“Well, it also won’t do my magazine’s reputation any good if we direct people here and nobody finds anything.” Captain Crack stood and stretched. “Not all of these article ideas pan out. Guess I’ll just be getting back to West Palm.”
“You seem like a reasonable person,” said the sergeant. He shook Crack’s hand. “Stop in anytime.”
Crack left the office, and the sergeant picked up the phone. “I need you to follow someone . . . Yeah, Dodge Dakota with a magnetic sign on the door for a boat-towing service . . .”
Captain Crack tapped the steering wheel to a country music tune about only being able to trust his dog anymore. The pickup truck passed vacant concrete buildings of pink, green and blue. He checked his rearview. Just as he thought. A police tail. But it was a loose one, not meant for strict surveillance as much as making sure he kept his word to leave town.
A few minutes later, Highway 98 said goodbye to the last building, and Crack left the city limits. He looked up in the mirror again, and watched the police car make a lazy U-turn in the road and head the other way. The captain drove another half mile through nothing but cane fields, then made a sharp left onto a road usually used only by the sugar company. After a few zigzags, he navigated a wide route back into town. He deliberately parked out of sight behind a small business near Main Street.
Bells jingled.
A pawnshop owner named Webber looked up from a newspaper. Finally, he thought. Not a kid, not police, but a real customer. He folded the paper. “How can I help you?”
“Gold pieces.”
“Only have a few.” Webber opened the back of a glass display case. “But a real nice one came in a few years ago. Just haven’t been able to sell it because, well, the economy around here. Saint-Gaudens double eagle, 1907. If you don’t know, it’s one of the—”
“I know the coin,” said Crack. “How’d you come by it in these parts?”
“I’m sorry, but that information is confidential.” Webber set the coin on the counter for Crack to examine. “We strictly protect the privacy of all our customers.”
“It was a kid, wasn’t it?”
The pawnshop owner’s head jerked up straight on his neck. “How’d you know?”
“Been doing my research. I’ll bet you’ve had a number of kids bring these in over the years. What can you tell me about them?”
The owner stepped back with hands on his hips. “Mister, what’s really your business here? You didn’t come to buy a coin.”
Crack opened his wallet. “How much?”
“You’re really going to buy it? You haven’t even looked at—. . . I mean I usually have to work harder for a sale.” He glanced at the gold circle still sitting on the counter. “In that condition it books for . . .”—Webber adjusted the number upward in his head mid-sentence—“. . . seventeen hundred.”
Crack pulled money from the billfold. “Would you settle for, say, two thousand? In cash.”
Webber scratched the top of his head. “You sure have a funny way of negotiating.”
“There’s a catch.”
“That, I assumed.”
“I’ll also need the name and address of the person who sold it to you.”
Webber paused again. “So you really believe kids are bringing these coins in?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Because the police think I’m fencing stolen collections.”
“That’s because they haven’t done their homework. Do you know anything about an early sugar baron around here named Fulgencio Fakakta?”
“Everyone’s heard the stories,” said Webber. “Especially the part about his hidden treasure lost in the Great Hurricane . . . Wait, you’re not looking for . . .”
“I never said anything about treasure. You did.” Crack leaned down to the counter. “Why? You don’t believe that these kids found pieces of the baron’s stash?”
“Not really,” said Webber. “As I was telling the cops, from the dates on these coins, that’s when there were all these juke joints—”
“I’ve read up on the local history,” said Crack. “The name and the coin? Do we have a deal?”
Webber considered the stranger a moment, then began writing on a blank sheet of paper.
“On second thought,” said Captain Crack, pulling out more bills. “Make it an even three thousand.”
“Another catch?”
“I was never here.”
Webber handed him the paper. “You’re already a ghost.”
“One more thing.” Crack gave him a business card. “If any other kids come in here with more coins, call me and I’ll buy them. Same price and terms.”
“You got it.”
Bells jingled.
Chapter 20
Fort Pierce
The gold Plymouth Satellite rolled up to the corner of Avenue S and Seventeenth Street. Serge got out and looked at another sign.
Garden of Heavenly Rest.
For a cemetery, it was sparsely populated. No big monuments or even large headstones. The rows of modest markers and slabs were widely separated in an otherwise sunny grass field where kids would have room to play ball. Coleman looked side to side as they walked past graves. “I’m guessing you have a cool story to drag me out here.”
“One of the best stories yet!” Serge continued on until they reached the middle of the field. A single grave sat in the grass, surrounded by a small brick walkway. The whitewashed slab was raised slightly higher than the others, although the headstone was still only knee-high. It was the only one where people had been by recently to leave flowers. There was a candle. Some had left rocks on the headstone in the Jewish tradition.
Serge got down on a knee and placed his page over the letter Z. He began rubbing. “Hurston’s undeserved obscurity had become so complete that her grave was unmarked for years and nobody could precisely pay their respects. Then the story takes a hairpin turn, extending beyond the grave to Zora’s proper place in the public’s awareness.”
“It was only right,” said Coleman.
“The year? Nineteen seventy-three. The person? Alice Walker.” Serge rubbed on. “Walker was still nearly a decade away from writing her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Color Purple. But back in the early seventies, the budding writer, still only twenty-nine years old, stumbled across Zora’s works and became intrigued, even obsessed to the point of visiting Florida to get the vibes of Zora’s life. She started in Eatonville, where she learned Zora was buried anonymously somewhere in Fort Pierce. So she drove out here to the coast and—this part I love—she fibbed that she was Zora’s niece to get locals to open up about her ‘aunt.’ To her surprise, most had never heard of her, even those now living near Zora’s last home. Finally, with a history-researching tenacity to which I can only aspire, she located the lost grave and bought this headstone for it.” Serge began rubbing the words on the next line: A Genius of the South. “Two years later, Walker wrote a watershed article for Ms. magazine, ‘Looking for Zora,’ using her grave search as a vehicle to showcase the forgotten literary lion. That first-person piece slowly but surely rekindled interest in Hurston’s work until she now stands in the pantheon. Oh, and she’s from Florida!”