Dead Bait

by Romana Baotic (ed. )

  Mike checked his watch. Three minutes before he was to meet Oke.

  Seeing no evidence of his attacker, Mike swam easily up to the small crevice and shone his light into it.

  There, in a small nest of kelp, were seven iridescent spheres, each about the size of a tennis ball. Mike checked the crevice, but there was no sign of any other creature within.

  He withdrew one of the spheres, and was surprised to feel its warmth through his glove. It was perfectly round and seemed to be made of mother of pearl, though there were traces of gold and crimson forming delicate veins through the turquoise, pink and silver nacre.

  He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life. What was it? It certainly wasn’t an eel egg. Had it not been so warm he would have thought it was some kind of objet d’art, some marine equivalent of a Faberge egg.

  Maybe it was. Maybe the warmth was some illusion, the aftermath of his battle with the eel.

  He knew he was rationalizing, but he could not leave the spheres where they were. He had to have them, had to take them to his home and keep them.

  He emptied his bag of the cowrie shells without a second thought and carefully loaded the nacreous spheres into it.

  He was two minutes late in his rendezvous with Oke.

  “You okay? I was worried,” Oke signed.

  “No trouble, let’s go,” Mike signed back. Now that he had possession of the spheres he wanted to leave before the moray eel returned.

  They left Cathedral 2 and headed back to the boat.

  Once in the boat, Mike tried to keep Oke from seeing his treasure, but the spheres were even more brilliant and beautiful in the sunlight.

  “Bra, what the hell is that?” Oke asked, his voice filled with awe.

  “Something I found in a small chamber, probably nothing,” Mike said, not wanting to share them, not even with his best friend and partner.

  “Come on, brother, let me look.”

  “Let’s head out, and then I’ll show you,” Mike said.

  Oke gave him a puzzled look but weighed anchor and soon they were on their way back to Maui.

  It was only when port was in view that Mike showed Oke what he had found.

  Rather than exhibit awe or wonder, the big man turned pale.

  “Mike, these are the children of U’ua the Fish Girl.”

  “Oke, these are clearly manufactured – they certainly aren’t the eggs of a mermaid.”

  “This is bad, brother, very bad. You have to take them back – we have to go now.”

  “I’m not taking them back.”

  “Brother, you know there is a lot on these islands that don’t belong to anyone but the gods. You know the stories of people who take lava rock from Pele’s beaches.”

  “Dude, I respect your traditions, but all that stuff is just self-fulfilling prophecy.”

  Oke shook his head fiercely. “My great uncle Charlie, they said he found a mermaid egg. Just one. My great aunt, she and the rest of the family begged him to return it, but he said it would bring him good fortune.”

  “Don’t tell me. Next day he got hit by a bus.”

  Oke looked at his friend, his face that of a small boy hearing a ghost story. “Brother, they found him in his bed. The sheets were wet and covered with seaweed. The egg was gone and so was his head!”

  Mike laughed in spite of Oke’s dead serious expression. “Tell you what, bra, I’ll make sure I lock my doors tonight.”

  Oke started to turn the wheel.

  “What are you doing, Oke?”

  “Going back, before it’s too late.”

  In that moment, Mike seriously considered killing his best friend. His knife was close at hand. It would be no trouble to stab the big man, throw him over the side and wash down the boat. He could tell everyone that Oke had been diving and had not come back.

  He was actually reaching for the knife when the two of them heard an unearthly shriek. It was like nothing on Earth. It was a sound both primeval and terrible in its message of sorrow and loss.

  Oke crossed himself, something he did without thinking. It had been years since the sisters at Grace Community School had rapped his knuckles and tried to rein in his native spirit.

  “God help us,” he whispered, and turned the boat back toward Maui.

  In less than an hour they were tied up and walking to Mike’s car, a beat-up Subaru wagon. Oke had pleaded with Mike to dump the eggs over the side or leave them tied to the pier in his dive sack. But the thought of someone else finding them and keeping them was more than Mike could bear.

  Mike dropped Oke off at his home near the docks and continued his drive up to Makawao where he lived in a small house near the outskirts of town.

  His house was a grubby, stucco affair with a waist-high chain link fence. Not the sort of place one pictured when thinking of the islands, but a style all too prevalent in some of the more developed areas. Mike padlocked the gate behind him, something he never did, and locked himself in the small house.

  Inside, the open blinds let the afternoon sun in. Mike closed the blinds and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Clutching the bag, he did a quick check of the place. Living room, kitchen, hall, bathroom, bedroom. It was a tiny place and took no time to search for intruders. Mike laughed at his own paranoia, but the sound of his laughter was hollow and forced.

  Mike had a fifty-five gallon salt water tank in his living room. He had carefully established a group of clown fish and sea anemones in as natural manner as possible. With little regard for the denizens of the tank he lowered the dive bag of mermaid eggs into it. The clown fish retreated immediately, as if they knew the contents of the bag did not belong there.

  There was a small cut on his hand and he decided he’d better not take any chances. He got out a bright plastic blue and white box with a drawing of an angler on the lid. It said “Sportsman’s First Aid Kit”. He had had the thing since being a Boy Scout in St. Ignace. He carefully washed the wound, covered it with mercurochrome and bandaged it.

  He nuked some leftover pizza and washed it down with a couple of Rolling Rocks. He tried to watch TV but his eyes kept drifting back to the tank. The light and bubbles in the tank caused the eggs to almost fluoresce and sent strange colors across the ceiling.

  It was better than being stoned.

  He wondered what he should do with the eggs. What if they hatched? He was not a particularly romantic soul, and did not think he would have some fantasy romance with a mermaid. Every story he had ever read seemed to indicate that humans and mer-people were incompatible, and one had to become like the other before…

  What was he doing?

  Without thinking he had subscribed to Oke’s superstitious babbling about the spheres being mermaid eggs, or rather, the offspring of U’ua the Fish Girl. The objects were jewelry, nothing more. Some enterprising thief or pirate had stuck them in that crevice knowing its obscure location would keep them safe.

  If he sold them he’d be a rich man. The smart thing to do would be to keep one for himself and sell the others to private collectors. He would get more if he acted like each was the only one he found. The right collectors wouldn’t be sharing their little treasures with the outside world, and he’d be set for life.

  A couple of more beers and he was pleasantly buzzed. He was dreaming of an ocean of money when his cell rang.

  Mike fumbled for the phone, the light from the aquarium turning his living room into some kind of 70’s era lava lamp.

  “Yeah?”

  “Bra, it’s Oke. Somebody’s poking around my freakin’ house!”

  “Call the cops, man, I’ll be right over…”

  “I don’t think the cops – “

  Mike heard glass breaking over the phone and Oke’s cries for help.

  “Oke, I’m coming, man – stay on the line!”

  Mike used his land line to call 911. He gave them Oke’s address and told them the big man was being attacked. He hung up as they asked his name and ran out to his car. He was hal
fway there when it struck him that he was leaving the spheres.

  What if Oke was playing him?

  Hell, he saw the way the dude looked at the spheres. Sure, he acted scared, but he wanted them, too.

  Screw it, he had called 911. The cops would get there quick. If Oke was in real trouble, there was nothing he could do.

  What came over him then was not a rational feeling, it was something akin to instinct, something raw and atavistic, that begged him to leave a place surrounded by water.

  He had to get out of there.

  Mike packed a few clothes. He placed the net bag of spheres into a plastic bag and stowed this in a carry-on. If they were eggs – and they weren’t – he hoped the airport x-ray wouldn’t harm them.

  He was at Kahului Airport in less than twenty minutes and was able to get a flight to Los Angeles that was leaving in just under an hour. He cleared security without a problem and waited nervously at his gate. He expected the police to arrive any minute and arrest him, though he hadn’t done anything.

  You left your friend behind.

  He had done that. But he could never have reached Oke in time. If the big guy was okay maybe he’d send him some of the money he was going to make.

  Maybe.

  His nerves continued to feel frazzled and jangled until his flight was in the air. He dozed for a few minutes, then had a nasty nightmare where the plane was pulled out of the sky by some enormous squid with tentacles a mile long. It grabbed the jet and he remembered screaming with the other passengers as they approached a maw lined with rows and rows of serrated fangs.

  Mike woke with a start. He was relieved that he had not called out in his sleep, and everyone around him was either watching the movie or dozing. He tried to lose himself in the movie, but he kept losing track of the story. He also fought the urge to continually check the spheres. He had already taken a peek at them several times and a man across the aisle had given him a look that was thinly veiled suspicion.

  He decided to start planning his strategy for selling the spheres. Being inexperienced and a stranger to the world of wealth, he’d probably have to hire a go-between, someone who moved within those circles and could broker the deal. That would probably cost him anywhere from ten to thirty percent of his earnings, so he had to choose well.

  He arrived in Los Angeles without incident and took a cab to the Burbank Hilton. LAX was only thirteen miles from the Pacific Ocean and this did not seem enough of a buffer to him. He realized again that he was believing in a mythical creature, moreover, he was unconsciously giving it the ability to swim as fast as a jumbo jet could fly.

  In his room he locked the door and spread the spheres on the bed. They were still warm to the touch, even though the outside temperature was around 60°F. He was pretty sure that if they had been made of nacre or glass they would have been room temperature, which he guessed was about 70°F.

  Living? He needed to verify that before he tried selling them.

  He went online, looking for an ichthyologist who would do some discrete consulting.

  There were some promising leads at UCLA and the Museum of Natural History, and he figured he would try them in the morning.

  At 11 p.m. he felt exhausted but unable to sleep. He turned on the local news, a nagging feeling of dread heavy in the pit of his stomach.

  The news was filled with dire stories about the economy and the Middle East, the sports world was rocked by another steroids scandal.

  Then came the story he feared he might see.

  “A bizarre occurrence on the island of Maui tonight,” the anchor woman solemnly intoned, “Police summoned to the residence of local Oke Pukui found no sign of the man. However, they did find a huge moray eel in the man’s bed. The eel was dead and an expert from the Maui Aquarium said it had recently lost an eye. Authorities are baffled by this and other aspects of the case, which took place several miles inland.”

  Mike turned off the television.

  An eel that had lost an eye.

  He tried to convince himself that the spheres were treasure belonging to some modern-day pirates with a taste for the theatrical, but he knew the truth.

  He had stolen eggs from a mermaid.

  Which meant he was in terrible danger.

  It also meant he had a fortune sitting on his bed.

  The next day he called around, seeking someone who would broker something both rare and possibly endangered. He wasn’t about to turn any of the eggs over to museums or the government. Their payment would be pitifully small, if anything. Oh, they might agree to name the specimens after him, but you couldn’t buy drinks or a house with a Latin classification.

  Through some networking he found a broker at, of all places, one of the larger talent agencies in Beverly Hills. He met with the agent, a well-dressed and erudite young woman named Claire Nassarian, at the Beverly Hills Hotel’s Polo Lounge.

  Mike had worn his only sport coat and dress shirt, but he felt like a grubby beach bum next to the casual elite of Los Angeles.

  Claire made no mention of his dress. She had the waiter bring him a beer and then nodded toward his overnight bag.

  “You brought one with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be candid, Mr. Clute, I don’t really believe you, but my profession is filled with stories of people who didn’t take the long shot and wound up regretting it. If you happen to be a conman, then at least I will have a good story for the Christmas party.”

  “What guarantee do I have that you won’t just run off with it?”

  “Because I am going to charge you forty percent commission.”

  “Forty percent!”

  “Yes, so I’ll make far more brokering six than stealing one.”

  He had told her he had six of the eggs. He intended keeping one for himself. Somehow, the knowledge he would have one made him feel less anxious about letting go of the others.

  “I think that’s a bit steep, Ms. Nassarian.”

  “Mr. Clute, you are, if I may, out of your depth here. I know three potential buyers just off the top of my head. Collectors who will pay handsomely for such a prize and keep it secret. Unless you want to resort to ebay or risk the government confiscating your find.”

  “No, no, you’re right. How much do you think we can get per egg?”

  “If I can verify that they are indeed what you say they are, I would estimate anywhere from twenty-five to thirty million per egg.”

  Mike gasped. Even with her commission he would be clearing over a hundred million dollars. “Are you… are you serious?”

  She smiled. “I never joke about finances. I know of two clients in Dubai and one in India who will pay at least that much.”

  With that kind of money he could disappear. He was sure that cops in Maui wanted to talk to him. He had no intention of going back there. They would know that Oke had called him at home and that he had called 911. He would be a loose end but not a real suspect. Once he had the money he could buy privacy, isolation and everything he had ever wanted.

  The tests on the sphere took a nerve-wracking week, and Mike moved to a motel further inland, one without a pool.

  Claire called him just before noon, her usual cool façade riddled with visions of what her commission would bring.

  “It’s real,” she told him, “the expert I hired has never seen anything like it. He pleaded with me to give him the sample, but I’m not in this to advance science.”

  Mike laughed, the first time he had since Oke had died. “He’ll keep quiet?”

  “He’s bound by a confidentiality agreement, plus he had to give me all his data. Besides, without one of the eggs, who will believe him?”

  “But even a sample…”

  “Mike, even if he did break our confidence, by the time his colleagues agreed with his findings we’ll have sold all the eggs, so what do you care?”

  They drew up contracts guaranteeing their mutual interests and protection, and set up an account in the Caymans for the bulk
of his coming fortune.

  They had one last dinner together, where he gave her the rest of the eggs. He had paid another attorney to go over his contract, and had been assured that it was legitimate.

  Claire held up a glass of champagne.

  “Here’s to the good life,” she said, smiling.

  Their glasses clinked. “So, are you moving out of that dingy motel?” she asked, her eyes sparkling.

  “Yes. I bought a trailer in Mojave. I’ll give you the address.”

  “Mojave?” She shivered. “Why in God’s name would you want to live there?”

  “Just temporary,” he assured her.

  She shook her head, and then the waiter brought over their meals.

  Mike was very keen on bedding Claire, but they agreed to keep their relationship purely professional. She did kiss him on the mouth as they said goodbye, her lips tasting of raspberries and champagne.

  “Once we’re rich,” she said, and let the unspoken future hang between them like a bubble.

  It was the last time he saw her alive.

  Mike moved out to Mojave, sure that he had made a mistake and that Claire would abscond with her lion’s share of the eggs. But he had chosen well, as Claire wanted to cement not only her fortune, but her reputation as being someone who could be trusted with the most precious and exotic of wares.

  He had been cooking beans on a hot plate when a chime told him he had an email. Only Claire had his new email address, and he prayed this was not some business equivalent of a “Dear John” letter.

  All her message said was: SOLD TWO – CHECK ACCOUNT. GOING TO DUBAI.

  Willing himself to stay calm, Mike called up The Royal Bank and Trust. He keyed in his user name, password and then his account number. The screen went blank as it refreshed.

  NEW ACCOUNT BALANCE: $62,005,650.00

  He felt dizzy, and actually had to lie down. The beans on the stove burned, filling the small trailer with smoke. He was sorry to see that it had ruined the saucepan, one that he had spent his last five bucks on.

  He was crying about five dollars when he had over sixty million in his account.