Absolute Pressure (4 page)

Thelma was coming toward us with our French fries. I waited until she was gone before I said anything.

“That's why you wanted people to think you were spear fishing,” I said. “You don't want anyone else looking for it.”

Uncle Gord dipped one of the fries into ketchup. “Exactly,” he said. “Night is a great time to do it. We have good lights for underwater, and fewer people can see us. But from what you said, it's not much of a secret anymore. And that's bad news for two reasons.”

“Yes?”

“One, I have no idea how the secret got out. Maybe one of the three lawyers is trying a double cross.”

“And the other reason?” I asked. Hungry as I was, I hadn't touched my fries yet.

“I don't know if you noticed,” Uncle Gord said. “But the scuba tanks that you and Judd took out today? They're the tanks I usually use. I think someone wants
me
dead.”

I felt guilty when I left the diner to go to the library.

Not because the library is a bad place to be. Just the opposite. Much as I love Key West and the different kinds of people who call it home, sometimes Duval Street is a little crazy. The library is a few blocks off Duval. I love the quiet inside. I love getting lost inside books. I love how I can be alone, but not feel lonely.

I felt guilty because I was headed to the library to do some snooping. Without Uncle Gord knowing about it.

I headed down Duval, away from the harbor. I loved the buildings with second-story balconies hanging over the street. Buildings weathered by sun and storm and hurricanes were part of Key West. Just like the people who made Key West their home.

There were old people on motorized carts and guys with long beards and deep tans and no shirts. There were sunburned tourists gawking at the guys with long beards and no shirts. The streets in front of the bars were quiet because it was morning, but at night the streets would be lit up and magical with music and loud conversations. Sometimes I walked Duval at that time. Sometimes that too was a good place to be alone but not lonely.

I crossed Eaton Street. Which, as always, reminded me of Sherri Eaton. I knew her family had been here a long time. Someday,
when I stopped stuttering around her, I'd ask if she was related to the Eaton that the street had been named after.

I reached the Empress, a store with cool-looking white balconies on the second floor, and turned left to go up Fleming Street to the library.

As usual, there were too many cars on the street. I wasn't the only one who complained about it. But with the smell of the trees and flowers and the sunshine on my shoulders, it still seemed like a great day.

Especially because the recompression chamber had saved me from any permanent damage like blindness.

Now all I had to worry about was who was trying to get rid of Uncle Gord.

Maybe I'd find my answers at the library. Same way I'd finally found why I tasted blackberries whenever I saw Sherri Eaton.

When someone like me doesn't want to talk to people about what's happening
inside them, there's a way to ask around without talking to anyone.

The Internet. And Google.

With the air-conditioning drying the sweat at the center of my back, I googled on a library computer. I could have done it at Uncle Gord's house, but one of the great things about the library was that you could expand your research with their books. Plus, I lived with Uncle Gord. I didn't want him finding out what I was doing.

I learned about the kings of Spain in the 1700s. Philip V, Louis I, Ferdinand VI, Charles III and Charles IV. As usual, I ignored the purple
M
s and orange
S
s as I read about them.

There were pictures of each of the kings. In their long flowing costumes and fancy wigs and ornate jewelry, they could have walked down Duval some nights and no one would have looked twice.

I read about their daughters. I read about their ships. I read about their wars. I read about their gold coins.

I was careful in my search. I knew that Key West had not always been called Key West. This guy named Ponce de León discovered Florida for Spain in the 1500s. Legend says he was looking for the Fountain of Youth—water that would keep him from getting old. When Ponce and his sailors first saw the thick mangrove trees on the shores, with their twisted roots reaching into the water like human limbs, they called it
Los Mártires
. The Martyrs.

It took about a hundred years for Key West to show up on maps, but back then it wasn't Key West. It was called Cayo Hueso— Bone Key—because the first explorers discovered bones of Calusa Indians who'd been driven south from key to key until they could go no further. They fought their last battle on Key West, leaving their skeletons to bleach in the sun. Or so the story goes.

Pretty soon, people found it easier to say Key than Cayo, and West than Hueso. And Cayo Hueso was replaced by Key West.

And when I found what I was looking for, I whistled so loud in surprise that a couple of old ladies frowned at me from a nearby table.

I didn't care.

What I was reading was an Internet rumor on a treasure-hunting website. It described how a ship went down off Key West in a hurricane in 1748.

The article said that nothing had ever been confirmed about the shipwreck. Most people believed it didn't exist.

But now the lawyers had something to confirm this rumor: the gold coins their client had brought them in utmost secrecy.

Now I understood why the lawyers were trying to keep it secret.

If the treasure existed, it was supposed to be worth over three hundred million dollars.

That was the kind of money that people killed for.

And the kind of money that people died for too.

I made it back to the dive shop just after lunch. Sherri was already there. I waited for the taste of blackberries. It came and went.

“Hey,” she said. “Uncle Gord called me when you made it out of recompression last night. Sounds like everything is all right.”

She was behind the front counter of the sales floor, at the computer.

“Yes,” I answered. “No.”

“Your eyes?” She looked worried. She knew as much about the bends as I did. “You can see okay, can't you?”

I could. And, looking at her face and shiny blond hair, I was glad I could.

“I'm okay,” I said. I went to the back to see if Uncle Gord was around. There was the usual smell of mildew and sea salt on scuba diving equipment.

Uncle Gord wasn't there. I came back. I lowered my voice.

“Have you heard the rumors in town about Uncle Gord?” I asked.

“Pirate ships.” She smiled.

“I heard that too,” I said. I tried to act like it was no big deal. But it was a big deal. If other people knew that three hundred million dollars was involved, Uncle Gord could be in big trouble.

“I don't take it too seriously,” she continued. “Lots of people around here want to believe in sunken treasure. Lots of people look. Lots of people think they are only one trip away from the big find. I mean, remember Mel Fisher?”

There was a museum in Key West, the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum. Although he wasn't alive any more, people sure remembered him. He searched the waters west of the Key for over twenty years, and finally found silver, gold and emeralds in a Spanish shipwreck named the
Atocha
. It was worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

“Say Uncle Gord was seriously looking. Say it wasn't a rumor.”

“You mean every Friday night when he goes out with those guys and pretends to be fishing?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Heard anything else about it?”

She was still smiling. “Why would you be worried?”

“Hey,” I said, “what makes you think I'm worried?”

“When I asked if you were okay. You said yes and no. Yes, you're okay after yesterday's accident. So it must be something else.” Another great smile. “Plus you look worried. You're not good at hiding things, you know.”

I'd hidden what I felt about her. But I sure wasn't going to tell her that.

And much as I wanted to, I couldn't tell her about the busted valve on the air tank either. Maybe the lawyers from Miami were getting close to finally finding the treasure. Maybe they wanted to get rid of Uncle Gord so they wouldn't have to share it with him.

“I need a favor,” I said. “It's about those Miami lawyers who book Uncle Gord every weekend.”

She nodded.

“I only know their first names,” I said. “Can you look up their last names?”

“Got it on the computer,” she said. “Give me a second or two.”

She rattled her fingertips across the keyboard, staring at the screen. Her fingertips didn't make much of a clicking sound. She kept her fingernails cut pretty short. I noticed these things about her.

“Here we go,” she said. “Come around and look at this.”

I looked at the computer. There wasn't much information. Just their names. John
Abbott. Hank Gardner. Timothy Betz. No phone numbers. No credit information.

I leaned in beside her. “Mind if I google?”

I opened up a search engine, fired up Google and put in their last names. And I put in the words
Miami
and
attorney
.

Almost instantly, a link to a website showed up. I clicked.

“Weird,” Sherri said. She pointed at the screen. “Look at the photo for John Abbott.”

The photo showed a man in his fifties or sixties. Bald. With a couple of saggy chins.

“That's not one of the weekend guys,” she said.

I had to agree. It wasn't.

This wasn't good.

“What's going on?” Sherri asked.

I knew what was at stake. Three hundred million dollars worth of sunken treasure. But I didn't know what was going on. So I was able to answer her honestly. “It does seem strange. Why would those guys be using other names?”

“That's what I mean,” Sherri said. “So is Judd Warner.”

“Huh?”

“Judd isn't Judd,” she said. “ I do the bookkeeping around here. Part of my job is submitting taxes for all the employees.”

“All four of us,” I said. Me. Sherri. Judd. Uncle Gord.

“And to do it,” she said, “I have to submit social security numbers.”

A fly landed on my left elbow. She brushed it off for me. I saw, as always, bright red. I didn't let that distract me.
Judd Warner wasn't Judd Warner?

“A letter came in from the IRS last week,” Sherri continued. “It said that Judd Warner's social security number doesn't match the name given for it.”

“Does Uncle Gord know?”

She nodded her head. “I told him right away. He told me not to worry about it. He said maybe I sent in the wrong number by accident.”

My turn to nod.

“But later I double-checked it against the number on his application,” she said. “I sent the number that Judd gave us.”

“A social security number has nine digits. He could have easily mixed one up.”

“That's probably it,” Sherri said. “But don't you think it's weird that the three Miami guys are lying about being the lawyers at Abbot, Gardner and Betz?”

I wanted to protect Uncle Gord. If people in Key West heard that he'd actually seen coins that belonged to a three-hundred-million-dollar shipwreck, things could get even nastier than a broken valve. It seemed very important that Sherri didn't ask too many more questions.

“How about I tell Uncle Gord about that?” I said. “We shouldn't add to the pirate ship rumors, right?”

“What about Judd Warner?”

“Like Uncle Gord said. He made a mistake on his application. Or he's doing what a lot of people do in Key West. Starting a new life.”

I'd never been to Alaska. But sometimes Key West was compared to it. Not because of the weather, of course. But because Alaska
and Key West are at the farthest ends of the United States. Kind of like frontiers. Where people go to escape and live without being asked questions about their lives. Live-and-let-live kind of places.

That phrase flashed through my mind. An old movie title.
Live and Let Die.

“You mean Judd's another runaway beach bum?” Sherri said.

I nodded. That's another reason Key West was such a great place to live. It wasn't a suit-and-tie city like New York. Millionaires wore T-shirts and shorts and sandals here. They didn't need to show they were rich, and it wasn't cool to do that anyway. On the beach, you couldn't tell who had money and who didn't. And people didn't care. It was all about hanging out and being peaceful about it.

“Just another beach bum,” I said.

Unless he knew about the three-hundred-million-dollar treasure too.

With about a half hour to go before the sun set, I had no idea how bad things were going to get.

It seemed like just another evening in Key West. The odd combination of joy and chaos, peace and energy. I watched a middle-aged couple in balloon hats holding hands as they walked in front of me.

This wasn't something I usually saw in Chicago in the winter. Or even in the summer.

The balloon hats were animal-shaped. She wore a giraffe. Blue. He wore a rabbit. Red.

One of the buskers here in Mallory Square, on the very west side of the Key, had made the hats for them. They probably paid him ten dollars for the balloons.

And they seemed happy about paying that much for a few balloons worth only a couple of pennies each.

See, tourists come here to be happy. To soak in the sun and the lifestyle where people don't care about suits and ties. Maybe Mr. Rabbit Balloon was a banker in a small town where everyone expected him to be serious all the time. Here, he could be himself.

Especially as sunset approached.

Every night, Key West had a sunset celebration. I loved it. As people relaxed and gathered at the edge of Mallory Square to watch the setting sun, they enjoyed street performances too. There were the buskers—people who performed for tips— like the balloon maker, a couple of jugglers,
a tight-rope walker, a unicyclist with a trained dog, a sword swallower, some magicians and even a bagpiper.