Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

It was Bailey’s theory that there was always something a person wouldn’t give up, even if it was bad for them. He drove the convertible to the north side of the island, up over Buttercream Hill Road and down to the marina, sparkling with fishing boats and pleasure craft. He parked in the lot, as close to the street as possible; fast exits had been imprinted on his mental list of things to do for a number of years now.

He walked out past a civilized little stand with a blue-and-white striped awning, where iced tea, beer, frozen yogurt, and hot dogs were sold. A mixed crowd, he noted; kids, holiday fishermen, and a somewhat more well-heeled set who probably belonged with those sleek craft he saw in the prime slips just after the refreshment stand.

Nobody who looked like Ron Zygmore, with or without beard.

It was funny how drug-dealers fell into the same sub-groups the rest of society did. The three men who hired him in Atlanta were not Miami-Vice type criminal overlords; they were businessmen, members of the Jaycees, the Masons, and the Knights of Columbus. And twenty years ago, when they’d run a thriving illegal business, they hadn’t been chic cocaine dealers passing merchandise in clubs to a soundtrack of throbbing rock; they’d been four college students running marijuana up from

Mexico on a secondhand boat, playing Jimmy Buffet and exchanging dreams in roadhouse cafes.

It was the most exciting time in their lives. Bailey heard that, in their voices; Bailey always listened, and watched, and took in everything. You never knew what would work, later.

The most exciting time, and the most pure. Their friendship had been a sacred thing. They believed in it the way some motorcycle gangs believed in the brotherhood of the road, the way officers and gentlemen believed in the concept of honor.

Bailey respected their sincerity. It was the kind of thing he did not consider himself capable of.

“It’s not like we really think there’s anything wrong,” Alan Tillman said. Tillman did most of the talking; he owned a computer supply company and wore his usual business suit when he spoke to Bailey.

“No,” agreed the other two men. It was probably a coincidence, they told him. You could hear the embarrassment in their voices at even bringing it up.

It was probably a coincidence that Ron Zygmore, D’Artagnan to the other three, had disappeared just after retrieving the last cache of money from their first, shared business.

“We always planned to retire on that money, you see,” Tillman explained. “We’d made about three-quarters of a million dollars, altogether—way too much to explain to anyone how we’d gotten it. And we didn’t want to use a bank. So we found…” He hesitated. “A place to store it. And we agreed that every ten years or so, one of us would go and retrieve another portion. Well, inflation being what it is—” The others nodded at this, “—this was going to be the last trip. There was about four hundred thousand left. We were going to split it four ways.”

It was odd, in a way, Bailey thought. You could listen to these middle-class businessmen talk and you could still hear the country boys underneath, like some kind of skeleton. They’d used their stakes to open supply stores and car dealerships and they’d forgotten about retiring, giving up their dreams to paperwork. But you could still hear the distant clank, under the words, of rebuilt cars and bar brawls where somebody pulled a knife.

“Ron went to pick it up on a Saturday afternoon,” said Tillman. “On Sunday he was dead.”

“Maybe,” said one of the others under his breath. No one commented.

Ron Zygmore, classmate and owner of the Elly Ann, the old wooden fishing boat whose hold they’d once stuffed with bags of Mexican Gold.

Two months ago he’d bought a spanking new fiberglass boat, that he’d taken out into a tropical storm off the coast of Florida. Now the boat was gone, and so was Ron. So was the four hundred thousand, and even though the money rankled, Bailey suspected that what rankled more was the possibility that they’d been made fools of by one of their own.

So Bailey had checked: Zygmore had been divorced one year previously. He had one child in college, with whom he was not very close. Another child had been killed in a car accident years ago. And the boat that had presumably gone down with Zygmore had not even been paid for.

Not Zygmore. Ron. Bailey preferred to start thinking of the people he searched for by their first names as soon as possible. It seemed to help the process.

“I’ll take it,” he said, interrupting another homage to coincidence from Alan Tillman.

Tillman looked at him. “We don’t just want the money,” he said finally.

“I know what you want,” said Bailey.