Double Whammy (26 page)

At about three o'clock Decker gave up on sleep and got out of bed. From the window there was no sign of Skink's campfire, or of Skink himself. Decker assumed—hoped, at least—that he was curled up in the bushes somewhere.

For Decker, being in the same house with Catherine was unnerving. Though it was also the house of James, Catherine's tastes predominated—smart and elegant, and so expensive that Decker marveled how such a destitute mongrel as himself had managed to keep her as long as he had. If only he could steal a few moments alone with her now, but how? Skink wanted to be on the road before dawn—there was little time.

Barefoot, and wearing only his underwear, Decker made his way through the long hallways, which smelled of Catherine's hair and perfume. A couple of times, near doorways, Decker had to step carefully over the white beams of photosensitive alarm units, which were mounted at knee-level throughout the house.

Photoelearonic burglar alarms were the latest rage among the rich in Miami, thanks to a widely publicized case in which a whole gang of notorious cat burglars was captured inside a Star Island mansion after tripping the silent alarm. The gang had comprised bold Mariel refugees relatively new to the country and unschooled in the basic skills and technology of modern burglary. While looting the den of the mansion, one of the Cuban intruders had spotted a wall-mounted photoelectronic unit and naturally assumed it was a laser beam that would incinerate them all if they dared cross it. Consequently, they did not. They sat there all night and, the next morning, surrendered sheepishly to police. The incident made all the TV news. Photoelectronic burglar alarms became so popular that burglars soon began to specialize in stealing the alarms themselves. In many of the houses where such devices were installed, the alarm itself was more valuable than anything else on the premises. For a while, all the fences in Hialeah were paying twice as much for stolen burglar alarms as they were for Sony VCRs, but even at five hundred a pop it was virtually impossible for thieves to keep up with the demand.

Tiptoeing around the alarm beams, Decker found the master bedroom at the far west end of Catherine's house. He listened at the door to make sure nothing was going on, and was greatly relieved to hear the sound of snoring.

Decker slipped into the room. He stood at the door until his eyes adjusted; the window shades were drawn and it was very dark. Gradually he inched toward the source of the snoring until his right foot stubbed a wooden bed poster. Decker bit back a groan, and one of the two forms in the big bed stirred and turned slightly under the covers. Decker knelt by the side of the bed, and the form snored directly into his face.

“Catherine,” he whispered.

She snored again, and Decker remembered how difficult it was to wake her up. He shook her gently by the shoulder and said her name again. This time she swallowed, sighed, and groggily opened her eyes. When she saw who it was, she sat up immediately.

She put her hand on the back of Decker's head and pulled him close. “What are you doing here?”

“Hey, careful with the neck,” Decker whispered back.

Catherine glanced at her husband to make sure he was still dozing. Decker had counted on James being a sound sleeper; unlike surgeons or obstetricians, chiropractors rarely had to go tearing off to the hospital in the middle of the night. Back spasms could wait. James was probably accustomed to getting a full nine hours.

“What is it, Rage?” Catherine said into his ear. Her hair was tangled from sleep, and her eyes were a little puffy, but Decker didn't care at all. He kissed her on the mouth and boldly slipped a hand under her nightshirt.

During the kiss Catherine sort of gulped, but still she closed her eyes. Decker knew this because he peeked; he had to. Some women closed their eyes during kissing just to be polite, but Catherine never did unless she was honestly enjoying herself. Decker was pleased to see her eyes shut. The activity beneath the nightshirt was another matter. With an elbow Catherine deftly had pinned his hand to her left breast; obviously that was as far as Mr. Hand would be allowed to go. It was all right with Decker; the left one had always been his favorite, anyway.

Catherine pulled away and said, “You're nuts. Get outta here.”

“Come to my room,” Decker said.

Catherine shook her head and gestured toward her husband.

“Leave him here,” Decker said playfully.

“He'll notice if I get out of bed.”

“Just for a few minutes.”

“No—”

So he kissed her again. This time she gave a shy purr, which Decker correctly read more as tolerance than total surrender. The second kiss lasted longer than the first, and Decker was getting fairly heated up when James suddenly rolled over, snorted, and said, “Cath?”

Carefully she lay down on the pillow, Decker's hand still resting on her breast. “Yes, hon?” she said.

Very sweet, Decker thought, a regular goddamn testimonial to marital bliss. He started to remove his hand but Catherine wouldn't let him. Decker smiled in the dark.

“Cath,” James said torpidly, “did Bambi ever come in?”

“No, honey,” she said. “He's probably out on the porch. Go back to sleep now.”

Catherine held motionless until James's breathing grew thick and regular. Then she turned her back to him so that she and Decker were face-to-face at the edge of the bed.

“Go back to your room,” she whispered. “Give me about ten minutes.”

“Thatta girl,” Decker said, rising off his knees. “One more kiss.”

Catherine said, “Ssshhh,” but she kissed him back. This time she let her tongue sneak into his mouth.

“We'll need your boat.”

Catherine and Decker opened their eyes mid-kiss and stared at each other. The whisper did not belong to James.

“The boat,” Skink said.

Catherine saw his tangled face looming impassively over Decker's shoulder.

“I don't mean to interrupt,” Skink said, “but there's some cops out front.”

Decker stood up and fought back a panic. It had to be Al Garcίa. He knew about the divorce, and Catherine would have been high on his list of interviews. The surprising thing was that he'd come in the dead of night—unless, of course, he knew Decker was inside the house.

Which any nitwit could have figured out from the rental car out front. Decker wondered if maybe deep down he wanted to go back to jail—what else could explain such carelessness? Skink took care of survival in the boonies, but the city was Decker's responsibility and he kept making dumb mistakes.

“Your boat,” Skink said again to Catherine, “it's tied up out back.”

She whispered, “I don't know where the keys are.”

“I don't need the keys,” Skink said, no longer making an effort to talk quietly. “We'll leave 'er up at Haulover, but don't go looking right away.”

The doorbell rang, followed by three sharp knocks.

James sat up in bed and reached for a lamp on the nightstand. Blearily he eyed Decker and Skink. “What's going on?”

Catherine was out from the covers, brushing her hair in the mirror. “You better get moving,” she said to Decker's reflection. “I'll keep them at the door.”

“We'll need a head start.”

“Don't worry, Rage.”

The doorbell rang again. The knocks turned to pounding.

Skink handed Decker his jeans and shoes.

“What's going on?” James the doctor wondered. “Where's the damn dog?”

 

Since the truck they'd been driving was registered to Dickie Lockhart, and since the New Orleans police had temporarily impounded it along with everything else belonging to Dickie, the Rundell brothers had been forced to take a Trailways all the way back to Florida. On the trip they talked primarily about two things—how their hero had died, and what had happened to their precious bass boat.

Dim as they were, even the Rundells realized that not much could be done for Dickie, but the boat was another issue. It had been stolen and then scuttled in the middle of Lake Maurepas, where it had turned up as bottom clutter on Captain Coot Hough's Vexilar LCD Video sonic fish-finder. Once the lost boat had been pinpointed, the Rundells had recruited an amateur salvage team made up of fellow bass anglers, who raised the vessel with a hand-cranked winch mounted on a borrowed construction barge. The sight of their sludge-covered beauty breaking the surface was the second saddest thing Ozzie Rundell had ever seen—the first being Dickie Lockhart's blue-lipped corpse in the big fish tank.

On the long bus ride back to Harney, Ozzie and Culver puzzled over who might have stolen their boat and why. The prime suspect seemed to be the violent hermit known to the Rundells only as Skink. A peculiar and vividly garbed man matching his description had been spotted on the lake by several other anglers, though no one had reported witnessing the actual sinking of the boat. What Skink was doing in Louisiana was a mystery that the Rundells did not contemplate for long—he was there, that's all that mattered. They clearly remembered the sky marshals leading him off the airplane in New Orleans, and they remembered the look of latent derangement in his eyes. Certainly the man was capable of stealing a boat; the riddle was finding a plausible motive. With a fellow like Skink, unadulterated malice might have been enough, but the Rundells remained doubtful. Culver in particular suspected revenge, or a plot hatched by one of Dickie Lockhart's jealous competitors. In the world of professional bassing it was well known that the Rundell brothers were the most loyal of Dickie's retinue, and in Culver's mind it made them likely targets.

If Culver were outwardly angry about the destruction of their prized fishing boat, Ozzie seemed more wounded and perplexed. He was particularly incredulous that Skink would commit such an atrocity against them for no apparent reason. In the ten-odd years since the shaggy woodsman had come to live on Lake Jesup, Ozzie had probably not exchanged a half-dozen words with him. On the rare occasions when Skink came to town, he purchased lumber and dry goods and used books from the Faith Farm—or so Mrs. Coot Hough had gossiped—but never once had he come into the bait shop for tackle or lures (though he was reputed to be an expert angler). Ozzie's only close encounters with the man were the many times he'd had to swerve to avoid the crouched figure plucking animal carcasses off the Gilchrist Highway or Route 222. Nearly all the citizenry of Harney had occasionally come across Skink and his fresh roadkills, and the general assumption was that he ate the dead critters, though no one could say for a fact. The only person known to have a friendly relationship with Skink was Trooper Jim Tile of the state highway patrol. Occasionally fishermen out on Lake Jesup would see Jim Tile sitting at Skink's campfire, but none of them knew the trooper well enough to ask about it. Actually no one in Harney, not even the blacks, knew Jim Tile much better than they knew Skink.

Which was why Ozzie was so stunned to hear his brother announce that they would visit the trooper as soon as they got home.

“We'll get some answers out of that nigger,” Culver said.

“I don't know,” Ozzie mumbled. He wasn't keen on confrontations. Neither was Culver, usually, but Dickie's murder had set him on edge. He was talking big and mean, the way he sometimes did after drinking.

Ozzie Rundell had a perfectly good reason for not wanting to see Jim Tile face-to-face: Jim Tile had been out at Morgan Slough the night Ott Pickney was killed, the night Ozzie was driving Tom Curl's truck. As they were speeding out from the trail, Ozzie had spotted the trooper on foot. What he didn't know was whether or not Jim Tile had spotted him too. Ozzie had assumed not, since nothing terrible had happened in the days that followed, but he didn't want to press his meager luck. He felt he should explain to his brother the risks of visiting Jim Tile, but as usual the words wouldn't come out. The day after the newsman's death, Ozzie had assured Culver that everything had gone smoothly at the slough, and hadn't mentioned the black trooper. If Ozzie revealed the truth now, Culver would be furious, and Ozzie was in no mood to get yelled at. The closest thing to a protest he could muster was: “A trooper is the law. Even a nigger trooper.”

Culver scowled and said, “We'll see about that.”

 

Jim Tile lived alone in a two-bedroom apartment on Washington Drive, in the black neighborhood of Harney. He had been married for three years until his wife had gone off to Atlanta to become a big-time fashion model. Jim Tile could have gone with her, since he had been offered an excellent job with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, but he had chosen to stay with the highway patrol in Florida. His loyalty had been rewarded with a protracted tour of duty in the most backward-thinking and racist county in the state. To stop a car for speeding in Harney was to automatically invite a disgusting torrent of verbal abuse—the whites hated Jim Tile because he was black, and the blacks hated him for doing a honky's job. Rough words were expected, and occasionally somebody would sneak up and cut the tires on his patrol car late at night, but it seldom went any further. In all the years only one person had been foolhardy enough to try to fight Trooper Jim Tile. The boy's name was Dekle, and he was eighteen, as big and white as a Frigidaire, and just about as intelligent. Dekle had been doing seventy in a school zone and had run down a kitten before Jim Tile caught up and forced him off the road. At the time Jim Tile was new to Harney, and the Dekle boy remarked how he had never seen a chocolate state trooper before. Now you have, said Jim Tile, so turn around and put your hands on the roof of the car. At which point Dekle punched Jim Tile with all his strength and was astounded to see the trooper merely rock back slightly on his heels, when any other human being would have fallen flat on his back, out cold. The fight did not last long, perhaps thirty seconds, and years afterward Dekle's right arm still hung like a corkscrew and he still got around with the aid of a special Lucite cane, which his mother had purchased from a mail-order house in Tampa. Even in a place where there was no shortage of booze or stupidity, no one in Harney had since gotten drunk enough or dumb enough to take a poke at the black trooper. Most folks, including Ozzie Rundell, wouldn't consider giving the man any lip.