Dagger Key and Other Stories

by Lucius Shepard

  Ruddle’s security was nowhere to be seen, but Ruddle, Kim, and the rest were bunched together against the picture window, their egress blocked by tracks of waist-high flame that crisscrossed the blue carpet, dividing the room into dozens of neat diamond-shaped sections. It was designer arson, the fire laid out in such a precise pattern, it could have been the work of a performance artist with a gift for pyrotechnics. Beside a burning sofa from which smoke billowed, Pellerin appeared to be orchestrating the flames, conducting their swift, uncanny progress with clever movements of his fingers, sending trains of fire scooting across the floor, adding to his design. I recalled the scorch mark on his bedroom wall. Along with everyone else in this lunatic circumstance, Pellerin had been holding something back. I thought if you could see the entirety of the pattern he was creating, it would be identical to one of the veves he had sketched on the napkin that day by the pool. I maneuvered as close to him as I dared and shouted his name. He ignored me, continuing to paint his masterpiece. The fire crackled, snacking on the rug, gnawing on the furniture, yet the noise wasn’t sufficiently loud to drown out the cries of Ruddle and his guests. Some were egging on Buster and another guy, who were preparing to pick up a sofa and ram it against the window. I shouted again—again Pellerin ignored me. Bursts of small arms fire, like popcorn popping, sounded from the front of the house.

  Billy’s people, I told myself.

  “Did you hear that?” Jo clutched my arm.

  I bellowed at Pellerin. He looked at me from, I’d estimate, twenty-five feet away, and it was not a human look. His features were strained, his lips drawn back, stretched in a delirious expression, part leer and part delighted grin. That’s how it seemed, that he had been made happy beyond human measure, transported by the perception of some unnatural pleasure, as if the fire were for him a form of release. I was frightened of him, yet I felt a connection, some emotional tether, and I was afraid for him as well. I urged him to come with us, to make a try for the boat. He stared as if he didn’t recognize me, and then his smile lost its inhuman wideness.

  “Come on, man!” I said. “Let’s go!”

  He shook his head. “No way.”

  “What the hell are you doing? You’re going to die here!”

  His smile dimmed and I thought his resolve was weakening, that he would break through the fences of flame separating us and join us in flight; but all he did was stand there. Behind me, I heard an explosive crash as the window gave way; the gunfire grew louder.

  “Listen!” I said. “That’s Billy’s men out there! You want them to catch you?”

  “That ain’t Billy! Don’t you believe it!” He pointed at Jo. “Ask her!”

  Despite the high ceiling, smoke was beginning to fill the room, drifting down around us, and Jo was bent over, coughing.

  “This shit isn’t working for me.” Pellerin seemed to be talking mostly to himself. “It’s just not acceptable.”

  I understood what he meant, but I entreated him once more to come with us. He shook his head again, an emphatic no. Turning his attention to the fire, he performed a series of complex gestures. The latticework of flames surrounding us appeared to bend away from his fingers and a path opened, leading toward the kitchen. The heat was growing intolerable—I had no choice but to abandon him. My arm around Jo’s waist, I started along the path, but she panicked, fighting against me, scratching my face and slapping the side of my head. I hit her on the point of the jaw, picked her up in a fireman’s carry as she sagged, and broke into a stumbling run.

  The sky was graying as I emerged from the house and staggered across the lawn; the Mystery Girl lurched in my vision with each step, appearing to recede at first, as though I were on a treadmill that kept carrying me backwards. The small arms fire had intensified—at least a dozen weapons were involved. I had no idea what was happening, and not much of an idea where I was going. If the boat had gas, I thought I would head north and search for the entrance to the intercoastal waterway, try and make it to Tampa where I had friends. But if Billy had survived, Tampa would not be safe and I didn’t know where to go. Not New Orleans, that was for sure. I could have kicked myself for not shooting the scummy little weasel when I had the chance.

  The planks resounded to my footsteps as I pounded along the dock, and the smells of creosote and brine hit me like smelling salts. When I reached the Mystery Girl, I laid Jo in the stern. She moaned, but didn’t wake. I climbed the ladder to the pilot deck, keyed the ignition, and was exultant when the engine turned over. The needle on the fuel gauge swung up to register an almost-full tank. I pulled away from the dock and opened up the throttle. There was a light chop on the water close to shore, but farther out, beyond the sandbar, the surface was smooth and glassy, with gentle swells. Crumbling banks of fog blanketed the sea ahead. Once inside them we’d be safe for a while. I wondered what had gotten into Pellerin, whether it was Ogoun Badagris or simply a madness attaching to having been brought back to life by bacteria that infested your brain and let you use more of it. Maybe there wasn’t any difference between the two conditions. Jo’s first slow-burner had gone out in much the same way, in the midst of a huge veve, so you were led to conclude that some pathology was involved…and yet it might be the pathology of a god trapped in a human body. I remembered how he’d smiled, leering at his fiery work, and how that smile had planed seamlessly down into a human expression, as if the man he was had merely been the god diminished by the limitations of the flesh.

  I cleared my mind of ontological speculation and focused on practical matters, but when I tried to think what we were going to do once we reached Tampa, it was like trying to walk on black ice and I wound up staring at the flat gray sea, listening to the pitch of the engine. I zoned out and began to think about Pellerin again. Formless thoughts, the kind you have when you’re puzzled by something to the point that you can’t even come up with a question to ask and are reduced to searching the database, hoping that some fact will provoke one.

  I had all but forgotten about Jo and when she called out to me, I turned toward the sound of her voice, full of concern. She came scrambling up the ladder and, once she had solid footing, she told me to cut the engines, having to shout to make herself heard. The wind lashed her hair about, and she held it in place with one hand.

  “Are you crazy?” I gestured at the fog bank. “Once we’re into the fog, we’ll be okay.”

  “We’ll never get away! If I thought we could, I’d go with you. You know that, don’t you?”

  “You are going with me,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

  She didn’t answer, and I glanced over at her. She had moved away from me and was standing with her legs apart, aiming a small automatic with a silver finish. A .28 caliber Berretta. With that black cocktail dress on, she might have stepped out of a Bond movie. She had to be wearing a thigh holster. The unreality of it all tickled me and I couldn’t repress a laugh.

  “Where’d you get that thing?” I asked her. “Out of a cereal box?”

  She fired, and a bullet dug a furrow in the control console an inch from my hand.

  I recoiled from the console. “Christ!”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  She looked sorry. Her make-up was mussed. The heat of the fire had caused her to sweat, and sweat had dragged a mascara shadow from the corner of her eye, simulating a tear. She told me again to cut the engines, and this time I complied. The boat lifted on a light swell. I heard the faint cries of seagulls—they sounded like the baying of tiny, trebly hounds. I heard another noise, then. Two dark blue helicopters were approaching from the south.

  “Who the hell is that?” I shouted.

  “Calm down. Please! This is…” The wind drifted hair across her face; she brushed it aside and said weakly, “It’s the only way. They’re relentless, they keep coming after you.”

  “You did this? You told them where we were?”

  “They always knew! They never went away! Don’t you get it?”

  “You
knew the whole time? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t know. Not for sure, not at first. And what good would it have done? You didn’t listen to Doctor Crain.”

  “I would have listened to you,” I said.

  One of the helicopters positioned itself off the port side of the Mystery Girl; the side door had been slid back and someone in harness sat in the opening. I couldn’t see what he was doing. The other helicopter hovered above the boat. A gilt script D was painted on the nacelle.

  “I love you, Jack,” Jo said.

  “Yeah, uh-huh.”

  “I do! Back at the hotel…they contacted me. They were going to step in, but I convinced them to keep the experiment going.”

  “The experiment. This was an experiment?”

  “I told them we might learn more about Josey if he went through with the game. Maybe that was wrong of me, but I wanted some time with you.”

  I was unable to line up all the trash she’d told me about her mother, how it had warped her, with her capacity for betrayal. Yet what she had said smacked of a childish willfulness and a clinical dispatch that, I realized, functioned as a tag-team in her personality. Until that moment, I had not understood how dangerous these qualities made her.

  “I can lose them in the fog,” I said.

  “You can’t. You don’t know them.”

  “I’m damn well going to try. You think they’ll let me go after what I’ve seen? They just wiped out twenty people!”

  “I’m sure they didn’t kill them all.”

  “Oh…well. Fuck! That’s all right, then.”

  I punched in the ignition; the engine sputtered and caught, rumbling smoothly.

  “Don’t, Jack! Please!”

  “I’m fucking dead if they catch me. Do you understand? I am dead!”

  The barrel of the automatic wavered.

  “You’re not going to shoot me,” I said.

  I pushed the throttle forward. Jo said again, “Don’t,” and I felt a blow to my back, a wash of pain. I was out of it for a while, and when I was able to gather my senses, I found myself lying on the deck, with my head jammed up against the base of the control console. I knew I’d been shot, but it felt like the bullet had come from something larger than a .28. The guy in the harness, maybe. I was hurting some, but a numb feeling was setting in. It was a chore to concentrate. My thoughts kept slipping away. Jo knelt beside me. I locked on to her face. Looking at her steadied me. “Did you…” I said. “Did you shoot…?”

  “Don’t talk,” she said.

  Silhouetted against the gray sky, a man was being lowered from the helicopter overhead, along with a metal case that dangled from a hook beside him. It seemed as big as a coffin. The sight confused me visually, and in other ways as well. I closed my eyes against it.

  Jo laid a hand on my cheek. The touch cooled the embers of my anger, my disappointment with her, and I was overwhelmed with sentiment. Bits of memory surfaced, whirled, dissolved. She lay down on the deck beside me. She became my sky. Her face hanging above me blotted out the chopper and the man descending.

  “I’ll take care of you, I promise,” she said.

  Her brown eyes were all that was holding me. A gurgling came from inside my chest. She started raving, then. Getting angry, swearing vengeance, weeping. It was like she thought I’d passed out, like I wasn’t there. Half of it, I didn’t understand. She said they would regret what they’d made her do, she’d make certain I remembered everything, and I would help her make them pay. I didn’t recognize her, she was so possessed by pain and fury. She laid her head on my chest. I wanted to tell her the weight was oppressive, but I couldn’t form the words. The lengths of her hair were drowning me. Her voice, the helicopter rotors, and the fading light merged into a gray tumult, an incoherence.

  “Jack…”

  …Jack…

  A jolt, as of electricity, to the back of my neck.

  Jack…Jack Lamb…

  My eyelids fluttered open.

  A gray ocean surrounded me, picked out by vague shapes.

  Jack Lamb…Jack…

  Another jolt, more intense than the first. I tried to move, but I was very weak and I succeeded only in turning my head. Someone passed across my field of vision, accompanied by a perfumey scent. Wanting to catch their notice, I made a scratchy noise in my throat. The effort caused me to pass out.

  Jack…

  “Jack? Are you awake?” A woman’s voice.

  “Yeah,” I said, my tongue thick, throat raw.

  Something was inserted between my lips and a cool liquid soothed the rawness. My chest hurt. My whole body hurt.

  “How’s that? Better?” The voice had a familiar ring.

  “I can’t see,” I said. “Everything’s a blur.”

  “The doctor says you’ll be seeing fine in a few days.”

  I asked for more water and, after I had drunk, I said, “I know you…don’t I?”

  “Of course. Jocundra…Jo.” A pause. “Your partner. We live together. Don’t you remember?”

  “I think. Yeah.”

  “You’ve been through a terrible ordeal. Your memory will be hazy for a while.”

  “What happened to me?”

  “You were shot. The important thing is, you’re going to be fine.”

  “Who shot me? Why…what happened?”

  “I’ll tell you soon. I promise. You don’t need the stress now.”

  “I want to know who shot me!”

  “You have to trust me,” she said, placing a hand on my chest. “There’s psychological damage as well as physical. We have to go cautiously. I’ll tell you when you’re strong enough. Won’t you trust me ’til then?”

  I asked her to come closer.

  Something swam toward me through the gray. I made out a crimson mouth and enormous brown eyes. Gradually, the separate features resolved into a face that, though blurred, was indisputably open and lovely.

  “You’re beautiful,” I said.

  “Thank you.” A pause. “It’s been a while since you told me that.”

  Her face withdrew. I couldn’t find her in the murk. Anxious, I called out. “I’m here,” she said. “I’m just getting something.”

  “What?”

  “Cream to rub on your chest and shoulders. It’ll make you feel better.”

  She sat on the bed—I felt the mattress indent—and she began massaging me. Each caress gave me a shock, albeit gentler than the ones I had felt initially. Soft hands spread the cream across my chest and I began to relax, to feel repentant that I had neglected her. I offered apology for doing so, saying that I must have been preoccupied.

  Her lips brushed my forehead. “It’s okay. Actually, I’m hopeful…”

  “Hopeful? About what?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “No, tell me.”

  “I’m hoping some good will come of all this,” she said. “We’ve been having our problems lately. And I hope this time we spend together, while you recuperate, it’ll make you remember how much I love you.”

  I groped for her hand, found it. We stayed like that a while, our fingers mixing together. A white shape melted up from the grayness. I strained to identify it and realized it was her breast sheathed in white cloth.

  “I’m up here,” she said, laughter in her voice, and leaned closer so I could see her face again. “Do you feel up to answering a few questions? The doctor said I should test your memory. So we can learn if there’s been any significant loss.”

  “Yeah, okay. I’m feeling more together now.”

  I heard papers rustling and asked what she was doing.

  “They gave me some questions to ask. I can’t find them.” More rustling. “Here they are. The first one’s a gimmee. Do you recall your name?”

  “Jack,” I said confidently. “Jack Lamb.”

  “And what do you do? Your profession?”

  I opened my mouth, ready to spit out the answer. When nothing came to me, I panicked. I probed around
in the gray nothing that seemed to have settled over my brain, beginning to get desperate. She touched the inside of my wrist, a touch that left a trail of sparkling sensation on my skin, and told me not to force it. And then I saw the answer, saw it as clearly as I might see a shining coin stuck in silt at the bottom of a well, the first of a horde of memories waiting to be unearthed, a treasure of anecdote and event.

  Firmly, and with a degree of pride as befitted my station, I said, “I’m a financier.”

  DINNER AT BALDASSARO’S

  Though she herself was not beautiful, Giacinta had a beautiful sneeze. Scarcely more than a musical sniff, it seemed to restate the cadence of her name and was followed, in short order, by a giggle as she wiped a residue of white powder from the rims of her nostrils. She was thick-waisted, heavy in the thighs, with an undershot chin and breasts no bigger than onions. But her eyes were shots of dark rum, her pale olive skin held the polish of youth, and her thin face had a desperately merry quality. For all her flaws, I considered her quite a prize.

  “This…” She scowled dramatically and pointed to the little heap of cocaine on the mirror in her lap. “No good! But I like! I like too much!” She made to hand me the mirror and a straw—the same she had used—and adopted a mischievous look designed to tempt me. I declined temptation and, in faltering Italian, explained that drugs were not beneficial to my health.

  “Salute,” she said, correcting me—I had used the Spanish word for health, salud. Her eyes flicked across my body, as if inspecting me for signs of frailty. “Va bene.”

  She dipped her head again to the mirror, face obscured by the fall of her chestnut hair.

  We were sitting in the offices of the Villa Ruggieri, where Giacinta worked as a receptionist and I had taken a suite. A showplace in the eighteenth century, its high-ceilinged rooms and muraled walls reverberating with the strains of archlute and cello, by the early twenty-first it had matured into a seedy relic of the Late Baroque, a hotel whose best two weeks came during the annual chile pepper festival (just ended), when all the shops of Diamante, the Calabrian seaside village it overlooked, featured fanciful decorations in their windows contrived of chile peppers, and tourists promenaded along the Via Poseidone wearing chile pepper T-shirts and chile pepper hats. Now in October, both the hotel and the village were in the process of shutting their doors, and, that evening, as Giacinta and I walked down the cliff trail and along a narrow, meandering street, we encountered only a few shopgirls hurrying home.