“I’ll call you when I get back,” Decker said.
“Take care,” Catherine said. “Slurp an oyster for me.”
At dusk Skink was ready to roll. Shower cap, weathersuit, mosquito netting, lamps, flippers, regulator, scuba tank, dive knife, speargun and, purely for show, a couple of cheap spinning rods. R. J. Decker was afraid the johnboat would sink under the weight. He decided there was no point in bringing the cameras at night; a strobe would be useless at long distance. If his theory was correct, Dickie Lockhart wouldn’t be anywhere near the lake anyway.
They made sure they were alone at the dock before loading the boat and shoving off. It was a chilly night, and a northern breeze stung Decker’s cheeks and nose. At the throttle, Skink seemed perfectly warm and serene behind his sunglasses. He seemed to know where he was going. He followed the concrete ribbon of I-55, which was sunk into the marshlands on enormous concrete pilings. The highway pilings were round and smooth, as big as sequoias but out of place; the cars that raced overhead intruded harshly on the foggy peace of the bayous. After twenty minutes Skink cut off the motor.
“I prefer oars,” Skink said, but there were none in the boat. “You can hear more with oars,” he remarked.
R. J. Decker noticed what he was talking about. Across the water, bouncing off the pilings, came the sound of men’s voices; pieces of conversation, deep bursts of laughter, carried by the wind.
“Let’s drift for a while,” Skink suggested. He picked up one of the fishing poles and made a few idle casts. Darkness had settled in and the lake was gray. Skink cocked his head, listening for clues from the other boat.
“I think I see them,” Decker said. A fuzzy pinprick of white light, rocking.
“They’ve got a Coleman lit,” Skink said. “Two hundred yards away, at least.”
“They sound a helluva lot closer,” Decker said.
“Just a trick of the night.”
After a few minutes the light went out. Skink and Decker heard the ignition sounds of a big engine. It was probably a bass boat. Swiftly Skink hand-cranked the outboard and aimed the johnboat toward the other craft. Legs wide, he stood up as he steered, though Decker couldn’t imagine how he could safely navigate around the highway pilings, not to mention the submerged stumps and brushpiles that mined the lakeshore. Every so often Skink would cut the outboard and listen to make sure the other boat was still moving; as long as their engine was running, they’d never know they were being followed. Sitting on two hundred horses, you can’t hear yourself think.
After a few minutes the other boat stopped and the Coleman lantern flickered on again. The men’s voices were faint and more distant than before.
“We’ll never get close,” Skink muttered, “unless we walk it.”
Fortuitously the wind pushed the johnboat into a stand of lily pads. Hand over hand, Skink used the roots to pull them to shore, where Decker tied the boat to a sturdy limb. He grabbed a flashlight and hopped out after Skink. They followed a ragged course along the shoreline for probably four hundred yards, taking tentative spongy steps and using the flashlight sparingly. They passed through a trailer park with particular stealth, not wishing to be mistaken for bears and blasted to oblivion. Far removed from his native territory, Skink’s nocturnal instincts remained sound; his path brought them out of the bogs within thirty yards of where the bass boat floated.
The lantern illuminated two men, not the Rundell brothers. “Local boys,” Skink whispered. “Makes sense. Need someone who knows the water.” The anglers were not casting their fishing lines; rather, they seemed to be studying the water. The deck of the boat bristled with rods, each with a line out. In the penumbra a half-dozen red floats were visible bobbing around the sides of the boat. “Livebaiters,” Skink explained. “My guess is worms.”
R. J. Decker said, “It could be anybody out for a night on the lake.”
“No,” Skink said, “these boys are out to load the boat.”
And they were. Every so often one of the poles would bend and flutter, and a bass would splash out in the pads. Quickly one of the men would snatch the rig and reel in the fish as fast as he could. The bass were quickly unhooked and put in a livewell under a hatch in the stem.
This methodical fish-collecting went on for two hours, during which Skink said little and scarcely moved a muscle. Decker’s legs were cramping from sitting on his haunches, but it was impossible to stand up and stretch without being seen. Mercifully, as the wind stiffened and the temperature dropped, the two poachers finally called it quits. They reeled in the worms, stored the rods, cranked the big engine, and motored slowly—confoundingly so—up the southeastern shore of the lake. The boat stayed unusually close to the elevated highway, maneuvering in and out of the pilings; occasionally the lantern light flickered across the faces of the two men as they leaned over the gunwales, peering at something which neither Decker nor Skink could see.
Of course it was Skink who led the way back to the johnboat. By the time they got there, the marsh was empty and silent; the other men had finished their business and roared away.
Skink stripped down to his underwear and began fitting his considerable bulk into a wetsuit.
“I was afraid of this,” Decker said. Pitch black, fifty degrees, and this madman was going in. Decker couldn’t wait to see the look on the game warden’s face.
“Can you drive the boat?” Skink asked.
“I think I can handle it.”
“Take me along the pilings, the same way our buddies went.”
Decker said, “I wouldn’t dive in this soup.”
“Who’s asking you to? Come on, let’s move.”
They motored down the lake to the poachers’ bass hole. Skink strapped on a yellow scuba tank, adjusted his headlamp, and slipped over the side. He fitted a nylon rope around his waist and tied it to the transom of the boat. One sharp tug was a signal to stop, two meant reverse, and three tugs meant trouble. “In that case do your best to haul me in,” Skink advised. “If you can’t manage, then get the hell out of here, I’m gator chow.”
Decker steered the boat anxiously, monitoring Skink’s progress by the bubbles surfacing in the foamy wake. He wondered what the fish and turtles must think, confronted in their inky element by such a hoary gurgling beast. The engine’s throttle was set as low as it would go, so the johnboat moved at a crawl; Skink was a heavy load to tow.
When he found what he was searching for, Skink tugged so hard that the rope nearly pulled the stern under. Immediately Decker shifted to neutral so the propeller wouldn’t be spinning perilously when Skink came up.
He burst to the surface like a happy porpoise. He held a wire cage, three feet by three. Inside the trap were four healthy largemouth bass, which flapped helplessly against the mesh as Skink hoisted their manmade cell into the bow. He turned off the regulator, spit out the mouthpiece, and tore off his mask.
“Jackpot!” he said breathlessly. “Lookit here.”
Hanging from the fish cage was an eight-foot length of heavy monofilament line, transparent from more than a few feet away. Skink had cut one end with his dive knife. “They tied it to a willow branch—you’d never see it unless you knew where to look,” he said. “Get the wirecutters, Miami.”
Decker clipped the hinges off the fish cage. Skink reached in and took out the bass one by one, gently releasing each fish back into the lake. It was an oddly tender moment; Skink’s grin was as warm as the glow from the lantern. After the bass were freed, he returned the empty cage to the water and tied it to the same dry bough.
Decker had to admit that it was an ingenious cheat. Salt the lake with pre-caught fish and scoop them out on tournament day. Dennis Gault was right: these boys would do anything to win. The more he thought about it, the more disgusted Decker got. The poachers had corrupted this beautiful place, polluted its smoky mystery. He couldn’t wait to see their faces when they discovered what had happened, couldn’t wait to take their pictures.
Probing the waters
around the highway pilings, Decker and Skink located three more submerged cages, each stocked with the freshly caught bass. They counted eleven fish in all, four in the final trap; lifting the largest by its lower lip, Skink estimated its weight at nine and a half pounds. “This bruiser would have bought dirty Dickie first place,” he gloated. “Adiós, old girl.” And he let the fish go.
That left two smaller bass flopping in the mesh, their underslung jaws snapping in mute protest while starved burgundy gills flared in agitation.
“Sorry, fellas,” Skink said. “You’re the bait.” With a pair of bluntnosed pliers he carefully clipped the first two spines of the dorsal fin on each bass.
“What’re you doing?” R. J. Decker asked.
“Marking them,” Skink replied, “that’s all.”
With the fish still trapped, he securely rewired the door of the cage and eased it below the surface. He made sure it was tied securely to the concrete beam where Dickie Lockhart would be looking for it. By that time, of course, the bass champion would be in a state of desperate panic, wondering not only who was sabotaging his secret fish cages but also how in the world he would ever win the tournament now.
13
The day the Cajun Invitational Bass Classic was to begin, Dennis Gault was hundreds of miles away in Miami. Though it nettled him to miss the competition, strategy dictated that he sit out the tournament. He wanted Dickie Lockhart to feel safe and secure, knowing his archenemy wasn’t around to spy on him. He wanted Dickie and his gang to let their guard down.
Gault spent most of the morning in a surly mood, barking at secretaries and hanging up on commodity brokers who wanted the scoop on the new cane crop. In the morning paper he checked the weather in New Orleans and was elated to see that it was windy and cold; this meant rugged fishing. R. J. Decker called briefly to say things were going well, but offered no details. The other thing he didn’t offer was an apology for smashing Dennis Gault’s nose. Gault was miffed at Decker’s icy attitude but thrilled by the idea that the drama finally had begun. Gault’s hatred for Dickie Lockhart consumed him, and he would not rest until the man was not just broken but scandalized.
The cheating was only part of it; Gault would have rigged some bass tournaments himself, had he found trustworthy conspirators. The more virulent seed of Dennis Gault’s resentment was knowing that a dumb hick like Dickie was part of the bass brotherhood—the Good Old Boy that Gault himself could never be. Dickie was the champ, the TV personality, the world-famous outdoorsman; he could scarcely balance a checkbook or tie a Windsor, but he knew Curt Gowdy personally. In a man’s world, that counted for plenty.
Losing to Lockhart in a bass tournament was bad enough, but watching impotently while the asshole outsmarted everybody else was intolerable. Dennis Gault’s venom toward Dickie and his crowd spilled from a deep well. It was the way they looked at him when he showed up for the tournaments; he was the outsider, the dilettante with the money. Their eyes said: You don’t belong on this lake, mister, you belong on a golf course. He was constantly referred to as The Rich Guy from Miami. Coral Gables would have been fine, but Miami. He might as well have dropped in from Bolivia as far as the other bassers were concerned. To a man they were rural Deep Southerners, with names like Jerry and Larry, Chet and Greg, Jeb and Jimmy. When they talked it was bubba-this and brother-that, between spits of chaw. When Dennis Gault opened his mouth and all that get-me-my-broker stuff came out, the bassers looked at him as if he were a peeling leper.
Naively Gault had thought this antagonism might abate as his angling skills improved and he began to win a few tournaments. Things only got worse, of course, due in large measure to his own absymal judgment. For instance, Dennis Gault insisted on driving his burgundy Rolls Corniche to all the fishing tournaments. The purple vision of such a car towing a bass boat down the Florida Turnpike was enough to stop traffic, and it positively ruined the bucolic ambience of any dockside gathering. Many times Gault would return from a hard day of fishing to find his tires flattened, or see that some mischiefmaker had parked his burgundy pride beneath a tree filled with diarrhetic crows. But Gault was a peculiar man when it came to personal tastes; his father had driven a Rolls and by God that’s what Dennis would drive. He did not like pickup trucks, but a pickup would have helped him crack the bass clique. With the Corniche he stood no chance.
The incident with the helicopters is what sealed his excommunication.
Long before he had collected any evidence against Dickie Lockhart, Dennis Gault had proposed a monitoring program to deter cheating in the big-money tournaments. Rumors of flagrant bassplanting had surfaced even in the usually booster-minded outdoor magazines, and a few unseemly scandals had come to light. Consequently, professional tournament organizers were in a mood to mend their tarnished image. More as a public-relations gambit than anything, they had agreed to try Dennis Gault’s unusual experiment.
This was his plan: to have independent spotters in helicopters follow the fishermen and keep an eye on them during the competition. Gault even offered to pay for the chopper rentals himself, an offer which was snapped up immediately.
The problem with the plan was that largemouth bass don’t much care for noise, and helicopters make plenty. The fish didn’t like the penetrating thrum of the big machines, nor the waves the aircraft kicked up on the water. This was quickly evident in the Tuscaloosa bass tournament, where Gault’s airborne scheme was tried for the first and last time. Whenever the helicopters would appear and hover over the bass boats, the fish would go deep and quit eating. The wind from the rotors made it impossible to cast a lure, and blew the caps and forty-dollar Polaroid sunglasses off several irritated contestants. The whole thing was a truly terrible idea, and on the second day of the experiment two of the helicopters were actually shot out of the sky by angry bass fishermen. Because no one was seriously injured, the offenders were assessed only ten penalty pounds apiece off their final stringers. Dennis Gault finished in fourteenth place and was banished from the national Competition Committee forever.
Which was probably just as well. Soon afterward Gault had come to suspect Dickie Lockhart of cheating, and his obsession took root like a wild and irrational vine. It twisted itself so ferociously around Gault’s soul that even knowing of R. J. Decker’s progress in Louisiana only agitated him; Gault itched to be there to share in the stalk, though he knew it would have been a grave mistake. On the telephone Decker had addressed him in the same cold tones as the fishermen always did, as if he were a spoiled wimp, and this began to bother Gault too. Sometimes Decker seemed to forget he was hired help.
The way this is going, Gault thought, I’ll be the last to know if something shakes loose.
So he made a call and asked Lanie for another favor.
Decker got up before dawn, struggled into his blue jeans, and threw on a musty blue pea jacket. The DJ on the clock radio announced that it was forty-eight degrees in downtown Hammond. Decker shivered, and put on two pairs of socks; living in the South Florida heat turned your blood to broth.
Skink sat on the floor of the motel room and flossed his teeth. He wore only Jockey shorts, sunglasses, and the flowered bathcap. Decker asked if he wanted to go along but Skink shook his head no. The twang of the floss against gleaming bicuspids sounded like a toy ukulele.
“Want me to bring back some coffee?” Decker asked.
“A rabbit would be good,” Skink said.
Decker sighed and said he’d be back before ten. He got in the rental car and headed for the dock at Pass Manchac. On old Route 51 he encountered a steady stream of well-buffed Jeeps, Broncos, and Blazers, all towing bass boats to Lake Maurepas. Many of the trucks had oversize tires, tinted windows, and powerful fog lights that shot amber spears through the soupy-dark bayous. These vehicles served as the royal carriages of the top bass pros, who had won them in various fishing tournaments; a tournament wasn’t even worth entering unless a four-wheel-drive was one of the prizes. Many of the bassers won three or four a year. br />
At the fish camp the mood was solemn and businesslike as the sleek boats were backed off galvanized trailers into the milky-green water. The anglers all wore caps, vests, and jumpsuits plastered with colorful patches advertising their sponsors’ products; everything from bug spray to chewing tobacco to worms was shilled in this manner. Most of the fishermen wore Lucite goggles to protect their faces during the breakneck race to the bass hole. This innovation had recently been introduced to the bassing world after one unlucky angler died hitting a swarm of junebugs at fifty knots; one of the brittle beetles had gone through his left eyeball like a bullet and tunneled straight into his brain.
R. J. Decker sipped coffee from a Styrofoam cup and stood among a throng of wives, girlfriends, and mechanics waiting for the tournament to begin. A tall chalk scoreboard posted outside the Sportsman’s Hideout displayed the roster of forty entrants, which included some of the most famous bass fishermen of all time: Jimmy Houston of Oklahoma, Larry Nixon of Texas, Orlando Wilson of Georgia, and of course the legendary Roland Martin of Florida. Revered in the world of fishing, these names meant absolutely nothing to R. J. Decker, who recognized only one entry on the Cajun Invitational chalkboard: Dickie Lockhart.
But where was the sonofabitch? As the headlights of the trucks sporadically played across the water, Decker scrutinized the faces of the anglers, now hunkered behind the consoles of their boats. They looked virtually identical with their goggles and their caps and their puffed ruddy cheeks. Dickie’s boat was out there somewhere, Decker knew, but he’d have to wait until the weigh-in to see him.
At precisely five-thirty a bearded man in khaki trousers, a flannel shirt, and a string tie strode to the end of the dock and announced through a megaphone: “Bass anglers, prepare for the blast-off!” In unison the fishermen turned their ignitions, and Lake Maurepas boiled and rumbled and swelled. Blue smoke from the big outboards curled skyward and collected in an acrid foreign cloud over the marsh. The boats inched away from the crowded ramp and crept out toward where the pass opened its mouth to the lake. The procession came to a stop at a lighted buoy.