He glanced down at the waters that had risen to his shins where he crouched and knew that the passage to that stairwell lay underwater now. He’d have to take one breath and hope that would be enough to make his way along the narrow passage he’d left while stacking. Otherwise, he’d die down there in that twisting blackness.
What would be worse? he wondered, as seawater continued to cascade around him. But he did not wonder for long.
He forced himself to calm, drawing a series of breaths that were increasingly deeper, at the same time rehearsing the route he would take. To the bottom of the steps, then right, he told himself. Then twenty feet—or was it more?—along that narrow passage to the place where he’d seen those steps. He took one last glance upward, past the motionless form silhouetted by the green-glowing sky, then took his last breath and dove.
He forced himself down, down through the cool water, fingertips brushing the rough-hewn steps as he went, the pressure in his ears growing fierce. He swallowed to equalize the force and felt the pain subside, at the same time he felt a hand swipe itself across his face. He fought back a surge of panic and shoved the drifting body aside. No way to tell who it might have been, and what did it matter now? He groped about until his own hand found the edge of the passage leading to his right.
He pulled himself around, kicking steadily but not frantically, his right hand pressed to the wall of the passageway for purchase, his left clawing crablike over the stacks and stacks of submerged crates, finding a crevice here, a handhold there. He sensed the crates tumbling crazily in his wake as he shoved himself along, a tangle that would jam the narrow passageway, sealing off any hope of retreat. A useless notion anyway, he thought. One breath was all he had.
His hand found a cleft in the stone on his right, his left dug into a seam between the stacks. He threw himself forward with a mighty shove and felt his head slam instantly into something hard.
Bright stars and comet trails erupted in the darkness. He was stunned, felt himself twisting sideways in the water, lolling backward, drifting down. He would die that way, he told himself, and fought the blackness that was even deeper than all that surrounded him.
He forced his legs to scissor once again, willed his hands to move. He found the crate that had toppled over to block the way and jerked back and upward with everything he had. Aided by the water’s buoyancy, the crate gave way, bringing a second backward with it.
He felt the rough wooden sides brush against his legs as he flung himself through the passage he’d made, felt the fire in his lungs growing toward eruption. He was past the last of the crates now, his dizziness replaced by bright pain at the crown of his head.
That pain was good, he told himself, and fixed upon it in an effort to drive out the agony growing in his chest. He felt his hands strike mossy stone then; one rigid angle beneath his groping fingertips, then another.
Another second, he begged his body. Just one. Two or three at most. What’s that against a lifetime?
His knees were on the sunken steps now, his nails raking stone. Lungs turned to cannonballs, to flaming fountains already burst.
His mouth flew open, all pleas disregarded, all abject bargaining tossed aside. The last of his breath blew upward, and seawater rushed down his throat. He was strangling, wondering why he hadn’t used the pistol when he’d had the chance, caught a glimpse of his wife’s lovely face as she bade him farewell and, in the next moment, burst up from the water at last.
***
“I threw up water till I thought I’d drown myself again,” Deal heard Ainsley Spencer say. He gave a shake of his head as if shedding decades-old water, then pointed off into the gloom behind him.
“The water rose a bit more in that chamber, but by then I knew I was safe,” he added. He paused and stared through the dim lamplight at Russell Straight, who sat on a pair of stacked crates across from him. For a moment their gaze held, then both men turned to look down at him.
“He’s back with us,” Ainsley Spencer said.
“About time,” Russell said, nodding.
“Mind your head now, son,” the old man added.
Deal raised his hand to his forehead and felt a bandage there. Flashes of a firefight on the deck of a houseboat strobed through his mind, interspersed with images of a dark and slender fish-man swimming effortlessly along a network of subterranean caverns.
“Where are we?” he asked blearily, pushing himself to a sitting position on what he realized was a dusty pile of burlap sacking. He had a surreal memory of a great concrete slab swinging up like the maw of a graveyard crypt, of himself being carried deep down into the earth.
Russell seemed to find the question amusing. “Can’t you see? This here is King Solomon’s Mines.”
The big man reached for the smoking lantern that sat atop a crate next to him and held it aloft. Deal blinked as his eyes adjusted to the yellowish light.
They were in a windowless room that seemed to have been chiseled out of stone, a set of carved steps angling down the wall behind where Ainsley Spencer sat. Subterranean, Deal thought. A cellar from another era. He’d never been here before, but still, the place had a dreamlike familiarity.
Stacked against the opposite wall were what seemed an endless series of wooden crates, stretching past the circle of light cast by the kerosene lantern, many of them stamped with the likeness of an imposing French château. “You were looking for a case of wine,” Russell said with a humorless laugh. “I guess we came to the right place.”
Deal stared silently at the series of stacked crates. Four crates high, a dozen stacks, he saw, as far as the light allowed. He tried to do the math, but his head was throbbing too painfully.
He turned back to Ainsley Spencer. “This is what Dequarius wanted to tell me about.”
The old man nodded. “I suppose it was,” he said, his head bowed between his narrow shoulders. “And it’s what got him killed, as well.”
Deal shook his head, still coming to terms with what he was seeing. “But why did he come to me?”
“That’s easy,” Russell said. “Because everybody else in this here place is crooked as a dog’s hind leg. It’s pretty clear what Stone’s willing to do to get his hands on all this. Dequarius probably heard about you and your high-rolling old man from Stone and figured you for someone he could talk to, at least.”
Deal stared at Russell, a fresh twinge of guilt come to nag at him. But even if he’d discovered what Dequarius had in mind, what would he have done? He turned to regard the stacks that stretched away into the darkness. “It must be worth a fortune.”
The old man glanced up suddenly. “It’s cursed is what it is. Everybody that’s ever had anything to do with it is dead: the senator, the ones that meant to steal it from him—” He broke off for a moment. “Except for me, that is.”
Deal got a knee beneath himself and with a hand from Russell rose unsteadily to his feet. He waited for the room to right itself around him, then glanced at the staircase.
“Nobody answered my question,” he said, turning back to Russell. “Where the hell are we?”
Russell nodded at the staircase. “What used to be the navy base, that’s what the old man tells me. He brought us here in his boat while you were out. We’re tied up to one of Stone’s docks, right outside.”
Deal turned to the old man. “That’s Truman Town, up those stairs?”
The old man glanced at him as if it scarcely mattered. “We’re underneath where some of the old fort used to be. They used this place to store ammunition a hundred years ago.” He broke off and glanced around them. “Maybe they kept prisoners here, too. It has the right feel for that, don’t you think?”
Deal glanced at the stacked cases again. “How long has all this wine been here?”
The old man glanced up at him. “Ever since Senator Rafferty told me to bring it.”
“Senator Rafferty?” Deal said after a moment. “Douglas Jacobs Rafferty?”
&
nbsp; The old man shrugged and began to repeat the story that he’d already related to Russell. As he listened, Deal put a hand against a nearby stack of crates to steady himself, the sense of a disembodied presence among them growing with every word.
In a state whose history was studded with a long list of scoundrels and discredited public officials, Rafferty was perhaps the most illustrious. He’d made a fortune selling underwater lots during the frenzy following the completion of the Florida East Coast Railroad early in the twentieth century and had gone on to amass an even larger fortune running rum during Prohibition. He’d rubbed shoulders with presidents, celebrities, and gangsters alike, and though out of office when he’d been cut down in a hail of bullets outside a Manhattan speakeasy in the thirties, he still held the distinction of the only U.S. senator thought to be the victim of a gangland hit.
By the time Ainsley Spencer had gotten back to the point where he’d escaped the water’s clutches, Deal sensed the ghost of Rafferty among them as keenly as if the draft coursing the chamber were the senator’s whispering breath. He glanced down the dimly lit passageway trying to imagine it filled with murky seawater, the old man swimming madly for his life.
“The stairs are still back there?” Deal asked, feeling the chill draft on the back of his neck.
“Stairs are, but they don’t go nowhere now,” the old man said, following his gaze as if he might still be envisioning how he’d popped up from the top of that rear stairwell directly out into the hurricane-lashed landscape like something shot up from a storm drain.
He’d discovered the entire dockside building where they had labored leveled by the storm, every speck of wreckage carried away by the tidal wave that had swept ashore. Even the heavy truck that had brought them had disappeared.
He’d fought his way home through the backside of the storm, then returned by first light to search the nearly drained chamber for the bodies of his friends. He weighted the bodies before he gave them back to the sea. The corpses of the senator’s men he simply dumped over the side of the seawall at the nearby docks. The body of the man who’d tried to kill him was nowhere to be found.
He’d swung the cover that had hidden the heavy steel grate back into place, then filled the entrance to the back stairwell with rubble. He then made his way back through the wreckage-strewn streets to the quarter and told the story of the great wave that had swept him and his comrades and their truck out to sea. And then he had settled in to wait.
Deal looked more closely at the old man. “You didn’t tell anyone what had happened?”
“I worked for the senator,” the old man said. “He was the only one to tell. Sooner or later he’d send for me, that was the way it worked. When I found out that he was dead, I knew I could end up that way, too.” He glanced up at Deal. “That’s just how it was.”
Deal nodded. “But you could have made yourself rich a long time ago,” he said, gesturing at the stacked cases.
“It might seem that way to you now,” the old man said. “But back then, I figured there’d be somebody coming along for it, sooner or later. And before long, there did come an end to Prohibition. After that, there was booze everywhere. This was just a bunch of wine in a hole in the ground, something that didn’t belong to me, something that I wanted nothing to do with.”
“So how’d Dequarius come to find out about it?” Russell asked.
The old man looked over at him and drew a weary breath. “There was a box of it in the house,” Ainsley Spencer said, his voice mournful.
“Just the one I took. Had been there forever. Me and June Anna opened a bottle of it once, one anniversary. But we didn’t much care for it. June Anna kept what was left to cook with. I kept the rest in the closet. I shouldn’t of, I know.” He gave Russell a hopeless look.
“One day a couple of months ago Dequarius was rooting around like he was fond of doing and come across it.” The old man was staring off now, talking as much to himself as to them, or so it seemed.
“He started asking questions. I loved the boy, you know. He had a persistent turn of mind.” He turned back to Deal, his eyes flashing. “One thing just led to another, you know. Once he had it on his mind, he was determined.”
Deal nodded his understanding. “Who else did he tell about all this, Mr. Spencer?” he asked gently.
“That’s Ainsley,” the old man said.
“Ainsley,” Deal repeated patiently.
The old man registered the correction, then shook his head. “I wouldn’t know. I didn’t want to know. I told him to be careful, that’s all.”
“How about Franklin Stone?” Russell asked. “Maybe Dequarius was tired of dribbles and drabs. Maybe he thought a guy like Stone had the bucks for a big score, he could unload the whole thing.”
The old man shook his head. “Maybe, but I don’t think so. It was the same as fooling around selling those coins. If anybody knew there was a lot of it somewhere, who knows what might happen? I think Dequarius was smart enough to understand that much. He’d have never let on about all this.” The old man swept his arm at the treasure stacked around them, then stopped, an odd look on his face.
“What is it?” Deal asked.
“Forty-nine,” the old man said. A hollowness had returned to his voice, as if he were talking to himself again.
“Forty-nine?” Deal repeated, shaking his head. Why did that number seem significant suddenly?
The old man’s eyes regained their focus. “It’s a restaurant, a new one, place one of those chefs from New York opened up, some Froggy fellow, I think.”
“Boussier,” Deal cut in, feeling his pulse spike. Stone’s pet pit bull of a chef.
The old man glanced up and shrugged. “Maybe that’s the name. Anyways, when things slowed down with Stone, Dequarius got him a side job busing tables there. He used to go on about the prices, what they sold their wine for. I couldn’t believe it. Maybe he tried to sell this Boussiy-waz something and just didn’t tell me.”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Deal said, his gaze turning toward the stairs. “Do you know where this restaurant is?”
“Just the other side of Old Town,” Spencer said, naming a street that Deal had never heard of. “Across from the power plant.”
The latter was a city landmark Deal was well aware of. He’d noted its steam-belching stacks towering above the gumbo-limbo trees every time he’d driven in and out of the Pier House’s parking lot. He checked his watch, amazed to see that it was nearly six.
“I was out the whole night?” he said to Russell.
Russell shrugged. “I didn’t see the point of waking you.”
Deal nodded, then felt an answering throb at the base of his skull. He glanced at the old man, trying to digest everything he’d heard, order it inside a head that seemed ready to crack open with uncertainty. So Dequarius Noyes had been trying to lead him to this treasure trove all along, because he’d thought him a less dangerous go-between than Stone in some scheme to sell this cache. Then again, maybe Dequarius had tried to unload the lot on a restaurateur who’d decided to take negotiations to an unexpected level; perhaps that’s why he’d come to Deal for help.
Whatever had set this chain of events into action, Deal realized that once again he had stepped inadvertently into the path of a train intent on grinding him to gut and gristle. They’d managed to escape the debacle on Dequarius’ houseboat, but they’d left three bodies and the Hog behind. He doubted he’d get a free pass from his friends in the sheriff’s office this time around. For all he knew, in fact, those were the very people who’d been ready to put them away. He drew a breath that threatened to split his aching head, then turned to Russell.
“We’re going to need a car,” he said, checking his watch again. “Probably best we get moving before it’s light.”
Russell nodded and started toward the stairs. Deal started after him, pausing to put a hand on Ainsley Spencer’s shoulder. “All this is no more your fault than it i
s mine,” Deal told him. “We’ll find out who killed Dequarius.”
When the old man glanced up at him with a doubtful look, Deal added the bitter truth. “We’ll damn well have to,” he said, then followed Russell up.
Chapter Thirty-three
If there’d been anyone in the maintenance area of Stone’s Truman Town marina awake at such an hour to see them, it might have seemed as though three men were climbing up from an open crypt, Deal thought. He paused to steady himself as he emerged into the predawn air, waiting for a slight giddiness to dissipate as he surveyed their surroundings.
There was a hint of sulfur off the exposed flats, along with the familiar tang of a salty breeze, helping to clear the fogginess in his brain. Maybe he’d picked up a concussion back there on the houseboat, or maybe it was just his brain’s way of signaling overload. A couple days ago, all he’d been worried about were the depths of some pilings at a construction site in Miami. And, for all the trouble that now surrounded him, what a trifling life that suddenly seemed.
He turned at the sound of Russell lowering the door to the chamber back into place. There was a scudding cloud bank passing over that reflected the distant lights of the city, casting enough of a glow for him to get his bearings. They were at a secluded spot near the seawall at the far end of the marina, on the other side of a cyclone fence that separated Truman Town from the grounds of Fort Taylor, another piece of the nineteenth-century network of fortifications that had been constructed when Key West was presumed to have a position of strategic military importance.
Decommissioned for more than a half century now, the place had been turned into a state park, underfunded and barely developed, a fact which probably accounted for Ainsley Spencer’s cache lying undisturbed for all these years. Fifty acres of prime waterfront property that Stone would love to get his hands on, Deal mused. If he knew the man, there was probably a long-range plan outlined somewhere to accomplish that very mission.
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