Key Weird 05; Key Lucky Page 5

  But he was always at least a little mad, since he always had The Song playing over and over in his head. He even dreamed it at night.

  ♦

  Revenge had never been a big thing for the Reverend like it was for some people. A jar of gas, a rag, and a kitchen match in the middle of the night did the job and kept it simple. He didn’t even wait around for the fire trucks after he heard the screams.

  But he did have to leave town and let things settle for a while afterwards. He ended up in Tampa where one of his flock, a Cuban woman named Maria, had some relatives. The father supplemented his social security by moving a few explosives he got from a son in the military. The other son did fake IDs, and the whole family was into low profiles and high stakes poker. Reverend Sharkey fit right in.

  They were drinking rum and playing poker one night, talking about the museum heist in Key West that was all over the news. Maria’s brother Santiago sucked at poker, and just about everything else, but he was a computer geek and master of forged identification.

  “Hey, Papa, remember that guy we did some business with a few weeks ago?”

  “The one who looked like a ex-con? What about him?”

  “That job in Key West? When they blew that safe, I bet they used plastic. Maybe some of yours?”

  ♦

  The Reverend took his time driving down through the Keys – didn’t need any grief from the local cops. He noticed two patrol cars parked-to-talk by a gas station, then a couple of miles later several more working a traffic light and giving cars leaving the Keys some hard looks.

  Sure could use a drink. Get a room in Key West, then hit a few bars. Ask around, see if anyone knows a Lucas Kahn. Santiago, bless his sneaky little soul, had even saved a copy of the picture he took for the ID.

  ∨ Key Lucky ∧

  11

  Lucky

  Finally, a day off. Two in fact, since Lucky had traded days with another barback. The only thing better than a day off in paradise was two.

  Lucky slept late, then set out on his bike for a leisurely ride around the island. There’d been a rainsquall during the night and a fresh breeze brought the smell of the ocean. Blue skies and just a few popcorn clouds made it perfect day-off weather.

  Pedaling down Roosevelt Boulevard past Smathers Beach he saw several men with metal detectors and shovels. He stopped his bike for a few minutes to watch a heated skirmish between two groups over what turned out to be a beer can. Two beefy men had gained digging rights to the area with the beer can by intimidating their older treasure competitors with strong language and a showing of the handguns under their shirts. Lucky figured cops looking on their own time.

  While the two cops dug up the immediate area, the group of retirees grumbled off with their metal detector and resumed searching along the edge of the water. Before leaving the beach, Lucky went further along and discreetly buried a silver coin. A Spanish eight reales coin – a genuine piece of eight. He was tempted to wait around to see their reaction when the old men found a coin the size of a half dollar.

  But he rode on. Seagulls shrieked overhead and kids ran yelling happily along the beach. He caught a whiff of hamburgers cooking on a charcoal grill.

  As he got closer to Old Town and Duval Street, the smells tended to include truck exhaust, hot pavement, and the occasional tang of garbage.

  Lucky was trying hard to enjoy it all, trying to convince himself he owned this town now. But he’d been up late watching the news. The unexploded bomb at the bank made the national news on TV. That and the handtruck thing had him thinking a lot about cutting town. A lot. Only he hadn’t exactly figured out how just yet. So he rode his bike on another beautiful day in paradise. He went by two Cuban women talking in front of one of the tiny houses built for cigar makers a hundred years ago. That reminded him of Tampa.

  Among the things he’d learned in prison was the name of a Cuban man who could supply him with some of the more hard to find items on his materials list.

  That took several days of negotiating price and some anxious moments. But he finally got what he needed from the crazy Cubans in Tampa and headed straight for Key West. A few more days to find a job and a place to stay, then it was time to start the final phase of the planning.

  His first choice for a time to do the heist was at night during one of the frequent thunderstorms. Plenty of loud booms to help cover the explosives, not to mention the few times Key West lost power it was usually during a storm. But then he started thinking about Fantasy Fest. During his initial research he’d read about it, but didn’t realize just how big a deal it’d become in the last few years. It was huge – the biggest party in a town noted the world over for partying.

  Fantasy Fest rivaled Mardi Gras in overall debauchery, but had way more nudity. Women wearing little else but cleverly applied body paint was quite common. Lucky decided he could wait a few extra weeks for Fantasy Fest. Planning had become almost an obsession, and he certainly had plenty of planning and rehearsing to do.

  “Excuse me!” A short, round tourist lady with a confused look and sunburned knees held up a hand to stop him. “You look like you live around here. Can you tell me where the place is that sells the treasure?”

  “If you mean the treasure museum, it’s down that way, close to Mallory Square. But it’s closed, they had some trouble a few days ago.”

  “Trouble? No shit!” Lucky noticed the front of her t-shirt had a drawing of a pirate pushing a handtruck. “I know the museum’s closed, I’m talking about the little shop that’s supposed to be around here somewhere.”

  “Oh, sorry. Yeah, there’s a little shop on Duval about half way down. Just turn here and it’s six or seven blocks on the right.”

  “Thanks, sweetie.”

  Lucky had forgotten about the museum’s little satellite shop. He turned down a side street and maneuvered his bike along the broken sidewalks while avoiding low-hanging tree limbs, parked cars, and feral chickens until he came up behind the shop. Judging by the crowd around front it looked like the place was indeed open and doing a brisk business. Lucky pedaled by and saw excited tourists coming out of the store flushed from battle clutching small shopping bags. He had to smile.

  “Maybe it’s true what they say about there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”

  Lucky’s haul was indeed incredible, but it was only a fraction of the treasure found in the waters off Key West over the years. Those old wooden galleons had been carrying literally tons of riches from the Americas back to Spain. He’d read once that there was so much in the area of one of the main piles that the treasure hunters didn’t want to bring it all up too quickly. They were afraid of devaluing their find.

  So even though Lucky had a good sampling and a few of the choicest pieces, he’d only scratched the surface of the total treasure reserve. There was still more than enough to sell to the tourists.

  He rode along crowded Duval Street, taking in the sights. A hardware store with a sign in the window – No Shovels. Flower smells, maybe jasmine or an orchid tree. People digging in the yard of a two hundred year-old house with a small crowd watching intensely. The town had definitely gone treasure crazy. He let his bike take him towards Mallory.

  “I wonder what’s going on at the museum.”

  One of the first things he’d done when he got to Key West was go to the famous treasure museum and pay the ten dollars admission. After years of pictures in books and on the net, the time had come to see the real thing.

  He tried to keep his excitement in check as he toured the sturdy old building. Room after room of incredible treasure in plastic cases. He loved it all, especially the salesroom. Really handy when they let you take pictures of a job – wished banks were that way. Might have noticed that back office at the bank in Ohio. Could have made a big difference in the way he’d spent the last few years of his life.

  But without those years in prison he never would have had the opportunity to do the kind of research and planning it took to pull somethi
ng like this off. Not to mention prison is the perfect environment to train for personal betterment through cunning and deviousness. And there’s never a shortage of experienced crooks with time on their hands to learn from.

  It had all started with a shipwreck story in one of the well-worn old books in the prison library. Soon he was reading everything he could get his hands on about treasure, if for no other reason than to stay sane and help him survive the horrors of prison. It didn’t take much reading about treasure hunting in the ocean for Lucky to decide it made a lot more sense to just go to Florida, find treasure someone else had already brought up, and steal that.

  ♦

  The museum was still closed. He stopped his bike across the street for a look. The windows were boarded up and the salesroom had a new, heavy door. The whole side of the building was fenced off with chain link and watched closely by a serious-looking armed guard. Keep moving.

  “Hey, you look like you might know.” Another tourist. Big bald guy with a tropical shirt, a non-tropical wife, and a frown. “Who you gotta fuck to get a hotel room in this town? Every place we checked so far is full of parrotheads or something.”

  “Did you try that big motel by the bridge when you first come into Key West?”

  The wife jumped on it. “I told you we shoulda checked there! You never listen to me!” She turned her anger on the man with the bike. “What’s the name of that motel?”

  “I’m not sure. I think it’s the Lucky Motel. Something like that.”

  The woman gave him a parting scowl for not knowing the full and proper name. Lucky wondered why visitors to the island always expected the locals to have extensive knowledge of all the hotels when that’s usually one of the last things anyone living in Key West would care about.

  But one hotel did come to mind. While the police were occupied with keeping the treasure fever under control, the time was right for him to cut town. He definitely needed to work on that. But first, while he was in the area, maybe stop by the hotel Consuelo and her sisters owned. Just for a minute.

  Maybe Lydia would be there.

  ∨ Key Lucky ∧

  12

  Mind Reading

  “Who’s that?”

  “Some guy looking for Lydia. She’s around back dipping leaves out of the pool, so I told him he could cut through the kitchen.” The most average, most non-descript young woman Taco Bob had ever known gave him a shy smile from behind the hotel’s front desk. “How are you doing? I haven’t seen you for a while.”

  “I’m right as rain, Sara. I got three boats, a good start on the ideal tropical lifestyle, a healthy appetite, a lady friend who owns a restaurant, and my circle of friends includes four very charming and beautiful sisters. If I was doing any better I just couldn’t stand it.” He gave her a good wink. “You’re looking good. You still seeing Fish Daddy?”

  “Yeah, among others.” He got the wink back. “So, you and Trish are good to go?”

  “We’re doing okay. She’s pretty busy with the restaurant right now.” The look of concern from Sara was a little unnerving; she must have heard that he and Trish weren’t really getting along so well lately. Taco Bob couldn’t believe how quickly things got around when you lived on an island. Time to change the subject.

  “Consuelo around?”

  “She’s off on one of her runs and Josephine is in her lab. She’s still working on a cure for the common hangover. Is there something I can do for you, big fella?”

  Again with the wink, but a slow, lewd wink this time.

  “Well, I could use a hand with a project on the Wilbur, something mechanical and dirty.”

  Sara seemed to be giving it some thought.

  “Consuelo, she really likes you, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know. And I’ve been kind of a jerk lately. I was hoping the opportunity to crawl down inside the bilge of a boat to fix a float switch I can’t reach might make her happy.”

  “You always did know how to show a girl a good time.”

  “It’s a gift.” Taco Bob pointed to the gold coin pendant Sara wore around her neck. A Key West dog tag. “I hope you’re careful with that thing, especially now.”

  “If anyone asks, I always tell them it’s a replica.”

  The two friends exchanged knowing looks. They’d both come into small amounts of Spanish treasure from the same source not that long ago. They’d settled on inheritance as their story should anyone inquire as to their financial situation. In a way, it was the truth.

  “Well, it’s not a replica, I can tell.”

  Sara held the coin away from her chest for a look.

  “That’s funny, you’re the second person to tell me that today.”

  “Oh? Who’s the other person?”

  Sara hopped up on the stool behind the desk and motioned behind her with a thumb.

  “That guy you saw when you came in, the one looking for Lydia.”

  “Talking about me?” Lydia breezed into the lobby from the kitchen. “And with a handsome man, no less.” She floated up to the front desk beside her sister and held up a hand for silence. “You should know that not only am I a magician of considerable talent, but lately I seem to be developing the power to read minds as well.” She reached over the desk and put her fingertips on their guest’s forehead. “As an example of my new ability I will read the mind of this total stranger who I have never seen before.”

  Taco Bob saw the slightest wink before Lydia closed her eyes. Sara was rolling hers.

  “I feel that this stranger is seeking something. I see it now – he is seeking a young woman. A particular young woman, one who didn’t clean up the kitchen like she said she would before she went for a run.”

  Taco Bob couldn’t help but smile, or notice Lydia was in an exceptionally bubbly mood.

  “Beautiful, talented, and now with psychic abilities. You certainly are in a good mood, Lydia. I swear you’re almost glowing.”

  “Yeah, sister mine. What’s up? Did you attain satori while netting leaves out of the pool?”

  “Almost as good. That good-looking guy you sent back to the pool? Before he left he asked me to dinner tonight at La Te Da.”

  ∨ Key Lucky ∧

  13

  Trapped

  “This one is number thirteen, and I’m feeling lucky!”

  “Skunk, you been saying that for every damn trap so far. And I think we’ve pulled a lot more than twelve. Sure feels like it at least.” Slip used a short fish gaf to grab the next orange and red float. “As much as I like kayaks for fishing the backwaters, I gotta admit they ain’t the best for pulling lobster traps.”

  The two men strained and cussed pulling on the slippery line. As soon as the waterlogged wooden trap came to the surface Slip scanned the horizon for boats.

  “I sure don’t want to get caught doing this. Them lobstermen have been known to take a shot at anyone they see around their traps.”

  “Yeah, Slip, and you done said that at every trap. Let’s get this heavy bitch in the boat.”

  The two men dragged the crate-like trap up onto the kayak. Skunk had to sit backwards in the front of the slender craft so he could get a good grip. He tried to look inside while Slip unhooked the trap’s door.

  “This one feels heavier. Must be full of either lobsters or treasure.”

  Slip got the latch undone and both men tried to stick their hands inside. Skunk gave up first.

  “Damn, nothing but big ol’ lobster. You said the coin your neighbor found was in a plastic bag?” Slip gave up, closed the trap door and pushed the trap back in the water.

  “Yep, like I told you several times already, one of those gallon-sized ziplocks. Said it was right in there with the lobsters.”

  Both men looked up. A boat coming.

  “Slip, is that a lobster boat?”

  “Nope, but he’s headed this way.”

  The two treasure hunters watched as the boat came closer, then slowed, then stopped a hundred yards away. Slip was not happy. />
  “Flats boat. They’re pulling a trap and don’t seem to care we can see ‘em. I bet that damn Mike’s been shooting off his mouth about finding that coin. A boat like that with three guys can get to most of the traps in this area before we do.”

  “Well, shit. Let’s check a couple more, long as we’re out here an all.”

  The men resumed paddling. They were getting tired.

  “Slip, did I tell you I heard something about they’re offering a reward now for any of the treasure coins.”

  “Yep, you said a thousand each, which makes sense. Cops won’t know where the coins are being found if everybody stays quiet and holds onto ‘em. Sort out the fakes that way too.”

  “Fakes?” Skunk stopped paddling. “What fakes?”

  “Keep paddling, there’s a float coming up on the port side.” The yak captain pointed. “The fakes made out of pewter they sell for a dollar or two to the tourists. They even use some of the silver from all those silver bars to make replicas. Big business in those.” Slip looked over at the flats boat dropping the trap back in the water. Slip would bet money it went back minus any lobsters. “There’s so many people coming down here now just to look for treasure, I heard they been looking all along the Keys lately. Rumor has it some of the hardware stores have been seeding the beaches with fake coins.”

  Skunk just shook his head at this, then almost fell out of the small boat reaching for the next float. “I got ‘er! I’m feeling mighty lucky this time!”

  Again they hauled on the line and pulled the heavy, barnacle-covered trap on board. By this time the men were both dirty with sea slime and smelled like old lobster bait.

  “Hot damn!” Skunk grabbed a piece of clear plastic sticking through the slats of the trap and pulled. “HOT DAMN!”

  “Settle down Skunk! You want that flats boat to hear you? Gimme that.”

  The Texas ant farmer clammed up and handed over the bag while taking a sudden interest in the other boat.