Tango Pirates
Sean Guillemette
“It’s the story that kills the teller. The story is the whole reason, the whole game. If you
get the story right, you get it all. If you get it wrong, your check bounces and so do you—off to
another town. I’ve got a story going right now and I’ll tell you, it’s a masterpiece. This thing is
going to cash in big.’
“I got this girl hooked and she’s a fat, old marlin. I don’t mean she’s fat or old, well, she’s
not young, but she’s a looker. She’s fat with dough I tell you and I got her hooked. She’s on my
line and she’s a beauty. She’s jumping in the air and the sun’s flashing off her gills so pretty. The
water is spraying everywhere and that tail is flapping and that bill—that bill is sharp. That bill is
a bayonet charging out of the water to gig me, but I’ve got my hook in her mouth. It’s in her deep
and one jerk of the line and I can send her back down into the water. So pay attention, because
tonight I reel her in, and it’s all on account of the story.”
I’d been scuttled up in my apartment for the last month burning cigarettes and drinking
booze on account of the Hilair widow strangling. The paper had been all over it, going so far as
to suspect that the murderer was a ‘tango pirate.’ The cops had trawled the afternoon dining halls
and tango parlors gathering names and addresses. I figured it was best to wait it out a bit and got
into the habit of calling my place the Jolly Roger. Benji couldn’t stand nesting up long; he
always had to keep moving. He refused to hole up and started looking for a new catch two weeks
ago.
He was the unofficial captain. He’d taught me everything I knew when it came to petty
thieving. He showed me how to pick pockets and simple locks, how to find leftovers at the dock,
and he introduced me to people interested in buying what we found. All the while he’d been
teaching me how to dance and sugar talk the ladies. Now he was showing me how to use that for
a real grift. With the law out in force there was so little competition he found an ideal woman
quick, and he was telling me all about her. I’d never seen him so excited.
“I met her last week at a new place over on Fifth and Broadway. Usual kind of place, they
serve lunch at eleven, but at one o’clock the band starts up. Thing is, tango hasn’t caught on over
there yet; so the keystone cops haven’t sniffed it out. I was scouting it out for a while and spotted
this lonely little siren sipping tea all by herself. I started up a gentle conversation, like we do, just
enough to get her talking so I could see where she stands.’
“She told me her husband is a fly boy fighting the Kaiser out in Germany. Right away I
caught her in a lie though. She said he’d been flying with the British for the last couple years and
that he’d been drafted, but I told her the draft only started a year ago. She got all flustered and
apologized. She said he’d volunteered, but she was too embarrassed to say so. What a sucker, but
that lie told me everything I needed to know. She was hooked on me.’
“You see, a lie is an investment, and you’ve got to be the banker. She told a little lie and
for what? It wasn’t going to profit her much. I was already talking to her. No, the bigger the lie
the more you’ll get out of it. Our stories are the biggest kinds of lie and they pay the biggest
dividends.’
“So I asked her how she could get by all alone for two years. She said her husband comes
18