by Tim Dorsey
“Why?”
“When you left me here and went to the store,” said Coleman. “I think he saw me.”
“Saw you? Doing what? . . . Wait, don’t answer that. I think I’m getting the picture.”
“I made some noises, too.”
“For the love of God, please stop! It’s going to be hard enough getting the image out of my head without audio as well.” Serge walked over to the hostage. “I think you traumatized him. They may be naming a new syndrome after you.”
He ripped duct tape off the mouth. “Sorry about my friend,” said Serge. “That should be more than enough punishment for you, but I don’t make the rules.”
“Please let me go! I did everything you asked!” Whimpering. “I went to the bank with you and got a certified check for those people . . .”
Serge held up a driver’s license. “What’s wrong with Malcolm Reynolds Greely? Much better than Tyler or Nicholas.”
“How many times do I have to say I’m sorry?”
“Yeah, but you don’t mean it.” Serge tossed the license in the trash and taped the captive’s mouth shut again. He grabbed a shopping bag off the dresser.
Coleman came over. “Is that what you bought at the store while I was—”
“Shut up! The image was almost gone.” Serge walked over and dumped the bag on the bed.
“What’s that stuff?” asked Coleman.
“Everything I need for my next science project.”
Coleman picked up each item in turn. “A barber’s electric razor, cheese grater, box of small trash bags and . . . I don’t recognize this thing.”
“It’s a time lock.” Serge picked up the razor. “A lot like a regular padlock, but you can set the timer to open it at a preordained point in the future.”
“This isn’t much stuff,” said Coleman. “Usually your projects are a lot more complicated.”
“It’ll be more than enough.”
“So what’s the timer for anyway?”
“I’ve fallen into a rut,” said Serge. “Different day, same shit. Into the trunk, out of the trunk, into the chair, duct tape, blah, blah, blah . . . But even though this started out predictable, I’m throwing in a twist at the end so nobody can say I was snoozing at the wheel.”
“You’re just being responsible.”
Serge walked over to Malcolm and held up the razor. “A little off the top? . . . Ha! Ha! Ha! . . . Just kidding. Actually a lot off the top.”
“Mmmmmmm! Mmmmmmm!”
Serge flicked on the razor and placed it at the back of Malcolm’s head just above the neck. He pushed the device upward and deep. Huge clumps of hair fell off the front of the razor as it continued over the top of the captive’s scalp, right down the middle, until it reached the edge of his forehead.
Serge turned off the razor. “There you go. I hear reverse mohawks are coming into style.” Next he grabbed the cheese grater. “I’d be lying if I said this won’t hurt . . . Coleman, grab a towel and come here!” He placed the grater where he’d just shaved and began rubbing.
“Mmmmmm! Mmmmmm!”
“Pipe down,” said Serge. “I’m only using the extra-fine side.”
Coleman arrived with the towel. “Here you go . . . Jesus, he’s bleeding.”
“Just a few scrapes.” He tossed the grater on one of the beds and applied the towel. “Coleman, hold this in place while I go out to the car.”
Serge ran out the door.
Coleman bent down to the captive’s face and whispered. “Malcolm, is it? Listen, what you saw earlier? I’d really appreciate it if we could keep that between you and me. If it ever got back to my mom—”
Serge returned. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothin’.”
Serge placed a clear rectangle on the bed.
“Hey, I remember that,” said Coleman. “It’s the storage bin you were putting bacon strips in down on Big Pine Key.”
“And it worked. You can let go of the towel.”
Coleman joined Serge as they crouched down and peered through the side of the bin.
“It’s a bunch of flies.”
“Cochliomyia hominivorax,” said Serge. “Otherwise known as the dreaded screw worm flies that recently plagued the Florida Keys.”
“Most of them are dead on the bottom.”
“That was inevitable,” said Serge. “But there are enough left to do the trick. They have a twenty-day life cycle under ideal conditions.”
“How did you know that bacon would lure them into the bin?”
“Read it in a medical journal.” Serge ripped open the box of plastic garbage bags. “As I said before, sometimes the best cure is to go low-tech. In the rare cases where screw worms attack humans, doctors use bacon, because the larvae are more attracted to that than human flesh, and the parasites unscrew themselves from their hosts. All completely true: Type ‘bacon therapy’ into any search engine.”
Serge opened one of the trash bags, inflated it with air and fit it over the storage bin. “This is the tricky part. I’ll hold the mouth of the bag in place, and you carefully pop the lid and slide it out from underneath.”
It went off without a hitch, and Serge shook the bin until enough of the flies took flight into the bag. “Coleman, slide the lid back on.”
Serge cinched the mouth of the sack and strolled over to Malcolm.
“Mmmmm?”
“You must be getting pretty confused about now.” Serge carefully fit the bag’s opening over the top of Malcolm’s head. “Coleman! Duct tape!”
“Coming right up.”
Several strips were wrapped around Malcolm’s forehead, sealing the bag in place. “It’s not your fault you don’t know what’s going on. You simply don’t have the scientific background. So I’ll tell you a little story . . .”
He did, explaining all about the gruesome infestation in the Keys, right up to: “. . . And I used a cheese grater to mimic lesions when those little deer have antler fights. That’s pretty much it.”
“Mmmmmmm! Mmmmmmm!”
“Why so glum?” said Serge. “I always give my contestants a bonus round and a chance to survive.”
A tap on his shoulder.
“What is it, Coleman?”
“Uh, hate to mention this, but you didn’t give the seagull guy a bonus round.”
“Of course I did.”
Coleman shook his head.
Serge pondered; then: “Damn! . . . I’ll just have to make it up to Malcolm to balance my karma account . . . Malcolm, did you hear that? Another jerk’s loss is your gain. I’m adjusting the time lock in your favor.” He knelt behind the chair. “What you’re feeling is me refitting your wrist restraints so the lock will free your hands in, say, three days?”
“Mmmmmm! Mmmmmm!”
“You’re going to get pretty hungry, but the key is hydration, so I’ll get you some sports bottles and stick the tubes through the tape. Just remember to conserve.” Serge hopped and clapped. “And most important of all, when the time lock opens and the bonus round begins, what do you need to do?”
“Mmmmmm! Mmmmmm!”
“That’s right!” Serge said with a widening grin. “Find bacon!”
Chapter 15
Four Years Earlier
A stuffed wahoo stared down from the office wall with glassy eyes.
Captain Crack Nasty tilted his head to consider the fish. Then he considered his career position. That shootout on the high seas the previous night wasn’t exactly tailored for the long game. He glanced at the bottle of Johnnie Walker on his desk and stuck it in a bottom drawer: Last time I make business decisions on that stuff.
Overall, though, Nasty viewed the evening a huge success, even if it was a one-timer. He’d recovered a serious amount of treasure, and he didn’t have to split it with anyone. Then there was that ugly violence. Crack hadn’t known this about himself before. But he liked it.
Now it was just a matter of tweaking his corporate model. Minimize risk. Captain
Crack opened another drawer in his desk and pulled out an empty notebook. He turned on his computer. He had decided to do something quite unnatural to him: homework.
He found a number of wreck sites that weren’t exactly inactive. The original salvagers still had valid claims. It was just that they had reached diminishing returns, and the locations were being worked more sporadically. Also, Crack began employing a spotter boat, on the off chance that the claim holders picked the wrong day to come back. He employed more care in selecting his associates, more stable, reliable, less trigger-happy. The bottom line: Take it slow and there could be a long future.
His new crew began doing quite well at five sites from Cape Canaveral to Port Salerno and Hobe Sound, never staying too long, never taking too much at once. Treasure would still be there when they came back, as they did, time after time, until there were only a few items in the bottom of a single dive basket. Then on to the next location.
But there were only so many sites off Florida—even dormant ones—that could produce any decent yield, especially if you had to dart in and out like thieves in the night. That meant even more homework for the good captain. And a funny thing happened. He began to find the research interesting, even enjoyable. The history of maritime trade routes back to the Old World, the life and times of sailors on the galleons, all the unnamed and forgotten hurricanes.
Captain Crack pored over notes he had recently scribbled. Of particular interest was a bit of treasure folklore that didn’t have any foundation in the official records. Which meant virgin territory. He was intrigued at the prospect of his first legitimate find . . .
The sun had just gone down when he was interrupted by a knock on his office door. “You wanted to see me?”
“Yes, yes, come in.”
It was one of his newest hires, a former marijuana bale loader released from Raiford. Went by Corky.
“What’s up?”
“Follow me, Corky.” He led him down the dock, making a mental note to hammer down some of the rusty nails that were popping up. They arrived at a black boat. “Climb in. We got work.”
“Okay.” Corky jumped aboard and looked around. “Where are the other guys?”
“Just us.” Crack untied the bowline from a mooring cleat. “No diving. Only recon to GPS a potential wreck with sonar . . .”
Since there wouldn’t be any violation of a claimed site, there was no need for speed. Crack motored unhurriedly out to sea, sipping coffee and Scotch. He became quite chatty. It was a new development ever since he’d gotten the research bug, and the crew was getting used to it, in a negative way. They rolled their eyes at all the boring knowledge that Crack now spouted. But only behind his back.
“Corky, you wouldn’t believe what I’ve been researching. Potentially my first legitimate find. It’s fascinating!”
“Really?” Corky concealed a sigh. “Tell me about it.”
“Our work is inextricably entwined with hurricanes and their storm surges that sent doomed ships down off our coasts.” The captain adjusted his course bearing. “Corky, did you know there was a hurricane in 1928 that had a storm surge unlike any other?”
“I can’t say that I did.”
Crack nodded earnestly. “The surge didn’t come from the ocean, but from Lake Okeechobee, producing a tidal wave that wiped out entire neighborhoods of fieldworkers. Then I stumbled upon a wild coincidence. I began hearing about a folktale circulating to this day out at the lake. A treasure was lost in the hurricane! Some sugar baron supposedly squirreled away a fortune. When the storm hit, it took him, his house and whatever he was saving, and decades of farming have since covered up all traces. But to this day, it’s said that children playing out in the sugarcane fields occasionally come across an old gold coin. Can you imagine it? An inland storm surge producing an inland wreck?”
“Wow,” Corky said with feigned enthusiasm. “So you’re going to go after it?”
Crack sagged slightly. “More homework first. I don’t know anything about this sugar baron, which is the key to narrowing the search to a specific location.” He cut the engine.
Corky looked over the side as the quiet boat rolled mildly in the swells. “We’re here?”
“Yes, we are.”
Corky climbed over gear on the deck. “I’ll start checking the sonar.”
“I’ve got something I want to show you first.”
“What is it?”
“See this tube on the side of the shore radio?” asked Crack.
“Yeah, but I still don’t know what I’m looking at.”
“It’s a pinhole video lens. Covers the whole boat from here on back, kind of like a nanny cam.”
“I’m not following,” said a bored Corky.
Crack reached down into bow storage and pulled something out.
“Now do you follow?”
Corky was no longer bored. He’d had guns pointed at him before, but a twelve-gauge always dials it up to eleven.
“What’s going on, Captain?”
“I’m sure you have a pretty damn good idea.” Crack gestured with the end of the gun. “That tiny camera was filming every time you stuffed shit in your pockets when we came up from a site. Have I not treated you well? And then you steal from me? Don’t even try to lie. I could show you the tapes, but I don’t care about your opinion.”
Corky silently reviewed options.
The captain racked the shotgun with the distinct sound that is a natural stool softener.
“Wait! Wait! Wait!” Corky began babbling. “I just took a little. I was going to give it back. I had car troubles. The electric bill. I was drunk. My girlfriend needed braces—”
Blam!
Corky hit the water and bobbed, well, like a cork.
“That was fun.” Crack throttled back up toward land. “Now to do some homework on this sugar baron . . .”
Mr. Fakakta
Sugarcane is actually a grass.
A grass that changed the march of history in the New World.
It can’t entirely be attributed to rum, but that’s a good start. During the colonial period, from the Caribbean to the South American coast surrounding French Guyana, farming took off due to the region’s conducive blend of climate and rich soil. Bananas, coffee beans, nutmeg, rice, cocoa. But when they started using sugarcane to make molasses, which was shipped north to rum distilleries, sugar took the lead and never looked back.
Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, Belize, Cuba, Guadalupe. Plow that other stuff under, boys, and plant that cane. The cash flowed in, but at a price. Brutal conditions in a brutal business, cutthroat competition and politics.
On the island of Hispaniola, in the Dominican Republic, there was a particularly heated rivalry among the four chief growers in the early twentieth century. And it wasn’t gentlemanly. Threats, vandalism, workers attacked and maimed. Alliances shifted back and forth like on one of those survival reality-TV shows, until one of the four growers was voted off the island.
Fulgencio Salvador Fakakta drew the short straw. But it was impossible to feel sorry for him. Fakakta was one of those rare comeuppance cases where the bad guy actually lost. He had bribed, cheated, stolen and even murdered his way to wealth and power. And now it had come full circle. In short, the other growers were just tired of this asshole.
Fakakta saw it coming, and it wasn’t going to be a polite eviction notice. If he was lucky, they’d burn his plantation home, seize everything he had down to the last penny, and allow him to escape with the shirt on his back. If he was lucky. So Fakakta quietly and quickly liquidated everything into gold, which was all crated up one night and packed onto a chartered ship.
“What’s in these crates? Rocks?”
“Shut up and keep loading!”
Fulgencio set sail. The other growers still burned his place to the ground, but at least he had enough for a new start.
Besides the Caribbean, there was one other place where sugarcane had just started to catch hold.
Florida.
Fakakta had the experience and ruthlessness to make it work, and soon he was one of the wealthier farmers in the lake region. It wasn’t enough. He began stealing from his workers. Docking pay for non-reasons, overcharging for rent on their ridiculous shanties and the food he required that they buy from him as a condition of employment. Then he realized there were far more people looking for work than there were jobs. Can’t let that equation go to waste. So he took it up a notch and started not paying some workers entirely. Of course they’d yell and argue and quit. But what else were they going to do? He was white. He’d just hire more guys.
But one particular worker, named Jacob, wouldn’t let it go. He kept demanding his money, day after day. Finally, Jacob went out to Fakakta’s stately colonial plantation house on the edge of town and pounded on the front door. The next morning he was found hanging from a prominent cypress tree with signs of torture. It was meant to be obvious, unlike the other missing workers, who were never found. The white law didn’t care, and everyone else got the message. Fakakta continued amassing his fortune, which he kept in gold. But nobody knew where.
Chapter 16
Cocoa Beach
Malcolm sat quietly in his chair.
Serge and Coleman sat quietly at a table.
Malcolm’s eyes stared up at the plastic bag taped to his head.
“Mmmmmmm! Mmmmmmm!”
Serge and Coleman wore plain white T-shirts. Open bottles of various colors were scattered across the table. Stains representing the same colors covered their shirts. Coleman leaned over and rubbed feverishly. “I’d completely forgotten about finger painting.”
“Finger painting is the best!” Serge made a blue circle with his thumb. “I don’t know why society cuts that off after kindergarten. I had dreams of becoming a world-class finger-paint artist. Huge gallery openings in SoHo, the toast of Paris. Then I found out it was just some bullshit to keep us busy until recess. It was the beginning of the counterculture, and that’s when I started seeing through all the lies. Finger painting, Vietnam.”