The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [6]
“Sure. Badge number…” He reeled off a realistic-sounding series of numbers. “Detective Sergeant, Miami Vice—” He paused.
She asked, “Are you waiting for a joke here?”
“It happens.” Hart had a very engaging voice. “Sorry, let me put this other call on hold.” He came back on the line. “So, about your dad’s mess. Feds told me to back off. Where’s the respect for locals anymore?”
Annie asked again to know what Hart meant by her dad’s “mess.”
“He stole a relic, alleged relic, that if it exists, belongs to the people of Cuba. La Reina Coronada del Mar.”
The Spanish words floated up at her out of her childhood; she’d heard them often from her father. “Queen of the Sea?”
“You know it?”
Annie thought back. “…A statue?”
“Sixteenth-century. Peru. Virgin Mary.”
Memories hurried in. Her father had told her long stories about La Reina Coronada. “The Queen of the Sea. I used to have dreams about that statue. I used to dream I was trying to save her from drowning.” She wondered why in the world she had just told this complete stranger a childhood dream of hers.
Just as oddly, he replied, “Did you save her?”
“No, I woke up.”
“Yeah. It’s too much for a kid. For years after my dad died, I was always dreaming I was trying to pull him out from under a car wreck. He died in a car wreck. He was a cop.”
Neither spoke for a moment. Then Hart asked, “So you ever get the impression your dad actually had hold of the Queen of the Sea?”
With a glance at her speedometer—92 miles per hour—she took her foot off the accelerator, breathing carefully while she slowed the car. “Sergeant Hart, I got the impression my dad had hold of the golden flip-flops of Helen of Troy and a MapQuest to Shangri-la.” Her father had told her thousands of extravagant lies: that there was buried treasure in his backyard, that the neon-blue plastic sunglasses he’d given her as a birthday gift would endow her with super-powered X-ray vision. “It’s what he did for a living, ‘false pretenses,’ lies to con suckers. He was a con artist.”
Hart laughed his pleasant laugh. “Still is. No offense but I wouldn’t trust Jack Peregrine if he walked on water and then turned it into wine.”
“Trust me,” Annie said, “If he could turn water into wine, he’d sell it.”
Hart’s jaunty guffaw surprised her. It was rare that people laughed aloud at her jokes. His response warmed her into asking, “So the FBI is what, shoving you aside? Federal intervention?”
“You should talk. You’re U.S. Navy.”
She couldn’t read his tone. “You have a problem with the Navy?”
“Well, I remember the Maine. Listen, I’m just trying to do my job, Lieutenant Goode. Protecting people like you.”
“Funny, that’s my business too.” Annie was accustomed to, but not particularly tolerant of, sarcasm about the military.
Hart laughed. “I gotta tell you, I was impressed, what I read about you. You and your husband flying the Hornet in Operation Desert Fox. I mean you guys bombed the shit out of some sand.”
Indignantly, she asked if he’d been reading files on her.
“Don’t take it personally. Anyhow, I need your cooperation. The FBI says this relic Coronada’s real, they say your dad’s got it, they want it and him both.”
She shook her head as vehemently as if he could see her. “You think that relic’s real? No way.”
Hart claimed to have better information. “FBI says it’s a sixteenth-century gold statue of Mary with Inca jewels and a thorn from the Crown of Thorns.”
Annie snorted. “Total bullshit.”
“I figure you love your dad.” Again, his familiarity jarred her. “Well, the guy’s in a serious mess here and you need to tell him, come see me, turn himself in. We can work a deal.” Abruptly Hart announced he had to take another call. “Fly safe, Lieutenant.”
“Hello? Hello?”
As Annie hit redial, she memorized the caller’s number. It was a skill she’d had since she was a toddler, a short-term photographic memory. When her father had discovered this talent, he’d used it to win bets against unsuspecting strangers who’d been sure she wouldn’t be able to repeat a column of figures after a