Dagger Key and Other Stories

Even the coffee sucked at Seminole Paradise—I set my cup down. Pellerin fiddled with the sash of his robe and Jo clinked a spoon against her cup, tapping out a nervous rhythm.

“What about the stuff I saw you doing on the island?” I asked Pellerin. “The night we had that dust-up on the beach, you were doing things with the water. Pushing waves around.”

A hunted expression flashed across his face, and I had the thought that he might be hiding something. “I can do a few parlor tricks,” he said.

“What’s your best one?” I asked. “Give us a demonstration.”

“All right.” He leaned over the table and put a napkin in an ashtray. “Sometimes I can do it, but other times…not so much.”

He concentrated on the napkin, wiggled his fingers like a guitar player lightly fingering the strings. After about twenty, thirty seconds, smoke began to trickle up from the napkin, followed by a tiny flame. He snuffed it out with a spoon. Jo made a speech-like noise, but didn’t follow up.

“That’s my biggie,” he said, leaning back. “If we had another month, I might could do something more impressive. But…” He shrugged, then said to Jo, “If we come through this, I want you to tell me about Ogoun Badagris. How that relates to me.”

She nodded.

“You know, that might have possibilities,” I said. “If you could start an electrical fire, we…”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he said. “After you get back from Ruddle’s, we’ll talk then.”

“I’ll tell you now if you want,” Jo said. “About Ogoun. It won’t take too long.”

Pellerin suddenly appeared tired, pale and hollow-cheeked, slumping in his chair, but he said, “Yeah, why don’t you?”

I was tired, too. Tired of talking, tired of the Seminole Paradise, tired of whatever game Jo was playing, tired of listening to my own thoughts. I told them I was off to Ruddle’s place and would return later that afternoon. On my way out, I heard a hissing from down the hallway. Tammy, wearing bra and panties, waved to me and retreated toward the bedroom, stopping near the door.

“Is your friend going to stay?” she asked in a stage whisper.

“For a while.”

She frowned. “Well, I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what?”

“We didn’t bargain on a four-way, especially with another woman.”

“You got something against women? It didn’t look like you did.”

Tammy didn’t catch my drift and I told her what I had witnessed.

“That’s different,” she said primly.

“Would more money help?”

She perked up. “Money always helps.”

“I’m going out now, but I’ll take care of you. I promise?”

“Okay!” She stood on tip-toe and kissed my cheek.

“One more thing,” I said. “Jo’s kind of shy, but once you start her up, she’s a tigress.”

“I bet.” Tammy shivered with delight. “Those long legs!”

“So in a few minutes why don’t you…maybe the both of you. Why don’t you go out there and warm her up? She really loves intimate touching. You know what I mean? She likes to be fondled. She may object at first, but stay with it and she’ll melt. I’ll get you your money. Deal?”

“Deal! Don’t worry. We’ll get her going.”

“I’m sure you will,” I said.

The one salient thing I learned at Ruddle’s was that a pier extended out about a hundred feet into the water from a strip of beach, and at the end of the pier was moored a sleek white Chris Craft that had been set up for sports fishing—the keys to the boat, the Mystery Girl, were kept in a small room off the kitchen that also contained the controls to the security system. The house itself was a post card. Big and white and ultramodern, it looked like the Chris Craft’s birth mother. An Olympic-sized pool fronted the beach, tennis courts were off to the side. The grounds were a small nation of landscaped palms and airbrushed lawn, its borders defined by a decorous electric fence topped with razor wire and guarded by a pink gatehouse with a uniform on duty. There was a plaque on the gate announcing that the whole shebang was called The Sea Ranch, but it would have been more apt if it had been named The Sea What I Got.

Ruddle’s son showed me around—a blond super-preppie with a Cracker accent that had acquired a New Englander gloss. During our brief time together he said both “y’all” and “wicked haahd,” as if he hadn’t decided which act suited him best. He was impatient to get back to his tanned, perfect girlfriend, an aspiring young coke whore clearly high on more than life. She sat by the pool, listening to reggae, painting faces on her toenails, and flashed me an addled smile that gave me a contact high. I made sure to ask the kid a slew of inane questions (“Is that door sealed with a double gromit?” “What kind of infrared package does that sensor use?”), delaying and stalling in order to annoy him until, growing desperate, he gave me the run of the house and scurried back to her side.