He held up his hand, shushing me. “When I was a young lieutenant, I was sent to a desolate sweep of beach with a handful of men on what seemed to be one more ‘silly’ recon mission. The name of that beach was Normandy, Captain. You never know. And you have your orders. Let’s say nothing more about it.”
Everything was in the file. High-altitude photos, the report made on the one search of the vessel. The Cuban boat had obviously done some shrimping, slipping off the Tortugas to drag, but always returning to an area off the Marquesas to anchor.
“There’s pathetically little to go on,” said D. Harold after I had skimmed through the file. “For one thing, it might be completely innocent. For another thing—and I hate to say this—our intelligence people aren’t as good as they once were. The information they give you is not always complete . . . or accurate. Some of them would be better off working for newspapers.”
“The data was fed through the computers, I assume.”
“Yes.”
“Did it kick out any possible motive for the Cubans to place a vessel in our waters?”
“Several. It might be espionage. Their deep divers might be placing submarine radar-tracking devices on the bottom, camouflaging them as coralheads. Or nuclear explosives. Also, a very lethal grade of PCP—the kids call it angel dust, I believe—has been filtering into the national drug market through the Florida Keys. Perhaps they have something to do with that. Or they might be somehow smuggling cocaine or even heroin into the country, using the shrimp boat as the distribution center. The possibilities are nearly endless.”
“Then why don’t we just send out a squad of Marines and run them back to their own country.”
“Oh, we plan to. But first we want to find out what they’re up to.”
D. Harold Westervelt went back to the floor safe and fished out another file. He handed me a paper. “For your cover as a treasure hunter, you will need this. It’s a state permit to search a specific area of water immediately off the Marquesas Keys. You may leave that area, of course, but it would be best for appearance’s sake if you spent most of your daylight hours there.” He handed me another paper. “This is a list of the equipment I have requisitioned for you. The magnetometer is not of the kind normally used by treasure hunters. Rather than reacting to gold and silver and other metals, the one you will have is extremely sensitive to underwater electronic devices. The reason is obvious. For weaponry, I don’t think you’ll see anything on the list with which you are not familiar.”
“Weapons?”
Colonel Westervelt smiled. “As I said, Captain—you never know.” He handed me a thin folder. “You should also go over this before you leave. Any operation they might be carrying out short of espionage and honest fishing would require American connections. And the most likely suspects would be the people who frequent the Marquesas area. There’s a list in there of people—treasure hunters, mostly—with a personal history when available. The boat I would watch most closely is the Libertad, a barge that has been converted into a treasure-salvage vessel by a group of Cuban-Americans.”
I skimmed the list briefly, planning to go over it carefully later. But something under the name of Jason Boone caught my eye:
Capt. Green Berets, resigned commission Aug. ’70; Purple Heart (3), Silver Star, Bronze Star (2), Presidential citation for bravery in action Vietnam, April ‘69. . . .
Colonel Westervelt raised his eyebrows. “You’ve noticed something?”
“This fellow Jason Boone. I met him a few days ago.”
“Yes, I heard something about that. Well, according to intelligence, the resignation of Captain Boone was a great loss to the American Army. They had big things planned for him. But he had some sort of a religious conversion or something and threw it all over for study.”
“Odd,” I said. “He seemed quite upset about killing a man who pulled a knife on him. I felt for sure that it must have been his first time.”
“God does odd things to people, Captain. But if something happens out off the Marquesas, and you do get into a situation where you need help quick, intelligence has cleared Jason Boone for a partial briefing. Reborn Christian or not, he’s a soldier. And if you need it, he’ll help you.”
“I doubt if I’ll need it, but I’ll keep him in mind.”
D. Harold smiled wryly. “It’s not that old SEAL-Beret rivalry which makes you say that, is it, Captain?”
“Rivalry! The idea of a SEAL being jealous of a G.B. is about as ridiculous as . . . Dolly Parton being jealous of Twiggy!”
My older friend and adviser laughed out loud. “Well, as long as you don’t feel strongly about it. Okay, Captain, you know where to pick up your equipment. I’ve given you another Farallon-Oceanic underwater propulsion vehicle—try to take better care of this one. And good luck. See you in a week or two.”
As I left the lab, I heard the steel firedoor close and lock behind me. Colonel D. Harold Westervelt had work to do . . .
9
Back at the docks, the fishing guides with morning half-day trips were already in, cleaning their fish. The charters stood around like proud old pros, getting their pictures taken with their catch of cuda, dolphin, wahoo, and billfish, while envious tourists looked on. Gulls circled overhead, squawking.
Man, you shoulda seen the damn shark we had on. . . .
Dang arms are still tired from that bull dolphin. . . .
Our captain seemed a little upset when my husband dropped the pole overboard, but I really don’t think it was Joe’s fault. . . .
Every day, twice a day, it’s the Dead Fish and Tourist Show, live from Garrison Bight and Charterboat Row. I sat in Sniper’s port fighting chair, stern deck facing the pier, watching. There was a cold beer in my hand, and the sun felt good on my face, reflecting up off the green harbor water. Two boats down, an old friend, Captain Nels Chester, stood hunched over the cleaning table steaking his catch while a middle-aged woman with a yellow straw hat bounced the same old tired questions off him. Every now and then he’d look over at me and wink.
“Yes, ma’am, twelve dolphin an’ a coupla cuda is considered a pretty good catch.”
“No, ma’am, I can’t give you a partial refund.”
“Yes, ma’am, you can buy fish at the market for five dollars a pound, but you can’t catch ’em for five dollars a pound . . .”
You get too many like that. They weigh the number of steaks or fillets against the price of the trip. They’re the ones who care nothing for the sport, who feel nothing in the fight of the fish; they’re the ones who want only snapshots to show the folks back home, and enough dead meat to pay for the cost of the trip. I finished my beer and went up to the cleaning table to give Nels some verbal support. When the lady with the yellow straw hat felt my shadow cover her, she turned around.
“Did you catch all them fish, ma’am?” I had on my best gawking smile, loose-limbed, the big, harmless, and not-too-smart admirer.
“Well, yes . . . ah . . . my husband and I caught them. But I was just telling the captain here that I don’t feel the number of fish we caught justifies the rather extravagant rates—”
I cut her off, looking at Nels. “Captain Chester, how do you do it? Why is it you’re the one to always catch all the fish?”
Nels looked down at the table, fighting back the laughter. “Jus’ lucky, I guess, Captain MacMorgan.’Course, I had a coupla real good fishermen with me, too.”
That made the lady straighten. “Why, thank you!” She looked at the row of fish again, the dolphin now a faded yellow in death. “I guess there are more there than I thought.”
She went off flushed with pleasure to find her husband, thanking Nels and promising to call him the next time they were in Key West. When she was out of earshot, Nels let it go, a big rolling burst of laughter. “Jesus criminy, MacMorgan, you ought to go on the stage, an’ that’s no shit.”
“Seems I can remember you helping me out a time or two.”
“Sure, sure, but the way you h
andled that woman . . . ha!”
“Two real good fishermen, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess I was doin’ it too. That lady there couldn’t catch her ass with a grappling hook, an’ that’s a natural fact. If they ever do come back, I hope she forgets my number.”
Back in the salon, I turned the little fan so that it would sweep across me as I sat in the pilot’s chair. I had another beer, Copenhagen wry against lower lip, and the little folder D. Harold Westervelt had given me. I went over the list of commercial fishermen who regularly worked the area. I checked off the ones I knew to be honest and dependable, and made a short list of those I didn’t know. I’d call their names in to Norm Fizer and have his people do a more complete bio on each. There were three groups of treasure hunters with state permits to search and salvage around the Marquesas. I knew one of the guys, Buster Ronstadz, a big tough customer who had been arrested more than once in Key West for drunk and disorderly. Buster was a good example of the treasure-hunter type: he’d failed at just about everything else—commercial fishing, dive-shop operator, fishing guide—and hunting Spanish gold seemed to be part of the natural progression toward his own ruin. Buster was the loudmouthed bully type, and I’d heard something recently about him. What? And then I remembered: his wife had been hospitalized with a few broken ribs, claiming to have fallen down the steps—an odd excuse when a police investigation showed her to live in a single-story mobile home. I made a little star by Buster’s name. He was one to watch.
There was a lengthy report on the team of Cuban-American treasure hunters. There were dozens of them, with a confusing host of surnames. All had one thing in common: each belonged to a fairly small organization called the Council of Liberty, a Miami-based organization which, in the minds of some, at least, had rather dubious motives. A note at the bottom of the report read:
“The Council of Liberty is presently under investigation. At least one, and possibly more, of the Cuban-American organizations in Miami secretly believes it to be a pro-Castro agency. As of yet, however, their claims are completely unsubstantiated. The Council is known to have financed and manned private military maneuvers in the Everglades, training, ostensibly, for the common Cuban-American goal to oust Castro and retake Cuba by force. Our investigation is expected to be complete by the end of this year.”
I took a sip of beer and sighed. Great. Just great. They could tell me everything I needed to know—in three months.
The last report was on Jason Boone’s group. It was impressive, to say the least. War hero, brilliant student of archaeology and history at the University of Iowa, and founder of a highly regarded religious organization called Christ’s Children of America. His group had raised nearly a million dollars to help feed, clothe, and educate the poverty-stricken in Appalachia, and had sent missionary teams to Europe, of all places. Reading the report, I felt rather small and meek in the swath Jason Boone had cut in his short lifetime. He was one of the good ones; one of America’s straight-arrows who apparently had been broken by all the needless death and suffering he saw in Vietnam. But he had regrouped quickly and found his way. I knew how it could happen. In Nam there were only three ways to escape the hell: drugs, death, or God. He had made the most sensible choice. In my long early years there, I just rode with the hell, and tempered the horror with an awesome amount of beer. I found the knowledge that he would be somewhere in the Marquesas area with me strangely reassuring—not because he was a man of God (I think even less about religion than I do about geometry) but because he was, at least, someone to turn to. Not even the Navy personnel who later would help me load my gear knew what I would be doing. And the open sea beyond the Marquesas is one hell of a lot of emptiness.
I got a notebook and scribbled down the port addresses of the Cuban-American group and of Buster Ronstadz. If I was going out to watch the Cuban shrimp boat, I might as well do a little amateur sleuthing and see if I could find out what had happened to Gifford Remus—and his treasure.
It was one of those tacky little trailer parks at the edge of town: a domino series of bleached paint and aluminum life-sized cartons raised on concrete blocks. Dirt yards, broken children’s toys on the ground, ragged, halfhearted attempts at landscaping with a few bright flowers and citrus trees—all of which looked as haggard as stray cats. There’s an air of despair about these places. An atmosphere of too many pointless comings and goings. The cars in the dirt drives looked as broken-down and uncared-for as the trailers, and bored, haunted faces peered out at me as I whistled my way toward Lot # 13, the Ronstadz residence. It was soap-opera time, and I could hear dim organ music coming from a dozen separate televisions. Edge of Darkness, As the World Turns—escapes for the abandoned trailer women, contrived dramas for the lonely. Dry wash fluttered on a rope strung between trees in the stillness.
“Who’s there?”
The thin face of a woman in her early thirties peered out at me through a crack as wide as the chain lock would allow.
“My name’s MacMorgan, Mrs. Ronstadz. Dusky MacMorgan.”
“If it’s about the washer, we sent our payment in yesterday. You’ll get your money. Sent it straight to the main office at Sears.”
“It’s not about the washer, Mrs. Ronstadz. I came to see your husband.”
A cigarette hung from her thin lips. It swung up and down as she spoke. “My husband ain’t here. Don’t know when he’s coming back.”
“It’s pretty important, Mrs. Ronstadz.”
I could feel it coming. Strangers scare the lonely. She was going to slam the door in my face. So I made my move. You have to play these things by ear, right or wrong. I pulled the gold chain from my pocket and held it up in the bright October sunlight. “It’s about this,” I said.
I saw the intake of breath, the burning eyes.
“If that’s my husband’s, I’ll just take it off your hands right now.”
“It’s not your husband’s. If I could just come in for a moment?”
She slid the chain and opened the door wide. “Sure. But, like I said, he ain’t home right now.”
It was one of those trailers that remind you of a giant matchbox. Dingy yellows and rounded porcelain edges on the small refrigerator and stove. Grease had coagulated on the plywood cupboards, and there was the dank odor of fried eggs, roach spray, and cigarette smoke. She lighted another Winston, exhaling through her nose. “So why do you want to talk to Buster if that chain ain’t his?”
“Because I know where to find more of these but I might need some help to do it.”
“Might need some help, or do need some help?”
I shrugged. “Might. I don’t know too much about treasure hunting. I heard your husband does.”
She gave me a long look of appraisal. She wore a mouse-colored sack dress. She was tall, thin, brown-haired, and her breasts sagged braless beneath the material. She motioned me toward a chair in the narrow living room, switched off the TV set, then took a seat herself, holding her ribs painfully.
“I can’t speak for Buster, but I think he’ll be interested. He ain’t been doing too good out there.” And then, almost to herself, she added, “He ain’t been doing too good at anything, lately.”
“So when can I talk to him? Is he out in his boat?”
She shook her head. “Naw, he got back in yesterday. Had to get supplies.”
“How long was he out?”
“Two weeks. But he says he found—” She cut herself off.
“Found what?”
She got up, searched for matches, lit another cigarette. “You better talk to Buster, mister.” She looked at me again. “Say, ain’t I seen you someplace? You look like this guy I saw in a movie once.”
“No, not me.” I smiled at her. “I’m just a fishing guide. Tell Buster my name and he’ll know where to find me.”
She brushed the hair out of her face, suddenly concerned with her appearance. She checked the clock on the wall. “Well, he ain’t gonna be back all afternoon. Out getting drunk, I suppose.”
She came closer, eyes brighter. “You’re welcome to wait here, mister. I got some beer in the fridge. I get so goddam bored here, it would be a pleasure to have someone to . . . talk to.” It was the sadly common invitation. We were alone, a mature man, a mature woman, in the lonely little house with the husband away. I wondered in how many towns and houses and trailer parks across the nation the same game was being played at that very moment. In our fast-paced existence of interstate highways and business trips on jet planes, we have all become victims. I watched her nipples rise beneath the thin material and her eyes grow bright, and I knew. Our mobility has served only to emphasize our loneliness and to heighten our awareness of the universal void, and so we grasp at the quick intimacy of sex as if it would slow our warp-speed journey toward death. I felt sorry for her. Buster Ronstadz was no prince. And this trailer was no castle. Life for Mrs. Ronstadz hadn’t turned out as neatly as it did on her TV programs. And it was slipping away from her all too quickly.
I stood up. She put her hand on my chest, tracing the line of buttons toward my pants. “Honest. He’s not gonna be back for a couple more hours.”
I was willing to play the verbal game, to spare her any rejection she couldn’t rationalize. But nothing more.
“Geez, I’d like to. I really would.” I checked my watch. “But I have this damn meeting. Just tell your husband I’ll see him around.”
She took a step back and smiled. “Ain’t that the way it always goes? People so busy they ain’t got time for the good things. Well . . . Buster don’t spend too much time here and . . . well, you know where to find me.”
As I left, the wind caught the aluminum door and it slammed behind me. I heard an infant squawl, and heard Mrs. Ronstadz scream for it to shut up. Good luck on your journey, lady. You’ll need it.
I called the marina where the Cuban-American group was supposed to stay when they were in port. Like Buster Ronstadz, I wanted to let them know I would be out there, and let them think I knew where Gifford Remus had found his treasure. If they were interested enough and ruthless enough, they would make a move on me. And I would be ready and waiting. I talked to a dockmaster with a sour disposition. No, they weren’t back in from the Marquesas; no, he didn’t know when they’d be back in, and there were too many goddam Cubans on the island as it was, and he didn’t give a shit if they ever came back. Nice guy. I got another quarter from my pocket and tried Rigaberto Herrera at the office, then at his home.
The Deep Six Page 9