‘Yes,’ Stoney managed. He wondered if he could grab the steering wheel, wrench it, stop this guy long enough for Alex to shoot him.
Gooch gave him a long glance. ‘I can smell stupid thoughts, man. Don’t do it. I’ll kill you.’
Stoney stayed put, his face buried in the worn upholstery of the truck, feeling it rumble off the beach, back onto grassland, then back onto the smooth road.
The van couldn’t navigate down the long spill of rock to the sandy wet of the beach, and Alex drove back to the road, the van heaving like a horse, and peeled back toward the main highway – his only hope of cutting the guy off.
Gooch in that same red truck, leaving Stoney’s hideaway, shooting at him, the gun in the hand rock-steady. He worked his own gun out, kept it in his left hand, steered right-handed.
The van rumbled onto the main highway, narrowly missing a Mercedes with an older couple. The driver laid on the horn. The woman lifted a manicured middle finger in salute and Alex nearly shot it off. Instead he swerved around them, bolted south to where the beach came closer to the main road. He kept glancing at the rearview mirror, thinking the red truck might burst from the trees or from another feeder road.
He drove all the way down to where a curve of beach came close to the road – no sign of the truck. He patrolled up and down the stretch of highway for a half hour but the only red truck he saw was new and had two women in it, pulling a horse trailer.
Finally he returned to the fishing cottage. Front door closed but unlocked. No sign of Stoney. No sign of a struggle.
So – Stoney had been kidnapped for real? Maybe Gooch was a partner Danny Laffite had that no one knew about. Or maybe Stoney had switched sides, decided to get out from under Alex’s thumb, gotten himself a new partner to take care of Alex. He swore. Screw worrying about getting the emerald, he should have killed Stoney the moment he figured out Stoney betrayed him. He felt the sting of his own greed.
Where the hell do I start looking for them?
He tried to calm his thoughts. Say Stoney decided to bolt, decided to hire muscle to cut out Alex. He’d have to call. Did Stoney have a cell with him? Alex went to the cordless phone in the cottage. There was a redial button. He pressed it. An answering machine clicked on, a low, comfortable drawclass="underline" ‘Hi, you’ve reached the office of Justice of the Peace Whitman Mosley. Office hours are nine a.m…’
Alex clicked off. Whit Mosley. That young judge in the loud shirt who came looking for Stoney to ask about the murdered old people.
So what the hell did a gun-happy Gooch have to do with a judge? He paced the floor for a minute. Maybe Stoney cracked. Decided to cut a deal and called the judge.
No. Police cars and sirens and Miranda rights would have been involved. Judges didn’t hire mercenaries to kidnap people.
But maybe it was even worse… maybe they knew about the emerald, the treasure. Maybe the judge and Gooch were just chasing it for themselves. Alex could see it: Stoney, babbling that he knew where a fat emerald was and knew a guy who’d hid millions in rare coins and could they help him cut a deal? Maybe a cop or a judge would think, Well, I’d like me some of that Even assuming Stoney hadn’t cracked, Gooch had already found Stoney here at the cottage. They must know enough. And nothing on the news yet about the treasure. No one else knew.
But they had Stoney, who had the Eye, and could completely ruin Alex.
PART THREE
‘For thirty years,’ he said, ‘I’ve sailed the seas and seen good and bad, better and worse, fair weather and foul, provisions running out, knives going, and what not. Well, now I tell you, I never seen good come o’ goodness yet. Him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men don’t bite; them’s my views – amen, so be it.’
31
The lunchtime heat wasn’t unbearable, the breeze a cool comfort. Whit met Dr Parker and a bookish, attractive woman on the waterfront dock of a small restaurant near the Port Leo harbor for Saturday lunch. Dr Parker introduced the woman as Dr Iris Dominguez with Texas A amp;M Corpus Christi. Pronounced her name the Spanish way, Ee-res.
The bones from the dig are in Iris’s car trunk,’ Dr Parker said. ‘I can sign custody of them back over to you after lunch if you like.’
Whit saw the waitress approaching for the drink order keep her smile frozen in place at the mention of bones.
‘He’s really not a maniac,’ Whit told her.
‘The day is young,’ Iris Dominguez said. She had a beautiful voice, soft but forceful, and a cool, unfussy elegance. Whit liked her immediately. They ordered hamburgers and onion rings, Parker asking for a Salty Dog, Iris and Whit ordering beers.
‘So you want to know about the coins and you’re bribing us with lunch.’ Parker scooped a tortilla chip with salsa and popped it into his mouth.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Why not just ask the sheriff’s office?’
‘I could. But I’m not popular with law enforcement right now. I just insulted the FBI.’
Iris Dominguez raised an eyebrow.
Parker laughed. ‘And why did you think that was productive?’
‘I’ll see if it gets the results I want,’ Whit said. ‘Plus, I wanted to thank you and Dr Dominguez for your help.’ He smiled at Iris. ‘You identified the relics. That was extremely helpful to me.’
‘You’re welcome. You’ve made my weekend interesting.’
The waitress arrived with their drinks; Parker licked the salt from the glass rim, sucked down half the grapefruit juice and vodka in a hard swallow.
Dr Dominguez waited until the waitress had departed. ‘Okay. What do you know about coins?’
‘They don’t stay in my pocket long enough,’ Whit said.
‘Let me give you a quick primer. These kinds of coins weren’t treated like how we treat quarters and pennies and dimes. They were created to make it easy to move massive amounts of wealth from Mexico to Spain. They might be struck in Mexico, shipped, and then immediately melted down in Europe.’ She sipped at her beer. ‘These are called milled bust coins, the last produced Spanish colonial coins. The gold coins come in denominations of eight, four, two and one escudo. The silvers are reales. Obviously the gold coins are worth more.’ She dug in her purse, pulled out a file of photos. ‘I took some pictures of the coins, nice big blowups so I can show you why these coins are particularly unusual.’ She spread the photos out, one group to one side, the other by Parker’s dwindling cocktail.
‘These all have a typical reverse side,’ she said. ‘See the pillars and shield? Typical of many Spanish colonial coins. And these have double rosettes under the pillars. Very unusual.’ She pulled the other section of photos into the center of the table. ‘The obverse sides of the coins often have either a monarch’s shield – like British paper money having the queen on it – or a design of the emperor’s head, which you can see these have. Most of these are Ferdinand VII. Don’t you think he had a weak chin?’ She pointed with a pencil tip.
‘Yes,’ Whit said.
Iris flipped the picture back over to the pillars, to the letters encircling the design. ‘You see the Mo? That means Monteblanco. Next, that’s the denomination – this is an eight escudo; and next are the initials of the assayer. Here that’s ET, Esteban Torres, the official of the Monteblanco mint. The other side has a date… Here, this coin was minted in 1819. Monteblanco was at that time the newest Mexican mint. Just opened. Freshly minted, you could say.’
‘Iris doesn’t get out enough,’ Parker said. ‘Does it show?’
‘I think you’re brilliant,’ Whit said.
She smiled and Parker said, ‘Hey.’