by Chris Niles
Kate pulled a long breath through her teeth.
“Do you think your parents would be willing to invest? I’d keep all the risk, all the responsibility. They’d get it all back by the end of next season, and after that, it’d be gravy for them. I just need a little bridge.”
Kate counted the bottles standing in rows behind the bar.
“God, I’m sorry.” Chuck suddenly looked down at his flip-flops. “I don’t want to get into your business, Kate. I just … Remember I met them that one time they came down? He mentioned he was in real estate?” He let the reminder hang.
“Yeah. The time they came down.” She focused on the smell of the grouper on her plate. “The time they spent three minutes on Serenity, then told me I was wasting my journalism degree? That I needed to get a real job and quit being selfish? Or the time my mother said she was ashamed to tell her bridge club her daughter lived on a broken-down boat in the Keys? Or maybe you mean the time my father told me if I married a cop, I’d better take his name because he wouldn’t consider me a Kingsbury? Yeah, Chuck. I remember.” Her already-dry voice flattened to bitter. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid they aren’t really an option.”
Chuck rested a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry, kiddo. I didn’t know.”
Kate pulled away from him and stuffed a cold French fry in her mouth. After a pause, she managed to meet his gaze. “It’s okay, I guess. I chose this. After … it happened. After Danny …” She shrugged. “I figured out what was important. Life is short and it’s precious. I’m not going to waste it as a slave to my parents’ expectations, and I’m not going to waste it getting bound up for anyone else. Ever. That’s all. So yeah, there’s a price for everything, right?”
Chuck slowly nodded. “Yeah. There is.”
The two sat in silence as the guitarist sang.
As Kate handed the remaining fish down to Whiskey, she noticed Chuck staring at a framed photo of an elderly man on the north point of the key, where the edge of the deck stood now.
“Who’s that?”
Chuck scanned the deck. “Who’s who?”
“The photo. Up behind the bar.”
“Oh. That’s … Come to think of it, maybe there’s one more option.”
Chapter Seven
Kate sipped her beer and waited for Chuck to continue.
“When I was a kid … This already sounds like a crazy old man story. I’m not a crazy old man. I’m not even sixty yet. Let’s get that right from the start?”
She nodded, but in her mind, the jury was still out.
“I was born on this island. My mom and dad were high school sweethearts. They married right after graduation, and my grandpa built a house for them as a wedding gift. Same house I’m in now. They loved the flats, and all they ever wanted was to stay and help Gramps run the place.
“Anyway, it was the sixties. Vietnam was heating up, and in the beginning, people believed in what we thought we were doing there. So Dad drove down to the recruiter’s office and enlisted. He was able, and it was the right thing to do. I had just turned six. Like so many did that year, he came back in a flag-covered coffin. And like so many widows did back then, Mom just fell apart.”
It was familiar territory. And all too fresh and raw. Every muscle in her body clenched. Whiskey pulled his body against her leg, and she started counting bottles.
“Oh, Kate. I’m sorry. I didn’t …” He waited.
After a few seconds, she turned back to him. “It’s okay. Go on.”
“Well, Mom started spending more and more time in the bars. Gramps tried to get her into rehab, but she couldn’t stay clean. I was nine when they found her body in a flophouse. Gramps buried her with Dad in the cemetery downtown, and then it was just him and me.”
Chuck stood and hitched up his pants. “Come here.” He took Kate’s hand and led her to the south edge of the deck. Low, thick mangrove hedges stretched down the shore on either side of the long, narrow island. Beyond the lush greenery, tips of masts bobbed in the current.
“Every year or so, we’d put in one more new thing.” He pointed around the property as he talked. “Longer docks. Camper hookups. We added a kitchen to the bar. New fuel pumps. Little by little, we built this place together, Gramps and me. I hated going to school, not because I didn’t like studying, but because I loved helping him here more.”
Chuck gazed down toward the line of docks on the sunset side where Serenity sat with her hull skimming the sandy bottom. “He was old when my dad was born. Older still after Mom died. No man in his seventies should have to raise a kid. But he did it, and he never complained. Not a word to me or to anyone else for that matter. Sometimes I’d find him sitting out at the end of the sunset dock — right out by your slip — sipping on a beer and watching the water. I always imagined he was thinking about what life would have been like if things had been different. If Grandma hadn’t run out on him. If Dad had come back from ’Nam. If Mom had stayed clean and raised me. If he’d have been able to retire and just watch the tide flow in and out. But every now and then, maybe two or three times a year, he’d take off in his boat for a couple days. Never told me where he went, and I never asked. Seemed to be something he needed to do. And it seemed right to let him have that because mostly he just worked hard around here.”
He turned around and leaned on the deck railing. “By the time I graduated, he was getting up there. And he wasn’t thinking quite straight anymore. He’d get confused about who’d paid their slip fees, or he’d accidentally quote someone a rate from the fifties. So I kinda took over. I don’t think he really noticed. Just did less and less until mostly what he did was sit on the porch over there in his rocker and watch the tide.”
She followed his gaze and waited. Just like she had painful baggage, so did he, and in her experience, people sometimes needed a minute to find the strength to carry it.
Chuck stared across the water, then pushed back off the rail. Then together they ambled back toward the bar, Whiskey trailing behind them.
“As I took over the books, we hit a wall growing things around here. Seemed we were only taking in enough to keep up, not enough to cover new projects like Gramps had before. And there was always something needed fixin’. The walk-in or the air conditioner would die. Dock boards needed replaced. I never quite figured out how he’d managed cash flow. To be honest, I didn’t think all that hard about it. Not as hard as I should have, anyway. I just started borrowing when I needed to. Like when I put in this deck a few years after he died. Even though I paid ahead when I could, I still kept falling further and further behind til I had to mortgage the place to cover the new fuel tanks the thieves at the EPA made me put in.”
Chuck pulled two more beers from the cooler and handed one to Kate. She took a pull, then picked at the label, waiting for him to go on.
He drained half the bottle before continuing. “Still nags at me. He always prided himself on giving locals the lowest slip rates in the Lower Keys — especially the native Conchs. He always tried to help widows, and during the war, he always hired the boys who’d lost their daddies in ’Nam. We never had a lot, but we always had enough. So how’d he keep up with all the new projects around here?” He shrugged and turned toward the stage where the guitarist was just wrapping up his set. As the crowd cheered, Chuck led Kate up to the stage.
“Hey, Branson. This is Kate. She lives aboard the old houseboat at the end of the west dock.”
Branson stretched his hand over the body of his guitar and shook Kate’s. “Nice to meet you, Kate.”
“Likewise. Your music is good. How long have you been playing?”
He rested his guitar on a stand. “Down here? About three years. Came down from Maine when my boss decided he didn’t want to run a business anymore. I figured it was time to take my fate into my own hands. Literally. Packed up the six-string and headed south, and I’ve never looked back.”
“Well, it was a good decision. They love you.”
“I’ve been lucky to
develop a few good fans who help spread the word when I play somewhere new.” He turned to Chuck. “You’ve got a great place here. Thanks for letting me play.” He nodded his farewell, then drifted down to greet the crowd.
Chuck looked across the deck out to the water. “You probably don’t remember much of the eighties, do you?”
“Where’d that come from?” Kate laughed. “I was born in eighty-six, so not too much, no.”
“Well, back then, we didn’t have such thing as reality TV. We had reality, period. Anyway, back then, live TV shows were a big event. And one of the biggest was when Geraldo Rivera made a huge deal of opening up a secret vault that had supposedly belonged to Al Capone.”
“I think I heard something about that. But what does that have to do with anything?”
“The whole thing was a huge fiasco. They’d promoted the hell out of it, and they expected to find piles of money or dead bodies … something dramatic. When they opened it, it was totally empty. A complete anticlimax. But Gramps was crazy over it. He was pretty out of it by then, but every time an ad for the show came on, he went nuts. He’d point at the TV and laugh his head off. And he kept reminding me to make sure we were in front of the TV before it started. He didn’t want to miss a minute of it.”
Visitors were drifting to the west railing to watch the sunset. A greasy Magnum wannabe in a Hawaiian shirt and a baseball cap scooted down to make room, then they all stared at the blazing orange ball sinking toward the horizon.
Chuck dropped his voice to nearly a whisper, picking up the story as if he’d never stopped speaking. “I figured Gramps was trying to connect with his youth. He’d been in his twenties during Capone’s heyday. He was originally from Chicago, and he’d met Grandma in a speakeasy, so I was sure it was a reminder of all the fun times. But when the show started, it was like he knew it was gonna be empty. Everyone expected them to find something. Everyone except Gramps. He started pointing at the screen before Geraldo opened the vault. And all he said was, ‘Gotcha, you sick bastard.’ Then he just laughed.”
Kate watched the horizon. It was too hazy to hope for a green flash, but she quietly watched as the last sliver of the sun faded into the sea.
“He died not too long after that,” Chuck continued. “His reaction to the empty vault struck me as odd, but with everything else going on, I pretty much forgot about it. He had some weird notes that referred to Capone in his old papers, but I never bothered to dig any deeper. I figured it might be fun to research after I retired or something. But now, maybe it’s my last chance. Kate, it’s a long shot, but I think maybe he took whatever was supposed to be in that vault and hid it.”
She stared at him. Then she busted a gut. “Dang, Chuck. You nearly got me. That was a long way to go for a laugh, man. How long have you been working on that?” She laughed so hard, she crouched down and buried her face in Whiskey’s fur.
Chuck gently rested his hand on her shoulder and pulled her back up.
“Oh.” Kate met his gaze, then turned her attention to her ragged flip-flops. When the silence stretched between them, she looked back up. “You’re not joking, are you?”
He shook his head.
“You know it sounds insane, right? Al Capone’s lost fortune?”
“Yeah. It sounds crazy. But it’s all I’ve got.” Chuck’s body began to shake, and he started back toward the bar. “I need to come up with a couple million bucks in two weeks, or Baumann is gonna snatch this place out from under me and build some stuffy gated community and fru-fru resort. You and me? We’ll be scrapin’ up rent money swabbing Steve’s deck and kissing tourist butts. I was born on this island. I can’t let that bastard steal it from us. You gotta help me, Kate.”
Chapter Eight
Vince traced a pattern through the tiny droplets on his beer bottle. He ignored the crowd and watched as clouds floated above the western horizon. Every nightfall, tourists and locals alike gathered against every west-facing railing in the Keys. And even the cloudiest sunset in the Lower Keys was better than a sunny day in New Jersey. At least, the part of New Jersey he was from.
The sun peeked beneath the cloud cover on its path beyond the horizon. Within moments, dusk settled over the deck. Tiki torches took up the slack, and the thin crowd drifted back to their tables, a few of the tourists shooing stray seagulls from their half-eaten dinners.
Vince returned to his table near the bar then kicked his feet up on the chair opposite him. He sipped his beer slowly and picked at a thread on his shirt.
He’d watched his primary gig — the bar’s owner — drift around for the past half hour, checking in with patrons. Finally, the man had paused to speak intensely with a woman sitting alone at the bar with a giant German Shepherd at her feet.
Who brings a filthy animal to a restaurant?
With what he’d overheard during sunset, it could be his lucky day. Just needed to get the chick and the dog out of the way, then figure out how to use this Al Capone-thing to his advantage. Vince drifted up to the bar to eavesdrop, near-empty beer bottle in hand. The dog lady sounded skeptical.
“Chuck, that’s a hell of a story, but if I were you, I wouldn’t bank my future on it.”
“I think it’s the only option I’ve got left. I can’t let it go without at least trying.”
“What about other banks? Refinancing? You’ve got to hold enough equity…”
The bar owner shook his head. “Tried ’em all. Cash flow isn’t good enough, especially right now. But once I get the docks upgraded and put in new fuel pumps, I can …”
The man droned on. Vince fought down a sneer — a month from now, this whole island would be bulldozed and Baumann would be laying the foundation of his newest playground for his rich friends.
Can’t build it without me. Won’t let me near the place once it’s open.
Vince watched the bar owner while the woman yapped. “Don’t you just need enough to get caught up on your payments?”
The man’s shoulders dropped even further. “It should be that easy, but this ain’t no home loan. Baumann is on the board, and he wants this land. After they foreclose, he’ll buy it from them for four times what I owe, which isn’t even a quarter what it’s worth. The bank wants me to default as much as Baumann does. They’re in bed together to steal this place out from under me and make a killing.”
“Why didn’t he just try to buy it from you?”
“He did. Shark Key isn’t for sale. But apparently it’s available for the taking.”
Baumann already owned half of the Lower Keys, and he was maneuvering to buy the other half, one twisted arm at a time. Vince’s job was secure — he’d done everything from construction site cleanup to running cargo across the Strait to taking care of problems like this Miller guy — but only as long as he delivered. His fingers teased the thick gold chain around his neck. He almost felt sorry for the guy. Baumann was a world class tool. The man would sell his daughter to seal a deal. Probably had. Her slimy dirt-bag husband never could have landed such a rich, hot blonde without paying for it in some manner.
“Kate, I’ve got nothing left. I know it sounds crazy, but this is my last chance, and I can’t do it alone. Please?” The guy sounded like a little kid begging his mom to stay up because there was a monster under his bed.
But this time, the monster was standing at the bar wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
The woman shook her head. “Steve had a really good season. He was planning to upgrade his compressor and nav station. Maybe he can put it off a season and float you a loan?”
“He might, but it’s too little too late. Look, Kate. I know you prefer to keep to yourself. I know you don’t get in the middle of other people’s messes. I know you have your own baggage you’re hauling around, and it makes that broken-down boat of yours sit really low in the water. I stay out of it and let you be. But kiddo, this is your home and your haven as much as it is mine. You could find another slip, easy. But going rate would cost you nearly a thousand a month, even w
ith the long-term discount. And you’ll be stuck around four-story dry storage and forklifts and concrete. You’ll have to go all the way down to Smathers Beach or the community pool for your swims.”
Vince looked down the bar for the toothless fat chick. This conversation was more pathetic than he was getting paid to listen to. And it kept getting worse.
“I don’t want to sound like your dad or anything, but honey, you’d have to get a job. That little bit you’ve got coming in from Danny’s pension is barely enough for you now. I don’t want be a jerk. I don’t want to sound selfish. I just need you to see that saving this place is as important to you as it is for me. Kate, please. You need this, and Gramps is our last hope.”
The idea of hidden treasure was insane. Vince had seen too many crazy northerners come down searching for Spanish gold and long-lost shipwrecks. He’d crewed for some of them and found a few stray trinkets on the floor of the Straits, but enough rich men had invested more than enough money for Vince to know that there was nothing left for the random explorer to find.
But the old man seemed convinced. Vince nursed his beer and wandered down toward the docks. He was tired. Tired of standing around, watching and waiting. Of threatening and roughing up people whose only crime was enough bad luck to get on the wrong side of the boss. Of evenings at The Dollhouse, then waking up alone.
Flipping on Baumann could cost Vince his life, but if the grandfather had really hidden something valuable enough to save the island, it could be enough to buy a new life away from all this. He was ready for a change, and maybe his best chance was to let Chuck lead him to it. But first, he needed to deal with the woman.
Chapter Nine
Kate slipped off the barstool then tapped the side of her leg. Whiskey jumped to attention.
Chuck took her hand. “Please. Just think about it.”
She shook her head and squeezed his fingers. “I can’t, Chuck. I can’t.” When she walked away from the bar, Whiskey followed her down the steps.