Dagger Key and Other Stories

“There is no guarantee of that,” Selkie says with a degree of irritation. “We must smuggle the cross into Germany. We must find a trustworthy buyer. Boah! Too much can go wrong!”

“The poorer you are, the more you got those same problems. We both taking a gamble, but if you win, you crazy rich, mon. That cross, even and you sell it cut up for the stones and the gold, it worth millions. Like that English fella on TV used to say, you be having champagne dreams.” Fredo makes a disgusted noise. “Me, maybe I get my kids off the island. Nothing much else going to change. But if I try to sell the cross for true value…and it my property, mon! It come down to me all the way from Annie.” He slaps the table angrily. “If I asks for millions, you think I be getting it? Hell, no! You can’t count to ten before I’m lying in a ditch somewhere with my throat slit and some bastard already rich rolling into his bank and everybody smiling upon him, saying, ‘Have a chair, sir,’ and ‘Ain’t you looking splendid this morning, sir,’ all because he stole a poor man’s property.”

Having listened to this outburst, Klose seems abashed—he clears his throat and looks down at his coffee cup; but Selkie maintains her expression of sleek, sulky discontent. It’s evident to Fredo now, if it hasn’t been before, that she’s the ruler of the marriage. It’s also evident that her perversity colors the couple’s actions. Klose is merely a drone and she’s the one Annie will have to watch.

“What for you, Fredo?” Vinroy, looking crisp in his navy shirt and white shorts.

“Fry me up about ten of them little sausages and wrap ’em with some rolls. For now, let me have some hotcakes.”

“Coffee?” Vinroy asks.

“Yeah, mon.”

Vinroy inquires whether the German couple would like a refill of their coffee, and Selkie says, no, they have to be going. Vinroy stacks their dishes and, once he’s gone, Klose says, “You said you would have instructions for us.”

A wave of fatigue washes over Fredo. He sits up straight, blinks against the sunlight chuting through the glass. “I be at your place around nine o’clock. At eight-thirty, you sit down at the kitchen table and stay there. Don’t make a move until I say so. Leave the door unlocked and the window shade open so I can peer in. Wear what you got on now. That way I can see you ain’t carrying no weapon. Keep the money close by. I don’t want you have to go into another room to fetch it.”

“Would you like us to put our hands in the air?” Selkie lays the sarcasm on thick, but Fredo gives her question its due.

“Maybe, and I see something not right,” he says. “Do what I say, everything go smooth. But let me tell you this much. You ain’t dealing with no bobo tonight, so have a care.”

After Selkie and Klose leave, Vinroy brings Fredo’s food, the sausages and rolls wrapped in a tin foil packet. “I seen you scaling down the rocks earlier,” he says. “What you doing way up there?”

“Wasting time,” says Fredo. “I used to crawl up there when I a boy and spy on the water.”

Vinroy looks perplexed. “What you expect to see?”

“Seen manta rays out past the reef.”

“I ain’t see no mantas for years.”

“None left to see, I reckon.”

Fredo spreads butter and blackberry jam on his hotcakes and cuts them into little bites. His thoughts turn to Selkie as he eats, but he pushes them aside and recalls

a big shadow coasting

through aquamarine water

over white sand,

rising explosively,

hidden by spray,

and then revealed for an instant,

the great rubbery body aloft,

strange monstrous beast

flapping black wings of muscle,

peering into unaccustomed light

with eyes opposed like a hammerhead’s,

crashing down, making a splash

like a depth charge,

becoming once again

a big shadow coasting

through aquamarine water

over white sand.

A young American couple sits at an adjoining table; they talk about mix ratios and the woman’s new rebreather. Her hair is the color of a fresh honeycomb, bleached to straw in places by the sun. She has an easy laugh, health insurance, a future. For a change, Fredo is too preoccupied to envy her beautiful blond life. He ladles more preserves onto his plate, dips a bite of pancake in it, savoring the sweetness.