He moved to the very edge of the wall and looked down through the clear green water. Tiny fish with needle noses were sucking algae off the concrete. Old storms and the tug of the moon had raised miniature dunes in the sandy bottom, six feet from the surface. He tore a few leaves from a buttonwood shrub and threw them into the water, studying the tide.
It seemed to be near the end of its oozing ebb from gulf to ocean. Soon the water would be slack, stalled so utterly as to make it seem impossible that the machinery of tides would ever start again. But the flood would come, softly at first, like drizzle before a hammering downpour, then swelling in volume and lurching in pace, becoming a gale of water that would shred the tops of seaweeds and pull the anchor lines of boats as taut as cables on a bridge, and would carry unmoored things—bottles, branches, bodies—miles to the north and west, deep into the Gulf, among the coiling shallows and the nameless knots of mangrove.
The peak of it, Gennady Markov figured, would come the hour after dark. He went inside and told his housekeeper to take the evening off. Then he composed himself and made a phone call, summoning his victim to Key Haven.
On another seawall, this one near the airport, facing south and east across the straits, Pineapple and Fred were sitting, dimly and mysteriously depressed.
Until just recently, their lives had been ticking along, basically rock-steady, not like a heartbeat but a watch. You wouldn't say they were terrific lives, but Piney and Fred were used to them, they fit. Then Suki came along and rippled everything, and then she left and the ripples started to subside, and the exact same mild flatness that had suited them before no longer seemed to satisfy.
So they sat there on the seawall and they didn't talk. Fred smoked, his inhaling powered by frustration, a gruff wistfulness being vented on the out-breath. Piney dangled his bare feet close enough to the water to feel its coolness reaching up between his toes. Finally, apropos of nothing, he said, "Ya think he really meant it?"
Fred welcomed the opportunity to get grumpy. He said, "You always fuckin' start a conversation in the middle. You realize 'at?"
Piney didn't answer, just watched a small barracuda, implausibly motionless as a school of pinfish wafted toward him.
Fred gave in, said, "Do I think that who meant what?"
Piney watched the school of fish, the extraordinary way they banked and turned as one. There was a certain distance from the 'cuda inside of which the little guys were doomed. If they didn't see or smell him before they swam into that circle, one or two of them would disappear so fast that no human eye could ever track them being swallowed. Without looking up, Piney said, "Aaron. He said that we could visit."
Fred sucked hard on his cigarette, his whole face scrunched up with the fury of the puff. "Yeah. He said that."
"You don't think he meant it?"
Fred blew exhaust from both nostrils. "Piney, " he said, "say you're a rich guy owns a hotel. Guests come in—credit cards, matching luggage. 'Ah, welcome, Mr. Fuckface, Mrs. Tit.' You want guys like us around?"
Piney looked up. A second later there was a splash from where the 'cuda had been lurking. Probably a fish or two had gotten scarfed, but he would never know for sure. He said, "What's so bad about us?"
Fred just kept on smoking.
"We wash," Pineapple said. "We don't ask for money."
Fred shook his head and looked toward the horizon. Grudgingly he admitted to himself that it was nice to look east when the sun was in the west. The sky just glowed, it didn't burn; the ripples in the water shone an even green with a cool white filament on top.
After a silence Piney softly said, "I miss her."
Fred took a long moment to swivel first his hips, then his shoulders, and finally his head toward his friend. He broke into a taunting smile that made parts of his face look twelve years old. "I think you got a crush on 'er," he said.
Piney looked down at his dangling feet. "I just think maybe there's more that we should do."
Fred hadn't quite got over feeling guilty about taking money to sink a car with a woman in the trunk. But he wouldn't admit it, and unadmitted guilt was making him feisty. He said, "More? Fuck should we do more?"
Piney raised his face again. Sun came over his shoulder and sliced through his scraggly beard like a golden comb. "Because we've done some stuff already."
"Now that don't make no sense," said Fred.
"Course it does. Ya help somebody once, ya got a obligation. Ya don't just stop."
Fred found this line of thought exasperating. "Piney," he said, "we saved this woman's life. She owes us. We don't owe her."
Piney gave a little shrug and said with infuriating calm, "I guess this is just exactly where we disagree."