Edgy, Chop Parilla went on. "You're in, spear 'im, you're out again, I drive away, we're finished. Right?"
"Right," said Berman grudgingly.
It was getting on toward three o'clock A.M. The moon had dimmed to a mauve smudge and set. The streets were quiet except for the electric hum of the streetlamps and a very occasional howl or cackle from a passing drunk. The air had cooled just enough for a patina of condensation to form on the windshields of parked cars.
"What about the broad?" said Chop.
"What about 'er?"
"I don't like it there's someone with him."
"Picked up a chippy. Getting laid before he dies. I think that's kinda nice."
"Nice we got a witness?"
"Chop," said Squid, "imagine this. You've just fucked a guy. Next thing you know he's got a fish stuck through his heart. You gonna notice much besides the fish?"
Chop frowned, drummed fingers on the steering wheel. "I just wish he was alone."
Squid was getting exasperated. "You're the one so anxious to get finished. Ya want we do 'im tonight or ya want we don't?"
Chop just squeezed his lips together.
But all at once Squid was ready, and with the readiness came an awful thrill he could no longer deny. He felt it behind his knees and underneath his tongue.
Swallowing deep, he opened the glove compartment, reached for his powdered rubber gloves, and pulled them on. From underneath his seat, he produced a cylinder of pepper spray, stuck it in the waistband of his pants. "Come on," he said, "it's time."
Chop petted the dashboard then started the Jag, eased it over to the hotel entrance, and sat there softly idling.
Squid pulled a cut-off stocking down over his face. The nylon squashed his nose and tugged at the corners of his eyes, exposed the red rims of his eyelids. He slipped out of the car, reached into the backseat, and retrieved the stuffed fish with the two-foot spike of a nose. He bounced the pad of his index finger against the tip of it. "Fucker's sharp," he said to Chop.
Chop said nothing, just sat there scanning the street with his passenger door wide open.
Squid slipped through the gate of the hotel, darted into the shadow of an oleander; and took a moment to survey the courtyard. Soft blue light hovered as though it were a solid thing above the pool. Empty lounges were arranged in friendly groupings. Wisps of mist escaped from the edges of the hot tub cover.
He looked toward the office. The light was on, the door was open, and he had no choice but to pass quite near it. He took a deep breath, held it. Hunkering low, the fish under his arm, he scooted by the doorway. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the sleeping desk clerk, elbows on the counter, cheeks resting in his palms.
Squid jogged around the still-damp apron of the pool until he reached the gravel path overgrown with giant philodendrons. Small stones crunched beneath his feet, but nothing stirred as he slipped around to the side of Big Al's bungalow and stood in the darkness near the thatch enclosure of the shower. Through the mesh that muffled his nose and mouth, he sniffed the air, freighted with chlorine and salt and iodine. He practiced his grip on the fish. With his right hand around the narrow place just before the tail, he could use his left to guide the thrust. The fish weighed six, eight pounds and would make an admirable harpoon.
He got the pepper spray ready to immobilize the dog.
Then he crawled beneath the thatch onto the wet slats of the shower. He scrabbled to his feet and tried the bathroom door. Unlocked as always. He let himself in. Smelled soap and toothpaste and deodorant. Gave his eyes a moment to adjust to the deeper darkness inside the bungalow, then sidled toward the doorway to the bedroom.
Squinting, straining, he studied the bed as though there were some mystic pattern in the rise and fall of the ripples in the cotton blanket. He knew there were two bodies there. He knew that any second the dog would start to yelp and time would shrink to a twitch and he'd have to take his shot. But meanwhile he could see no more than one inchoate lump between the sheets, one heap suggesting tangled limbs and loins.
Readying the fish, he edged closer, his knees nearly touching the foot of the bed, close enough to hear the whoosh of breath. And from this new perspective, the geometry of the bedclothes told him there was just one person on that mattress. Was it possible? It made sense that the chippy would do her business and then slip out. So much the better. But how had she got past them, watching in the Jag?
No time to think about it now.
He inched up along the bedside, following the cocoon that swathed Big Al from heel to head, passing knees, thighs, waist, measuring the distance to the victim's rib cage, to the heart and lungs that would be pierced. He started lifting the fish. Its lacquered skin had gotten sticky from the heat of his gloved fingers.
He raised the tail above his head. He balanced the abdomen against his other hand so that the death-spike pointed toward Big Al's torso at an angle like a falling bomb. He caught a sharp breath through the nylon that deformed his face, hitched his arms a notch higher, then locked his bandy muscles, fixed his gaze on the lump of flesh about to die, and brought the stuffed fish hurtling down with all his might.
At that instant Katy Sansone twitched the sheet back from her face.
Squid Berman saw the spiky hair, the forehead that was not Big Al's, and was horrified.
The harpoon was heavy, was descending with a dread momentum. This was a debacle. There was nothing artful about killing the wrong person, skewering a chippy. But the spike was coming down and he didn't have the strength to stop it. All in a heartbeat he was wrestling against the very motion that he'd started, his limbs contending wildly against themselves. He clamped down with his arms, tried to suck back gravity with the muscles of his chest, and managed just barely to deflect the grim trajectory of the spike.
It sliced through the blanket and grazed Katy Sansone's flank before sticking eyes-deep in the mattress, impaled as though it had fallen from the sky.
Squid Berman, his balance thrown off in the grotesque and desperate effort to change the course of wrongful murder, fell flat on top of Katy, pushed off again and started running even as she screamed.
Her scream, at last, woke up the dog, which had been insulated from sound and foreign odors by her master's blanket and his breathing and the safe smell of his chest. But now, hair on end, with no thought whatsoever for herself, the valiant shih tzu sprang down from the sofa and lit out on ticking, sliding paws toward the intruder. She caught up with him as he was escaping through the bathroom door. He paused just long enough to shoot pepper at her nose and eyes, then crawled beneath the shower and was gone. Fifi yelped and ran in circles.
Al Tuschman bolted up as well, as quickly as his cramped legs would allow him, and ran the short length of the alcove. Groping for the switch, he turned the light on and discovered, through the rude and sudden glare, a bizarre and inexplicable tableau: a painted sailfish having done a face-plant through his mattress, and Katy quivering like an outsized butterfly freshly pinned in wax.
"Jesus. You okay?" he asked.
She couldn't answer right away. She was trembling and she badly needed to slip out from under the pole-axed blanket, to persuade herself she wasn't really trapped there.
The dog, in torment, found Al's feet, whimpered piteously against his ankles.
He picked her up and stroked her head, and watched the pale and quaking Katy wriggle toward the edge of the sheet.
To no one in particular he said, "God Almighty. And I really thought my luck was changing."
THREE
27
Al Tuschman stood inside the thatch enclosure and held his dog high up beneath a tepid shower. Fifi didn't like the splash and dribble of the water but it was better than the burn of pepper. She trusted that her master was doing the right thing.
Katy Sansone was leaning against the counter by the sink. With a pale green washcloth she dabbed at the thin line of drying blood that stained her right side, just above the waist.
It was three-thirty in the morning. Adrenaline had rendered them wide awake and almost sober. Calamity was intimate but not immediately sexy; they felt hardly any discomfort now, standing in their underwear.
Turning off the shower, wrapping the wet dog in a bath towel, Al said, "Didja see anybody? Anything?"
Katy shook her head, kept dabbing at the blood. The thin red line would disappear and then re-form, a little fainter every time. "Someone fell on top of me. That's all I felt. Didn't even feel the cut. Didn't see a thing."
Rubbing the dog in the towel, Al said, "Maybe the clerk."
They retreated to their separate corners, retrieved their clothes, and dressed. The stuffed fish was still poised in its improbable headstand on the bed, its spined fin spread proudly open like a winning hand of cards. They left it there as evidence.
Outside, the layer of blue light still sat atop the pool. Giant leaves secretly savored the hours of dripping dew. Al carried Fifi as he and Katy crunched over the gravel to the office.
They found the desk clerk dozing with his elbows on the desk. A tiny muted television threw an anemic glare on one side of his face. With a considerate softness, Al said, "Excuse me . . ."
If the clerk heard him at all, he heard him in a dream. A mouth corner tightened, ruby studs moved on his eyebrow.
Louder, Al said, "Excuse me!"
The clerk blinked himself awake.
"Did you just see someone sneak in and out of here?" Al asked him.
"Hm?"
Al put his hands flat on the counter, leaned across them. "Look. Someone just broke in here with a giant fish and tried to kill her. I'm asking if you saw anyone."
Sleepily the clerk said, "Giant fish?"
Al said, "You are really worthless."
People are sensitive when they first wake up. The desk clerk flushed and for an instant seemed about to cry. "You don't have to get nasty, Mr. Tuschman. I've worked eight straight shifts."
"I know, I know," said Al, feeling guilty now. "Rents are high. How 'bout you call the cops for us, at least."
The clerk stifled a yawn then reached stiffly toward the phone. His hand was lifting the receiver when Katy softly said, "No."
Al looked at her in her pink shorts and lime-green blouse and high-heeled sandals. "No?"
Katy's near-demise had focused her attention, and she'd been thinking hard. She'd been thinking about nicknames. About license plates. About how that other Al was treated in the seafood restaurants they used to go to in the city. "Tusch," she said, "I think we better talk."
*
"Mafia?" said Alan Tuschman. The word felt odd in his mouth, felt like a stranger had borrowed his voice to say it.
Katy blew steam from the surface of her coffee. "I mean," she said, "you never know for sure. But, hey."
She broke off with a shrug and Al looked out the window, checked on Fifi, tied up to a parking meter. They were sitting in an all-night diner on Duval. The bars had just closed and there was something bleakly, forsakenly transitional about the scene outside. It could almost have been quitting time in a mill town somewhere. People wandered, glazed, unsatisfied, wondering what was left for them to do with the dregs of time until they slept. Cop cars cruised by slowly, waiting for the sluggish, drunken fights to start.
Katy went on. "This much I know—he was having business troubles in New York. That's what all of a sudden put him in such a rotten mood. Whoever he works for, they put his worst enemy in charge. That bent him really outa shape."
Al played with his spoon and thought it over. "I just don't see what this poor bastard's business troubles have to do with you almost getting murdered."
Katy sipped her coffee. Out in the unnatural twilight of the sidewalk, two guys started cursing at each other.
Softly, she said, "Tusch—or should I say Big Al?—who was supposed to be in that bed?"
Al blinked. He plucked at his shirtfront, twisted his neck from one side to the other. He ran his hands over his torso where the spike would have gone in. "Now wait a second ..."
Katy waited several seconds, but Al could not continue right away.
Finally, with the brittle logic of someone trying to convince himself, he went on. "Look. He's from New York, I'm from Jersey. He's in seafood, I sell furniture. He's like five-foot-two, I'm six-foot-three. Someone mixed us up? . . . Nah, it's too ridiculous."
"Okay, it's ridiculous," said Katy. She paused as a waitress went by with a cinnamon roll. The cinnamon smelled great. "Mind I get a Danish?"
"Get a Danish."
She ordered it and then resumed. "So, Tusch, okay, it's ridiculous. But lemme ask you something. Do you have friends or enemies who are the kind of people who would put rotten calamari in someone's car?"
"No."
"He does."
The Danish arrived. She cut it into wedges and started eating one.
"Lemme ask you something else. Among your circle of acquaintances, are there guys who specialize in finding weird new ways to murder people in their beds?"
Al pulled on his face. It had been a long night and the skin felt very loose. Absently, he picked up and chomped a piece of Danish, swallowed it along with the conclusion he could no longer fend off. "It's one big fat mistake?" he murmured. "The whole thing's been one big fat mistake?"
Katy shrugged and sipped her coffee.
Al sipped his, then suddenly brought forth a quick and honking chuckle. He tried to put some sportsmanship in it but that didn't work. "I don't know whether to laugh or be really pissed."
She looked at him over the rim of her cup. "Be pissed. It might come in handy."
She said it as an ally. He knew she did, but still, the comment worried him. She saw the worry in his face.
"Look," she went on, "I know a little bit about these people. They're bullies. Real tough till you stand up to them."
"Stand up to them?" said Al. "They're killers. Me, I haven't had a fight since junior high."
"Come on. You're big. You're strong."
"I'm chicken."
He tried to say it lightly, blithely, but at four A.M. things have a way of coming out truer than they are really meant to. Katy's face told Al that his joke had failed but his revelation had succeeded. He prepared to flush with embarrassment. But he looked at Katy's unmocking eyes, and the embarrassment didn't come. He felt relief instead. He heard himself keep talking.
"I've always been chicken. Playing sports. The pressure, the contact, you could get wracked up any second. Always scared. Never admitted it. Can't admit it if you're big. Some people see right through it, though. Like my boss. Ya know what he told me just as I was leaving to come down here? Told me, 'Al, you're big, you're strong, but deep down you're a softie.' Killed me with that."
Katy said, "I think it's nice."
"Nice," said Al dismissively. "Nice for selling dinettes. Less nice for dealing with the Mafia."
Katy started picking up another piece of Danish, put it down again, and placed her hand on top of Al's. Her hand was a little sticky but he liked it. "Tusch," she said, "everyone's afraid. Doesn't matter you're afraid, matters what you do."
It mattered to him. He looked at her and frowned. Outside, a patrol car had turned its beacon on; cold blue light raked across the diner window. Fifi had started barking.
"You'll do what needs doing," she told him. "I know you will."
He doubted it. He said, "How's your side? It hurt?"
"No big deal," she said. "Hey—how 'bout we find someplace to watch the sun come up?"
28
On Long Island, dawn was on a dimmer the sun thwarted like an unlucky performer who couldn't find the break in the curtain. Light barely trickled through a chilly haze the color of weak tea. It was an hour before there was brightness enough to quell the streetlamps and throw the first, faint shadows from basketball hoops and minivans crouched in asphalt driveways.
In his four-bedroom split-level, Nicky Scotto woke up nervous. He tried to convince himself that it was a happy nervous, th
e nervousness that came with triumph. Big Al Marracotta should be dead by now. If everything had gone well, that is. His own control of the fish market should be secure—assuming he'd rightly interpreted Tony Eggs' sphinxlike advice.
But what if he hadn't?
Too late, the rashness and the riskiness of his strategy was getting through to Nicky. He'd unilaterally called a hit on a powerful and well-connected man. Cagey old Tony had stopped well short of saying anything that would make him party to the call; he could totally disclaim it with a shrug, a lifted eyebrow. What if something went wrong? What if it was only his ambition that made Nicky imagine that he'd got the go-ahead?
He tried not to think about it. He showered and shaved and dressed for work.
But at the fish market office, his antsiness only increased. Big Al's things were still around. The edges of his family portraits stuck out from underneath the phone books. His calendar had a dentist's appointment marked down on it. This gave Nicky the creeps, brought home to him the enormity of what he'd set in motion.
Besides, he could not get comfortable in his cheap new suit. The rough wool chafed him behind the knees. The stiff sleeves bound him at the elbows. His lapels would not lie flat, and he could not banish the thought that when he saw guys whose lapels stuck out like that, he thought of them as pissants.
The morning went very slowly. He kept waiting to be summoned to the pay phone across the yard, to get the news that his nemesis had in fact been iced. He tugged on his lapels. The call didn't come.
Finally, around ten-thirty, he broke down and decided to get in touch with Florida.
He left the office, went outside, trudged through oily puddles and around the loading dock, and lifted the freezing-cold receiver to his ear. Inhaling diesel, exhaling steam, he dialed. The phone rang a long time and then a sleepy Chop said, "Yeah?"
"So what's the story?"
"Nicky?"
"No, Santa Claus. Didja do 'im yet?"
Chop struggled up onto an elbow, used his other hand to rub his eyes. "Well, not exactly."
Welcome to Paradise Page 14
