Chapter 3

I told Leta to "Be careful who was around when she told anyone about our visitors. If it gets out, that

we don't really have a treasure, we are going to lose customers, a whole lot faster than we got them. I need to talk to Bethan and Rubi. I need Rubi for a project, and I don't think Bethan is going to want to let her go. We need a couple more part time boat drivers. I don't have a lot of work going on, so do you have any idea if Jamie or Roma would work with the divers for a while, so maybe I could get Rubi?" "I don't know, I'll go talk to them, Roma might be afraid to, but I don't think anyone is going to find her here, I'll be back in a few minutes." It turned out that they thought it was a wonderful idea. So at dinner I told Dan to "Get them certified as divers, and they would help with the boats." He said "Look Levy, I'm making more money than I ever have, and I love this, but you are going to have to find another instructor. We need a day off." "What for, I haven't had a day off since I was 12 years old." "Look Levy, no games, get us some help or you're going to start losing people, we can't do this forever." Christi said, "I know a good diver, with the ratings, but she's working out of some port in Maluku." "Where in the hell is Maluku?" "It's part of Indonesia. I'm in e-mail contact with her, do you want me to ask?" "Can she speak English?" "Better than you can cowboy." "OK, OK, ask her. If she doesn't want to come, we're going to have to steal some divers from the other companies and that's going to start a war that I want no part of. Now Dan, I'm trying so hang in there." "Shit Levy you're too easy, I need to go talk to my new boat girls, you know just to let them know what the dress code is." "If you piss one of them off, she's going to be on your boat." Christi said "I hope Palila comes." "What's her name?" "It's Pay-li-la, she goes by Lila. She is Polynesian, pretty as a picture and as deadly as a Cobra. She is fun and good at what she does. The customers will all want to be on her boat, you can count on that. She has more jokes and stories than you have ever heard." The next morning Christi told me she had talked to Lila and she would come but I would have to send her the money. "None of them had been paid because the contractor had taken off with the money, and left them stranded. The company that the work was done for told them, he had paid the contractor, and that was all he was going to do." She handed me her name and a bank account number. I asked her if she thought it was on the level. She said "If you don't send it to her, I'm taking off work and sending it myself." "OK, Leta will get it sent just as soon as the bank opens." "Thank you Levy, she won't let you down, and I won't either." I caught Roma and Jamie and told them that "When they finished eating, to go tell Ireni to get them fitted, so they would be ready when the new class got here, from the taxi." "Oh, nice looking bikini's, Thank you Levy."

Roma and Jamie got their certificates, and were working with a different team each day. It was already decided that Roma would work with Lila, and Jamie would work with Bethan. Rubi would be the treasure boat driver. Christi has Lena working with her. The girls are going to handle the new divers and Dan and Coop will take those with certificates. They took the experienced divers to the reef, about a mile off the east coast, almost every day. The students spent all but the last day, on the west side in less water while they learned. They all agreed that the new students do more for a girl, so they got the helpers, and the guys could drive their own boat. "Fine with me, I got Rubi and a girl named Dani. Both have their dive certificates." I went over the map with them, and Rubi marked where there were some sunken boats. I told them that "Each day they were to go by one of the dive boats, while in search mode. Go slow, turn around and move over about 40 yards and go back the other way. Never go faster than you could walk while they are watching. Wave to them and say 'hello' or whatever. The idea is to be seen and have them ask questions about you. Now, after you have done that, start searching for real. Select an area and move in straight lines scoot over and do it again. Go over all the boats that you know of, and watch the screen, to see what it does. It should detect the metal. Do that until you know exactly what metal looks like on the screen. Know the difference between large and small objects. Then when you do find something in one of your search areas you will know what the screen is telling you. Use this notebook, and write down the GPS coordinates and what you think it is. Do not dive to find out. Don't let the book out of you sight and don't let anyone look at it. Get you a lunchbox from Mercedes, and some drinks, go out and find us lots of treasure. Remember put on a good show anytime the divers are watching you. This will bring people to the island and the people will bring money, and that is the real treasure."

Lila was everything Christi had told us she was. She is a very pretty girl, and all the girls were envious of her hair, which was jet black and wavy and reached her waist. She was a noisy person, wherever she was she was talking and laughing and it was contagious. The dive student's thought she had invented diving and whatever she said was law, and woe be to any fool who tried to change it. Dan and Coop admitted that she had a lot wider knowledge than they did. Neither of them had a rating for 'Deep Water suit' and helmet diving. She was a fast swimmer, but she lost to Rubi, and decided that Rubi was now 'Mistress Rubi, Queen of the Deep'.

. You couldn't hear yourself think at dinner. You would have thought that the divers had witnessed the Olympic Gold Medal swim meet.

"Levy." "Yes Leta what is it?" "I need two more rental dive boats right now."

Well, can't you get Russ and Buddy to pull the pins on the front seats of the taxis, and set them in the shop?" "That will work for now, but I need them permanently." "Really?" "Yes, really and would you want to lease the treasure boat and crew to some people up the coast at Chetumal Mexico?""Ain't no way I'm letting those girls work for anybody, but us! Tell them I can have them a boat ready in 3 weeks, and will lease it with the equipment for $1,500 per day, or I will sell it to them for $65K with equipment. I will let the girls instruct their people, here, for two days, if they buy the boat. And, if they try to hire either one of the girls, they get no boat, and might get a bit wet before they get out of here. Call Lupito, and have him build the boom and pedestal for a treasure boat. If they don't buy it, I'll split Rubi and Dani and run two boats." "We'll need another fish." "I'll get a crew putting your boats together for you."

We did not have the room to store assembled boats, so we kept the hulls stored on the patio, and the deck panels stacked inside. It was just a matter of putting them together and setting them in the water.

I had thought that the boat shop would have to keep the dive shop going, but it had turned out just the opposite. Andy had most of the help working with him doing repairs for anyone needing it. They had added a raised hardtop to Dan's old boat, it was being sold to a company that made a run from Belize City to Chetumal, Mexico once a day. The guy said "They were always running at the maximum weight and the round trip was about 150 miles, so the big diesel would be just right for what they were doing." "I'm going to have to go to the city, and see if I can find anything worth rebuilding, to keep the guys busy. I probably will catch hell from the salvage crew for not letting them drag in another mud ball. I really need to find a few boats that I can hang the motors from the taxi company on. Andy and the crew had them rebuilt and they were just hanging there doing nothing. I guess I'll take the big boat to the city and see what I can find."

The next morning at breakfast, I told everyone I was going to find some small boats to hang our motors on. This was the first day of a diver cycle, so everyone was setting around waiting to go pick up the new divers, when the taxi came in. Lila wanted some tape to hang a sign on the wall. "What sign?" She went over to her table and held up a sign that said, "If you drink more than 2 beers tonight, you are not diving tomorrow" and was signed "Lila" I asked, "Did you have a problem?" "Yes, but I think he understands now. I don't mind taking the time to explain things to someone who just didn't catch on the first time, but I'm not wasting my time on somebody that is hung over, so bad, they can't listen." Roma said, "She told him if she had to tell him again, she was going to throw his ass off the boat." He asked "Who was going to help her?", and his ass went flying, but I did notice that everyone else paid very close attention.

"Well, I would say that it is a very good rule, Hey Coop, did you see this sign?" Then Lila said, "I'm not letting either one of those two on my boat, so I wont have to throw them off."

A girl from the high school came in and talked to Leta. She needed to take a bunch of pictures of the crews for the website. So, everybody outside by the boats. Group picture, crew picture, single picture, Treasure crew, cook and staff picture. You name it, she got it. "I thought we already had a website?" "We do, dumb ass, they put new pictures on it all the time." "Oh, OK, well 'dumb ass' is headed out to get some boats. Anything I can bring you ladies?" I shouldn't have asked.

"Hey Levy, where are the girls?" "I left them at home, so they can work. If they don't work, I won't have any money for you to take from me." "Levy, Levy, what I do with you huh? What you need today." "I need 5 or 6 small boats, 20 to 28' long. Old, needing repair, and cheap." "Let me make a call." "OK, head up the river about half a mile on the right." When we got to the boatyard, there was a catamaran power boat that looked like a bomb went off in it. Lupito was walking up to the man and said "Holy shit, what happened to that boat?" "The owners' wife got pissed off, and took a chainsaw to it." "Boy, she did a job on it." "Yeah, he had it pulled down here, and asked me what it would cost to fix it, and I told him about 3 times what a new one will cost." "What's he going to do with it?"

"Hell, there ain't nothing he can do with it. Maybe sell the engines." "Call him, and tell him that you have an idiot here, asking what he will take for it?" "OK, but I hope you know what you are doing." In a minute I heard, "Hey, come and talk to this guy." An hour later I had the title to a 48' cat, and he had $25K in cash. I was able to load 3 boats on the Isabel and tow the cut-up-cat. I stopped at Lupitos', to drop him off, and get the boom and pedestal for the treasure hunter. I pulled up to our dock. and everyone came out. I threw them the lines and jumped onto the dock. The were all looking at the "Cut Up Cat" and saying things like 'damn, wow', and stuff like that. "What are you going to do with it Levy?" "Ya'll put it back together for me, while I go eat."

"Yeah right." Andy came and set with us, after dinner, and asked "What I had in mind for the cat?"

"I don't really know, but I only paid $25K for it, and it has two Cummins 550 horse turbocharged diesels in it. I guess we'll just tarp it down and think about it for a while. Those 3 boats need various amounts of work, nothing real big. Power washed, patched and painted. Hook up one of those rebuilt motors on them and get whatever we can. He has four more that I'm going back to get. Do you know anyone in the city that would sell them, for us?" "Oh yeah, I know several, but only one I would trust, without having their money in my hand." "You know he might be a good source for boats. I'll go with you and we can look around and talk to a few people about what they have. Might be something out there we can make money on, and you need to meet them anyway."

We went and loaded up two more at the place I got the Cat. We just couldn't get together on a price for the other two. We went farther up the river than I had been before, and I loaded up another one, and we bought a nice 36' cabin cruiser with a bad motor, for almost junk price, and hooked it up to the towline. Andy seemed to think it would be a fast turn around. "I asked why they didn't get it fixed?", and he said "That there were really only two places to have it done. One was the place where he had worked, and the other was really high on their engine work." The Cruiser had a white bottom and a blue top. The blue was faded. It might buff out, but paint is not that high and we have the people and equipment. The curtains would have to be replaced and a lot of steel wool and oil on the wood interior. I think they have enough to stay busy in the shop.

Rubi wants a piece of pipe to poke at something and we came up with a 20' section of conduit, about an inch in diameter. I told her again, "Don't dive on whatever it is." "OK Levy, but I think it's a pirate treasure." "Rubi you need to quit watching those late night movies. The only pirates here are us, and we're doing it honestly." "Levy, I'm serious. I found something, and there were pirates here, because we were taught about them in school. It has a good signal and, I can see part of it. I want to poke it with the pipe, and see if I can get enough mud off of it to see what it is." They were back, an hour and a half later, just hopping up and down. "It's wood Levy, it's wood. Come on and look." So we went to see it. It's in about 15' of water and from what I can see it looks like wood planks. Both of the girls wanted to dive but I told them "If it is a historical wreck, they will have our asses, if we go pulling it apart. We need one of those vacuum things, like on the treasure shows. Maybe we can hook up one of the water pumps to this pipe, and blow the mud off of it. I don't want you down there trying to blow the mud off. You wouldn't be able to see a thing, and you might just be so blind, that you are blowing mud from everywhere. Let's think about it, and do it right. If it's just an old wreck, we can clean it off and then let the students dive on it, as part of their class. Let's go get the pump." "OK let's go."

We got a pump off the big boat, and set it down on the dock. I got Andy, and told him,

"We needed to hook the pipe, to the outlet on the pump, so we can blow away some mud." It looked like a plumbers' nightmare, when we got it together, but it would work. "We will have to be careful, and open this valve very slowly, or it might blow everything away. It's quitting time. Let's go to the dive shop." "Is it OK to tell them we found an old wood boat?" "Yeah we can tell them we're going to try to blow the mud away, so they can use it for classes." They were pretty excited and telling everyone that would listen. I told everybody that "It looked like wood planks, where I could see it, but I had no idea if it was four years or four hundred years old. We would just wash it off and then try to decide what they had."

The pump pipe turned out to be a backbreaking job to hold it on target. Just a little pressure was all you could handle. We tried getting in close, and turning down the pressure, but it churned up so much mud you couldn't see anything. Then we held it about 5' off the bottom, and turned it up. It looked like a volcano blew up. We ran it for a few minutes, then shut down, to let the water clear. This will do it but it's going to be work. By lunch we had it swept off. We decided to eat and let the dirt settle. I let Rubi dive but told her to just look and not to touch it. She came up and told us "It was a chain with a weight on it." "How long is the chain?" "About 3 or 4'." "OK, come on up. Let's head in, we'll bring the metal detector tomorrow, and see if the ball and chain is all there is." "Is it important Levy?" "I don't know, but people haven't used ball and chains, on their prisoners, in at least a hundred and fifty years." Dani said "Yeah, and the only reason a person would have a ball and chain, in a rowboat, is because they were going to throw him in." Then she said, "If it was me, I would have thrown the ball through the bottom of the boat and took the bastards with me." They thought that was funny, I thought it might be true.

The metal detector did not find anything else in or around the boat, so I thought we better call the guys at government house, and give them the GPS coordinates. We need to look into one of those vacuum things that the gold hunter people use. Lila told us that "What we needed, was about a 10hp gold dredge." She says that a "10 hp. 5 inch inlet, would be good for about 30' deep." She said she had "Spent weeks on the business end of one, and it would wear you out." I told her "We just wanted to uncover things like the wood boat." She said "I could probably order it, without the sluice box, and just blow the water back into the sea or through a screen bottomed box. Then she drew us a picture of how to set it up." She said "If what you are hunting is coins or relics of that size and up, just direct the flow into the box with 1/8" mesh screen. The box sets on a stand, and has a sloped chute on the bottom, to direct the water back into the sea." "Yep, we gonna get one. I'll mount it on the treasure boat, with the chute going over the side. Where is Leta? We need to get this ordered."

We got it working. Lupito built a nice stand for it. The discharge hose is clamped to the stand, pointed into the screen. We found out the hard way that it needed to be clamped. We had to build a splash shield to keep all the water going out the chute instead of all over the boat. Man that thing will move some dirt. We had two visitors, from Government House come for a visit. It seems that they don't have a boat, or a diver, but they sure would like to see the wood boat, and the square rock. "Do either of you dive?" "No, but I do snorkel." "OK, we can take you out. Did you bring your camera?" "Ahh, No, we don't have a camera." "We can go by where Bethan is, and borrow hers." We did get them some pictures of the boat and, the rock, and Bethan e-mailed them to Government House. They had no funds to do anything with either site. We did get permission to dive on both sites as long as they were not touched. They were quite impressed with our boat and the knowledge that the girls had of the area. They traded pirate stories for a few minutes, and we told them if we stumbled across anything else we would give them a call. "Hey girls, let's get another piece of that conduit, and wire the sucker to it. That way we can clean around the square rock, and find out what it is, without being afraid it will fall on us. If we move too much mud on one side, there is a good chance it could come down in a hurry." We went and got the conduit, a roll of wire, and a pair of pliers. It was too late today, but we decided to make sure the wire would hold the sucker to the conduit. The dive boats were coming in, so we waited to help them gas up. Roma was driving Lila's boat, and she turned it around, and let it float up to the dock. Lila was throwing me a line, when a guy came down the dock and reached over and grabbed Roma, and he was yelling about "I got you now bitch", when Lila went flying past me and, ' whap, whap, whap, ' and the guy was laying there bleeding, with his arm at a weird angle, and broken for sure. Lila had him by the throat and had her fingers spread and about an inch from his eyes. She said Roma "Who is this Son of a Bitch?" "It's Rubio, the man I've been hiding from." "Well, Well, Mister Rubio, the man who likes to beat up little girls. You made some mistakes today, Rubio. You came here, you touched one of my crew, and you pissed me off. I'm going to let you up, Rubio, and if you're still on this island after the next taxi leaves, I'm going to break both your legs off and shove them up your ass. If you come back here for any reason, I will kill you. There are too many witnesses today. If you ever get to feeling lucky, you bring some help and come on back. Bring body bags." None of the divers had moved or even blinked. Lila stood him up and pointed toward the taxis. He took off at a fast walk. "Are you OK Roma?" "Yes." "Good. Let's eat, Levy's buying." Lila had her arm around Roma and asked, "Did I ever tell you about the nun, that went into a bar?" ... And off they went, laughing. Rubi wiped her hands against each other, put her hands on her hips and said, "Any questions?" "Nope, I think I'll gas up her boat for her, I wonder if she wants it waxed?" The divers laughed and grabbed their gear headed to the dive building.

During dinner,, the girl from the high school came in and asked the divers if they wanted a group picture? She would e-mail it to them for only $5. "Put your name and e-mail address here, make sure I can read it, and put the money in my hand." Lena said, "Right there is how he found Roma. The website, I'll bet he or someone he knows saw her on the website." Then she added, "That's a good thing, because she didn't get hurt, and now she can send for a copy of her birth certificate, and get a passport, and not have to worry about him finding her."

I got the divers in the office and asked what they thought about the idea of using the conduit pipe to control the suction nozzle? "We want to clean the dirt away from the square rock, to find out what it is, and I am afraid it might fall over on one of us, if we start moving too much material." "Why do you need to know what it is?" "The government man was talking to us about the pirates in this area, and how they would lure Spanish ships into the shallow water, and how they hid out among the islands. The Spaniards couldn't chase them, because their boats set too deep in the water. He said that the pirate, Henry Morgan, was suppose to have hid out here, and he led a raid on Panama, and stole 400,000 silver coins. It was interesting and I would like to put all the information that I can find on our website. I want to attract treasure divers and pirate a bit of their money. So we may have to make up a small story, here and there, to make what is written in history books match what we find. We are going back to the wood boat and vacuum it good so the treasure divers can see it. If you find any relics or anything like that, get a GPS reading, and we'll go sweep it with the metal detector before we let government house know about it. If there are any coins or gold, I want to count it and tell them the total, when they take it, because I'm not letting them cheat us. If we're doing the work, we deserve the 60%. Our share will be brought right here, appraised and sold with the shares divided among all the employees of our little boat and dive business. If they don't like that arrangement, we will put both shares back in the ocean, where we found it, right after we send them a picture of what they missed out on. Our 2nd treasure boat is ready and we will offer it for lease or sale. But I'm not going to rent it to anyone coming here to hunt until, I'm sure ole Henry took his silver with him when he left.

Now, about that guy who fell down and hurt himself on our dock." Lila said, "I don't want to hear about it."

We had to drill some holes in the conduit to keep the wire from sliding up, but we were able to get it mounted to the vacuum nozzle tight. We got to the rock and got everything hooked up and I asked the girls, if we had overlooked anything? None of us could think of anything, so we fired up the pump turned the valve wide open and pushed it down to the base of the rock. We were moving a lot of material, and had another 6 feet sticking out. The end that was the highest started shifting downward. Then it just lay flat on the seabed. Dani said, "Well hell, I was expecting something more than that! No splash, no nothing." "Yeah, what is it?" "I think they are called "Stele", the Mayans left them standing all over the place. We saw some on a school trip." "How in the hell did it get out here?" "I don't know Levy, I guess they were taking it somewhere, and it got away from them. The big bastard could have broke their boat or raft or fell off whatever they had it setting on." Rubi walked over to shut the pump down and screamed, "Look", and she was pointing into the screen. Well we had our first gold. There were quite a few rocks and some other debris, but there was a gold something. I had no idea what it was. It had designs made into it and was just larger than a quarter. Dani said "It looks like one of those things you see in the ear lobe of those strange Mayan carvings. Which means that he either lost it, when the rock fell or, he went with it." "Or, he was responsible for the rock and lost it, and made the big chief mad, and he threw him in. Did those guys wear two of them?" "If he did, it's still there. Pull that thing up and get the wire off and I'll go down and run it." "Dani you relieve me in 30 minutes." We spent a couple of hours, but we found enough to convince us that they had all gone down with it. You had to look at every rock before you threw it away because some of them had holes through them. When we quit, we had a double handful of stone beads, and 11 gold and silver pieces, with the largest being a bird shape, with holes through its wings, so it would make a necklace. It was about the size of the palm of your hand. Just holding a piece of it made you want to jump in and start looking. We had to decide if we should let everyone see it or should we hide it? I still didn't have anything signed by the government. Let's take it to the Boat office, and then after dinner we will get all our dive people and decide what to do. We wound up with an almost even split, some wanted to just keep it and sell it because they didn't trust the government. The others wanted to get the government involved but only after they signed the 60/40 agreement. I told them that, "Leta, Rubi, Dani, and I would go to the Government House, and take them the beads and carved stone items, as we had told them we were only interested in gold, silver, or coins and wanted 60%. We would stick to that." Everybody wanted to be on the treasure team. Leta told them "They could do that, right after we handled all the divers that we had contracts with. Also, you will need to figure out how you're going to pay for the dive building, 6 dive boats, 2 treasure boats, and pay the wages of those doing the support work, not to mention all the food and fuel. When you figure out how to do it without an income, then you can run the company, and I'll go work on the treasure boat. Each of you are being paid to teach, or help teach diving. You receive that money each week. You are being "Given" an equal split of the treasure with all employees. Ireni, or you, or any of you, will get the same amount as Levy, Lena, or me. That's the only way it can be. If you have a better idea, put it in writing, sign your name to it and post in on the board in the dining room. I'll check there first thing in the morning."

We left right after we ate. Rubi told us it was "The first time she had worn clothes since she left high school." Dani said "It had been almost that long for her." We left the boat with Lupito and caught a 4 wheel taxi to the government house. It took a bit, but we found our Antiquities man. If his office had been any smaller, it would have had brooms hanging in it. I handed him the beads and carved stones and told him we had "Found them next to the square rock and that it turned out to be a Stele." He asked, and we told him, how we vacuumed the dirt away, until it just laid down. It was a boating hazard as it was, and had sunk the boat it was on and one more that we knew of, for sure. He agreed that it was. I asked him about the signed agreement of the 60/40 split for gold, silver, and coins. He said he "Didn't know if he could get one." I told him "Fine, we will leave it where we found it." "What did you find?" "Where is our agreement?" He went to get his boss. He came back and asked us to follow him as his boss had a larger office. His boss was looking at the beads and we had to repeat the whole story. He said tell me about this agreement that you want. I told him about "The Minister of Education, and the Tourism Minister, visiting us, and they were the ones who sent him." So he told "Him" to go get "Them." Now this office is getting to small. They asked me again what I had found and I told them again that I didn't know what it was and it was still laying right where I last saw it. "Where is that?" "I told you, do we have an agreement or not?" "Gentlemen, while you're all here, I would like to ask you, is 40% of something, better than all of nothing? In Florida the state only gets 20%." He asked us to step out in the hall for a moment. Rubi said, "Do you think they will give it to us?" Leta said, "Wouldn't you?" When we went back in, he said "He would have the papers in a moment but, he wanted a representative with us, when we searched." "I said, send two, we have two treasure hunting boats." He said, "Look, this is going to cost us a lot of money, do you think you have something of value?" "If I were you, I would send them," and I pointed to his man and said "This guy can snorkel. It would be better if he could dive. We are going to teach him and get his certification. A new class starts Thursday morning. He will be furnished with room and meals. If you find someone else that has the same interest in Pirates, Mayans, and artifacts, send him or her with him." I got my copy of the agreement, made sure we were getting 60% of the value by an appraiser selected by both parties, and to be paid by both parties.