Hard Rain

by Peter Abrahams

  Davey looked up at Zyzmchuk. “All set?”

  They climbed onto the torn front seat of the pickup, Davey behind the wheel, Jessie in the middle, Zyzmchuk on the outside. As Davey started the motor, the door of the house opened and a woman in a housecoat ran out.

  “Here,” she said, thrusting a Thermos through Davey’s window. She didn’t look at Davey’s passengers. “I’ll leave egg salad in the fridge. You can make sandwiches.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  She ran back into the house.

  Davey backed out of the driveway and drove east on Route 9, into the mountains. He leaned over the wheel, eyes fixed on the road. So were Zyzmchuk’s. Jessie tried closing hers, but that only made her head hurt more. She wondered how Zyzmchuk’s head felt: he hadn’t said anything about it. In the dim light of the cab, she looked for damage on the back of his head. There was no dried blood—he’d been struck with the side of the gasoline can, not an edge—but she thought she saw a bump pushing through the iron-gray hair.

  Zyzmchuk felt her gaze and turned. Their eyes met. “That was only round two,” he said. “We’ll get our licks in.”

  Jessie laughed, not so much at what he said as at the revelation that another mind was running parallel to her own. Davey glanced at them, looked quickly away. Jessie suddenly felt very safe, almost as though she could stay in the cab of the rusty pickup forever, with the alert boy at the wheel and the parallel mind at her side. Almost, except for Kate. Kate, who like Davey had a Mom: a Mom like a turtle shell. The cab of the pickup was her shell, and she was Kate’s.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Jessie said.

  “Ask.”

  “What was it you said to Mr. Mickey?”

  Zyzmchuk smiled. “Kaka idyot Polkovnik Grushin?”

  “Meaning?”

  “How is Colonel Grushin?”

  “In?”

  “Russian.”

  Jessie was aware of Davey’s quick glance. She lowered her voice. “And he understood?”

  “What do you think?” Zyzmchuk said, not lowering his.

  “Yes,” Jessie replied in a normal tone. “He has an accent. I thought he was Scandinavian. I even asked him.”

  “That must have amused him.”

  “It annoyed him. He said he was from Hermosa Beach.”

  “Is that on the Black Sea?”

  “No,” Jessie said, “near Redondo.” And then she saw his smile. “So he’s Russian, then?”

  Zyzmchuk nodded.

  “A Russian … agent?” The phrase, so common in the papers, on TV, in the movies, sounded unreal.

  But Davey’s darting look was real, and so was Zyzmchuk’s voice. “Looks like it,” he said.

  “But how did you know?”

  Zyzmchuk replied with a sound that might have been the beginning of a laugh, a bitter one, or maybe just a grunt.

  Davey turned onto a dirt road that climbed a hill into thick woods. An old stone wall ran along the right side. The road was rough. Every bump hurt Jessie’s head.

  “Slow down a little,” Zyzmchuk said.

  Davey slowed down.

  “But what connection can there be between Kate and … Russia?”

  An opening appeared in the wall. Davey slowed still more and turned into it. His headlights swept across a sign nailed to a tree: POSITIVELY NO MOTORIZED VEHICLES.

  “Maybe none,” Zyzmchuk said.

  Leaves lay thick on the narrow track. Trees rose on all sides. Jessie was acutely conscious that they were living things, and this was their domain.

  “Did Pat ever go to Russia?”

  “No. Not as long as I knew him. He didn’t like traveling.”

  “Did he have a passport?”

  “No. Not that I ever saw. Who is Colonel Grushin?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Jessie watched Zyzmchuk’s face. He seemed to be gazing into the trees. For a while she thought he was formulating his reply. Then she realized he wasn’t going to say anything.

  Davey followed the track for another mile, maybe two. Then the track forked. The main branch led to the left. Davey took the other one, more a space between the trees than a track. He crept along for about ten minutes, then stopped at the bottom of a short rise.

  He pointed. “It’s just up there.”

  They got out and walked up the rise. It ended in a flat shelf of rock. The night opened in a circle all around. The moon, now less than full, shone on a still sheet of water twenty feet below, black water with a broken silver line shimmering across to the other side.

  “Little Pond,” Davey said. He took a flashlight from his pocket and walked, crouching, to the end of the rock. “Here,” he said. “See?”

  A thin layer of earth and gravel covered the rock. Davey’s light shone on the impression of a lone tire tread, a few inches from the edge.

  “I see,” Zyzmchuk said. He looked down. “Got your gear?”

  “My gear?” Davey said. “You want me to go in now? I was just in this afternoon, and I told the chief what I saw.”

  “Not you,” Zyzmchuk told him. “I want to see for myself.”

  “In that case …” Davey went silent. He was looking at the broken silver line; Jessie saw its pattern repeated in his eyes. “Are you certified?”

  “What?”

  “Have you had much experience with scuba?”

  “Some,” Zyzmchuk said.

  “It’s deep. I hit fifty feet on my gauge, and I wasn’t on the bottom.”

  “I’ll be all right. I’ll pay for any damaged equipment.”

  “It’s not that,” Davey said. He sounded hurt.

  “Good,” Zyzmchuk said. “Let’s get started.”

  They returned to the pickup. Davey laid out the equipment: mask, snorkel, fins, regulator, tank, wet suit, weights, light.

  “You’ll never get in that wet suit,” Jessie said.

  “She’s right,” Davey said. “I think I can find you a bigger one by tomorrow.”

  Zyzmchuk shook his head. “We’ll have to manage without.”

  “Are you kidding? It’s November. You wouldn’t last three minutes in there.”

  “Have you got any Vaseline? For lubricating the zippers and stuff?”

  “Yes,” Davey admitted.

  “That’ll do.”

  Davey found the Vaseline. Then, carrying the dive bag, he led them along a path around the base of the rock to a small, stony beach.

  Zyzmchuk stripped off his clothes. Jessie thought of going back to the pickup or averting her eyes, like some Victorian damsel. That seemed silly, so she just looked.

  Zyzmchuk’s body was white and hard in the moonlight, like stone, except for the scars. He rubbed Vaseline all over it: polished stone. If he was conscious of her watching, he gave no sign.

  “Here,” Jessie said. She stepped forward, took the jar and rubbed Vaseline on the part of his back he couldn’t reach. His skin felt warm, much warmer than hers.

  He lifted the tank over his head, wincing slightly—Jessie noticed only because she was watching for it—and strapped it on. He put on the fins; spat into the mask, rinsed it in the pond; donned the weight belt; turned on the light.

  Then he walked into the water. “Jesus Christ,” he said. He laughed.

  “Why not wait until morning?” Jessie asked.

  But he had put the regulator in his mouth and slipped below the surface before the last word was out. The moment he was gone Jessie remembered her dream: diving down to the deep place where Kate was crying. A horrible thought germinated in her mind.

  Silver bubbles broke nearby on the black water. A trail of them led steadily toward the base of the rock, shrinking smaller and smaller and finally vanishing.

  “Did he used to be a football player or something?” Davey asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Jessie said.

  She and Davey stood on the stony beach. Jessie, in her wool sweater and suede jacket, still felt
cold. She wanted to hug herself warmer, but didn’t because of Zyzmchuk down in the pond.

  “Five minutes,” Davey said. Then there was silence until he said, “Ten.”

  “Have you got another tank?” Jessie asked.

  “Not here. There’d be nothing—”

  Yellow light glowed up through the water near the base of the rock. “Here he comes,” Davey said.

  Jessie saw silver bubbles. They grew bigger. Zyzmchuk stood up in the water, a few yards from the beach. The polished stone had turned from white to blue. He raised his mask and spat out the regulator.

  “I’d like to open that trunk,” he said. His words were slurred, as though his lips and tongue had thickened. “What have you got?”

  “Like a torch?” Davey said. “I left it at home. The chief said this was just for—”

  “A crowbar will do.”

  “I don’t have that either. I’ve got a screwdriver.”

  “We’ll try it.”

  Davey ran to the pickup.

  “Ivan?” Jessie said.

  “Yeah?”

  She’d been about to say, Why not come out now? Or, Leave it till tomorrow. Something in his eyes told her not to. So instead she said, “How’s the water?”

  He laughed. He was still laughing when Davey returned with the screwdriver. Davey tossed it to him, and he dipped out of sight.

  “Is he okay?” Davey said.

  “Seems like it.”

  They watched the silver bubbles. The bubbles had lost some of their luster; the moon was slipping down the sky. An unbroken line of cloud was closing behind it like a sliding door.

  “Five minutes,” Davey said. “I hope he’s watching his air. A big guy like that can go through a lot of air.”

  Time passed. It seemed like a long time to Jessie.

  Davey said, “Six minutes. Shit. Does he know how to make a free ascent?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Jesus.” Davey started to pace, up and down on the stony beach, checking his watch every few seconds. “Why couldn’t he wait till morning? Nothing’s going to change. It’s only a few hours, for God’s sake.”

  Jessie thought about that. Was it that Ivan Zyzmchuk was a driven man, like some Type A executive who had to have things done his way and when he wanted? Or did it have to do with something else, such as losing the fight in the barnyard and letting Mr. Mickey and the real estate man get away? Was he punishing himself down there? Or just getting his licks in?

  Jessie didn’t have time to think it through. Underwater, yellow glowed again, and silver bubbles grew bigger. “Here he comes,” Davey said.

  “Have you got a blanket?”

  “In the truck.”

  “Get it.”

  Davey ran off.

  Zyzmchuk rose in the water, just a few yards away. He was shaking. He didn’t come forward. Jessie realized that he was shaking so hard he couldn’t manage the last few steps to the beach. Jessie went in and got him.

  Davey wrapped the blanket around the hard blue body. Together he and Jessie pounded on it. “Here,” Davey said, holding out a cup of steaming coffee from the Thermos. Zyzmchuk couldn’t hold it. Jessie tipped it up to his lips. His teeth were chattering; Jessie could hear them. She held the back of his head to steady it. He no longer felt warm, but icy cold.

  Some of the coffee went in. Then more. “Okay,” Zyzmchuk said. “I’m all right.” His speech was so slurred Jessie could hardly understand him.

  He said something else. She put her ear close to his mouth. “Couldn’t open the trunk,” he said.

  “They’ll do that tomorrow.”

  “But I found something else.”

  “What?”

  He looked away, across the pond.

  “Tell me.”

  Zyzmchuk licked his lips. “Another car.”

  “Another car?” Davey said. “I didn’t see another car.”

  “It was under the Corvette. They must have been pushed off the same spot.”

  “What kind of car?” Jessie said. “Tell me.”

  Zyzmchuk opened his shaking hand. On his palm lay a metal disk with the letters BMW printed on it.

  32

  It took longer than the police chief had expected. The Corvette didn’t come up until three o’clock, the BMW until after four. Both cars gushed water as they swung over Little Pond, up onto the big rock: white water from the Corvette, muddy water from the BMW.

  The two cars, sitting side by side, had some things in common—low mileage: the BMW had seven thousand miles on the odometer, the Corvette one hundred and three, sixteen more than when Jessie had seen it under the tarpaulin; color: they were the same shade of blue; ownership: soggy papers taken from the glove compartments showed that both cars were in Pat Rodney’s name.

  But there were differences. The BMW had a current sticker on the license plate. The Corvette’s vanity plate—PAT 69—read 1969 and hadn’t been updated. And the trunk of the BMW was empty. That wasn’t true of the Corvette. A body, jammed into fetal position, lay in the Corvette’s trunk—a woman’s body with a big gold hoop dangling from one mushroom-colored ear.

  It was Blue Rodney.

  She was fully dressed—jeans, Birkenstock sandals, an embroidered Mexican shirt—but the shirt buttons had popped open, so it was easy to see the round, bloodless hole between her breasts. That made Jessie remember the red fingerpainting around the light switch at Spacious Skies and the taste of blood—Blue’s blood—in her mouth.

  An ambulance arrived. The attendants laid Blue on a stretcher and carried her inside. As they set her down, her head flopped to one side. Brown water ran from her slack mouth and down the white bodywork of the ambulance.

  “Oh God,” Jessie said. The words made almost no sound. She was so rigid with tension she could barely speak.

  Then Davey, in a bright orange wet suit, surfaced from his last dive. He swam to shore. It seemed to take a long time. Jessie’s eyes were glued to him, straining to pick out some body movement that would reveal the news he carried. At last he stood up in shallow water, pulled off his mask, let go his regulator, wiped the snot from his nose and stepped onto the stony beach. Jessie was waiting for him.

  “That’s it,” he said and shivered like a dog.

  No more bodies.

  Jessie’s worst fears weren’t realized, but they’d grown more palpable, less abstract, fed by hours of watching the work at Little Pond. Now they didn’t go away, but merely receded a little, like an army biding its time.

  Two tow trucks came. They towed away the Corvette and the BMW. The ambulance left. Then the police chief, the fire chief, Davey. Cold drizzle drifted down from the sky.

  Jessie turned from the pond to find Zyzmchuk watching her. “I could use a drink,” he said. “How about you?”

  She nodded.

  They stopped at a little inn off Route 9 and sat before a fire. It hissed and crackled in the grate, but it didn’t warm Jessie. She felt cold, almost as cold as mushroom-colored skin.

  “What’ll it be?” Zyzmchuk asked.

  “Anything.”

  “Two brandies,” Zyzmchuk said to the innkeeper. He didn’t look like the kind of innkeeper who came from a family of innkeepers; he looked like the kind of innkeeper who’d abandoned a high-paying city job in pursuit of some country squire dream.

  “Will that be genuine Cognac from France or Spanish brandy?”

  “Genuine Cognac for the lady,” Zyzmchuk said. “Rotgut for me.”

  “I assure you,” the innkeeper began, reluctantly adding, “sir. Our Spanish brandy is rather—”

  “Make that rotgut all around,” Jessie interjected. The words came out unbidden.

  Zyzmchuk laughed. The innkeeper closed his mouth and went away.

  Spanish brandy came. Zyzmchuk raised his glass. “To picadors,” he said.

  The Spanish brandy burned Jessie’s throat and radiated heat through her body, as though it had distilled the power of the Spanish sun.

 
“Sometimes Spanish brandy’s just the thing,” Zyzmchuk said. “Especially the kind with ten or twelve stars on the bottle.”

  They sat on a couch, not at opposite ends, not touching. Blue-tipped flames nipped at each other in the grate. A Vermont yellow pages lay on a side table. Zyzmchuk picked it up, leafed through.

  “That’s funny,” he said. “They’re not listed.”

  “Who’s not listed?”

  “Big-Top Motors in Bennington.”

  “Who are they?”

  “The dealership that sold the Corvette, according to the chrome writing on the trunk.”

  “Why do you want to talk to them?” Jessie was aware of the note of irritation in her voice, but was too tired, too worried to overcome it.

  Zyzmchuk ignored it. “Someone—the man you call Mr. Mickey—went to a—”

  “I don’t call him Mr. Mickey. He calls himself Mr. Mickey.”

  “I meant it’s unlikely to be his name. There aren’t a lot of Mickeys in Russia.”

  Jessie and Zyzmchuk looked at each other. Anger sparked between them, like electricity between two terminals. Zyzmchuk switched it off by raising his hand, palm out, and saying, “Peace, Bazak?”

  Jessie laughed, not hard, not long, but a laugh. “Peace, Vaclav.”

  They ordered more brandy. “I knew you’d like it,” the innkeeper said. He poked the fire, emptied an ashtray, straightened his ascot and went away.

  “The man who calls himself Mr. Mickey,” Zyzmchuk resumed, “went to some trouble not just to hide the body, but to hide the Corvette as well.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s what we have to find out.”

  “And what about the BMW?”

  “Good question: we can’t hang that one on Mr. Mickey yet. Maybe never.”

  “What are you saying? Surely the same person—”

  Zyzmchuk shook his head. “Four people have died. Blue Rodney and Disco and possibly—probably—your friend were all killed by Mr. Mickey and Andy Rooney. But what about Jerry Brenner?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Me either. That’s why we’ve got to take one car at a time.” Zyzmchuk stared into his drink. “I liked those cars down there, in a neat little pile and all. Of course, one was on the bottom a few days before the other.” He rose and went to the pay phone in the hall.

  But the operator had no listing for Big-Top Motors, not in Bennington, or anywhere else in Vermont.