Bone Deep (18 page)

Very effective. He started the engine . . . gunned the throttle while ropes strained . . . revved it higher, and soon, behind him, the riverbank began to melt away.

“Is this standard?” I asked Shelly over the noise.

“If you knew anything about rivers, you’d understand that banks erode—every year, it’s a natural cycle. This just speeds up the process.”

“That’s a lot of silt for a creek this narrow,” I replied. “Have you ever seen a toilet back up?”

Shelly didn’t appreciate that. “Do you get some kind of weird kick out of ruining my day? If you don’t like it, leave.”

My pal, the noble redskin, played both sides by observing, “Rivers find their own path.”

Geezus.
I waited for Shelly to gather her mask, fins, and weight belt and leave before telling him, “You should contact the Actors Guild and get a card.”

Fallsdown kept his eyes fixed on the woman. “I’ve been a member since
The
Horse Whisperer
. What do you think of Shelly? I really like her legs and that cute little chin of hers.”

“You’ve been in movies?”

“Redford believes I’m the hereditary medicine man of the Crow Nation. But three years in the joint knocked me off the A list. I like her body, but there’s something not quite right about her . . . I don’t know—her behavior, I guess. Something.”

“She can’t stand me. Or, are you asking if she’s onto your act?”

Duncan said, “I give people what they want. Sometimes it makes them happy to play along. Besides, what makes you think I’m acting?”

“From your wise-old-Indian bullshit,” I replied, which made him smile. I was about to tell him about my confrontation with the biker, but he suddenly got serious.

“I saw something out there, Doc.”

I said, “On the other side? It was probably a feral hog.”

“In the water. Big, too. It surfaced just before you got back.” His eyes left the woman long enough to explore downstream. “Fifty meters or so, but it could have been a log, I guess. It came up, then went under.”

“What color?”

“Blackish . . . dark green, maybe. Too big for a fish. Or maybe not.”

Because of the Jet Ski’s dredging, the creek was beginning to boil with vegetation and silt, the surface brown as coffee, while, upstream, the water maintained its rum clarity. I said, “Some of those pools look deep enough, it could have been an alligator gar. They get to three hundred pounds. Lots of teeth, but they’re harmless. Or even a manatee. Are you really worried?”

Duncan said, “It looked more like a damn snake. Sort of humped its back when it went under.”

I took off my glasses; checked on Mick, who had deposited the mastodon rib on the bank and was diving again. Shelly, adjusting her mask, was shuffling backward, water to her waist. The Jet Ski’s scream mimicked a chain saw. The noise added chaos and a sense of danger. No point in mentioning Florida’s problem with exotic snakes—ball pythons and other constrictors, some twenty feet long, even waterborne anacondas.

Duncan asked, “Are there alligators this far north?”

He missed the irony when I replied, “Only the ones that survive.” I took the little pistol from my pocket, tilted it to show a round in the chamber, and handed it to him. “Keep a watch behind us, too. The psycho biker made an appearance.”

Dunk understood. “Did he find the photos?”

“He took them. Mick set us up.”

“Are you sure?”

I said, “I’m not worried about it. Whoever’s in charge knows we have the tusk. Or soon will. He’ll keep his people on a leash until we make the trade.”

Fallsdown, folding his arms again, said, “If Mick makes the owl stones angry, the Little People will tear him a new asshole. Or I will.”

I smiled. “Hollywood is missing an angel,” I told him, then got in the water.

Until a snake got its mouth around Mick’s wrist, the magic tour guide was at his ingratiating best. An overeagerness to please is a red flag, but neither his yoga training nor twenty years dealing with tourists had taught him the first tenet of infiltration: Only whores and amateurs tumble eagerly.

Mick started on the wrong foot at first by instructing Shelly on breath control. “Slow down. How much lead you wearing? Doesn’t matter ’cause in a wet suit it’s never enough. So what you do is . . .
Here.
” He handed her a chunk of rock. “Use this as an anchor. And never search an area any wider than your shoulders. One square foot at a time, then move another foot or two.”

Irritated, Shelly told him, “This is
so
not my first fossil dive—back off.” A slap with a mall girl sting that didn’t connect when she followed Mick’s advice, then surfaced with a megalodon tooth bigger than her hand. She whooped and called, “Alfie! See this?
Alfie!
The best spot ever!”

Alfie—the man sitting aboard the Sea-Doo GTX—looked only slightly less bored when he responded, “Need your dive bag?”

Even Alfie began to soften when Mick helped him re-anchor the ski at a fresh spot downstream and said, “That virgin bottom belongs to you and Shelly, man.” Meaning he would dredge new territory while Alfie put on a mask and had first pick of the fossils he had sluiced free.

Mick did it, too: revved the engine with the abandon of his psycho Harley associate while the GTX bucked and strained against its ropes. The magic tour guide was no stranger to bone hunting.

I swam upriver, no longer concerned about what Fallsdown had seen. It was that damn Jet Ski. Noise is an effective weapon. Noise is to the twenty-first century what cigarette smoke was three decades ago—a menace to all, including the minority of abusers. I’ve yet to meet an angler who didn’t dread the sound of Jet Skis. I’m no different.

In the river’s deep pools, though, was refuge. Mick had been right about buoyance even in this mild current. I’d brought a belt strapped with twenty pounds of lead, but it wasn’t enough to keep me on the bottom. So, after rationalizing I would have done it anyway, I found a chunk of limestone and banged my way along the bottom. It was like floating over Mammoth Ridge as seen through an amber filter: stubs of black bone, petrified oysters, globs of ancient dung that had been compressed into rock, and shark teeth everywhere. A shark produces thirty-five thousand teeth in its lifetime, and megalodons had thrived in Florida’s inland sea.

The fossil fever I had faked became a mild reality—out of character, so I imposed a limit of only two prime specimens to take home. Three meg teeth later, I increased the limit to six, but then dumped all but one tooth to prove I’m a choosy hypocrite.

Fifty yards from the other divers, the creek narrowed, then
widened into a switchback, a cove that was shaded by oaks and Spanish moss. The drop-off beneath the bank was deeper than expected. I was making my third dive when the ski went silent. Soon Mick swam up beside me.

“Mate, you’ve got a good eye for water,” he said. “In the shallows, the shit we find has been banged around by the current. A spot like this could be the real deal. Not just because it’s deep. Understand why?”

Maybe. Florida sits on a volcanic base that connects Florida with Africa. Piled on that is limestone three miles thick, which is covered by a veneer of soil and foliage. Occasionally, an underground river surfaces through the limestone: a spring or bottomless lake.

Mick explained it differently. “Some river switchbacks are prehistoric watering holes. Ever see documentaries on Africa? A place where animals and the first people came to drink. Rare, but they exist. Finn called places like that time tunnels. You know, tunnels that lead down, not up into space.”

The tour guide was a good diver, I had to give him that. Careful with his fins rather than screwing up visibility. The spot had hard bottom. It wasn’t an archaic well, but Mick surfaced with a crocodile jawbone . . . No, from a whale with a crocodilian head, he decided, when we waded to the shallows. “See how this tooth’s triangulated? Six prongs—a yoke tooth, it’s called. What’d you find?”

What I had
seen
was a flint or chert spearhead lying near a fossil that resembled a loaf of sliced bread and was just as large. It took willpower to leave the spearhead untouched, but seemed okay to have a look at the fossil.

“This is from a mammoth,” Mick said, holding the thing in both hands. “A grinding tooth. Has a higher crown than a mastodon.
Nice find, mate.” He offered it to me, and I could see him thinking:
The guy’s an undercover cop if he doesn’t take it
.

I dropped the fossil into my net dive bag, which was clipped to my belt.

“Only one meg tooth?” he asked, seeing the bag.

“This damn mask,” I said. “The eye doctor changed my prescription. Everything else I found was either chipped or I didn’t know what the hell it was.”

Mick wasn’t sure he believed me but moved on to what he really wanted to talk about. “Are you serious about that mining property? I’m booked every afternoon this week, but we could go mornings—or at night. I like night diving.”

I said, “I’ll call Albright when I get home. But I won’t mention you. If someone sees us on his property, then I’ll explain.”

“As your consultant,” he said.

“Sure. How about this week?” I replied—ingratiate myself to the ingratiating tour guide and Mick might reveal the name of the collector who was paying him.

“Tomorrow morning’s good,” he said. “Bring dive gear—tanks if you have them.”

I wasn’t expecting that. “If you’re thinking of the creek I told you about, it’s dry. I didn’t say that?”

We were standing near a bank walled with deadfall and palmettos; moss, green on rotting logs, moss-draping shadows in the trees. Mick took a look downstream to confirm the others couldn’t see us. As he did, the Jet Ski started and began dredging again, but farther away. He removed one fin, then the other, and felt it was safe to speak in a normal tone. “Finn used to hunt the Mammoth Ridge property. I don’t know what happened, some sort of trouble, but he wasn’t allowed back—this was before my time. One of the quarries
there he claimed was the real deal. A watering hole before the draglines got in.”

“A prehistoric watering hole,” I said. “That had to be twenty years ago if the mine was still operational.”

“It was. There were security guards, so Finn had to be careful when he dug there—always at night even before the trouble happened. For some reason, he stopped doing that, too. Which never made sense if the place was as hot as he claimed.”

I was thinking,
Maybe Finn Tovar killed the night watchman
, so nudged Mick along. “What do you mean ‘hot’?”

“Incredibly rich, man. Mammoth and mastodon ivory. At Finn’s house, I was going to show you and Dunk this tusk he found there. Has to weigh fifty pounds.”

Actually, forty pounds, but should I admit it? No . . . If the blood feud collector was smart, he would dismiss the tour guide as a bad risk. Mick would never hear about the photos the biker had just taken. I said, “Wouldn’t you love to find a spot like that?”

A dreamy stoner smile as he replied, “Whoa—black ivory worth half a mil—probably more these days. And Finn found a bunch of it. You didn’t wonder how he could afford a beach house?”

“Half a million dollars, huh?” I said, then played dumb by mentioning the stolen tusk I had read about, the one that had been insured. He didn’t let me finish.

“You don’t have to tell me—it had like this simple thatch sort of decoration. Mate, what you’ve got to understand is there’s not an important find I don’t know about. Finn’s tusk, the one I wanted to show you, fifty pounds of mastodon ivory—if it had been worked by Paleo man?” His wagging eyebrows read
Name your own price
.

To me, that suggested Finn hadn’t noticed the saber cat petroglyph. He would have bragged about it to his favorite pupil. I said,
“You just convinced me,” then hesitated, as if thinking it through. “But wait—it’s been a long time since Tovar dived Mammoth Ridge. It could be cleaned out by now. I’d be risking my job.”

“You saw the lake?”

“
Three
lakes. They all looked man-made. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

Mick’s expression read
I do
, but he said, “I mentioned Africa? There are these watering holes where elephants go to die. Some think that’s a fairy tale, but Finn was smarter than any three men with diplomas. Think about it.” He pointed a finger at the massive tooth in my bag. “There’s your proof. A mammoth or mastodon gets old, he loses his teeth. Same with elephants. What’s an elephant going to do when he’s dying and can’t chew? He’s gonna find a spot with water and the easiest food. It’s not about being some mystic sacred spot where elephants go to die—although I have my own thoughts about that. They draglined a time tunnel at Mammoth Ridge, that’s the only explanation. Know what Finn called the place? It was a deep spot in one of the quarries. He called it the Ivory Pot.”

I wasn’t going to let myself tumble easily. “It’s been twenty years,” I said again. “I might lose my contract if Leland Albright finds out.”

Mick waved the name away as if unimportant. “He’s totally out of touch. Let me tell you something.” His voice became confidential. “A buddy of mine’s screwing Albright’s wife
and
his daughter. What do you think of him now? And his son’s a gambling junkie—Albright doesn’t know about that either. Or maybe I’m thinking about the stepson, the one who showed you around the Mammoth property. Mate, no offense, but you’re such a straight-acting dude, an old man like Leland Albright, he’ll believe whatever you tell him.”

I remembered Owen saying
Gambling is for losers
in a way that had the flavor of a mantra. Maybe it was true: Owen was a
gambling addict. The gymnast yogi instructor was Mick’s informant, as I already knew, but it was still necessary to ask, “Who told you this?”

“I’ve got my sources, man.”

“I hope you’re right. My only fallback is a job for someone named Mondurant. It would pay a lot less than Albright. You ever hear of the guy?”

Mondurant
—the name got no reaction, just Mick’s impatience. “Twenty years, that’s how long I’ve been in this business. Stop worrying.”

“Yeah, so we dive and find nothing but get caught. Then what?”

Mick, getting excited, said, “Not if we find the Ivory Pot. I’m the only one Finn told about it, and what’s down there is worth a . . .” He took a breath to calm himself and started over. “Let me explain how the business works. Most quality ivory comes from Russia, up near the Arctic Circle where it’s still frozen. That’s why it’s in prime condition. Florida’s different. Word would have gotten out if there’d been a major find in Florida. It hasn’t happened, man. I’m an expert—you either trust me or you don’t.”

I said, “It’s tempting.”

Mick sensed I was weakening. “Look . . . there’s not a bone hunter in the world who wouldn’t give his left nut to dive those lakes on Mammoth Ridge. Me included. You’ve got the magic ticket, man. Don’t blow it, okay?”

I wrestled with the decision but didn’t overdo it. “Under one condition. Fallsdown’s a nice guy and all, but I want him out of my hair.”

“What?”
The tour guide tried to sound indignant. “Dunk and me are brothers, man. I thought you were his friend.”

I said, “Then put him in touch with your boss. Or tell me the
man’s name. Dunk can’t even swim, for christ’s sake, so it’s better to let him and the collector make their own deal.”

Mick, for once, didn’t tumble easily. “Can’t do that, mate. Not because of Dunk—business is business. But it’s like the drug biz, man. We never share names.”

I held up my dive bag. “If your boss wants incriminating video, I can hand Dunk this. I understand needing leverage, but, look, I’m not going to risk my job and then split three ways.”

The tour guide’s opinion of me changed. “Goddamn, Ford, that’s nasty. You’ve got the makings of a real bone hunter, I’ll say that.”

“It’s a win-win,” I said. “Duncan gets his sacred carving, or whatever it is, and I get to learn from an expert. Think about it.”

The tour guide did while he stroked his chin. My back was to the trees. He faced me. He started to debate the pros and cons, but then his eyes vectored in on something beyond my shoulder. He grinned. “Damn right, I’m the expert,” he said. “Turn around and tell me what you see. The bones, they speak to me, man.”

Protruding from the bank, amid vines and rotting wood, was the nub of something that resembled a stick of charcoal. A bone of some type. And Mick was right: I would have never noticed.

As he sloshed past me, I told him, “Watch out for poison ivy.”

The man laughed to remind me
You’re in my dojo now
, and was still grinning when he got to the bank. “Another mastodon rib. What’ll you bet?” and then he looked at me while he hunkered down and reached for the bone.

Only I saw what happened next. A chunk of rotting wood came to life near his wrist . . . a sudden coiling of scales that struck, mouth wide, while I hollered,
“Snake!”

Too late. Rows of needle teeth had already locked into Mick’s flesh.

Mick yelped and yanked his arm away, extracting a five-foot reptile from the vines; the snake in kill mode, biting harder, or its teeth had snagged in Mick’s wrist. He made a gagging sound and spun with such force that he launched himself backward, and the snake ripped free, spinning boomerang-like toward me.

Slow motion, it seemed—even my poor vision discerned dung-colored scales, the pale latticed underbelly, and one round black eye as the reptile revolved at speed toward my face. Still wearing fins, I could only fall sideways.

I felt a whip-stinging weight hit my shoulder as I went down.