Nick frowned. ‘Now I understand why you’ve been so quiet these last few minutes. You’ve been thinking about your share. I misjudged you. I thought you might decide not to create any more trouble—’
‘Who said anything about trouble?’ Carol interrupted him abruptly, her voice rising slightly. ‘If you must know, I’m not that interested in the damn money. I will gladly take my one-third if any dollars are forthcoming from the trident there, for I certainly deserve it. But if any more such treasures are down there and you and Troy can find them without me, then be my guest. I want something else.’
Both men were now listening intently. ‘First and foremost, I want exclusive rights to this story, and that means absolute secrecy about what we have found, when and where we found it, and anything else associated with it—at least until we’re certain there’s nothing more to learn. Second, I want immediate possession of the object for forty-eight hours, before anyone else knows that it exists. After that you can have it to take to the authorities for evaluation.’
Uh oh, Carol thought to herself as she saw the searching looks she had elicited from Nick and Troy. I overdid it. They suspect something. Better back off just a bit. ‘Of course,’ she smiled disarmingly, ‘I’ve just given my initial position. I expect that some negotiations may be necessary.’
‘Wow, angel,’ Troy said with a laugh, ‘that was some speech. For just a minute there, I thought that maybe there was a whole other game going on here and you were the only one playing. Of course the professor and I will be delighted to discuss an agreement with you, won’t we, Nick?’
Nick nodded. But he had also been alerted by the careful organization and unmistakable intensity of Carol’s response. It seemed out of proportion to the journalistic value of their find. Is she trying to make this some kind of a contest between us? he thought to himself. Or am I missing something altogether?
They had worked out a compromise agreement by the time the Florida Queen reached the dock in Key West. Nick would take the golden trident (both of the men liked Carol’s name for the object) with him on Friday morning. There was an elderly woman in Key West who was a compendium of treasure knowledge and she would be able to assess its value and to give its probable place and date of origin. The woman would also be a witness to their find in case the trident were ever misplaced. On Friday afternoon, the three of them would meet on the boat or in the marina parking lot at four o’clock. Nick would give the object to Carol and she would keep it over the weekend. After she returned it to Nick on Monday morning, he would be responsible for its care and eventual sale. The three of them had joint ownership of the trident, but Carol waived any interest in future discoveries. Carol wrote the terms of the simple agreement on the back of a restaurant menu from her purse, they all signed it, and she promised to bring copies back the next day.
Troy was quiet and subdued while he was loading all Carol’s equipment back into the footlocker. He lifted the locker on to the cart and then pulled the cart along the jetty. Carol walked beside him. It was about nine o’clock and very quiet at the marina. The tall fluorescent lights created a strange reflection on the wooden jetties. ‘Well, angel,’ Troy said as Carol and he approached the marina headquarters, ‘it’s been quite a day. I’ve really enjoyed your company.’ He stopped and turned to look at her. Her black hair had dried unevenly and looked a bit dishevelled, but her face was beautiful in the reflected light.
Troy looked away, out at the water and the boats. ‘You know, it’s a shame sometimes, the way life works. You meet somebody by chance, you strike up a friendship, and then poof, they’re gone. It’s all so… so transient.’
Carol came over beside him and stretched to kiss his cheek. ‘And you know I like you, too,’ she said, lightening up the conversation with a grin and making certain that Troy understood what kind of a friendship they could have. ‘But cheer up. All is not lost. You’ll see me tomorrow for a while and then maybe when I return the golden thing on Monday.’
She hooked her arm through his as they briefly walked back down the jetty, away from the loaded cart. ‘And who knows,’ Carol laughed, ‘I’m down in the Keys from time to time. We could have a drink together and you could tell me some more stories.’ They could just barely make out the spotlight above the canopy on the Florida Queen some hundred yards in the distance. ‘I see your friend the professor is still at work. He’s not strong on goodbyes. Or any other area of manners, as far as I can tell.’
She turned, switching locked arms, and they walked back to the loaded cart. They moved through the apparently deserted headquarters without speaking. When the footlocker had been replaced in the station wagon, Carol gave Troy a hug. ‘You’re a good man, Troy Jefferson,’ she said. ‘I wish you well.’
Nick was almost ready to leave by the time Troy returned to the boat. He was packing a small exercise bag. ‘Looks innocent enough, doesn’t it, Troy? Nobody will ever suspect that one of the great treasures of the ocean is in here.’ He paused a moment and changed the subject. ‘You put her safely in her car? Good. She’s a strange one, isn’t she, all feisty and aggressive but still pretty at the same time. I wonder what makes her tick.’
Nick zipped up the bag and walked around to the side of the canopy. ‘Just finish up with the diving gear tonight. Don’t worry about the rest of the boat—we’ll fix it up tomorrow. I’m going to go home and dream of riches.’
‘Speaking of riches, Professor,’ Troy said with a smile, ‘how about that hundred-dollar loan I asked you for on Tuesday? You never answered me: just said “we’ll see”.’
Nick walked deliberately over to Troy and stood right in front of him. He spoke very slowly. ‘I should have made my Polonius speech to both of us when you asked me for a loan the first time. But here we are now, borrower and lender, and I don’t like it. I will lend you a hundred dollars but, Mister Troy Jefferson, this is positively the last time. Please don’t ever ask me again. These loans for your so-called inventions are making it hard for me to work with you.’
Troy was a little surprised by the unexpected harshness in Nick’s tone. But he was also angered by the connotation of the last sentence. ‘Are you suggesting,’ Troy said softly, suppressing his temper, ‘that I’m not telling the truth, that the money is not being spent on electronics? Or are you telling me that you don’t believe an uneducated black man could possibly invent anything worth having?’
Nick faced Troy again. ‘Spare me your righteous racial indignation. This is not a question of prejudice or lies. It’s money, pure and simple. My lending you money is fucking up our friendship.’ Troy started to speak but Nick waved him off. ‘Now, it’s been a long day. And a fascinating one at that. I’ve said all I want to say on the subject of the loan and I consider the matter closed.’
Nick picked up his bag, said good night, and left the Florida Queen. Troy went behind the canopy to organize the diving gear. About ten minutes later, just as he was finishing, he heard someone calling his name. ‘Troy… Troy, is that you?’ an accented voice said.
Troy leaned around the canopy and saw Greta standing on the jetty under the fluorescent light. Even though there was now a slight chill in the air, she was wearing as usual a skimpy bikini that showed off her physique. Troy broke into a grand smile, ‘Well, well, if it isn’t superkraut! How the hell are you? I can see you’re still taking care of that wondrous body.’
Greta managed the beginnings of a smile. ‘Homer and Ellen and I are having a small party tonight. We noticed that you were working late and thought that maybe you’d like to join us when you’re done.’
‘Just might do that,’ Troy said, nodding his head up and down. ‘Just might do that.’
9
‘Oh, God, can’t we stop now? Finally? Please let us. It’s so quiet here, now.’ She was speaking to the stars and the sky. The old man’s head slumped forward in the wheelchair as he drew his last breath. Hannah Jelkes knelt beside him to see if he was indeed gone and then, after kissing him on the crown of the h
ead, she looked up again with a peaceful smile. The curtain fell and rose again in a few seconds. The cast assembled quickly on stage.
‘Okay, that’s it for tonight, good job.’ The director, a man in his early sixties, grey hair thinning on the top, approached the stage with a bounce. ‘Great performance, Henrietta, try to can that one for the opening tomorrow night. Just the right combination of strength and vulnerability.’ Melvin Burton jumped nimbly up on the stage. ‘And you, Jessie, if you make Maxine any lustier they’ll close us down.’ He spun around with a flourish and laughed along with two other people at the front of the theatre.
‘Okay, gang.’ Melvin turned back to address the cast. ‘Now go home and get lots of rest. It was better tonight, looked good. Oh, Commander, can you and Tiffani stay around for a moment after you change? I have a couple more pointers for you.’
He jumped back down from the stage and walked back to the fourth row of the theatre, where his two associates were sitting. One was a woman, even older than Melvin but with twinkling green eyes behind her granny glasses. She was wearing a bright print dress full of spring colours. The other person was a man, about forty, with a studious face and a warm, open manner. Melvin fretted as he sat down beside them. ‘I worried when we picked Night of the Iguana that it might be too difficult for Key West. It’s not as well known as Streetcar or Glass Menagerie. And in some ways the characters are just as foreign as those in Suddenly, Last Summer. But it looks almost okay. If we can just fix the scenes between Shannon and Charlotte.’
‘Are you sorry now you added the prologue?’ the woman asked. Amanda Winchester was an institution in Key West. Among other things, she was the doyenne of the theatrical entrepreneurs in the revitalized city. She owned two of the new theatres near the marina and had been responsible for the formation of at least three different local repertory groups. She loved plays and theatre people. And Melvin Burton was her favourite director.
‘No, I’m not, Amanda. It clearly adds to the play to get some kind of initial feeling for how frustrating it would be to lead a group of Baptist women on a tour of Mexico in the summer. And without the sex scene between Charlotte and Shannon in that small, stuffy hotel room, I’m not sure their affair is believable to the audience.’ He paused a moment, reflecting. ‘Huston did the same thing with the movie.’
‘Right now that sex scene doesn’t play at all,’ the other man said. ‘In fact it’s almost comical. The hugs they exchange are like the ones my brother gives his daughters.’
‘Patience, Marc,’ Melvin answered. ‘Remember, these are amateurs.’
‘Something has to be done or we should take the prologue out altogether,’ Amanda agreed. ‘Marc’s right, the scene tonight was almost comical. Part of the problem is that Charlotte looks like a child in that scene.’ She paused a moment before continuing. ‘You know, the girl has gorgeous long hair and we have it stacked on top of her head to look prim and proper. Clearly she wouldn’t wear it down all day in the heat of a Mexican summer. But what if she took it down when she went to Shannon’s room?’
‘That’s a great idea, Amanda. As I’ve often said, you would have made a fabulous director.’ Melvin looked at Marc and they exchanged a warm smile. Then the director settled back in his seat and started thinking about what he was going to tell his two cast members in a few moments.
Melvin Burton was a happy man. He lived with his roommate of fifteen years. Marc Adler, in a beach house on Sugarloaf Key, about ten miles east of Key West. Melvin had directed plays on Broadway for almost a decade and had been associated with the theatre in one capacity or another since the mid-fifties. Always careful with his money, Melvin had managed to save an impressive amount by 1979. Worried about the impact of inflation on his savings, Melvin had sought investment advice from an accountant who was a friend of a close associate. It was almost love at first sight. Marc was twenty-eight at the time, shy, lonely, unsure of himself in the maelstrom of New York City. Melvin’s savoir faire and theatrical panache opened Marc up to aspects of life that he had never known.
As the stock market ratcheted upward in the mid-eighties, Melvin watched his net worth near a million dollars. But other factors in his life were not so pleasant. The AIDS epidemic hit the theatrical community in New York with a vengeance and both Melvin and Marc lost many of their lifelong friends. And Melvin’s career seemed to have peaked; he was no longer in demand as one of the premier directors.
One night on his way home from the theatre, Marc was mugged by a group of teenagers. They beat him up, stole his watch and wallet, and left him bleeding in the street. As a saddened Melvin ministered to his friend’s wounds, he made a major decision. They would leave New York. He would sell his stocks and convert his fortune to fixed income investments. They would buy a home where it was warm and safe, where they could relax and read and swim together. Maybe they would do some community theatre work if it was available, but that was not the most important thing. What was important was that they share Melvin’s remaining years.
Melvin ran into Amanda Winchester one day while he and Marc were on vacation in Key West. They had worked together briefly on a project that had never panned out twenty years before. Amanda told him that she had just formed a local amateur repertory group to do two Tennessee Williams plays a year. Would he be interested in directing them?
Melvin and Marc moved to Key West and started to build their house on Sugarloaf Key. Both of them thoroughly enjoyed their work with the Key West Players. The actors were everyday people, dedicated and earnest. Some had had a little acting experience. But for the most part, the secretaries, housewives, and retail clerks, plus officers and enlisted men from the US Naval Air Station, were all novices with one thing in common. Each of them viewed his few days on the stage as his moment of glory, and he wanted to make the best of it.
Commander Winters came out of the dressing room first. He was wearing his uniform (he had come straight over to rehearsal from the base) and looked a little stiff and uncertain. He sat down in one of the theatre chairs next to Amanda Winchester. ‘I was really glad to see you back again,’ said Amanda, taking his hand. ‘I thought your Goober last fall was just right.’
Winters thanked her politely. Amanda changed the subject. ‘So how are things out at the base? I read an article the other day in the Miami Herald about all the modern weapons the Navy has these days, pilotless submarines and vertical takeoff fighters and search and destroy torpedoes. There seems to be no limit to our ability to build more powerful and dangerous toys for war. Are you involved with all that?’
‘Only in a limited way,’ Commander Winters said pleasantly. Then, anticipating the discussion with the director, he leaned forward so that he could see Melvin and Marc as well as Amanda. ‘I apologize if I was a little flat tonight,’ he began. ‘We have a couple of big problems out at the base and I may have been a bit distracted, but I’ll be ready tomorrow—’
‘Oh, no,’ said Melvin, interrupting him, ‘that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. It’s your first scene with Tiffani… Ah, here she comes. Let’s go up on the stage.’
Tiffani Thomas was almost seventeen years old and a junior at Key West High School. A Navy brat all her life, Tiffani had gone to seven different schools in her eleven years since kindergarten. Her father was a noncommissioned officer who had been assigned to Key West about three months before. She had been recommended to Melvin Burton by the high school drama teacher.
‘She hasn’t done anything for me yet except rehearse,’ the teacher had said of Tiffani, ‘but she learns her lines quickly and has a quality, an intensity I guess, that sets her apart from the others. And she’s clearly been in plays before. I don’t know if she can get ready in three weeks, but she’s my first choice by far.’
Tiffani probably would not have been called beautiful by her Florida classmates. Her features were too much out of the ordinary to be properly appreciated by most high school boys. Her assets were olive eyes, quiet and brooding, light freckles on
a pale complexion, long red eyelashes tinged with brown, and a magnificent head of thick auburn hair. Her carriage was proper and erect, not slumped like most teenagers, so she probably seemed aloof to her peers. ‘Striking,’ Amanda called her, accurately, when she first saw Tiffani.
She was standing on the stage alone in her short-sleeved blouse and jeans as the two men approached. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, the way her father liked it. Tiffani was very nervous. She was worried about what Mr. Burton was going to say to her. She had overheard the buyer who was playing Hannah Jelkes say that Melvin might do away with the part of Charlotte altogether if ‘the new girl can’t hack it’. I have worked so hard for this part, Tiffani thought. Oh please, please, don’t let it be bad news.
Tiffani was looking down at her feet when Melvin Burton and Commander Winters joined her on the stage. ‘Well, now,’ Melvin began, ‘let’s get straight to the point. The first scene with you two in the hotel room is not working. In fact, it’s a disaster. We must make some changes.’
Melvin saw that Tiffani was not looking at him. Gently he put his hand under her chin and lifted it until her eyes met his. ‘You must look at me, child, for I’m trying to tell you some very important things.’ He noticed that her eyes were brimming with water and his years of experience told him immediately what was wrong. He leaned forward and whispered so that nobody else could hear, ‘I said we would make some changes, not do away with the scene. Now get yourself together and listen up.’
Burton regained his director’s voice and turned toward Winters. ‘In this scene, Commander, your character Shannon and young Miss Goodall engage in foreplay that leads to intercourse later that night. In the following scene they are discovered, in flagrante delicto, by the confused Miss Fellowes. And that establishes the desperate situation causing Shannon to run to Maxine and Fred at the Costa Verde.
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