The pub is crowded with reporters tonight when the stranger staggers through the front door. His thick arms wrap around a warped wooden box the size of an ice chest. It looks like a treasure chest from one of the junk shops on First Street, something the merchants fill with fake pirate's gold for the tourists.
       The stranger drops his box beside an empty stool at the bar, and then sags against the counter. I pour him a rum. Even from my position behind the counter, I can smell the stranger and his treasure chest--like last week's rot from the beaches on the north side, where tourists seldom go.
       Judging from the bristles on this stranger's face and the shadowy puffs of flesh pulling away from his red-streaked eyes, I don't think this guy can be one of the reporters. Reporters from all over the world have been tramping up our island these last few weeks, ever since the young bride--Angie Strather--went missing from her honeymoon. Reporters have been after me for barroom gossip like a pack of. . .well, sharks. At feeding time.
       This guy is far too silent, as if something is eating away at him inside.
       So when his deep-throated voice finally burps out of him, my hands stop polishing the 'rita glasses. He nods up at the poster taped to the mirror behind my head, the one that shows a tentacled monster from the deep, and says, "Lusca. What the hell is it." His voice, thick with our Caribbean rum, pours out too flat for a question.
       The truth is, no one knows the real answer.
       Although the drug traffickers who breeze through here think they know. They're the ones who tacked up these posters all over this chain of islands, offering a $10,000 reward for the Lusca's capture. Something is out there, they swear, getting in the way of their runners, messing with their business.
       The barroom gossipers, fishermen and tour guides by day, claim it's a giant octopus. And if they've had too much rum, then they swear the Lusca really exists. It's some prehistoric predator, who knows? Seventy-five feet long. Maybe more. One thing for sure, it's a monster of the deep. Comes out long enough to drag swimmers back to its lair. Not so good for any boating business.
       Or for tourists.
       Some say the Lusca got Angie Strather.
       "Lusca bait," Rum-bo the stranger says. "Tha's what I am."
       "Okay." I shrug and rack the clean glasses. It'll be closing time soon, and I want to go home. I've got an early date, swimming with the stingrays at dawn. My therapy.
       "You ever seen it?" Rum-bo says.
       "Sure," I lie. That's what he wants to hear. As long as the tourists bring their soggy dollars, I'll say whatever they want me to.
       Rum-bo doesn't look like a tourist, either. He's not slicked up enough from a daily shower, a Hard Rock tee-shirt, or a fancy label fanny pack. Instead, he's wearing rags the color of sand and the smell of seaweed.
       And the box.
       His biceps, which are bigger around than my swim-toned thighs, flinch as he lifts his rum glass, downs its contents, and then gives me a look like a stray dog that's lost its bone. "Where?"
       "Out there," I say, nodding my head toward the window. "Off the north shore."
       Most people would ask me what it looks like, not where. The truth is, what I saw that one time was just a disturbance in the water. I didn't get a close enough look to see anything more than that. The stingrays must've scared off whatever was there.
       He rolls my story around his palate for a while. "You din't really see it, didya?"
       "Sure, I did. Come back tomorrow, and I'll tell you all about it."
       "Tomorrow's too late." He glances down at the box at his feet.
       Too late. The words send a chill through me. It's always too late. Especially for northerners. It was damn near too late for me when I escaped from the toilet of my dead-end world back in corporate Chicago. I sigh and flick a glance at my wristwatch as my regulars, lined up beside Rum-bo the stranger, settle up their tabs. They slide off their stools, stretch, yawn a "night night" and stagger away.
       Rum-bo doesn't follow them. He probably doesn't see them, as low as he slumps. The unwashed tangles of his wiry hair fall like a greasy curtain over his arms. He's built like a football player, except his steam is all shot out. I can't tell how much brawn is left in those thick muscles, but I don't want to call my bouncer to find out.
       "We're closing." I wipe a towel across the varnished wood that reflects Rum-bo's sorry sight. "I want you to leave before I have to call the cops."
       You'd think, the way he guards that box at his feet, there's a real treasure inside.
       "Got nowhere to go."
       "Not my problem."
       His eyeballs roll up, showing me their red streaks. "You gotta help me."
       "Gimme one good reason."
       "I'll give you ten thousan' of 'em if you get me off this rock."
       "What's your rush?" The direction this conversation is moving makes my skin prickle. "Someone looking for you?" It's not just reporters swarming the islands. Cops, too. Cops make the drug traffickers nervous, and when they get nervous, life gets rough for the rest of us.
       He looks over his shoulder, but the bouncer has moved out of sight. He nods at the box at his feet. "You wanna know wha's inside here, don' you?"
       The dishtowel stops moving of its own accord, as if I'm rubbing a Ouija board. I so don't need the problem of Rum-bo, but if ten grand's at stake, what's five minutes?
       The stingrays will still be there waiting for me another day, but I am not so sure about this guy. I pour two shots, lock the front door, shut off all the lights except for the one hanging over the counter, and sit down on the stool beside him. The bar fades away as he tells his story.

        Him and Angie weren't married yet, Jimmy told the bartender chick. But they were gonna get married, he swore.
       Why would he kill Angie?
        Everyone thought he'd killed her. Jimmy didn't have to understand the local pidgin bullshit to know what they were thinking. Murder one. They locked him up in a stinking cell to make it clear what they thought.
       Him and Angie had come here to vacation in paradise. A little honeymoon first, then wedding after.
       Sweet Jesus. He was shaking all over with cold sweat. The friggin temperature never dropped below a hundred here.
       Then a voice whispered at him. "Hey, stupid."
       He looked around his cell. Stone walls. Shadows so thick that they swallowed him like he was in some beast's belly. Stone floor beneath his bare feet. Hell, the cops dragged him off the beach before he had a chance to dress up. What was this place, a cave?
       "Out here," said the voice.
       He squinted at the shadows beyond the bars of his cell. One of them shifted slightly. Maybe it was his head swimming.
       "What do you want?" he said, his own voice a growl. Ten hours locked up in here with only a piss pool in one corner. Some paradise. Maybe he was hearing voices in his head.
       "Got a job for you."
       "Yeah? What makes you think I'm interested?"
       "You got something better to do?"
       He wished.
       "You want out of there, don't you?"
       "You got any great ideas, Einstein?"
       "In fact, I do. But you got to swim. You know how to do that, don't you?"
       "So what?"
       "That's how you got rid of the girl."
       "I had nothing to do with that. It was an accident."
       "Sure. That's what they all say."
       He shook from the depths of his gut, all the way out through his pores. "Look. Who the hell are you? And where the hell are you?"
       "You can call me Einstein. I know the layout of these rocks. I know the schedule of the guards. That's all you got to know. Now, if you want out of there, here's what you got to do. There's a pool over there, see it? It's deeper than you think. You got to dive in. You'll find a passage down there that leads to the sea. Follow it, and my partner will be waiting outside on the rocks for you."
       Dive into that piss pool? Was his subconscious trying to get rid of him for what he didn't--couldn't--do?
       As if in response to Jimmy's doubt, something gurgled in the shadows of his cell. Currents swished up from the sea.
       Sure, what the hell? He didn't have anything to lose hanging around here in the shadows. No one had even brought him a bowl of shit disguised as food rations. No one had visited to torment him with false promises. Rights. Hope. A lawyer? Who were they kidding?
       Jimmy took a deep breath, pinched his nose, and plunged in. Feet first. He wasn't stupid. He wasn't going to crack his head open because of some voice in his head, telling him to dive.
       Goddamn.
       It was some sort of bottomless pit, all right. He sank. And then kept on sinking, as if he had sand in his shorts, weighing him down. He didn't want to think about the scum skimming the surface of the piss pool. That slick washed up his body as the water level rose, swallowing his legs, his chest, his shoulders. His nose sank beneath the surface of the water, and still his feet did not touch bottom.
       He thrashed. His feet searched for something. Anything. But all he managed to do was scrape off a layer of skin. He must've done more, probably drew blood, because next he felt the sting of saltwater burning the sores on his ankles. Or maybe those injuries were left over from what happened ten hours before.
       Ten hours was only his best guess. It could've been more.
       Then the currents kicked in, bashing him about, like he was a dead fish caught in a whirlpool.
       Was this what happened to Angie? She was dead somewhere, her body washed out to sea. Or maybe hung up in the rocks of the craggy coast of this little island paradise hell-hole. Like Jimmy was about to become. Dead.
       He struggled, but the current held him in its vise. Saltwater flushed up into his nose as his feet scraped against rock. His chest turned to fire. Blackness sucked into his head. The spinning made him dizzy. Or maybe it was from holding his breath too long. He could see the headlines now: ex-football jock drowns in a pool of piss. Wouldn't the assholes in the league love to see that? Serve him right for tackling a referee, they'd say, but hell, he'd got in the way. Jimmy couldn't help it. It was an accident!
       Fury fueled him. Who was he, a pussy? He hadn't done all those reps in his workouts for nothing.
       He clenched his muscles and heaved himself away from the rock, head-butting against the current. Not much different from running with the ball. Then he broke free from the pack, and he lunged toward the goal. He choked. Gagged. Coughed a gallon of water into his lungs, then spit it out again. He clawed his way onto rocks and finally sucked in air.
       "Up here," said a husky voice from the top of the rocky cliff.
       Einstein and his partner had just sprung him from that cave that passed as the local jail.
       Why?
       Jimmy scaled the cliff, easier than the climbing wall back at training camp. It felt like spikes gouging him as he pulled himself up. By the time he crested the top, sliding onto his belly, his muscles burned. He gasped and sputtered. "What do you guys want with me?"
       "Pu-lease." It was a woman's voice.
       "Am I supposed to thank you?" Jimmy said, raising up on one elbow. Pain splintered through his arm. He shook water from his head and blinked, but his vision blurred. All he saw was the dark of night. A shadowy shape bent over him. Wind and mist tickled his bare flesh. He felt stronger fast, riding the surge of his adrenaline high. "Who the hell are you?"
       She tackled him from behind, shoving his face into the rocks. Instinctively, he curled into a fetal ball, but hands grappled his arms, twisted them behind his back, bound them together with something stiff, twine maybe. Or wire.
       "What the hell?"
       Just as the blur was beginning to clear from his eyes, revealing the shape of his attacker--or rescuer?--a bag scrunched down over his face. He struggled, flopping like a beached bass, feeling as stupid as if he'd been reeled in.
       He had.
       "Who the hell are you?" His lips got tangled in some kind of scratchy fabric.
       The broad hauled him to his feet. Oily smelling fingers pushed under his head sack and stuffed a wad in his mouth. Tasted like used sock.
       His handler pushed him from behind. He moved, all right. Face first into the rocks again. The sack cushioned his skin, but this time his nose broke. Hell, it needed a little reconstruction. He snorted blood.
       "You busted me out of jail just to beat me up?" That's what Jimmy meant to say, but it came out sounding like grunts and growls, thanks to the gag.
       "Shut up," the woman said, hauling him up to his feet again with an impressive display of strength. For a broad. "Get moving. And this time, see if you can stand on your own two feet."
       The farther away from the jagged cliff that she steered him, the turf turned to hard-pack, sprinkled with rocks that stubbed his toes. Weeds clawed against his legs, and thorns speared his feet.
       They finally stumbled onto level ground, but it felt like he was walking barefoot on a bed of nails. Gravel. Then something clicked. The broad grabbed him and shoved him forward. He fell onto a vinyl seat, and then he recognized the tinny sound of a car door slamming shut behind him.
       A joy ride, swell.
       Nothing happened, and Jimmy wondered if he'd dozed off.
       Then a faraway sound of crunching gravel tickled his ears.
       "What took you so long?" said the woman from the other side of the car door.
       "I'm here now," said a man's voice from farther away. Einstein. "I got him out, didn't I? Let's go."
       The car shook as they must've climbed in. Up front, since no one brushed against him. The engine rattled awake.
       "I told you to get that muffler fixed," Einstein shouted over the roar of the car. "Hell, you might as well wake up everyone on the island. Tell the world it's us that done it."
       "It's not us," she said, "and it's not my car. Fix the damn thing yourself. You going to drive, or you want to stick around here until they come looking for us?"
       "Hell."
       The car lurched forward, throwing Jimmy against the seat. It seemed like hours that they drove. This island wasn't so big. Either they circled round it three or four times, or else Jimmy passed out. For all he knew, they could've ended up back where they'd started from. Finally, the car stopped. The engine cut off, and silence took over. It was the kind of silence when you start to fade out after being tackled too hard. One of them dragged him out of the seat. Something poked into his back. He didn't think it was a fingernail.
       "You guys get your rocks off beating up the tourists this way?" Jimmy said, but his garbled sounds didn't do the words justice.
       Justice. Where was Angie's justice? He'd watched her go down, and he'd frozen.
       The poker poked his back again.
       Soon, he stumbled up a few steps and fell--okay, dropped from the shove--into a chair. Light seeped through the weave of his head sack. He thrashed again, hoping to get across his pissed-offness. They must've got it because the sack ripped off from his head.
       He blinked. Choked on his saliva. Or maybe it was blood.
       "The Lusca," said the woman, drilling Jimmy with coach-mean eyes. She looked like a jock with boobs. "Ever hear of that?"
       Einstein, skinny as rebar and just as tough, slapped her. "Shut up."
       Her oiled muscles quivered, and her voice snapped nasal. "Shouldn't he know? He's goin' after it for us."
       "You got that backwards," Einstein said, slapping her again. "Lusca got a taste of his old lady, and now it wants more. He's gonna bring Lusca to us."
       Lusca bait, that's what Jimmy was.
       Next morning Einstein and the broad hauled Jimmy outside. No head sack this time. No need. Their house was a shack, sitting alone at one end of the island. They pushed him over the edge of a cliff, and they slid down to the rocky shore. Einstein stuffed Jimmy into a rubbery suit, then clamped a cable round one ankle. The broad puttered with tanks in a dinghy tied up there.
       "Hey," Jimmy said, "I've never dived before."
       "Don't worry," Einstein said, "you'll catch on fast."
       Jimmy needed a Hail Mary.
       So down he went. It wasn't so bad. He'd watched how they did it on TV. He drew his first breath through the thing in his mouth, and he didn't drown. Tiny bubbles from his breathing rose to the surface like a trail. He could see the bottom of their boat floating above his head. He swam harder, putting some distance between him and them. But there was that damned cable. And the boat, always staying a little ways behind where he was.
       He needed a new plan. If there was one underwater cave, then there was bound to be another. Like the one he'd escaped through from the jail. All he had to do was find another cave that would lead him to the surface. As pockmarked as the rocky cliff was, there had to be another way out of there. He could saw the cable off between his strength and a jagged rock.
       But when he started poking around inside the holes in the rocky wall underwater, something lashed out at him. Like a giant rubber band snapping at him. Or a tentacle. Maybe one of the tentacles of the Lusca.
       Shit, he thought, their monster wasn't just a story. This was real.
       He thought he was going to shit his pants. He shot backwards, flipped like a maniac away from there as fast as he could go. The water curdled around him. That creature was chasing him.
       He was doing it again. Running away.
       Like the pussy he was when him and Angie went out swimming that day. She got tangled up in something, seaweed? He saw her wave one arm, waving for help. He heard her gurgle. All he could think of was that he didn't want to get caught, too. He'd never get his career back if he got caught. Her scream muffled through her snorkel and sounded like ripping rubber. That sound haunted his dreams ever since.
       All along, he'd been running away. Running from the truth, maybe. He'd been running all his life. Angie hadn't solved his problems with the league. She'd only made them worse. Now look at him. He was still running. He was nothing more than yellow-bellied. Some football hero.
       Well, he must've led the Lusca toward Einstein and the broad, 'cause next thing he knew, something long, pointy, and sharp, slid through the water past his cheek. Looked like an anorexic torpedo, and it was headed straight toward the beast that was fast approaching his butt.
       Then the water boiled up around him as the Lusca rose to the surface. Like some exploding volcano, the creature erupted past him like a waterspout with whips. It lifted the boat clean out of the water. Jimmy waited for everything to crash back on top of him, shoving him to the seabed. And the end.
       But it wasn't Jimmy's time yet. The Lusca wrapped its tentacles tight around the dinghy and dove under, racing away. The Lusca, Einstein, and the broad all disappeared. Down into the depths of the sea. Jimmy survived. Free.
       But wait.
       Something shot back at him from their wake. At first he thought it was a piece of debris off the shredded boat. But no. It was this box.
       Jimmy grabbed it. Almost dropped it, 'cause a sucker pad from one of the Lusca's tentacles was stuck to its side.

       "You can still see the mark it left," Rum-bo says, all sobered up from telling his story. "Right here. Like it sucked off a layer of wood. See?"
       I nod, but it looks to me like a rum stain.
       "That's how come I know this box belonged to the Lusca. It's the treasure he guarded. And everyone wants it. It's the reason everyone's after the Lusca."
       "Sure." I glance at my wristwatch and stifle a yawn.
       "Don't you want to know what it is?" His face twists up, and his eyes dart back and forth.
       "Okay," I say. "What's inside?"
       "Angie's ring finger."
       "No way."
       "I know it's hers, 'cause it's still got that silver ring we bought in Mexico off a beach vendor."
       "You saying the Lusca's treasure is a woman's finger?" Oh man, I only think I've heard everything. I stand up from the stool, whisk the shot glasses away.
       "It's a trophy. From its victims."
       "A box that size," I say, "could hold an entire body."
       He shrugs. "Maybe it did. And she got away…"
       As I wash the glasses, I watch the way his shoulders slump, his spine sags. He looks like a victim himself. He looks the way I felt before bailing from Chicago. "What about the ten grand?" I finally say.
       "You can have it," he says, sliding off his stool. "It doesn't matter no more. It may look like her finger, but really, it ain't nothing more than chicken shit. The Lusca dragged Angie away, and I was too chicken to help her. There's only one thing to do now. Go after her. Be a man."
       The box captures me, the way the island did when it first pulled me here, the way the stingrays do every morning, and Rum-bo's words don't register until a couple beats after he says them.
       I run after him. "Wait! You can't go out there." She's already dead. And he will be, too. There is no ten grand.
       He doesn't hear me. He's already gone.
       I think about calling the cops. But first. . .
       I turn back to the box.
       The lid creaks when I lift it.
       The box is empty.