Stumped, she slid down in the tub to wet her hair. She didn't hear the phone ring on the main line in the kitchen and the office.
Aaron, at the front desk doing paperwork, picked it up, said, "Mangrove Arms."
His adrenaline started coursing before he'd heard a word—as soon as a normal silent beat had passed, and a jarring foreign fraction had begun.
"I am looking for a Mr. Katz," said Tarzan Abramowitz. He'd come up empty the first time through his list of numbers from Lucia's reservation book. He'd reached answering machines, cleaning ladies, gotten numb responses. Now it was early evening and he was trying again.
"This is Aaron Katz."
Out of rhythm, Abramowitz said, "Ah, you are proprietor."
Aaron was itchy at the hairline and his hand was growing damp around the phone. "Who's this calling, please?"
A syncopated pause. Then: "I am looking for a friend. Perhaps she stays there. Suki Sperakis."
Time compressed for Aaron, the way it does when synapses are glowing, nerve endings crackling, when a looming fall or crash rearranges space and puts a freeze on gravity. He pleaded with his voice for steadiness, groped for a cadence that would not sound false to this man of clumsy cadences. "Susie Sperakis?" he said.
"Suki... Suki."
Aaron's shirt was clinging to his back, his stare was stuck on the little silver bell on the counter. He paused, like he was looking in his book. "There's no one by that name staying here."
"You go to Lucia's, Mr. Katz?"
"Who is this, please?"
Abramowitz hung up.
Aaron put the phone down, then reached out for the silver bell, didn't ring but squeezed it a long moment, let its coolness and its weight absorb the heat and quaking of his hand.
Chapter 38
At the very end of what appeared to be the guest wing of his house, Gennady Markov was working in his lab— mixing a broth of sulfuric acid and iodide salts; doing the prep work, like a chef, for the later concoction of plutonium oxide—when his housekeeper called him on the intercom to tell him a policeman was waiting in the foyer.
The buzzer broke the Russian's concentration, but the news didn't rattle him at all. Key West cops—they cared about parking tickets, cats in trees. Something big and complicated and organized was way beyond them. Why then was he here? Looking for a bribe, no doubt... It did not occur to Markov that the cop was here about Ludmila. He didn't know the body had been found; he hadn't imagined it would ever be found. And if it was, so what? No one would connect him with Ludmila's death. Where was the motive? No one but Cherkassky would ever figure it out. Besides, who would care about Ludmila? She was joined to no one, made no difference in the world. Her death meant only that some pillowcases might go unchanged until a new cleaning lady had been found; here and there a cobweb might briefly flourish in a corner.
Markov washed his hands, left the lab, and locked the door, walking calmly down the long hallway toward the foyer.
He recognized Lieutenant Stubbs at once—the wrinkled khaki suit, the concertina creases behind the knees—from the day that Stubbs had brought him to identify the murdered Lazslo. He said, "Ah, Lieutenant, you bring news perhaps of my nephew's killers?"
"No, Mr. Markov, I'm afraid I don't."
"Then—"
"There's been another death."
Markov strove to look shocked but not too shocked. He was a man of the world. He'd been through a lot. His reaction should be dignified, muted.
"A woman," Stubbs went on. "Drowned. We think she's Russian."
"Russian?"
"Labels in her clothes," said Stubbs. "Russian labels."
"Ah," said Markov. He hadn't thought about labels in the murdered woman's clothes, and now for the first time he began to wonder what else he hadn't thought about. Ludmila's absurd red scooter was in his vast garage, covered only with a tarp. Her lost shoe was stuffed into her helmet. He'd thought no one would care.
"And the officer who answered the call about.. . about your nephew," Stubbs continued. "She met his housekeeper. That's who found the body. The officer thinks that's maybe who the murdered woman is."
Markov blinked, a quick shiver ran through the pads of fat beneath his eyes. He hadn't thought about the cops connecting Lazslo with Ludmila. He hadn't realized anyone had seen her.
"Did you know your nephew's housekeeper, Mr. Markov?"
The Russian thought back to the days when he had planned his crime. Drunken days, days of grief and rage amok, wildly incautious days. Now belatedly he groped after caution. "A little. I've met her, yes."
"Her name?"
"I think... Ludmila. Ludmila, yes."