Key Weird 01; Key Weird Read online

  “Not that you would appreciate it or anything, Carol” – Jeremy took a sip of the Margarita and tried to work the TV remote with his toes - “but I’ve been cultivating some sources of information with the locals here.”

  “I’m sure you’ve got your finger on the pulse of whatever passes for sleaze down there, Lover-Boy, but you better have some solid leads on the treasure scene when I get there.”

  Jeremy choked, spitting some of his drink on the bed.

  “You’re coming here? You won’t like it, Carol, trust me! The place is full of sweaty, sunburned tourists drunk on overpriced booze, and everything is covered with seagull shit. The locals are uppity, and there’s no high-end shopping for a hundred and fifty miles!”

  “Thanks so much for your concern, Jeremy, but I’m sure I’ll get by somehow. Meet me at the airport at 6:30 tomorrow evening, and be ready to take me to whoever has my idol.”

  Jeremy stood with the phone to his ear, listening to the dial tone for several seconds after Carol hung up. He finally decided the best course of action was to quietly grab his stuff and slip out of the room. Jeremy headed for the Pink Snapper for a drink and a serious strategy session.

  ∨ Key Weird ∧

  26

  Sam

  Sam Turbano sat at the end of the bar. He drank coffee while casting a seasoned, judgmental eye over the early shift of losers filtering into the Pink Snapper. He hocked up a wad, spit on the floor, and mumbled something to the bartender, who quickly refilled his coffee cup. Nobody else even looked at Sam. He was a dried-up old man in a rumpled suit, sitting in a dark, dingy, topless bar in the middle of the afternoon on a bright sunny day.

  Sam didn’t care about going outside in the brilliant sunlight these days; the light hurt his eyes. He’d spent most of his life out in the sun, diving for treasure and raising hell around Key West. As a young man, Sam had made a reputation for himself in the Keys as a selfish and quarrelsome bastard. The only thing that had changed as he got older was that he got older. He was a mean old cuss.

  Sam had always liked money and women. He also liked hiring and firing people, mostly firing. That’s why when he found the mother lode treasure years ago, he’d bought the Pink Snapper with part of his money.

  Rumor had it that Sam had screwed his partners out of shares of the treasure when they finally hit it big. People said there was even more treasure on that old ship than what had been brought in, and that Sam had it hidden away somewhere. There were threats and lawsuits for years. Sam finally won by simply outliving all his former partners.

  ∨ Key Weird ∧

  27

  Life at the Snapper

  Butch was getting tired of this clown from California in the cowboy boots. He had already scammed the moron for several hundred dollars the last few days. It was easy, really. He simply saw to it that the guy was sitting as close to the stage as possible, and then waited until he was out of his head on booze and the sight, sound, and smell of sweaty naked women just out of reach. Then the guy would cough up money for just about anything to do with treasure, as long as he didn’t have to leave the bar to get it.

  It was time to cut him loose though, and Butch figured he might make some points with the old man if he let Sam have him to fuck with. His boss was bad about that. He really liked to mess with anyone he thought he could intimidate. If it wasn’t for the fact that Sam treated Butch like shit too, he would almost look up to the old bastard.

  ♦

  Sam checked his watch. Another five minutes and the first dancer of the day, a Cuban girl named Amee, would be late, again. Sam saw one of his bouncers walking across the bar toward him with a big stupid grin. What was his name? Bubba? Brad?

  “Yo, Mr. Sam, how you doing today?”

  Beavis? Brian?

  “Look, there’s this guy over here, been asking about treasure,”

  Buck? Bert?

  “and I figured, you being such a treasure expert and all.”

  “Fuck off, Bruce. I got no time for another asshole tourist wanting a some hot deal on treasure to impress some broad. Get your ass back to work or hit the road, Barney!”

  “Uh, it’s Butch, Mr. Sam. This guy, he’s looking for a particular piece. Some little gold idol that looks like this.”

  Sam gave his employee a hard look, took the picture, and held it to the light. He stared at it for a few seconds, then took his glasses from his pocket and put them on. When he looked up, he was feeling a little lightheaded.

  “Where’d you get this picture from, boy?”

  Butch straightened his shoulders a little.

  “The little guy with the cowboy boots over there by the stage. Been coming in here the last few days. Says he’s got somebody willing to cough up some serious jack for that piece. I told the – ”

  Sam’s hand came up, and Butch got quiet. A young woman ran in the front door and went straight into the back room.

  “Tell him to come over here. And tell Amee if she’s late again, she’s fired.”

  ∨ Key Weird ∧

  28

  The Days of Treasure and Treasure Hunters

  Before they found the mother lode, they knew they were close. In about 20 feet of water just inside the reef near Bird Key, a lump sticking up a little higher than the rocks around it turned out to be iron, an ancient iron anchor from a Spanish ship. The next day they found a barnacle-covered cannon, and everyone in the dive crew was pumped.

  After years of searching, this was the most promising thing they’d seen. The divers worked longer and harder than ever, but six days later they hadn’t found anything else. The men were exhausted and disheartened. Back then Sam Turbano was head man on the treasure team, but he still took a shift in the water everyday. The men usually stayed on the big boat for a week or so at a time, diving every day when the weather was good.

  Sam had been in the water checking a new area further out, and was turning back to come in when he saw a rock formation he wanted to get a better look at. But it wasn’t rock – it was silver bars. A stack of bars almost two feet high and even more bars spread out over the bottom, sticking out of the sand.

  Here Sam’s years of practice at being an asshole came in handy. He hid his excitement over the find by going off on one of his screaming rants when he got back to the boat.

  “That’s it! I want you shitheads to pack it in for a few days before somebody screws up and I got a dead diver on my hands. Go get yourselves some sleep and some pussy in Key West. And try not to get too fucked up, I want to hit it hard again Monday morning.” Sam would stay aboard with the boat’s captain and do some work on the equipment.

  As soon as his men set off for civilization in one of the skiffs, Sam broke out a bottle of Scotch and had a drink. Old Bart, the captain of the ship, wasn’t one to turn down whiskey. Sam left him the bottle after slipping a couple of barbiturates in it, and grabbed himself some sleep.

  When Sam woke a couple hours later he found Capt. Bart passed out on the floor of his cabin, snoring loudly. He got his gear loaded in the other skiff and slipped out into the night. It took him almost an hour after he had anchored to find the silver bars. Even with the big underwater flashlight, things looked a lot different swimming in the pitch-black water at night. Sam didn’t bother with the silver, he was looking for gold.

  And he found it. Coins, necklaces, and figurines, some just lying there, some under decades of silt and ocean crud. His light reflected jewels scattered across the sandy bottom in places, and he spent several hours picking through treasure and going back to the skiff, stopping only to change scuba tanks.

  Just before dawn, an exhausted Sam pulled himself into the skiff. He started the motor and did a quick check of his gear and the extra gas he’d put aboard. He didn’t see any sign of life on the big boat as he headed north with two full sacks of Spanish treasure.

  ♦

  At first there were suspicions about Sam when it was discovered that someone had already disturbed the area around the silver
bars. The partners calmed down some though as the treasure kept coming in. Even without what Sam had taken that night, it still turned out to be the biggest treasure find in Florida’s history.

  ∨ Key Weird ∧

  29

  Meet the Man

  Areosmith’s “Teacher” blasted from the sound system inside the Pink Snapper. The first dancer of the day came out on stage in a skimpy schoolgirl outfit wearing her hair in pigtails and sporting an oversize pair of horn-rimmed glasses.

  Jeremy was transfixed. His palms started sweating as he unconsciously kept checking the wad of one-dollar bills he had in his front pocket for the dancers.

  Suddenly, the big, stupid bouncer that had screwed him on the treasure map was in his face. Jeremy couldn’t hear what he was saying because of the music, and was trying to look around him at the dark-haired dancer with the incredibly firm-looking tits.

  Next thing Jeremy knew, the asshole had a big meaty hand under his arm and was walking him roughly away from the stage, yelling in his ear, “Somebody wants to talk to you.”

  When they got close to the old man sitting at the end of the bar, the geezer gave a dismissive wave of his hand and the big jerk let go of Jeremy’s arm. Jeremy shrugged his shoulders and made a token gesture at straightening his shirt. He turned to give Butch a look, but found himself alone with the old man.

  “So what’s up, Chief? You got something on your mind, old dude?” Jeremy didn’t like the way the guy in the rumpled suit was looking at him.

  “Sit down. What do you know about this?”

  The old guy set the picture of a little golden idol on the bar in front of Jeremy.

  “Hey, that’s one of my pictures! You got some information for me?”

  In less than two minutes Jeremy’s mind went from Lust Mode to Panic-and-Fear Mode. Now Greed Mode was kicking in. It was making him a little dizzy; he sat down facing Sam.

  “This is my bar, I own it. I’m asking the questions. Tell me everything you know about this picture or I’ll have Bruce come back over here and squeeze your little bald head until it pops like a big zit.”

  ∨ Key Weird ∧

  30

  Buried Treasure

  Sam ran the skiff with the bags of treasure back up through the Keys and then north into Florida Bay, looking over his shoulder every thirty seconds. He stopped at several of the dozens of little deserted mangrove islands before he found one he liked, not too far from the mainland near Cape Sable.

  Having thought of everything except a shovel, Sam used the little Danforth anchor from the skiff to dig a hole and bury his gold. He stopped digging every few minutes to check in all directions to make sure no one was around to see what he was doing. It was a beautiful clear day, and back then there wasn’t much boat traffic. Only once did Sam see another small boat way off in the distance.

  After making sure he’d left no signs of digging, and even smoothing over his footprints in the sand as he left, Sam made his way back to Key West, still looking over his shoulder every few minutes.

  He should have been ecstatic with the treasure he and his partners were about to start bringing in after years of searching, but all he could think about was his two sacks of buried gold. Sam was a nervous wreck thinking about it when he got back to Key West, so he decided to go to the topless bar, have a few drinks, and look at some titties to take his mind off things.

  The more he drank, the more it began to dawn on him that he was about to become a very rich man. The more he drank, the better those titties looked. It didn’t take too long before Sam and the whiskey decided he could take his pick of any of the women in the bar that night. The one shaking her ass in front of Sam’s face right that moment was his first choice.

  Sam had a good grip around the dancer’s waist and was halfway to the door, when a stocky bartender with a shaved head and a baseball bat got in the way. Despite the naked woman squirming and screaming, Sam was holding his own one-handed against the bartender, who seemed to think he was Roger Maris going for home run number 61. He had just sent Roger back to the bench with a kick to the nuts, when the owner of the bar stepped up and pinch hit Sam hard across the back of the head with a pool cue.

  Sam loved a good fight as much as the next mean bastard back in those days, and he didn’t mind fighting dirty either, as long as nobody tried it on him.

  The pool cue made a loud crack when it broke over Sam’s head. The soon-to-be-former owner of the bar stepped back and looked at the madman holding the frantic dancer like she was a stuffed toy he’d just won at the carnival. He expected the madman to go down. He didn’t.

  Sam froze and looked at the now still and wide-eyed blond dancer a second, then shook his head sadly. He let loose of the woman, turned and charged, roaring headfirst at the soon-to-be-leaving-town man holding half a pool cue.

  ♦

  Within a few days, Sam had recovered from the beating he received that night from the police batons before spending the rest of the night in jail. He would go back out on the big dive boat with his men, find the mother lode, and become rich and locally famous. He bought the bar from a man who would then move to Orlando to get in on the ground floor of the topless bar scene just before Disney hit town. The man eventually became rich himself, but had difficult bowel movements for years due to an incident he did not care to discuss involving a pool cue.

  After that night, the blond dancer thought she could never get enough of Sam. But after living with him for a few weeks, she decided she’d definitely had enough, and headed for Orlando herself.

  Sam enjoyed the money and even liked the attention from the press at first. He bought a nice house in Key West, and settled into being a local celebrity and owner of the only topless club in town. But mostly Sam worried about his two bags of gold buried on the mangrove island in Florida Bay.

  ∨ Key Weird ∧

  31

  Butch’s Job

  Butch decided his job wasn’t all that bad. Sure the old man was a pain in the ass and never gave him any respect, but it paid good and had some decent bennies. Getting to hit a drunk in the face with some parking lot once in a while was one of them. Another was intimidating the dancers. Though that was only until they found out he was just hired help and not the manager. When Sam found out Butch had been telling people he was the manager, he told him to get his head out of his ass or he could go back to renting jet-skis to tourists for a living again.

  ♦

  But driving the car was a plus. Butch knew he was cool in his wrap-around shades and Hawaiian shirt with the little pink parrots open over his black T-shirt with the picture of Stone Cold, his current favorite wrestler.

  Since rolling up the dark-tinted windows in the big black Mercedes would keep people from seeing how cool he was, Butch took the long way to the airport in the old man’s car with all the windows down and the air conditioning and sound system cranked to the max. He’d driven the old man around a few times, but this was the first time solo. He bobbed his head to the music and hoped the old fart would let him use the car more often.

  ∨ Key Weird ∧

  32

  Pirate Jim’s and Taco Bob

  “Free beer with chowder!”

  Some fool in a big black car just about run me over as I was walking across the street to a little place called Pirate Jim’s. It ain’t a very big or fancy place, so I sat at the bar and ordered up a bowl of their famous by-catch chowder and a beer. I was still a little shook from my close call and the ol’ fella sitting next to me asked me what was up.

  “A big Mercedes just about took my kneecaps off when I was crossing the road just now. I don’t think the fella ever even seen me, had his head down messing with the radio.”

  The ol’ guy had white hair and beard, and reminded me of a scrawny Santa. With his skin the color and texture of shoe leather, and the white splotches of bird poop all over the shoulders of his threadbare work shirt, I had him pegged as a local.

  “Lotta that going on here these day
s. Old days, man could get blind drunk, walk all over the island and not get run over but once or twice all night. These days it’s hardly safe crossing the street stone sober!”

  He punctuated that bit of timely information with a loud belch, which was answered in kind by the green-feathered source of the bird droppings that was perched on his faded old captain’s hat. I’d never heard a parrot belch before.

  “Had to drink a lot of beer to teach that damn bird to do that.” He gave me a big wink. “Name’s Fish Daddy, and that’s Capt. Tom up top on the poop deck.” Upon hearing his name, Capt. Tom let lose another long parrot belch.

  I told him my name was Taco Bob, and we did the hand-shaking thing just as my chipped bowl of steaming chowder and warped spoon arrived. I was hungry, as usual, so I got my spoon bent back to where it resembled an eating utensil, and dug in. I ordered another bottle of Samuel Adams for my crusty new acquaintance, and another draft for myself.

  “Yes sir, I would imagine Capt. Tom there’s a real crowd-pleaser at some of your better social events around town.”

  “He shore is. Women like him too, ‘specially drunk women!” The ol’ fella thought this was way funny and went to laughing. The beers arrived just in time for him to down half of his to settle the coughing jag that followed his laughing. I was busy polishing off my chowder.

  “You ever had any of that chowder you’re throwing down before young fella? Back in the old days, Pirate Jim used to make it up himself, you know, in a big ol’ oil drum out back. Couldn’t afford shrimp, got all the weird stuff the shrimpers usually threw back, made his chowder with that. Had just a hint of a fuel oil taste first few batches.” The wall behind the bar was covered with all kind of pictures; one was a big cartoon drawing of a grinning Pirate Jim stirring a drum of chowder with a boat oar.