Treasure Hunters

by James Patterson

  While Beck studied the art masterpieces, I checked out a different kind of art—a cartoon that Dad had tucked under the glass near the to-do list. I knew it was Dad who clipped the comic out of some magazine because it was based on this very lame joke he must’ve told me a million times: A professor, in his cap and gown, is showing a head-scratching student an ancient Greek vase with figures and scenes painted all over its sides. “What’s a Grecian urn?” asks the student. The professor’s answer? “About thirty dollars a week.”

  Corniest. Joke. In. The. World.

  But for the past couple of months, my dad had loved telling it. To me. Over and over and over again. It was like the Greek version of Chinese water torture.

  He’d even scribbled a note in the margins of the cartoon: “That is all ye need to know, matey.” He must’ve written it during National Write Like a Pirate Week.

  Beck and I searched The Room for fifteen or twenty more minutes, but neither one of us could find anything resembling a map for a Cayman Islands treasure hunt. And there was nothing pinned to the bulletin boards about shipwrecks off the coast of the Caymans or secret lost Cayman cities of gold or even a take-out menu for Cayman jerk chicken.

  “So, Bick?”

  “Yeah, Beck?”

  “All this stuff is extremely cool.”

  “Extremely.”

  “I only have one question.”

  I nodded. “Same here.”

  “How come Storm knew where Dad had hidden The Key?”

  We said that at the same time, too.

  CHAPTER 7

  Beck and I stormed (sorry about that) into Storm’s cabin.

  She was sitting on the lower bunk, flipping through the pages of a six-inch-thick hardbound book the way a fast-scanning copy machine would.

  “International maritime law,” she mumbled as she finished the whole book in, like, fifteen seconds. “Fascinating stuff.”

  “Storm?” said Beck.

  Storm looked up at Beck with sleepy eyes and said nothing.

  “How come you knew where The Key was hidden?” I demanded.

  “Because I have a photographic memory.”

  “What’s that got to do with this?” I jiggle-dangled The Key in front of my face.

  Storm shrugged. “Dad didn’t trust himself to remember where he hid it. So he asked me to be his designated key keeper.”

  “Wha-what?” Beck sputtered a little when she heard that. “You and Dad? Together? Hid it?”

  (You see why it’s a good thing Beck is such an excellent artist? Her verbal skills are… a little weak. What? No, I will not write that my personal-hygiene skills are also a little weak. Oh. I just did. Shoot.)

  “What else were you and Dad hiding from us?” asked Beck.

  “Um, let’s see.” She held up her very thick law book. “He asked me to ‘familiarize’ myself with this book’s contents. Said it might come in handy when we hit the Caymans.”

  “Have you ever been inside The Room?” I asked.

  “Nope. I was just in charge of hiding The Key and not forgetting where I hid it. So give it back, Bick. I need to hide it again.”

  “No, you don’t,” said Beck. “We need The Room.”

  “For what?”

  “Files and stuff.”

  “Did you find a treasure map for a Caymans dive?”

  “No,” muttered Beck.

  “Not yet, anyway,” I added.

  “Maybe Tommy knows where Dad put it,” said Storm. “He’s been in The Room a couple of times.”

  Now it was my turn to stammer. “Wh-whaaa?”

  “Him and Dad. Once, they wanted to go in after I had hidden The Key in the bottom of the cookie jar. Squirreled it underneath all the Oreos and Mallomars. Best hiding place ever.”

  “So you knew about The Key,” I said, “and Tommy’s been in The Room. What else don’t we know?”

  “Well,” said Storm, “Mom told me you both needed to work harder on your trig homework and—”

  Suddenly, an air horn blared up on deck.

  WHOMP! WHOMP! WHOMP!

  Kidd Family Rule No. 1: If you hear the air horn do a triple blast, drop everything, no matter what you’re doing, and race to the deck. A triple blast means somebody’s in trouble and needs help. (Two toots means “Dinner’s ready,” and four, “The Dolphins won the Super Bowl.”)

  The three of us hurried up out of the hull quarters, dashed across the deckhouse, and scrambled up the ladder to the wheelhouse.

  Tommy nodded toward our stern and raised a pair of binoculars up to his eyes.

  “We have company,” said Tommy.

  Every time the waves behind us rolled down, I could see a boat racing across the heaving whitecaps. When the waves swelled, it disappeared. When they dropped again, it had moved closer.

  “Uh, Tommy?” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “This may not be the best time to ask.…”

  “Go ahead, little bro,” said Tommy, never taking his eyes off the boat, which definitely seemed to be gaining on us. “We’ve got time. Couple of minutes, anyway.”

  The white-hot searchlight swung across our stern, then swooped back and tilted up. Beck, Storm, and I looked like deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming freight train. Tommy did not. He narrowed his eyes down to slits.

  “Um, okay. So, why did Dad take you into The Room?”

  “No big deal,” said Tommy, keeping his eyes glued to the speedboat (we could hear its whining engines now) bounding over the foamy breakers behind us. “He just needed to tell me some oldest-kid stuff.”

  “Really? Like what?”

  “Like where he kept the spare speargun.”

  Without taking his eyes off the snarling speedboat, which was only about twenty yards behind us now, Tommy tapped the baseboard of the wheelhouse wall with his right foot. A narrow cabinet popped open.

  Inside was what looked like a rocket launcher equipped with a lethal, twin-barbed shaft.

  You know—oldest-kid stuff.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Wha happen, my friends?” shouted the man behind the wheel of the speedboat as he pulled back on the throttles and eased his craft alongside our starboard. He held up both his hands. “And, please, do not point that speargun at me, Bobo. I am not a fish.” And then he let loose with a rumbling Caribbean laugh. “Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha.”

  The man in the speedboat was wearing a weird collection of clothes: A policeman’s cap with a bright red band above its shiny black brim, a sleeveless tuxedo jacket (but no tuxedo shirt), a necklace made out of shark teeth, and brightly striped pajama pants.

  And did I mention the blue iguana nibbling lettuce leaves in a cage on the passenger seat of his banana-yellow speedboat?

  “Please, brudda,” he said, gesturing at the iguana, “lower the speargun. You are scaring Tedee.”

  “Who are you?” demanded Tommy.

  “Why, I am the man who just found you lost on The Lost in the middle of the sea. Ah-ha-ha-ha.”

  Storm moved behind Tommy. Guess she didn’t like the jolly man’s laugh.

  Or maybe it was the tattoos running up and down both of his bulging arms. Could’ve been the scar slashing his left cheek, too. Or the fact that he’d ripped the sleeves off a perfectly good tuxedo jacket.

  “Help me out, little brudda,” the guy called to me, I guess because I was at the railing closest to him. He held a mooring line in his hands and gestured like he wanted to toss it to me.

  I looked to Tommy.

  He shook his head.

  I stayed where I was.

  “My friends,” he said, dropping the coiled rope, “I mean you no harm. If I did, I would have shown you this instead of a rope.”

  He raised a nasty-looking rifle with a curved ammunition clip.

  “That’s an AK-47,” whispered Storm. “Originally developed in the USSR by Mikhail Kalashnikov, it fires a thirty-nine-millimeter cartridge with a muzzle velocity of seven hundred and fifteen meters per second. Modern Amm
o Magazine, June 1987. It totally beats a speargun, Tommy.”

  Tommy lowered his weapon. Our visitor lowered his.

  “Your boat,” he said, “she is not looking so good, eh?”

  “We had a little trouble in the storm,” said Tommy.

  “Ah. This would explain your delay. Where is Thomas Kidd?”

  “I’m Tommy Kidd.”

  “Dr. Thomas Kidd? The world-famous treasure hunter? This is you?”

  “That’s our dad!” I shouted. “He’s not here right now.”

  “Really? Oh, my. The Big Man will not be happy.”

  “Who is the Big Man?” said Beck, jutting out her hip and planting a hand on it just to give our visitor a little ’tude.

  “The Big Man is the one who sent me all the way out here to find you, little lady.”

  “And how, exactly, did you do that?” I asked.

  “Your transponder, little brudda. Your satellite and radio may not work, but your AIS radar beacon is looo-king good.”

  “Do we have that?” I asked out of the corner of my mouth.

  “Yeah,” said Tommy out of the corner of his. Guess that was more oldest-kid stuff.

  “You see, Kidds, your father gave the Big Man your transponder numbers. When your father does not show up to deliver the goods, well, the Big Man, he sends me out to find the goods. Instead, I find you.”

  “Well,” said Beck, “we don’t know what kind of goods you’re talking about.”

  “That’s okay. The Big Man, he will know. You come with me, Tommy Kidd. You explain to the Big Man why he did not receive that which your father promised to deliver.”

  “No,” I said. “We’re family. We stick together.”

  “If Tommy goes,” added Beck, “we all go.”

  “Heh-heh-heh. Very good. We all go see the Big Man.”

  He raised his coiled line again. This time Tommy nodded to say it was okay.

  I scampered down the ladder.

  “Tie me off to your bow, little brudda.”

  I grunted when I caught the heavy hemp line he heaved at my chest. Hauling the rope up to the foredeck, I looped it around a cleat and tied it off with a hitch knot. I raced down the deck and joined everybody else up in the wheelhouse. The instant I got there, I heard engines rev.

  The speedboat shot forward and fishtailed in front of us.

  “What’s going on, Tommy?” I asked as The Lost cut across the souped-up tugboat’s choppy wake.

  “Dude in the tuxedo is giving us a free ride up to Grand Cayman, which is where we want to be. This way, we save on gas.”

  “Oh. Okay. Cool.”

  But something told me that being “found” might turn out to be more dangerous than staying “lost.”

  CHAPTER 9

  The next morning, when we woke up in Grand Cayman, I expected us to be docked next to boatloads of scurvy knaves, all of them toting AK-47s, machetes, or worse.

  Instead, we were moored in a very swanky marina, our battered boat surrounded by gleaming yachts and sleek sailboats.

  “Good morning, Kidds,” boomed our jolly tugboat captain as he climbed aboard The Lost at first light with a green parrot perched on his shoulder. I guessed the iguana had the day off. “I brought ackee and salt fish for everybody!”

  “What?” asked Storm.

  “It is a very popular traditional breakfast here in the Caymans.”

  “Was the store all out of Froot Loops?”

  “Come on, Storm,” said Beck. “Try it.”

  (For the record, breakfast did not look that good to anybody except Beck. Seriously, who eats fish for breakfast besides bigger fish?)

  After choking the food down (and wishing I had some Tic Tacs), we were driven into George Town for our audience with the Big Man, which, apparently, was going to take place at a dump with a tin roof called the Surf Shack.

  “Wait a second,” said Tommy as we all piled out of Jolly Mon’s dusty Range Rover. “We’ve been here before. Back when the twins were way younger.”

  “It was six years ago,” said Storm. “The second Tuesday in July. Temperature was eighty-three degrees, and there was a sudden downpour at three fifteen in the afternoon. Tommy got a surfboard. Beck and Bick got boogie boards. I tried jerk chicken egg rolls for the first time, and they were amazing.”

  The Surf Shack was part surf shop, part boat shop, part disgusting restaurant, and, I’m pretty sure, part black-market front. I vaguely recall Mom and Dad bartering for our boogie boards with booty they’d brought up from a shipwreck off the coast of Jamaica.

  The parrot squawked on Jolly Mon’s shoulder.

  “Ah, here he is! The Big Man himself.”

  A burly, three-hundred-pound guy in dark sunglasses—with a bald dome ringed by wet, curly hair—waddled out from the shadows. He was all smiles as he toddled off the Surf Shack’s porch like a bear-sized penguin. Wearing a rumpled Hawaiian shirt (with dark half-moon sweat stains under each armpit), baggy cargo shorts, and heel-thwacking flip-flops, the guy looked vaguely familiar.

  “Louie Louie?” said Tommy, his tensed shoulders sagging with relief.

  “Oh, yes. In the flesh, as they say. In the flesh.” Louie Louie slapped his jiggling jelly belly and laughed. He sort of reminded me of Santa Claus. If Santa lived in a cheap beach motel, had body-odor issues, and listened to steel drums in a thatched tiki hut all day.

  “My, my, my. So good to see you all again. It’s been too long since we last had the entire Kidd clan here with us on Grand Cayman.”

  “Six years,” said Storm drily. “And, just in case you hadn’t noticed, Mom and Dad aren’t here.”

  “Ah, yes. Indeed. I had noticed that. Pity. Called off to another lecture, were they?”

  “Something like that,” said Beck. “Mr. Louie? Maybe we should talk about all this… inside?”

  “Oh, yes. Inside. Capital suggestion. Get out of the sun. Enjoy some refreshing beverages. Order up a batch of deep-fried conch fritters, eh? Come, children. We have much to talk about. Very much, indeed. Thank you, Maurice.”

  He bowed slightly to the man who had towed us into harbor last night.

  “Will you be needing anything else, Mr. L?”

  “No. Not just now. Later, perhaps?”

  “Ah, yes. Ah-ha-ha-ha.” Maurice gave Louie Louie a two-finger salute off the tip of his castaway-cop cap and headed back to his Range Rover. We followed Louie Louie into his shady establishment.

  “Shame your father was called off the boat so unexpectedly,” said Mr. Louie as we followed him through the cluttered aisles of the Surf Shack. “He was bringing me something very special. Very special, indeed. In fact, we had a very firm deal, as I recall.”

  “Hey,” said Tommy, trying to change the subject, “I see you still have that autographed Duke Kahanamoku surfboard.”

  “Oh, yes. Been there for years.”

  “I used to think it was called the Don’t-Touch-That surfboard,” Tommy joked.

  “Children. Such a delight,” said Mr. Louie, rumbling up a chuckle. He took off his sunglasses (which had an oil slick where they’d been bumping into his eyebrows) and darted his beady eyes back and forth slyly. “Would you like to touch the surfboard today, Tommy?”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely. I think it will prove most beneficial to our upcoming business discussion.”

  Tommy shrugged. “Sure. Whatever.”

  He stroked the tail fins.

  I heard a click.

  Suddenly, the whole wall behind the famous surfboard started to slide open, revealing a set of hidden steps that led down into a dark cellar.

  “Step into my office, Kidds,” said Louie Louie, gesturing toward the staircase and wiping sweat off his shiny head. “We have some serious business matters to discuss. Very serious, indeed.”

  Now we were sweating, too.

  CHAPTER 10

  Louie Louie’s secret downstairs lair was chock-full of treasures and antiquities.

  I saw golden chalic
es, a jewel-studded crown, a couple of Grecian urns (Dad would’ve told me his corny joke again), a full suit of armor, Byzantine brooches, pirate swords, a crate filled with pearls, a collection of colorful glass bottles, and water-stained sea chests brimming with jewelry and gold doubloons (just like you’d see bubbling in the bottom of an aquarium).

  “Where’d you get all this stuff?” I asked.

  “From those who, shall we say, wished to exchange it for something greener.” Louie Louie chortled and jiggled. “Cold, hard cash.”

  “So you’re basically a fence?” said Storm, who, like I’ve said before, isn’t big on thinking before speaking. “A person who deals with stolen goods?”

  “Oh, no. I am but a humble businessman. I am one who will do business with anyone who cares to do business with me. For instance, your father.”

  Even though it was just him and us in the cluttered basement, Louie Louie made a big show of looking around to make certain no one else was listening to what he said next.

  “I have a certain…item… that your father was most desirous of possessing. An insignificant trinket, actually. A mere Minoan bauble at best. It is an amulet. Half the face of some insect god or goddess. Worthless, actually, without its matching twin. Be that as it may, your father informed me, in the strictest confidence, that this item was of vital importance. Something to do with a terrible mess he and your mother were tangled up in? Tell me, children, has your mother really gone missing somewhere in Cyprus?”

  The four of us shot glances back and forth.

  How much does Louie Louie know about Dad’s business and Mom’s disappearance?

  I was about to evade the question with some kind of clever response, but Storm blurted out her answer first.

  “They’re both dead. Mom in Cyprus. Dad in the storm.”

  Louie Louie acted stunned and surprised.

  But I think I saw the twitch of a grin.

  “Really?” he said, clutching both of his chubby hands over his heart. “Oh, dear. Oh, my. The four of you are…orphans?”