Mangrove Squeeze(52)

Pete shook his head. "Clean," he said. "We smoked it all."

And so by nine o'clock the Monroe County sheriffs had run the tag on Lazslo's sunken Caddy, and by eleven the car had been dredged up from the bottom, wet sand streaming from its doors; and by seven the next morning the whole thing was in the paper: Unsolved sinking of the car of the victim of an unsolved murder. Unsolved puzzle as to how the car got a dozen miles from the body of its owner.

For almost everyone who read the story, it was a head-scratcher but no more, just one more instance of the kind of loony and inscrutable misadventures that happened in the Keys. You slapped the paper then went back to your breakfast.

Some few people took the story much more seriously, however. Some few people were surprised and disappointed and very much annoyed that there was no mention whatsoever of a woman's body in the trunk.





Chapter 26


Sergei "Tarzan" Abramowitz, the muscular young man who always wore suspenders, paced athletically along the length of Ivan Cherkassky's sofa. The ridge above his eyes was furrowed; tangled hair bounced against his neck. He moved his heavy jaw and spoke in Russian. "That prozhny vorchnoi," he snarled, calling the dead Lazslo an eliminatory organ of low social status, "he screwed it up but good."

Cherkassky didn't answer right away. He crossed his skinny legs, gazed out the picture window at the yellow morning light, and wondered briefly if Abramowitz's gait was naturally that springy or if it was one more way of showing off. At last he said, "You're sure? You're absolutely sure?"

Tarzan's walk became more acrobatic still, his knees flexed, his thigh muscles bulged, it seemed he might do a back flip any moment. "Ivan Fyodorovich, I am sure. Practically the last words of that out-of-wedlock child who has sex with his mother. We are holding him down. He says Why? Why? I did my job, I swear. The knife, we bring it closer. He says, The bitch is dead, she's dead. The blade is now against his neck. He tries to shrink, he cries, the cockroach with no testicles. The car, he says. Even now the car goes down, she disappears forever. I did my job, I swear."

Ivan Cherkassky hunkered forward across his knobby knees. His scooped-out melon face seemed to grow a little hollower, chin and forehead cinching in with concentration. "The car," he said. "Who helps him? Who makes it disappear?"

Tarzan pivoted, fisted hands swinging low against his legs. "This he did not say."

Resignedly, Cherkassky nodded. "Of course not. Because it would be good to know."

The young man in suspenders burst forward once again like a sprinter from the blocks. "Yes," he said. "It would."

"And the girl—you think she lives?"

"If she is not in trunk, I fear she does."

"Pyutchni streshkaya!" Cherkassky murmured in disgust. "Still we must clean up after this ragpicker who is incontinent."

"You want I find the girl?" said Tarzan.

"She cannot live," Cherkassky said. "Is clear."

"A flotl defioreski khrichevskov!" Tarzan hissed. "I find her, I send her to meet Lazslo, they have oral sex in hell."





At the Mangrove Arms that morning, things got too busy too early for anyone to read the paper.

At eight a.m. Suki was leaning over her widow's walk railing, peeling an orange and looking through the leaf curtain to the street, when she saw a taxi pull up and disgorge a pale and harried-looking couple.

Barely had the couple bumped their luggage up the porch steps when another taxi approached from the opposite direction, dropping off another pair of white and rumpled visitors.

From anything that Suki had so far seen or heard, two couples arriving at the Mangrove Arms on the same morning was a record. Without thinking about it very much, she stepped inside and went downstairs to see if she could help.

She found Aaron bustling around the kitchen. He was slapping coffee cups onto a tray, his hair was wet, and he was sweating. "Town's packed," he said without looking up at her. "Business finally trickling down to me. Last resort No reservations. Not ready for the rush."

Two couples. To Suki it didn't seem like that much of a rush, but she kept it to herself. She said, "What can I do to help?"

Aaron, frantic, didn't seem to hear her. He arced around his father, who was sitting calmly, sipping tea. Pouring milk into a pitcher, Aaron rambled. "Beds unmade. Towels balled up in the dryer. Drop cloths in the hallway. Paint chips."

"So what should I do?" said Suki.

Aaron's hands were not quite steady, milk splashed on the floor. "The breakfast person, out sick again. Not the hemorrhaging tattoo this time. The bellybutton. Pierced. Abcessed. Dripping she said."