Stubbs saw. But the problem was the numbers. He said, "Listen, if we divvy up our forces—"
"So call more people," Suki said.
Stubbs's neck chafed against his collar as he turned. He gave a quick bleak smile or a wince. "You think we keep a SWAT team here? There are no more, okay?"
The phone started beeping in Aaron's hand, he finally remembered to hang it up. He pointed vaguely toward Key Haven, and with an immovable calm, he said, "Look, there's two old men in trouble up there, and they're not any less important than us. I'm going."
He turned his back. He was heading for the office door.
Stubbs blew air between his teeth, said, "You're staying. Two of us'll go."
Carol Lopez quickly counted troops, said, "But—"
Dryly, Stubbs told her, "If they're there, they can't be here. We'll be back as soon as we can."
And Stubbs left with another officer, their footsteps heavy on the front porch stairs. The ones left behind sipped their cooling coffee. The Mangrove Arms, as it almost always did, once again seemed emptier than it should have been.
Abramowitz shoved Bert into the backseat of the Camaro, quickly tied his skinny ankles in their sheaths of nylon socks, and drove the few short blocks toward Markov's house.
There, standing on the seawall, with Cherkassky monitoring his every move, the physicist was casting the last of his equipment to the tides. Beakers bobbed away like men-of-war, glinting in the sun; acid sizzled as it hit the ocean salts then became inconsequentially dilute in all that vastness. Pebbles of plutonium, far heavier than lead, defied the current and sank deep into the muck, becoming tiny heaters whose warmth would fascinate the fish and make the plankton glow.
When the job was done, Ivan Cherkassky pulled back his thin gray lips and said with satisfaction, "You see— like there never was a lab."
Markov said nothing, stared down at the water. Science was his secret edge and science now was finished. Underling and figurehead, nothing more. His humiliation was complete.
"Only we are small-time smugglers," said Cherkassky. "Like a thousand others. Hardly worth the time of FBI. Deported, Gennady. Where next you like to go?"
Markov didn't respond, and Cherkassky didn't care. Neither quite knew why he still bothered talking to the other.
The Camaro's tires crunched over Markov's driveway, and the two old comrades walked toward it.
The car's bright blue paint glittered in the sunlight. There was no foreboding in the sky, and this was somehow cruel. It should have been night, but it was day. It should have been stormy, but it was hot and calm, the cloudless sky imposed no mood. Silently, Markov and Cherkassky climbed into the car along with bound and stoic Bert the Shirt and headed downtown to try to save themselves by murdering everyone who'd dared to know them.
At the corner of Whitehead and Rebecca, Pineapple sat on the curb in the moist shade of the banyan tree and thought things over.
He wished Fred wouldn't put sweet things so crudely. Shacked up. Made it sound rough when really it was tender. Aaron and Suki kissing; sharing a blanket; all that stuff. She'd liked him from the start; Piney had seen that right away. So he was happy that they were together. If they really were. He just hoped he'd get to see her now and then, visit for a while.
He sat there and he twirled his parking sign. Twirling it was something he did when he was preoccupied; the arrow faced all different ways, and people couldn't find his boss's parking lot. But there'd been a few distractions that day. Two unmarked cop cars had pulled up in front of Mangrove Arms. Four cops went in, three of them in uniform. A little while after, two came out again and drove away. Why all the coming and going? It was worrisome, and Piney closely watched the old hotel.
Inside, in the kitchen, Carol Lopez was worried too. But she was the seasoned one, the pro, and she couldn't let it show. She pushed her hat back and stole glances at the guy that Stubbs had paired her with. Rookie. He had pale pudgy fingers and the leather around the snap of his holster was perfectly uncrinkled, like the snap had never once been opened. She sipped more coffee and looked down at her watch. But the watch could only tell her what time it was, not when anything would happen.
Aaron and Suki were sitting at the unromantic table, holding hands. They didn't just hold palms, but interlaced each and every finger, and Carol Lopez looked at the twined-up digits as at a Chinese puzzle, trying to figure out which fingers belonged to whom. It dawned on her that once those hands were parted they might never be rejoined.
She put down her coffee cup, said, "I think it's time we went to our positions."
Music was blasting at the T-shirt shop.
Infernal bass shook the floor, screaming treble knifed through the racks of merchandise. Back in the stockroom, Sam Katz slumped and swayed on his hard stool, now and then humming scraps of tune that had nothing to do with the music that was playing. He did not hear the approach of a loud car in the alleyway that backed the row of stores.