by Matthew Rief
I raised my beer high over my head. “To the Aztec treasure,” I said before chugging the rest of the beer.
“Just try and stay out of trouble, bro. At least for the afternoon, try not to beat anybody up.”
“I can’t make any promises,” I said with a grin.
Jack shook his head as he disappeared down the dock. I closed my eyes and fell back into the soft cushion, smiling from ear to ear. Looking at my watch, I saw that it was only twelve thirty and decided to take my new boat out for a test drive. I would take the long way to Conch Marina, circling around Mule Key. Having already checked out with the office, I unloaded my weapons from the bed of my truck and locked them in the safe inside the master stateroom. Then I untied the lines and threw them aboard before hopping into the cockpit and grabbing hold of the wheel. Using the engines to guide the boat away from the dock, I brought her out of the marina where she was moored and into the open ocean.
It being a calm day, I decided to find out for myself just how fast she could go, so after getting up on plane, I slid the throttles all the way forward. The boat flew through the water, the ocean streaming by in a blur as I got the massive engines up to fifty knots. The feeling of taking my own boat out on the water and letting it loose was incredible.
After spending an hour cruising around Mule and Crawfish Keys and up towards Barracouta Key, getting a handle on my new boat by testing different high-speed maneuvers, I headed towards Conch Marina. I called Gus on my way back to get an idea on price, and he told me that since I couldn’t commit to a year, it would be fourteen dollars a foot, and that included electric, water, internet and access to all of the marina facilities. I agreed, and less than fifteen minutes later I was pulling my boat into slip twenty-four, which was just a short walk down the dock from the Calypso.
While meeting with Gus and handling all of the paperwork, I got a text from Jack informing me of the location where I could find Pete. After finishing up at the marina office, I locked everything away on my boat, then headed down the sidewalk to the parking lot a few marinas down, where my truck was still parked. I typed the address into my GPS, and four minutes later I was pulling into the parking lot of what looked like someone’s house, aside from the sign out front that read “Salty Pete’s Antiques and Grill.” When I stepped out, I realized I was the only car in the small gravel lot. I looked around, then walked up to a large wooden porch and opened the front door. A bell rang as I entered and a woman appeared from the kitchen.
The restaurant was small but seemed to make good use of its space, with booths lining the walls and a few tables and chairs in the middle. In the back was an old wooden stairway and beside it was the door to the kitchen. The walls were covered with old pictures of boats and various locations around the Keys. There were a few old boat wheels and other marine memorabilia, giving the run-down place a nostalgic feel to it. In the distance, I heard the Eagles’ “Take It Easy” playing over the radio.
“Welcome to Salty Pete’s,” the woman said. She had light brown hair that she kept in a ponytail. She looked to be in her early twenties and wore a green shirt tied behind her back that had the words Salty Pete’s emblazoned in bold along with a picture of a guy fishing. She wore jeans and sneakers and held a small notebook and pen in her hands. “It’s your lucky day, Mister…?”
“Dodge,” I said with a friendly smile, “Logan Dodge.”
“Well, it’s your lucky day, Mr. Dodge. We just got a fresh haul of grouper, and Osmond’s got them marinating and ready to grill.” She motioned to the tables. “Go ahead and have a seat anywhere. What would you like to drink? The Key limeade is my favorite.”
I sat down at one of the middle booths and looked at her name tag.
“That sounds great, Mia. Thanks.”
As much as I’d wanted to find this Pete guy and find out what kind of stuff I would need, I was starving after buying my new toy and driving around the islands. I realized that I hadn’t eaten since dinner the night before.
Mia smiled and walked back to the kitchen. Looking at my watch, I saw that it was just after two o’clock, and it made me wonder why the place was so empty. I chalked it up to the poor location, since it wasn’t near the main rows of stores and restaurants in downtown Key West. It was also in desperate need of a renovation, from the old scratched-up wooden floors to the faded paint on the walls.
Mia appeared with my drink and set it on a napkin in front of me.
“What will it be, Mr. Dodge?” she asked, her hands resting on her hips.
“Just Logan,” I replied, “and I’ll take the grilled grouper.” I hadn’t even bothered to look at the menu that was on the table in front of me. “But to be honest, I’m not really here for the food.”
The young woman wrote on her pad, then smiled. “It’s the location, right?” she said as she slid the menu from the table. “We get that a lot here.”
I returned the smile, glancing again at the run-down establishment that bordered a tourist gift shop on one side and an empty alley on the other. Both could be seen from open windows with weathered curtains hanging down their sides.
Mia said she would be right out with my meal, then walked back to the kitchen to tell the cook. A few minutes later, she returned with my plate. The grouper appeared to be cooked perfectly, its surface lightly blackened. It was served with wild rice and a kabob of mixed vegetables. I took a bite of the fish and was taken aback by how delicious it was. Mia wasn’t kidding about it being my lucky day. I’d wager this fish had been swimming carefree less than a few hours ago.
“So what brings you here?” Mia asked. “I mean, since you’re not here for the food.”
I swallowed a bite of fish and rice, then washed it down with a gulp of the Key limeade.
“The truth is I’m actually looking for somebody.”
She shrugged. “It’s just me and Osmond in the back.”
I grabbed my phone and brought up Jack’s message from earlier that day and held it up to Mia.
“I was told that I could meet with Pete this morning.”
“Salty Pete’s out diving,” a man said, appearing from the kitchen. He had long blond hair that was braided in the back and a scruffy face. He was wearing a dirty apron and wiping his hands on a rag. “That’s the guy that owns this shack.”
Mia nodded, then turned to me. “Oz works for him sometimes on his boat. Pete’s a collector. He has an antique shop upstairs.”
I shook Osmond’s hand and introduced myself. I hadn’t been prepared for the smell of marijuana that radiated from the large Scandinavian-looking man.
“It’s quite the collection, really,” Osmond said, “He spends most of his time out on the water, though. I go out with him occasionally. He helped me find this.” He placed his fingers on a gold earring dangling from his left earlobe.
“Where can I find him?”
“He has a boat just down the street a few blocks,” Mia said. “It’s in the harbor. Moored to a buoy. Poor guy can’t afford to keep it on a dock.”
A small group of people walked in through the door. Mia ushered them to a table and handed each of them a menu. Looked like a few tourists who’d stumbled off the main street.
I took a few more swigs of the cool limeade and finished off more of the grouper. When I looked up at Osmond, I saw that he was watching me awkwardly.
“It’s good, isn’t it?”
The guy looked stoned out of his mind, but he sure cooked up some mean fish.
I nodded and told him it was delicious.
“Well, if you need anything else, just let either of us know,” he said before turning to head back towards the kitchen.
“Where did you find it?”
Osmond paused, then turned on his heel and looked at me with a crooked brow.
“The earring,” I said, turning on a lightbulb in his head.
“Oh, uh, Voodoo Reef,” he said, placing his fingers on the golden earring once more. “It was from a shipwreck first discovered years ago. It
’s just north of Cottrell Key. About forty feet down. Near the sunshine rim of the reef.”
“You find a lot of gold around here?”
He shook his head. “The Keys are scarce these days. Better luck fifty years ago.” Mia motioned for Osmond to walk with her into the kitchen. “But you can get lucky sometimes.”
Before they reached the kitchen door, it swung open in front of them. A man stormed through the door, carrying a large net over his right shoulder that was filled with lobsters and holding a line of fish in his left hand.
“Get the grills hot, Oz!” the man shouted enthusiastically, “we’re gonna cook up some fresh bugs tonight!”
“Well, speak of the sea devil,” Osmond said. He looked over at me and pointed at the man. “This is Salty Pete, Logan. Pete, this is Logan Dodge and he wants to talk with you about something. He’s friends with Rubio.”
“Dammit, Pete,” Mia said, walking angrily towards the older man. “How many times have I told you not to bring your catch into the dining area. You’re dripping water everywhere.”
Pete smiled and patted the young woman on the back as she grabbed a rag and started to dry the floor.
“It used to be a tradition here in the Keys,” Pete said. “It’s the conch thing to do.”
“Well, your tradition is scaring away customers,” Mia said. She pointed to the door just as it was closing behind the small group that had sat down just a few minutes earlier.
Pete handed the net to Osmond, who took it into the kitchen. Then he walked towards me, unable to remove the smile from his face despite the fact that he’d just driven away probably the only other customers he’d see for a while.
I guessed him to be in his early sixties. He had a few gray hairs, but his head was mostly tanned bare skin. He was short and had a decent belly but still moved with ease across the restaurant towards my table. He was wearing the same design of shirt that Mia was wearing but in gray instead of yellow. The first thing I’d noticed about Pete, however, was that his right arm was missing just above the elbow.
“Welcome to my restaurant, Logan,” Pete said, offering me his left hand, which I shook. “Don’t worry about my arm. People stare at it all the time. Care to know how I lost it?” Mia walked away from the table, rolling her eyes as Pete continued, “Well, I was deep sea diving off the Goblin Gull and I ran across the largest great white any sailor ever saw. She was over seven fathoms from tail to snout, no lie.”
“You’re telling me a shark the size of a school bus came after you and all he took was your arm?” Osmond said, shaking his head.
“Aye, and I took a hell of a lot more from him.”
“You’re a lucky man,” I said. “Where is this Goblin Gull? I’ve never heard of it.”
Pete smiled, liking the fact that I’d humored him. “It’s a secret blue hole roughly twenty to a hundred miles southeast of here.”
I chuckled. “That’s very specific.”
Pete leaned in close, revealing two gold teeth as he practically whispered, “If I wasn’t vague, it wouldn’t be a secret, would it?” Looking down at my plate, he added, “How do you like the eats? Oz’s the best chef in the Keys if you ask me.”
“It’s great.”
“But he didn’t come here for the food,” Mia said, appearing behind him.
Pete eyed me suspiciously, then gave a soft smile.
“Yeah. Look, do you think we could talk in private?” I asked. “Jack told me you’d be a good person to ask for advice on a particular venture we’re undertaking.”
Pete’s eyes lit up. “He called and said you’d stop by sometime today.” He motioned towards the stairs at the back of the room. “My collection is just upstairs, along with my office.”
When I finished eating, I walked with Pete up the old, creaking stairs, hoping with each step that I wouldn’t break through the floorboards. The second floor was a wide-open space with rows of glass cases and shelves, each filled with an assortment of antiques. On the walls were paintings, pictures of big fish and other artifacts from the Keys. I stood in awe of the enormous collection, admiring the pieces that were closest to me. One was an old-style pistol, like the ones you see in the old pirate movies.
“My office is just back here, mate,” Pete said, motioning towards the back of the room.
I followed him through a creaking door to a small room that was taken up mostly by a massive wooden desk covered in old charts, maps and various equipment. The room was lined with bookshelves filled top to bottom with everything from Cussler to the encyclopedia.
“Have a seat,” he said, removing a bunch of papers from an old leather seat. He sat across from me on a squeaky office chair, then leaned back and looked me over.
“Well, what can I do for you, Logan?”
“I’m looking to get ahold of some salvage equipment.”
He tilted his head towards me. “Oh? What are you trying to salvage?”
I looked him over, wondering how much I should say, then decided to be as vague as possible.
“I’m looking for a shipwreck.”
Pete then shot a barrage of questions my way, from the year the ship went down to the approximate expected location of the wreck.
“That’s nearly five hundred years ago,” Pete said. “Years of shifting sands, changing tides, storms, erosion and corrosion can make a wreck almost impossible to find with the naked eye. I’d recommend you pick up some heavy side-scan sonar equipment and a magnetometer so you can pick up cannonballs, anchor chains, stoves and other large metal objects. Then you could get yourself a computer guru to hook you up with good GPS software to help pinpoint unique formations under the water, at least in the shallower areas. You’ll also need a mailbox if you want to find a treasure that’s been down that long.”
“A mailbox?”
“Yeah, mate. It’s a metal shroud that directs prop wash to the seafloor to clear away sand and other loose debris. It would work well on Jack’s Sea Ray.”
He went on to explain a few other necessities for treasure hunting and gave me the address and phone number of a place up by Marathon that could hook me up with most of the stuff I needed.
After we’d talked a while and he’d written down the gear I would need, I thanked him and we walked out of the office. While heading for the stairs, I caught a glimpse of a dirty sliding glass door that led out to a porch. I changed direction and looked out the glass, staring through at the ocean that peeked over a patch of palm trees.
“The view’s amazing from up here,” I said.
Pete grinned. “One of the best in the Keys. You can watch the sunrise and sunset from right out there.” He looked out over the water, then looked over at me. “Anything else I can help you with?”
“Yeah, actually,” I said. I decided to trust this guy a little more based on both Jack’s recommendation and my own gut feeling after having talked with him for half an hour. “Does the name Francisco de Cavallos mean anything to you?”
Pete stood frozen for a moment. He looked at me quizzically, then gave a small grin.
“I haven’t heard that name in over thirty years,” he said. He looked away from me and into one of the nearby glass cases. “You know, my grandfather opened this place almost a hundred years ago. He was a brilliant treasure hunter by the name of Theodore Jameson, and he used to tell me all sorts of stories.”
I was surprised to learn of the relation. I’d heard of Theodore Jameson, as had many people in Florida. In fact, he ranked right up beside Walt Grissam as one of the most famous treasure hunters ever to explore the Caribbean.
“My favorite was always the story of Francisco de Cavallos,” Pete continued. “He was a Spanish rogue who lived in Cuba and had stolen a ship from Cortés himself, sailing with a crew of ragtag outcasts in search of gold in the Americas. However, after leaving Havana in 1528, the Intrepid and her crew were never seen nor heard of again. There is no doubt that she sank. When and where is the only question. And there’s also no doubt that most of t
he crew died.”
“Most of the crew?” I asked, intrigued by his story.
“Well, there’s more to the story. At least, whenever my grandfather told it there was. The history books will claim otherwise, but he was confident that there was one man who survived.”
“One man?”
Pete nodded. “This is where the story gets interesting. A few years after they set sail from Cuba, a man washed ashore on a beach not too far from here. For three days he lived here on his own before traveling north in search of a settlement. He was found by a Calusa hunting party, and after a few years he assimilated into the group and became a part of the tribe, the only white man ever recorded as doing so with the Calusa Indians. To the astonishment of the natives, the man remembered very little about where he came from. It wasn’t until much later in his life that he started having dreams about gold and nightmares of a catastrophic shipwreck. Until the day he died, he told stories about a massive treasure that he claimed was under the waves just a few miles off the coast of what is now Key West. His story was passed down, and it’s still well known among the small handful of remaining Calusa, but very few others have heard it before.”
“What do you think happened? Do you believe the story about the gold?”
Pete grinned, then shrugged. “I hope so. I like a good treasure yarn.” He reached into a nearby glass case, grabbed a small model ship and set it on a table beside me. “All that’s certain is that this ship sailed out of Cuba and never returned. And she hasn’t been found to this day.”
I was happy with the way it went with Pete. Jack had been right; he was clearly the right person to talk to about a treasure anywhere in the Keys. Now, in addition to the captain’s name, I had the name of his ship and a list of all the equipment I would need to find her. I was anxious to get out on the water and find the rest of the gold.
I thanked Pete for everything, but before I left, he stopped me.