The Nautical Chart (44 page)

Down near the lights bordering the beach, beneath the overhang of a closed little fish shop, he identified the small, unmistakable, and at this point almost perversely lovable figure of Horacio Kiskoros, the ex-Argentine petty officer and Nino Palermo's hired assassin. The melancholy dwarf.

THIS
time no one was going to steal the catch from his hook. So he waited thirty seconds and, using the excuse of a visit to the gent's, he ran down the steps two at a time, went out the rear door, past the garbage cans, and around in a direction that led away from the restaurant and the beach. He advanced cautiously beneath the palm and eucalyptus trees, planning his approach: one tack to starboard and one tack to port. The drizzle began to soak his hair and shirt, renewing the vigor that charged through his body, tense now with the acid pleasure of expectation. He crossed the road toward an open space, crept through the fennel growing in the ditch, and with the darkness behind him, crossed back, taking cover behind a trash barrel. I hear him breathing over there, he said to himself. He was to windward of his prey, who, unaware of what was about to hit him, was smoking and protecting himself from the wet beneath the cane and board overhang. A car was parked near the sidewalk, a small white Toyota with Alicante plates and a rental-car sticker on the rear windshield. Coy skirted the car and saw that Kiskoros was watching the lighted terrace and the main door of the restaurant. He was wearing a light jacket and bow tie, and his brilliantined black hair gleamed. The knife, thought Coy, recalling the Guardiamarinas arch, I have to watch out for his knife. He shook his hands and closed them into fists, evoking the ghosts of the Tucuman Torpedoman, Gallego Neira, and the rest of Crew Sanders. His sneakers helped him take eight silent, fiercely stealthy steps before Kiskoros heard something on the gravel and turned to see who was coming. Coy saw the sympathy fade from the sympathetic frog eyes, saw them fly open and the cigarette drop from a mouth turned into a dark hole, the last mouthful of smoke spiraling through his precise mustache. He leaped, spanning the remaining distance, and his first punch landed right in Kiskoros's face, snapping his head back as if his throat had been cut. Then he slammed him against the wall of the building just below a sign reading La Costa Azul. Best octopus in town.

The knife, he repeated obsessively as he landed punch after punch, systematically, efficiently. Kiskoros, unable to stay on his feet before that onslaught, slid down the wall as he desperately tried to reach his pocket. But now Coy knew a few things about his opponent; he stepped back a little, built up steam, and the kick that landed on the Argentine's arm caused him, for the first time, to let out a long howl of pain, the howl of a dog whose tail has been run over. Then Coy grabbed him by the lapels and jerked him across the sidewalk in the direction of the sandy beach. He pulled, stopped to punch him, and pulled again. His victim, in agony, was emitting a series of muffled groans, struggling to get his hand to his pocket, but with each attempt Coy pounded him again. You're all mine now, he thought, all systems racing with that strange lucidity that occurs in the midst of rage and violence. I have you right where I want you; there's no referee, no witness, no police, and no one to tell me what I should or shouldn't do. So I'm going to lay it on till you're a sack of shit and your broken ribs nail your insides together, and you swallow your busted teeth one at a time and don't have the breath to whisde a tango.

Like a bull looking for a barrier to fall against, Kiskoros was barely struggling. His bow tie was twisted below his ear. The knife, which he'd finally got out of his pocket, had slipped from his unresponsive fingers and lay on the sand where Coy had kicked it. The light from the nearest street lamp gave density to the fine mist as Coy used his foot to roll the sand-coated Argentine over and over to the edge of the water. The last blows came when Kiskoros was already in the drink, splashing and moaning painfully as he attempted to keep his mouth out of the water. Coy waded in ankle-deep to deliver a last kick that rolled his target a few feet farther, and he watched as it disappeared completely beneath the yellow reflections and rnirrored image of the shed on the black water.

He retraced his steps and sat down hard on the sand. The tension in his muscles began to relax as he recovered his breath. His ankles hurt from the kicks he'd delivered, and the whole back of his right hand, and up his forearm to his elbow, seemed tied in knots. Never in my whole life, he told himself, have I had such a good time beating someone up. Never. He rubbed his fingers to ease the stiffness, lifting his face a little so the rain could wet his forehead and closed eyes. Motionless, gasping through his open mouth, he waited for the galloping to still in his chest. He heard a noise and opened his eyes. Streaming water that made him glisten among the reflections, Kiskoros was crawling along the waterline. Coy kept his seat in the sand, watching his efforts. He could hear the jagged breathing and the dark grunts of a mauled beast, the clumsy splashing of hands and of legs incapable of supporting a body.

It was good to fight, Coy thought. Like cleaning out the bilges. It was stupendous for the circulation and gastric juices to pour all your anguish and bad humor and soul-rending despair into your fists. It was downright therapeutic for action to take your mind off your problems, and for atavistic impulses from days when a person had to choose between death and survival to claim their place in the game of life. Maybe that's why the world was the way it was today, he reflected. Men had stopped fighting because it was frowned on, and that was making everyone crazy.

He kept rubbing his sore hand. His rage was cooling. He hadn't felt so good in a long time, so at peace with himself. He saw the Argentine, on all fours, lift his body out of the water but then fall back, covered from the waist down. The yellowish light revealed hair and a mustache clotted with sand and reddened by streams of blood.

"Bastard," said Kiskoros from the water, breathless and moaning. "Hey, shove it up your ass."

Then both were silent, Coy sitting and watching, the Argentine face down, breathing with difficulty, moaning quietly from time to time when he tried to move. Finally he pulled himself forward on his elbows, leaving a furrow in the sand, until he was clear of the water. He looked like a turtle about to deposit her eggs, and Coy watched dispassionately. His anger had nearly dissipated. He wasn't quite sure what to do next.

"I'm only doing my job," Kiskoros muttered after a bit.

"Your job's pretty dangerous."

"I was just shadowing you."

"Well, go shadow the bitch who birthed you out there on the pampas."

Coy stood up unhurriedly, brushing sand from his jeans. Then he walked toward the Argentine, who was getting to his feet with great difficulty, and stared at him a minute—until he decided to punch him again, this time a less impulsive and more businesslike punch, knocking him flat. Small, wet, stiff, and coated with sand, Kiskoros looked like a pitiful croquette. Coy bent over him, hearing his breathing—thousands of little whistles in his lungs—and methodically checked his pockets. A cell phone, a pack of cigarettes, and the keys to the rental car. Coy threw the keys and the phone far out into the water. The dwarf's billfold was huge, stuffed with money and papers. Coy walked over to the nearest light to take a lpok. A Spanish identification card with a photo and the name Horatio Kiskoros Parodi, other people's business cards, Spanish and English money, Visa and American Express credit cards. Also a color photocopy of a page from a magazine, which he unfolded carefully because it had been handled many times and was damp with saltwater. Under the heading "Our divers humiliate England" was a photograph of several British Marines with their hands up, guarded by three Argentine soldiers, feces blackened with grease, pointing automatic rifles at them. One of those three was short, with a frog's bulging eyes and an unmistakable mustache.

"Hey, I'd forgotten. The hero of the Malvinas."

He put the identification and credit cards back in the wallet, added the clipping, kept the money, and dropped the billfold on Kiskoros's chest.

"So, talk to me. Come on."

"I don't have anything to tell."

"What does Palermo want? Is he here?"

"I don't ha..."

He stopped when Coy hit him again in the face. It was a dispassionate blow, almost reluctant, and Coy stood watching as the Argentine, who was holding his hands over his face, wriggled like an earthworm. Then Coy sat down on the sand again, never taking his eyes off Kiskoros. He had never treated anyone this way, and he was amazed that he didn't fed sorry for him. He knew, however, who that man on the ground was. He couldn't forget Zas, lying dead on the rug, poisoned, and he knew the fate women like Tanger had suffered at the hands of CPO Horado Kiskoros and company. So as far as he was concerned, that sonofabitch could roll up his Malvinas clipping and carefully stick it up his asshole.

"Tell your boss that I don't give a fart about the emeralds. But if anyone touches her, I'll kill him."

He said that with unusual simplicity, almost modestly, as if he didn't want it to sound like a threat. It was merely information, absent any emphasis or overtones. A bulletin for sailors. At any rate, even the least attentive listener would have understood that, in Coy's case, such information was reliable. Kiskoros grunted darkly and turned onto his side. He groped for the wallet and put it in a pocket with clumsy hands.

"You are a fuck-up," he muttered. "You're greatly mistaken about
Senor Palermo, and me_ And you are mistaken about her, too."

He paused to spit blood. He was looking at Coy through wet, dirty hair strung over his face. The frog eyes were not sympathetic now; they gleamed with hatred and hunger for revenge.

"When my turn comes..."

He smiled a horrible smile with his swollen mouth, but a fit of coughing left the threatening and grotesque words in the air.

"Fuck-up," he repeated with rancor, and again spit blood.

Coy kept staring at him as he got to his feet slowly, almost grumbling. I can't do anything more to him, he told himself. I can't beat him to death, because there are things I'm afraid to lose, and freedom and my life still matter to me. This isn't a novel or a movie, and in the real world there are police and judges. There's no boat waiting, at the end to carry me off to the Caribbean to take refuge in Tortuga among the Hermanos de la Costa, and from there defy the English and take twenty prizes. Today those privateers have been recycled and are building condos, and the governor of Jamaica gets apprehend and arrest warrants by fax.

That was his state, frustrated and undecided, considering whether to punch Kiskoros in the face again, when he saw Tanger standing by the side of the road under a yellow street lamp. She was quietly watching them.

AT
the far end of the bay, the beam of the lighthouse was circling horizontally into the warm drizzle. The luminous intervals resembled narrow cones of fog as they swung around again and again, in each circuit picking out the slender trunks and motionless fronds of palm trees weighed down by water and reflections. Coy glanced at Kiskoros before setting off along the beach after Tanger. The Argentine had managed to reach the car, but he didn't have the key, so he was sitting on the ground, propped against a wheel, water-soaked and sandy, watching them go. He hadn't opened his mouth since Tanger appeared, nor had she, even when Coy, who was still a little revved up, asked if she didn't want to take the opportunity to send greetings to Nino Palermo. Or maybe, he added, she might draw pleasure from interrogating the g.d.
sudaca.
That's what he said—interrogate the goddamn South American —knowing that no matter how many kicks he gave him, no one was going to get a word out of Kiskoros. She started off down the beach. So Coy, after a brief hesitation, took one last look at the battered assassin and followed her.

He was furious not because of the Argentine, who had been a welcome target for pouring out the bile scalding his stomach and throat, but because of the way she seemed to turn her back, whenever it pleased her, to reality. Hello. I don't like this. So long. Any time something didn't fit into her plans—unforeseen appearances, difficulties, threats, the intrusion of reality into the daydream of her adventure—it was denied, put off, or set aside as if it never existed. As if the mere consideration of it was an assault on the harmony of a whole whose true dimensions only she knew. This woman, he concluded as he walked along the beach nursing his bad humor, defends herself against the world by refusing to see it. Although he was hardly the one to criticize her for that.

And yet, he thougjht as he caught up to her and grabbed her arm, whipping her around in the murky light, never in his whole damn life had he known eyes that saw so deep and so far when they chose. His grip on her arm was close to brutal, forcing her to stand there as he examined her wet hair, the reflections in her eyes, the drops of rain multiplying her freckles.

"This whole thing,'* he said, "is crazy. We'll never be able..."

All at once, to his surprise, he realized that she was frightened. Her half-open lips were trembling and a shudder shook her shoulders as the beam of the lighthouse slipped over them. He saw all that in the light, and a couple of seconds later the next flash showed that the warm drizzle had intensified to heavy rain, and she stood there trembling as the sudden downpour fell on her hair and face, pasting her wet blouse to her body and pelting Coy's shoulders and arms as, without even thinking, he opened them to take her in. Warm flesh, shivering in the night and the rain, came to the haven of his body, consciously and deliberately. Came directly to him and pressed against him, and for an instant Coy held his arms open, not yet enfolding her in them, more surprised than hesitant. Then he closed them, holding her softly against him, feeling her muscles . and blood and flesh throb beneath the wet blouse, her long, firm thighs, the slim body shaking against his. And the parted lips, so close, lips whose quivering he calmed with his own in a long, long kiss, until they weren't shivering anymore and became warm and soft and opened wider, and then it was she who tightened her arms around Coy's strong back. He put his hand at the nape of her neck, a strong, square hand supporting her head, his hand beneath hair streaming water in the heavy rain. Now their mouths sought each other avidly, with unexpected ardor, as if starved for saliva and oxygen and life; teeth bumped together and impatient tongues touched and thrust. Until finally Tanger drew back to catch her breath, her wide-open eyes staring into his, untypically confused. Then it was she who threw herself on him with a long moan like that of an animal in pain. And he stood there waiting for her, squeezing her so tight he was afraid he would break her bones, and then staggered blindly with her in his arms until they realized that they had walked into the sea, that the rain was beating down, deafening, solid, erasing the outlines of the landscape, the drops popping as if the bay around them were boiling. Their bodies beneath wet, Hinging clothes sought each other violently, collided in strong embraces, desperate, hungry kisses. They licked water from each other's faces, their mouths tingling from the taste of rain and wet skin on warm flesh. And she kept breathing into Coy's mouth the interminable moan of a wounded animal.