Mangrove Squeeze (11 page)

She watched those things to calm herself. It almost worked. By the time they reached their turnoff, eight, ten miles above Key West, she almost believed that nothing was amiss, not really; Lazslo was just a moody guy, a macho kid whose pride was hurt. His sulk would pass, he'd get talkative again. Probably he'd say intriguing things, useful things, maybe even things that would be worth the milky ache that Suki was feeling in her stomach.

He turned right off the highway. The road that led toward Egret Key was badly paved and narrow. Grasping mangroves blotted out the fading light and the deeper darkness was not soothing. The Caddy's headlamps glared back from waxy leaves, from scarred and ulcered trunks. Frogs and lizards scurried off, their bulbous eyes flashed red.

Suki swallowed back a sour taste, sought to guide her thoughts to the bar at Egret Key Marina. She'd always liked the place. Funky, friendly, a locals' retreat the tourists hadn't found. She thought about the thatched roof, the mismatched glasses. A drink, an hour, and then she really had to call this whole thing off. She was pushing her luck. It wasn't worth the way she felt.

Lazslo drove. Egret Key was just a speck of land across a stubby causeway, and she tried hard to keep believing they were really going there. The brutish set of Lazslo's jaw, the hard clench of his hands around the steering wheel, made her fear they weren't. Two hundred yards ahead, a hand-hewn sign, propped crookedly in limestone gravel, pointed out the turn. Suki shut her eyes a moment, prayed that she would feel the car begin to slow and veer. She didn't feel it.

Halfway through the dark and tiny intersection, she said, "You're missing it."

Lazslo didn't turn and didn't touch the brake. His eyes straight forward, he said, "I don't feel like a drink. Let's just go somewhere and talk."

Suki struggled with her voice, tried to keep it normal. She told herself she was from Jersey, she could handle this. "I feel like a drink," she said.

He moved his head just slightly on a neck that seemed mechanical, unoiled. He said, "It's always your way, Suki. Not tonight."

He drove. The road got bumpier and narrower. The mangroves leaned in closer, squeezed down like a funnel. Suki said, "I don't like this, Lazslo."

He didn't answer.

She firmed her voice like she was training a dog. "Take me home."

His lips pulled back for just an instant in a travesty of a smile. "And not talk about Russia?" he said. "About the Russian Mafia that interests you so much?"

"I don't care about that anymore. Let's turn around."

"Don't care?" he said. "After all your hard work pumping me? All your flirting? All your teasing?"

The paved road ended, gave onto a tunneled byway of coral powder and honeycombed gray rocks that crunched beneath the Caddy's tires and clattered against its groaning undercarriage. Looking back, Suki saw rising swirls of dust infernally shot through with a red gleam from the tail-lights. She was wearing sandals. She worked her toes against their insoles, straining for a solid grip. She wondered if she would have to run away, if she would have a chance to.

"Don't care?" Lazslo hammered on. "After all your questions, all your stringing me along? ... Crime excites you, Suki. Are you excited now?"

He drove. The car rocked crazily, nauseously, through holes and over rocks. Suki's mind, cradling its sanity, dosed out fear in increments but still stopped short of believing he would murder her. His object, she imagined, was hideous unwilling sex; his desire had sickened over into monstrous rage, his intention was to force himself on her. She willed her body far away. She thought with pity of her clothes, the soft thin dress with the pattern of apples and pears. Her voice let go at last, became a pinched despairing moan. She said, "For God's sake, Lazslo, turn the car around."

He continued straight ahead. Mangrove leaves threw light back at his distorted face. His eyes flashed a vacant silver, the corners of his mouth were flecked with dried saliva. The car rocked so violently that his foot lurched off the accelerator. At a sudden curve he slowed still more. Suki flicked her door handle and rolled out of the car.

The ground was sharp and hard but she didn't feel the impact, only tasted coral and noticed grit against her cheek.

She clambered to her feet and started running through the dark, back along the dusty road. At the second step she lost a sandal, jagged nubs of limestone bit into her arch. She heard the Caddy crunch to a stop, the clicking open of Lazslo's door. She ran. Crickets were rasping and tiny panes of sky, triangles and diamonds, showed between the mangrove leaves. Her ribs were bruised, her breath came short and cramped.

She heard the steps behind her, pounding, crunching. If the mangroves opened up for her, perhaps there'd be a place to wriggle into, to hide; but they didn't open up, just loomed ragged and impenetrable, scabby trunks clustered close as strands of hair. She ran. She heard his breathing, the wheeze and catch of it. She heard a grunt as he lunged and grabbed her shoulder, his dreaded weight dragging her to the ground.

She pivoted as she fell, went down kicking and clawing. Coral rubble slammed against her back, hammered air out of her lungs, but still she bucked and flailed. Her knee found Lazslo's groin; her fingernails bit into the skin of his cheek, raked down deep and hard. She pummeled his sides and kicked at his ankles, but his thick torso and thighs crushed down, exhausted her.

He leaned and fended until her arms grew rubbery, her legs went numb. Then her body understood that it was over, and she was visited by the mercy that descends on doomed animals when pain and panic are no longer of use, and sad peace rolls back the eyes and stops the flanks from quivering. Her arms came up around her face like palm fronds blown back by the wind, but they offered only faint resistance as Lazslo's hands locked down around her throat.

Vaguely she felt the grit of the road against her scalp, saw a narrow swath of stars between the ranks of mangrove. The last time she smelled air it was scented with salt and seashells.

Chapter 13

Aaron Katz arrived at Lucia's at ten of eight and was shown to a so-so table in the middle of the room.

He took the seat that faced the door, ordered a bottle of Barolo, and did the things that people do when they are waiting in a restaurant, alone. He took more time than was necessary to unfold his napkin. He fiddled with his silverware and read the menu several times. He fended off the feeling that people were looking at him, and when he'd finished his first glass of wine and his date hadn't yet arrived, he tried to check his watch without anybody seeing.

At 8:25 he got up to use the men's room and the phone. There was no answer at Suki's house and he didn't leave a message. He expected she would be sitting at the table, harried and apologetic, when he returned to it. She wasn't.

He reclaimed his napkin, nibbled bread. He sipped more Barolo. He had no reason to be worried for Suki, and in the absence of worry, annoyance and self-mockery set in. It had been a long time since he'd been stood up; then again, it had been a while since he'd had a date. But why would Suki fail to show? She'd offered him her number, kissed him on the cheek—was this all some screwed-up game she invented as she went along? Was she, like a lot of people in this town, just plain nuts?

Aaron lived with that theory for half a glass of wine, took a hollow solace from it. Stood up by a crazy woman, just as well. But finally he rejected the notion. He'd seen just enough of Suki to understand that if she was crazy, her craziness wouldn't take the form of failing to appear, but of appearing too wholeheartedly. A hell-bent candor, an in-your-face there-ness—if the woman was nuts, that's what her nuttiness was made of.

So why hadn't she arrived? Aaron began to worry after all, but only faintly. Key West was a safe place, a loony but a gentle place, a place where people survived their errors. Not a place where awful things happened.

At a quarter of nine the waiter came over, stood at Aaron's side. He tried to be kind, offered a smile he hoped didn't come across as patronizing. He said, "Perhaps you'd like to go ahead and order."

Aaron tried to smile back. He'd read the menu half a dozen times but now remembered nothing on it. "Just bring me," he said, "a plate of macaroni."

At the Eclipse Saloon around that time, Fred had eaten his burger and his fries and slaw, had washed them down with quite a few beers, and was at that stage in his race to bankruptcy when he had to pay close attention to just how many damp dollars he still had on the bar. It was better for his fragile standing in the place if he cut himself off as the last of the money was going, rather than making the barkeep do it for him.

So he was looking down, counting, concentrating, lifting the bent edges of soggy singles to make sure they weren't stuck together, when a voice above him said, "Hello there, sport"

Fred looked up, saw a guy who looked familiar, in the way that people in bars often looked like other people one had met in bars. Except that this guy's eyes looked like they'd been stained with some image of catastrophe, and he had thin lines of dried blood on one cheek. His shirt was torn on the side and his tight jeans were abraded at the knees and mottled with fine gray dust. He said to Fred, "You once bought me a beer, remember?"

Slowly it was coming back to Fred. Some evening a week, ten days ago. Pissed-off guy with a funny name. Drank a Bud and hardly talked. Fred said, "Looks like you need one even worse tonight." He gestured toward the soggy bills. "But you're outa luck, my money's about gone."

The seat next to Fred was vacant, but Lazslo didn't sit, just leaned in a little closer. "Tonight," he said, "I'm here to do something for you. Come to the john with me a minute."

Fred narrowed his eyes. The guy didn't look like a queer but not all queers did. He said, "No offense, pal, but go fuck yourself."

Lazslo fell back then leaned in again, his catastrophic eyes were pulsing. "Hey," he said, "it's nothing like that. You crazy? It's business. Wanna make a thousand dollars?"

The amount, heady and all but inconceivable, captured Fred's imagination. His reaction had less to do with greed than awe. He'd never had a thousand dollars in his life. He glanced quickly around the Eclipse's U-shaped bar, wondered if a thousand dollar bills would be enough to pave the whole entire thing.

Lazslo let the thought settle in a moment, then, limping slightly, moved off toward the men's room.

Fred sucked down some beer, allowed a discreet interval to pass, and followed.

He found Lazslo at the sink, washing his hands. He washed them a long time then lathered them again with pink soap from a dirty dispenser hanging crooked in its bracket. Still washing, he told Fred to lock the door. The lock was only a flimsy hook and eye, wood splintering where the bent screw was half pulled out.

Lazslo said, "I need someone to lose my car."

Fred leaned against the partition between the sink and the urinal, looked at Lazslo in the mirror. "Lose your car?" he said.

"Take it to the Everglades and lose it. Sink it. Ya know, in a swamp."

"Lose your car," Fred said again.

Lazslo flicked water from his fingers, reached up for a paper towel. There were no paper towels and he dried his hands on his jeans. The jeans gave back some fine gray dust and he cursed and washed his hands all over again. "Five hundred dollars now," he said. "The other five when the car is sunk and you make it back to town. I'll pay you here tomorrow night."

"Why you wanna sink this car?" asked Fred.

"Questions," Lazslo said, "that's not part of the arrangement."

Fred rubbed his walrus moustache. He'd lived in Key West a lot of years, he didn't want this guy to think he didn't know what was what. "Drugs."

It was not a question and Lazslo didn't answer, just tried to coax his clawed face and stained eyes into an expression that suggested, Yeah, it's drugs, some residue of some shit in the glove compartment.

Fred said, "This car, what kind of car is it?"

Lazslo frowned. His voice caught. He loved that car. "Cadillac. Fleetwood 1959. Mint condition."

Fred's nose tickled, he rubbed the tip of it. "Shame to sink a car like that."

Lazslo held his hands up like a surgeon, letting them dry in the air. He'd been outrunning exhaustion and disgust and an insanity of guilt, but with every moment they were catching up with him. He was no longer the least bit confident that he was thinking straight or that he'd settled on the right sucker for the job. Once again he felt the heat of Suki's throat against his thumbs.

Wearily, his eyes receding, he said, "Yeah, it fucking is a shame. So thousand dollars. Yes or no?"

Fred thought about it a moment more, then said, "Sure, why not?"

Lazslo told him where the car was parked, handed him the keys and ten exotic fifty dollar bills. "Everglades," he said. "Make sure it fucking disappears."

Fred pocketed the money and then just stood there, his elbow on the dented metal partition.

"So what're you waiting for?" said Lazslo.

Shyly, Fred nodded toward the urinal. "Ya don't mind," he said, "I gotta take a leak."