Dagger Key and Other Stories

  The implicit threat of an audit ticked me off, but I let him continue. I began to realize where this might be going.

  “I’ve got the authority to take Joseph back to Mckeesport and throw his butt in jail,” said Kiggins. “He’s in arrears with his child and spousal support. Now I know Joseph doesn’t have any money to speak of, but seeing how you’ve got an investment in him, I’m hoping we can work out some arrangement.”

  “Where’d you hear that?” I asked. “About my investment.”

  “Joseph still has friends in Mckeesport. High school kids, mainly. Truth be told, we think he was supplying them with drugs, but I’m not here about that. They’ve been spreading it around that you’re about to make him a star.”

  I snorted. “He’s a long way from being a star. Believe me.”

  “I believe you. Do you believe me when I tell you I’m here to take him back? Just say the word, I’ll give a whistle to those boys out front.” Kiggins shifted the chair sideways, so he could stretch out one leg. “I know how you make your money, Vernon. You build a band up, then you sell their contracts. Now you’ve put in some work with Joseph. Some serious time and money. I should think you’d want to protect your investment.”

  “Okay.” I reached for a cigarette, recalled that I had quit. “What’s he owe?”

  “Upwards of eleven thousand.”

  “He’s all yours,” I said. “Take the stairs in back. Follow the corridor to the front of the house. First door on your right.”

  “I said I wanted to make an arrangement. I’m not after the entire amount.”

  And so began our negotiation.

If we had finished the album, I would have handed Stanky over and given Kiggins my blessing, but as things stood, I needed him. Kiggins, on the other hand, wouldn’t stand a chance of collecting any money with Stanky in the slam—he likely had a pre-determined figure beneath which he would not move. It infuriated me to haggle with him. Stanky’s wife and kid wouldn’t see a nickel. They would dock her welfare by whatever amount he extracted from me, deduct administrative and clerical fees, and she would end up worse off than before. Yet I had no choice other than to submit to legal blackmail.

  Kiggins wouldn’t go below five thousand. That, he said, was his bottom line. He put on a dour poker face and waited for me to decide.

  “He’s not worth it,” I said.

  Sadly, Kiggins made for the door; when I did not relent, he turned back and we resumed negotiations, settling on a figure of three thousand and my promise to attach a rider to Stanky’s contract stating that a percentage of his earnings would be sent to the court. After he had gone, my check tucked in his briefcase, Kiwanda came to stand by my desk with folded arms.

  “I’d give it a minute before you go down,” she said. “You got that I’m-gonna-break-his-face look.”

  “Do you fucking believe this?” I brought my fist down on the desk. “I want to smack that little bitch!”

  “Take a breath, Vernon. You don’t want to lose any more today than just walked out of here.”

  I waited, I grew calm, but as I approached the stairs, the image of a wizened toddler and a moping, double-chinned wife cropped up in my brain. With each step I grew angrier and, when I reached Stanky’s bedroom, I pushed in without knocking. He and Liz were having sex. I caught a foetid odor and an unwanted glimpse of Liz’s sallow hindquarters as she scrambled beneath the covers. I shut the door partway and shouted at Stanky to haul his ass out here. Seconds later, he burst from the room in a T-shirt and pajama bottoms, and stumped into the kitchen with his head down, arms tightly held, like an enraged penguin. He fished a Coke from the refrigerator and made as if to say something; but I let him have it. I briefed him on Kiggins and said, “It’s not a question of morality. I already knew you were a piece of crap. But this is a business, man. It’s my livelihood, not a playground for degenerates. And when you bring the cops to my door, you put that in jeopardy.”

  He hung his head, picking at the Coke’s pop top. “You don’t understand.”

  “I don’t want to understand! Get it? I have absolutely no desire to understand. That’s between you and your wife. Between you and whatever scrap of meat loaf shaped like the Virgin Mary you pretend to worship. I don’t care. One more screw-up, I’m calling Kiggins and telling him to come get you.”

  Liz had entered the kitchen, clutching a bathrobe about her; when she heard “wife,” she retreated.

  I railed at Stanky, telling him he would pay back every penny of the three thousand, telling him further to clean his room of every pot seed and pill, to get his act in order and finish the album; and I kept on railing at him until his body language conveyed that I could expect two or three days of penitence and sucking up. Then I allowed him to slink by me and into the bedroom. When I passed his door, cracked an inch open, I heard him whining to Liz, saying, “She’s not really my wife.”