"You just got your job back, white boy. I'll never dive again."

***

Ellen sat at lunch with Carla on the porch, sipping her wine and gazing at the blue chip, on which was stamped, "Loma Bella: Nassau." On it was a bunny's face with a gold halo around its ears.

"A hundred dollars?" She gasped. "Carla, I just can't! Let's get Thea some decent clothes!"

"She doesn't need decent clothes, Ellen. Not playing with native youngsters in the boondocks on Whiskey Cay." She smiled at her mother-in-law. "No, I wasn't going to take it, and then I figured, what the hell? Let Ellen take old Hoagie on a date."

"Well," Ellen said, bristling, "he isn't all that old."

Their eyes met, and both burst into laughter. "Of course he isn't, Ellen. That's the point! Where are you going to find another crazy guy like him?"

"Crazy?" She toyed with her glass. "He's more than he seems, Carla. There's sadness in there somewhere. And last night... he didn't believe in any of it—I guess I don't, either, today—but he was there, and warm, and he cared."

Thea rocketed past them on her tricycle, circled on the wide wooden porch, and parked at the table. She looked up at her mother with her candid eyes of blue. Ellen touched her cheek. Cool, and as smooth as silk. Thea, at least, had no memory of the previous night, or the horror she must have known.

No one in this house was talking things out: Carla was too busy, and Mike was always gone, at the bottom of the sea.

"Where's Deenie, Thea?" asked Carla. "Did you ask her over to play?"

Ellen frowned at her, sending messages. If Deenie was going to brainwash Thea, even innocently, Thea had better get another playmate.

But she need not have worried.

"I asked her," Thea said with a nod. "She's not allowed."

Carla stiffened. "What?"

"Her daddy says she can't play with me." Her eyes began to fill with tears.

Carla hugged her and looked straight into her face. "But why?"

"'Cause Daddy salted Papa Jacques." Thea squirmed away, heading for the water.

Ellen's brow wrinkled. "Salted?"

"Insulted, probably," Carla said, translating.

"Well, Ellen, he really did insult him. Damn, it's all my fault. I wish I'd never seen that awful little man."

"Maybe she's wrong about Clarence," Carla suggested. "Maybe Deenie's mad because Thea made her lie. About the package Thea says Hoagie dropped."

"Why did she lie?" wondered Ellen.

"Dope."

"Dope?"

Carla stood up and moved to the railing, looking out at the approaching boat.

"These kids are taught not to see things, Ellen." When she turned back, Ellen saw a shadow of fear in her eyes. "At least if it drops from an airplane. Or..."

"Or what?"

"Or they and their parents are liable to wake up dead."

***

While William secured the dock lines, Mike and Jake conferred in the deckhouse, each with a bottle of St. Pauli Girl.