Fallen Palm (Jesse McDermitt Series) Page 2

  The sea stories went on and on, until Julie finally called it a night for us about 0300. By then, the bar was empty. Somehow, I had found my way back to Dockside, where I took my new flats skiff I kept there for when I came down to take out a charter or cavort with the locals, and miraculously made it home. The trip was either twenty-five miles across some very skinny water, or nearly forty miles if I’d followed the channels, without becoming a permanent part of the Seven Mile Bridge. At least this is what I thought must have happened. I don’t remember much after leaving the Anchor.

  Actually, my house is little more than a shack on stilts, just over a thousand square feet, with a large combination living room, dining room and kitchen in front and a bedroom and head in back. But it’s solid, keeps the summer rain and winter wind out. As far as solitude, it’s better than sleeping on the boat, though not nearly as luxurious. I’d built this place by hand on an island in the Content Keys, northwest of Big Pine Key. This group of islands is mostly uninhabited scrub and mangrove covered swamps and sand bars. When I retired, I’d used up nearly all my savings which I’d scraped together over twenty years in the Corps, supplemented by an inheritance from my grandfather about six years ago, to buy Gaspar's Revenge and this tiny island. It was no more than two acres in size at low tide. It had no beach and the water around it was so shallow you could walk to any of the neighboring islands and not get your shorts wet.

  It took me a whole winter and spring to dig a channel by hand from Harbor Channel, just deep enough for my little skiff to get to the island. There I’d carved out a part of it and spent all of the summer building my stilt house above the channel. I’d planned to make the channel wide enough and deep enough to get Gaspar’s Revenge through it, but it proved to be too much work to do by hand. One day I’ll rent a dredge and do it, but for now I’ll keep running back and forth in the skiff.

  I’d gone up to the commercial docks in Miami during that summer and scrounged through the discarded piles of pallets. There were lots of them from South America and I managed to find a lot of mahogany planks and quite a bit of discarded lignum vitae posts, along with other hardwoods rare in the states, but plentiful down there. The siding on the walls of my house is mostly mahogany. The roof is corrugated steel I’d scrounged from the Naval Air Station in Key West when they’d torn down some of the old Quonset huts that had been there since before WWII. The floor is fourteen feet above the narrow channel at high spring tide, just enough room for the Revenge. The floors, studs and beams are solid lignum vitae and it was through these heavy boards that I could now hear the constant banging noise. My little house could withstand anything Mother Nature could conjure up, but something down below was trying its best to knock it down.

  I finally gave up trying to ignore the noise from below the house and the pounding at my temples and slowly got up from the bed. It was hot. Too hot to be morning, I thought. I went to the head to take a leak, then walked out onto the deck and saw that I was right. The sun was directly overhead and though it was looking like another hot south Florida October day, there was a strong wind blowing out of the southeast, churning up white caps out on the flats as far as I could see. The shallow waters north of Big Pine Key were normally flat in late summer and fall. Usually not even enough wind to make a ripple, unless a squall blew in from the Gulf. I figured there must be a storm brewing and the pounding I’d been hearing must be my skiff banging against the dock below. I went down and found that the skiff looked like it had been tied up by some rookie sailor, and was indeed banging against the pilings. My skiff is an eighteen foot Maverick Mirage, with a 150 horsepower Yamaha engine, under the poling platform. It’s a fast little boat and can handle the skinny water around Florida Bay with ease.

  “Jesse,” I addressed myself again, “you really outdid yourself this time. Lucky that old skiff ain’t halfway to Cape Sable by now.” I tightened the mooring lines, then went back up to the house to get some water, aspirin and food for my growling stomach. The pounding in my head finally subsided a little, as I wondered how I’d gotten home. It wasn’t like me to not remember a fifteen to thirty mile boat ride. But I must have done it as there was nobody else on the island. After three bottles of water, four aspirin, and a ham sandwich, I felt nearly human again and thought back to the events of the previous evening.

  Russ Livingston drowned? It was a stretch to think that’d be how Russ would leave this world, I thought. The man practically lived in the water. He was an accomplished diver, as was I. We’d once swam completely around the island that Hammocks Beach State Park was situated on, near Camp Lejeune, a distance of some six miles, half of it in open ocean, just on a dare. In the fall of 1982, we were on leave and had been diving for lobster off Fort Pierce and found something far more interesting. The whole area of ocean from Saint Lucie Inlet to Sebastian Inlet was where the 1715 “Plate Fleet”, twelve treasure laden ships, had sunk in a hurricane. While trying to get at a really big and exceptionally stubborn lobster, I pulled out a big black rock from under a ledge. Once the lobster was in the bag, I turned and found Russ examining the rock I’d pulled out. It was nearly two feet long and about a foot square, black and heavily encrusted with barnacles. Even under water, it was very heavy. I’d almost dislocated my shoulder dislodging it to get at that lobster. I tapped Russ on the shoulder and gave him the universal “What’s up?” sign with my hands out, palms up and a shrug. He replied by rubbing his thumb and first two fingers together in the universal “Money” sign. When we got back up to the boat, Russ said, “Jesse, I think that might be silver.” We rigged a line around the rock and hoisted it into the skiff. Out of the water, it was really heavy.

  Since the whole coast there was still an active salvage site of the 1715 Fleet, we knew we had to keep our find on the down low. Russ said he knew a guy that could help us out. Turned out, we’d found 256 silver bars, encrusted together, about four inches long and one inch square. They must have been in a chest and the wood had just rotted away over nearly three hundred years, since it was wedged under that ledge. Each bar weighed about ten ounces, giving us a total of over 160 pounds. Russ’s friend gave us $100,000 in cold, hard cash, no questions asked. Russ, being the man he was, didn’t want a share of it at first. “You found it, Jesse. It wouldn’t be right for me to take any money.”

  “Russ,” I’d said, “I found a big, black rock, trying to get at a $5 lobster. You’re the one that recognized it for what it was. Half of this is yours. No more argument.”

  Russ was hooked. He had just been promoted to Staff Sergeant earlier that year and was due to reenlist in the spring. He decided to pass on it and left the Corps after twelve years, to devote his time to hunting treasure. Well, I thought, we’re not getting any younger. Russ must have been in his early fifties at least. But still, something kept gnawing at the back of my mind, that I just couldn’t let go.

  2

  Ten Weeks Earlier

  Early August, 2005

  Lester Antonio couldn’t believe his good fortune. Finally, things were starting to go his way. At 25, he’d lived a hard life. The son of a coke whore, who didn’t even know who his father was, he’d had more than his fair share of encounters with the law. At thirteen, as part of his initiation into a street gang in Philly, he stole a Toyota. His theft didn’t go unnoticed for long. Sitting at a stop light at Broad and Cherry in downtown Philly, a cop stopped right beside him. He tried to sit up taller and look tough, but the cop must have seen through his attempt and only saw a thirteen year old kid. When the light changed Lester turned right and hit the gas, heading toward the Convention Center. But, it was a one way street and he was going the wrong way. The cop hit the lights and siren and came after him. The start of Lester’s big time criminal career lasted a whole two blocks before he was tangled in oncoming traffic and the cop stopped right behind him, blocking any escape. That cost Lester six months in juvie.

  Back on the block six months later, he tried other criminal enterprises, picking pockets, petty theft, dr
ug dealing and so on, with pretty much the same results. Lester just wasn’t a very good criminal, though he aspired to be. At eighteen, he was popped with a drug distribution charge. All he was doing was carrying a box from one point to another for a local hard ass and he was getting paid a crisp C-note to do it. Turned out the package contained two pounds of coke. That got him real time, five years in state lockup. That was rough. With little else to do but play basketball or lift weights he soon started putting on a little bulk. At five feet ten inches, he added fifty pounds of muscle in that five year stretch, topping out at 220 pounds.

  Upon his release, he decided a change of climate might help. So he left Philly on a Greyhound headed for the Sunshine State. He really didn’t have a destination in mind, but knew that anywhere that the snow didn’t turn gray would be good enough for him. At a rest stop on US-1 in St. Augustine, he didn’t get back to the Greyhound in time and they left without him. Stranded in a beach town, he first tried pan handling. A St. Johns Deputy Sheriff picked him up and he was charged with vagrancy. Since he had no license, no money, and no bags, he spent another month in lock up. Released from the St. Johns County Jail, he made a bee line for the interstate and stuck out his thumb. No, Lester didn’t want to be in this podunk little burg anymore. Bright lights and big city, that was where Lester wanted to be. He felt more comfortable surrounded by people.

  A car pulled to a stop on the ramp to I-95 and he trotted toward it. The driver was an old guy with dark hair around his temples but snowy white on top. He had a long crooked nose, dark pock-marked skin, and was driving a pretty expensive looking sedan. The driver put the window down on the passenger side and asked, “Where you headed, kid?”

  “Anywhere but here, pops. Someplace with people that aren’t all related to each other.”

  The driver opened the door and said, “I ain’t your pops, kid. But I could use the company on the drive to Palm Beach. Get in.”

  Lester climbed into the air conditioned comfort of the big sedan and the old guy pulled out onto the freeway. “Sorry for the pops thing, man. Just want to get out of here quick, is all.”

  “Name’s Sonny Beech, kid. You ain’t a druggy, I can see that. You ain’t a queer are ya?”

  “No, I ain’t no fag. For real, your name’s Sonny Beech?”

  “Yeah, kid” the driver said. “But with an o and two e’s. Grew up in Amish country and hated my first name. When I came down here, I picked up the nickname Sonny. Suits me better.”

  “I just spent some time with this counties finest on a bogus charge,” Lester said. “Just need to get outta here, is all.” Damn, he thought, I need to keep my yap shut. Dude’s probably going to pull over and put my ass on the shoulder, now.

  Sonny drove on in silence for half an hour and Lester said nothing more. He concentrated on keeping his mouth shut. After passing Daytona, Sonny asked, “You need work, kid? I could use some muscle. Someone that ain’t afraid of getting his hands dirty, if you know what I mean.”

  So, Lester’s career as hired muscle for a West Palm Beach loan shark began. At first, Sonny had him doing menial tasks befitting his stature and lack of education. In other words, Lester worked under one of Sonny’s thumb breakers, a weird dude named Walt. In no time at all, Sonny had Lester performing more important jobs, picking up dead beats that owed Sonny money and taking them for a meet. Sometimes, he even took them back to where he’d picked them up. Other times, he didn’t.

  During his days off, Lester trolled the beach looking for beach babes. He got a lot of looks from a lot of very attractive ladies, but as soon as he started talking to one, they dropped him like a hot potato. Lester wasn’t the greatest conversationalist. One day, he’d noticed an old guy coming out of the water with scuba gear on, who was immediately surrounded by several women. “Gotta have an angle,” he said to himself. As the old guy walked by, Lester asked, “Is that hard to learn?”

  “Scuba diving, or picking up chicks?” the old guy replied, laughing.

  “The diving thing,” Lester said.

  “If you can swim, you can dive. You’d have to take a course and there’s a little math involved, but it’s pretty easy.”

  “What do ya find out there? Is da course close by here?” Lester asked.

  “You can catch lobster during the season, or spear fish, or just look around at all the pretty fish,” the old guy replied. “There’s dozens of scuba centers all over town, just look for the red and white dive flags. My name’s Russ.”

  “I’m Lester. Hey, what’s that long thing ya carrying? Don’t look like no spear gun to me,” Lester said.

  “Oh this,” the old man said, as he lifted a thing with a box at one end that had some dials and meters on it and a round plate at the other end. “It’s an underwater metal detector. Sometimes I find things that people lose off their boat.”

  Lester noticed he was wearing something around his neck, on a chain. It was gold, but oddly shaped with a cross on it and some things in the four parts separated by the cross. He couldn’t make out what those were. Had to be some kind of treasure, he thought. Old dude is looking for more than some old lady's wedding ring, that’s for sure.

  Several weeks later, Lester saw the old guy again and said, “Hey, I’m taking one of those diving classes, maybe you can show me how to look for stuff, when I get finished with it.”

  Russ said, “Yeah, I can show you a few things, once you’re certified. I don’t dive here a lot, though. I live up in Fort Pierce.”

  A month later, Lester had his Open Water certification and had asked around about the old guy he’d met. Turned out, he was right, Russ was a kind of amateur treasure hunter with a reputation for skirting the salvage laws. Although Lester didn’t do well with the ladies, despite his physique, he always managed to make friends with other men pretty easily. The next time he ran into Russ, they got to talking about his new diving certification.

  “Where ya from, Russ?” Lester asked, over a beer at a Palm Beach tiki bar.

  “Originally, I’m from Philadelphia but haven’t been back there in over twenty years.”

  “No kidding! I’m from Philly, too! Just moved down here a few months ago.”

  After a couple more beers and talking about their neighborhoods, Lester finally asked, “Say, Russ, besides looking around, or spear fishing, can a guy make any money doing this scuba diving?”

  Russ thought it over for a minute, motioning the waitress to bring another round. Finally, he looked hard at the kid in front of him and said, “With a lot more classes, you could be a Divemaster and make about enough to buy this next round. But, yeah, there’s money in the water. You just gotta know where to look.”

  “Money in the water? You mean like finding old ladies rings and what not?”

  “No, kid. I mean REAL money. You see, over the last three or four hundred years hundreds, maybe even thousands, of ships have sunk during storms right out there on that reef. It runs from Key West to Fort Pierce, over three hundred miles. A lot of them carried gold and silver, headed back to Spain. If a person knew where to look, he might find some of it.” Russ leaned in closer and stared hard at Lester. “Of course, sometimes it’s not exactly legal to look in some places and the state of Florida wants a cut of anything found legally.”

  “Well, Russ, the way I look at it nothings against the law till ya get caught.”

  “I could use a dive partner on some of my dives,” Russ said. “A guy with your muscles could come in handy. Interested?”

  With that, Lester became a part time treasure hunter. At least until he could find out where the old man kept his trinkets hidden. Then, well maybe the old timer might join those guys that Lester didn’t take back to where he’d picked them up at for Sonny Beech.

  3

  Sunday afternoon, 10/23/2005

  It was early afternoon and I hadn’t accomplished much of anything since waking with a hangover. I’d noticed that the engine on my skiff had a bit of a sputter while running at three quarter speed the
day before, when I’d crossed Bahia Honda Channel. So I spent the afternoon rebuilding the Walbro carburetor on the 150 horsepower Yamaha outboard. I’d always liked working with my hands. It allowed my mind to wander, as my hands worked. I took the carb up onto the rear deck, where I had a large built-in wooden table. I used it as both a work bench and outdoor dining table. The rear deck overlooks the rest of the island. Last spring, I’d cleared a large area of sea grape, wild coffee, buttonwood scrubs and palmetto, in the middle of the island, with the crazy notion of growing some vegetables. After two weeks of cutting, digging, and scraping, I had a fairly round patch cleared that measured 150 feet across. I left a single coconut palm standing in the middle, it being one of only three coconut palms on the island. Reality sank in shortly afterwards, when I borrowed a tiller from a friend on Grassy Key and found out that the sandy soil on the surface was only a few inches deep and below it was limestone and ancient coral. Then there was the problem of irrigation. Salt water doesn’t help vegetables very much. I figured that maybe if I brought in a few thousand tons of rich topsoil, I might be able to make it work. Another project put on hold.

  As I sat at the table, I looked out across the clearing and across the mangroves and gumbo limbo trees on the northeast side of the island, into the Gulf of Mexico. My island was just thirty feet off of Harbor Channel, which ran northeast to Turtlegrass Bank, then turned north in several natural cuts, leading to the deeper waters of the Gulf. I could see several pelicans diving on bait fish out there, just south of Upper Harbor Key. To the west, I could see a pair of herons wading through the shallows along Content Passage while several others sunned in the mangroves and banyans along eastern Content Key.

  It was relaxing up here, away from all the distractions in the many towns and villages that make up the Keys. I didn’t really need a lot of human interaction and it seemed there were just more and more tourists down there, lately. A year ago, there was one human I enjoyed interacting with. Her name was Alex. We were only friends and occasional workout partners when I lived on my boat at Dockside. She was very striking in appearance, not what a lot of men would call beautiful, but I’d always found her attractive. Tall, with a swimmer’s broad shoulders, long blonde hair and a pretty face. She left last year. Flew back up to Oregon to take care of a sick brother.