Wood's Fury

by Steven Becker

  Sloan was sure that he had ruined Trufante’s phone, but they had been separated long enough for him to buy another. Must be a burner, he thought as he waited for Trufante to make his next move. Finally, he placed the phone in the pocket of his cargo shorts, and turned right on Front Street. Sloan followed, continuing to keep his distance, thinking that the Cajun was close to his destination.

  Sloan started to wonder what Trufante was up to when they left the bar district and walked past several streets of Victorian-style houses, some used as residences, others as bed and breakfasts. This street was darker, but the pedestrian traffic had thinned, forcing Sloan to drop back. At the corner of Front and Margaret, Trufante stopped again, then turned left.

  As Trufante approached the marina, Sloan started to panic. The old axiom of never mixing business with pleasure was in danger of being broken, and he suffered a few minutes of paranoia that somehow Trufante knew Eleanor and was heading toward Sloan’s boat. That irrational fear died, but was replaced by another when the Cajun stopped at a newspaper-covered storefront.

  Trufante knocked. When the door cracked open he was ushered inside. Sloan was too far away to see who was there or what the building housed, until he looked up at two men on ladders working above the door. People working odd hours in Key West were nothing unusual, as it was often necessary to hold down two jobs to handle the cost of living here. When one of the men turned a spotlight on and focused it on the sign, Sloan’s jaw dropped as his two universes collided.

  “Billy Bones sent you?” JC spat and turned away from the cash extended in Trufante’s hand. “You gonna give me my cash back and think we’re making an exchange?” He turned to one of his men who was sitting at a corner table drinking. “Find Billy and bring him back here. Goddamned son of a bitch, go to hell,” he screamed, then under his breath muttered, “Forgive me, gods.”

  JC had a quick thought that he should call his priestess and ask what the incubation time was for the gods to respond to a sacrifice, but with his bad luck compounding faster than the interest from a loan shark, he knew the chickens had failed. Tomorrow he would consult her, but tonight, he was going to take matters into his own hands.

  Changing tactics, he turned back to Trufante. “Have a seat, my friend.” JC waved his hand at the new barstools. From the packaging scattered around, it looked like they just had been delivered. Trufante nodded and slid onto one. JC saw his eyes move to the bottle on the bar. “Of course. Have a drink and tell me what you propose.”

  Trufante poured himself a good three fingers of the clear liquor and slammed it down in one gulp. “It’s not me. I ran into this dude, he’s looking to do some quantity. Hoping to work a deal that helps us all out.”

  JC eyed the Cajun’s Adam’s apple as he swallowed, thinking how similar it was to the chickens’ necks just before the priestess cut their throats. Maybe if the gods were not happy with the birds, a larger offering was in order. Even with a buyer, if one truly existed, Trufante was still a problem. He had a reputation for being loose-lipped, especially around alcohol. After the shot he had just drank, there was no way JC was going to let him walk out of the bar tonight. He’d lead him on and see if the buyer could be lured here, then when the deal was over, Trufante was done. If it pleased the gods, so be it, but either way it would eliminate a problem.

  As if even the thought had turned the tables on his luck, there was a knock on the door. JC nodded to the man at the table, who rose, and after checking to see who was there, opened the door. A smaller man was pushed forward, landing on his hands and knees, as the the man tasked with bringing Billy Bones back had done his job. The man on the floor groaned and rolled over, exposing his face.

  Eighteen

  After checking every bar on the street and then some that weren’t, Mac started to backtrack to Ned’s house. Pamela’s head hung low, but there was nothing he could do for her. Trufante would eventually turn up. He had more lives than a cat, and always appeared somehow.

  An idea came to him and Mac started walking faster.

  “I thought we were going back to Ned’s?” Pamela struggled to keep up with him. “That’s his street, right?”

  “Yeah. I’m wondering if there’s anything we missed at the site of the sacrifice. Maybe there’s something there that might point us in the right direction.”

  “Like a clue?” Pamela’s face brightened.

  It wasn’t the sacrifice that Mac was thinking about, but their earlier run-in with Rusty. He already knew that JC had been aboard the fisherman’s boat, and he recalled they had stopped at a popular blue-crab spot near the White Street Pier. Trying to recall the sequence of events, he remembered wondering about the erratic maneuver Rusty had made while Mac was following. If JC had been able to rescue the drugs from the burning building, there was little doubt in his mind what they had stopped for.

  “Yes,” Mac said, breaking into a lope, then slowing to a fast walk. There weren’t many things that would attract attention on Duval Street. This time of night, walking was as complex a motor skill as most were capable of; but running was an alarm. Pamela caught up to him and together they turned left onto Truman. Now that they were off Duval, the pair picked up speed. Mac’s island legs started to give out long before they reached White Street, and he stopped to catch his breath.

  “What are we looking for?” Pamela asked.

  Mac couldn’t help but notice that she was breathing easily. “The water,” he said, not wanting to waste his breath elaborating. With one long inhale, and moving more slowly, he started off again. If what he suspected was correct, Rusty and JC would have waited until dark before coming back. He had already lost an hour.

  The sweat dripping from his brow flew forward when he stopped. They had reached the pier. Instead of crossing onto it, Mac moved to the rocky shore. In the moonlight, he could see a few dozen Styrofoam balls bobbing in the waves. What to a casual observer would appear to be a random pattern of brightly-colored fishermens’ buoys actually had order. Mac could see the straight lines of each set. Each buoy was painted a different color, and several had two or three balls attached. Mac knew these were from the commercial crabbers, marking the beginning and end of their trap sets with double buoys. His trained eye separated the commercial traps from the groups with four or five buoys in a wavy line. These would be the residential pots.

  Trying to remember Rusty’s colors, he waded into the water.

  “If you tell me what you’re looking for, maybe I can help.” Pamela was ankle deep behind him.

  “Yellow and red.” Mac saw the line ahead. Consciously or not, a fisherman’s first instinct when encountering another of his kind was to check out his competitor’s gear. He remembered seeing both colors on Rusty’s boat when they had stopped him earlier.

  “Yellow and red what?” Pamela looked around confused.

  “Buoys. He ditched the drugs in a trap.” Mac reached the first trap and pulled the line. Fortunately they were in only five feet of water and he was able to stand. If the first few didn’t have what he was looking for, he would have to move deeper and things would get much harder.

  Two blue crabs and a chunk of a pig’s foot were all that he saw in the first trap. The second yielded a few more crabs, but no drugs. He was sure this was the spot. Now in neck-deep water, he struggled to pull in the next pot.

  After this one, Mac could go no further. Once the traps were in water over his head, he didn’t have enough leverage to lift the concrete-weighted pots. During the day, he could free dive and look into them, but at night their contents would be invisible.

  Pamela was working the next trap. Taller than Mac by a few inches, she was able to work just deep enough to reach the trap past the one in his hands. Mac could see that it held only crabs.

  “We need a boat to check the rest,” Mac called to Pamela. She acknowledged him and turned toward shore. Having ditched her flip-flops along with their phones on the beach, she had no protection for her feet; he at least had his boat shoes. Ma
c waited to make sure she was okay walking barefoot on the rocky bottom.

  Before she reached him, Mac heard a boat engine. He paused and realized it was coming toward them. Turning to the sound, he just was able to make out the red and green running lights of the boat.

  “We gotta go.”

  Rusty was sure he saw two figures in the water near his traps. Ordinarily he would have thought them poachers, and depending on his mood, let them go or confront them. With everything that had happened in the last few hours, he suspected something different. Gunning the engine, he saw the figures fleeing the water—clearly a man and a woman. As they entered the cover of the rocky shoreline, he was sure one was Mac Travis.

  By the time he reached the trap they were gone, and he changed his focus to what he had come for. Cutting the engine to an idle, he lined up on the trap and left the wheel. Leaning over the gunwale, he snagged the line with a gaff. Taking it in his gloved hand, he brought it to the winch, and flipped the switch. The trap was soon on the surface of the water.

  A smile appeared on his face when he saw the vinyl of the red bags shining in the moonlight. Things had been bad since the hurricane had reshaped the sandy bottom of the shallow water that was home to the lobster and stone crabs he made his living harvesting. Many spots that formerly featured the foot-high ledges or potholes favored by the crustaceans had been filled with sand by the storm. New areas were created, but it would take years to catalogue them. Some years were good and some bad; this one was dismal.

  Leaning over, he clipped the line to a cleat, and reached for the trap. Pulling it to the surface, he breathed in relief when he saw the bags were all there. But as he was about to reach into the trap, it occurred to him that the safest place for the drugs was right here. Seeing the flashlight from a phone suddenly illuminate the shore, Rusty became paranoid. What had sounded like a brilliant plan when on dry land with a beer in his hand now looked like it could cost him his life.

  Just in case anyone had spotted him, Rusty would throw up a smoke screen by telling JC that Travis had been out here and taken the drugs. Reflecting on his circumstances, and considering Travis’s presence, Rusty still thought the safest place for the drugs was right here, but he had one card to play to ensure that JC didn’t cut him out of his share.

  Pulling the knife he kept in a sheath on his belt, he sliced the line. Before the trap was even below the surface, he entered the wheelhouse, where he saved the coordinates.

  Someone else might have ignored or not realized what the look Ned was giving her meant, but Mel had known the man her whole life—she knew. They sat in the study of Ned’s partially remodeled Victorian house off Whitehead Street. There was still a lot of work to be done, but as it was now, it was comfortable. Romance and history were associated with the iconic Key West homes, often hidden by thick coats of paint. Intricate gingerbread trim hung from the steep-pitched roofs, and unique woodwork was a highlight of the homes. Brilliant island colors, along with distinctive shutters, rails, and fences added to the mystique of the island, but the climate was far from friendly to the wood construction. Extreme vigilance and patience were needed to keep one of these classic houses in good condition.

  Thinking she would only be in the way, and worried Ned might be in danger, Mel had let Mac and Pamela go in search of Trufante. A courtroom was more her wheelhouse than the backstreets and bars of Key West.

  “Don’t stick your nose up in the air at me. I’m as high on the education curve as you are, especially around here.” That wasn’t really the truth, but Mel was trying to make a point. Ned had one up on her, his doctorate trumping her law degree. Her point was that the Florida Keys were not known as a hotbed for critical thinking. Between the heat and the alcohol, the ratio of the baked to not-so-baked was higher than on the mainland.

  “What can I do to help?” Mel asked. The devastating red tide of the past summer was gone, and with it the donations that fueled her war with Big Sugar. With a near-empty war chest, she needed funds to continue her fight.

  “Maybe you can tell me why you’re suddenly so interested in this treasure. You were a young ‘un when Wood and I were searching for ghosts. I didn’t see a lot of interest from you then, or recently for that matter. It’s not like you were playing with Barbies, but treasure held no appeal to you.”

  Mel had spent her teen years as a tomboy. She remembered Ned and her dad spending hours talking about galleons and fleets, but as a kid, freediving and spearfishing gave her the thrill and immediate gratification she needed.

  “Point taken. If you guys would have found some treasure, I might have been more interested.” Ned used his index finger to make an imaginary mark in the air. “So, what is it then?”

  “Van Doren’s journal is compelling, and unlike most of the stuff out there, it’s real. Maybe I never got the treasure bug before, but I seem to have it now.”

  “Fair enough. I have to admit Van Doren’s is an interesting character. A little bit more to it than the usual stories of wrecks that ran into a storm and washed up on the reef.”

  “I think it was Mac finding the diving bell. It gives the journal legitimacy.”

  “Yes, it does, but the tail end of the journal is lacking in details. The earlier section took us right to the bell.”

  Nick Van Doren was a different kind of character. Dutch, of Jewish descent, as a child he and his family had been captured by José Gaspar, the notorious Spanish pirate. There was no mention of his family in the journals, so Mel assumed they had been killed along the way. Van Doren had been an educated twelve-year-old when their ship was taken. Gasparilla, as the pirate was known, took a liking to him and made him his cabin boy.

  Following the War of 1812, President Jefferson and the fledgling U.S. Navy had started a campaign to eradicate what was left of the pirates who preyed along the United States’ and adjacent waters’ coastlines. The pirate Jean Lafitte was their first target, running him out of New Orleans, and later Galveston. Once Lafitte had fled to the Mexican rebel state of Campeche, the navy turned their attention to Gasparilla, taking him down, as well as his ship, the Floridablanca.

  Van Doren, along with ten of the pirate crew, had been watching from the beach on Gasparilla Island, his hideout just off the southwest coast of Florida. Tasked with guarding the treasure that Gasparilla was about to split among with his crew, they witnessed Gasparilla’s plunge from the bow with the anchor chain wrapped around him, and the sinking of the Floridablanca.

  Van Doren and the remaining crew, taking ten crates of loot, fled through the interior of Florida. Losing a few men and a good deal of the treasure along the way, they were able to evade the navy and find a ship. The following years marked their journey from pirates to accomplished salvors. According to Nick’s journal, the men were trying to make their way to the Pacific when they ran across another treasure, larger and more valuable than anything they had recovered before. It belonged to another Jewish pirate, Moses Cohen Henriques. His wasn’t a household name, but he had taken the largest haul of all—that of the 1628 Spanish Plate Fleet.

  Treasure brings trouble, and the saga of Van Doren and his crew confirmed that. After having their ship blown up in an attempt to take Henriques’s treasure, the survivors were forced to make a deal with Jean Lafitte, who, as his reputation would imply, double-crossed them. In an attempt to lose his “escort” ships, Van Doren and his crew had ditched their diving bell, heavy with gold, using it as one end of a chain boom that took out Lafitte’s ships off the Dry Tortugas. Mac had found the diving bell, but there was still more treasure somewhere—much more.

  “Mac gave the diving bell to the government without a fight,” Ned said.

  “It was in the National Park Boundaries. He had little choice.”

  Ned pushed his glasses back up his nose and turned back to the photocopies. “We’ll just have to hope the rest is not in state waters then, won’t we?”

  He looked down at the papers and continued. “From Van Doren’s description, they
found six chests stashed in a cave in Cozumel. That’s a lot of silver and gold, but nowhere near a fleet’s worth of treasure.”

  “So, they didn’t find the whole thing.” Mel put aside Van Doren’s journal. Thinking about it, Ned was right. There was a whole lot more where the diving bell had come from.

  “Looks like it’s back to 1824.”

  JC watched as Billy Bones grasped his nose, trying to stem the tide of blood pouring from it. He thought about collecting the blood for the center shrine behind the bar, but figured he needed an offering from someone purer than the filth that lay on the floor.

  His ringing phone took his attention away from Billy Bones. He saw Rusty’s number.

  “Someone is after the drugs.” Rusty told him about the two people in the shallow water checking traps, and that one looked like Travis.

  JC stomped away from the door and walked around the bar. Standing in front of the shrine, he wondered if maybe it wasn’t too late to offer some of Billy Bone’s blood.

  There was only one man who knew the players and had all the pieces to put this mess together. Turning to Trufante, he wondered if the gods would like Cajun blood any better than that of the white trash on the floor. He remembered something about the power of bayou magic.

  “Pick him up.” Looking down on the blood splattered across the polished concrete, JC thought it added a touch of authenticity to the place. A furtive glance at the crate of expensive stone scheduled for the floor that he would now return put a smile on his face. It was a small gift, but he thanked the gods anyway.