Under Cover of Daylight by James W. Hall

He’d called her up at home and said he wanted her to guide. Wouldn’t be persuaded that yellowtailing was off. Very slow. Everything on the reef had been slow for most of June. Some Guatemalan freighter had run aground on Alligator Reef, and in the weeks that the tugs had been pulling at her, the water had gotten so milky all up and down the reef line, the fishing had died.
    She told him no. She wouldn’t take his money for just a boat ride. She was a billfish guide anyway. No meat fishing unless it was for Thorn and her, groceries. But with charters, it was strictly catch and release, except for the occasional trophy fish.
    The Cuban wouldn’t let go of it. Said he was down from New Jersey, came all this way to catch his favorite fish.
    “No,” she’d said. And she gave him the names of a couple of others she knew could use the work.
    He’d said, “I want the best.” And she asked him right back who had referred him to her.
    “I forget her name,” the Cuban had said. “But I have yellowtail once a long ago, and I never forget it. It’s a savory fish, the best. I like the best.”
    “Try one of those others. One of them’ll find you fish.”
    “It was Roxy. Or like that. Said she was related. In Key West, where we eat breakfast.”
    “I have a daughter, Ricki.”
    “This is the one, then,” he said, sounding in a hurry now to get past this name business.
    “Ricki recommended me?” she said. Not like her, not at all.
    “Say you always get fish. Yellowtail, anything.”
    “Well.” Weakening.
    “We’ll not be trouble. Pay in front. Don’t worry about us.”
    “All right,” she’d said, only because of Ricki. ’Cause she wanted to see who these guys were Ricki would recommend her to, after all this time. Even a little touched that Ricki would give her name. Yes, touched. Otherwise, she’d already begun building a case against this guy.
    She put the chum bag in, sprinkled some elbow macaroni overboard. Poured a half gallon of menhaden oil over. Watching the slick spread across the calm surface. More whispering, the big one hunched over his companion, a real speech this time. Neither of them particularly interested in the chumming.
    When she was finished, she turned and motioned at the big guy, who was looking over the side, holding on to the rail. She asked if he was OK.
    “He is unused to being on the water,” said the little, skinny one. His mirror glasses full of moonlight. His hook nose the shape of a shark fin.
    “Where does he usually fish?”
    “I understand what you mean”—this with a trace of José Jiménez. “He is catching fish most times before from bridges.”
    “Tell him if it gets any calmer than this, you could putt on it.”
    The short, curly-haired one spoke out loud to the big man. It wasn’t Spanish, not Cuban, not Puerto Rican, nothing remotely Spanish. She’d heard the real thing all her life. This was something else.
    She spilled some more macaroni onto the flat sea. Hands sweaty now. Not concentrating on the path the chum was taking. Eyes scanning, searching out lights. The two of them were watching her when she turned. She couldn’t read their looks. The little one was wiping his hands on the seat of his dark pants. Then he clasped his hands and stretched them inside out.
    He said to her, “All that shit in the water, doesn’t it bring in sharks?” He’d taken off his mirror glasses, was holding them in his hand.
    “It brings in yellowtail first,” she said, shifting the bucket of glass minnow slush to her right hand. She felt a queasy shake begin in her stomach, sending a wobble into her legs.
    “But the sharks,” he said, smiling now with his eyes. The moon shining up his earring. “They come around, too. I want to see that. I like sharks. I like the idea of sharks.”
    The big one was staring at him.
    “Let’s catch us a goddamn shark. Forget this yellowtail shit.” His accent gone. Just American, plain, flat, maybe Ohio, maybe Indiana. It was a