That’s another sport-diving protococlass="underline" Look but don’t disturb. But we hadn’t come to this lake as sport divers. We were on a mission, of sorts, although the kid was the last to know.
It wasn’t until just before we entered that water that Arlis Futch gave us a nod, meaning it was okay to finally tell Will Chaser the truth about why we were here.
Tomlinson did the talking—not just because the man is talkative by nature, although he is. He served as our spokesman because he was one of the few adults that the teenager seemed to like and trust.
Tomlinson made it short and sweet. He told Will that we hadn’t trucked forty miles inland, carrying scuba gear, a generator and a jet pump, plus sundry supplies, to search for fish, or fossils, or to catch specimens for my lab.
No, nothing that simple.
“We’re looking for an airplane,” Tomlinson had explained, enjoying himself, “but not just any airplane. Fifty years ago, a cargo plane left Havana. The plane was overloaded. It probably got caught in a storm, and it crashed south of Tampa. No one’s ever found it. Arlis thinks it went into this lake.”
“Overloaded with what?” Will had asked, interested, but with a teenage reticence to display enthusiasm.
I watched the boy’s eyes change as Arlis fished a hand into his pocket, extended his arm and said, “Maybe these.”
The man was holding two gold coins. They were hundred-peso coins, struck in the 1920s. José Martí’s profile was on the obverse side. REPUBLICA DE CUBA was stamped on the back. Even though we were outside, standing in the middle of nowhere, Arlis had shaded the coins and kept his voice low. Treasure hunters tend to be a noisy, talkative bunch until they think they’ve actually found something. It’s only when they turn quiet that I take them seriously.
“I’ll tell you the details later—if there’s need for that,” Arlis had said to Will. “Depends what we find. A few weeks back, I bought this chunk of land. About ten acres—lake included. It cost me more money than I have, but that don’t mean lawyers and cops won’t get involved down the road. Either way, you’ll be cut in on the profit—today only, I’m talking about. And that depends on what we find, and how long you work, and how hard you work. That sound okay with you?”
I was still watching Will’s expression. He and Arlis hadn’t liked each other from the start. Arlis was quick to give orders, and the teen was slow to comply. Halfway to the lake, Will had bristled at something Arlis had said, and he had called him a “mouthy old redneck.” Will had said it to the man’s face—not something a man like Arlis Futch would normally tolerate. I had thought that was the end of the boy’s afternoon dive.
To Arlis’s credit, though, he ignored the insult, but the two hadn’t spoken a word to each other until Arlis stuck out his big hand to display the coin. I could see that Will was surprised by Arlis’s offer—but no more surprised than I.
“You’re serious?” Will had said.
“About the lawyers trying to take it away from us?” Arlis replied. “Hell, yes, I’m serious.”
“No, about offering to let me help. No one said anything about a sunken plane.” Then the boy added, smiling, “But you don’t have anything to worry about. Not from me. I’m used to dealing with lawyers and cops. They don’t bother me a bit.”
Tomlinson was nodding his approval. Arlis liked it, too.
After that, there were no more surly teenage looks from Will, no more grumbling complaints and no more calling Arlis names. He believed the man. Will expected to find more gold.
Personally, I’d grown incrementally more certain there was nothing to find. I’d believed it right up until Tomlinson discovered the ancient tusk. During our half-hour dive, we’d done a random search of the perimeter, circling farther and farther from shore.
No sign of a plane.
Nor did we find the human detritus—beer bottles, old tires, fishing line—typical of such places. One exception: a crumpled Marlboro pack, suspended in silt. Otherwise, the place was pristine. It was a pleasant discovery that confirmed the lake’s inaccessibility.
It wasn’t until I backed away to give Will room to inspect the tusk that I saw something else that was man-made. Something that changed my mind about the lake . . . and the plane wreck.
Maybe.
I had glanced down to make certain my fins were clear of the bottom.
I didn’t want to murk the water. And there it was—proof we weren’t the first humans to breach the lake’s surface.
It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. On the bottom, lying in the sand, was another gold coin. Our fins had fanned the silt away. The coin was as yellow as molten brass. When I got a closer look, I saw that it was similar to the two coins Arlis had already found.
Diving to retrieve the coin is what saved me. It lured me away from the ledge. Bad luck, good luck—it’s all random. Because the kid and Tomlinson were focused on the ivory artifact, they didn’t follow me.
A moment later, I heard the ball-bearing clatter of rock on rock. One million years of limestone wall came cascading down.
As I raced ahead of the murk, I was already berating myself, thinking, How stupid! How very damn stupid!
It wasn’t just because I had allowed Will to jam his hand into the delicate limestone. It was the whole situation that I regretted.
I, too, had made a basic mistake. Instead of following my instincts, I had allowed myself to fall under the influence of friends. One friend in particular: Arlis Futch.
TWO
THREE DAYS EARLIER, ON THE WARMEST, MANGROVE-SULTRY February afternoon in recent memory, Arlis had come clomping up my laboratory steps wearing boots, a coat, dressed for snow, and told me that, after years of searching, he’d finally found something very, very damn valuable. But it took us thirty minutes of verbal sparring before he finally told me what he’d found and where he had found it.
“It’s in a sinkhole,” he said. “A little bitty lake that’s shaped like a drop of water. It’s way the hell off the road, so nobody goes there. Ever, from the way it looks.”
Typical of the man.
Arlis is a talker, but, when he has something important, he measures out the information at a speed proportionate to the worthiness of his audience. The audience doesn’t have to be interested—and I wasn’t. Arlis kept talking, anyway.
The fisherman began his story obliquely, saying, “There’s a cold front coming. Feel it? If it weren’t for this norther blowin’ in tonight, we’d both be rich men by Tuesday. Friday, the latest.” He tossed it out there and let it hang.
It was a Saturday, Sanibel Island, on the Gulf Coast of Florida. I replied, “Weather radio says the front arrives tomorrow, late. I was just listening.”
“They’re wrong—as usual,” Arlis had snapped. After several seconds of silence, he returned to the subject of getting rich, saying, “You can’t comprehend the amount of money I’m discussing, so I don’t expect you to thank me now.”
“Then I won’t,” I said. I was fine-tuning an aquarium, just beginning a new project. Sea horses. It wasn’t research, really. The sea horses were a tangent inquiry. Animals of a more academic interest were in two large tanks nearby: electric eels from the Amazon, via some pet-shop hobbyist who had released them into a ditch east of Naples.
Arlis told me, “It’s part of my nature to share with my friends when I come across a big chunk of luck. Most folks would expect something in return. Not me, it’s just the way I am. But down the road, a man of character would want to return the favor.”
Arlis has a knack for shading innocuous remarks with subtle criticism. We are all manipulators, sly in our methods, but the man uses guilt as weaponry—a device I find particularly irritating. I didn’t look up, and I took a measured interest in showing no interest as I peered into the aquarium, watching four freshly netted sea horses adjust to changes in salinity and the absence of tidal current.