Lazarus Key
By
Gilbert M. Stack
Pembroke Steel
Copyright 2015 by Gilbert M. Stack
Cover Copyright 2015 by Shirley Burnett
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Table of Contents
Dedication
Lazarus Key
About Gilbert M. Stack
Discover Other Stories by Gilbert M. Stack
Dedication
This one is for Scott and Ray.
Lazarus Key
Lorali was gone.
Mitch stood dumbfounded, staring at the note in his hand.
Darling, I’ve been called home suddenly to Lazarus Key. Lorali.
Ten simple words apparently ended a relationship of nearly three months. He turned the card over looking for something else. Three months together and she’d left after just ten words.
Mitch didn’t think he could just let her walk away.
****
Mitch had been on the docks most of the day looking for passage to Lazarus Key. He was not alone in his quest. He was not, in fact, the sort of man who enjoyed being alone. He liked company, and female company too often liked him, which indirectly explained his most regular companion.
Kit Moran was four inches taller than Mitch, a shade over six-four, with fifty additional pounds of muscle and bone. The perfect companion for Mitchell Pembroke III, or so Mitchell Pembroke II had thought when he hired Kit to keep his son out of trouble.
On most levels, they were quite different—most unlikely friends. Mitch was the son of a steel tycoon from Pittsburgh; Kit from a blue-collar family in New Jersey. Yet Mitch had never been overly impressed by his father’s wealth and station and quickly grew to like the man who succeeded in keeping him out of fights he never quite understood were beginning.
Neither man was quite sure they should be making this journey. The fresh salt air and sunshine were encouraging, but the stodgy old sailors mending their nets and smoking their pipes were not. The Captain of the Princess proved the most helpful, although that was clearly not his intent. “Lazarus Key?” he asked them. “You mean that old island where they stashed the lepers?”
Mitch shrugged. He didn’t know about any lepers. All he knew was that Lorali lived there and he wanted to find out why she had left him. “I guess so. I only know the place is called Lazarus Key.”
The captain looked Mitch and Kit up and down. “You’re the second one to ask me about that today. You look smarter than the other guy. Why don’t you take some advice and just forget you ever heard of the place?”
“I can’t do that,” Mitch told him. “I’ve got to meet someone there.”
The captain sighed. “Chasing that Sinclair girl, I’ll bet. Well I don’t care how pretty she is, she ain’t worth risking a voyage to Lazarus Key.” He started to return to his work, then thought twice about it. “Look, can you read a map?”
“Mr. Pembroke,” Kit informed him, “was a pilot during the Great War.”
Mitch colored with embarrassment, but the captain was evidently impressed. He disappeared into the Princess and came back with a nautical chart, spreading it on the dock between them. “Look, we’re here in Miami.” He pointed. “Here are what we call the Florida Keys. Lazarus Key isn’t really one of them. It’s way over here, nearly fifty miles west of the traditional keys and one hundred twenty miles south and west of Florida. It’s surrounded by some uncharted coral reefs. Practically no one alive knows the way in and out of those reefs. It’d be suicide for just about anyone besides the Sinclairs to try and pilot a boat in or out of that harbor. I won’t try, and you won’t find a sane pilot in this town who will try it either.”
Mitch looked at the map and tried to decide if his own sailing skills would be adequate. His father could afford the boat, and he was fairly certain he could get Kit and himself to the island, but he had to admit that he had no reason to believe that he could find a way through the reefs.
“Those waters are full of sharks,” the captain added to discourage him, “tiger, gray reef, you name it.”
“You said that no one sane would take us,” Kit noted, a small part of him wondering why he was helping Mitch to do something that was clearly stupid. “Do you know someone insane enough to try it?”
The captain sighed and spit. “Just what that other fool said. Captain Jack and the Lucky Lady is who you should ask for. Let it be on your own heads.”
“Captain Jack?” Mitch asked him, his voice brightening with anticipation.
The reply lacked any enthusiasm. “He learned the route in the Yellow Fever days. You’ll find him at the end of the wharf.”
****
“Lazarus Key, you say? Seems like the whole town wants to go to Lazarus Key.” Captain Jack rubbed his hands together and leapt onto the dock. “Let’s see your money.”
He was a dry and weather beaten man whose shock of white hair made him look seventy, even if his spry movements were those of a much younger man.
Mitch took a fold of crisp 1925 bank notes out of his pocket as a fat stranger in a cheap suit came out of the small cabin behind Jack and onto the deck of the Lucky Lady. “Hey,” the fat man bellowed. “What do you think you’re doing? I’ve chartered this boat!”
Captain Jack continued to watch Mitch count bills. “I know you’ve chartered it,” he retorted, “but we’re all going to the same place and there’s plenty of room on the Lady.”
“I chartered this boat and it’s not big enough for more than you and me,” the fat man insisted,
Kit stepped lightly onto the deck. The Lucky Lady was thirty foot from stem to stern with a cabin, a single mast and an inboard motor. Under normal circumstances it should be able to carry six or seven passengers, but if the fat man wanted trouble Kit would oblige him. “That may be true,” he conceded, “considering your enormous girth, but Mr. Pembroke and I are coming. If you don’t like that you can wait for Mr. Jack’s next trip.”
“Captain,” the old sea dog protested. “I’m Captain Jack.”
The fat man blustered up next to Kit until he was practically spitting in his face. “I chartered this boat!”
“Too bad about the stomach ache,” Kit apologized.
“Huh?”
Kit jabbed a hard left into the man’s paunch and watched him sit down hard on the deck.
“Hey now, that ain’t half bad,” Captain Jack applauded. “Glad you boys settled that because we’ve got another passenger to pick up in the Keys.” He tucked the money Mitch paid him into his pants and busied himself freeing the mooring lines.
“You mind if we get our things before you sail?” Mitch asked him.
“Mind?” Captain Jack repeated. “No, I don’t mind. Course the Lady’s sailing now. I won’t be here when you get back.”
Helpless against such logic, Mitch looked to Kit who clearly had no easy answer for him. Not knowing what else to do, Mitch stepped onto the Lady’s deck.
“You two guys must be as dumb as the kid I’ve come out here to find,” the fat man told him.
****
“Name’s Charlie Diamond.”
The fat man started talking about ten minutes after the Lucky Lady eased away from the docks and Captain Jack raised the sails. Neither Mitch nor Kit responded immediately and after a few moments of silence, Charlie spoke again.
“That’s quite a hammer you’ve got there
, big guy. You fight professionally?”
“I’ve been a few rounds,” Kit admitted.
“Kit’s been more than a few rounds.” Mitch laughed. “He’d have been a contender if the war hadn’t intervened.”
“He sure showed fatso a thing or two,” Captain Jack agreed.
Charlie snapped his fingers a couple of times. “Kit . . . Kit . . . Kit Moran!”
“In the flesh,” Kit admitted, far more pleased to be recognized than he wanted to admit.
Charlie was clearly excited. “You fought Mickey Malone in Chicago in 1923. That’s my hometown. I made a fortune that night.”
Kit tried to be modest, which clearly wasn’t easy. They were talking about his final fight and his last great win. “Mickey wasn’t used to an opponent who wasn’t willing to take a dive.”
“That’s just what I thought.” Charlie laughed. “I heard somewhere that you wouldn’t take a fall. Won a hundred bucks that night.”
“So why are you heading out to Lazarus Key, Charlie?” Mitch asked.
“That’s my employer,” Kit announced. “His name’s Mitch Pembroke.”
“Dad’s your employer,” Mitch corrected him. “I’m your friend.”
“Whatever you say, Mr. Pembroke,” Kit agreed.
“So like I was asking,” Mitch continued, “why Lazarus Key, Charlie?”
Charlie considered Mitch for a moment, noting the expensive clothes and the dashing good looks. “I’m searching for someone like you—handsome and well-to-do, but a few years younger. The boy’s name is Eddie Mason, and his father hired me to come down to Miami and find out what happened to him.”
“Last winter,” he continued, watching Mitch closely for any reaction, “Eddie met Lorali Sinclair and fell head-over-heels in love with her.” Kit and Captain Jack found their eyes moving toward Mitch as well. “In December, Eddie followed the girl home after her brother sent word that he needed her at Lazarus Key. He never came back again, and the Sinclairs told my employer that his son never arrived on their island. Mr. Mason and I suspect differently.” Charlie wrapped up his story by asking Mitch a question. “You still want to go out to Lazarus Key?”
“Does he want to go?” Captain Jack asked. “Of course he does, fatso. You don’t think a young man’s going to worry about what happened to the girl’s last suitor, do you? He wants her for himself. Happy not to have the competition, I’ll bet. Wouldn’t change his mind even if I told him I dropped Eddie off on the shore myself, which I did.”
“If you landed him safely on the shore,” Kit asked, “then what happened to him?”
“Can’t rightly say, now can I? Could be he left the path to the house and got lost in the swamps. Could be the spirits got him—lots of dead things buried out there on Lazarus Key. Could be lots of things.”
“It doesn’t really matter,” Mitch observed. “I need to know why Lorali left, not why Eddie didn’t.”
****
At Key Largo they took on Miss Agnes Tharpe, a scholarly woman in her early forties with masters degrees in history and anthropology. Unlike Charlie Diamond, she was not the slightest bit discomforted by the presence of unexpected companions in the boat, and if anything was happy to have a captive audience to lecture about the importance of her journey.
“Well, I don’t know how much I can presume you know about the history of these parts,” Miss Tharpe began.
“Absolutely nothing,” Mitch assured her, while Captain Jack insisted he knew more than any of them.
“Well then,” she continued, in what was clearly a classroom manner, “perhaps I should begin with a bit of general history. Lazarus Key was discovered by a Captain P’druza when the Spanish still ruled this part of the world. P’druza was searching for gold and the Fountain of Youth, but occasionally he took time out from his hunting to note other matters of interest. On one voyage he was forced to put in at Lazarus Key to escape a tropical storm and lost part of his hull in doing so. While he was repairing his vessel, he noted that certain natives from the neighboring Keys carried their dead to Lazarus to bury them. When questioned, these natives claimed that they were appeasing spirits, guardians of the dead which they called a-cha-te. P’druza translated this term as those who hunger. We have no other reference to these a-cha-te, probably because the natives disappeared shortly after this. They were the victims of a European disease which they doubtless caught from P’druza.”
“Very colorful,” Charlie commented, “but what’s it have to do with the price of tea in China?”
“Yes, of course it’s colorful.” Miss Tharpe made an effort to ignore Charlie’s question and suppress her irritation. “But what is really interesting is that after the Spaniard repaired his vessel and moved on, he returned twice more to the island for fresh water and supposedly buried a fortune there in doubloons and Aztec gold.”
“So you’re treasure hunting?” Charlie asked, still searching for the woman’s interest. Truth to tell, Charlie could be convinced to take some time off from his search for Eddie if there was a fortune in gold to be discovered.
“Of course not,” Miss Tharpe growled. “I am an historian. I’m simply trying to explain to you the background of my interest in Lazarus Key.”
“And it’s really quite interesting,” Mitch placated her. “Do you know how the Sinclairs came to live on the island?”
Miss Tharpe seized eagerly upon Mitch’s interest. “That is particularly fascinating. The founder of the family, Robert Sinclair was an American Tory who was run out of Charleston after the American Revolution. He was a very wealthy slave trader with a decidedly sadistic streak. In 1790, he bought Lazarus Key from the Spanish crown and set up a sugar plantation on it. It is said he enforced discipline on his slaves by cutting off the hands and feet of those who disobeyed him.
“Fortunately, some of his successors proved to be more humane. In 1868 when Yellow Fever struck Florida, Carl Sinclair, Robert’s grandson, volunteered the use of Lazarus Key as a burial ground for victims. He said that his plantation had been shut down by an onslaught of malaria nine years earlier and in exchange for a token bounty, agreed to take the infected bodies off Florida’s hands. More than five thousand corpses were shipped to him.”
“My Pappy made some of those runs,” Captain Jack piped in. “Stank something terrible, but it was all good money. A lot of the bigger ships didn’t want anything to do with them.”
“Really? How interesting,” Miss Tharpe lied, clearly preferring to relate her story unassisted. “During the 1880s the island was turned into a leprosarium, which I understand fell out of use at the turn of the century. I believe that only the Sinclairs, themselves, and perhaps a handful of the descendants of the plantation slaves still inhabit Lazarus Key.”
Mitch had been following Tharpe’s account carefully, but couldn’t quite put all of the pieces together. “So why exactly is it that you’re going there, Miss Tharpe?”
“Well, isn’t it obvious?” she asked him.
“I’m afraid not,” Mitch admitted. From their blank expressions, Charlie, Kit and Captain Jack clearly agreed.
“The doubloons, of course,” she replied as if this explained everything. “Spanish doubloons have been showing up on the coin market in Miami. I think they might have come from P’druza’s hoard. I was able to trace the seller through the dealers. Her name is Lorali Sinclair. So I wrote to her, and her brother, Derek, responded, inviting me to come and examine their collection. This is a tremendous opportunity to learn more about P’druza’s voyages and the early history of Lazarus Key. Who knows what I might find? I’ll probably end up writing the history of this unique little island.”
“Just so long as it doesn’t write yours,” Captain Jack laughed.
****
The storm loomed darkly on the horizon, just as storms must have appeared in P’druza’s day. With remarkable speed, the clouds stretched out across the water and blotted out the morning sky, leaving four tired and unhappy passengers holding tightly to the boat.
Captain Jack just laughed and refused to lower the sails.
“Been at sea all my life,” he reminded them, shouting to be heard over the storm. “Not going to let a little squall slow me down, now, am I?”
“But how can you navigate?” Mitch wondered. He counted off the problems on his fingers. “No sun, no stars, barely enough light to read your compass by…”
“I’ll know it when we’re close,” Captain Jack assured him. “Don’t you worry none. I’ll feel it in me bones.”
“And the reefs?” Mitch shouted back, feeling even less confidant.
“Won’t be no problem,” Captain Jack replied. “With the wind whipping the waves into a frenzy, we’ll just pass right over those reefs and land gently on the shore.”
That, Mitch thought glumly, was probably what P’druza had told his own crew on their first voyage.
****
Mitch clung tightly to the gunwale, facing into the storm. Captain Jack had finally reefed the sails, but the craft seemed impossibly frail to hold its own in these waters. Waves rose to blot out the dismal sky before crashing curtains of ocean through the thick sheets of rain.
Kit, when Mitch could see him, was turning ever darker shades of green and spewing a day’s worth of meals upon himself and the deck. Was it worth it to have brought him here to this? Was any woman worth the life of his friend? Mitch hadn’t known Kit might drown when he insisted they follow Lorali.
That final night in Miami continued to haunt him; his final night with her. Mitch could see it—could not help but see it—each time he closed his eyes. Their table by the window had overlooked the moonlit water. They feasted on shelled shrimp, pink and hot, washed down with water because with Prohibition they couldn’t order wine. Candles illuminated the table, the dancing flames reflecting in Lorali’s beautiful golden eyes.
Mitch had asked Lorali to come home with him to meet his father. He had taken her small, tanned hand in his and asked her to come to Pittsburgh. She must have understood. Why else would she have grown serious and answered, “But then my brother might insist on meeting you.”
****
“Land ho!” Captain Jack proclaimed.
Mitch’s eyes snapped open as his mind lurched back to the little boat in the darkness. Salt water slapped his face as the Lucky Lady dropped beneath him. Nothing appeared to have changed—not the waves, the darkness, nor the storm.