Don Bruns - Too Much Stuff

I stood there dazed, hearing the muffled voice.

“Are you there? Are you alive? Are you there? Answer me.”

It took several seconds to realize it was coming from my pocket. Pulling the phone out, I shouted into it. “I’m alive.”

Taking a quick survey, I saw James standing by the box, Maria cowering behind the forklift, Weezle unconscious on the ground, and Markim kneeling, holding his shoulder where blood was seeping onto his shirt. And then there was Em, standing behind the wooden coffin, her right arm hanging by her side with the pistol in her hand.

“Yeah. We’re all alive.”

“What was that dreadful noise?”

I took a deep breath. “Em shot Markim, and James took out Weezle with a crowbar.”

“Oh, my God. What have you gotten yourselves into?”

I swallowed hard. “We’re about to find out, Mrs. T. I really think I need to call you back later.” With that, I clicked off the phone.

Maria had duct tape. Rolls and rolls of gray duct tape.

A forklift, a pry bar, duct tape? “What do you do with all this stuff you’ve got in your rental unit?” She seemed to have every tool imaginable.

“I rent properties, Skip. You need a variety of things to manage properties. I probably should take a course in plumbing, so I would have all those tools and wouldn’t have to rely on phonies like you to fix my leaks.”

She tossed a roll to me and one to James and we proceeded to wrap up the two PIs. We taped their arms to their sides, their legs together, then we repeated the process, over and over.

“Maybe Markim will bleed to death?”

“Nah. You shot him once before, Em. He’s a tough one.”

Weezle’s face looked like he’d been in a heavyweight title bout. The crowbar had crunched his nose and split his lip, and there were purple bruises forming under both eyes.

“Finish opening the crate.” Em turned her attention to the box. With all the excitement and the rush of adrenaline, we were at an emotional high. We had to get back to business.

I took the crowbar, wiped it on the damp grass to remove any blood, and continued to pry, leveraging my weight, my strength, to pull up the last couple of nails. I then worked around the wooden lid, prying it free. We all gathered ’round as James lifted off the cover.

“You know, we had that letter before you did,” Weezle said. We’d propped him up against the forklift and a little blood was still running from his lip. “That’s when we decided to find this treasure ourselves. Just the two of us. Without anyone interfering.” He sniffed. “Problem was, we never figured out the damned code. So we followed you guys. We figured if the lady was with you, she’d know where the treasure map was located.”

And James and I had decided to follow them, just in case they knew more than we did. That didn’t seem to be the case.

Weezle spoke like his nose was stuffed up. Actually, it was broken and the blood probably had filled his nasal passages.

“If there’s any gold in those boxes, some of it should be ours.”

The low-hanging light cast shadows, but we could see inside. There was a top layer of rocks, pieces of coquina and limestone that covered the surface.

I reached in and tossed them to the ground, anxious to get to the bottom of things.

Lying on the bottom of the box were small chunks of rusted iron.

“This is not possible.” James stood back, a stoic look on his face.

“What’s the purpose?” Em stared into the box, shaking her head.

“It’s only one crate.” Maria looked at the four unopened crates on the ground. “There are nine more crates. Let’s not give up so fast.”

Our two trussed captives looked up from their position on the ground.

“No gold?” Weezle croaked.

I bit my bottom lip.

“No. No gold. Congratulations,” James said. “It appears that you guys gave up your business to find some stones and old pieces of iron.”

There was a long sigh from Markim. He hadn’t bled to death. Yet.

We picked the fourth crate, just to make it a random search. Twenty minutes later we popped the top. Rocks. More rocks and iron.

“Why would someone bury rocks and iron?” Maria looked like she could cry.

I sat on the ground, closing my eyes, and remembering the conversation with Bernie Blattner. It came back to me and for a moment I was almost nauseous.

“Jackie Logan.”

“Who?” James was propped up against a tree.

The quiet of the early morning was cloying, and it was almost by necessity that we made noise.

“Come on, man.” I was shouting. “Jackie Logan. Bernie Blattner’s coworker.”

“What about him?”

“Remember the story? The local pineapple growers needed to make more money, so what did Bernie and Jackie do?”

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” Em had finally gotten the message. “They’d add scrap iron from the railroad to the shipments of fruit to up the price. It translated into more pounds of fruit. Until they got caught.”

“So?” James looked back and forth at the two of us. “So?”

I turned to him, raising my arms, my palms up.

“Oh, my God, Skip.” He shouted the name just as I had. “Jackie Logan. That bastard Jackie Logan.”

“Son of a bitch figured it out.”

“The rich son of a bitch. Damn. And this poor Matthew Kriegel, looking out for the Eastern Railway Company, is dying of fever-”

“Probably did die of fever, James. No one ever found him or the boxes. But Jackie Logan, he figures that with the right weight and the metal straps, the nails in the lid, it would take someone a while to figure out that these boxes didn’t contain the original gold.”

“Jackie Logan. He figures out those boxes are worth more than five dollars to haul them to a graveyard.” Em sat on the corner of the box, her chin in her hands.

“He and the guys who helped bury the crates, dig them up, open them, lift the gold, fill ’em back up and somehow take off with all of that treasure.” I knew in my gut that’s what had happened.

“And anyone from the railroad who dug them up would assume they still had the gold.” It was all making sense. “It gave Jackie more time to get away.”

“Only,” James said, “no one ever came back for the gold. Until now.”

“Who’s going to call Mrs. T.?” Em was always the pragmatic one.

“She’ll be devastated.” Maria had only met her once, but knew the lady would not be happy.

“Jackie Logan. What did he end up doing?” James was pissed.

“Split the loot with the black guys who helped him, buried boxes of rocks and iron to approximate the weight of gold, and went to some other South American country. Bernie said he bought a plantation down there.”

“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. I do not believe that we’ve been screwed like this.”

“Worst part of this, James. What do you think is the worst part of this entire experience?”

He thought for a moment. “That we don’t get the money?”

“No. That we can’t go after the damned guy. Jackie Logan is long since dead. I’m sure of it.”

“Point well taken, amigo.” He breathed deeply. “And the money is long since spent, Skip.”

“There’s probably one more person who should feel worse than we do.”

“Who’s that?”

“Bernie Blattner. Bernard.”

“Oh, yeah,” Em said. “He turned down the moving job so he could help the railroad. And how did that work out for him?”

I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. Somebody had kneed me in the groin, or taken away my oxygen. There was no gold. There was no treasure. No dreams, no more surprises.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. We had a couple of surprises left.