King Of California Page #2

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Miranda, I gotta go.

What are you talking about?

What is this all about?

- Just tell me what you're doing.

- It's embarrassing, okay?

I take these medications.

I gotta do pit stops all the time.

Yeah. I'm sorry.

Can you back up to the bushes?

[Beeps]

[Automated female voice]

When possible, make the first

available legal U-turn.

[Man choking, struggling]

[Gasps]

[Guttural cries]

Charlie?

[Scraping, tapping]

[Car ignition faltering]

[Car engine starts]

Ow! Sh*t!

Charlie? You okay?

I'm fine.

Stop! Stop!

God...

What are you doing?

Do you have to do this right now?

The stars are

in a perfect position.

They won't be like this

for another year.

I can't stop you, can I?

Work your magic.

Oh, yeah, that's it,

the northerly declination

from Sirius the Dog Star.

That's my baby!

This is it.

This is what?

What're you doing?

Come on, let's go.

Come on.

Oh, come on.

[Truck horn blaring]

Come on,

I'll give you a boost.

Come here.

Just so you know,

I have to be at work

in, like, seven hours.

Relax.

You'll be there.

Miranda...

meet the Excalibur 1000.

[Machine powers up]

Is that a metal detector?

[High-frequency whine,

beeping, chirping]

[Beeping faster]

Now you hear that?

That's maybe tin foil or nickel.

Nickels and tin foil

make that low tone.

We call that the fool's gold

of modern prospecting.

Prospecting?

Yeah.

[Beeping faster]

[Tone changes]

High tone,

could be silver.

Silver is a great conductor.

Must be one

of the old quarters.

The new ones,

they don't have much silver in them.

We are well on our way

to paying off the Visa.

[Chuckling]

You know, Charlie,

the manual says

you can plug headphones

into that thing,

so why don't you do that

so that we don't get popped?

No, then you wouldn't

get to hear it

when it makes a noise.

- [Sighs]

- [Beeping grows higher]

Huh!

[Dog barking]

[Whispering]

Get the shovel!

- We have a shovel?

- It's in the bag!

I'm am out of here.

We're going to get busted.

We're not doing

anything illegal.

This is public land.

There's gotta be

something illegal about...

You are so lame,

Miranda.

I can't believe I raised

such a law-abiding citizen.

Oh, you raised me?

Of course,

the highest tone

is for the best conductor of them all.

[Spits]

[Laughing]

[Crying]

Eureka.

Can we go now?

Don't you want to

even know what this is?

Okay.

What is it?

This is a doubloon.

A what?

A doubloon

from the 17th century.

The diary of Father

Juan Florismartes Torres,

So, I picked up this book

in the hospital library

and it got me thinking.

I thought the whole idea

behind the hospital

was for you

to stop thinking.

And I got some other books.

More books, eh?

Along with a gold crucifix

and the statue of the Virgin,

Father Torres' expedition

had a cache of gold doubloons.

Now, these doubloons were dated.

This one...

it's hard to see.

Something...

Something, 1624.

Let me see.

That's 24 carats.

Records that I obtained from

the Spanish Treasury indicate...

Okay. Wait, wait, wait.

How the hell

did you obtain records

from the Spanish Treasury

from a mental institution?

The internet.

- Perfect.

- No, I'll show you.

Here.

[Paper shuffling]

See for yourself.

Father Torres' doubloons

were dated.

Now, coins minted in 1624

were allocated

for what we call now,

you know, "petty cash,"

which Torres lost sooner.

Nobody else was around back then,

so it's gotta be his.

Now based upon

where we found this

and the reports of

the underground cave system...

- Cave system?

- Right. Right.

So all we gotta do

is follow this journal

and it's going to lead us

to the treasure.

It's just...

It's waiting to be found.

You're serious.

Yeah.

Look, a lot of people

must've read this journal.

How come nobody ever found

the treasure before?

They've tried!

I mean, lots of people have tried.

It's been well documented,

all right?

I've read all of them.

- I marked chapters for you.

- Oh, Charlie.

The thing is that nobody realized how special

this Father Torres was.

Nobody ever went and looked

into his background!

Charlie, these people

all look like idiots.

[Sighs]

I'm going to go to bed.

- Miranda...

- You're freaking me out.

Okay?

[Foot steps]

[Knocking]

[Sighs]

I'm not decent.

Come on, Miranda.

Open up.

Sometimes I wake up and...

and I don't know if I'm me.

That's why you take

your medication.

No, it's not that.

I'm me. I know that.

What I'm saying is that...

I don't know if I exist.

- Oh.

- Come on, listen...

No, l... I'm listening.

You're not sure you exist.

- And?

- I've done a lot of things in my life.

But maybe I haven't

done what I need to do.

And if I do this,

maybe I will.

Exist?

Yeah.

You're shaking.

You need something to eat.

Read the book.

This is so stupid.

Please?

All right, I'll read it

if you eat something.

- [Knocking]

- [Sighs]

This is for you.

[Miranda narrating]

Parents have this advantage over us.

We want to believe in them.

And when we don't

believe in them,

we still just want

to be with them.

[Bell tolling]

[Man speaking

foreign language]

Hey, Padre!

[Charlie]

As a young man,

Torres was a mathematics scholar in Seville.

[Man screaming]

In fact, it looks like he might've

been sent to the New World

because certain of his ideas

were considered heretical.

[Screaming continues]

But that's not

what's important.

The thing that matters here

is that he was more accustomed

to communicating

with numbers than words.

So then, it dawned

on me one night,

while the other patients

were watching JAG.

They like that in there?

- They love it.

- Oh.

Anyway, I noticed that some

of the passages repeated themselves.

I read the book again,

and sure enough they did.

So I began to wonder, why would

somebody in the middle of nowhere

presumably with a limited

supply of pen and ink

repeat themselves like that?

Senility?

He was writing in code.

Took me a long time,

but I finally broke it.

I gotta go.

[Charlie muttering]

[Charlie]

See, I transposed

Padre Torres' description

and found the area he was

in was exactly seven leagues

to the north of where

he said he was.

It's simple, really.

[Miranda narrating]

Charlie believed

the doubloon had been dropped

when Father Torres'

expedition was robbed

and half of his party

was massacred.

He thought that Torres

had headed northwest after that,

and that we were following

the same route.

"Journal of Father

Juan Florismartes Torres,

"18th of October,

the year of our Lord 1624.

"As we reached the summit and look

down into the valley of Santa Clarita,

"there unfolded before us

was as beautiful a picture

"as one ever looked upon.

"We saw a large green meadow

of thousands of acres, more or less,

"its north side bounded

by low mountains at the base

"which oak trees

were plentiful.

"It was like a grand old park,

"such as we read of

in fairy tales.

"We passed that night

under some large trees

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