Anansi Boys

Daisy looked at Fat Charlie imploringly, and she nodded. Her hands were on the tablecloth, pressed flat.

Fat Charlie sat down.

“Hands where I can see them. Spread them on the table, just like hers.”

Fat Charlie obeyed.

Grahame Coats sniffed. “I always knew you were an undercover cop, Nancy,” he said. “An agent provocateur, eh? You come into my offices, set me up, steal me blind.”

“I never—” said Fat Charlie, but he saw the look in Grahame Coats’s eyes and shut up.

“You thought you were so clever,” said Grahame Coats. “You all thought I’d fall for it. That was why you sent the other two in, wasn’t it? The two at the house? Did you think I’d believe they were really from the cruise ship? You have to get up pretty early in the morning to put one over on me, you know. Who else have you told? Who else knows?”

Daisy said, “I’m not entirely sure what you’re talking about, Grahame.”

The singer was finishing “Some of These Days”: her voice was bluesy and rich, and it twined around them all like a velvet scarf.

Some of these days

You’re going to miss me honey

Some of these days

You’re gonna be so lonely

You’ll miss my huggin‘

You’ll miss my kissin‘…

“You’re going to pay the bill,” said Grahame. “Then I’ll escort you and the young lady out to the car. And we’ll go back to my place, for a proper talk. Any funny business, and I shoot you both. Capiche?”

Fat Charlie capiched. He also capiched who had been driving the black Mercedes that afternoon and just how close he had already come to death that day. He was beginning to capiche how utterly cracked Grahame Coats was and how little chance Daisy and he had of getting out of this alive.

The singer finished her song. The other people scattered around the restaurant clapped. Fat Charlie kept his hands palms-down on the table. He stared past Graham Coats at the singer, and, with the eye that Grahame Coats could not see, he winked at her. She was tired of people avoiding her eyes; Fat Charlie’s wink was extremely welcome.

Daisy said, “Grahame, obviously I came here because of you, but Charlie’s just—” She stopped and made the kind of expression you make when someone pushes a gun barrel deeper into your stomach.

Grahame Coats said, “Listen to me. For the purposes of the innocent bystanders here assembled, we’re all good friends. I’m going to put the gun into my pocket, but it will still be pointing at you. We’re going to get up. We’re going to my car. And I will—”

He stopped. A woman with a red spangly dress and a microphone was heading for their table with an enormous smile on her face. She was making for Fat Charlie. She said into her microphone, “What’s your name, darlin‘?” She put the microphone into Fat Charlie’s face.

“Charlie Nancy,” said Fat Charlie. His voice caught and wavered.

“And where you from, Charlie?”

“England. Me and my friends. We’re all from England.”

“And what do you do, Charlie?”

Everything slowed. It was like diving off a cliff into the ocean. It was the only way out. He took a deep breath and said it. “I’m between jobs,” he started. “But I’m really a singer. I sing. Just like you.”

“Like me? What kind of things you sing?”

Fat Charlie swallowed. “What have you got?”

She turned to the other people at Fat Charlie’s table. “Do you think we could get him to sing for us?” she asked, gesturing with her microphone.

“Er. Don’t think so. No. Absatively out of the question,” said Grahame Coats. Daisy shrugged, her hands flat on the table.