Dagger Key and Other Stories

by Lucius Shepard

  “This one’s my first,” said Shellane. “I just retired. Did my twenty, and I always wanted to try a book. So…”

  “What’s it about,” Avery asked. “Your book.”

  “Crime,” said Shellane, and tried to put an edge on his smile. “Like they say—write what you know.”

  It took him until after dark to settle into the cabin, to order an Internet hook-up, to prepare and eat his dinner. Once he’d finished with dessert, he poured a fresh cup of coffee, switched on his laptop and sent an email that prevented a file from being sent to the U.S. Justice Department. The file contained a history of Shellane’s twenty years as a thief, details of robberies perpetrated and murders witnessed and various other details whose revelation might result in the indictment of several prominent members of Boston’s criminal society. It was not that effective an insurance policy. The men who wanted to kill him were too arrogant to believe that he could bring them down, and perhaps their judgment was accurate; but knowing about the file had slowed their reactions sufficiently to allow his escape. He was confident that he would continue to stay ahead of them. However, this confidence did not afford him the satisfaction that once it had. It had been many years since Shellane had derived much pleasure from life. Survival had become less a passion than a game he was adept at playing. Lately the game had lost its savor. Apart from the desire to thwart his pursuers, he was no longer certain why he persevered.

  He was about to shut down the computer when he heard a noise outside. He went into the bedroom, took the nine-millimeter from his suitcase, and holding it behind him, went out onto the porch and nudged open the screen door. A slim figure, silhouetted against the moonstruck surface of the water, was moving briskly away from the cabin. Shellane called out, and the figure stopped short.

  “I’m sorry,” a woman’s voice said. “I was out for a walk. The lights…I didn’t know the cabin was rented.”

  “It’s okay.” Shellane stuck the gun into his belt behind his back and pulled his sweater down over it. “I thought it was an animal or something.”

  “Aren’t many animals around anymore,” said the woman as she came into the light. “Just squirrels and raccoons. People say we’ve still got a few wolverines in the woods, but I’ve never seen one.”

  She was slender and tall, most of her height in her legs, with long red hair gathered in a ponytail, wearing jeans and a plaid wool jacket. Early thirties, he guessed. A pale country Irish face, with a pointy chin and wide cheekbones. Pretty as a morning prayer. Faint laugh lines showed at the corners of her olive green eyes. Yet she had a subdued air, and he suspected that she had not laughed in a while.

  “I’m Grace,” she said.

  “Michael,” said Shellane, remembering to use his temporary identity. “Guess you’re my neighbor, huh?”

  She gestured toward the lake. “Three cabins down.”

  Being accustomed to city paranoia, it surprised him that an attractive woman—any woman, for that matter, would tell a stranger where she lived. He had assumed that following the introduction she would retreat, but she stood there, smiling nervously.

  “How about some coffee?” he asked. “I was going to make another pot.”

  Once again she surprised him by accepting the invitation. As he fixed the coffee, she moved about the cabin, keeping away from the center of the room, touching things and stopping suddenly, like a cat exploring new territory. Now and then she would glance at him and flash a nervous smile, as if to assure him she meant no harm. She possessed a jittery vitality that drew his eye, alerted him to her every gesture. He set a cup of coffee on the table and she sat on the edge of her chair, ready to take flight.

  “I didn’t really want coffee,” she said. “It’s just living out here, I don’t get to meet many people.”

  “You’re not renting, then?”

  “No, I…no.”

  Her mouth thinned, as if she was keeping something back.

  “What are you doing up here?” she asked. “Vacation?”

  He told his retirement story. Her attention wandered, and he had the idea that she knew he was lying. He asked what she did.

  “I…Nothing, really. I take a lot of walks.” She came to her feet. “I should go.”

  Maybe, he thought, paranoia just took a while to develop in the Upper Peninsula. He followed her to the door, watched her start toward the lake. She turned, walking backwards, and said brightly, “I’m sure we’ll run into each other again.”

  “Hope so,” he said.

  He stood in the doorway until she was out of sight, sorting through his impressions of her, trying to distinguish the real from the imagined. “Trouble,” he said, addressing himself to the shadows along the shore, and went back inside.

  That night Shellane had an unusual dream. Unusual both as to its particulars, which bore no obvious relation to the materials of his life, and to the fact that he rarely remembered dreams. He was walking in a roiling gray fog so thick it seemed like flimsy tissue, scraps of the stuff clinging to his clothing. Visibility was severely limited and he was afraid, yet determined. As if on an important errand. Soon a rambling building with a gabled second story partially materialized from the fog. It was fashioned of black boards and had a look of false antiquity redolent of the Gas ’n Guzzle, suggesting that it, too, was a quaint facade housing some less savory enterprise than might be expected. The windows were shuttered; no light escaped from within, and yet there was light enough to see. Except for the weeds that sprang up here and there, the surrounding land was devoid of vegetation. Jutting from the side of the house was an architectural feature he couldn’t quite make out, but seemed curious in some way…At this point the dream had faded. He recalled fragments. Shapes in the fog. Someone running. And that was all.

  As though the dream were made of the same clingy stuff as the fog, its imagery stayed with him all the following day, as did his brief encounter with Grace. She had, he believed, been interested in him. Because he was interested in her, he questioned whether he might be flattering himself; but he was not given to assuming that every woman with whom he spoke was attracted to him. He trusted his instincts. She had to be fifteen years younger than he. It would be foolish to get involved with her—under the best of circumstances she would be a problem, and these were far from the best of circumstances.

  That evening, however, he went for a walk along the dirt road that followed the shore, half in hopes of running into her. Her cabin, set among the trees high on the bank, was more a house than cabin. A deck out back. Satellite dish on the roof. Light sprayed from a picture window, and Grace was standing at it, wearing jeans and a cable-knit white sweater. Curious about her, wanting to get closer, he climbed the bank to the right of the window. Her head was down, arms folded. She looked miserable. He had an urge to knock, to say he was passing by and had spotted her, but before he could debate the wisdom of obeying this urge, headlights slashed across the front of the house. Rattling and grumbling, a big blue Cadillac at least thirty-five years old pulled up beside the house and the reason—Shellane suspected—for Grace’s misery climbed out. Avery Broillard. He clumped to the door, knocked his boots clean, and went inside. Grace had apparently retreated into the rear of the house. Broillard stood in the front room, hands on hips. “Fuck!” he shouted, and made a flailing gesture. Then he stomped off along a corridor.

  As Shellane headed for home a bank of fog moved toward him across the lake, like the ghost of a crumbling city melting up from the past. He was furious with himself. That he had been on the verge of coming between husband and wife, boyfriend-girlfriend, whatever…it spoke to a breakdown in judgment. All it would take to bring the cops nosing around was some asshole like Broillard getting his wind up, and though Shellane could handle the cops, it would be wiser to avoid them. Agitated, unable to calm down, he drove into town, thinking he would eat at a diner; but when he saw the lights of Roscoe’s, a low concrete building with a neon sign that sketched the green image of a snub-nosed pistol above
the door, he turned into the parking lot. Inside, he grabbed a seat at the bar and ordered a cheeseburger plate. At the far end of the room was a stage furnished with amps and mike stands and a PA, backed by a sequined curtain. A bearded roadie was engaged in setting up the mikes. All the tables were occupied, and it appeared that more than half the crowd were women. The babble of laughter and talk outvoiced the jukebox, which was playing “Wheel in the Sky,” a song emblematic to Shellane’s mind of the most pernicious form of jingle rock. He nursed a draft, watching the place fill beyond its seating capacity. Apparently Broillard did have a following. People had packed in along the walls and were standing two-deep at the bar.

  He had intended to leave before the live music started, but when the lights dimmed and a cheer went up, people massing closer to the stage, jamming the dance floor like a festival audience, curiosity got the better of him. Five shadows moved out from the wings. A spot pinned the central mike stand, where Broillard was strapping on a Telecaster with glittery blue stars dappling its black finish. He flashed a boyish grin and said, “How ’bout somebody bringing me a beer. I feel a thirst coming on.” Then he turned his back on the crowd and the band kicked in.

  At best Shellane expected to hear uninspired songs about beer and dangerous roadhouses and wild, wild women played with a rough, energetic competence; because of his distaste for the band’s front man, he hoped for worse. But the Endless Blue Stars had a lyrical sound that was way too big for Roscoe’s, their style falling into a spectrum somewhere between Dire Straits and early Cream. Retro, yet carrying a gloss of millennial cynicism. The first song featured a long intro during which Broillard laid down sweetly melodic guitar lines over a 4/4 with a Brazilian feel that built gradually into a rock tempo. When he stepped to the mike, the crowd waved their arms and shouted.

  “Walked out tonight, a frozen blue,

  the moon was dark and shooting stars were dying…”

  The bassist and drummer added harmony on the next line:

  “…with a cold white fire…”

  Then Broillard’s throaty baritone soared over the background:

  “…things ain’t been the same

  since I fell in love with you,

  I’ve been so hypnotized…”

  The mood cast by the song—by all the song—was irresistibly romantic, an invitation to join in a soothing blue dream of love and mystery, and Broillard’s Byronic stage persona was so persuasive, Shellane wondered if he might have misjudged him. But when the band went on break and Broillard came swaggering over to the bar, dispensing largesse to well-wishers, his arm about a pretty albeit slightly overstuffed brunette, caressing the underside of her right breast, Shellane decided this was the thing that made music—all art, for that matter—fundamentally suspect: that assholes could become proficient at it.

  Broillard spotted him, dragged the girl over, and said, “Needed a break from all that peace and quiet, eh?”

  Shellane said, “Yeah, you were right,” and then, though he was tempted to dishonesty, complimented him on the set.

  “I didn’t figure you for a music lover,” said Broillard.

  “That song, the one that went into a seven-four break after the second verse…”

  “‘Three Fates.’” Broillard looked at him with renewed interest. “You play?”

  “Used to,” Shellane said. “I liked that song.”

  “Yeah, well,” said Broillard dismissively. “Cool.” He gave the brunette a squeeze. “Annie, this is…”

  “Michael,” Shellane said when Broillard couldn’t dredge up the name.

  “Right. Mister Michaels is a writer. Crime novels.”

  Annie blinked vacantly up at Shellane, too blitzed to say Hi.

  Somebody caught Broillard’s shoulder, claiming his attention. As he turned away, he smirked and said to Shellane, “Stick around, man. It gets better.”

  Over the next two days Shellane was kept busy in detailing a new passport, setting up bank accounts on-line. Twice he caught sight of Grace walking along the shingle and considered calling to her, but her air of distraction reinforced his belief that she was a woman with time on her hands. Such women had a need for drama in order to give weight to their lives—he did not intend to become the co-star in her therapy. But he continued to speculate about who she was. He remembered no wedding ring, yet she displayed a kind of cloistered unhappiness that reminded him of married women he had known. Perhaps she removed the ring to give herself the illusion of freedom.

  Around noon on the third day, he took a couple of beers, a sandwich, the new James Lee Burke novel, and went down to the shore and sat with his back against a boulder that emerged from the bank, a granite stump scoured smooth by glaciers and warm from the sun. He read only ten or fifteen minutes before laying the book aside. If he had done crime in Louisiana, he thought he might have stayed with it. The players there were more interesting than the Southie ratboys he’d crewed with in Boston…at least if he were to trust the novel. Burke might be exaggerating. Crews were likely the same all over, just different accents. He stared out across the sunstruck lake, watched a motor boat cutting a white wake, too far away for the engine noise to carry over the sighing wind and the slop of the water. He half-believed nothing bad could happen here. That was ridiculous, he knew. Yet he felt serene, secure. It seemed the landscape had adjusted to him, reordered itself to accommodate his two hundred and twenty-six pounds, and settled around him with the perfection of a tailored coat. No way he could hack it here for three years as he had in Detroit. But the fit felt better than it had in Detroit, and he could not understand why this was. He stuck out in Champion. There was no cover, no disguise he could successfully adopt.

  He finished one beer, ate half the sandwich, and went back to the book, but his attention wandered. Wind ruffled the long reach of the water, raising wavelets that each caught a spoonful of dazzle, making it appear that a myriad diamond lives were surfacing from the depths. The trees stirred in dark green unison. The shingle was decorated with arrangements of twigs, matted feathers and bones, polished stones. Mysteries and signs. Shellane closed his eyes.

  “Hello,” said Grace, and his heart broke rhythm. He let out a squawk and sat up, knocking over his freshly opened beer.

  “I’m sorry!” Her chin was quivering, hands upheld in a posture of alarm.

  “I didn’t hear you come up,” he said.

  She relaxed a little, but still seemed wary, and he had the idea that she was used to being frightened.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “No big deal.”

  She had on jeans, the plaid jacket, and a T-shirt underneath—black with sequined blue stars. Her hair, loose about her shoulders, shined a coppery red under the sun. All her being was luminous, he thought. It was as if a klieg light were trapped in her body.

  “Did you eat yet? I’ve got half a sandwich going to waste.” He held out the baggie containing the sandwich.

  She stared at it hungrily, but shook her head. The wind lifted the ends of her hair, fluttered the collar of her jacket.

  The depth of her timidity astonished him. Broillard, he figured, had a lot to answer for.

  “What are you reading?” she asked.

  He showed her the book.

  “I don’t know him,” she said.

  “It’s detective fiction, but the writing’s great.”

  She cast an anxious glance behind her, then sank to her knees beside him. “I mostly read short stories. That’s what I wanted to write…short stories.”

  “‘Wanted to write’?”

  “I just…he…I couldn’t…I…”

  She stalled out, and Shellane resisted the impulse to touch her hand.

  “I wasn’t very good,” she said.

  “Who told you that?” he asked.

  As he spoke he recognized that he was casting aside his resolve and making a choice that could imperil him. Something about Grace, and it was not just her apparent hopelessness, pulled at him, made him want to take the ris
k. Her face serially mapped her emotions: surprise and alarm and fretfulness. Green eyes crystalled with reflected light.

  “Your husband,” Shellane said. “Right?”

  “It’s not…” She broke off, and glanced off along the shore road. The blue Cadillac was slewing toward them from the direction of Broillard’s cabin. Grace scooted behind the boulder. As the car turned onto the access road, Shellane saw that the brunette from the tavern occupied the passenger seat. The Cadillac skidded in the gravel, then sped off among the evergreens.

  “Did he see me?” Grace emerged from behind the boulder. “I don’t think he did.”

  He ignored the question. “He brings ’em home? His fucking bimbos? You’re there, and he just brings ’em home?”

  Her nod was almost imperceptible, hardly more than a tucking in of the chin.

  “Why do you put up with it? What does he do? Does he hit you?”

  “He never…No. Not for a long time.”

  “Not for a long time? Terrific!”

  She opened her mouth, but only shook her head again. Finally she said, “It’s not entirely his fault.”

  “Sure, I can see that.”

  “You don’t understand! He’s very talented, and he’s been so frustrated. He…”

  “So he takes his frustrations out on you. He makes you feel bad about yourself. He tells you you’re worthless. He blames you for his failings.”

  Shellane reached for her hand. She looked startled when he touched her wrist, but let him pull her down onto her knees. “If that’s how it is,” he said, “you should leave him.”

  The boat that had been racing around at the far end of the lake swung close in along the shore, the sound of its engine carving a gash in the stillness. The driver and the woman with him waved. Neither Shellane nor Grace responded.