“Is that a real magazine?” asked Coleman.
“I thought it was a joke, too, but it’s quite real,” said Serge. “I can just see the early organization board meeting to come up with a name: ‘We need a concept that appeals to the broadest possible audience covering the entire spectrum, something no other magazine has ever dared! Let’s shoot it around the table . . .’ Second place was probably Kittens and Whiskey.”
“I’d buy a subscription to that.”
“This pie delivers more than a taste-bud party.” Serge yanked the napkin from the neck of his shirt. “Symbolically harkening back to the glorious time and place of the legend laid to rest here. It was out in these sweltering pioneer badlands of Central Florida near Lochloosa Lake, where she had the fruit trees growing off her veranda, and it’s a safe bet she baked sour orange pie. Today, a couple of local rustic restaurants in her area are among the few places left where you can still order the real deal.”
“So that’s why we made that long detour on the way here.”
Serge opened the door. “We have rubbing a-callin’.”
They strolled across the field until they came upon a slab with no tombstone, just statues of a family of deer, mom, dad, and baby.
“Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.” Serge got down on his knees with an oversize sheet of paper. “Most known for her classic novel The Yearling, hence the animals on her grave.”
“They look cute.”
Rub, rub, rub. “This tour stop is special, and not just for Rawlings. It marks a turning point in our odyssey, where we’ve picked up the beginning of a long strand of Florida connective tissue that will bring our trip to a fever pitch of heritage, lore and motel antics.”
“So where to now?”
“It’s amazing how you can jump across the shoulders of Florida giants.” Serge stood with his finished page. “By no coincidence, our next stop involves one of Rawlings’s writing students . . .”
Four Years Earlier
They call it the Treasure Coast.
Why not?
Florida already had the Gold Coast and the Space Coast, and above that, the First Coast with St. Augustine and all its oldest-everything-in-the-United-States signs.
That left three counties in the middle—Indian River, St. Lucie and Martin—orphaned with no coast of their own. It was hurting business.
Then, in 1961, a group of treasure salvagers made international headlines by discovering wrecks from a silver-and-gold-laden Spanish fleet that disappeared in a hurricane in 1715. A total of eleven ships were lost after departing Havana and ultimately sinking off the Sebastian Inlet near Vero Beach. The local Press-Journal newspaper swung into action and coined the term Treasure Coast.
Today, there is an annual pirate festival commemorating the 1715 wreck, and souvenir maps are sold everywhere with the locations of the ill-fated ships. Divers still search the well-known and charted sites, occasionally finding an artifact. And after hurricanes, children digging holes in the beach—as they are known to do—are said to unearth a doubloon or two. There are even guidebooks telling metal-detector enthusiasts where to look when visiting the Treasure Coast. And even as late as 2015, a salvage team would rework one of the wrecks thought to be depleted, and recovered another $4 million in gold.
Of the eleven lost ships, three have never been found.
One of the people still looking for them was a crusty salvage operator named Cale Munson, but everybody knew him as “Captain Crack Nasty.” You don’t want to know where the nickname came from. Cale tried to shake the moniker for years, then embraced it. He figured it was always good for a seafaring man to have a gritty air of reputation, even if it resulted from personal grooming.
On his business card, Crack wasn’t a true treasure salvager, but the regular kind. He operated one of those boat-towing services for when engines blew at sea or a vessel began taking on water. His fees were steep, like all the others in his field, because it was a sellers’ market. But the real money came when a boat went down, thanks to state and federal law. The government sought to provide high incentive to rescue unfortunates on the water, as well as mitigate ecological damage from a grounded ship. The statutes so heavily favored salvagers that it meant this: If a boat went down and was raised, the salvager now owned it and could sell it back to its original purchaser.
Captain Crack mulled these codicils as he became increasingly bitter about towing the ultra-wealthy back to shore. He wanted to be wealthy, too, like the owners of the mini-yachts he aided, and especially like the now-famous treasure hunters who pulled up millions in precious metals and gems. He already had scuba equipment from his current gig, which could easily reach a sunken galleon. All he needed was a break. Only one problem: He was lazy. The successful treasure finders did extensive homework, even flying to Spain and spending hours in special libraries poring over parchment ship manifests from the eighteenth century. Crack just put on his scuba suit and dove to scour a site that someone else had already put in the elbow grease to find, like being the second person to discover the Titanic. After years of diving, he had exactly one cannonball to show for his efforts.
On a sunny afternoon, Crack was motoring out to a fancy disabled boat that was sitting lower than usual in the waves. The emergency call over the radio said it wasn’t a fast leak, but would eventually turn fatal without intervention. From a distance, Crack could tell it was one of those boats where people didn’t fish but sipped champagne. He began thinking about salvage laws again. He pulled back on his throttle. Another call over the radio. What’s the holdup? Crack answered that everything was under control. He leisurely arrived at the boat to find a bunch of polo and tennis people standing in shin-deep water.
“No problem,” said Captain Crack, climbing aboard with an assistant. “Have you out of here in no time.” He explained the procedure with the water-pumping machine back on his vessel and the hoses he was sticking down in their bilge. Plus the temporary patch to help the pump outpace the leak.
A half hour later. “We have a problem.” He said the patch wasn’t holding and the leak was faster than his pump. He didn’t tell them that he was running his pump at one-third steam. “Everyone grab your valuables and get on my boat! We don’t have much time!”
The theatrics worked. They were actually grateful as they watched their pleasure craft disappear beneath the water. And after bringing the thankful party back to shore, the good captain went back out, strung inflatable bladders under the sunken hull and raised the boat. This time he used a real patch and quickly pumped her dry. Not a bad day’s work for $200,000.
From there it was the rhythm of routine. Distress calls came in, and Crack waved off all the other salvagers, saying he was closest. Closest but not fastest. He built in delays and excuses and deliberately incompetent water pumping, until once again: “Everyone on my boat! Hurry!”
And so it went, scuttling vessel after vessel. Captain Crack suddenly had a lot of money. But to him, it wasn’t real money. That required treasure. He sat in his dockside office one afternoon, windows open to the cross-breeze, staring at the cannonball on his desk. He got an idea. He wouldn’t dive for Spanish wrecks that had already been salvaged. He would go after sites that were still being worked. Which was highly illegal because of the claims filed by the rightful discoverers. Which meant cover of night. Crack went down to a government auction and bought on the cheap a sleek black ultra-fast cigarette boat that had been seized from a cocaine cartel. He promptly put her back into criminal service.