply. A fat lot of good this sparring was going to do Arnauld, who had only been doing his job. Had done his job. Or Charley either, for that matter. Red sighed. Twenty years ago, smuggling had been easy. It had even been fun. Or had he thought that nostalgic, useless bit of rote already today?

  The drinks appeared. By the time the waiter had shown the Russian the label on the bottle, cut its foil, and drawn its cork, the Russian had tossed off half his v
odka. When the waiter offered to pour a taste for the Russian, he waved it off. He poured the taste for Red. I know from wine like I know from cosmonauts, Red brooded. He swirled the wine in its globe. “Nice color,” he said without enthusiasm. He drank it off, letting it stay in his mouth for a moment before he swallowed. “Damn.”

  The waiter beamed.

  “Next time,” the Russian said, as the waiter half-filled his glass, “we’ll call ahead. Get them to open the bottle a half-hour early.”

  Next time, Red thought, I’m going to be a lot harder to find.

  “Excellent idea, sir,” the waiter agreed. He half-filled Red’s glass and declined to advance the caveat of credit card and authorization, when ordering by phone.

  “To that end, as I’m sure this bottle won’t last long enough to realize its full potential,” said the Russian, his eyes still on Red, “perhaps we should proceed without delay to a second one. So it will be awakened by the time our steaks arrive.”

  “Suit yourself, Vassily,” said Red.

  The Russian nodded at the waiter.

  “Another?” said the waiter, in a neutral tone. A second two-hundred-dollar bottle of wine came with the potential of thirty or forty dollars added to the tip, which would make it a hundred-dollar table, and a horse the waiter liked was running at Golden Gate Fields tomorrow. Otherwise, neither the floridity nor the extravagance of the order impressed him.

  “So that, having properly breathed, the wine will realize its potential,” said the Russian. By the tone of his voice, he might have been counting pigeons at a bus stop.

  “I’ll see to it at once. And since you like this wine so much, sir, with your permission I’ll send over a salver of three or four starters, gratis. Beef tartar, onion rings, green beans in olive—”

  Red sighed abruptly. Vassily waved a hand. “Skip the starters.”

  “Very good, sir,” the waiter segued smoothly. “Have you selected your main course?”

  “The biggest steak you have, and still walking,” replied the Russian, again not waiting for his guest.

  “That will be the Vaquero Porterhouse. Thirty-four ounces. Very rare. Sir?”

  “The smallest steak you have,” Red said, “medium rare.”

  “That’s our pepper steak, sir, grilled with sweet onions and a cognac and peppercorn sauce.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Any legumes?” asked the Russian, throwing back the last of his vodka.

  “Two vegetables come with it, sir. You have a choice …”

  Goddamn this is excruciating, Red thought. Why force me to sit through this meal when we both know it’s going to come to an unpleasant end? I might have to kill this guy to get him to let me alone. Unfortunately, as Donald Rumsfeld is on record as having mentioned in reference to himself, no man is irreplaceable. Like me and like Rummy, Vassily is working for somebody else. If something happens to Vassily, they’ll just get another boy. And, as with the Rummy, they started out with a proper motherfucker. So I’ve got to try and satisfy him somehow.

  The waiter departed. The Russian drank off half his wine, stuffed his mouth with a large tuft of bread pulled off the loaf, and chased it with the second half of his wine. “So.” He refilled his glass from the bottle. “Where is it, Mr. Means? Where is our prize?”

  “If you’re talking about the brick, it’s on the chart table on your boat.”

  Chewing more bread, the Russian looked at him sadly. “I told you that you could have that for yourself, Mr. Means. Your brick holds no interest for me.”

  “I’m not interested in it either, Vassily. Take it as a token of my good faith.”

  “Mr. Means.” Vassily leaned over the table. With a glance toward the aisle, he stipulated in an undertone, “We are quite beyond good faith.” The burgundy Naugahyde complained as he resettled his weight against the cushions of the banquette. “It’s results or nothing.”

  “Nothing is a big word.”

  “As far as you—or I, for that matter,” Vassily touched the breast of his shirt, “are concerned, nothing is everything except the desired result. There is no other path. You know it, I know it. And I, for one, am tired of talking about it.”

  “Well I’m here to tell you, Vassily, nothing is all I come up with. What else can I do? Arnauld convinced you he didn’t pull a fast one, and you should have left it at that, by the way. It’s been a long time since anybody got himself murdered on Rum Cay.”

  Vassily held up his glass. “Drowned,” he said. “Servicing a bottom. Got tangled up in his hookah. Tsk.”

  “I don’t think so. Nobody thinks so. He lived there fifteen years and never so much as ran out of air. And besides, Charley makes two.”

  “Charley?” Vassily frowned. “Charley …” He brought his wine glass to his nose and savored the wine’s bouquet. “And what have I to do with Charley?” He moved his glass so that its contents spiraled up and down its interior. “Charley worked for you.”

  “Yeah, well,” Red sighed. “I never lost an employee. And the reason I never lost one is that I never exposed them to risks they—or I—couldn’t handle.”

  “Well, now you’ve lost two. It’s probably got something to do with averages.” Vassily smiled. “Welcome to the big time.”

  “Yeah,” Red said without enthusiasm. “The big time.”

  “I wish I could have seen the sister’s face when you showed her the head.” Vassily chuckled.

  “She’s kind of plucky.” Red smiled. “She came at me with a knife and a beer bottle. Better you weren’t there.”

  “That’s true,” Vassily agreed simply. “I might have killed her.”

  Red nodded. “Like I said.”

  “Where is the head, anyway?”

  Red shrugged. “Right where you last saw it.”

  Vassily’s smiled waned. “Still on the boat?”

  Red touched his butter knife. “Still on the boat.”

  “My … With the brick of cocaine?”

  “On the chart table. Is it really yours?” Red smiled thinly. “The boat, I mean?”

  Vassily set his glass to one side.

  “I presume the reefer isn’t all that far from the registration papers?”

  Vassily said nothing.

  “You’re supposed to keep them on board at all times,” Red reminded him, “in case the Coast Guard boards you.”

  Vassily retrieved a cellphone from the breast pocket of his Chesterfield, which was draped next to him on the settee, and keyed a preset. “And where, exactly, is my boat, Mr. Means?”

  “Oh,” Red said, “it’s around.”

  Vassily made a face. “Is it legally parked, at least?”

  Red affected surprise. “You know, I didn’t even think of that.”

  “Miou Miou.” Vassily lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “Call me.” He closed the phone and set it on the table, next to his wineglass. “I see.”

  “Good,” Red said. “That’s good that you see.”

  Salads arrived. The waiter showed them a pepper mill the size of a bowling pin. “Gentlemen?”

  Red smiled at him. “Please.”

  After dusting Red’s salad, the waiter asked Vassily if he wanted some pepper.

  “Yeah.” Vassily’s listless surliness implied to Red that Vassily may well have been capable of wringing the waiter’s neck just to make himself feel better. He’d seen this level of frustration before. It was one of the wildcards of the business.

  The waiter went away intact.

  “So,” Red said, stuffing roughage into his mouth, “Kreutzer’s Revenge is registered in your name.”

  Vassily’s eye fell on the key. Delta Bait and Tackle was embossed in white on the unsinkable blue fob. “Twenty years I wanted a boat,” he said simply. “I bought her brand new.”

  “Well,” said Red, “you keep her Bristol, all right.”

  “Guy works on her two days a week,” said Vassily dully. He looked at his salad. “So how’s it going to be?”

  “How it�
�s going to be is how it already is, Vassily.”

  “Which is?”

  “The sister has no idea—none—of who we are, what we’re talking about, or what we’re after. Let alone what her brother was up to. Which is as it should be, because he didn’t know what he was up to either. No more than Arnauld knew what anybody was up to,” Red added pointedly.

  “So you say.”

  “The thing I regret is, I need to prove it to you.”

  “And how do you propose to do that?”

  Red’s salad was nearly finished. “I want to tell the sister what’s going on.”

  Vassily blinked.

  “Look at it this way. If she already knows what it is, all you have to do is keep an eye on her and sooner or later she’ll lead you to it. I mean, it’s not like it has a … how should I put it … a limited shelf life?”

  “That’s for the employer to decide, not the employee.”

  Red turned his head to one side.

  Vassily realigned the pair of forks next to his plate. “Not to mention, they would think nothing of appealing to your innate … patriotism.”

  Red smiled. “Patriotism may be a lot of things, Vassily, but innate isn’t one of them.”

  “You mistake my meaning. In the circles I normally inhabit, patriotism is synonymous with greed.”

  “Ah,” Red nodded. “Greed, I might consider innate. Yes … you may have something there.”

  “May I, as you say, sweeten the pot?”

  “You can try.”

  “Find it,” Vassily said quietly, “and live.”

  “Oh come on, Vassily,” Red replied. “I know what’s at stake. I’m seeing dead people—”

  “You have no idea,” Vassily cut him short.

  Red considered this. “Okay, “ he said at last. “I have no idea.”

  “Surely,” Vassily frowned as if in disbelief, “you don’t conceive of yourself as in a position to demand more money?”

  “On the contrary.” Red shook his head. “If returning your deposit would square things, I’d happily give it back. With interest.”

  “Deposits are nonrefundable,” Vassily pointed out. “Your very words. Not only that, you lost the consignment. So there’s the matter of … insurance.”