Hard aground, p.1
Hard Aground, page 1
Hard Aground
James W. Hall
CHAPTER 1
FOUR HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS IN GOLD AND SILVER, coins and bars, emeralds, rubies, jewelry of every kind. Sunk somewhere within a few miles of the coastline of Miami, probably not more than an hour by boat from where we are standing today.
A greedy murmur passed through the audience.
"Bullshit," Hollings said, normal voice.
A few people in the row in front of him glanced his way. An old lady sitting beside him got up, changed seats.
Hollings was in the back row in the conference room of the Holiday Inn at Seventy-ninth and 1-95. For the last twenty minutes he'd been scanning the audience, that bunch of retired morons, thinking to himself, shit, if he threw a grenade out into that bunch, say an M26, it sprayed its steel jacket for ten yards around, what with a 50 percent hit probability, Hollings figured he could take down sixty, maybe seventy, of these buttfaces at once. The rest of them, though, they'd probably just stay right where they were. That's how hypnotized they all were by Max Hunter.
Max Hunter, world famous treasure salver. That's what it said on the poster Hollings had seen. How to discover and mine gold, how to locate Spanish ships hidden for centuries, how to read seventeenth-century maps and stake your claim to thousands, even millions, in jewels and booty that's just lying there waiting, with your name on it. All that hand-Lettered in red, the poster taped to the barbershop window on Collins Avenue where Hollings got his flattop trimmed every Saturday.
Hollings shifted in his seat, glancing over at the exit, wondering why the hell he was there. He should be saving his money for his September rent payment, but no, he'd stood in line and paid his sixty-nine ninety-five, tax deductible, and now he was stuck. Wasting his Saturday afternoon watching that tall blond guy in an Italian suit and blond walrus mustache strut back and forth in front of the audience, two hundred and twenty-eight losers. Hollings had amused himself for a while by counting them all, and multiplying times sixty-nine ninety-five. Close to sixteen grand the buttwipe was walking away with.
Hollings tapped his foot, certain this whole thing was a royal con. And, as it was turning out, not even a very entertaining one. Hunter spent most of his time talking about some library in Spain where all the ship registries were stored. He'd been over there to this library, dug around till he found the right book; he'd got the list, all the things on the Carmelita, the ship he'd been talking about. Then Max Hunter went to some other library in England, looked up the newspaper for 1633, checked the weather reports for that month, saw what the other ships sailing about that time had to say about where the Carmelita went down, and when he'd done all that, he'd been able to start drawing a pretty accurate map about where this goddamn ship was. He'd been using this map for almost five years. He'd found this and that, a cannonball, some coins from the ship, but not the mother lode. So, he told them, anybody in that audience today could do the same thing, follow the clues, draw tip their own map. Or better vet, for five hundred bucks, they could buy a copy of his, with all the places crossed off where he'd looked already.
Hollings listened, scanning the audience, trying to pick the exact spot for grenade number two. 'Cause he'd decided already, his first one was going up onto the stage, wipe out the walrus mustache, the Italian suit.
He waited around another twenty minutes till the question-and-answer period, then he stood up. Max Hunter took a sip of water and nodded back at Hollings.
"What I want to know is," Hollings said, "if you're for real, whatta you want five hundred of my dollars for, when you could just go haul up all those doubloons and emeralds yourself?"
Everybody in the room rustled around in their chairs, turning to see who this was giving their hero some shit. And Max Hunter nodded, and smiled halfway, and said he was glad Hollings asked that particular question, in fact he'd been expecting somebody to ask it. Then he proceeded to go off into ten minutes of total bullshit about how he didn't mind having a little competition out there on the high seas, and about how competition actually improved mankind, made us all sharper, work harder. Not to mention the fact, Max Hunter said, smiling right at Hollings, he'd slipped a goddamn disc last year hauling up so many gold bars, now he needed to engage in lighter work. Everybody in the room chuckled, then craned around to shoot Hollings ugly, see-there looks.
After the question-and-answer, Hollings walked up to the stage to check out the exhibit. Some of the loot from wrecks Max Hunter had salvaged. A couple of armed guards stood on either end of the glass cases watching the people pass by. There were necklaces and rings, gold cups and little things you couldn't tell what they were, all in gold with sapphires and emeralds sprinkled over them. There were photographs of Max Hunter and his crew out on their barges and swimming underwater, one with Max straddling the barrel of a cannon that was pointing up out of the sand.
Near the end of the line they'd set up a little exhibit of how the blower worked, the thing Hunter had invented that fit on the back end of one of his ships. It shot a ton of air down at the sand and cleared the ocean floor so they could see what was hidden. Hollings had seen all this shit before. In magazines, and a book he read once.
The only thing of any interest in the exhibit was the small gold brick. It was sitting there behind a thick plastic wall, rigged up so you could stick your hand through a slot and grip the gold bar and pick it up a few inches to see how much it weighed. Hollings put his hand in there, stroked it, then lifted the thing. Set it down and lifted it again. Touching that gold did something funny to his heart, jacking it up a notch. Felt so good, he might've stayed there the rest of the afternoon if the people behind him hadn't started grumbling.
He was out in the parking lot opening his Datsun B-210, kicking himself in the butt for wasting that kind of money, when a big guy with lots of shiny black hair tapped him on the shoulder and put out his hand for a shake.
"Name's Alvarez," he said.
Hollings shook the guy's hand. It was cold and hard like squeezing that gold brick.
"What you said in there, it made a lot of sense."
Hollings said, "A goddamn waste of money is what that was. You, me, all those other assbrains in there, throwing our dollars at Max Hunter. And he didn't tell us shit."
Glancing around, Alvarez said quietly, "You want to go to a bar I know about, have a couple of cold ones, wash all this phony baloney out of our mouths?"
"Why would I want to do that?"
"I may have a proposition for you."
"Yeah?"
"I'm looking for somebody I can trust to help with some of the details on a project I'm working on."
Hollings said nothing, looking down into his Datson, feeling the heat pouring out of it, stinking of mildew from the rotting carpet. Jesus Christ, what the hell was he doing out there in the hundred-degree sun talking to some guy stupid enough to pay sixty-nine ninety-five for some con-job lecture?
Alvarez said, "Last year or two, I been devoting my time, pretty much twenty-four hours a day, to tracking down this ship, this Carmelita."
"The four-hundred-million-dollar one?"
"That's right At least four hundred million."
"And?
Alvarez said, "You got any military experience?"
Hollings leaned against his car and said, "Well, he had two tours in Nam. Did that count."
"I thought so," Alvarez said. "I looked at you, I thought to myself, yeah, there's a vet. There's a guy I could count on.
"You can stop horse-shitting me anytime now.
"I know where it is," Alvarez said. "That ship, I know where it went down, more or less."
"More or less?" Hollings said. "Which is it?"
Alvarez gave him a long, measuring look, then said, "Pretty fucking less."
Hollings could feel his heart begin to tread water in there.
"So you interested?" Alvarez said. "Wanna help?"
Help? Are you kidding, man? Help? He didn't say it out loud, but just having Alvarez come up to him, single him out, he was reach' to follow the guy anywhere. It'd been that long since anybody had thought Hollings was special.
But what he said was, "So you know where this thing is? And you're going to split it with me? Just like that? Walk up to a guy in the parking lot and split it with him."
Alvarez said, "The absolute truth is, I don't know vet exactly where it is. But I know the guy that does know."
"Who, Max Hunter?"
"Naw. A guy I been following. He knows where it's stink."
"You're kidding me.
Alvarez peered at Hollings for a couple of seconds and said, "I don't kid."
Hollings looked at him a little more carefully, catching an ugly glimmer in his eyes.
"So that's what you want me for," Hollings said, "to reason with this guy?"
Alvarez smiled. "That interest you? You have any talents in that direction? Reasoning with total knuckleheads. Inflicting measured amounts of pain."
Hollings looked out at the side door of the Holiday Inn. There was Max Hunter and a blond woman and one of the bodyguards. All of them smiling and yakking away, probably deciding on ways to spend all the money they'd just ripped off.
Hollings said, "What's to keep you from reasoning with this guy yourself? You look big enough."
"I gotta keep my head down. I'm a known quantity around this town. I'm easily recognized."
"Well, that's one problem I don't have."
"There's considerable profit involved here," Alvarez said. Letting it hang there.
"I'd like to make a profit, yeah, sure," said Hollings. "But I'm at the time of life, when I do something, it's 'cause I want to, money or not. Money's only a minor part of the picture for me."
Hollings gave Alvarez a hard look, like There, that's who I am, take it or fucking Leave it.
Alvarez said, "Whatta you, a thinker, some kind of philosopher or something?"
"I'm just saying, money isn't all that important to me. I'm interested in other things. Getting higher satisfactions."
Alvarez smiled, patted Hollings on the shoulder, kind of turned him around a little so they were facing the same direction.
"Well, shit, then you're like me," he said. "Been a little guy all your life, doing somebody else's work. Got no pull. You're sick of that shit now. And you're waiting around for the right thing to come along. So maybe you can pledge yourself to a greater purpose.
Hollings had heard that when jet pilots got up into the stratosphere or whatever the hell it was called, they couldn't breathe anymore, had to keep their air masks on or they'd die. You could get up so high there was no way to bail out. That's exactly how Hollings felt at that moment, hearing Alvarez say that thing about a higher purpose. Feeling like he was up there, up above the oxygen. Feeling all of a sudden woozy, his eyes fuzzing over. This guy, this complete stranger, standing out in a Holiday Inn parking lot, saying what were Hollings's own personal magic words, the words that took all the oxygen out of his air. He'd been looking for something, had been for a long time, a higher goddamn purpose.
"I'll think about it." is what Hollings said. "I'll give your proposition some thought."
Alvarez stared at him.
"Well, maybe I got the wrong guy here. Maybe I've made an error in human judgment with you."
Alvarez started to turn away, but Hollings quickly put a hand on the guys big shoulder.
"That bar you mentioned," Hollings said. "It around here?"
Alvarez turned back around. The guy tilted his head to one side, twisted his mouth like he might've caught a whiff of something didn't agree with him.
"A couple of beers would be good," Hollings said. "We talk a little more, then we could have a toast to our new partnership."
"I didn't use that word, did I? Partnership?"
"That was my word."
"Yeah, well," Alvarez said, "I'm not exactly looking for partners. More like soldiers. A couple of people I can trust. A couple of people with special skills."
"Mercenaries," Hollings said. "Soldiers of fortune."
"Yeah, I like that. That's good. Soldiers of fortune."
He moved a half step closer to Hollings, lowered his voice.
"So tell me," he said. "You kill anybody in Nam? Take any scalps over there?"
Hollings took out his car keys, jingled them, looking at all the other guys getting in their cars, pulling out of the Holiday Inn parking lot. Like the end of the shift at the loser factory.
Hollings said, "You see how full that room was, all those morons, rows and rows of them turning out to hear Max Hunter?"
Alvarez waited, said nothing.
Hollings said, "I notched more gooks than all of that."
"You're shitting me now," Alvarez said. "Hundreds? You killed hundreds of gooks?"
"I killed so many," said Hollings. "they had to send me home early. I was to stay over there any longer, they'd run totally out of the little guys, have to call off the war."
Alvarez smiled with just his mouth. Clearly not believing Hollings, but not saying it out loud. Hollings guessed this guy had never been anything but top dog in his life. Pissed higher up on the tree than all the other dogs, got the pick of the bitches. Hell, that was all right with Hollings. He wasn't pit-bull material himself, but was comfortable enough being around tough guys. He could take orders fine and still keep his self-respect. Learned that in the military. Fact was, he kind of hated to admit it, he'd always been a follower of one kind or another, felt comfortable with that. Blending in, harmonizing, doing what he was told. Probably came from being the fifth of five boys.
Alvarez said, "You wouldn't happen to have anything against black people, would you? Like, are you racist or anything?"
Hollings said no, he wasn't racist. Not the least little bit, far as he knew.
"That's good," Alvarez said. "'Cause the person I got in mind, somebody you'd be working with, she's black."
"She?"
"Yeah, I'm supposed to meet her tomorrow, the next day. If I can convince her to come in, it'd be the two of you together."
"Me and a black woman. With you calling the shots."
"That's how it would go, yeah. I'm the general, you could be the colonel or whatever rank you want."
Hollings said. "So tell me, this guy who knows where the Carmelita is sunk, what's his name anyway?"
"Don't go getting ahead of things, man. We haven't even shook hands yet."
Hollings let a second or two go by, not wanting to seem too eager, pretending to deliberate on it. Then he put out his hand.
Alvarez cocked his head back a couple of inches and studied Hollings for a moment, making him wait now. Then very slowly, he reached out, put his hand in Hollings's, and squeezed the shit out of him.
"The guy in question," Alvarez said. "His name is Tyler. A real zero.
CHAPTER 2
HAP TYLER WATCHED HER SLEEP ON THE TWIN BED IN the corner of the boathouse. As far as he could tell, Joyce Hardy always slept in that same position, flat on her back, hands at her side like she was about to be fired from a cannon. Her head stayed in the same dent in the pillow for eight hours, and she never disturbed the sheets. It'd scared Hap last week when he'd awakened next to her that first morning and she was lying in exactly the same position as when she fell asleep. Rigid as a mummy.
Joyce's clothes were arranged on the wooden chair beside the bed, jeans hung carefully over the back, the creases straight, her T-shirt positioned with the Nike logo showing, her panties folded into a rectangle on top of the T-shirt. Tennis shoes squared off beside the bed. The woman was seriously fastidious.
Making love with her was the same thing. Unfailingly efficient and methodical movements. Her orgasms: the same long gasp, same three shrieks, followed by a four-second shudder, a hard embrace. And then after an interval she would give him a peck, roll out of bed, go shower, wash her hair, brush her teeth.
But still, Joyce Hardy was smart and attractive, their conversation came easy, she laughed at his jokes, and he thought hers were funny, and it really didn't turn him off that she was such a neat freak. Hell, that might even be a good stabilizer against Hap's tendency toward total personal chaos.
She was just two years out of college and already one of three women partners in an advertising firm. He bet she was damn good at her job. Maybe someday he'd find out all about it, visit her office, meet her friends, her family. But first he had to tell her the truth about himself, see if there was any hope. He'd been wanting for a long time to make it to week two with a woman. Peel back a few more layers of intimacy, educate himself in the ways of the normal. Hap Tyler knew all about sex. What he wanted to know about now was the other thing.
All right, so Joyce Hardy didn't ignite the grand passion in him. Well, big deal. The truth was, Hap Tyler already had plenty enough fires raging inside. He could settle for something less than grand passion. Anyway, maybe grand passion was one of those things that came in week two or beyond. Something you had to work tip to.
At sunrise this morning he'd been jerked awake by the insistent bleating of an osprey in the sea grape by shore. He'd eased out of bed, put on flip-flops, T-shirt, and baggy white shorts, his Miami Heat cap, and he'd tiptoed over to the far corner of the boathouse, the workshop area, and he'd plugged in the hot-knife and had begun to carve quietly on the fiberglass sailboard he'd started yesterday.
Hap Tyler had invented the electric hot-knife a couple of years before. It was shaped like a slingshot, a thick copper wire strung tight between its aluminum prongs. With two hundred and twenty volts running through the wire, the knife could slice through solid fiberglass laminate as if it were a slab of cheddar. Hap was using the knife to trim away a few inches of the sleek tail on the sailboard, giving it a blunt, squared-off look.
This was as close to a vocation as he had, customizing these blanks. So far he'd made almost nineteen hundred dollars, selling his modified fiberglass boards to some of the hard-core windsurf guys who hung out on the Rickenbacker Causeway beach. Nineteen hundred Bucks. A damn fortune for Hap.
