Encounters Read online

  “What makes you think the government of Crete is gonna be real anxious to sell it to you?” I asked.

  “They won't know they're selling us Atlantis,” said Mr. Short. “We'll merely buy dredging rights for a few miles in each direction.”

  “I don't want to sound ungrateful or nothing,” I said, “but fifteen thousand dollars seems a small price to pay me for helping you becoming billionaires.”

  “We're not through doing business with you yet, Reverend Jones,” said Mr. Tall.

  “No?”

  “Unfortunately, Mr. Short and I have had certain ... ah ... technical disagreements with the authorities on Crete.”

  “It's true,” added Mr. Short. “They would be most unhappy to see us show up there.”

  “They might even ask how we came by the money we plan to use to purchase Atlantis,” chimed in Mr. Tall.

  “In fact,” said Mr. Short, “there are probably fifty or sixty customers of the Bank of Crete who would be more than happy to tell them.”

  “It's our own fault for leaving so many witnesses alive,” added Mr. Tall, “but how were we to know the bank would be that crowded?”

  “We simply didn't have enough bullets for them all,” explained Mr. Short. “It was most unprofessional of us, and I assure you it will never happen again.”

  “But in the meantime,” concluded Mr. Tall, “it would probably be best if someone else were to purchase Atlantis—someone totally unknown to the Cretan authorities.”

  “You're looking at him,” I said proudly. “I don't even know where Crete is.”

  “Fine,” said Mr. Tall. “Then it appears that we will be able to do some more business, Reverend Jones.”

  “I'm all ears,” I said.

  “We don't know how much money it will take to purchase Atlantis, so we may have a momentary cash flow problem,” said Mr. Short. “But if you will forego your fifteen thousand dollars now, we will give you five percent of everything we recover, which should come to considerably more. A thousandfold, at the very minimum.”

  “Well, that's right generous of you gentlemen,” I said. “But if you will allow me an indiscreet question, how can I be sure you'll give me a fair accounting of what you owe me—not that I think for a single moment that you'd ever cheat a partner. View it as an academic question.”

  Mr. Tall chuckled. “In point of fact, Dr. Jones, it's we who have to make sure that you don't cheat us. Everything will be registered in your name, so all the revenues will come to you.”

  “Now,” added Mr. Short, “can we be sure that you'll give us a fair accounting of what you owe us?”

  “You ask that of a man of the cloth?” I said.

  “We'd simply like to hear your reassurances.”

  “Brother Short,” I said, “I wouldn't never cheat no partner. That's contrary to the Seventh and Twelfth Commandments.”

  “Then we're in business,” said Mr. Tall. “Let's stop wasting time here and catch the next plane to Crete.”

  “What about poor Brother MacDonald?” I asked. “Seems we ought to give him some kind of a sendoff, long as he's the one who's making us all rich.”

  “Well, we'd like to,” said Mr. Short uneasily. “But unfortunately, should the Athens police see us at his graveside, they might ask some embarrassing questions.”

  “That ain't no problem,” I said. “I'll vouch that he died by accident.”

  “Oh, they won't ask about Mr. MacDonald,” said Mr. Short. “Not at first, anyway.”

  “But when they finish asking about the other seventeen misunderstandings, they might well want to know about poor Mr. MacDonald as well,” added Mr. Tall.

  “Well, the Good Book teaches us to be adaptable, so why don't we all just observe a moment's silence right now?” I suggested.

  Which we did.

  Then we went down to the black car, which was parked by the curb, and headed out to the airport, where we found that there weren't no scheduled flights to Crete for the next four days, so Mr. Tall chartered us a plane—leastwise, I think he chartered it, though the pilot didn't seem none too happy about the proceedings—and a few hours later we landed on Crete.

  It was too late in the day to visit the government offices, so we spent the night in the El Greco Hotel, which took in tourists, roaches and rats with equal hospitality, and in the morning we headed on over to the Hereklion Public Works building. Just before we got there, Mr. Small handed me a thick envelope and told me that it contained all the money he figured I'd need for dredging rights, and that he planned on getting a strict accounting the minute I came out.

  Well, it took me a good hour and a half to get to the right department, and then another hour to make myself understood, but by noon I was the proud owner to the dredging rights to Atlantis for a mere thirty-two thousand dollars, which was two thousand more than was in the envelope, so I used my last two grand to cover it, and I walked back out carrying the certificate that made it all legal. Then we celebrated with lunch, and in the afternoon Mr. Tall and Mr. Short hired a mighty impressive-looking boat and we all went out to pull a few rare pots and pans out of the ruins of Atlantis.

  We sent down half a dozen divers, all loaded with sacks and pouches to pull up their treasure. What they brung up was three sea shells and a blowfish.

  “Where are the artifacts?” demanded Mr. Short.

  “I keep telling you,” said the captain of the ship, “we have sailed this sea all our lives, and we have never seen a trace of this lost continent or city or whatever it is.”

  “Maybe we're not looking in the right place,” said Mr. Tall. “Let's head south.”

  The captain shrugged. “It's your money.”

  Well, we looked south and east and north and west. We looked right off the shore, and twenty miles out to sea, and eighty miles out to sea. We looked halfway to Italy and all the way back to Greece, but after a month we had to conclude that we had guessed wrong there wasn't no lost continent, or even a lost suburb, off the island of Crete.

  “I suppose in every enterprise, there comes a time to pull up stakes and call it a day,” said Mr. Short while we were eating dinner at a little waterfront taverna.

  “That's what happens when you put your faith in an academic,” said Mr. Tall distastefully. “Obviously the late lamented Professor MacDonald really did mean Cretin, and now the secret of Atlantis has gone to the grave with him.”

  “We'll head back to the mainland tomorrow morning,” said Mr. Short.

  “Since you guys are quitting and there ain't no million dollars’ worth of old ashtrays and such to be dug up out of the sea,” I said, “what about my fifteen thousand dollars?”

  “You stood to make a fortune if we had succeeded,” said Mr. Tall. “I see no reason why we should bear the brunt of our failure alone.”

  “Well, at least give me five thousand,” I said. “If you guys hadn't been after him, poor Brother Zachariah would have lasted out the week and I'd have earned my bodyguard money.”

  “Nonsense,” said Mr. Short. “You're the legal owner of Atlantis, such as it is. Go sublease the dredging rights.”

  “That's it?” I demanded. “You're just gonna get up and walk away?”

  “Well, if you feel we've been unfair to you in any way, we could shoot you first,” suggested Mr. Tall.

  The conversation kind of flattened out and lay there like a dead fish after that, and the next morning Mr. Tall and Mr. Short were gone, leaving me with nothing but my last fifteen dollars and the ownership of a continent that was so lost nobody could find it.

  I figured I might as well head back to the mainland, too, but when I went to the airport I found out that I didn't have enough money to pay for a plane ticket, and they wouldn't extend me no credit even though I was a man of the cloth. Then I moseyed over to the docks, and discovered that there weren't any boats leaving for the next three days.

  So since I was stuck there, I got to thinking about what Mr. Short had said about my being the legal owner of Atla
ntis, and suddenly the Lord hit me between the eyes with one of His better revelations, and I walked over to the telegraph office and got ahold of the biggest newspaper in Athens and spent all but my last seventeen cents placing an ad.

  I had given my address as the El Greco Hotel, so I spent my nights sleeping on a park bench and my days hanging around the lobby, and sure enough, in three days the money started pouring in, and within a week I'd made a quick forty-two thousand dollars and had barely scratched the surface of my potential market, and just when it seemed like me and God were finally gonna get our tabernacle, a bunch of Cretan police officers entered the El Greco's lobby and had a quick conversation with the desk clerk, who pointed to me, and a minute later I was being dragged, none too gently, to a squad car, and a couple of minutes after that we pulled up at the police station and they escorted me into a room with a single chair and damp white walls.

  “Is anyone gonna tell me what's going on?” I demanded. “I'm a peaceful law-abiding businessman what ain't been bothering no one, and suddenly you guys drag me off like I was some kind of undesirable or something.”

  “You are Lucifer Jones, are you not?” said the captain of the squad.

  “The Right Reverend Lucifer Jones,” I corrected him.

  “The same Lucifer Jones who placed an advertisement last week in The Daily Athenian?”

  “Yeah, that's me.”

  “I hate to think of how many laws you have broken, Reverend Jones,” said the captain.

  I pulled out my certificate of dredging rights. “I stand on the law,” I said. “I got every legal right to subdivide what I own and sell it off.”

  “You do understand, do you not, that every square centimeter of land you own is under the water?”

  “So what?”

  “Then how can you possibly sell lots with, as the ad says, ‘a Mediterranean view'?”

  “I didn't never say what angle the view was from,” I replied. "Caviar empire."

  He shook his head. “I am afraid we will have to confiscate any money you have appropriated and return it to the poor dupes who answered your advertisement,” he said. “And of course,” he added, taking my certificate away, “your dredging rights have been revoked.”

  “Then give me my thirty-two thousand dollars and we'll call it square,” I said.

  “Your fine comes to thirty-one thousand nine hundred dollars or fifteen years in jail,” he said calmly. “The choice is yours.”

  Well, I growled and I grumbled, but finally I didn't have no choice but to pay the fine.

  “Now give me my hundred dollars and let me out of here,” I said.

  “First you must sign over all claims to dredging rights,” he said. “Then it will be my pleasure to place you on a plane that is leaving for Rome in less than an hour.”

  “Who do I sign the rights over to?” I asked, looking at the certificate.

  He frowned. “The Hereklion Public Works building is closed today. To facilitate matters, you can sign them over to me—Captain Hektor Papadoras—and I will conclude the paperwork tomorrow.”

  I did what he said, and they put me on the plane—which cost sixty of the hundred dollars they owed me—and a few hours later I was in Rome, chastising my Silent Partner for turning His back on me just when things were going well for the two of us.

  I ate something I hadn't never heard of called a pizza pie for dinner, which I decided was okay for Italy but would never catch on in the States, and then I found a cheap hotel and took a room there.

  The next morning I picked up a newspaper and read a feature about how an enterprising Cretan policeman named Hektor Papadoras was selling private fishing concessions off the coast of his island.

  I gave my Silent Partner a serious talking-to, explained that He'd been falling down on the job and that I expected better of Him in the future, and then I set out afresh to make my fortune and bring His word to the degenerate heathen of the Roman Empire, or such portion of it as I could snugly fit in the Tabernacle of Saint Luke once it got itself built.

  5. Exercising Ghosts

  For a city that all roads were supposed to lead to, Rome wasn't exactly the most dazzling municipality I'd ever encountered. Of course, it may well be that I was somewhat hampered in my ability to enjoy its sights and sounds by the fact that I only had seventeen cents in my pocket, all that remained from my unfortunate ventures into treasure hunting and buying lost continents (which in this case was so lost that nobody ain't found it to this very day).

  Still, it takes more than poverty and a string of bad luck to keep a good Christian down, especially a man of the cloth, so I headed on down the Via Veneto looking for some way to replenish my funds, which was when I realized that even though the Vatican was right next door I was surrounded by a bunch of pagans, because even though I hunted up three different craps games on street corners none of the participants was willing to take my marker, even after I explained that I was toiling in the personal service of the Lord.

  Never one to be downcast by cruel turns of Fate, I hung around the bus terminal until a batch of Americans got off about noontime, introduced myself as their guide, and collected a quick three dollars a head from all seventeen of ’em. Fortunately they didn't know Rome any better than I did, so nobody objected as I led ’em through town pointing out Buckingham Palace and the Louvre and other such historic sights as I reckoned were towering about the countryside somewhere. It was when I was explaining to them how the Sistine Brothers had hired Leonardo da Vinci to give their chapel a couple of coats of paint that I began to detect unhappy stirrings in my little group, and by the time I got around to trying to collect some more money for a gondola ride to the Tower of Pisa they all just up and left.

  Still, fifty-one dollars for two hours of work wasn't bad pay, though it only took me ten minutes to lose it once I scared up another game of chance. I figured my Silent Partner has His attention directed elsewhere for the time being, and I was seriously considering taking a little fling at the guide business when I heard the worst kind of shrieking and wailing coming from a nearby house, and then the door opened and a priest walked out, followed by a pudgy-looking woman.

  “I told you this would be a waste of time, Signora,” he said. “Probably you need an exterminator.”

  “I need you!” she hollered.

  “You are a superstitious old woman,” he said. “Your church has more important things to do. You must stop bothering us with these foolish requests.”

  He turned on his heel and walked away, and she started weeping and wailing to beat the band, so I moseyed on over and asked her what the problem was.

  “Ghosts!” she said, answering in heavily-accented American.

  “Ghosts?”

  “In my attic,” she said, crossing herself. “Every night I hear them, pacing the floors and rattling their chains. So I asked the church to send someone to exercise the ghost, and instead they sent that ... that buffoon, who wouldn't know a ghost if it jumped up and spit on him.”

  “Well, I'm right sorry to hear it, ma'am.”

  “I even offered to pay a million lira to the church if they would just exercise my ghosts.”

  I couldn't figure out why she was so all-fired anxious to have someone take her ghosts out for a walk, but suddenly I thought I saw a way to raise a little grubstake for me and my Silent Partner.

  “Uh ... how much is a million lira in real money, ma'am?” I said.

  She didn't know, but she told me what it bought, and I figured we were talking close to a thousand dollars.

  “Well, ma'am, I don't want to say nothing bad about our competitors, me being a decent Christian, but it appears to me that you've been dealing with the wrong church.”

  “What are you talking about?” she said.

  “I'm the pastor of the Tabernacle of Saint Luke,” I said, “and it just so happens that exercising ghosts is one of the very best things we do.”

  “Where is this Tabernacle?” she asked suspiciously.

 
; “Well, truth to tell, it ain't quite built yet, but your kind donation could buy us the first cornerstone.”

  “I don't give money to any charlatan who comes around making promises,” she said. “First you exorcise my ghosts. Then I'll pay you.”

  “Ma'am, you got yourself a deal,” I said with my very best Sunday go-to-meeting grin. “I'll exercise the tar out of the critters.”

  “They're never around in the daytime,” she said. “Come back after dark.”

  “Sounds good to me, ma'am,” I said. “I'll see you then.”

  I shook her hand, and went off to buy myself some lunch with the money I'd gotten from the tourists, and with what was left I stopped by a pet store and bought a couple of leashes so these here ghosts wouldn't try to get away from me while I was exercising ’em. Then I bought a flashlight, and a nice black bag to hold everything, and I spent the rest of the afternoon testing out half a dozen fine Italian wines, all of which had been aging at least since mid-morning, and finally the sun set and I went back to the lady's house and knocked on the door.

  “I really didn't think you would come back,” she said, and now that it was dark out her whole manner was different, like she was scared to death or something. If it had been me and I felt that way about ghosts, I'd have wanted ’em permanently removed from the premises instead of just given a workout, but there ain't no accounting for the peculiarities of the female mind, even though it's frequently attached to other parts that seem to make a lot more sense, so I just walked into the living room and asked her where the ghosts were at.

  “Upstairs,” she said with a shudder. “In the attic.”

  “Thanks a lot, ma'am,” I said. “Just go about your business. I'll have ’em exercised in no time at all.”

  “What is that?” she asked, pointing to my black bag.

  “It's got all my exercising equipment in it,” I explained.

  “You are the bravest man I have ever met,” she said. “What is your name?”