Dagger Key and Other Stories

“What you got to tell me about old Eduardo Galvez?” says Fredo. “The mon who marry Annie.”

“You know about this?”

“Sure I know. It family business.”

Klose appears stunned. “You are claiming to be Anne Bonny’s descendant?”

“Yesterday you trying to pin it on me, and now you say I claiming it?”

“You denied the connection. I thought…”

“I don’t like talking about Annie where other people can hear.”

“But why? All this happened three hundred years ago.”

“It still happening, mon. But I’ll get to that.” Fredo has a sip of coffee, finds it to have cooled. “You worked out some of the story; now I going to tell you the rest. Annie come to the island and she marry Eduardo Galvez some years after. But she did not come alone. That Mary Reade were with her. I know…” He holds up a hand to forestall an interruption. “They say she die in prison, but that were another woman did the dying. It were Mary that engineered the escape. She bribe someone high up with the promise of treasure. It ain’t clear who. Someone she knew that were close to the governor, though…”

Fredo breaks off as Vinroy approaches with a tray, delivering bacon and rolls, granola, chopped banana, chunks of mango and papaya, a fresh jug of coffee.

“The plan were for Mary and Annie to take their share of the treasure and go to New Orleans,” Fredo says once Vinroy is out of earshot. “But Mary…”

“The treasure was here?” asks Klose. “On Cay Cuchillo?”

He’s excited, unmindful of his food, and Fredo feels more secure about telling him the rest.

“That’s right,” he says. “Calico Jack bury it here, and Mary use the knowledge to secure their freedom. They make sail from New Provincetown to Cay Cuchillo and once they divide the treasure up, like I saying, they plan to find a boat what will carry them to New Orleans. But Mary decide she want to stay here. They have a big row about it, but in the end they build a café on the island and call it The Two Swans.”

Wilton Barrios stands abruptly, knocking over his chair, and spits curses in Spanish. The gray-haired man looks up at him placidly and has a bite of melon.

“Maricon!” Wilton clenches his fists and appears ready to strike the man, but instead turns and stalks toward the door. On seeing Fredo and Klose, he takes a hitch in his stride and his furious expression abates as he goes out into the corridor, leaving the children gawking in his wake, the elderly couple whispering together, Vinroy shaking his head behind the bar.

As far as Klose is concerned, however, none of this might have happened. “The Two Swans,” he said. “This is your cafe?”

“It been rebuilt more times than I can tally,” says Fredo. “The boards rot, the winds blow it down…you know. Over the years, people drop the ‘Two,’ and then when the British write down the name for their records, they throw in an extra n and the change stick. But I guess you could say it more-or-less the same. It occupy the same ground, at least.”

Fredo nibbles the end of a thick-cut strip of bacon. “Cay Cuchillo were a place where nobody care what two women do with one another, and that why Mary so strong for to stay here. For a while they happy, but Annie have a roving eye. She like men and other women, too. And come the day when she say she going to take her fair share of the treasure and leave. Mary beg her to stay, but once Annie have it in mind to do something, the weight of the world can be against her and she going to have her way. So Mary say, ‘Go ahead, then. But the treasure ain’t going nowhere.’ She snatch up a cutlass and menace Annie. She not angry, she stricken by the thought of losing her love. But Annie’s angry at being thwarted, and when she angry she a terror. She go at Mary with a dagger and stab her deep. Mary run out onto the beach, down toward the point from the café, and that’s where Annie catch her. Mary pleading for her life. She tell Annie that she didn’t mean nothing, she loves her. But Annie say, ‘To hell with love, and to hell with you!’ And she cut Mary down.

“When Annie realize what she have done, the spirit go right out of her. All her fierceness, all her joy in life, were spent with that one knife-stroke. She pass the days drinking and weeping. She don’t care no more about New Orleans, about the café, about nothing—she might have drink herself to death if Eduardo Galvez didn’t happen along. He prop her up, he help her to face things. She never come to love him, but she grateful to him and that’s enough. She bear him three sons. The last of them, the one she died giving birth to, I of his line.”

Vinroy saunters up, concerned that there’s something wrong with the food, they haven’t eaten a bite—Klose tells him, no, he was preoccupied, and shovels in a spoonful of granola as if to demonstrate his appetite.

“What all that fuss with Wilton?” Fredo asks.

“Some business. I don’t know,” says Vinroy, and nods toward the gray-haired man. “Wilton tell me he’s an investor. ’Pear he got the good sense not to invest with Wilton.”

“Yeah, mon,” says Fredo as Vinroy walks off. “I hear that.”