Carl Fitzpatrick, past retirement age but fit-looking in khaki shorts, his eyes bleached gray by the sun, said, “Nickelby’s wife scares me more than him running loose in the Bahamas with my logbook. She called yesterday out of the blue. That’s why I had to see you. Did you warn Doc?”
Ford’s pal, Tomlinson, couldn’t look at the man without hearing the Buffett song in his head, “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” but more like seventy-something in Fitz’s case. Him with his beat-up SUV, a compressor and dive gear in the trunk, and business cards that read
Professional Treasure Hunter
As Featured in Miller Lite Commercials
&
National Geographic
Oh yeah, on the back, Argosy, True, and a few other magazines that had gone tits-up decades ago. Plus, a link to a documentary featuring Fitz, Mel Fisher, and Jack Haskins, a trifecta of treasure hunting pros, although Mel had been the only one to make it big.
“I didn’t see the need for a warning, just shared with Doc what you said. A reporter, a writer of some type, might already be in the Bahamas looking for Nickelby. So what? But, you know, to keep his eyes open. Oh, and explained I’m leaving a day late because you wanted to—”
“Reporter, my ass. What, she’s threatening Leonard with an exposé in the Key West Citizen? Horsefeathers.”
Leonard—Nickelby’s first name, which took a moment to connect. “That’s my point,” Tomlinson said. “There’s no need to put Doc on serious alert for something like this.”
“But there is. I’m worried it’s someone pretending to be a reporter. And if it’s the guy I’m thinking of—”
“Who?”
“Did you follow the stories about the SS Panama? It’s a deep-water wreck, sank in 1877, with literally tons of gold ingots. The guy who found it was a MIT grad shyster who built an underwater robot—”
“Jimmy Jones, the hotshot treasure hunter,” Tomlinson said. “I haven’t heard that name in a while.”
“Professional conman and thief, more like it. Gave us all a bad name.”
“Wasn’t he beaten to death in—”
“Jimmy, yeah, in prison about a month ago, and no wonder. He surrounded himself with the big-money crowd, the greedier, the better—including his hired help. But smart in his way, I’ll give him that. The Panama went down in water a mile deep—the Tongue of the Ocean. So he built a big-assed robot, and salvaged what no one thought would ever be salvaged, then ran off with—”
“I know the story,” Tomlinson said. “How does this concern Doc?”
“Because the guy I’m thinking of worked security for one of Jimmy’s investors. Ex-military turned cage fighter, I heard, probably an ex-con, too. His name . . . maybe it’ll come to me, but a Latin-looking tough. He wanted to get into movies and maybe did, but mostly he kicked whosever ass he was told to kick. The whole salvage group was dirty. Now do you see?”
Fitzpatrick’s voice had mileage, a gravelly wisdom like the old prospector who’d played opposite Bogie in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. But Tomlinson was in a skittish mood he’d been battling for weeks and he lost the battle now. “Goddamn it, Fitz, what’s the connection?”
The old treasure hunter sat back. “Geezus, shallow up. I thought it was obvious. Nickelby was one of the so-called government experts who helped send Jimmy to jail. So the guy shows up claiming to be a reporter, what does the wife care if he’s legit or not?”
“You’re guessing. Nickelby’s wife didn’t say—”
“I’m being careful. I’ve talked to jealous wives before, but never one as fired up as her. On the phone, she asked where to send the reporter—whatever he is—after Nassau because she’d paid five hundred in expenses. Like that’s a big deal. I said, ‘Lady, there’s a thousand miles of islands between Nassau and Port of Spain, you got off cheap.’ Which really pissed her off. That’s when she started making threats.”
“Threatening you?”
“Oh yeah.”
“After her husband ripped you off?” Tomlinson’s tone—No way. “Dude, come on. There’s got to be something else involved if you expect me to believe—”
“That’s what I’m trying to explain.”
“You admit it, then.”
“Yes, shit. Okay—” Fitz sighed and rubbed his temple. “I didn’t tell you everything because I was hoping . . . Anyway, now that Nickelby’s wife is involved, I’ve got no choice. You need to hear the whole—”
“Leaving shit out isn’t cool, man. There’s got to be a reason she was ballsy enough to say shit like . . . What exactly did she say?” Tomlinson got up and began to pace.
Fitzpatrick gave him a concerned look. The hipster was usually laid-back, not jittery, constantly tugging at his hair like he was now. He was more likely to wander off on philosophical tangents. “Hey . . . are you okay?”
Tomlinson realized he’d overreacted. “Oh, a little pressed for time, maybe. Why do you ask?”
“Save the manure for your new crop of weed. It’s the way you’re bouncing off the walls. Are you doing speed again?”
The barb produced admiration. “Fitz, you haven’t lost your junkie radar. Good ol’ Key West, huh? You learn more there by accident than shrinks learn by design. Meth, no. What I tried was this nasty shit flakka, a synthetic amphetamine. The street names vary, but Five Dollar Insanity sums it up.” He silenced the man with an open palm and took a seat. “Yes, I had my reasons. In fact, smoking a gram of flakka was a well-planned experiential decision. Totally appropriate for the circumstance. That was four months ago—not that I’m counting.”
“Looks to me like the monkey’s still got you by the nuts. You know my rules about diving and doing business with stoners who’re still using.”
Rules in the treasure biz? This was news to Tomlinson, but he said, “A residual echo is what you’re seeing. Trust me, one visit to Flakka Land was twice too many. A hit of that shit, wow. The descent was like parachuting into a forest fire after a snort of propane.” A brittle smile offered reassurance. “Ancient history, man. Sorry if I was sharp. Uhh . . . what were we talking about again?”
Fitzpatrick tugged at his collar and looked around, seeing fish, sea horses in aquariums, and rows of beakers and other stuff on shelves, but no refrigerator. “Is there someplace we can get a beer?”
They were in Marion Ford’s old stilthouse, the side he’d converted into a lab. Windows opened to the bay, water from every angle, including a boardwalk that led to shore. Tomlinson got up. “The dog, that big retriever swimming around outside—if he wants in, open the door or he’ll bust right through the screen. You want a glass or just the bottle?”
“Zonk, you sure you’re feeling up to snuff? What it comes down to is, I’m embarrassed at being so damn stupid. That’s why I didn’t lay it all out for you right away.”
Zonk, a nickname bestowed by treasure hunter friends in Key West.
“I’ll bring two and ice down a six-pack,” Tomlinson answered.
“Meth heads,” Fitzpatrick muttered as the screen door closed. “Like I don’t have enough to worry about.”
It was late afternoon, sleepy time at Dinkin’s Bay Marina, the docks empty down the mangrove shoreline. Tomlinson crossed the breezeway into Ford’s home. It was more like a ship’s cabin. There was a galley, bookshelves by a reading chair, ceiling fans above a wooden floor, and a bed behind a curtain where there were more bookshelves and an old Trans-Oceanic shortwave radio.
A counter separated the galley from a table that seated four. Earlier, after feeding the fish and the dog, he had brought in Ford’s mail and stacked it there. He was a reluctant snoop who, out of respect, only snooped in the hope of better understanding his friends—or protecting them, which was a more palatable excuse.
Three letters, all hand-addressed, Tomlinson now placed in a separate pile. Ford had a son and a daughter by different mothers, in different parts of the world. One of the kids was having serious problems—exactly who and what, he would have to pretend not to know. It was best to wait until he delivered the letters personally.
A fourth letter was from Ford’s sometime lover, a local fishing guide, Hannah Smith. Hannah was strong-willed, independent, and as devoted to honesty as she was to her Christian convictions. The woman was also very, very pregnant. Tomlinson added Hannah’s letter to the pile.
From the fridge, he took two bottles of Hammerhead Ice, a local beer. He chugged one, then opened another.
Hopefully, Fitz wasn’t waiting with more bad news in the lab.
Two weeks ago, on the phone, all Fitzpatrick had said was that Nickelby, a government drone, had confiscated his logbook on some bullshit technicality, then split for the Bahamas with a younger woman who wasn’t his wife.
Fitz didn’t want the police involved. His business required dealing with the Bureau of Archaeological Research, so why risk a bargaining chip he might use down the road when negotiating with the stuffy bastards? The reward for helping to recover his logbook, he’d said, was partnership in a hot new wreck site he’d found.
Tomlinson didn’t care about a reward. He did care about a friend who had spent decades, from Florida to the Caribbean to the archives in Seville, perfecting his craft. A pioneer, as Tomlinson viewed the man, who loved boats and history as much as he did and also despised tight-assed bureaucrats. He and Fitz had had many fun, beery nights together in Key West. So he had pitched the idea to Ford via email—join forces and have some fun while they tracked down Nickelby. It was a long shot, but a small favor to ask, and the timing was ideal.
When Tomlinson returned to the lab, Fitzpatrick was fussing with his iPhone. Didn’t even glance at the cold beer at his elbow. “Here, I looked up his web page.”
“Who?”
“The guy Nickelby’s wife claims is a freelance writer. There’s only one page, sort of amateurish. Looks fake to me. Oh hell . . . need my glasses. Maybe you can figure out this damn gadget.”
Tomlinson accepted the phone but laid it aside. “I wouldn’t worry about Doc.”
“You haven’t heard the rest of it yet. Doc’s doing me a favor. You both are.”
“What you don’t understand is . . .” Tomlinson stopped himself. What Fitzpatrick didn’t understand about Marion Ford could not be shared. Not openly. But a hint or two might put the old guy at ease. “Look, he wanted to get out of Dodge anyway, so he took off last week to do some bonefishing, which, in his world, could’ve meant a trip to Colombia or Fumbuck anywhere. Or maybe he was already in the Bahamas when I sent the email. In other words, you did him a favor.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Exactly. That’s the way Doc plans it whenever he disappears. See, his girlfriend, it’s possible she’s about to dump him again, and he’s got some other heavy family kimchi coming down, so the man was antsy. Plus, he truly loves this sort of thing. Poking around, doing intel-psycho assessments of total strangers.”
“Psycho . . . ? You lost me.”
“Get used to it. It’s the Gemini in him. Or could be he’ll use this as an excuse to . . . Hell, let’s not even explore that nest of snakes. Anyhoo, looking for Nickelby is small potatoes compared to what you might call Doc’s usual research trips.” Boney fingers bracketed the phrase in quotes.
Fitzpatrick missed the inference. “That’s what I mean, a nice guy like Doc, he might be in way over his head. What if the wife sent that cage fighter security freak? I feel guilty enough about not going after Nickelby on my own. And with you still in withdrawal—”
“Stop saying that. I’m right as goddamn rain,” Tomlinson snapped, then calmly pulled up a chair. “So it’s official, you can’t go, huh? Doc will understand. He knows about that mess you got into a while back.”
At a certain age, bitterness is buffered by amusement. “Which mess? Colombia dropped the charges two years ago, but that story didn’t make the headlines, of course. The government still won’t release my damn boat—the Chris Commander I rebuilt with twin Cats and blowers. And the Bahamas, after all the plata I put on the deck off Nassau, they flagged my goddamn passport. That’s where I was, at the consulate in Miami, and they, this guy with a smirk and a pressed suit, he laughed in my face. I’m a marked man in every country a Spanish galleon made landfall. Florida’s the worst, no surprise there, which is why . . .” He reached for the briefcase, then decided, “I’ll get to that in a bit.”
Tomlinson nudged him along. “Most pissed off wives go to an attorney. I still don’t understand why she called you.”
“Probably because she spent twenty years trying to change Leonard and suddenly he wasn’t the man she’d married. Why does it always surprise them? Becca, that’s her name. She blames me for her husband screwing around with a college girl, I guess, then the two of them bugging out. Like I’d planned the whole shebang.”
“His wife should know better. There would be no such thing as adjunct professors if it wasn’t for the perks,” Tomlinson said. “It happens all the time. Gotta tell you, amigo, so far Prof. Nickelby doesn’t sound like the straight arrow you described.”
“No shit. For years he was an officious jerk to anyone, kids, old retired farts, it didn’t matter if they owned metal detectors. Treasure hunters, especially the few old pros around, we despised the guy. Called him Nick the Prick. Then all of a sudden”—Fitzpatrick shrugged—“he went middle-aged crazy, I guess. Or woke up one morning, saw his wife, and packed his shit. It was a day or so after he vamoosed that I realized I’d been robbed.”
Tomlinson said, “Do you know anything about the girl?”
“Just that she was his student for a while. Only found one old photo—Lydia Johnson, a skinny, mousy little thing. She’s about as interesting as a paper bag. Which makes sense, at least. Nickelby—I’d describe the little dweeb as about the same. That bastard chased me off more wrecks than bad weather.”
“His wife has to have something against you. Or on you. Let’s have it, Fitz. Offering a government suit a bribe would’ve been just plain damn stupid, so it can’t be that.”
“Hell, I would’ve had I thought it might have . . . But, no, he approached me back around Christmas. Called me on my cell and asked if we could meet privately. That was surprise number one. Then hinted around like he might be willing to cut a deal if we could just speak confidentially.”
“Geezus, you didn’t fall for a rookie gambit like that.” Tomlinson chewed at a strand of hair, readying himself for the worst.
“Pissed me off, is what it did. Sure, I figured it was some kind of sting, but he kept after me, so we took a boat ride. Then another and another. That’s how he finally convinced me. Money problems, sick of being paid jack shit for years of work, and he’d lost a promotion to a younger guy who’s now his asshole boss. Oh, and his car. He bitched about driving the same shitty Volvo while us treasure hunters were out getting rich. That part cracked me up, it really did.”
Fitzpatrick moved his briefcase from the floor to his lap. “Anyway, I finally listened to his offer. Nickelby said he’d fix the papers while I dove a couple of off-limits spots. In return, I’d teach him the treasure diving business—open up my files, so to speak. That, plus half of whatever we recovered.”
“And you fell for it.”
“Goddamn, give me some credit. I did a couple of test runs first. Let him find a few trash coins I’d seeded, then some pot shards and one of my best ale bottles. You’ve seen them—black glass, torpedo-shaped. Fairly rare. They’re mostly from the sixteen hundreds. That’s what sealed it. You know that look an amateur gets? A kind of greedy-assed glow. Man, I could tell the hook was set. After that, we hit a couple of real spots and split the profits from a nice little bronze cannon and a couple of Dutch coins. The deal seemed to be working out okay—until he took a powder. Among other things.”
“Another government suit run amok.”
“I know, I know.”
“Small people with power, man, never trust them. Now Nickelby will either narc you to the feds if he ends up in court or sell your GPS numbers to the competition. Or . . . Wait, is he any good? Could be he’ll dive the spots himself.”
“You haven’t heard the worst. The idiot took his laptop but left behind a hard drive with enough evidence to put us both in jail. All the details and numbers in a row, plus pictures—X-rated, I guess—of his new girlfriend.”
“Oh shit.”
“Yep, his wife found it.” Fitz rubbed his forehead. “That’s how she knew we’d worked out a secret deal. It must’ve taken her a week to figure out the password, and that’s what she’s threatening to do—put us both in jail if I don’t . . . Well, I’m sick to death worrying about it. Take a look at these before you hear the rest.”
He opened the briefcase and placed several coins on the lab table. They were in plastic sleeves, clumps of three or four fused together by centuries of black oxidation. This indicated the metal was silver, not gold.
Tomlinson fetched a magnifying glass. A light brought a single coin into focus. It was heavy, round but imperfect, the die hand-struck, a king’s head in profile. Date, 178-something, the last digit indecipherable.
“You and Nickelby found these?”
“Just me, almost a year ago. I didn’t get a reply from Seville that confirmed the source until a few days after Nickelby split. Thank god, or all the details would’ve been in my logbook. These coins could have changed American history, and that’s no bull.”
They’d been commissioned in 1782 by King Charles the Third, he explained, to fund Spain’s holdings in the Americas. About thirty million dollars’ worth out of the Mexico City mint.
“That’s by today’s bullion prices. Most believe the manifest left Vera Cruz on a single ship, the El Cazador, which sank in the winter of 1784. If she’d made New Orleans, Spain wouldn’t have gone broke and ceded Louisiana back to France. Think about how that would’ve changed everything.”
Tomlinson’s brain raced ahead. There would have been no Lewis and Clark Expedition, no Louisiana Purchase, no Hollywood, no Bogart-and-Bacall classics, or even a decent cup of Starbucks coffee. In his mind, the domino effect erased seventeen U.S. states and a lot of good times. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, an entire generational hoedown from Berkeley to Boulder, a golden era of hopeful discord that in recent years had withered like a flower, the movement poisoned by a self-righteous myopia that had once infected only the enemy.
“There would’ve had to have been a bright side,” he mused.
“Huh?”
“Had that ship not sunk. For instance, Texas shit-kickers would need a visa if they wanted to breed with human beings. But, yeah, changed history. For sure.”
Fitz ignored that by producing another sleeve of coins. “Check out the die marks on the one you’re holding. These and a bunch more could be yours if you help dig me out of this mess.”
On the coin’s obverse side was a Spanish coat of arms braced by pillars. Or cannon. “How deep?”
“The El Cazador? Too deep for nitrox, about three hundred feet, but don’t worry. That wreck’s already been picked clean. A few years back, a Louisiana shrimper snagged his nets and winched up a few hundred of these. All black as tar, of course—I’m not making this up. Nets full of what they figured were seashells and junk. The captain ’bout had a heart attack when he realized what he had.”
The captain had played it straight and sort of smart, Fitz added, but not smart enough. He’d hired a crack maritime attorney before contacting the feds—and lost more than half of what he finally dredged up for being so damn honest.
“What the pinheads don’t realize is, pros like me have discovered more important wrecks than all the archaeologists combined. And we’d keep sharing information if they’d just cut us a fair deal.” Fitz had a whole speech on the subject. Lots of bitterness based on personal experience. It went on for a while.
Tomlinson returned the coins to their sleeves before interrupting. “But these didn’t come from . . . where?”
The man’s eyes sharpened. “The Cazador’s sister ship, and the letter I mentioned confirmed it. The so-called experts didn’t believe she existed because they were too lazy to do their own research—that’s always been the difference between us. I spent most of a decade in Seville learning to read and write archaic Spanish. The sister ship, I call her La Escaponda because that’s what she was doing, I think—‘running for her life.’”
“The Runaway,” Tomlinson said, a loose translation of the name.
“Your Spanish is pretty good. What I think happened is . . .”
Fitzpatrick had a theory. The captain of the sister ship had seen the El Cazador go down in a hurricane. By the time he’d saved his own ship it was too late to help, but not too late to change course and steal the manifest.
“Picture the poor bastard and his crew, barely alive, eating wormy salt beef but carrying a ton of newly minted coins. How his mind might view the situation, you understand. If neither boat arrived in New Orleans, the big shots in Madrid might figure they both sank in the storm. Risky, but the chance of a lifetime, right? So he and his crew said screw it and headed for the islands to live like rich men.”
A few hundred miles later, the sister ship sank, too. Damage from the first storm or another hurricane came along—or it was captured by privateers, not uncommon in those days.
“I know where she is,” Fitz said. “La Escaponda.”
“The Bahamas,” Tomlinson said in a flat tone.
The treasure hunter tried not to react. “I’ve got forty years of hard work recorded in that logbook. Trips all over the Caribbean where I dragged magnetometers, and marked wrecks that I didn’t have time to dive. Or didn’t have the money. Or the weather went to shit. Wrecks, some of them, I matched up later with the archives in Seville. You wouldn’t believe the potential dollar amount if I told you.”
“I’d believe it but don’t care. Will Nickelby know what he’s reading?”
Maybe not. Fitz had his own system when it came to writing GPS numbers. All salvage pros did, just like fishermen. Add or subtract a linchpin number in case someone peeks over your shoulder.
“The coordinates will confuse him unless he figures it out. He might. Nickelby’s smart. And he’s dealt with enough archaic Spanish to understand some of my notes. It’s my sketches he’ll focus on first: the way reefs lie, the trees and the towers, the anchorages—you know how triangulation works. The less important sites, I didn’t bother writing everything in code. That’s where I think we’ll find him.”
Tomlinson was running out of patience. “Where exactly? Are you talking about the whole damn Caribbean Sea?”
“Yeah . . . no . . . a couple of places. Islands, shallow-water areas with promising spots not far from shore. He’ll try those first. Don’t worry, I’ll stay in touch by phone.”
That did it. “The hell you will. The cell towers down there suck. It’s text messages only, unless you’re close to Nassau. And that’s on a good day. Doc’s already poking around Andros because that’s what you suggested, and I’m supposed to fly out tomorrow. If I fly out. Damn it, Fitz, I’m not dumb. You want to use us like chess pieces to block Nickelby from finding something. The question is, what?”
Fitzpatrick evaded by repeating a tired old maxim—The first rule of treasure hunting is to trust no one—then withdrew into himself while Tomlinson’s hollow, haunted blue eyes probed the man’s cranial bone.
Truth is multilayered. It is tangled in roots and often caged in lies. Patterns of thought formed in Tomlinson’s brain as a topo map. There were contours of varying intensity.
“You’re worried about Nickelby,” he said gently. “Worried that someone might kill him to get your logbook. No . . . to get their hands on something else. Talk to me, Fitz.”
The older man stared at the floor. “Him and the girl, if they’re still together, they might start around the Elutheras, but probably Andros, the southern tip, like I said on the phone. There’re a couple of promising wreck sites there. Not great, but okay. That much of what I told you is true. Hopefully, Nickelby stops there. But I doubt it.”
Tomlinson pictured white sand and ballast rock, a remote expanse of turquoise water. “Before the Bahamas flagged your passport, you were onto something really big, weren’t you?”
The treasure hunter in Fitzpatrick sidestepped that, too, saying, “There’s more I left out. Don’t get pissed. Along with my logbook, he stole something else—three primo Spanish coins. Very, very valuable. So, in a way, you’re right.”
“Right about what you found?”
“I’m talking about the coins. Nick the Prick stole a gold doubloon that could get them both killed.”