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…