Maroon Rising (2 page)

“Seven.” That was two more boats than Johnny’s last report.

Jack had to pay for JNHT’s costs too. An operation of that size would run roughly twenty-five thousand dollars per day. After two months that’s around a million-five in sunk costs—pun intended.

I bit my lip. “Is Betty there?”

“You mean the beautiful blond woman, Mr. Buck?”

Jack’s wife was brunette. Did Gunner have a girlfriend?

“No, my old Grumman Widgeon.”

“Oh yeah, his water plane.” Johnny laughed. “Thought you was talking about that babe with them. Got all the boys on the crew distracted. Some famous supermodel or something.”

Supermodel? “What’s her name?”

“I don’t know, mon. Hot bitch is what I call her.”

I imagined the scene out on the water. All those boats, all those divers working through the grid, stabilizing and restoring each bit of exposed structure as they dug deeper. Slow, grueling, expensive. Good.

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, mon, that woman from the university still wants to talk to you.”

“I don’t know, Johnny—she works with the professor who was on the selection committee.”

“Yeah, but she’s for real. Deep Jamaican roots. Says she got some ideas to talk to you about.”

“This has to do with the Morgan excavation?”

“She won’t tell me nothing, but I suppose so,” Johnny said.

I wanted to call, but it was no longer my hunt. While I enjoyed watching Jack and Gunner bleed money, their selection by the HARC was final—any meddling by third parties would be punishable by law, and I had no interest in the consequences of breaking the law in Jamaica. Johnny and I scheduled our next call for another week out and hung up.

I read the number I’d written on the scratch pad by my phone, but it was the name that made me pause. Nanny Adou. The name Nanny had historic significance in Jamaica, and anyone named after Queen Nanny would either have to be a powerful woman herself or a pariah for using the name of one of Jamaica’s most important figures.

Curiosity got the better of me. What could a phone call hurt? I drained the beer and used my new cell phone to dial the number.

A young man answered. “History Department.”

“I’m calling to speak with Nanny Adou.”

“Professor Adou? One minute.”

Silence filled the line and I debated whether to open another beer.

“Hello?”

“Is this the Mother of us all?” I said.

“I’m not
your
mother.” She sounded young, and agitated.

“This is Buck Reilly calling. Am I speaking with Nanny Adou?”

“Mr. Reilly. You must be versed on Maroon history here in Jamaica. I’m impressed.”

We bantered back and forth a few rounds, then she got down to business.

Sort of.

“I’d like to meet with you, in person,” she said.

“I have no plans to be in Jamaica, Professor Adou. You’re welcome to come to Key West, or we can talk on the phone, now.” I paused. “Is this to do with the dig your colleague helped assign to my competitor?” I didn’t make an effort not to sound bitter.

“There’s someone who would like to meet with you, Mr. Reilly.”

“As I said, I—”

“To discuss the excavation project you referred to. Colonel Stanley Grandy, to be exact. He’s not military—”

“The figurehead of the remaining Maroons,” I said.

“Correct again—on the Windward side, anyway. But he’s more than a figurehead and he’s an old man now. He would like to meet with you. In Moore Town.”

Moore Town was in the northeastern part of the island, just below the Blue Mountain range. The town had been founded and controlled by the Jamaican Maroons, known to the Europeans as runaway slaves, since the late seventeenth century. The research I’d done during the application process for the Morgan site had mentioned a couple of Maroon connections.

What Nanny said had the hair up on my forearms. But Jack and Gunner would know the moment I set foot back in Jamaica, and I had no doubt that whatever forces they’d rallied to manipulate the selection would turn against me. Nothing Nanny Adou or Colonel Grandy could say would be worth the risk of winding up in a Jamaican jail.

“I’m sorry, Professor Adou, but as I said, I have no plans to be in Jamaica. So, thanks, but no thanks.”

“I wish you’d talk to—”

“I appreciate your thinking of me.” I dropped the phone into the cradle.

A sudden sense of claustrophobia closed in on me. I jumped up, headed out into the sixth-floor corridor, and pushed the button for the elevator. After two seconds I took the stairs, my mind back in Jamaica as I hurried down the steps.

Thirty More Days Later

“Y
ou know this place is gonna be packed,” Ray said.

“Yeah, well, Thom Shepherd draws a crowd—”

“Two cruise ships came in today, Buck. That’s like ten thousand people.” Ray Floyd—friend, mechanic, and island philosopher—dodged and juked through the crowds on the Duval Street sidewalk. I walked a straight line, or as straight as I could, staring dead ahead.

I took a left on Eaton. Ray was right—as we approached the busiest end of town, the crowd had indeed thickened. Two cruise ships would clog Key West’s arteries like a lifetime diet of cheeseburgers but without the satisfaction.

Ray brushed his palms down the front of his long-sleeved blue flowered shirt as if to wipe clean any public interaction. Getting him to go anywhere other than the airport, Blue Heaven, or his duplex on Laird Street was a rare event. Not that I was much better.

“And how do you know Thom, anyway,” Ray said.

“You know him too.”

I caught the arch of his brows as we took a right on Whitehead. At least the pedestrian crowd was now moving in the same direction as us. Sunset was approaching, and Mallory Square was a black hole sucking in all loose matter not affixed to a barstool or a real life.

“Wait, what do you mean—”

“He was at the Beach Bar in St. John when we were down there with Crystal.”

“Oh yeah. Tall guy with a cowboy hat?”

“He’s a country singer, Ray. They wear cowboy hats.”

“But couldn’t we meet him later for a beer at Blue Heaven or Rum Bar? The Tuna’ll be packed.”

I turned down Caroline Street and saw a crowd ahead around the Bull. Or maybe they were waiting in line to get to the Garden of Eden, the rooftop nudist bar.

“We’ll see if we can catch him before his first set,” I said. “God forbid you relax, enjoy some live music, maybe chat up a pretty tourist.”

“Funny, Buck. I get plenty of live music at Blue Heaven, thank you very much.”

“And?”

“And pretty tourist women too, all right?”

The truth was, neither of us had been on a hot streak in the romance department lately. Those months of work on the Jamaican salvage application had sent me traveling from Kingston to Key West and back so often I’d lost my last flame, Nicole on St. Barth’s. I couldn’t afford to live there, as much as I enjoyed her company, and her roots were too deep to leave. Besides, neither of us was ready for anything more permanent. And I’d been in a funk in the months since Jamaica. Harry Greenbaum had encouraged me to move on, even offered to go in on another project, but I’d burned half my nest egg on the expenses he wasn’t covering. One more failure like that and I’d be dead broke again.

As for Ray, well, he might never have had a hot streak.

We took a left then a right into the back door of the Smokin’ Tuna, which was indeed packed.

“Let’s go over here.” I nodded toward the side bar, where Robert, the bartender, waved to us. He brought me a Papa Pilar’s dark rum on the rocks and Ray a Coors Light.

“Surprised to see you guys here,” he said.

“No kidding,” Ray said.

“Is Thom Shepherd here yet?” I said.

Robert said Thom was in the back room at the end of the bar tuning his guitar.

Ray held his palms up. “Well?”

“I’ll go see what’s up.” As much as I enjoyed my friendship with Ray, he could be like a nervous old woman outside his comfort zone, whose radius was very small.

I pushed the door open on the back room, actually a private room in the front of the building. I’d been in there once for a book signing by Michael Haskins, a local author.

Thom was sitting on a table, hunched over his guitar, strumming it slowly while twisting the knobs on the neck. The brim on his cowboy hat covered his eyes.

“Howdy, pardner.” My John Wayne accent.

A wide smile creased his face as he looked up.

“Buck Reilly, just the man I wanted to see. How you been?”

We didn’t know each other well, so it didn’t take long to catch up.

“What’s on your mind?” I said.

He rubbed the stubble on his chin between his thumb and index finger.

“Didn’t I hear through the Coconut Telegraph that you’re working on some kind of project in Jamaica?”

“Yeah, well, I was a few months ago but lost out to another salvage company. Why?”

He stood up and laid the guitar gently on the table. I realized he was nearly as tall as my six feet two—taller with that hat on.

“You have any plans to go back down there anytime soon?”

Jack Dodson’s smug smile flashed into my mind.

“Buck?”

“Sorry, I was thinking about my schedule. You have a show down there?”

“Not exactly. But I’m recording an album at Tuff Gong Studios, where Bob Marley used to record, then shooting a video on the beach.” His smile lit up again. “Thought if you fly me down, I can use your plane in my video.”

“Let me think a minute.” Getting paid to hang out during a recording session and video shoot? Normally that would be a no-brainer. And the email and voicemail messages from Professor Nanny Adou had grown more urgent and filled with more assurances that meeting the Maroon elder would be mutually beneficial. And hell, I wasn’t prohibited by anybody other than Gunner from going to Jamaica, I just had to stay away from Jack’s site.

“You with me, Buck?”

“Yeah, sorry. Let me make a couple calls. What’s your timing?”

“ASAP. Hell, I’d leave tomorrow if possible. I’m behind schedule on the new CD and I have an important meeting with a record exec. Plus this whole Tuff Gong thing has stirred some buzz. Got Noah Gordon and Jim “Moose” Brown to produce it. Moose wrote “Five O’Clock Somewhere” for Jimmy Buffett—”

“I’ve heard of Moose.”

I took down Thom’s cell number and said I’d let him know by morning. According to Johnny, Jack was still scraping a dry hole in Port Royal, and just yesterday their fleet of boats had actually increased. If my estimate of $25k per day was accurate, they’d spent another three-quarters of a million dollars this last month—over two million in total. They’d have to be nervous wrecks by now.

And what could Professor Adou or the Maroon leader have to tell me that was so damned important?

Ray was only too happy to leave after his one beer, which I paid for. He rambled on about gossip at the airport and his checklist of things the Beast needed while we walked, but my mind was far away—one hundred eighty miles south, to be precise. I already knew what I’d tell Thom and had begun my own checklist, but I did want to speak with Nanny Adou once more before committing. I glanced at my watch.

Still time to call tonight.

A
fter scanning the increasingly sparse news, all I found was an article about the upswing in community concern for the project amid accusations that SCG International was doing a shoddy job, stirring up silt and overdisturbing the area around the salvage site. Some artifacts had apparently been destroyed, resulting in fines imposed by the JNHT. SCG had declined to comment.

A follow-up article had me laughing out loud. There was a picture of a really big old brewer’s vat hanging from a crane aboard one of the barges, with Gunner standing to the side, hands on his hips and scowling up at the dangling monstrosity. The caption: “One Man’s Treasure, Another Man’s Cask.” According to the story, SCG International thought they’d zeroed in on a massive stash of treasure when their magnetometer found the vat. While disappointed, they remained “committed to the preservation effort.”

I laughed again. Preservation effort was just code amongst treasure hunters for permission to tear up a historic site in search of valuable antiquities.