Double Whammy (40 page)

“Lie down.”

“What for?”

With his good arm he flattened her on the bed. Using torn strips of bed linen, he tied her to the mattress. Catherine was impressed by the strength of the knots, considering his limited dexterity.

Thomas Curl unplugged the phone and tucked it under his right arm. “Don't try nuthin' funny,” he said to Catherine.

“Are you leaving?”

“Lucas has to go for a walk.”

Catherine nodded.

“I'm taking the phone,” said Curl.

“Could you pick up some food?” she asked. “I'm starving.”

Thomas Curl threw R. J. Decker's coat over his shoulders. “Burger King'll have to do,” he said.

“Wendy's has a salad bar,” Catherine suggested.

“All right,” Curl said, “Wendy's.”

 

He wasn't very hungry. He picked at some french fries while Catherine ate her salad and sipped a Diet Coke. Curl had had so much trouble untying her that he'd just cut the linen with a pocketknife.

“Did Lucas enjoy his walk?” she said.

“He was a good boy,” Curl said, patting the dog head. “A good boy for daddy.”

He put the phone back in the wall and told Catherine to try Montreal again. This time James answered.

“How's the convention?” Catherine said. “Lots of laughs?”

Thomas Curl moved dose to her on the bed and took out the gun, as a reminder.

Catherine said to James: “Just so you won't worry, I'm going up to my sister's in Boca for a few days. In case you called home and I wasn't there.” They talked for a few minutes about the weather and the encouraging advance orders for the electric vibrating chiropractic couch, and then Catherine said good-bye.

“That was good,” Thomas Curl said, munching a cold french fry. “You like him as much as Decker?”

“James is a sweetheart,” Catherine said. “If it's money you're after, he'd pay anything to get me back.”

“It's not money I'm after.”

“I know,” she said.

“So now he won't be worried, your doctor won't? When you're not home?”

“No, he's having a ball,” Catherine said. “He got interviewed for
Vertebrae Today
.”

Curl burped.

“A chiropractic magazine,” Catherine explained. She herself was not overwhelmed with excitement.

The phone rang. Catherine started to reach for it, but Curl thwacked her arm with the butt of the gun. When he answered, a man's voice said: “It's me. Decker.”

“You here yet?”

“On the way,” Decker said. He was at a service plaza in Fort Pierce, gassing up Al Garcίa's car.

“You ready to trade?”

“Absolutely,” Decker said. “How's Mrs. Gómez?”

Curl put the receiver to Catherine's cheek. “Tell him you're fine,” he said.

“R.J., I'm fine.”

“Catherine, I'm sorry about this.”

“It's okay—”

Curl snatched the phone back and said: “This is the way we're going to do it: a straight-up trade.”

“Fair enough, but I choose the place.”

“Fuck you, bubba.”

“It's the only way, Tom. It's the only way I can make sure the lady walks free.”

Curl rubbed his brow. He wanted to stand firm, but his mind could not assemble an argument. Every thought that entered his head seemed to sizzle and burn up in the fever. As Decker instructed him when and where to go, Thomas Curl repeated everything aloud in a thick, disconnected voice. Luckily Catherine jotted the directions on a Holiday Inn notepad, because Curl forgot everything the instant he hung up.

“Hungry, Lucas?” He opened the brown grocery bag. He had stopped at the store and bought the dog a little treat.

Catherine eyed the package. “Gaines Burgers?”

“His favorite,” Curl said. He unwrapped one of the patties and mashed it between the dog's jaws, still fixed obdurately to his own arm. The red meat stuck to the animal's dried yellow fangs. “You like that, dontcha, boy?”

Catherine said, “He's not hungry, Tom. I can tell.”

“Guess you're right,” Curl said. “Must be all the traveling.”

Deacon Johnson tapped lightly on the door. For once, Reverend Weeb was alone.

“Charles, you'd better come see.”

“What now?” the preacher said irritably.

He followed Deacon Johnson out of the townhouse office, through the courtyard, down a sloping walk to a boat ramp on the newly sodded shore of Lunker Lake Number One. Many of the anglers had begun to arrive, so the ramp was crowded with needle-shaped bass boats, each attached to a big candy-colored Blazer, Jeep, or Bronco. In the midst of the gleaming congregation was an immense army-green garbage truck with a warped old skiff hitched to its bumper.

Two men leaned impassively against the truck; one was tall and muscular and black, the other roundish and Latin-looking. The rest of the bass fishermen studied the unusual newcomers from a distance, and chuckled in low tones.

Charlie Weeb approached the men and said, “If you're looking for the dump, it's out Road 84.” He pointed west, toward the dike. “That way.”

Jim Tile said, “We're here for the bass tournament.”

“Is that right?” Weeb eyed the rowboat disdainfully. “Sorry, son, but this event's not open to the general public.”

Al Garcίa said, “We're not the general public, son. We're the Tile Brothers.” Coolly he handed Charlie Weeb the receipt for the registration fee. Without a glance, Weeb passed it to Deacon Johnson.

“It's them, all right,” Deacon Johnson reported. “Boat number fifty, all paid up.”

“You don't look like brothers,” Reverend Weeb said accusingly.

“
Sί,
es verdad,”
Jim Tile said.

“Fo sho,” added Al Garcίa. “We true be bros.”

They had practiced the routine on the long ride down. Jim Tile had done much better learning Spanish than Al Garcίa had done learning jive. Still, it achieved the desired effect.

Charlie Weeb puckered his cheeks and anxiously ran a manicured hand through his perfect blond hair. “Gentlemen, excuse me for a sec,” he said, and took Deacon Johnson aside.

“This is some fucking joke.”

“It's no joke, Charles.”

“Spic and spade brothers? I'd call that a joke.” Weeb was spitting, he was so exasperated. “Izzy, tonight we're flying in one thousand loyal Christian prospective homesite buyers. I promised them to do a healing, I promised them to have some world-class bass fishing, and I promised to get their shining faces on national cable TV. All this, Izzy, in order to
sell some fucking
lots.
”

“Keep your voice down, Charles.” Even at a whisper, Reverend Weeb could rattle the china.

Deacon Johnson took him by the arm and edged away from the newcomers. Standing in the rank shadow of the garbage truck, Deacon Johnson said, “We've taken their money, Charles, we've got to let them fish.”

“Screw the entry fee. Give it back.”

“Oh fine,” Deacon Johnson said, “and when the newspapers call, you explain why you did it.”

The thought of bad publicity sent a cold razor down Charlie Weeb's spine.

Almost plaintively he said: “These folks I'm bringing down, Izzy, they don't want to see a spic and a spade in this family-oriented development. The folks at home who watch my show, they don't want to see 'em either. I'm not here to pass judgment, Izzy, I'm here for the demographics. Fact is, my people are the whitest of the white. Soon as they spot those two guys, that's the ball game. They'll think everything they heard about South Florida is true, niggers and Cubans everywhere. Even on the bass lakes.”

Deacon Johnson said, “There's forty-nine other boats in this tournament, Charles. Just tell your camermen to stay off the little wooden one. As for the garbage truck, we'll park it out back in the construction lot. Loan these guys a decent rental car to get around the property. Anyone asks, tell 'em they work here.”

“Good idea,” Weeb said. “Say they pour asphalt or something. Excellent.” Sometimes he didn't know what he'd do without Izzy.

Deacon Johnson said, “Don't worry, Charles, just look at them—they don't have a chance. It'll be a holy miracle if that termite bucket doesn't sink at the dock.”

All Charlie Weeb could say was: “Whoever heard of a spic and a spade in a pro bass tournament?”

But the mysterious Tile Brothers were already putting their boat in the water.

 

The next day was practice day, and in keeping with tradition the anglers gathered early at the boat ramp to exchange theories and cultivate possible excuses. Because no one had fished Lunker Lakes before, the talk was basically bullshit and idle speculation. The bass would be schooled by the culverts. No, they'd be holding deep. No, they'd be bedded in the shallows.

Only Charlie Weeb and his men knew the truth: there were no bass except dead ones. The new ones were on the way.

Eddie Spurling realized that something was terribly wrong, but he didn't say a word. Instead of mingling with his pals over coffee and biscuits, he strolled the shore alone in the predawn pitch. A couple of the other pros sidled up to make conversation, but Eddie was unresponsive and gloomy. He didn't show the least interest in Duke Puffin's deep-sonic crankbait or Tom Jericho's new weedless trolling motor.

While the mockingbirds announced sunrise, Eddie Spurling just stared out at the still brown canals and thought: This water's no damn good.

Al Garcia and Jim Tile were the last to get started. They'd been briefly delayed when Billie Radcliffe, a very white young man from Waycross, Georgia, said to Jim Tile: “Where's your cane pole, Uncle Remus?” Jim Tile had felt compelled to explain the importance of good manners to Billie Radcliffe, by way of breaking every single fishing rod in Billie Radcliffe's custom-made bass boat. This had been done in a calm and methodical way, and with no interference, since Al Garcίa and his Colt Python had supervised the brief ceremony. From then on, the other fishermen steered clear of the Tile Brothers.

It was just as well. All the practice at Lake Jesup had been in vain: Al Garcίa proved to be the world's most dangerous bass angler. On four occasions he snagged Jim Tile's scalp with errant casts. Three other times he hooked himself, once so severely that Jim Tile had to cut the barbs off the hooks just to remove them from Garcίa's thigh.

Casting a heavy plug rod required a sensitive thumb, but invariably Garcίa would release the spool too early or too late. Either he would fire the lure straight into the bottom of the boat, where it shattered like a bullet, or he would launch it straight up in the air, so it could plummet dangerously down on their heads. In the few instances when the detective actually managed to hit the water, Jim Tile put down his fishing rod and applauded. They both agreed that Al Garcίa should concentrate on steering the boat.

With the puny six-horse outboard, it took them longer to get around the canals, but by midday they reached the spot Skink had told them about, at the far western terminus of Lunker Lake Number Seven. Charlie Weeb's landscapers had not yet reached this boundary of the development, so the shores remained as barren white piles of dredged-up fill. The canal ended at the old earthen dike that separated the lush watery Florida Everglades from concrete civilization. Charlie Weeb had pushed it to the brink. This was the final barrier.

Jim Tile and Al Garcίa had the Number Seven hole to themselves, as Skink had predicted they would. It was too sparse, too bright, and too remote for the other bassers.

Garcίa nudged the skiff to shore, where Jim Tile got out and collected several armfuls of dead holly branches from a heap left by the bulldozers. Hidden under a tarp in the boat were three wooden orange crates, which they had brought from Harney in the bin of the garbage truck. Garcίa tied the crates together while Jim Tile stuffed the dead branches between the slats. Together they lowered the crates into the water. With a fishing line, Al Garcίa measured the depth at thirteen feet. He marked the secret spot by placing two empty Budweiser cans on the bank.

This was to be Queenie's home away from home.

“Oldest trick in the book,” Skink had told the detective two nights before. “These big hawgs love obstructions. Lay back invisible in the bush, sucking down dumb minnows. Find the brushpile, you find the fish. Make the brushpile, you win the damn tournament.”

That was the plan.

Jim Tile and Al Garcfa felt pretty good about pulling it off; there wasn't another boat in sight.

There was, however, a private helicopter.

The Tile Brothers hadn't bothered to look up, since it flew over only once.

But once was all that Dennis Gault's pilot needed to mark his map. Then he flew back to the heliport to radio his boss.

 

That evening, after the practice day, the mood at the boat ramp ranged from doubtful to downhearted. No one had caught a single bass, though none of the fishermen would admit it. It was more than a matter of pride—it was the mandatory furtiveness of competition. With two hundred and fifty thousand dollars at stake, lifelong friendships and fraternal confidences counted for spit. No intelligence was shared; no strategies compared; no secrets swapped. As a result, nobody comprehended the full scope of the fishless disaster that was named Lunker Lakes. While scouting the shoreline, a few anglers had come across dead yearling bass, and privately mulled the usual theories—nitrogen runoff, phosphate dumping, algae blooms, pesticides. Still, it wasn't the few dead fish as much as the absence of live ones that disturbed the contestants; as the day wore on, optimism evaporated. These were the best fishermen in the country, and they knew bad water when they saw it. All morning the men tried to mark fish on their Humminbird sonars, but all that showed was a deep gray void. The banks were uniformly steep, the bottom uniformly flat, and the lakes uniformly lifeless. Even Dennis Gault was worried, though he had an ace up his L. L. Bean sleeve.