Mangrove Squeeze(44)

He would wait, and remember the bloodless Lazslo on the slab, and pick a time when he could make more trouble for Cherkassky than such a careful man should ever have to face.





Chapter 21


Piney, resigned and braced, lay there for a long moment on the moist cool ground, his knees drawn up, the air growing stale in his unflexing lungs. Heartbeats slammed by, crickets marked the time, and he was almost as baffled as relieved when the dreaded kicks and slashes failed to start.

Holding his tuck, he took a deep but guarded breath that smelled of grass and stone, then moved his forearm just enough to catch a sideways look at the man who'd knocked him down and now was kneeling over him. Harsh and jagged shadows played over the man, but even so, he did not look very big or very mean or very angry. His arms hung at his sides and his hands were not balled into fists. His face looked almost as scared as Piney knew his own must look. Very tentatively, he started to uncradle.

Aaron Katz looked down, saw the scraggly beard, the slot of a mouth. Trying hard to sound commanding, to keep the quaver out of his voice, he said, "Who the hell are you?"

Piney did not presume to get up from the ground, but lay there among the broken shadows of the shrubs. "Name's Pineapple," he said.

"Why are you here? What are you doing?"

Piney blinked and squirmed. He almost started to answer, then remembered that Suki was supposed to be dead. This complicated things a lot. "You a Russian?" he asked the man who hovered over him.

"What are you talking about?" said Aaron. "What do you know about Russians?"

Piney didn't answer but he knew he'd made things worse.

Aaron said, "Look, do you tell me why the hell you're here, or do I call the cops?"

Pineapple flicked a dry tongue over dry lips, glanced around himself at the ladies' garments that festooned the yard. He'd been caught red-handed with sacks of skirts and panties and lipstick. The authorities would frown on this and the nature of the crime would not earn him the respect of the other guys in the lockup. He said, "Please don't call the cops. I ain't done nothing wrong."

Aaron hesitated, sighed, said, "Let's start over then. Why are you here?"

"Mind if I sit up?"

Aaron said nothing and Piney raised himself. Absently he began retrieving clothes and cosmetics and putting them back in the bags. Finally he said, "I can't tell you why I'm here, okay? But I'm not a thief. I have a key."

"Plenty of thieves have keys," said Aaron. But he was watching Piney put things into the shopping bag, and there was something in the almost dainty care he took that told him this man was not a burglar.

There was a pause. Aaron became acutely aware of the dampness of the earth beneath his knees. His own pulse was just now getting back to normal, the adrenaline just retreating from the edges of his twitchy muscles. He was surprised at himself for coming here, shocked at his nerve in staking out the bushes when he'd seen the sneaking figure on the porch, amazed that he'd had the chutzpah to bowl him over.

Finally he said, "Listen, I'm not looking to make trouble for you. I'm a friend of the woman that lives here."

Pineapple was freeing a bra whose strap had caught on a croton branch. "So am I," he said.

Aaron thought this doubtful. Key West was a loose town, and the climate had a way of leveling things out between the citizens and the vagrants, but there were limits here, as everywhere. He let it slide. "I'd really like to find her."

"Why?"

Aaron wondered what a tougher guy would say to that. "You're not the one to ask the questions," he said.

Piney just kept putting Suki's things back into the bags.

"Because she was supposed to meet me for dinner last night," Aaron said, "and she didn't show, and I'm worried. Okay?"

The moon had risen, it poured a milky brightness on the stamped tin panels of the roofs and threw a cool light that nibbled at the shadows from the street lamps. The woman with the cocker spaniels skated past, saw two men kneeling in the yard surrounded by assorted female garments. It didn't register as that unusual, she kept on skating.

Piney said, "You had a date with her? What's your name?"

"Aaron."

Pineapple remembered something then. He remembered the day, back before he and Suki had ever spoken, when she'd come out of a guest house on the corner of Whitehead and Rebecca, and rode past him as he sat there on the curb, and he noticed that her face had changed since the time that she'd gone in. "Aaron, can I ask you where you live?"

He told him.

"She likes you," Piney said.

"She does?"

Piney tucked the last of her things back into the shopping bags. "You sure you're not a Russian? You swear to God?"