by Scott, D. D.
I smiled and reached out to squeeze his hand.
On days like this, I had a hard time understanding how Roman and R could do this sort of gig every day and hang onto their sanity. Chasing assholes was a serious drain.
I was too tired and stressed to even attempt conversation.
In fact, I’d asked Roman and R to take Stanley to the back of the plane, way out of my earshot. After a while, I just couldn’t stand his excuses and gibberish.
When had becoming a pathetic human being required an explanation? You either were or you weren’t. Since Stanley landed squarely in the “were” pool of pathetic, I couldn’t care less what he had to say in defense of his actions.
Besides, if everything went according to plan, he was about to be in the custody of Grams and her new sidekicks, Bunny and Beefcakes. So, if remorse for his behavior hadn’t set in by the time we landed in a few hours, it would set in quickly enough.
* * *
Thank the powers that be, Grams and Company didn’t disappoint.
Back at the Witherspoon Lodge tucked deep inside the Sol Larga’s Reservation, we were all seated in the outdoor room, enjoying the sounds of the rainforest while sipping vibrant-colored cocktails to match the tropical birds flying around in the dense foliage.
The sounds of the calls of distant howler monkeys and squawking parrots, a nearby waterfall and a gazillion buzzing insects and croaking frogs didn’t hold a match to Grams’ crazy bunch.
Grams and Company were way more colorful than the mini umbrellas sticking out of the mint julips and mojitos her new BFF Bunny had whipped up for us.
“Here’s a cocktail napkin, my dear,” Bunny said, lifting up my glass and placing underneath it the cutest napkin I’d ever seen.
Now this was some kinda’ gal. She had cocktail napkins featuring a very Velveteen-looking Rabbit along with her initials – BW - embossed in gold at each corner of the thick napkin stock. Add to that the Brazilian hunk of nothin’-but-buff trainer at her side. She was definitely my kinda’ happy hour company.
With her Macallan whiskey - going for around $18,000 per bottle at the Montage Beverly Hills hotel where it was served in a glass also bearing her initials - Bunny Winston was something else. I couldn’t believe she even traveled with her own stemware! She was a mobile, high-class cocktail queen.
I made a mental note to make sure when I was 85 years young, I traveled like this gal.
So, there she was…our happy hour hostess Bunny in her Juicy Couture tracksuit and loads of costume jewelry. The costume jewelry was a major reason why she got an A+ in my book. Bunny had told me she never bought real jewels, even though she could obviously buy half the Smithsonian’s stash.
She didn’t want to take the chance of purchasing gems that were fueling many of our world’s bloodiest conflicts.
Far from Bunny’s Beverly Hills high-class cocktail set which often supported the conflict gem industry was Grams, who looked like some Mad Scientist version of Maxine. I swear she used Maxine calendar photos as her style guide as well as her quote reference.
Today’s ensemble included a lavender lab coat-esque looking jacket with a bright, tropical yellow Tommy Bahama brushed silk button down shirt underneath. Gray culottes and a sunny yellow visor nearly completed the look, but we shouldn’t forget the pencil she had tucked over her ear that was also poking out from her blue-gray hair. It wasn’t an accessory I’d choose for my clientele.
‘Course that was lost underneath the swimming goggles and snorkel that were wrapped around her neck and the diving fins flopping on the floor as she wobbled toward our table.
The poor woman looked like a duck that had no business anywhere near a body of water.
“I’m too overwhelmed to even ask,” Roman said, clinking his glass against mine.
I rolled my eyes and returned his toast.
Thankfully, knowing Grams, none of us would be left wondering what she was up to for long.
She plopped the pile of books she was carrying on the table, causing our cocktails to slosh over their sugar-coated rims. So much for the gorgeous napkins. All our bunnies looked as if they’d soiled themselves.
“Doing some research, Grams?” I asked, trying to catch the title of the book on top of the stack, but the glare of the late afternoon sun made it impossible to see the cover.
“As a matter of fact, I am. I’m about to discover the whereabouts of the treasure we’re seeking.”
“What treasure would that be?” Roman asked.
He was either egging her on just for the hell of it, or he’d had one too many mint julips.
Grams looked at Roman as if he were the dumbest guy alive.
“Um, hello, Prince Genius. We’re in Atocha country, and there were three ships in that brigade. Mel Fisher and his crew only found one of ‘em. Or maybe two. I can’t remember for sure.”
I choked, and no, not on the sprig of mint that I’d sucked up through my straw.
“Grams, the Atocha was found off the coast of Florida. And it’s a ship that sailed the sea. We’re in a rainforest with rivers, not on an ocean,” I said, knowing that there was no way in hell my facts would put the slightest dent in her plans or philosophies.
“It takes fewer muscles to smile than frown. And fewer still to ignore somebody completely,” she said.
“Another Maxine quote?” Bunny asked, a trying-to-be-polite smile tugging at her lips.
“Sure is. And y’all know how I’m a huge Conservationist. So screw the frowning.”
“Well, Dear Grams, if you go wading through the river in those fins, all you’re gonna’ get is majorly stuck in river sludge. I guarantee that will make you do much more than frown,” R said, taking a seat next to Bunny.
“Again, fewer muscles to ignore people completely. Is this my drink?” Grams asked, taking the nearest glass to her pile of books and draining half of it before any of us could answer her question.
“Do you think I’ll need one of those oxygen tanks for my back? How deep is that river?” She asked, never looking up from her stack of Mel Fisher memoirs.
“No worries. Bunny and Beefcakes will look out for her,” R whispered in my ear, winking at me and then at them.
“I’d feel better if you could assign a couple members of your elite forces too,” I whispered back.
It wasn’t like Grams could even pay attention if she wanted to with her ear buds in and her iPod cranked to a horribly high volume. It was loud enough that we could all hear Ricky Martin getting her fired up for Carnival.
“Bunny’s got it covered, I assure you,” R said, tapping the top of her hands. “Right, Sis?”
Aha! So that’s why Bunny and Beefcakes befriended Grams. They worked for Roman and R too. Hell, I knew it couldn’t be coincidence. I just hadn’t been able to put the pieces together till now.
R was right, though, I had nothing to worry about for Gram’s sake, but damn, was I majorly feeling for Bunny and Beefcakes. No amount of sugared rum could numb the kinda’ pain that would result from dealing with their new charge.
Chapter Ten
There may not have been an Atocha-era ship buried in the river sludge, but Grams had no idea how close she was to hinting at the one secret I still hadn’t revealed.
Today could change all that…if I lived till nightfall to tell about it.
As my boots sunk into the alluvial deposits of our Sol Larga riverbed, part of my heart sank with them.
While life in the rainforest carried on, I hoped our efforts today would save the lives of the indigenous people we’d partnered with here in this Garden of Eden on Earth.
The sluice boxes, trammels and pans were all there waiting for us. All we had to do was turn this large area of riverbed into our next placer mining jackpot.
“So how am I supposed to figure out which one of these guys is Long Tom with all these clothes on?” Grams asked, with a seriously disgusted look on her face.
Roman choked, and I did my best to hold back a hearty guffaw at
Grams’ risqué mind full of mischief.
“A Long Tom is the name of the sluice box you, Bunny and Beefcakes will be in charge of,” I explained to her, tapping the side of the ten-foot long metal contraption they’d be using.
While pressurized water rushed over the sand and gravel deposits shoveled from the river into the top of the sluice box, the Long Tom’s tunnel would allow Grams and Company to trap gemstones along its bottom riffles.
“Oh well. Looks like I planned on ten inches and got about ten feet. Not a bad return,” Grams said, nudging Bunny with her elbow, as if the poor woman was her accomplice.
I decided to ignore her last bit of snark and carry on with getting all of us settled into our assigned tasks for the day. If we were lucky, we’d find the newest source of stones by the time night descended on the forest.
“While you three mine this section, Roman, R and I will work the trommel in the bench deposits a ways downstream.”
“That sounds kind of kinky,” Grams said, wiggling her much-in-need-of-being-plucked eyebrows.
“I give up,” I said, grabbing a couple of extra metal mining pans before leaving Grams to her Long Tom.
There was nothing remotely sexy about scouring miles of terraced river banks to see what Mother Nature may have deposited in them over the years.
“Why would you give up when you’re married to this hottie?” Grams said as she pinched Roman’s now majorly flushed cheeks. “You two are on your honeymoon, for God’s sake. I’m surprised you even have time to hunt gemstones.”
Some honeymoon, I thought to myself, wishing for an entirely different type of action than the kind I was about to get.
Walking in silence along the riverbed, enjoying the songs of the forest’s exotic birds, we made our way to the newest of the Witherspoon trommels.
Although artisanal mining like our Witherspoon-Sol Larga mines are simple operations, we still have some rather cool equipment that even R could appreciate.
Alluvial – also known as artisanal - mining involves digging up then sifting through mud, sand and gravel using sieves as well as your bare hands.
“So how is it that you knew exactly where to have Chief Valente and his men set up this new trommel?” Roman asked as we walked hand-in-hand along the river bank.
“The stones come from rock formations called Kimberlites, which are eroded over time by the forest’s rivers and streams. The erosion and flow of the water cause large deposits to build up downstream from the original source rocks. The forest’s topography, drainage patterns and the location of our Kimberlites themselves gave my parents a very clear indication of where the greatest alluvial deposits should be found.”
“This trommel is terrific,” R said, beginning to inspect every inch of the slightly-inclined rotating metal tube that could be our savior or our Grim Reaper.
Trommels have a screen at the discharge end, as well as lifter bars made of bolted angle iron. The combination of pressurized water and mechanical action frees the stones from the mud and gravel after it’s fed into the elevated end of the trommel.
“We’ll have to keep an eye on the sluices and jigs attached to the screen end. That’s where we’ll see just how good my parents’ instincts and research really are,” I said, knowing they very rarely missed identifying locations.
“I can envision a ton of gadgets I could derive from this beauty,” R said as he took out the notebook and pencil he always carried in his jacket pocket and began drawing sketches that once brought to life would, at some point, probably save our lives.
“Is all of this equipment environmentally sound?” Roman asked, reminding me of one of the reasons I was beginning to fall so hard for my fake husband.
“Yes. My parents have made sure that Witherspoon & Witherspoon leads the way in continuously recycling both the water and the alluvial deposits once our stones have been extracted. None of our silt is dumped in any of the Amazon’s clear running streams.”
“Well done,” Roman said, taking off his jacket and revealing a six-pack that was totally accounted for, every muscle’s edge beyond well-defined.
If the heat of the rainforest and/or the stress of our operation didn’t get me, his six-pack would.
My prince not only had great abs, but he was totally packin’ too …and packin’ a lot more than his gun.
“Time for some placer mining, then,” he said, starting to hand crank the trommel into action.
“Let’s just hope Mom and Dad located the right place for our placer, if you know what I mean.”
“Touché,” R said, never looking up from the sketches he was still frantically drawing in his notebook.
Chapter Eleven
Just as Stanley’s gem forfeiture case could have been starting to wind its way through the American court system, here we were, sweating in the steamy heat of the Amazon Rainforest, panning for a prize that would make his forfeiture look like peanuts.
If we found it, it would be our ticket to freedom, but it wouldn’t be freedom in the sense of the ability to start over in life. It would be the freedom to have a life at all. As in a form that actually involved breathing.
Roman and R had convinced Stanley to play along with our plan for the time being. But who knew how long that slimy little bastard would be afraid enough of us to favor our plans over those of his gem smuggling cohorts.
Although anyone would be super smart to pay heed to my two R’s. The dark side of opposing them could arguably be much worse.
Even though Stanley had Maple Lynch believing he’d successfully sold the last batch of precious stones in Antwerp, and had thus secured more of their seed money for what they thought was his next operation, none of us could rest until we’d found the gems that would be the keys to our future.
Stanley had sent the invoice for the faux gem sale to Maple Lynch’s executives, who’d in turn issued another check for $1.5 million for the operation.
Under Roman and R’s watchful eye, he’d also given some of that money to Fosito.
So now, we had two things to do next…
First, we had to stick to The Foz like glue.
Second, we had to find what my parents thought could be the largest stones yet to come from our mines.
Why these two to do’s?
Because, if our plan didn’t work, we’d all be the next Done Dids…as in Done Did-in under the river sludge.
“I’m still not convinced that Bunny, Beefcakes and Grams can handle Foz Watch today,” I said, sifting through the latest cache the Large Tom had provided.
As the high noon sun cleared the closest trees and danced off the gazillion facets of our newest discoveries, I marveled at the beautiful chunks of Pink Morganite and sea blue aquamarine.
“Don’t worry about Fosito. He’s got tons more than he can handle with Bunny and Grams,” Roman said over the sound of the Long Tom’s crank being once again pushed into high gear.
“And I suppose with Beefcakes there too, all’s fine,” I said, wanting to believe that more than I actually did.
“If Fosito has Beefcakes pegged as his biggest nightmare, he’s a lot dumber than I thought,” Roman said, his eyes twinkling brighter than the most brilliant of aquamarines resting in my palm.
I laughed, knowing exactly what he meant. And I couldn’t argue his point. My gut instincts told me, and they’d proven to be right on many occasions where Grams was concerned, she was the much bigger danger and force to be reckoned with. Not even some buff Brazilian hunk of bodybuilding could match Grams four feet of fury.
After safely securing the last stash in my rock sack, I leaned down to inspect the latest catch from our Long Tom.
“Pay dirt!”
I shouted then rose up sooo quickly that I damn near passed out from the sudden change in equilibrium.
“We got it?” Roman asked, immediately coming to my side.
“My parents were right. All their years of research and calculations have finally paid off. Damn! They were right all along!”
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br /> “How do you know that?”
“I know…because of this,” I said as I opened up my hands.
Even now, as I moved the gargantuan stone with my thumbs to give Roman a more sun-glistened view, I couldn’t believe what was right before my eyes.
“Is that what I think it is?!”
“Nope. But it’s damn close to the prize we’re seeking.”
“You mean there will be more stones, bigger and more brilliant than that?!”
“Not just one stone, my prince. Hundreds if not thousands,” I said, so proud of my parents’ skills and ingenuity, I was giddy all over.
I was silent for a moment, taking in the sheer magnificence of the five-pound beauty I held in my hands. For the life of me, and actually this discovery could mean I had a shot at still having one, I couldn’t believe that this one stone meant there was an entire cache of these on my family and the Sol Larga’s land.
If my mom’s calculations were correct, with these stones, which could be as large as 250 pounds each, my parents dream of being able to save the Sol Larga, as well as discover a treasure trove of stones that would rock the world, could be just a few more Long Toms away from becoming reality.
I climbed up the steep riverbank and sat down, unable to keep the tears from flowing out fast enough to create an entire new river to rival the one I was sitting above.
Roman, like the good man he was, said nothing. The fact he simply sat down beside me and held me in his arms spoke volumes.
I tried to use the deep-breathing techniques my Yoga Master had taught me, but I couldn’t make them work. Feeling the rough edges of the uncut stone pressed against the inside of my tightly closed fists was the only thing keeping me convinced this day had finally come. I was even afraid to drop the stone into my rock sack for fear it would somehow disappear and would seem to have been a dream.
Thinking I should probably have Roman pinch me, very lightly, as I was kinda’ squeamish about pinching in general, I leaned away from him just long enough to ask him to try it.