By the time she reached the island of Marathon, she had decided to call the man back this evening. The mystery… the enigma of it all… was just too much for her to ignore. She’d call, let him tell her what was sure to be his outrageous story, then tell him goodbye. At least that’s what she had thought. Much later she’d realize that was the moment that would forever change her life.
Slick with a sheen of sweat, and a pumping, healthy heart rate, she arrived back at the center near dusk. Chelsea had locked up. Megan punched in the keypad code at the back door and the lock chunked open. She walked in and grabbed the towel from her locker.
Her cellphone beeped, announcing she had a voicemail. She recognized the number from earlier; this Troy Bodean—whoever he was—had called back.
“Megan,” —the message was a bit garbled but understandable, probably the storm beginning to interfere with cellphones— “I think we got off on the wrong foot this morning. I didn’t mean to be so cryptic, but there are a lot of people who could be very dangerous regarding the information I wanted to discuss with you.”
The man paused for a second, as if deciding whether or not he should actually share his information. He seemed to have a nice voice, but it was difficult to tell with the bad reception.
“I’ve seen something in the water. Best I can tell is, it might be a cannon or something. I’ve done some checking, and based on location and what’s been found already, it’s what I think might be a Spanish Galleon, the Señora de la Muerta. I wanted to talk to you about what might be on that ship and possibly helping me dive the wreck. So… um… if you’re interested… well, we could meet at a public place, you choose when and where, and talk about it?” He paused again, apparently unsure what else to say. “Yeah, so… call me back, bye.”
Megan closed her phone. “Señora de la Muerta?” she said aloud to no one. “The Lady of the Dead?” she translated.
She wondered what sailor in his right mind would get on such a ship; hello and welcome aboard the Hindenburg Titanic. She had never heard of it, but she knew there were hundreds of ships lost in these waters… many of which were loaded with gold and treasure and headed back from the new world.
A quick internet search told her that Señora de la Muerta was thought to be an empty ship that accompanied other ships on long journeys and served as a holding tank for sailors that died at sea but who didn’t want to be dumped overboard. Usually this privilege was reserved only for ranking officials on the ship, officials who would be stored with their personal belongings… often gold and jewelry.
“Ah,” —she shook her head— “so you’re after their gold, Mr. Bodean.”
She clicked off her computer and texted Troy a message.
–Sloppy Joe’s tomorrow at noon.
A minute later she received his reply.
–You bet.
4
Sloppy Joe’s
Megan walked into Sloppy Joe’s and scanned the bar for Troy. It was one of the larger bars on Duval Street and almost always had a crowd of people sitting at the bar and the surrounding tables. A giant portrait of Ernest Hemingway hung at the back of the stage; Sloppy Joe’s claimed he liked to frequent their bar. If he witnessed the dance club atmosphere they turned on at night now, she thought, he’d never set foot in the place.
Large garage doors lined the front and side and were now opened to the street. A longhaired kid was strumming on a guitar on the stage under a sign that said, Smile, you’re on Sloppy Joe’s Web Cam. That’s when it hit her… she had no idea what he looked like. Suddenly, the bar’s open-air front seemed a little too open, and she felt very vulnerable. She turned around to leave.
“Megan?” It was a smooth voice that sounded a bit salty, but somehow sounded handsome. She wasn’t sure how she knew that, but it was somewhere between Matthew McConaughey’s Texas drawl and George Clooney’s sophisticated debonair clip, something she hadn’t picked up during his phone calls with her. She took a deep breath and turned around.
He was only about five-foot-ten, but athletically built and not too broad. He looked to be around forty, and his face was deeply tanned with the raccoon-eyed sunglasses line all too common among seafarers on the island. His eyes were blue, but not piercing, or the blue described in so many novels as ocean or azure, or any cliché like that. His black, slightly salt and peppered hair looked like its only comb was attached to the ends of his hand and might not have been washed today. But he grinned, and showed that contrary to some of his outward appearance he did take some care of himself, with straight, clean teeth… something she always looked for in a man. And on top of his head, he wore a somewhat cheesy straw cowboy hat with a peacock feather stuck in the back… but it worked for him, gave him a little bit of Bret Michaels’ flair. In short, she thought he was pretty cute.
She shook her head suddenly. Looked for in a man?? Pretty cute?? What am I thinking here? This man was basically a pirate threatening to rape the shipwreck of the Señora de la Muerta. She gritted her teeth and walked toward him, determined not to like him.
He shook her hand and slid a chair back from his table for her. There were two waters, one with lemon and one with lime, and one tequila shot in front of him and a menu at each place setting.
“Well,” Troy said, “I know you’ve done some checking, and I’m sure you know what the Muerta is all about.”
Megan nodded.
“And I’m sure you think I intend to plunder the gold and leave the rest to rot away the local ecology,” he added.
She took a sip of her lemon water. “I’m sure that’s exactly what you intend to do,” she said, trying to muster some acid in her tone.
He reached into his shirt pocket, took out her business card, and flipped it onto the table in front of her. She could see the idealistic, straight out of college optimism oozing from the card.
“And you think I’d try to hire someone like you if that’s what I intended to do?” he asked.
Troy plucked the lime from the rim of his water glass, poured the tequila quickly down his throat, and hid his grimace with a quick squeeze of the lime.
“Give me twenty-four hours to convince you I’m on the level,” he said, leaning forward, “and if I don’t, you’ll never hear from me again.”
She peered into his eyes, trying to detect what crazy intentions this guy might have and whether or not he was feeding her a load of bull to get her alone with him. She stared hard, but he stayed relaxed. His smile seemed genuine, and he didn’t appear to have an unseemly bone in his body. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt strongly that he was on the up and up. She did promise herself to be cautious though.
“Fair enough,” she said. “Twenty-four-hours, and I’m done.”
“That’s what you think,” he said, and grinned, “Come on, I want to show you something.”
He stood up and ushered her toward the door. The bartender noticed him leaving and rushed out from behind the bar.
“Troy, the tequila?” He held up a receipt.
“Put it on my tab,” Troy called back as he hurried Megan out the door of Sloppy Joe’s.
The bartender crumpled the receipt and tossed it into a nearby trash can.
Megan allowed Troy to lead her down Duval Street toward the tourist district. Soon they approached a building at the corner of Whitehead and Greene that had a giant anchor outside the front door. The overhead sign declared it to be Mel Fisher’s Maritime Heritage Museum.
“No doubt you’ve been here before?” Troy said and pointed to the building.
Megan nodded.
“People died to bring up the things in that building,” he started, “and the irony is that none of it is really worth that much… without the historical context.”
He took a step in front of her and turned to face her. “Sure, there are a couple million dollars’ worth of gold and jewels in there, but the story of raising her and the story of her demise is where the real money is... could be billions.”
She did nothing to hi
de her doubt. “Billions?”
“Yes, I want the money,” he said and tilted his head to the side, “but the money I want is walking in and out of that door over there.”
He pointed again to the stream of tourists exiting the museum, with shirts and books and replica coins. This was definitely sounding a little far-fetched.
“Okay, darlin’, maybe not billions, but look, I’m offering you the chance to help me bring the Muerta up right, and tell her story as faithfully as you can.”
She took a long silent look into his eyes… maybe they were a bit piercing.
“Let me show you one more thing, and then I’ll rest my case. “He took her hand and led her down Whitehead Street toward Tortuga Adventures; nothing is very far away on Key West.
Troy jerked open the door of the sales office, startling R.B., who was on the phone and busily selling tourist luncheons to Fort Jefferson. He grabbed a set of dangling keys from a pegboard just inside the door.
“Back in a bit.”
R.B. held up a finger in a wait just a second gesture. Troy ignored that and closed the door to the office. He motioned toward the yellow and white seaplane rocking gently off the dock. She was still in the water awaiting an evening tour and had more than enough fuel to get her there and back again. The FAA frowned upon such takeoffs, but Troy knew a few ex-Navy people who worked for them now, and as long as he was careful, he could get away with it.
“Let’s go,” he said, and guided her into the plane’s cockpit.
Within seconds they were off the water and headed toward the island fort.
“And just where the hell do you think you’re going?” R.B.’s voice crackled over the radio, “or do I even want to know?”
“Don’t worry, buddy,” —Troy smiled and winked at Megan— “I’ll have Gidget back before the next run.”
“You’re killin’ me here,” R.B. said but with a trace of a smile in his tone. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Have you ever known me to do anything like that?” Troy retorted back with his own smile. “See ya in a bit.”
“Roger that.”
“Gidget?” Megan asked, her eyebrows raised.
“Yeah, that’s what we call the plane… it’s a long story.” Troy turned them toward the west. “Maybe I’ll tell you one day while we’re enjoying the spoils of our find.”
She looked out the window to the open gulf water below them.
“I haven’t agreed to do this yet, Mr. Bodean.”
“You will,” he said, winking again, “you will.”
The seaplane whizzed across the gulf, with her north side facing bright sunlight and on her south side in the distance the darkness of the coming storm. Troy knew time was against them, and that he had to convince Megan quickly. He figured they had about a week before the hurricane buried any hope they had of finding the Muerta.
After about half an hour, Troy checked his G.P.S. reading and began to scan the water below them. He soon spotted his recent discovery.
“Look there,” he said, and nodded to Megan and pointed down.
“What? Where?”
He leaned over and held his arm outstretched in front of her. The water was not yet muddied from the storm surge and was only fifty-feet deep to the top of the coral reef. A dark oblong shape jutted out from the side of the coral wall.
“I see it, but what is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know? Timber, a cannon? I can’t tell.”
“Have you been down?”
“No, not yet,” he said, and circled the plane over it a few more times. “I didn’t want to draw any attention to it.”
She could feel her pulse quicken and she strained to see any detail she could make out on the sunken object, but it was too deep, just a dark shape. She signaled for him to make another pass and he banked the plane around again.
He flew a little lower and she could tell it was definitely not a natural ocean feature. Her palms began to sweat; the fever had suddenly caught her. She would help him, at least with this first dive. If this object should prove to have archaeological merit, it could be a very important find. Her thoughts drifted to the money it would take to bring her up… she wondered idly if he had checked her out and learned she had a trust fund that would more than cover the cost of this operation. She brushed the thought away; probably not smart enough for that. It didn’t matter; she’d gladly give that money up for a discovery of this potential magnitude.
“We need a magnetometer,” she blurted out suddenly, “and a boat.”
“A magne-whatsit?” he asked with a smile. “Darlin’, I don’t speak Spanish or scientist, so I have no idea what you just said, but I think I can get us a boat.”
Megan laughed. Okay, so he is pretty charming after all.
Troy nodded, and after a few more circles around the mysterious object in the water, he turned the plane back toward Key West.
In the distance, silent waves flapped against the side of a small fishing boat. Its captain watched the seaplane disappear into the distance.
“They were very close,” he spoke into the ship’s radio. “I’m pretty sure they saw it. They circled it a few times.”
“Keep an eye on them,” came the reply, “and don’t let ‘em bring anything up. If we can hold ‘em off for a week, the hurricane will carry everything away.”
“Yes sir.” The captain hung the radio receiver up and started his boat’s engines.
He motored casually toward the shore, loosely following the local fishing routes. It wouldn’t matter if he was spotted; he was well known here and had caught enough this morning to cover his story of a day-fishing expedition. He wondered idly what they thought they had found.
With a smirk, he thought it might be fun to see the looks on their faces when they realized how wrong they were.
5
Lucky Cat
Detective Joe Bond reached for the knob on the outdated AC unit next to his desk to see if the fan would go any higher. It wouldn't. He scratched his close-cropped hair above a high hairline and dabbed the sweat from his forehead. He undid the top button on his cream-colored linen shirt. On days like today, nothing would stave off the heat of a late summer, early fall day in Key West. With the elevated temperature always came an acute pain in his lower back, where a hollow-point 9mm slug sat adjacent to his spine. On the worst days, the pain would be almost crippling. So, rather than take his normal stroll to lunch over on Duval Street, he thought he’d sit this one out, literally.
He stared at the NYPD badge encased on his wall. His mind drifted back to walking the beat in foot-deep snow, and today it didn't seem like such a bad thing. Heck, just walking anywhere without pain would be nice. But it had been on one of those cold winter days that he chased the wrong punk down the wrong alley and ended up with three shots in his back from the punk's friend. The vest had caught the first two, allowing them to only break his ribs and shatter a vertebra. But the third one clipped the edge of the vest, bounced off a low vertebra and lodged on the front side of it. Had the impact not left Joe temporarily paralyzed and motionless in the snow, the little punk would have realized he was still alive and finished him off.
But instead, Joe spent the next twenty minutes face down in the snow, alive, awake, totally unable to move and thoroughly convinced he was about to die. As he’d lain there watching the snow pile up in front of his face he could hear the deafening silence; the snow gently falling in front of his eyes; and the cat. That damned cat. Grey, curious, mangy, and bony thin. It had walked over to him, rubbed noses and then sat down to stare at him, as if to watch him die. From his prostrate position, he had drifted off, his last thought being that the wretched thing had six toes on each foot.
Rehab was difficult. He cashed out from the NYPD with an early pension, despite being only four and a half decades old. To avoid spending time around the house, he spent too much time in the local cop bar. He tried to remain one of the boys, but the stories became harder and harder for him to follo
w. He’d fallen out of the loop, and there was no going back.
Then came the night he skipped the bar and went straight home, hoping to surprise his wife, only to be surprised himself. With his back injury, he knew he’d been neglecting bedroom duty with her, and apparently she’d been getting that with someone else. Joe spent the next week at a friend’s place looking for a new life that was anywhere but there.
He found a posting from Monroe County, Florida, which was looking to recruit talent from major metropolitan police forces. He responded, talked to some people on the phone, sent in his glowing resume, and very soon had a job offer. It was far enough away to assure him he would never collide with his old life again.
Before he left town, he returned to the alley. He wanted once more to see that miserable place where his life had forever changed, maybe to say a symbolic goodbye. As he stepped over the muck, around the garbage, and between the trash cans, he found where he had laid in the snow and contemplated the life he had thought would end right there.
That’s when he’d heard the meow. Out from under a box crawled a familiar face. The cat! He could hardly believe the thing was still here, looking at him as if to say, what took you so long? The next day, Joe had boarded a plane for Key West, Florida with an extra carry on.
His phone rang and brought him back to the very hot and humid present. The caller ID indicated it was Ed “Skipper” Johnson. Joe knew why he was calling.
“Yeah? Hi Skipper… No, nothing this month… I know, I'm sorry too… No, it’s never a bother… Yes, of course I'll call if anything breaks.”
For nearly a year now, Skipper Johnson had been calling for any updates about his two boys. Mark and Randy had been murdered at last year’s Fantasy Fest—a world famous island celebration of Halloween. They were found on a boat drifting some fifty miles west of the island, both with their throats slit. The last week of October being the busiest of the year, naturally the entire island was full of possible suspects, as thousands come and go by road, boat and plane every hour.
The Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Series Boxset Page 24