by Scott Cook
“I can’t believe that’s Sharon’s father,” Lisa commented.
“Neither can she, I’ll bet,” Wayne rejoined.
“So now what, Nolen?” I asked. “We start shooting each other? What do you see happening here?”
He seemed to consider that for a long moment. I don’t think he had any idea. He was winging it as much as I was. Finally, he perked up.
“I propose that we run our boat ashore beside yours,” Nolen explained. “We all disarm except for one of each of us. Those two can stay with the boats and keep an eye on each other. The rest of us will take a little nature walk and see exactly what’s here.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Like I’d trust you, Nolen… or you’d trust me.”
“Understandable,” he replied. “But I’ll have a man to watch my back and so will you. I also have… well, my insurance policy. Try anything funny and Sharon pays the price.”
I felt heat blooming white-hot in my face. A surge of tingling rage flooded my being and all I wanted at that moment was to wrap my hands around this bastard’s throat and squeeze it down to the diameter of a pencil.
“Well?” He called over the water.
It took me several seconds to master my emotions enough to say: “Agreed.”
“You okay, brother?” Wayne asked, glancing at my face.
“Yeah, fuckin’ great.”
“You think this is a good idea, baby?” Lisa asked.
“No, nothing that’s happened over the past twenty-four hours has been a good idea,” I growled. “What choice do we have? So who wants to watch the boat and the camo guy?”
“Not it,” Wayne and Lisa said almost in unison.
The Carolina Skiff turned toward the beach and sped up in order to do what we’d done. However their pilot wasn’t as skilled at shallow water boating and the boat came to a sudden stop ten feet from the shoreline. Not that it mattered much. Sharon got out and walked forward and up onto the sand with a small anchor in her hands. She planted it and then turned to us. First Lisa and then Wayne hugged her. Finally she came to me and I held her close. As I did, I felt a small something in the center of her middle back.
“That’s the explosive,” She said in a quavering voice. “Duct taped to my skin. I can’t quite reach it.”
“They’d set it off if you or we tried,” I said. “Are you okay?”
She laughed bitterly, “Oh, just fuckin’ great. Sorry about your boat… sorry for this whole damned thing.”
Her tears began to flow and I kissed the top of her head, “No need for you to be sorry, Sharon. I wish I could make this all go away for you… but I promise we’ll get out of this.”
“Tell me you’ve got something up your sleeve?”
“Of course.”
“Liar,” She said with a small smile.
“If the reunion is over,” Nolen said as he and his two men sloshed ashore. “I’d like to get on with things?”
I glared at him and then at his two men. It was only then that I realized that only one was a man. The two camouflaged mercenaries were both about five-foot eight, both stocky and both had a very similar body shape. The woman was rather unattractive and doughy, although she looked strong. Her face had a squarish quality with heavy eyebrows and a hint of a double chin. The man looked somewhat similar. I first thought that they might be siblings until I noticed the wedding bands on both of their left hands.
“This is Jim and Trina Bender,” Nolen introduced. “They’re… security specialists.”
“Yeah,” Jim sneered. “We make sure nobody fucks with nobody.”
“No fucking? Sounds dull,” Lisa jibed.
Trina studied her with narrowed eyes and a scowl, “Don’t get cute with us, beauty queen. It’d give me a lot of pleasure to fuck up that pretty face of your’n.”
“Envy is such an ugly emotion,” Lisa replied coolly. “You must be filled with it.”
Wayne and even Sharon snickered.
“All right,” Nolen said, holding up a hand. “Let’s not be childish. Trina, would you stay with the boat? Maybe Lisa can volunteer to stay with yours, Jarvis. That way the two ladies can keep an eye on each other and get to know one another better.”
I glanced at Lisa who frowned but nodded slightly. I then turned to Nolen, “What about disarming?”
“We deposit our guns in our boats,” Nolen said. “Trina and Lisa watch over them, too. We can take turns frisking each other to make sure there are no surprises. That satisfy you?”
“Agreed,” I said.
Trina and Jim hauled on their boat’s anchor and pulled the skiff closer. The two boats were more or less side by side and about ten feet apart now. Trina climbed into Nolen’s and Lisa into ours. They each kept their rifles. Lisa had my M4 and Trina what looked to be an AR-15. Immediately, Nolen deposited his own weapon, a shiny revolver, into the bow. I went and placed my AK on the casting deck of the Maverick.
He came and stood to one side of Sharon and me the other. Then Jim placed his AR-15, the one with the 40mm grenade launcher, in the Carolina Skiff. Finally, Wayne grumbled something dark and put the Mossberg next to my gun.
Wayne then went and frisked Nolen who frisked him in return. Jim came over to me and sneered as he patted me down. He was thorough, but didn’t go below my knees, thankfully. I had my KA-bar strapped upside down to my right calve beneath my jeans. I also patted him down, being more thorough and finding nothing. I was surprised at that.
“Everybody’s clean,” Jim said. “We good now? Can we get on with this shit?”
“What, you got a date for the opera or some shit?” Wayne needled him.
“Don’t get smart with me, Spook,” Jim quipped.
Not much of a surprise. These two redneck wannabees were probably not big fans of the NAACP. While Nolen seemed to be able to find plenty of henchmen, it was plainly a case of quantity over quality. Drug addicts, gang bangers and white trash seemed to be his go-to choices. I had high hopes that this would once again, as it had several times already, work in our favor.
“Yeah, let’s get on with it,” I said. “Who’s taking point?”
Nolen grinned at me, “Guess that’d be you, action star. You led us here, so why not lead me to the treasure too?”
“If it’s even here,” I said, turning and heading for the far edge of the clearing. “There’s no guarantee of that, Nolen. Just because there’s a kayak on the beach that doesn’t’ mean this is the spot or even that Rick is here.”
“Well, I certainly hope you’re wrong,” Nolen remarked. “Because it could be quite unfortunate otherwise. I’m not a patient man… but my associates have taken quite a risk here and they expect a payoff.”
“Stupid rarely pays,” Wayne jibed.
Jim retorted with something unkind and we stopped where the pines seemed to give way to low brambles mixed with some sort of medium-tall leafy tree or other. Off to our left, the ground cover thinned somewhat as it neared the mangroves again. Ahead, there appeared to be a path, although nearly overgrown. Otherwise, there was nothing to indicate a direction of travel or that anybody had been here before us in the past decade.
“Exactly what are we looking for, George?” I asked.
“Meraux’s treasure,” he replied smugly.
I turned to face him, “Yeah, no shit Dick Tracy. But why here? Why do you think the treasure is here or even that there is a treasure?”
He laughed, “Oh, I know there is.”
“But you don’t know where it is,” I replied. “I find that… odd. For all we know, this is just another small island in a sea of them.”
“There is a marked rise in the land here,” Nolen stated. “Indicating a potential Calusa shell mound. I happened to know the treasure is buried in one.”
“There’s a rise of maybe fifteen or twenty feet overall,” I said, pointing to a hump of cypress trees that might be at the center of the island and were a hundred yards away. “That’s no guarantee of a shell mound.”
“T
hen what’s that?” he asked, pointing to our left where the ground cover thinned.
At first I didn’t see it, but after a moment, something seemed to stand out. There was a definite geometric pattern in the foliage, as if it were growing around a rectangle some hundred feet long and twenty feet wide. Here and there a rough stone shown through the nettles and weeds.
“If I’m not mistaken,” Nolen continued. “That looks like it could be the remnants of a Calusa water court.”
“You’re right, George. Good to know you haven’t forgotten everything you learned from me.”
The new voice was deep and had a bit of Florida cracker mixed in. We all turned as one to see Rick Eagle Feather standing twenty feet away. He seemed to have materialized out of nowhere. He wore jeans, a western style denim shirt and a Stetson. In his big right hand rested a rather nasty looking semi-automatic pistol. Probably a .45. He was not smiling.
“Well, well, good to see you again, old friend,” Nolen said. He did wear a smile, but there was more warmth in a gas station burrito.
“My friend George Nolen died long ago,” Rick replied, slowly walking closer. “Long before he supposedly died five years ago. The day he left his wife and little girl alone. And since then… whoever you are now, George, you aren’t my friend. Sharon, are you okay, sweetheart?”
Sharon scoffed, “Well, Uncle Rick, I’ve had better days. Found out my dad’s alive, that he probably killed my mother… that my mother was really your sister… let’s see… my boyfriend was shot last night… oh, and I almost forgot! My dear old dad has a fucking bomb strapped to my back. How have you been?”
A slight smile flickered across the Indian’s stern expression. In that moment, I was interested to see the differences between the two men, who had been contemporaries since they were small boys. Rick was tall, still strongly built and his seventy years hardly showed on him. George Nolen, who was a year or so younger, was still fit and held on to some of his youth as well, yet his hair was silver, his body a bit ropier and pudgier and the wrinkles around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth were a bit more pronounced.
“You know why I’m here, Rick,” Nolen said confidently.
“Of course I do,” Rick said flatly. “If those incompetent fools you hired to kidnap me hadn’t told me enough to figure it out, I’d have already guessed. That’s why I led you here, George. I suspected who was behind all of this from the beginning.”
“Led me here?” Nolen asked indignantly, his cool and collected demeanor beginning to fray at the edges. “It’s hardly been easy.”
Rick laughed. It was an odd laugh. Visually, it carried all the signs of a great belly laugh. Yet the sound was almost non-existent. It sent a shiver up my spine.
“Of course it wasn’t easy… for you,” Rick told his ex-friend bemusedly. “That’s why I had to get the help of this very capable young feller here. Jarvis found me, George. And he let himself be traced. I needed to get you out here and vulnerable so we could put this thing to bed once and for all. To put a stop to all of the madness, George. This obsession you have with Spanish treasure… look what it’s done to your life? It’s destroyed you and hurt everyone around you… and all for nothing. A cryin’ shame is what it is.”
What remained of Nolen’s cool vanished in a flash. His face went red and his fists clenched at his sides, “Nothing! What do you mean, nothing, Rick! We found it, all of us! We’ve all seen it!”
“Then why are you here, George?” Rick asked casually. “Why do you need to go through all of this to find what you’ve already seen?”
“You know damned well why!” Nolen shouted.
Rick spread his hands out wide to indicate the island around them. He then re-aimed his pistol at Nolen, “Then feel free, George! Here’s your goddamned island. You’re right, this is an ancient Calusa shell mound site. It’s yours. All yours. Dig away to your heart’s content.”
“I don’t understand all of this,” Sharon piped up, “Uncle Rick…did you and dad find a treasure? And if so… why didn’t you split it up and sell it way back when you found it?”
Rick sighed heavily, “I’m so sorry for all of this, honey. You deserved better. Definitely from your dad and even from me. I should’ve told you this long ago… it’s just… it’s just that keeping it secret is for the best.”
“Yeah, you mean keeping it all to yourself, don’t you, you son of a bitch?” Nolen snapped, still stiff with rage.
Rick looked at me, “Have you ever heard of a tontine?”
I nodded, “As I understand it, it’s some kind of agreement until death. A group of people share something, often an annuity like income from a stock. The shares grow larger as each person dies off, until finally one remains and gets the whole thing.”
“Yeah… and it works for treasure, too,” Rick explained. “This one goes back fifty years and more. George, Michael Harney, Sharon’s mother and myself made a pact before George and I went off to Vietnam. We did find something… found it where my dad’s boat now rests. You’ve seen the other ship?”
I nodded gravely, “Just a glance. It looked old.”
“It is…” Rick continued, sounding a little weary now. “It was my dad who found that vessel. I’ve never been certain, but I think he was murdered for it. Somebody came upon him one night while he was out there and killed him and sank the boat… but by then, what he’d discovered was gone. He didn’t know that he’d found the last of the treasure. Neither did his murderers.”
“Who?” Sharon asked.
“As I said, I’ve never been able to prove it… but I think it was Lucinda and Carsen Harney,” Rick said sternly. “Anyway, George and I and the Harney twins thought that Dad had found Meraux’s treasure along with a rough map to find the real stash. What was on the ship was just a small pile of gold doubloons. We split that up amongst ourselves. We all agreed that if we found the treasure, that we’d keep it to ourselves. Only occasionally dipping into it when we needed money. Then some other things happened… a long story for another time, Sharon… and we had to let things lie. I was elected to be the keeper of the secret. And because of what happened with Susanna and her father… well, time went by. I never actually found the damned treasure. Personally, I think its bunk. Like Jose Gaspar’s treasure that’s supposed to be buried on Sanibel or Yuseppa or Gasparilla Island.”
“Bullshit!” Nolen cried. “You found it, I know you did! I’ve watched you over the years… seen how you always seemed to have money for whatever you wanted. But you kept it away from us all this time… well, Rick, we made an agreement and I’m here to see that you hold up your end. Susanna and Michael are gone… now it’s just you and me. Actually, you can thank your buddy Jarvis here. If it wasn’t for him, Michael would be here with us now. So much the better. Let’s forget the tontine, Rick. There’s enough to split up fifty-fifty. You get your half and I get mine. We all win and Sharon goes free.”
Rick scoffed, “You murder her mother and arrange the murder of Michael and think fair is fair, George? You threaten my niece, who’s been more of a daughter to me all these years than you were ever a father to her? You think you aren’t going to answer for that?”
“How, Rick?” Nolen asked. “You gonna shoot me? Take a chance that either I or Jim here won’t detonate my little surprise?
It was at this point when, as I’m sure you’ll be shocked to discover, that things took a decidedly less pleasant turn.
43
The last of the hotness
Lisa’s Lucky Journal Entry 13
For a long while after the boys tromped off into the woods, Trina and I just stared at each other. She stood in their skiff with an unattractive scowl on her very unattractive face and glared at me. She held her AR-15 loosely and had the barrel pointed down at the deck. I held my M4 at port arms in the proper and far sexier position.
“So what do you think you’re a fuckin’ bad ass or some shit?” Trina inquired a few minutes after the other four had disappeared behind the e
dge of the clearing.
“It’s not a matter of opinion, honey,” I retorted.
Trina scoffed, “You keep dreamin’, prom queen. Look at you, what’re you like five-four? Maybe a buck ten soakin’ wet? I got four inches and sixty pounds on ya’. Bet I could snap you over my knee like a little ole’ stick.”
“And you’re… proud of that?” I asked. “Wow… don’t be so sure, puta. An over-abundance of flabby bulk isn’t everything. You need to know how.”
“Fuck you,” She rejoined wittily. “I know how to handle little stuck-up twats like you.”
“Jesus… does Jim actually have to fuck you?” I asked nastily. “Almost makes me feel sorry for him.”
“You better watch your mouth, little girl,” Trina warned, her rifle barrel slowly coming up.
Mine was already pointed at her chest before she was able to bring it halfway to bear, “Now, now… let’s not be hasty. If you don’t like what I have to say, then don’t start any shit with me. You fuck with the bull, you get the horns.”
I pronounced horns the way Scott would under stress, with barely a hint of the R. Trina only rolled her eyes and flipped me off. She did lower her barrel, though.
We could hear voices coming from beyond the clearing. It was hard to make them out until George Nolen started shouting something about treasure and keeping it to himself. It sounded as if there might be five men, but I couldn’t be sure. Trina held a smug expression on her face that I didn’t like.
I could very easily shoot her. None of the men were armed, and by the time anybody got down here, I’d have all of the weapons at my disposal. That was obvious. Sure, I was one of the heroes and wouldn’t just arbitrarily shoot Trina. She probably knew that… or should know that.
On the other hand, bad guys rarely saw the world or others who occupied it as being anything but how they perceived things. They were cold blooded killers, they were liars, they were thieves… so everybody was. So in that case, why did she seem so pleased? I’d just illustrated how I could bring my weapon to bear faster… something was tickling the back of my mind. Like one of Scott’s little voices maybe. Something that nagged at me but at the moment wasn’t quite loud enough to be heard clearly.