“Jesus Christ,” Perry said, his voice soft. “And it’s just sitting down there. Waiting.”
I was wondering why King knew so much about gold prices, putting it together with the American gold eagles they’d mentioned and the five dead people in Winter Haven, as King asked me, “How many coins, you think? Coins’d be easier to carry. Easier to sell, too.”
“There’s more than enough to split six ways, that’s the point I’m making,” I replied. “You guys are on the run for some reason—that’s obvious. I don’t care why and I don’t want to know. But it kind of works out, you showing up. You need help, we need help. Look at it as purely business.”
Perry said to King, “How many pounds are in a ton? Just in case he’s telling the truth. I used to know, but—”
“Two thousand pounds,” King said. “Half a ton is a thousand. And that cowboy Cadillac over there is big enough”—he was measuring the truck’s bed with his eyes—“Jock-a-mo could be wrong about not being to haul it all out of here in one load. But good coins are worth more. That’s what we want, Jock-a-mo, the coins. But a couple dozen bars of gold, that’d be okay, too. We could walk out of here with a few million each, easy.” The man’s smile hardened as he stared at me. “Drive out, I mean.”
He was lying about splitting the take, of course. King wanted it all, I could see it.
I said, “The gold’s one thing, but my friends are part of the deal. You don’t get the keys until we get my friends.”
“You keep saying that.”
“They’re down there with the gold. A ledge collapsed and covered everything. I can’t do it by myself. We brought a jet dredge. I need it to blast the sand and rocks away. But the pump takes at least three men to run. Two in the water and one man on land to tend the generator and keep the intake filter clear.”
Perry asked, “What’s an intake filter?,” but King wasn’t interested in the details. He said, “If that’s what you’ve got to do, then get to work! You and Grandpa do the water part. We’ll stay on land and run the machine, or watch the filter—whatever it is you want us to do. But we’re also gonna keep the rifle handy in case you try something cute.”
I was shaking my head. “Captain Futch is in no condition to do anything. Look at him.”
Arlis’s face had gone pale. Sweat on his forehead was streaking the coagulating blood, but he was still willing. He snapped, “I can work, don’t you worry about that.”
Even if he’d been able, I didn’t want Arlis’s help. My brain had been assembling a workable scenario, and I knew how I wanted it to go—how it had to go—if Will, Tomlinson, Arlis and I were to get out of this mess alive.
I ignored Arlis and spoke to the men. “It was stupid what you did to him, but now we’re stuck with it. If you want the truck keys and a share of the gold, you two have to help me, not him.”
“A share,” King said, sarcastic. “Sure, we’ll be happy with a share. What do you want us to do?”
I was getting to my feet, already reaching for my BC. “First thing for you to do is push the truck closer to the water while I get ready. There’s a hundred feet of hose, and I’m going to need it all.”
The men were looking at the truck thirty yards down a grade parked beneath trees, their expressions reading You’ve got to be shitting me.
Talking fast, I continued, “I need one of you in the water—on the surface, in an inner tube, not with tanks. Not at first, anyway. We don’t have an extra wet suit, and there isn’t time for that, anyway. Which one of you is the best swimmer?”
Instantly, Perry said, “He’s the best swimmer. He’ll do it.”
King’s expression read Huh?
“King worked as a lifeguard someplace in Florida. That’s what he claims, anyway. Where’d you say it was?”
The way King stood fidgeting, not answering, reminded me of a child who’s been caught in a lie.
“It was in Palm Beach,” Perry added, “that’s where he worked. He was the head lifeguard on some rich beach, weren’t you, King?” Perry was skeptical, though. It was in his tone.
King answered, “Sure . . . I lifeguarded for a while, but—”
“He said he did scuba diving, speared fish, the whole works.” Perry was talking to me, now.
“Well . . . sure. Yeah. Goddamn right, I did, but the thing is—”
Perry interrupted, saying, “You ain’t backpedaling now. He’s a big shot—all the time, he’s got to be the big shot. Now’s his chance to prove it, for once.”
King started to say, “Without a wet suit? When I was lifeguarding, we had decent equipment—”
Perry interrupted. “Go naked, for all I care. I want some of that gold and I want those truck keys. I’ll help push the damn truck, but there ain’t no damn way I’m going in that water.”
Perry was an angry man, but it wasn’t just anger I was hearing. He had seen something in the lake that scared him. I was sure of it now.
Arlis, I remembered, had said the rancher who sold him the property had behaved the same way. He had refused to come near the place.
“Even the roustabouts who work for the man,” Arlis had told me, “are afraid to go near that lake.”
NINE
THE THING THE PROFESSOR-LOOKING DUDE, FORD, called a “jet dredge” reminded King of a pressure washer he’d used to clean aluminum siding at a motel where he’d worked for a few months outside Kirkland, Illinois.
It was the same motel where King had robbed guests’ rooms half a dozen times, but then pushed what was a sweet setup a little too far. He had surprised one of the guests showering—a decent-looking brunette, although a little chunky—then exposed himself to the woman, who turned out to be a librarian from Moline who didn’t take shit off anybody, particularly a skinny maintenance man wearing a soiled blue uniform that smelled of wine and Pine-Sol.
When King had tried to calm her down, telling her he was on leave from the Air Force, that he didn’t know a soul in town—he was just lonely, that’s all—she had thrown an ashtray at him, and that’s when things had really gone to hell. A military man deserved respect, after all, and King had tried to force the issue by forcing the woman, naked, onto the bed.
Next stop, Statesville Correctional. King had been sentenced to seven years but got out in three. At Statesville, the work coveralls were orange, not Air Force blue.
The pressure-washer gizmo that the old man and Ford had brought—the dredge pump—was the size of a bread box but heavy. It floated on an oversized inner tube, connected by a waterproof cord to the generator onshore. Coiled beside the pump was a hundred feet of commercial garden hose, the end clamped to PVC pipe and fitted with a nozzle. Hit the trigger, and water jetted out in a stream finer and harder than any pressure washer King had ever used—Ford had tested it, even though he was in a hurry.
The rig was homemade, with redundancy kill switches in case water breached the power contacts. Ingenious, King had to admit. The old man and the professor dude were smart, he had to admit, too.
So what?
He had met a ton of men like these two. Superior acting. Always so sure of themselves. Smart, yes, but all of them born with a sort of governor inside their heads that stopped them from crossing certain lines of behavior. They were like dogs chained to a wall, which made them easy to tease. Self-important suits, too good to sink to the King’s level.
King hated them for it. He always had, he always would.
Early on, King had learned that he would never be accepted by these superior asshole types. He would always be considered an inferior. It was pointless to challenge their tight-ass behavior one-on-one, so King had learned how to choose his shots. He had learned how to erode their authority, and how to get even, by picking away at their weaknesses like a crow picks at garbage.