Boxing the Octopus, page 19
Sergey stepped close to the guard, who remained expressionless. “Tony, are you on the take for anyone else?”
Tony shook his head, causing the ash from his cigarette to fall onto the floor.
“Is he really mute?”
Sergey shrugged. “Why don’t you ask him?”
“Gospodi.” Eva pushed past her brother into the cramped interior of the diminutive donut factory. She pulled out a flashlight and swept the room.
Sergey followed, leaving Tony standing by the door. “He guards this section of the pier until four a.m., so as long as he’s on duty, we are invisible.”
“Shouldn’t he be outside, keeping watch?”
“I don’t trust him that much,” said Sergey. “He might wander off or fall asleep. You know how security guards can be. This way I can keep an eye on him.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Someone comes to the door, he can say he found it ajar and came inside to investigate.”
“He doesn’t even talk—”
“—so we hide in the dark while he chases them away, or we slip out while he distracts them.”
“Does he know that’s the plan?”
“He nodded when I told him.” Sergey shrugged. “What do you want from me? He’s the only guard we own.”
“He should put out his cigarette,” repeated Eva. “This place looks flammable.” She indicated the conveyor belt where the donuts got made, a mobile ramp which ended in a straight drop into a vat of cooking oil. The lid was off the vat, rainbow patterns forming in the beam of Eva’s flashlight.
“You think they clean that out in the morning or use the same cooking oil over and over again?”
Eva stuck out her tongue. “One of the many reasons I don’t eat the donuts.”
The flashlight bounced along powdered sugar on metal shelves, sealed containers of oil stored against the nearest wall, and trays of dough in a refrigerated section of the shack toward the back. After they made a circuit of the room, Eva turned the flashlight on Sergey.
His chin glowed but his eyes were in shadow, like a treat-or-treater trying to scare his friends. She tilted the beam so it caught him directly in the eyes.
“What is your brilliant plan, Brother?”
Blinking furiously, Sergey said, “We are here to cause trouble.”
“We discussed this,” said Eva. “Trouble is not a plan. Be specific.”
“We find the stash of drugs and take them.”
At the word drugs, Eva looked over his shoulder and caught Tony staring at them, his eyes barely visible but his body angled in their direction. As she watched, the stoic sentinel took the butt from his mouth and used it to light a new cigarette.
“He should not be in here with us,” Eva hissed.
“You’re so tense,” said Sergey.
“Please just find the drugs,” sighed Eva.
“Give me the flashlight.” Sergey snatched the light and got on his hands and knees, aiming it under the shelves. He crawled a few feet before heading toward the front counter and the walk-up window.
Eva followed a few paces behind but remained standing. “We sold him these drugs, so why are we stealing them?”
“We put a little dent in Dave’s cash flow. Who knows, maybe we sell them back to him after he admits to ripping us off.”
“We don’t know him,” said Eva, “or that he ripped anyone off.”
“And we won’t find out unless we have leverage,” said Sergey. “Or get someone to make a move.”
“By make a move, you mean start a war.”
“A skirmish,” said Sergey. “Dave thinks someone is picking a fight, maybe he’ll fight back.”
“But with whom?”
“Who would you pick?” Sergey directed the light under the counter.
Eva stood in the dark while her brother crept along like a drunken rat in a cellar. After a moment, she said, “I would blame the khuliganami at the aquarium.”
“So would I!” Sergey smiled at what he considered a moment of bonding. “Pick the biggest kid on the playground and punch him in the nose, then nobody messes with you.”
“That’s what I was thinking, but—”
“—it doesn’t matter,” said Sergey. “He could go after anybody, one of the big restaurants, the banana stand, anyone on the pier who’s part of the group. All we want is enough chaos to bring some order to this situation. Dave might call the meeting himself, but he will never suspect us.”
“Because we sell him the drugs.”
“Bingo,” Sergey cried. It took a second before Eva realized he wasn’t responding to her but had discovered something. A wooden cabinet mounted under the counter, secured with an old padlock. “Hold the flashlight.”
Eva stole a glance at Tony. It was hard to tell in the murky gloom of the shack, but the glow from the ash lit his face less brightly than a moment ago, making her believe he was on his third cigarette. She muttered something under her breath and crouched below the counter, grabbing the flashlight from Sergey as he unwrapped his lock picks with loving care.
It took four tries and seven minutes before the latch popped open, but Eva had to admit her brother had finally developed a useful skill. Inside the cabinet was a plastic container of the type common to kitchens everywhere for storing flour or sugar. It held a jumble of small packets that resembled tea sachets, along with a plastic bag filled with a white powder that Eva knew wasn’t confectionary sugar.
Sergey handed Eva the container, which she slipped into the oversized purse on her shoulder. He closed the cabinet and relocked the padlock. Even in shadow, he had a deeply satisfied look on his face.
Eva let a smile displace her familiar scowl. “Let’s get out of here.”
They reached the door and Sergey opened it a crack, peering outside. As he gestured for them to follow, Tony paused to light his fourth cigarette, the butt from his third held carefully between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. His sullen face glowed in the amber light as he greedily sucked in the nicotine.
Eva’s scowl reappeared as her right hand shot forward involuntarily. Before she could stop herself, she had smacked both cigarettes sideways, sending them spinning like batons.
The shorter butt landed on the conveyor and bounced once, twice, and a third time before landing on the trail of powdered sugar, which simmered and spat like an incendiary camel.
“Oops.” Eva looked apologetically at Tony, who wasn’t mute after all.
“Oh, shit,” he said.
Eva lunged for the door.
She spared a glance over her shoulder as the longer cigarette completed its slow-motion arc, landing in the vat of cooking oil like Esther Williams, headfirst with barely a ripple.
An orange ball of flame expanded like a star going supernova, followed by a heatwave that slammed the door shut with a resounding whump. Eva grabbed Sergey by his shirt and dragged him across the pier.
They managed to stumble-run almost thirty feet. The siblings dove behind a cement planter topped with miniature palm trees—an instant before a secondary blast sent a shock wave that Eva felt in her chest. The first explosion must have knocked the lid from one of the spare oil drums, a hungry fire foraging for fuel.
In middle school Eva watched movies about the history of the Cold War. Atomic bombs tested in deserts and mock cities, wooden towns built to demonstrate the destructive power of the United States and her own Mother Russia. Mushroom clouds as big as the sky, smoke and fire eclipsing anything on the horizon, radioactive fallout as heavy as summer rain.
Eva remembered hearing that the energy of an atomic bomb was needed to trigger fusion in a hydrogen bomb, a codependent conflagration that takes you all the way from Bikini Atoll to Hiroshima. But the films from her childhood were black and white, poor production values. Propaganda films from a half-forgotten place and time. For Eva, this was all too here and now, as the series of explosions inside the shack became a chain reaction.
Dave’s Donuts reached critical mass.
The fireball was as bright as day, as hot as the sun, and as loud as a used car salesman’s tie. Eva felt something burn her cheek and realized the palm trees were on fire, their fronds disintegrating overhead. She swatted ash out of her hair and kept her head down, body sprawled across Sergey, who was yelling wordlessly against the thunderous wave rolling across the pier.
Then came the fallout.
Donuts rained from the sky. Raw dough had been flash-cooked and launched skyward. Golden-brown harbingers of doom plummeted back to earth like gluten hail.
Splat-splat-splat. Donuts sounding like hoofbeats, but Eva could hear sirens in the distance and knew the cavalry wasn’t coming. She and Sergey were pinned down, but they had to get out of there.
A final chthonic wave shook the planks of the pier as the last vat of cooking oil turned to plasma, blasting the walls of the shack to splinters. Eva and Sergey were jolted backwards as something slammed against the far side of the planter.
Eva wondered if the motor from the conveyor belt or a section of the roof had nearly crushed them, but she waited a full minute before unclenching her eyes and gingerly rising onto all fours. Prepared to duck if anything that didn’t have wings was airborne, she peered cautiously around the smoldering palm trees.
Tony the security guard was smoking, but for once there wasn’t a cigarette in his mouth.
Tendrils of flame danced along his torso, wisps of smoke poured out of his ears, nostrils, and mouth. He was deep-fried and crispy.
Tony’s eyebrows and lashes had burned off, the lids open and melted in place. His eyes were wide in disbelief that cigarettes had actually killed him. Irony lay across his steaming corpse like a burial shroud.
Eva crouched behind the planter and tugged on her brother’s shoulder. Sergey kept yelling at the top of his lungs until she smacked him on the side of his head. The sirens were getting closer.
“Get up.” Eva smacked him again, more gently. “Now.”
Sergey rose to his knees and looked at the crater where the donut shack used to be. “What the hell happened?”
“I got Tony to quit smoking.”
“Where is that perebezhchik?” Sergey stood shakily. “Did he take off?”
“Oh, yes,” said Eva. “Like a rocket.”
51
Cape’s first thought was that a rocket had been launched from the pier.
He saw the flash of light before hearing a thunderous wave that shook the planks beneath his feet. A glimpse of something hurtling skyward, a frenzy of bottle-rockets launched in the middle of the night. Maybe an explosion at a fireworks store, he couldn’t guess.
When donuts started to fall from the sky, Cape wondered if a childhood wish had finally come true.
Undeterred, Cape climbed the steps to the second level of the pier. The silver cross was dangling from his right hand, the chain wrapped around his palm like a rosary. It was late, but Cape was suddenly anxious to finish the conversation he’d been avoiding all day.
He had hoped the police would have found one of the missing drivers, but neither Beau nor Vincent had called him back. Linda and Sloth probably made progress following the money trail, but there was no point checking until tomorrow.
He took the stairs on the south side of the aquarium to avoid the gate at the main entrance. Tourists didn’t realize the sides of the pier were always open to foot traffic so business owners could come and go as they pleased. All the stores were closed and the promenade lights extinguished as Cape walked along the open balcony leading to Vera’s place.
Though already a safe distance from the donut shack when the fireball lit up the pier, it shone brightly enough to illuminate everything in his immediate vicinity. Vera was standing in front of her store, watching him approach.
Cape wondered if she’d rushed outside at the sound of the blast or was already getting some night air when the shack went boom. Vera looked like she’d been waiting there all night, as if this sort of fireworks display happened like clockwork. Either way, Cape wouldn’t get away with just leaving a note on her door.
Instinctively he wanted to run toward the fire. Lose himself in something physical and leave the wreckage of the human heart up here, where it was someone else’s problem. But the flashing lights at the end of the pier meant professionals were already on the scene, people trained to deal with conflagrations and calamities.
Their job was down there. His job was standing right in front of him.
Vera tracked his progress, her expression shifting with the light and shadows cast by the distant flames. When her gaze landed on the cross, Cape could see fire dancing in her eyes and felt like he was hand-delivering her own personal hell.
She let her fingers slip off the railing as Cape unwrapped the chain and gently lowered it into the palm of her left hand. She clenched her fingers until the knuckles were white. The reflected glow from the fire expanded as her eyes welled with tears, but before the first had fallen, Vera turned wordlessly and stepped across the balcony into her store.
She left the door ajar, but Cape waited, standing outside until the sirens stopped. The emergency vehicles kept their flashers on, a beacon for any stragglers from the firehouse. It was mesmerizing to watch the lights without their caterwauling soundtrack. Cape counted to one hundred before following his client into the store.
Red and white staccato flashes were the only illumination as Cape navigated his way past the counter to the back room. Vera was already sitting on the bed facing the window, her legs straight across the mattress, back against the pillows. Her eyes were fixed on the middle distance between the aquarium and the marina. Scaffolding covered the near side of the aquarium up to the roof, but the work site was as dark and empty as the rest of the pier.
The last time Cape was here, the room had felt almost cozy. Now it seemed small and sad. Her jacket was strewn across the desk chair. The cross lay on the desk, its chain across the back of her cell phone. The phone screen pulsed softly in the darkened room, barely visible under the edge of the phone case—the light from a fairy trapped in a box.
Cape sat down on the bed and tried not to breathe.
Vera sounded too tired to utter more than one syllable at a time.
“Where?”
Cape told her about his undersea tour of the docks, the position of the cross relative to where the truck fell into the marina. When he had finished, she spoke softly.
“You think Hank swam away from that crash?”
Cape couldn’t tell if she sounded hopeful or hopeless. “I simply told you where I found it.”
“I can’t believe you found it at all.”
Cape waited until she turned away from the window, then said, “They didn’t find a body in the truck, but that doesn’t mean he’s alive.”
“You think Hank is hiding…from me?”
“I didn’t say that either,” said Cape. “But if he isn’t, he’s probably dead…”
“Those are my choices?” Vera’s eyes flashed in the dark. “Accept that he’s dead and innocent—or believe that he’s alive and guilty? That isn’t good enough.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“But that’s all you’ve got.”
“For now.” Cape shifted on the bed. “Vera, do you know anything about money laundering?”
“What?” The question caught her off guard, diffusing her anger. “What’s that got to do with finding Hank?”
“If I can’t find him,” said Cape, “maybe I can find a motive.”
Vera shook her head slowly from side to side.
Cape pressed. “You sent me to speak with Harkness for a reason.”
“Maybe I thought you were left-handed.”
“I’m not.” Cape laid his right hand on hers. “And you’re not answering the question.”
Instead of pulling away, Vera rotated her wrist so her fingers wrapped around his. She held fast, as if afraid she might fall.
“Everyone on the pier knows there’s skimming,” she said. “Some of the restaurants don’t even try to hide it, encouraging customers to pay with cash, offering discounts if they do. But for those of us selling hard goods, it’s not so easy, is it?”
“Not to mention illegal.”
“And the little fish always get caught first,” replied Vera. “So, a lot of us mind our own business. We’re not invited to the party, but we don’t call the cops to complain about our neighbors, either.” She paused, glancing out the window again. “Nothing illegal about that.”
“I’m not talking about running a cash business and lying on your taxes,” said Cape. “Harkness can chase that dog all he wants, he can even run to the IRS and they’ll yawn in his face. Half the restaurants in town exaggerate their cost of goods and underestimate their income, and there’s no way of checking unless you go there and eat three meals a day for a year.”
Vera’s brow furrowed. “Hank was just a driver.”
“A lot of money flows through the pier,” said Cape. “And Hank’s one of the few people who saw just how much. That might have made him a liability.”
“Clean money and dirty money look the same, isn’t that what you’re telling me?” She let go of Cape’s hand and ran her fingers through her hair. “How would he know the difference?”
“Maybe he didn’t.” Cape took a deep breath, feeling the smallness of the room, frustrated that every question only raised another. “Maybe his partner did.” He stood abruptly and said, “Why don’t—”
The wall behind Cape exploded.
A searing pain across his cheek. Cape instinctively let his knees buckle to fall forward. He grabbed Vera by the sleeve on his way down, dragging her from the bed onto the floor. Cape twisted to land on his back and Vera fell on top of him, the wind knocked out of both of them. Plaster-dust filled the room like smoke.
