Suki put in without confidence, "It's just the way it seems."
"Exactly," Bert said. "Just like it used to seem like Luciano ran Havana, when really it was Lansky. Or the way it looked like Fat Tony was boss of the Genovese family when really it was Vinnie Chin."
Aaron raised his eyes from the unplanted shrubs strewn along his property, their thwarted roots poking through the burlap swaddling. "So you're saying—"
"I'm saying," Bert went on, "that unless the head guy is a knucklehead egomaniac like Gotti, he don't want it should look to all the world like he's in charge. Old Sicilian saying: Ya got the biggest balls, ya don't need the tallest antlers. 'Scuse me."
"No problem," Suki said. "But then who—?"
Bert shrugged and petted his dog, little diamonds of whose abdomen seemed to be slipping through the table's metal mesh like strands of melting cheese. "I have no idea," he said. "I'm only saying don't trust the way things seem or you'll get confused before y'even start."
"I'm confused," said Sam, and he fiddled with his hearing aid.
"Ya think about it though," Bert resumed, "a hit on his own nephew? Flesh and blood, they usually get some extra slack."
"Flesh and blood," said Sam. "How could anybody do that?"
"So say it's not the uncle," Suki said. "Who else... ?"
Bert stroked his waffled dog, raised his shoulders almost to his long and fleshy earlobes. "Maybe we never find 'at out," he said. "Wit'out we infiltrate."
"Infiltrate?" said Sam.
" Ya know, like get inside."
"I know what infiltrate means. But how—?"
"Hey," said Bert, "we're talkin' just, like hypot'etical heah. Just thinkin' things through."
Sam looked a little disappointed, tugged his Einstein hair. "Infiltrate," he murmured. "Spies, like."
A pack of motorcycles roared up Whitehead Street, a plane banked low and clattered in its final approach to the airport. The din reached a harsh crescendo then subsided, and a soft whoosh of fronds soon erased the memory of it; in Key West, peace and quiet were shattered and restored a thousand times a day.
"And say they're lookin' for you," the Shirt said to Suki. "Where they gonna look? They got no reason to look here. Not so far at least. Who they gonna squeeze? How hard they gonna squeeze 'em? These are things I think we gotta find 'em out."
Suki bit her upper lip, looked down.
Aaron rubbed his forehead. He'd always been taught that an enterprise could not succeed without a plan, that you didn't just embark on a journey without a strand of logic laid out like breadcrumbs in the forest. He said, "Bert, so say we figure out those things. Then what?"
"Then what what?" the old man fired back.
"Do we know where we're going with all this? Longer term, I mean?"
Bert the Shirt scratched his dog behind the ears. "Longer term?" he echoed.
The phrase coaxed his lips into a rueful smile. He was seventy-eight years old. He'd been dead once. He kept thinking he was retired, then life would throw some caper or crusade across his path, and he would realize that retirement was a ludicrous concept. No one breathing was retired. Life didn't work the way young people thought it did. It didn't go in one straight line, with stages and events notched out like inches on a ruler. Results didn't squirt out clean and parallel from causes like jet trails from an airplane. Life was crazier and richer and less fair than that. But how did you explain that to someone young enough to hold sacred the idea of future, a person in thrall to a fascination with what would happen next?
"Longer term," he said again, "I guess we'll just have to see what happens in a bunch of shorter terms."
Chapter 27
It was over a late lunch that day—cold lamb and potato pancakes, eaten at the shaded table on his patio—that Gennady Markov decided on a victim. His choice satisfied him in every way, and he celebrated with an extra Key lime tart.
First and foremost, this victim would be easy. Second, the killing would be one whose significance would be lost on everyone except Ivan Cherkassky. Finally, Markov might even be able to work up a bit of moral umbrage to underpin his questionably sane resolve, since this person had played an undeniable role in the death of Lazslo.
Excited but not impatient, he finished his meal and blotted his flubbery lips on a napkin. Not without difficulty, he pushed back from the table, then strolled through his garden, past oleanders and lemon trees and palmettos, to the seawall. Sharp western light was skidding off the Gulf, little tufts of mangrove dotted the horizon, and Markov reflected that, of all of humankind's gizmos and contraptions, the seawall was among the saddest and the most futile. A tissue of cement against a universe of seep and surge; a draughtsman's tracing of hard edge sketched atop a ceaseless maelstrom. Blink an eye, your seawall is gone, a coastline rearranged, your attempt at a boundary mocked and undone. So much for security.