Skin itching, forehead dappled with sweat and bugs, he thought once more of giving up. Maybe his father had wandered back to the tiled house by now. Maybe this should all be left to the police. But he pressed ahead, not content until he'd counted every room; and then, at the very far end of the guest wing, visible in slices through the slats of a blind that was not quite snugly closed, he saw Gennady Markov, working in his lab, alone, his big face intent over an enamel tub.
Aaron froze, his breath arrested. Weirdly, his first reaction was one of deep nostalgia. A scientist at work. His father. The same concentration that made the tongue flick at the corners of the mouth. The same saving single- mindedness that held the world at bay. Good or evil, there was beauty in a scientist at work...
But what was Markov doing? Aaron wrestled with leaves and branches, leaned as near to the window as he dared. He saw canisters; electric coils; a fine gray gravel with a consistency like lentils. The gravel gleamed dully. It might have been some peculiar form of silver, some odd stuff to be transformed by a jeweler or a dentist. Then a dreadful thought occurred to Aaron: Plutonium? Was it possible? Suki had told him that Lazslo hinted at it. The source of the huge sums that needed laundering. Weapons for rogue nations. Bombs for lunatics. Being cooked up here?—in peaceable Key West, a few miles from the bars, from Duval Street, from the Mangrove Arms?
Aaron fell back, dizzy and suddenly exhausted. Through the slats, Markov's image blurred. Everything blurred. Aaron's search for Sam blurred against the enormity of nuclear material. His love for Suki blurred against the terror of what she had discovered. His sense of his own new life—small, quiet, accomplishment measured nail by nail—blurred against the sick size of the schemes that people found themselves embroiled in.
Puny and shaken under the stars, too rattled even to remember to stay in the shade of the shrubbery, Aaron turned at last and walked away.
Befuddled, driving all but blind, he made it back to the Mangrove Arms just as Gary Stubbs and Donald Egan were coming down the front porch steps.
It scared Aaron to see the cop there. His stomach burned. For the moment he forgot about weapons crossing borders and thought only of intimate losses. With effort he said, "Suki?"
"Suki's okay," said Stubbs. "She's fine. She called about your father."
Aaron said, "You know something?"
Stubbs shook his head.
"You'll help?"
Stubbs nodded.
Aaron glanced with vague recognition and no warmth at Egan. The editor's cigar was glowing in the dark. In his fat soft hand he held some papers. "Tomorrow early," he said, waving them toward Aaron. "Special edition."
"Special edition what?"
"Talk to Suki," said the cop. "She's waiting for you."
The two visitors continued down the stairs.
Aaron said to their backs, "Wait. Markov."
Stubbs stopped walking, looked across his shoulder. "What about him?"
"He has a lab."
"A lab?"
"I saw him working."
Stubbs said, "So?"
"Lazslo used to talk about atomic stuff. Brag about it."
The cop and the editor shared a look. Egan said, "Jesus Christ, I should put that in the article."
Aaron blew. He hadn't had a fight since junior high and now he felt an impulse to shove the newspaperman down the last few stairs. "Fuck your article," he said. "These are people's lives. Who gives a shit about your article?"
Stubbs said calmly, "Can't go break into his house without a warrant. Couldn't get a warrant with what we have so far."
Aaron said, "What the hell's it take? Another person dead? My father? Suki? All of us?"
Stubbs said nothing, waited for Aaron to calm down.
Aaron didn't calm down. "And Markov's not the real boss anyway," he said. "The real boss lives around the corner. I think that's who my father's with."
"How you know all this?" said Stubbs.
"I know it... " Aaron said, and then he stopped. He stopped because the beginnings of tears—tears of worry, of frustration—were pressing like thumbs at the backs of his eyes. He choked them down like he was swallowing a rock. "I know it because I've been out there on the fucking streets, Lieutenant. Not waiting for a fucking warrant."
Stubbs grimaced and continued down the stairs. Egan followed.
Aaron went up into the office, where he took a slow deep breath and tried to remember how to recognize his world.
He looked around. He knew every potted palm and every promo propped up on its cardboard easel, but now it all looked strange to him, removed, as though his looming grief had built a warping membrane around him. Only vaguely he saw the slashed counter, the silver bell that needed buffing. In that moment it was someone else's hotel.