Suki bit her lip, the upper one. She said, "Just, you know, in general. How to use it."
"There's no category just-in-general." Peter said. "You've got to plug something in."
Suki said, "Okay. Pick something."
"You pick," Peter said.
"Okay," said Suki. "How about... how about, um ... Russian Mafia?"
"Russian Mafia?" said Peter, and he looked at her over the tops of his glasses. "Hm. Would we look that up under Mafia or Russian?"
"This is what I'm asking you," said Suki.
"Maybe just crime," said the restaurant reviewer. "Or organized crime."
"Look, how do you get started?" Suki asked. "I mean, just get into the system?"
"Might still be under Soviet union ," Peter said. "Breakup of. Or even Cold War, aftermath of."
"Maybe we should start with something simpler," Suki said.
"Could be cross-referenced," Peter said, "with individual crimes—extortion, murder."
Suki leaned lower over Peter Haas's chair. "All I really want to know—" she began. Then she straightened up and said, "Oh shit. I smell Donald."
The restaurant reviewer sniffed the air, which second by second was becoming fouled with the approach of a cheap cigar. The publisher's heavy step could now be heard on the metal grid-work of the outside stairs.
Suki said, "Can we talk about this later?"
Peter said, "But—"
"Later, Peter, please? You'll take me through it step-by-step?"
The restaurant reviewer shrugged agreement.
Suki sniffed. "That stink," she said. "Do you think it would be more exact to call it rank, or putrid?"
"Uncle, I am not a child," Lazslo said.
He'd been summoned to Key Haven for lunch, but Key Haven generally took away his appetite. He poked at his blini and looked across the seawall to the Gulf.
"Put more sour cream," Gennady Petrovich Markov advised. "You hardly have any sour cream."
"I have enough," said Lazslo.
Markov frowned, took another hefty dollop for himself. He watched it slide fatly off the silver spoon, then returned to the business at hand.
"No," he agreed. "You are not a child. You are a fine young man, and like every fine young man you are following your schwantz, and your schwantz sees only half the picture because it only has one eye."
"What picture?" Lazslo said. "I'm dating this woman. That's the only picture."
"For a newspaper she works," said Markov.
"And I run a chain of T-shirt shops. What's the problem?"
Markov put down his fork. An instant later it was in his hand again, like fork and hand were magnetized. Pondering, he yet managed neatly to fold another buckwheat crepe. "Lazslo. You don't want to admit you understand, but I know you understand. Of all the women you could have. Ivan Fyodorovich is very concerned."
"Ivan Fyodorovich!" Lazslo said, and he launched into a manic pantomime of the scoop-faced Russian's tireless paranoia. He pulled his brows together, dropped his neck, vulture-like, between his shoulders. Eyes darting, he glanced nervously behind himself, then underneath the table. "Ivan Fyodorovich! Are you hiding? Are you listening?"
Markov smiled even as he shook his head in disapproval. "Luzhka," he said, "a real American you have become. You think everything is joke."
"Uncle, most things are."
"And some few things are not," countered Markov. "For your own good, Luzhka, please stop seeing this—"
Lazslo was pushing some food around his plate. "You're just a little bit too late," he interrupted.
"Late?"
Lazslo tried to stifle a triumphant grin. He was several years too young to manage it, and a hint of a lubricious smile broke through his irritated look. "I called her up this morning. She's coming to my place for dinner."
"Your place?" said Markov. A thrum of vicarious lust pulsed through him, he reached across the table and lightly squeezed the muscles of Lazslo's forearm. Then he took another blini from the platter and shoveled up another wad of sour cream. "So tonight's the night you—"
"Don't jinx it, Uncle," Lazslo said.
Markov chewed some pancake, wiped his fat lips on a napkin. "Okay, Luzhka, so you fuck her once—"
"How about twice?" said Lazslo.
"Then have more blini," Markov said. "As many times you like. But please, after tonight you call it off. Promise me."
Lazslo looked toward the green water, the distant mangrove islets floating on their silver nests. He didn't promise. Instead, he said, "Don't I always, Uncle? Right afterwards, I almost always call it off."