“Yeah, mon,” says Fredo as Vinroy walks off. “I hear that.”
The dining room has begun to fill and Klose, taking cognizance of this, lowers his voice. “What happened to the treasure?” he asks.
Fredo reaches into his hip pocket, withdraws a grimy, much-folded piece of paper—stiff paper, like that used by artists—and lays it on the table. “This my family’s fortune,” he says. “If anybody hear of it, it could mean trouble for me.”
Klose rests the fingertips of one hand on the paper, but Fredo also keeps his hand on the paper.
“You seen my place,” says Fredo. “I better off than some, but I a poor mon nonetheless. Now you a rich mon. Maybe not king-rich, but rich enough you can help me out.”
The German’s face tightens as he realizes that money is to be the topic of conversation.
“I not going to try to sell you something you ain’t interested in,” Fredo continues. “If you don’t want what I got, I no be bothering you again. But if you interested, remember this. You tell anyone what’s on this paper, the deal is off. There’s three items sketched on it. A cross, a cup, and a dagger. There’s information written down about them. You can check it against the cargo manifest of the Nuestra Senora de Alegria, a Spanish galleon that were lost with all hands in these waters. The treasure ship sites online, they can tell you about it.” He pushes back his chair and stands. “The dagger’s not for sale, but I can let you have the cup or the cross.”
Suspicion gone from his face, washed away by eagerness, Klose starts to unfold the paper, but Fredo restrains him and says, “Not here, mon! Not where anybody can see. Take it somewhere private.”
Klose apologizes, then says, “May I show this to Selkie?”
“I’ll be direct with you. From what I hear about your wife, she ain’t the kind to trust with a secret.”
Strain surfaces in Klose’s voice. “I’m aware of my wife’s proclivities, but where a matter of finance is concerned, you can count on her to be discreet.”
“Well, that’s up to you. But the same rule apply. She tell anyone, we ain’t doing business.”
Fredo tells him they’ll talk early tomorrow and leaves Klose to his breakfast, intending to walk the beach to Dever’s Landing. He cuts across the patio toward the water and notices two boats moored to the wharf: a sloop with a blue hull and a white cabin cruiser, the Selkie. As he’s about to take a closer look, Wilton hails him and asks if he can use a ride. Minutes later, Fredo is hanging onto the roll bar of the Jeep as they lurch and rattle over the potholed road toward town, producing so loud a racket that Wilton has to shout to make himself heard.
“You got some business with that German fella?” he asks.
“He pay me a few dollars to tell him some lies. That’s all.”
Wilton appears to nod, though it may just be the bouncing of the Jeep.
“If it get any more than that, you let me know,” says Wilton. “These Germans, they slick operators. You need someone looking out for you. Someone who can see you don’t get took advantage of.”
Fredo gazes at the dusty-leaved shrubs along the roadside, at palms with brown fronds and bunches of dried-out nuts, at the aquamarine sea that shows itself whenever the Jeep tops a rise. “No doubt,” he says. “I be sure and consult with you first thing.”
All through the day, doing chores and filling orders behind the bar, Fredo worries about whether he’s doing the right thing. Annie thinks that dealing with Klose is worth the risk, that’s apparent, though Fredo’s not certain how much she actually thinks or what her process is. She may possess a thread of instinct or premonitory sense that causes her to seek him out, or it may be something unknowable that triggers her appearances. What worries him most is his family history. Once filling two deep chests, the treasure has dwindled over the course of the centuries to a cross, a chalice, and a dagger, and almost every transaction, every attempt to sell a piece or two, has been attended by abysmal luck, errors in judgment, drunkenness, and so forth. On occasion, a Galvez has realized some small profit from the sale of a ring or a golden place setting, but it seems that a curse has been laid upon the treasure and whenever a great profit is sought, tragedy results. Fredo believes that if a curse exists, it is one worked through the social fabric of the island. The way things are, the way they always have been, it’s extremely problematic for someone poor, someone powerless, to sell an item of great value and come away with any money. Too many prying eyes, too many men with grasping, conniving natures. Impoverished men with hopes like his own; the police; government officials; gangsters and thugs; each looking for a glint of gold in the ordinary dirt of their lives. And should they catch sight of such a glint, they’ll act without compunction.
The cross is a processional cross, 18 inches high, designed to be mounted on a wooden staff and held aloft by the acolyte preceding, in this case, the Archbishop of New Providence, for whom it was intended as a gift. Fashioned of yellow gold, exquisitely carved, and set with four diamonds of approximately forty karats and a ruby nearly twice that size. Also a gift meant for the Archbishop, the chalice is more resplendent yet, made of white gold and studded with emeralds and diamonds. By contrast, the dagger is nondescript, its hilt of horn chased with silver, but it has history on its side, having belonged to the fourth Marquis of Vallardo and been put to bloody use by both him and Annie. Fredo has held them in his hands several times, yet he has never once laid eyes upon them. Annie keeps her secrets close.
He sleeps poorly, ridden by dreams of a pale woman in a white blouse and brown leggings, and he rises before dawn to make the long walk into Dever’s Landing, catching a ride from town with young Gentry Samuels, who delivers fresh bread to the resort. The eastern sky is touched with mauve when he arrives, and Fredo waits on a stool at the beachside bar until a red sliver of sun has crept up over the horizon and the lights come on inside Klose’s bungalow, watching as
an orb weaver,
a galaxy of white spots
speckling its black back,
dangling from the thatch
on a single strand of silk,
lowers itself to within an inch
of the countertop, then stalls
as if wary of the wet ring
left by a drunkard’s glass…
and when it finally descends to the wooden surface, only then does he approach the bungalow and knock.
To his surprise, Selkie opens the door. She’s wearing a frilly nightgown that extends from the slopes of her breasts to mid-thigh, and conceals nothing. Her pink areolae are visible through the sheer fabric, as is the dark suggestion of a pubic patch, at odds with her blond head. Fredo is put off by this casual display, but he also recalls what Vinroy said and wonders how it would be to lie with her. She seems less woman than a parfait of cream and strawberry, and he thinks that though the image she presents is arousing, she would not give him the pleasure of a real woman like Emily. He asks where her husband is.
“He is showering,” Selkie says, sitting on the large overstuffed sofa that dominates the room, a harmony of white and pastel blues, except for the breakfast nook, decorated in sunnier colors. “Do not concern yourself with him. He is quite happy to remain in the bedroom while we are concluding our business.”
“He not coming out, then?”
“Not unless we wish him to.” Selkie pats the cushion beside her, indicating that he should sit, and, once he does, she scoots nearer so that their knees are almost touching. The musky scent of her perfume surrounds him, seeming to issue from the depths of her cleavage. She nods at the bedroom door. “Perhaps you would be more comfortable dealing with him?”
“I can handle it if you can.”
“Oh, of this I am quite sure.” She smiles coyly, the crimson bow of her mouth lengthening as if being strung, and gives his leg a pat. “The paper you gave Alvin…are you the one who made the sketches?”
He wrenches his eyes away from the milky valley between her breasts. “That were a friend of mine did the drawing
.”
“Your friend has had a peculiar education,” she says. “He uses antiquated spelling. The double f instead of the s, for example. Did he perhaps copy the words from the cargo manifest?”
“I suppose,” says Fredo.
“Were you not present when he made these sketches?”
Rattled, Fredo says, “What you want to know all this for?”
“I am wishing only to satisfy my curiosity.” She dismisses the subject with a wave of her hand. “To business, then. Your friend has noted the diamonds in the cross are weighing forty karats, and the ruby is…” She casts about, as if searching for something. “Scheisse! My little book? Do you see it? It has a green cover.”
“The ruby seventy-eight karats, if that’s what you looking to know. The emeralds on the cup, now…”
“We have no interest in the cup. Too bulky. The cross is better because it lies flat.”
Fredo shrugs.
“We will, of course, require to see it before we commit,” Selkie continues. “Once we have made an assessment of its value, we will secure the funds.”
“No, no! That’s not how it going to be,” Fredo says. “You gets the money, I brings the cross. You like what you see, then we make a trade and go our separate ways. And we do it quick. If the money not here tomorrow evening, say about seven-eight o’clock, it might as well never be here.”
“But we must authenticate the cross…and the stones.”
“Then best you learn about authenticating quick. Look here. When you see the thing, you going to know it old. And if you don’t trust it, walk away. That’s what I intends to do and the money ain’t right.”
Selkie looks at him without expression for a long moment. “How much do you want?”
“Fifty thousand dollars,” he says. “Cash money.”
Selkie starts to raise an objection, but Fredo says, “I ain’t going to bargain with you. Fifty’s what I need. Fifty in small bills. I can’t get it from you, I’ll get it somewheres else. For fifty, you stealing it. Any one of the stones worth a damn sight more than that, so I ain’t going to listen about you ain’t got it. If that the case, we got no use to talk further.”
After a pause, Selkie says, “Fifty thousand. Yes. This I think we can manage, but it’s good you do not ask for more. We will have to sell some things. And to transfer the money takes time. We cannot do this in less than two days.”
Fredo doesn’t like it, but after a brief internal debate, he agrees. “Two days, then. Not a minute longer.”
He gathers himself, preparing to stand, and Selkie asks if he would like a drink. To seal the bargain, she says. She leans back, half-reclining on the sofa, and puts one slippered foot up on the cushion, opening her legs. A smile plays about the corners of her lips, and Fredo realizes that more than a drink is being offered. His eyes go to the bedroom door. It’s cracked open and would afford anyone behind it an unobstructed view of the sofa.
“Please, Fredo. Stay for a drink…or two,” Selkie says. “Alvin will not mind.”
Angry that they think him a fool, or that he would willingly serve their perversity, he stands and says, “I’ll take back my paper now.”
“Your paper? I don’t understand.”
“The one with the sketch of the cross.”
She makes a smacking sound with her lips, rises and goes to the breakfast table; she opens a drawer and extracts the folded paper, holds it out to him.
“I don’t want no funny business when I bring the cross,” he says. “I catch a sniff of anything wrong, and that be the end of it. You hear me?”
“No problem,” Selkie says flatly.
He snatches the paper, avoiding the touch of her fingers.
“When will you bring it?” she asks.
“If I not here by ten that night, I not coming. But I see you in the morning, day after tomorrow, and give you instructions. Meet me in the bar for breakfast. Eight o’clock.”
“So early!”
“I got things to do of the day.”
She tips her head to the side, as if this new angle will allow her to see inside him. “Is the cross buried so deep, it will cost you a day to dig it up?”
“Not deep,” he says, opening the door to admit the humid air, perfumed by a night-blooming cereus. “But deep enough that no man alive can find it.”
The bank opens each morning at eight-thirty, and at eight-fifteen, Fredo is sitting across the street in a shanty bar known as John Wayne’s, named for its owner, John Wayne Casterman, an elderly man with nut-brown skin and a wizened neck like a turtle’s, his head nearly bald, a few tufts of cottony hair seeming to float above his scalp like clouds above a barren planet. The bar is accessed by a two-tiered stairway of rickety boards and rotting railings, and consists of a single room containing half-a-dozen tables and a makeshift counter of oil drums. Faded reggae posters advertising bands that no longer exist postage-stamp the weathered planking of the walls. John Wayne is perched on a stool behind the oil drums, humming to himself, reading a day-old newspaper, and Fredo sits by the door, nursing a warmish beer, watching the armed guards smoking in front of the bank, the passage of a Toyota pick-up, an old VW bus, a Hyundai truck carrying a load of concrete blocks. A young black woman, Jenny Bowen, in a tight skirt and a red tank top, balances a bowl covered in cheesecloth on her head, her walk an African elegance, serene and sensual. She pays no mind to the guards, who stare at her, whisper together, and laugh. Fredo remembers her as a little girl, when she skipped everywhere she went. Two pariah dogs engage in a snarling match, snapping at one another, until a bystander runs them off. The sun is a yellow glare in the east. Dust settles, rises from the dirt street, settles again.
Garnett Steadman, a man even older than John Wayne, hobbles into the bar, and, after a brief exchange with Fredo, How’s Emily doing?, I spied your boy Jenry yesterday, etc, he takes a stool and talks fishing with John Wayne…
…I bait the hook
with a chunk of barracuda,
and where I toss it in,
the sea go dark with mackerel.
The surface all lathered up around me
just like in the back time
when the fishing always good.
But not a one take a bite of that barra,
and I had that duppy feeling,
cold in the middle of the day,
like the sun ain’t truly hot,
like them fish ain’t truly there…
A little after nine, a taxi stops in front of the bank, and Klose climbs out. He disappears inside the stucco building. Less than an hour later, he emerges from the bank and waits, nervously pacing, until a second taxi arrives to collect him. Fredo bids so long to Garnett and John Wayne, and begins the long walk home. Satisfied that things appear to be going the way he wants, he’s anxious for the same reason. Annie has come to him three times before, none of which he recalls after a certain point. The first two occasions yielded neither profit nor loss, but the third time, after making a small profit from the sale of some coins, he had the idea that something bad happened. When he checked on the buyer the next morning, the man, a college professor from New Mexico, locked the door of his bungalow, refusing to admit him, and fled the island at the earliest opportunity. Now, with so much more at stake, dealing with untrustworthy people, he knows there’s a potential for serious trouble.
“When Annie come, never try and thwart her,” his father advised him. “You don’t want her mad at you. She got your interests at heart, and ’cept you a big fool, like some of us has been, she bound to keep you safe. Whatever she do, that’s on her, so don’t wreck your soul worrying about it.”
Sound advice, but Fredo is a less pragmatic soul than was his father and, since the old man died, he has learned he can’t equate absence of guilt with innocence. He dreads these days when Annie’s morality is imposed upon him, when he is at the disposition of a three hundred-year old spirit who, driven by a freakish sliver of blood loyalty, will go to any extreme on his behalf. As he walks
the beach toward the café, he mutters prayers for himself and Emily, for Klose and Selkie, for anyone who may become involved. The words occupy his mind, but give him no comfort.
That afternoon, in the cool shade of the café, Fredo mopes about the place, drinking coffee and treating his customers dismissively. To avoid conversation, he takes a portable TV/VCR from beneath the counter, parks it at the end of the bar, and plays an old cassette of Miami Vice episodes, losing himself in gun battles and explosions, beautiful women, neon gleaming on the metal skins of expensive cars. Captivated by these images, three men join him at the bar and, when the tape ends, one of them, Philby Davis, says, “How about you put on some Baywatch, mon?,” a notion seconded by the other customers. Fredo complies, and soon the women of Baywatch are jogging down the beach in their red Speedos, breasts asway in slow motion, while the ragged men of Dagger Key hoot and offer risqué comment.
“Look like that brown-haired gal going to catch ol’ Pamela,” says Philby. “But Pamela always edge her out by a nipple.”
The others laugh and slap Philby’s palm.
Fredo goes outside and sits on the palm trunk, wishing that he remembered to buy cigarettes. The sun is declining in the west, the light going orange. Waves pile in—the same wave, it appears, a low roller thinning to a frothy edge of water that races up the slope of the island to be absorbed by the sand. Shadows blur on the beach. Sand crabs burrow into silt at the tidal margin, leaving tiny airholes. Fredo imagines his thoughts are similar to theirs, a quiet, fretful paranoia.
Emily joins him on the palm trunk, places a hand on his back. “Why don’t you go on up to the house?” she says. “You can send the boys down after dinner. They help me close.”
Fredo nods. “Okay.”
“What time you leaving?”
“I might go in tonight. These people got a boat. Little cabin cruiser. I need to make sure they don’t go nowhere.”
“How you going to do that?”
Dagger Key and Other Stories Page 50
