The Russian woman, with her feral eyes, now had the skeletal face of a screaming death’s-head. Her partner appeared briefly, walking upright, then was liquefied and reassembled as an animal from a cartoon vision. He dropped to all fours, his body as thick and hairy as a lion, but with the leering, hairy head of a jackal.
“Walk, you clumsy idiot. If you make us carry you, we’ll let you die here.”
The screaming death’s-head spoke a whispered English, heavily accented.
I then stood for a moment, teetering on the edge of an expanding abyss-the trunk of a car was opening next to me, I realized. A third figure was now involved. A man with a plaid jacket, a Bronx accent, eyes smoldering with the stink of cigars.
I tried to say his name-Jimmy Heller-but the words exited my numb face as the blubbering sound of an invalid weeping.
“Tough guy,” I heard the squatty little detective say. “The way he handles himself-like his shit doesn’t stink. Listen to ’im now, crying like a baby.”
I watched, beginning to tilt earthward, as the checkered jacket became an animal’s spotted pelt, and smoldering eyes centered themselves on Heller’s pointed, yellow face-the face of a hyena. Then I was falling… falling toward a dark concavity that had been the trunk of a car but was now a spinning coffin.
Felt the air go out of me. Felt an acidic welling that signals the need to vomit as the coffin lid slammed shut…
30
Serpiente
Marion D. Ford-if the man really is an operator, what’s the best way to take him down…?
Dasha had been thinking about it Friday morning when she’d found the address of Sanibel Biological Supply on the Internet, and used MapQuest to print directions. She was still excited; couldn’t wait to meet the man face-to-face.
She’d also printed Ford’s photograph. Those eyes… thinking of the way he’d used a boat as a weapon added to the anticipation.
She had Broz drop them at Orlando International, where she used a counterfeit credit card to get another rental, a green Pontiac midsize, nondescript.
Aleski was with her, of course. Aleski, whose right eye was now swollen closed, ear blood-clotted beneath antibiotic salve.
Irritating. She’d have much preferred to make the trip alone, she and Ford, two operators meeting-that’s the way she pictured it-but there was no escaping Aleski. Like a dog, the way he followed her around. Lately, though, it was more like a guard dog.
Four hours later, they were driving over a causeway bridge onto Sanibel Island, mica-bright water beneath, the molten fire of a western sky familiar in a misplaced way.
An image formed in Dasha’s mind: the Foundry furnaces of Volstak blazing, doors wide, ghost men swinging shovels…
One of them probably my idiot father.
Her mother had worked the factories at lunchtime. To Dasha, the heat from the furnaces felt like heaven. Her mother said they were doors that opened to hell.
“This is a pretty island. I like the way coconut trees look at sunset.”
Aleski’s first combination of sentences since they’d left Orlando. He sat there, his face looking as if he’d been beaten with a hammer, now suddenly the insightful romantic.
The images of furnaces and ghost men lingered. “Shut your stupid mouth. Concentrate on the job. I told you-this man, Ford, isn’t some typical American amateur. You can’t even defend yourself from a woman. And you’re wasting your time thinking about fruit trees?”
“Sorry, Dasha.” Aleski sniffed, obviously irritated, but still not done with it. Finally, he asked, “Coconuts are fruit?”
“Oh God…”
“I didn’t know that. But, if they are a fruit, why are they called ‘nuts’?”
“Enough!”
“I’m tired of you speaking to me as if I’m stupid! Fruit is soft on the outside. Nuts are hard.”
Dasha couldn’t wait to park the car, get away from Aleski. Find a private room, take a long, sudsy shower. The stink of Mr. Earl seemed to cling-it had to be her imagination. But work came first.
The woman drove straight to Dinkin’s Bay because that was the professional thing to do. Check out the place; fix landmarks in her mind.
The first of several disappointments that night.
Following the map, Dasha turned right onto Tarpon Bay Road. Narrow shell lane, mangroves. Rounded a slow curve… then braked to a stop when they were confronted unexpectedly by a man in the process of locking the marina gate.
“Sorry, folks! Friday nights, we always close at sunset. Unless you got an invitation.”
A wide-bodied older man, white plantation hat, smoking a cigar.
Dasha had been so worried he’d get a close look at their faces, she had nearly skidded into the swamp in her rush to get away.
“It must be a very exclusive marina if customers are required to have invitations,” Aleski said as tires spun, shells flying. “Have you ever been on such a wealthy island?”
Fool. “Shut up!”
Dasha didn’t get her shower, or a hotel. On west Gulf Drive, they’d stopped at Tradewinds, then Island Inn. Both desk clerks said the same: It was December 17, a week before Christmas, and every room on the island was booked.
Fuming, the woman parked the rental a few blocks from Dinkin’s Bay at a little shopping center-Bailey’s General Store, Island Cinema. Then she and Aleski walked to the marina gate, as if they were a couple out for an evening stroll.
All she wanted to do was eyeball Marion Ford’s home and lab; have a plan. Maybe get a look at the man himself. Decide if it was plausible to break in later, stick him with 10 ccs of Versed, and snatch him.
The Mossad profile was alluring in itself, but the photo had really hooked her.
A carnivore surprised in tall grass.
Yes. Exactly the same. But had the photo lied? Photos often did.
There was a secret place within her where she hoped the photo was accurate.
Now, though, there was loud music playing beyond the marina gate, people dancing on docks silhouetted by holiday lights. Big party going on.
Dasha and Aleski returned an hour later. Then three hours later. Then at midnight.
Music was still booming.
Impossible.
Finally, nearly 3:00 A.M., Sanibel traffic had thinned enough for them to attempt to wrestle their way through the mangrove swamp that bypassed the fence and gate. Mosquitoes screamed in their ears; muck sucked at their shoes. The bay stank of rotting eggs. Awful.
“Duck! Stay down.”
Off to the right, there was an abrupt detonation of light. It transformed the mangrove leaves overhead from black to beige, erased stars. Blinding.
Dasha tensed as the light became a focused yellow conduit that panned along the mangrove fringe. It nearly found them once, swept away, but then returned quickly and found them again.
“Don’t move.”
The light came from a house previously unseen, a structure built on stilts over water. The bright conduit swept back and forth, the timing unpredictable. It went off for seconds, sometimes minutes, before the blazing column began to probe again.
A lone figure up there on the porch, wide-shouldered, who knew how a search was done.
The unpredictable rhythm kept the Russians pinned for more than half an hour while mosquitoes drank their blood in the sulfur stink, and dropping December chill.
Back in the car, Aleski said, “I feel like I’m going to be sick. My eye’s infected, my ear’s infected. I don’t mind that rotten egg odor so much. But something in this car smells worse. What’s that terrible perfume old women wear? Lavender.”
“Shut up! You fool. Shut your filthy mouth!”
Late the next morning, though, their luck changed. One of Dr. Stokes’s stooges tipped off Mr. Earl.
It was Hartman, the stooge, vice president in charge of environmental oversight.
Dr. Marion Ford was on his way to Kissimmee. He had called for an appointment; was returning to ask questions about Frieda Matthews’s death. It sounded like he planned to retrace the woman’s steps, Hartman said, and he claimed he had Applebee’s computer files.