Mangrove Squeeze(66)

Cherkassky pulled on the pitted crescent of his face and made a huge concession. "And perhaps you were right, Gennady ... But now the job needs finishing. Surely you agree."

Markov pushed his tongue against his teeth, said nothing.

Cherkassky paused, then launched into the effort of smiling. His eyes twitched at the outside corners. Skin crawled at his hairline. His lips stretched briefly, their surface shiny and dry as cellophane. He said, "And surely you understand we are together till the end. Are we friends again, Gennady?"

Markov drummed his chair arms. "Of course, Ivan," he said. "How could we ever be anything but friends?"





Chapter 34


Nick Sorrento, the maitre d' at Lucia's, had a suave but modest smile, a manner that was confident yet deferential, and just a hint of an Italian accent.

Or at least he did when customers were present. But now it was five p.m. and the door was locked. The floor was being mopped, the bar was being polished. The evening's flowers were being divvied up into many little vases, and Sorrento, in an accent direct from an Italian neighborhood in Queens, was screaming at the top of his lungs, "Where the fuck's the reservation book?"

Yussel Lupinski, the busboy from Minsk, kept his mop in steady motion, and stared down at the red and golden highlights in the hardwood floor. The reservation book was in his pants. One end of it was tickling his pubic hair and the other was poking past his belt but was covered by his apron. He stayed hunched over so the corners wouldn't show.

"We are really fucked wit'out that book!" Sorrento screamed. "Fucking chaos! Fucking madhouse!"

Swaying on his mop like a hockey player on his stick, Yussel skated back toward the kitchen. The book's edges dug into the lymph nodes in his groin.

Nick Sorrento rummaged through the shelves beneath his podium. "I find the asshole moved that book I'm gonna fire his sorry ass."

Yussel mopped straight through the swinging kitchen door. He mopped past the ranges and the ovens and the dishwashers with their big round wire racks, to the side exit where the garbage was put out. Tarzan Abramowitz was waiting in the alley. He took the book and bounded off.

Lupinski went back to his mopping.

Sorrento kept on screaming. By five-thirty he was so hoarse he could barely croak out a buona sera.

But by six-fifteen the reservation book had miraculously been found, underneath some menus at the end of a banquette, where Yussel Lupinski had been setting tables. Sorrento looked daggers at the quiet busboy as he handed it over with no expression on his pallid face.





"Wait," said Sam Katz, "again it's making noises." He yanked out his hearing aid, started fiddling with it in his lap.

Aaron rolled his eyes. It was dusk, and he was giving Fred a lift back to the hot dog. Fred was in the backseat and his bike was mostly in the trunk, its front tire hanging out and spinning slowly, last light glinting off the spokes. Aaron said to his father, "If you'd stop taking it apart and putting it back together..."

"What?"

They'd passed the airport, were rounding the curve where the mangroves were fenced in. "Either that," said Aaron, "or you just don't want to listen."

"I'm listening, I'm listening," said Sam, still twisting and turning the little gizmo in his hands.

"All right, then," Aaron said. "This infiltration nonsense, just get it off your mind."

"What?"

Fred said, "Hey Aaron, how about we stop for ice cream?"

"Ice cream, yeah," Sam said.

Fred slapped his knee. "I knew it! I had a grandmother was exactly the same. Deaf as a post till someone mentioned ice cream."

Sam put the hearing aid back in. "Better now. Must be something from the airport. We really going for ice cream?"

"Pop," said Aaron, "this infiltration craziness, I really want you to forget about it."

"Don't tell your father what to do."

They'd reached the place where the mangroves gapped and a narrow path led back to the hot dog. Aaron pulled off the road.

"Basic respect," Sam went on. "I'm not so old I shouldn't be allowed to make my own mistakes."

"But there's mistakes and there's mistakes," said Aaron. "Some mistakes you don't recover from."

Sam looked out the window. Color was fading from the water and the sky. It was time for that to happen and Sam was not saddened by the change. He said, "Aaron, worst case, what? My life is worth so much?"

"To me it is, okay?"

Leaning forward in the backseat, Fred said, "Ninety- eight cents."

Aaron said, "Excuse me?"

"Something I heard a long, long time ago," said Fred. "Really made an impression. Take the chemicals and stuff from a human body, it's worth ninety-eight cents. Maybe three bucks by now... Wanna come in for a beer?"