Personally, I’d grown incrementally more certain there was nothing to find. I’d believed it right up until Tomlinson discovered the ancient tusk. During our half-hour dive, we’d done a random search of the perimeter, circling farther and farther from shore.
No sign of a plane.
Nor did we find the human detritus—beer bottles, old tires, fishing line—typical of such places. One exception: a crumpled Marlboro pack, suspended in silt. Otherwise, the place was pristine. It was a pleasant discovery that confirmed the lake’s inaccessibility.
It wasn’t until I backed away to give Will room to inspect the tusk that I saw something else that was man-made. Something that changed my mind about the lake . . . and the plane wreck.
Maybe.
I had glanced down to make certain my fins were clear of the bottom.
I didn’t want to murk the water. And there it was—proof we weren’t the first humans to breach the lake’s surface.
It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. On the bottom, lying in the sand, was another gold coin. Our fins had fanned the silt away. The coin was as yellow as molten brass. When I got a closer look, I saw that it was similar to the two coins Arlis had already found.
Diving to retrieve the coin is what saved me. It lured me away from the ledge. Bad luck, good luck—it’s all random. Because the kid and Tomlinson were focused on the ivory artifact, they didn’t follow me.
A moment later, I heard the ball-bearing clatter of rock on rock. One million years of limestone wall came cascading down.
As I raced ahead of the murk, I was already berating myself, thinking,
How stupid! How very damn stupid!
It wasn’t just because I had allowed Will to jam his hand into the delicate limestone. It was the whole situation that I regretted.
I, too, had made a basic mistake. Instead of following my instincts, I had allowed myself to fall under the influence of friends. One friend in particular: Arlis Futch.
TWO
THREE DAYS EARLIER, ON THE WARMEST, MANGROVE-
SULTRY February afternoon in recent memory, Arlis had come clomping up my laboratory steps wearing boots, a coat, dressed for snow, and told me that, after years of searching, he’d finally found something very, very damn valuable. But it took us thirty minutes of verbal sparring before he finally told me what he’d found and where he had found it.
“It’s in a sinkhole,” he said. “A little bitty lake that’s shaped like a drop of water. It’s way the hell off the road, so nobody goes there.
Ever,
from the way it looks.”
Typical of the man.
Arlis is a talker, but, when he has something important, he measures out the information at a speed proportionate to the worthiness of his audience. The audience doesn’t have to be interested—and I wasn’t. Arlis kept talking, anyway.
The fisherman began his story obliquely, saying, “There’s a cold front coming. Feel it? If it weren’t for this norther blowin’ in tonight, we’d both be rich men by Tuesday. Friday, the latest.” He tossed it out there and let it hang.
It was a Saturday, Sanibel Island, on the Gulf Coast of Florida. I replied, “Weather radio says the front arrives tomorrow, late. I was just listening.”
“They’re wrong—as usual,” Arlis had snapped. After several seconds of silence, he returned to the subject of getting rich, saying, “You can’t comprehend the amount of money I’m discussing, so I don’t expect you to thank me now.”
“Then I won’t,” I said. I was fine-tuning an aquarium, just beginning a new project. Sea horses. It wasn’t research, really. The sea horses were a tangent inquiry. Animals of a more academic interest were in two large tanks nearby: electric eels from the Amazon, via some pet-shop hobbyist who had released them into a ditch east of Naples.
Arlis told me, “It’s part of my nature to share with my friends when I come across a big chunk of luck. Most folks would expect something in return. Not me, it’s just the way I am. But down the road, a man of character would want to return the favor.”
Arlis has a knack for shading innocuous remarks with subtle criticism. We are all manipulators, sly in our methods, but the man uses guilt as weaponry—a device I find particularly irritating. I didn’t look up, and I took a measured interest in showing no interest as I peered into the aquarium, watching four freshly netted sea horses adjust to changes in salinity and the absence of tidal current.
“You act like I’m interruptin’. Like you’re too busy to listen.”
I replied, “Acting’s on a long list of things I’m not good at.”
“But you heard me.
Rich,
I’m telling you. Both of us. Your hippie friend, too, if he’s willin’ to work for it. We can all kick back and retire.”
My hippie friend is Tomlinson, a middle-aged oddity, part sinner, part saint, a Ph.D. brain coded with a sailor’s sensibilities, all hardwired inside a scarecrow’s body.
I asked Arlis, “Which is it? A Spanish galleon or an investment scheme? I’d guess the track, but I know how you feel about horses and gambling.”
“Only thing stupider than a horse,” Arlis replied, “is a man dumb enough to bet on something dumber than he is.”
I smiled, filing it away for later, and replied, “I’m out of guesses,” then returned my attention to the aquarium, noting the balanced mobility of sea horses as they ascended and descended, erect as chess pieces. Four weightless knights powered by a hummingbird blur of fins.
Arlis baited me, saying, “You couldn’t guess in a month of Sundays.”
I replied, “Then I won’t waste my time.”
I was fiddling with the aquarium pump, having trouble with the flow valve. Wild sea horses are more fragile than the pet-store variety. They require a tranquil environment and no surprises. The man watched me open a yellow legal pad and calculate a stress-free rate of water exchange:
50 × 4 = 200 × 1.75 = 350 gph.
Then he endured several more minutes of silence as I began replacing the large pump with two smaller pumps. Finally, he lost patience.
“Dang it, pay attention. This is big! I found something most men quit looking for years ago. But I finally figured it out. You’re the first I’ve told. How you figure it’d feel to have a hundred million dollars in the bank? Maybe five hundred million, depends on gold prices. I’m talkin’ about
bona fide rich.
”
He pronounced it “bone-a-FI-DEE,” a man with enough swamp and saw grass in his ancestry to speak with an authentic Florida Cracker accent.
“Gold,” I said. “You think you found a Spanish wreck. I was right.”
“Nope. Not the pirate treasure variety, anyway. I ain’t no schoolboy dreamer and I ain’t senile. I’m sure about this one, Doc.”
I stood, removed the glasses that were tied around my neck on fishing line and used microscope tissue to clean the lenses.
“Just like you’re sure about the cold front? VHF weather says it gets here tomorrow afternoon. You say tonight. Usually, faith and fact don’t have much in common.”
The man touched the zipper of his coat, then produced leather gloves from the pockets. “I’m right, you’ll see. You’re gonna need that new wood-burning stove of yours. By sunset, the wind will start to gust. Four hours from now, it’ll feel like Canada’s pissing on us with a cold hose. Nothing to slow that north wind but the Georgia border and a couple of parking lots at Disney World.”
I turned to the windows above the dissecting table where chemicals and test tubes were lined on shelves. The sky was Caribbean blue. The bay was silver where clear water met mangroves along the shoreline. It was eighty degrees and calm. Pelicans crashed bait near an oyster bar where—bizarrely, but not unexpectedly—my boat-bum neighbor, Tomlinson, was sloshing in the shallows, wearing baggy Thai fishing pants, no shirt, a bucket hanging from the crook of his arm. He was as animated as a kid collecting Easter eggs.
Tomlinson was harvesting oysters for dinner, I decided. I made a mental note to pick a few fresh limes when I walked to the marina and buy a couple of more quarts of beer.
“Arlis,” I said, “I’m working. If you want to tell me what you found, tell me. If not, there’s one last beer in the fridge and plenty of books to read until I’m done. But take it outside.”
“Doc, you’re always in a hurry. You ain’t changed a gnat’s nut since you was a boy. You call this work? Now, mullet fishing’s
real
work, not playing around with little bitty fish to be sold to some laboratory or Yankee college professor.”
He was referring to my little company, Sanibel Biological Supply—purveyor of marine specimens and consultant for hire when a worthwhile project comes along.
I turned to him and saw that he was unzipping his coat, sweat beading on his forehead, as he came closer to the aquarium. “Man, it’s warm in here,” he added. “Don’t your ceiling fans work?”
I gave him a closer look. “Are you feeling okay?”
His face was flushed, and I noticed that his hands vibrated with what may have been a neurological tremor. Arlis is seventy, but the man is fitter than most thirty-year-olds.
“I’m fine, just fine,” he replied.
I told him, “Shed a few layers of that snowsuit—if you’re willing to risk frostbite. But do it outside. Don’t make me ask again.”
In reply, I received a pointed look, his rheumy gray eyes huge behind thick glasses, a young man alive in his brain, still in command of the aging body.
“You tellin’ me to leave?”
“I’m telling you I can’t talk about getting rich until I’m done doing what I get paid to do.”
“No need to get mouthy about it. A week from now, you’ll be wondering how a man could be so generous—that is, if I don’t get pissed off and march my ass right out of here.”
I replied, “Unless you messed with the bolt, Arlis, the door’s not locked. I wouldn’t want to be the one to stand between you and happiness.”
The man glared at me for a moment. “Well, if you did, it wouldn’t be the first time, Dr. Marion D. Ford!”
I knew what the man was referring to. It was a women whom we had both known and admired—and possibly loved, in our respective fashions—but then she had died. I sighed. I shook my head. I said, “Jesus, Arlis, let it go.”
“I didn’t bring her up—you did.”
I replied by returning my attention to the sea horses, suddenly envious of a species that is blessed by the inability to speak.
Arlis is a variety of old-time fisherman seldom encountered these days, possibly because, on the Mangrove Coast, men as irritating and assertive as Arlis often died suddenly while being choked, or shot, or left behind to drown.
I like the man but in small doses. I appreciate the fact that he’s among the last of a very few people whose toughness reflects the Florida biota by virtue of having been forged by its hardships.
Arlis continued staring at me for a long moment, before saying, “I found his treasure plane. Batista’s treasure plane.”
I said,
“What?”
He said it again.
Suddenly, the man had my attention.
“This isn’t the first time someone’s told me that,” I replied, trying to recover from my surprise.
“It’s the first time
I
ever said it,” Arlis replied. “I suppose now you’re gonna tell me that don’t make a difference. This is
me
talking, Doc. By God, I found it. I’m not going to beg you to listen.”
Arlis was right. It was different coming from him. He was talking about a plane commandeered by Fulgencio Batista, the man who had ruled Cuba before Castro seized power.
Arlis paused, taking his time as he gauged my interest. “You know the story. I can see it.”
I said, “I’ve heard rumors.”
“This ain’t rumor. I know people who know people.”
“Everyone does. And everyone has a treasure story. They print wreck sites on restaurant place mats. It’s what boat salesmen talk about before they reach for the contract.”
“Not men who’ve lived on this coast long as I have. I’m discussing fact, not faith.”
The old man let that sink in, before adding, “Batista was a thief—just like the Castro brothers. I’ve heard he was an even worse killer. Nastier about it, anyway. When there was a man he particularly hated, I heard he’d march them to the zoo outside Miramar and toss them in a cage at feeding time.”
Arlis was watching my face, disappointed possibly that I didn’t react. So he added, “While the prisoner was still alive, of course.”
“Waste not, want not,” I said.
“You think I’m joking?”
“No. I’m thinking about the flow rate of this pump. I think the impeller’s bad.”
“It could be true,” Arlis said.
“Yeah,” I answered, “the impeller’s usually the first thing to go.”
“No! I’m talking about ol’ Batista. He had a special fondness for that zoo. That’s what some of the marlin fishermen told me, anyway, down there in Cojimar, before the Castros took over. Batista grew up poor. Like a lot of poor kids, he liked bright, fancy things—including circuses. Some of the animals for that zoo, he picked out personally and had them flown back to Cuba. You know—when he was traveling around different parts of the world, a very important man all of a sudden after being nothing but a broke-poor cane cutter.”
As I worked, I let my expression tell him,
I’ve never heard that one before.
Arlis responded, “People forget what Batista was like. They forget that a lot of folks hated him.”
“That’s true,” I said.
“He knew he’d lost control of Cuba. He knew the Castro brothers were coming and that he had to leave the island—or maybe they’d cart him down to the zoo, his own self, come feeding time. But Fulgencio Batista was as greedy as he was mean, and he wasn’t about to leave that island empty-handed.”
I knew more than Arlis realized about Cuban history, but I asked, “What did he take?”
“Before he ran, he robbed the fanciest museums in Havana. He robbed the national treasury, too. In December 1958, four cargo planes loaded with art and gold—mostly gold bars and coins—left Cuba for Tampa. Only three planes landed. The heaviest-loaded plane disappeared. That pilot’s last radio transmission is in Coast Guard records, if you know where to look. The pilot called a few Maydays, then he said, ‘We’re goin’ down. We’re goin’ down in the water’—or something close to that—and that’s the last anyone ever heard.”