Calahan's Con Part 13

An encyclopedia compiled by Tony Donuts Junior would have been a very slim paperback, but he he'd been in the state of Florida for several weeks now. If he'd spent as much time in Salt Lake City, the name Brigham Young would by now have begun to ring a bell. "Flagler, Flagler ... guy that invented Florida?"

She grimaced. "In the same sense that Edison invented the lightbulb, that's right. Pretty much everything from Saint Augustine to Key West, Henry Flagler built from nothing. The day a little settlement called Fort Dallas incorporated and changed its name to Miami, a century ago, Henry owned six hundred acres of what is now downtown, and the railroad that was the only way to get there. Before he was done, he drove that railroad to the end of the state and a hundred miles out to sea, to this very pile of coral we're standing on-boarded his personal car in Saint Augustine and stepped down off it here in Key West."

"He musta had dough."

Behind him Willard began, "He was one-"

Tony interrupted him. "Getcher a.s.s out here, Moonbeam. I'm gettin a stiff neck lookin' atcha." He allowed two seconds' grace, then turned his whole body around. "I said-"

"Okay, okay." Willard turned to his right, and in two strides reached the wall at the far end of the counter. He did something behind the counter, and the wall opened on concealed hinges, became a doorway. He stepped through it, closed it behind him snick!-and in a few seconds a rack of videoboxes against the back wall swung away to reveal another secret doorway, from which Willard emerged. He closed that behind him, too, and came over to stand beside little Ida Flagler. He did not quite touch her, but Tony read his body language and knew he would die for her if necessary. Tough s.h.i.t for him.

"Tony had gotten a good close look as the hippie squeezed past. "That's a good rug," he stated. "So's the beard."

"Not many people can tell," said Ida.

"So?" Willard said belligerently.

"So nuttin. Finish yah story."

Willard glared but continued. "I was saying, Henry Flagler, Samuel Andrews, and John D. Rockefeller were the three founders of Standard Oil, one of the greatest monopolies in history. The first ant.i.trust laws were invented specifically to stop them. In today's money, Flagler paid something like a billion dollars for his ticket to ride that train from Saint Gus to Key West. Yeah, he had dough."

"He warehoused me in a h.e.l.lhole for thirty-three years," Ida said, "and left me a thirteen-million-dollar estate, like a tip, so that none of my heirs would raise any inconvenient questions about my competence-the b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Tony admired his technique. "Well, you got your revenge. I heard he croaked a long time ago."

In 1913," Ida agreed. "But I'm afraid his death was no more real than my own. The only difference was, he did take it with him. Henry is still alive. He simply decided to duck out on the Great War-the First World War, they call it now-and he never found a reason to come back up from underground. He spent the first eighty years of his life piling lip money, doing things . . . and he's pa.s.sed the last eighty spending it all, invisible to the world, accomplishing nothing whatsoever except to enjoy life."

"That's the way I'd do it," said Tony. "Now tell the part about how come you guys don't lie down an shut up when ya die."

She hesitated, looked down at her feet. It was stupid, she'd come this far, there was no way she was gonna not tell him, all three of them knew that, and still she hesitated-that was how reluctant she was to say it. Finally Willard put a gentle hand on her shoulder. Somehow that enabled her to look up and answer. "The first time Henry came to Florida, in 1878, he hated it. His first wife, Mary Harkness, was dying of tuberculosis, and the doctors said she needed to be warm in winter, so he brought her to Jacksonville. He loathed it there so much that after a few weeks he went back to New York, even though he knew she wouldn't stay without him. She died in New York in 1881."

Tony made a growling noise. "I'm gettin bored."

"I was one of her nurses. Henry and I were married in the summer of 1883. But by the time he could get away from business it was midwinter. So I persuaded him we should honeymoon in Florida-only this time we went to Saint Augustine. It was there that everything changed."

"He liked it dis time," Tony suggested, in a let's-make-this-move voice.

"That's what it says in the history books," she agreed. "He'd looked at Jacksonville and seen a backwater; now he looked at Saint Augustine and saw infinite potential, saw an entire state waiting to be carved out of the swamp and sold to gullible northerners. They never explain what the difference was, why Saint Augustine was so much more inspiring."

"But you will," said Tony. "Very soon."

Willard spoke up. "Columbus never saw America, spent all his time island-hopping around the Caribbean. Saint Augustine is the spot where the very first European stepped ash.o.r.e onto the continent of North America, and because itwas Palm Sunday, and the Spanish for that is Pascua Florida, the 'Feast of the Flowers,' he named the place Florida. Same guy that discovered Puerto Rico, as it happens. Ask me his name."

"Am I not makin it plain," asked Tony, "that I'm gettin p.i.s.sed off?"

"His name was Don Juan Ponce de Leon," Ida said quickly, and waited.

For a couple of seconds Tony coasted in neutral, staring out the windshield, and then the fog lifted. He had read that name once, on a restaurant place mat. "Wait a minute-wait a minute, you mean Pounce Dee Lee-on?"

Willard had a brief coughing fit. When it was done, Ida said, "That's right, Tony. Pounce Dee Lee On. When my rotten husband, Henry, brought me to Saint Augustine, three hundred and seventy years later, he rediscovered what Pounce had found there long before-"

"Holy s.h.i.t," murmured Tony. "Da Fount'n A Ute!"

8.

BURYING THE HOOK.

When you are fooled by something else, the damage will not be so big. But when you are fooled by yourself, it is fatal.

No more medicine.

-Shunryu Suzuki Roshi.

That is correct, the Fountain of Youth, Mr.-What is your name?" Tony was so bemused, he answered truthfully. "Donnazzio, Tony Donnazzio."

"He found the secret of eternal youth, Mr. Donnazzio, rediscovered what, uh, Pounce had found four centuries earlier. We stumbled on it together, on our belated honeymoon, while looking for a discreet place to-to be alone in Nature. I don't think anyone else but Henry would ever even have thought to try such an unlikely, uninviting spot, much less persist as long as he did. He was a man of remarkable stubbornness. I was becoming quite put out with him. And then suddenly there it was. A natural spring, whose water happens to have pa.s.sed through just the right rare mineral deposits in just the right amounts in just the right sequence while underground. The effect was immediate and unmistakable; we never did get around to...what we had come there for that day. We had to find ways to hide from the servants and staff for the next day or two, until we learned how to convincingly snake ourselves look as old as we were supposed to be again. Henry said we mustn't let the secret of the spring slip out until we'd had time to think through how to handle it properly.

"When I finally understood he meant us to keep the secret forever, so that forever we could be not merely immortal but the only immortals, I realized what a monster I had married. I resolved to break with him and reveal the secret to the world. But I had underestimated Henry's power and ruthlessness. Like a fool, I allowed him to guess my intentions. The next thing I knew I was officially a hopeless lunatic, and Henry had forced the Florida legislature to make lunacy grounds for divorce just long enough to end our marriage, and he was remarried to Mary Kenan, a tramp who'd been his mistress for the past decade. My only consolation is that he never breathed a word about the Fount to Mary, never let her suspect his own aging was only cosmetic, and skipped out on her when he was ready to fake his own death. Three years later, she married a fellow named Bingham, and I think he may have murdered her; in any case, she died mysteriously within a year."

Tony had seen people wrinkle their foreheads when they thought; he tried it now, and it didn't seem to help any. But the little thinking he did get done made him wrinkle up his forehead even more. "Where's he now, this Henry?"

The teenybopper hag shrugged and gestured toward the door. "Out there, somewhere. Invisible. Transparent to most radar. He's had more than a century in which to insulate him-self from the official world. He has no address, no phone number, no e-mail address. He has no legal ident.i.ty, and as many phony ones as he likes. He pays no taxes. His fingerprints aren't on file anywhere. He probably doesn't have a reflection in the mirror anymore, or show up on satellite photos. And he has more money than the Fortune 500, nearly as much as the United States of America, all of it off the books."

The fundamental absurdities and contradictions of the story troubled Tony not at all. He admired this f.a.gola's technique. That was the way Tony woulda done it, in his shoes. The guy was as mean as Tony, as tough as Tony, richer than Tony had ever fantasized being-richer than the Five Old Men put together!-and he'd had something like a century and a half to get himself dug in, to erase his tracks from anywhere cops could see. He was way too dangerous to live, and one day would have to be hunted-carefully-and exterminated. The sole flaw in his program, so far as Tony could see, had been sentimentally allowing his wife to remain alive as a mental patient. Well, correcting other people's mistakes was one of Tony's best things. Just as soon as little Mrs. Ida Alice Shourds Flagler had told him the only useful thing she seemed to know, admittedly a very useful thing- "Where's it at, this Fount'n A Ute? Exackly."

She squared her shoulders and looked him in the eye. She had obviously been expecting this. "I will-"

"Ida, no," Willard groaned.

She shrugged him off. "I will sell you that information for ten million dollars. Cash. No more than half of it in hundreds."

Tony stared at her.

"Yes, I know," she said. "It is worth incalculably more than that. The sum is ludicrously small. But my back is to the wall. I will settle for ten million-with one condition."

"Yeah?"

"You agree that once you have taken possession of the Fount, you will supply Willard and me with five gallons apiece of its water. We will take that and the money and go away, and that will be the last you'll see or hear of either of us for at least a thousand years. We're quiet people, Mr. Donnazzio; there should be plenty of room on the planet for all of us."

Tony chose not to debate the point at that time. "Ten mil is a big piece of money."

"It is the absolute minimum I will consider, for two reasons."

"Gimme the first one first."

"You travel in different circles than Willard and I, Mr. Donnnazzio. Just from what I've seen of you in the last few lays. I'm sure you have a quite considerable reputation locally, and perhaps in more distant quarters, as well. But we have no way to evaluate that-and we must be absolutely sure you're the right man for this job. The Fount is so hard to stumble across by accident that only one man seems to manage it every four or five hundred years. If you come for the Fount, Henry will know someone must have told you about it. I here is no one but me who could have told you. So he will know that I'm alive."

This was getting complicated for Tony. "So?"

"Mr. Donaz-"

"Call me Tony."

"Tony, my former husband is probably the richest, most powerful, most dangerous man alive. First he will try to destroy you. If he succeeds, eventually he will come for me, and Willard. If I'm to send you up against Henry, I must be confident that you have a reasonable chance of defeating him. You understand?"

He was following the individual sentences, but didn't quite see how they added up to ten mil. "Maybe."

"Willard?"

Willard interpreted, using extravagant hand gestures. "If you f.u.c.k up, it's our a.s.s, Tony. Flagler has so much juice, if you're not the kind of guy who can come up with ten mil in a day or two, if you're just muscle, then you're just not in his league, and we'd be crazy to tell you d.i.c.k. Plus which if he takes you out, we'll need ten mil just to stay out of his way. Capisce?"

Much better. "Gotcha," Tony said. "Okay, how about this? How about I start snappin parts offa ya, start out wit little bits, and keep snappin stuff until you tell me d.i.c.k no matter how crazy it is?"

Willard turned pale, but Ida stood her ground. "Do you think I'm more afraid of you than I am of Henry Flagler, Tony?"

"You oughta be."

"Perhaps so, but I'm not. I made up my mind seventy years ago: I will never permit Henry to lock me away again. The tools they have for mind control these days are just too good. So I took steps to see that the means of painless suicide are always with me. You can't frighten me with torture or with death. And Willard honestly doesn't know just where the Fountain is."

Tony believed her on both counts. She'd have been crazy to trust Willard. He could kill her, but he couldn't scare her. And if he killed her, he had no fountain. "What's the second reason you want ten mil?"

"The only reason Willard and I are both still young," Ida told him, "is that once-once-in the past, we were able to arrange secret access to the Fount, for just long enough to spirit away a few precious quarts undetected. Once you and Henry tangle, that will become infinitely more difficult, for decades to come, whichever of you wins ... and vastly more expensive, when a chance finally does arrive. Ten million dollars is cutting it very close, I think."

Privately Tony saw her point. "That ain't my problem, kid. I still like snappin stuff. Maybe I can't frighten you, but I bet I can frighten Willard."

"You lose," said Willard at once.

No, Tony," said Ida, very firmly, and Tony was quite surprised to notice himself move about half an inch farther away from Willard. "Willard is the only person on this planet I care a d.a.m.n about. I owe him everything. My life, my sanity, my dignity-he gave me all those back, when I was dead and worse than dead. He has more courage than anyone I know. You could 'snap things,' as you put it, all afternoon and he would tell you nothing. But we're not going to prove that, because if you lay a hand on him, I'll be out of here faster than you can stop me, and I'll run straight to the Naval Air Station and tell them all about the Fount. Or maybe I'll run over to Greene Street and discuss the matter with Mel Fisher, the world-famous treasure hunter."

"Bulls.h.i.t. They'd laugh you out the door. You'd end up right back in the hatch."

Not if I proved my story," said Ida.

Tony was starting to understand why she had begun to bug him: she reminded him of nuns. He hated nuns. You had to argue with them, but it was almost always a waste of energy that ended in humiliation. "What, you got a sample a the Ute Water on ya right now?"

She nodded and turned around. Now Tony understood the second belt at her waist. It wasn't part of her outfit, after all, just of a f.a.n.n.y pack she wore at the small of her back. A little one, just big enough to hold, say, a wallet and a bottle of spring water. The pack looked full. She turned around to face him again. "And I have a bit more of it hidden elsewhere. A very little bit more."

He held out his hand. "Lemme try some."

"Out of the question."

"Ten mil, I don't get a taste? You never sold drugs before, have ya?"

"What's the point? You know it works; you've seen me get younger."

He shook his head. "Not yet, I ain't. All I know, maybe you got older sisters look like you, an' you're all runnin' some kinda game on me. Lemme try some."

Her turn to shake her head. "No. I need you to remain just as strong, mature, potent, and wise as you are right now, Tony. The more immature your body and judgment become, the greater the risk that Henry will crush you."

Well, that was hard to argue with. He had to agree that he was at this moment a perfect specimen of manhood in his prime. Still. "Ten mil and no sample. I dunno, lady."

"Oh, for Heaven's sake!" With quick impatient movements she pulled the f.a.n.n.y pack around in front of herself, unzipped it, took out what looked like a standard clear plastic one-liter bottle of distilled or spring water. It was nearly empty, only an inch or two of water left at the bottom. Before Tony could frame a question, she twisted off the cap and drank half the bottle's contents. Then she capped it again, put it back into the pack, held her hand up and slightly to the side of her face, and Tony could see his own familiar signature on the palm of her hand-the one he had written (or so he believed) on a considerably older girl yesterday. As he recognized it, she changed, right in front of his eyes- Tony had once made a guy eat a grenade, and had not flinched even when one of the guy's eyeb.a.l.l.s ended up in Tony's own shirt pocket, staring up at him. He flinched now.

Just as an earthquake is outrageous because the ground is simply not supposed to move like that, what he saw happen to her was outrageous because bone and flesh are not supposed to flow that way, to shimmer so confusingly, to sparkle in such a manner. What it was incredibly like, Tony thought, was somebody beaming down from the Enterprise, except that the somebody was already there to start with, and the sound was different. Less of a mzzzzzzzzzhaou-and more of a whuff. Weirdest of all, it was only the girl herself who sparkled and shifted: her clothing was unaffected.

When it was over, Ida Alice Shourds was, tops, seven years old. The yellow outfit was no longer snug on her; the shorts were halfway to her knees now. The autograph on her palm was smaller, like the palm itself, but still legible.

The Miracle Brat was saying something to him.

Tony was busy. There was no other way-he was thinking. Doing his best, anyway.

For ten mil in a hurry, he would have to go to Charlie Ponte. Was there any chance in h.e.l.l he could get ten huge off of Charlie without stating a reason? Even with maximum vig?

No way. Two huge, Charlie might just have gone for-because Tony was known to be a serious man whose word was good (save when given to a civilian or a cop), and because he was way too noticeable and memorable to hide anywhere in the world, and mostly because Charlie almost certainly had two huge of his own lying around in cash, convenient for disburs.e.m.e.nt. Also Tony knew that Charlie hated his guts, behind him being his father's son, and would have relished the constant hope that Tony might f.u.c.k up, miss a payment, and provide Charlie with an excuse to raise up the full power of his authority for executive action against Tony.

But ten million in cash was more than Carlo Pontevecchio aka Charlie Ponte would have around-of his own money. To come up with that much, he would have to lay it off on the Five Old Men. Two mil each, probably. That meant he would have to be given a reason. A real good one.

Tony had a reason. He just wasn't sure it would do him any good. He laboriously a.s.sembled a mental picture of himself about to tell Charlie Ponte about the Fountain a Ute, pushed the PLAY b.u.t.ton, and watched it unfold in his mind's eye. The results did not please him. Then he created another movie, in which Charlie pa.s.sed along Tony's explanation, five times, to the most skeptical humans in the solar system. An even more emphatic thumbs-down this time.

Was there a fake reason that would persuade the old men to cough up a couple mil apiece? If so, was there a chance in h.e.l.l that Tony Donuts Junior could think of it?

Like computers, some chimpanzees and nearly all politicians, Tony lacked true intelligence, or even the hardware to run it on, but was often able to mask this by relying on certain painfully learned algorithms-or as he called them, Rules a Tums. One of the oldest such subroutines in his repertoire stated that if he really wanted something but the price was too high, threatening to maim or kill the vendor might prove effective-and if not, actually doing so would at least be soothing. Tony had developed a mild distaste for beating up seven-year-old girls, back about the time he'd been graduating from juvie to adult court, so he decided to work on Willard instead, to start with, and see how she felt about that- Ida must have read his intention on his face. As he was bunching his shoulders, before he had even begun to turn toward Willard, she yelled, "Run, Prof!" and pulled over a rack of videotapes to block Tony's path. Willard sprang for the same hidden door by which he'd entered and slammed it behind him before Tony could kick his way through the s.m.u.t-slide. A second, distant slamming sound a few seconds later confirmed that Willard was not going to reappear behind the counter this time. Without pausing for thought, or even an algorithm, Tony s.n.a.t.c.hed the kid up-grabbed her at the waist with both hands, lifted her clear off the floor, and shook her, while growling, "Bad girl!" He kept shaking until he could tell she was either unconscious or so dizzy as to amount to the same thing, and then he slung her over his shoulder and headed for the street. For all he knew, Willard might return in a matter of moments with cops, or a gun. Tony did not exactly have a plan yet-but he did know that if you have a treasure in your hands, and you don't know how to use it, you at least make sure it'll stay in your hands until you figure it out.

Chasing down the nun who had his Jeep, while carrying an unconscious child, sounded too aggravating to even think about. So Tony curbed his impatience and himself. He stood there on the sidewalk outside the p.o.r.n shop, ignoring the stares of pedestrians, browsing pa.s.sing cars with his eyes. Key West is a favorite destination for owners of convertibles; one came along nearly at once, an ancient and hence st.u.r.dy Dodge, slowing for its turn onto Duval Street. It contained two college students dressed as morons and drunk enough to pa.s.s. The nearer one had a long ponytail, so that was what Tony yanked him out of the car by as it glided past. The driver stood on the brake, turned his head, saw a creature out of nightmare clutching his buddy and another victim, and stalled the convertible. Tony dropped the unconscious Ida Alice into the empty pa.s.senger seat, casually tossed the student over his shoulder into the p.o.r.n shop, and walked around to the driver's side. By the time he got there, the driver, ice-cold sober now, had scrambled over the windshield, crawled across the hood, and disappeared. Tony took his place, restarted the Dodge, and drove away from there.

He drove to his rental cottage on William Street, pulled the Dodge into the Jeep's garage around back, and went in to get a few items for the road. He was able to carry the brat inside without being seen by any nosy neighbors, largely because he never had any. By the time he carried her back out to the car and dropped her back in the pa.s.senger seat, she was beginning to come around-and her ankles were locked together by a pair of standard-issue handcuffs. n.o.body outside the car was going to see them, but there was no chance of her jumping out and running away on him.

"Where's the Profes . . . Where's Willard?" she asked as he was fastening her seat belt.

"Still runnin', I bet. Forget him. Listen up: If you want that ten mil, I gotta convince a guy, okay? You're gonna drink some more a the Ute Water in fronta this guy, show him what's what, just like you did for me. Then he gives me the ten mil, and you tell me where the Ute Water comes from-me you tell, not this guy-and then I give you the ten mil an everybody has a nice day."

Her expression was skeptical-even for a seven-year-old, but she made no reply.

He left Key West, took US 1 across Cow Key Channel to Stock Island, entering the long straight pipeline that led east and north back up the chain of Keys to America. With good traffic he could reach Charlie Ponte's place in Miami in three or four hours.

Key West is so laid back, and its street layout so eccentric, that it is often possible to tail a car through town on a bicycle. The Professor was able to keep up with Tony's stolen convertible, right up until it was clear it was going to leave the island. Then he gave up the chase and found a pay phone. (He told me later it was the first and only time in his life he'd ever even briefly wished he owned a cell phone.) I'd have thought that on the day I spoke the words, "Doc Webster is dying," to my friends, no other declarative statement could possibly qualify as important. But I changed my mind fast when the Professor said, "Jake, I think Erin may be in trouble."