Missing Witness (4 page)

A tall, athletically built man with bleach-blond hair down to his shoulders was holding open one of the two doors to the courtroom. An instant later, a second man, this one short and skinny, with thick glasses, opened the second door.

With both doors opened wide, a man in his late thirties, walking with a cane, appeared in the opened doorway and began to slowly enter the courtroom.

The man had long, jet-black hair, which was tied in a ponytail behind his head. He sported a black, drooping Fu Manchu mustache. He wore black boots with tall heels, white linen pants, a black silk shirt, and a shimmering red tie. His shirt was short-sleeved, and it revealed a large tattoo on his right forearm, consisting of a human skull with dollar signs in the eye sockets. Under the skull were written the words
IN GOLD WE TRUST
.

The man was walking slowly, limping slightly and leaning on his cane. His right leg was stiff and somewhat immobile.

The man used the cane in his right hand to steady himself and dragged his right foot behind him as he walked. The courtroom was hushed. The only sound was the echo of the tap of his cane, each time he placed it down hard on the marble floor, followed by the sliding of his right foot as he pulled it behind him.

“Is this your client, Mr. MacPherson?” the judge asked.

But before MacPherson could answer, his client, leaning on his cane, stiffening his back, and raising his head, answered for him.

“Your Honor, I am Blackjack Morgan,” the man with the cane announced loudly.

“That's your name?” the judge asked somewhat incredulously. “I mean the Blackjack part—that's your name?”

“Your Honor, I filed the necessary papers and had a court hearing in an actual courtroom in North Carolina in order to legally change my name from Sylvester Morgan to Blackjack Morgan. So, yes—that is my name. You see, Your Honor,” Morgan continued with a broad smile, “that name—Blackjack—is very important to me. That's why I went to court to get it added to my official name.”

“Just out of curiosity, Mr. Morgan, this ‘Blackjack' business—I know of only two proper uses of that word. One refers to a gambling game—a game of cards. And the other use of the word blackjack is to describe the instrument used by thugs and criminals to whack people on the head and
knock them out. Which use of the word did you entertain when you got your court-ordered name change?”

MacPherson spread his arms out wide in front of him, hoping to block his client's answer and explain away the name himself. But his client was too quick.

“Your Honor,” Morgan said, still smiling but narrowing his eyes ever so slightly, “the name ‘Blackjack,' to me, is highly personal and
private
.”

“Then that's where we will leave it…at least for now,” the judge said, eyeing Morgan closely.

The judge returned to the papers on the bench in front of him, leafed through some of them, and then looked back at Mr. Morgan.

“Before I bring this hearing to the point, now that we have Mr. Morgan's presence, I was wondering what your reason was for showing up late to my courtroom.”

“Your Honor, I can explain that,” Morgan replied quickly. “You see, I have a handicap—as you may have noticed—a leg injury. It slows me down. Many years ago, I was diving in a deepwater salvage operation when a big mako shark came by and decided to take a bite out of my leg. Carlton Robideau, my chief diver, and Mr. Orville Putrie, my technical assistant—they're with me today—they got me to the hospital. So here I am today, Your Honor, with salt water in my veins and afraid of no creature, shark or otherwise. No dive's too dangerous—no treasure is too deep for my salvage operation.”

Dr. Rosetti, at the other end of the counsel table, burst out with something between a laugh and a groan.

“Dr. Rosetti, do you have some comment about Mr. Morgan's statements to the court?”

Rosetti jumped to his feet and taking off his glasses and using them for emphasis, pointed them in the direction of Blackjack Morgan.

“Well, actually, I do, Your Honor. I happen to know, with absolute proof beyond question, that this supposed shark injury never took place. It's a fable. A myth that Mr. Morgan has concocted around the Cape Hatteras area to bolster his claim to be an expert in deep-sea salvage operations. Our investigation indicates that he was struck by a propeller on his own boat. If there were any sharks involved, they came sniffing around only when he started bleeding to death because of his own boating incompetence during one of his attempted dives.”

Morgan turned to face Rosetti, and he was no longer smiling. He raised his cane in the air and then slowly lowered it until it pointed directly toward Rosetti's face.

“Do not attempt to embarrass me, little man,” Morgan shouted. “Your Honor, just because this man here has himself a PhD degree and works at the Maritime Institute doesn't mean he has a right to put a stain on my reputation.”

Rosetti was being restrained by his attorney, and the judge finally intervened.

“All right, everybody sit down and cool off. You, Mr. Morgan, put that cane down—and you, Dr. Rosetti, sit down.”

Then the judge opened his file and located one of the pleadings filed by Morgan's attorney.

“I'm going to bring this thing to a head right now. Now, Mr. MacPherson, you make some allegations here as to why Mr. Morgan's salvage operation ought to be the one to be granted permission, by this court, to take over the salvage operation of the ship
Bold Venture
. Nevertheless, you're going to have to provide some very persuasive evidence as to why it was wrong for me to grant permission to Dr. Rosetti's team to run this operation.”

MacPherson attempted to bend over toward Morgan and whisper something in his ear, but Morgan waved him off and stood to his feet.

“Permission to address the Court, please, Your Honor?” Morgan asked with carefully manufactured courtesy.

The judge nodded.

“Your Honor, I come before this court with new evidence—yes, sir, Your Honor, sir, I sure do.”

“And what is that evidence? What's the additional proof that you have for this Court?”

“Guts.”

“Guts?” the judge asked, his face revealing confusion.

“That's right, Your Honor,” Morgan snapped back. “Guts. This Dr. Rosetti is afraid to go down when the weather gets a little nasty. When the waves are too high. That's why no salvage has begun yet. Now, me—and my crew here—we're maybe a little rough around the edges. We don't have the fancy degrees. But we got hair on our chests, salt water in our veins, and we go down and get those ships—and find that treasure and those artifacts. So guts, Judge, is what I got—and what this fancy PhD doesn't have.”

Rosetti could no longer restrain himself. He jumped to his feet.

“Your Honor, we really need the chance to respond to the outrageous comments from this man. I happen to know—my attorney's got the proof—that in the last court-ordered salvage operation of Mr. Morgan—the
Queen of Boston
—most of the ship's artifacts ended up being sold on the black market. Now it doesn't take a genius to figure out that Mr. Morgan here was selling off the pieces improperly, without permission of the court—”

But before Morgan could respond—his cane raised again and pointing at Rosetti—the judge brought the courtroom back into control.

“Sit down, Dr. Rosetti. Mr. Morgan, I've heard enough from you, too. Sit down, please. Now here's my ruling. I don't hear anything very persuasive from Mr. Morgan—even accepting Mr. Morgan's overblown explanation of his adventures on the high seas. Motion of Mr. Morgan is denied. Now, Attorney Hathaway, will you draw up the order as a result of this ruling?” With that, the judge nodded to Dr. Rosetti's counsel, who agreed.

The judge, bailiff, and clerk rose quickly, and the judge disappeared into his chambers.

Dr. Rosetti wasted no time in quickly approaching Blackjack Morgan. MacPherson had to stand between the two men to prevent a confrontation.

“Just one thing, Morgan,” Rosetti said with barely restrained rage. “You stay away from our diving site. This is a historical site, and I intend to preserve it for posterity. Not have it be sold off to the highest bidder like you would.”

“You and your
history,
” Morgan responded with a half smile. “All you want to do is make a name for yourself and get on television—to get your story on the Discovery Channel. But Blackjack Morgan here, I'm for free enterprise. I figure the best way to preserve history is to allow it to be sold on the open market. That is the American way, ain't it?”

Rosetti shook his head in disgust. “MacPherson, you tell your client not to come within a half mile of our diving site at the location of the
Bold Venture
. I see one of his boats near my dive site, and I'm going to call the court. I'll get federal marshals to arrest him.”

“Dr. Rosetti, I wouldn't worry,” MacPherson said in a honey-coated voice. “Mr. Morgan here knows the law. He's going to obey it. We may all be fighting about a ship belonging to Blackbeard, but that doesn't mean we have to act like pirates.”

MacPherson smiled at his own clever quip. And his client was also smiling—but for a different reason.

Possessing no degrees higher than his GED, Morgan had read every historical account, research paper, and book having to do with the ships sailed or destroyed by Edward Teach. Morgan also knew that the scholars were wrong when they announced that the death of Edward Teach, the famed Blackbeard, marked the beginning of the end of the “golden age” of piracy.

With the new cravings and appetites of the twenty-first century, he knew for a fact that piracy was still alive and well. And Blackjack Morgan—without hesitation—considered himself to be its current dark hero.

5

T
HAT DAY BEGAN, FOR
R
EVEREND
J
ONATHAN
J
OPPA
, the same as all the others. He had disciplined his life into a careful pattern of daily routines. Up at six
A.M
. He would open the shutters of his small, two-bedroom bungalow that was situated along the Croatan Sound on the outskirts of Manteo, North Carolina. The little town lay in the sheltered sound waters protected from the Atlantic Ocean by the Outer Banks, with their long, thin expanse of sand dunes, beach, and ocean homes that arced around the coast of North Carolina like a slightly bent arm for some hundred miles.

As usual, Joppa would take his black-and-white border collie, Hank, for a short walk and then feed him. After that, the minister would click on the radio for the morning news and quietly eat breakfast, alone, at the kitchen table that overlooked the quiet bay. After breakfast, he would shower, shave, and dress casually for his brisk walk to the church. And every other day he would put on his running clothes and jog the distance.

He usually took Hank with him. He had a dog bed and an open-air crate in the choir room—although Hank was well behaved enough to roam freely through the church building.

Joppa would usually arrive at the Safe Harbor Community Church half an hour to an hour before his loyal secretary, Sally, arrived.

Today he had to review the minutes of the church recreation committee, whose primary focus over the last three years had been a fundraising drive to build a softball stadium to be used as a youth outreach for the church. Then he had to do some work on his sermon for the upcoming Sunday—a message called “Maintaining Our Delicate Ecosystem—What Would Jesus Do?”

When he settled into his desk in the study, Joppa noticed that his new issue of
National Geographic
had come in. He leafed through it, noticing an article about the Australian Outback. He read the article from beginning
to end. Putting down the magazine and staring blankly out into space for a moment, he resolved to start work.

Joppa wheeled around in his chair in his study, looking for a book to retrieve for his sermon. He noticed the familiar photos. One showing him in his baseball uniform when he played in a major-league farm team. Next to it was a picture of his son, Bobby, then fourteen years old, wearing his Peewee League uniform and shouldering a baseball bat, grinning radiantly.

Next to that, was a photograph of his late wife, Carol.

Joppa studied the pictures. Those two faces always forced him to take personal inventory. Yet that would quickly be followed by a flood of emotions—guilt, anger, and a feeling of frustration because he knew that he could not change the unchangeable.

His intercom buzzed. It was Sally.

“Minnie and Wes Metalsmith are here. I know that they don't have an appointment. But Minnie says it's very urgent.”

Joppa grimaced. He had some idea of what they wanted.

“Okay, Sally,” he replied hesitantly, “tell them I'll see them—but I have only a few minutes.”

Before he had a chance to clear his desk, a tall, large-boned woman walked brusquely into the room, followed by her shorter, round husband, a balding man with a plain, pleasant face.

The two sat down in the chairs across from Joppa's desk. Immediately the woman commenced speaking.