After trying Catherine, Decker had made three attempts to reach Dennis Gault. Various disinterested secretaries had reported that the sugarcane baron was on long distance, in a conference, or out of town. Decker had not left his name or a message. What he had wanted to tell Gault was that the case was over (obviously) and that he was pocketing twenty grand of the advance for time and expenses. Gault would bitch and argue, but not too much. Not if he had any brains.
Al Garcίa showed up right on time. Decker heard the car door slam and waited for a knock. Then he heard another car pull up the gravel drive, and another. He looked out the window and couldn’t believe it: Al’s unmarked Chrysler, plus two green-and-whites—a whole damn posse for a lousy agg assault. Then a terrible thought occurred to him: What if it were something more serious? What if one of those Louisiana dirtbags had actually died? That would explain the committee.
The cops were out of their squad cars, having a huddle in front of Decker’s trailer. Garcίa’s cigarette bobbed up and down as he talked to the uniformed officers.
“Shit,” Decker said. The neighbors would be absolutely thrilled; this was good for a year’s worth of gossip. Where were the pit bulls when you needed them?
Decker figured the best way to handle the scene was to stroll outside and say hello, as if nothing were out of the ordinary. He was two steps from opening the door when something the approximate consistency of granite crashed down on the base of his neck, and he fell headlong through a dizzy galaxy of white noise and blinding pinwheels.
When he awoke, Decker felt like somebody had screwed his skull on crookedly. He opened his eyes and the world was red.
“Don’t fucking move.”
A man had him from behind, around the neck. It was a military hold, unbreakable. One good squeeze and Decker would pass out again. A large gritty hand was clapped over his mouth. The man’s chin dug into Decker’s right shoulder, and his breath whistled warmly in Decker’s ear.
Even when Decker’s head cleared, the red didn’t go away. The intruder had dragged him into the darkroom, turned on the photo light, and locked the door. From somewhere, remotely, Decker heard Al Garcίa calling his name. It sounded like the detective was outside the trailer, shouting in through a window. Probably didn’t have a search warrant, Decker thought; that was just like Garcίa, everything by the bloody book. Decker hoped that Al would take a chance and pop the lock on the front door. If that happened, Decker was ready to make some serious noise.
Decker’s abductor must have sensed something, because he brutally tightened his hold. Instantly Decker felt bug-eyed and queasy. His arms began to tingle and he let out an involuntary groan.
“Ssshhh,” the man said.
Forced to suck air through his nose, Decker couldn’t help but notice that the man smelled. Not a stink, exactly, but a powerful musk, not altogether unpleasant. Decker tuned out Garcίa’s muffled shouts, closed his eyes, and concentrated. The smell was deep swamp and animal, sweet pine tinged with carrion. Mixed in were fainter traces of black bog mud and dried sweat and old smoke. Not tobacco smoke, either, but the woodsy fume of campfires. Suddenly Decker felt foolish. He abandoned all thought of a struggle and relaxed in the intruder’s bearlike grip.
The voice in his ear whispered, “Nice going, Miami.”
R. J. Decker was right. Al Garcia didn’t have a search warrant. What he had, stuffed in an inside pocket of his J. C. Penney suit jacket, was a bench warrant for Decker’s arrest, which had been Federal Expressed that morning all the way from New Orleans. The warrant was as literate and comprehensible as could be expected, but it did not give Al Garcίa the right to bust down the door to Decker’s trailer.
“Why the hell not?” asked one of the uniformed cops.
“No PC,” Garcίa snapped. PC was probable cause.
“He’s hiding in the can, I bet.”
“Not Decker,” Garcίa said.
“I don’t want to wait around,” the other cop said.
“Oh, you got big plans, Billy?” Garcίa said. “Late to the fucking opera maybe?”
The cop turned away.
Garcίa grumbled. “I don’t want to wait either,” he said. He was tired of hollering through Decker’s window and he was also pissed off. He had driven all the way out here as a favor, and regretted it. He hated trailer parks; trailer parks were the reason God invented tornadoes. Garcίa could have sent only the green-and-whites, but Decker was a friend and this was serious business. Garcίa wanted to hear his side of it, because what the Louisiana people had told him so far was simply not believable.
“You want me to disable his vehicle?” asked the uniformed cop named Billy.
“What are you talking about?”
“Flatten the tires, so he can’t get away.”
Garcίa shook his head. “No, that won’t be necessary.” The standards at the police academy had gone to hell, that much was obvious. Anybody with an eighteen-inch neck could get a badge these days.
“He said he’d be here, right?” the other cop asked.
“Yeah,” Garcίa mumbled, “that’s what he said.”
So where was he? Why hadn’t he taken his own car? Garcίa was more miffed than curious.
The cop named Billy said, “Suppose the jalousies on the back door suddenly fell out? Suppose we could crawl right in?”
“Suppose you go sit under that palm tree and play with yourself,” Garcia said.
Christ, what a day. It began when the Hialeah grave robbers struck again, swiping seven human skulls in a predawn raid on a city cemetery. At first Garcίa had refused to answer the call on the grounds that it wasn’t really a murder, since the victims of the crime were already dead. One of them in particular had been dead since before Al Garcίa was born, so he didn’t think it was practical, or fair, that he should have to reinvestigate. Everybody in the office had agreed that technically it wasn’t a homicide; more likely petty larceny. What could a crumbly old skull be worth on the street? they had asked. Fifteen, twenty bucks, tops. Unfortunately, it developed that one of the rudely mutilated cadavers belonged to the uncle of a Miami city commissioner, so the case had hastily been elevated to a priority status and all detectives were admonished to keep their sick senses of humor to themselves.
About noon Garcίa had to drop the head case when a real murder happened. A Bahamian crack freak had carved up his male roommate, skinned him out like a mackerel, and tried to sell the fillets to a wholesale seafood market on Bird Road. It was one of those cases so bent as to be threatened by the sheer weight of law-enforcement bureaucracy—the crime scene had been crawling not just with policemen, but with deputy coroners, assistant prosecutors, immigration officers, even an inspector from the USDA. By the time the mess was cleaned up, Garcίa’s bum shoulder was throbbing angrily. Pure, hundred-percent stress.
He had spotted the express packet from New Orleans when he got back to the office. A perfectly shitty ending to a shitty day. Now R. J. Decker had made like a rabbit and Garcίa was stuck in a cracker-box trailer park trying to decide if he should leave these moron patrolmen to wait with the warrant. He was reasonably sure that, left unsupervised, they would gladly shoot Decker or at least beat the hell out of him, just to make up for all the aggravation.
“Screw it,” Garcia said finally, “let’s go get some coffee and try again later.”
“He’ll be back,” Decker said when he heard the police cars pull away.
Skink had let go of his neck. They were still in the darkroom, where Skink’s fluorescent rainsuit shone almost white in the wash of the red bulb. Skink appeared more haggard and rumpled than Decker remembered; twigs and small pieces of leaf hung like confetti in his long gray braid. His hair stuck out in clumps from under the shower cap.
“Where have you been?” Decker asked. His neck was torturing him, like someone had pounded a railroad spike into the crown of his spine.
“The girl,” Skink said. “I should have known.”
“Lanie?”
&nb
sp; “I got back to the room and there she is, half-undressed. She said you’d invited her to fly up—”
“No way.”
“I figured,” Skink said. “That’s why I tied her up, so you could decide for yourself what to do. You cut her loose, I presume.”
“Yeah.”
“And screwed her too?”
Decker frowned.
“Just what I thought,” Skink said. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here.”
“Listen, captain, that cop is a friend of mine.”
“Which one?” With one blackened finger Skink scratched absently at a brambly eyebrow.
The Cuban detective. Garcίa’s his name.”
“So?”
“So he’s a good man,” Decker said. “He’ll try to get us a break.”
“Us?”
“Yeah, with the New Orleans people. Al could make it as painless as possible.”
Skink studied Decker’s face and said, “Hell, I guess I squeezed too tight.”
They went to a Denny’s on Biscayne Boulevard, where Skink fit right in with the clientele. He ordered six raw eggs and a string of pork sausages. Decker’s neck had stiffened up, and he had the worst headache of his life.
“You could have just tapped me on the shoulder,” he complained.
“No time to be polite,” Skink said, without a trace of apology. “I did it for your own good.”
“How’d you get in, anyway?”
“Slim-jimmed the back door. Two minutes later and your bosom buddy Garcia would have had you in bracelets. Eat something, all right? We got a long damn ride.”
Decker had no intention of taking a long damn ride with Skink, and no intention of getting picked up as an accessory to murder. He had decided not to turn Skink in to the police, but the man would have to make his own escape; the partnership was over.
Skink said, “Your neighbors’ll raise hell about the dead dogs.”
“Oh?”
“Couldn’t be helped,” Skink said, slurping a drip of yolk from his mustache. “Self-defense.”
“You killed the pit bulldogs?”
“Not all of them. Just the ones that were chasing me.”
Before Decker could ask, Skink said, “With a knife. No one saw a thing.”
“God.” Decker’s brainpan felt like the bells of Notre Dame. He noticed that his fingers twitched when he tried to butter a biscuit. It dawned on him that he was not a well person, that he needed to go to a doctor.
But before he abandoned Skink he wanted to ask about Dickie Lockhart. He wanted to hear Skink’s version, in case it never came out.
“When you left the motel in Hammond,” Decker began, “where’d you go?”
“Back to the lake. Borrowed a boat and found Dickie’s fish traps.”
“You’re kidding.”
Skink beamed. A brown clot of sausage was stuck between his two front teeth. “The boat I took was Ozzie Rundell’s,” he said. “Dumb fucker left the keys in the switch and a map in the console.”
“A depth chart of Lake Maurepas,” Decker guessed, “with the trap sites marked.”
“Marked real clear, too,” Skink said, “in crayon, just for Ozzie.”
It made sense. While Dickie Lockhart was celebrating his victory, the Rundells would sneak out on the lake to clean up the evidence. Dickie was so cheap he probably used the same traps over and over.
“Those fish he won with were Florida bass,” Skink was saying. “Probably trucked in from Lake Jackson or maybe the Rodman. That mudhole Maurepas never saw bass that pretty, you can bet your ass—”
“What’d you do after you found the traps?” Decker cut in.
Skink set down his fork. “I pulled the plug on Ozzie’s boat and swam to shore.”
“Then?”
“Then I stuck out my thumb, and here I am.”
Two cops came in, walking the cowboy walk, and took a booth. Cops ate at Denny’s all the time, but still they made Decker nervous. They kept glancing over at Skink—hard glances—and Decker could tell they were dreaming up an excuse for a hassle and ID check. He laid a ten on the table and headed for the car; Skink shuffled behind, shoving a couple of biscuits into the pockets of his rainsuit. No sooner were they back on the boulevard than Decker spotted another patrol car in the rearview. The patrol car was following closely, and Decker could only assume that Al Garcia had put out the word. When the blue lights came on, Decker dutifully pulled over.
“Hell,” Skink said.
Decker waited until both cops were out of the car, then he punched the accelerator and took off.
Skink said, “Sometimes I like your style.”
Decker guessed he had a three-minute lead. “I’m going to turn on Thirty-sixth Street,” he said, “and when I hit the brakes, you bail out.”
“Why?” Skink asked calmly.
Decker was pushing the old Plymouth beyond its natural limits of speed and maneuverability. It was one of those nights on the boulevard—every other car was either a Cadillac or a junker, and nobody was going over thirty. Decker was leaving most of his tread on the asphalt, and running every stoplight. The rearview was clear, but he knew it wouldn’t take long for the cops to radio for backup.
“You might want to try another road,” Skink suggested.
“You’re a big help,” Decker said, watching a bus loom ahead. He took a right on Thirty-fifth Street and braked the car so hard he could smell burnt metal. “Get going,” he said to Skink.
“Are you crazy?”
“Get out!”
“You get out,” Skink said. “You’re the dumb shit they’re after.”
Impatiently Decker jammed the gearshift into park. “Look, all they got me for is agg assault and, after this, a misdemeanor resisting. Meanwhile you’re looking at murder-one if they put it all together.”
With a plastic crunch Skink turned in his seat. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Dickie Lockhart.”
Skink cackled. “You think I killed him?”
“It crossed my mind, yeah.”
Skink laughed some more, and punched the dashboard. He thought the whole thing was hilarious. He was hooting and howling and kicking his feet, and all Decker wanted to do was push him out of the car and get going.
“You really don’t know what happened, do you?” Skink asked, after settling down.
Decker killed the headlights and shrank down in the driver’s seat. He was a nervous wreck, couldn’t take his eyes off the mirrors. “What don’t I know?” he said to Skink.
“What the goddamn warrant says, you don’t even know. Jim Tile got a copy, airmail. He read it to me first thing this morning and you should hear what it says, Miami. Says you murdered Dickie Lockhart.”
“Me?”
“That’s what it says.”
Decker heard the first siren and went cold.
Skink said, “You got set up, buddy, set up so good it’s almost a thing of beauty. The girl was bait.”
“Go on,” Decker said thickly. He was trying to remember Lanie’s story, trying to remember some of the holes.
“Don’t even think about turning yourself in,” Skink said. “Garcίa may be your pal but he’s no magician. Now please let’s get the hell out of here while we still can. I’ll tell you the rest as we go.”
17
They ditched the Plymouth back at the trailer park and took a bus to the airport, where Decker rented a white Thunderbird from Avis. Skink did not approve; he said they needed a four-by-four truck, something on the order of a Bronco, but the Avis people only had cars.
Sticking in the heavy traffic, they drove around Little Havana for two hours while Decker quizzed Skink about what had happened at Lake Maurepas.
“Who whacked Lockhart?” he asked.
“I don’t know that,” Skink said. “This is what I do know, mostly from Jim Tile and a few phone calls. While you were banging Gault’s sister, somebody clubbed Dickie to death. First thing the
next morning, Gault himself flies to New Orleans to offer the cops a sworn statement. He tells them an ex-con photographer named Decker was trying to blackmail Dickie over the bass cheating. Says you approached him with some photographs and wanted a hundred K—he even had a note in your handwriting to that effect.”
“Jesus,” Decker groaned. It was the note he had written the night Gault had fought with him—the note raising his fee to one hundred thousand dollars.
Skink went on: “Gault tells the cops that he told you to fuck off, so then you went to Lockhart. At first Dickie paid you—thirty grand in all, Gault says—”
“Cute,” Decker muttered. Thirty had been his advance on the case.
“—but then Dickie gets tired of paying and says no more. You go to New Orleans to confront him, threaten to expose him at the big tournament. There’s an argument, a fight . . . you can script the rest. The cops already have.”
“And my alibi witness is the real killer’s sister.”
“Lanie wasted no time giving an affidavit,” Skink said. “A very helpful lady. She says you poked her, drove her back to New Orleans, and dropped her at a hotel. Says you told her you had to go see Dickie on some business.”
“I can pick ’em,” Decker said mordantly.
Skink fidgeted in the car; his expression had grown strained. The press of the traffic, the din of the streets, bothered him. “Almost forgot,” he said. “They got the blackmail photographs too.”
“What photographs?”
“Of Dickie pulling the fish cages,” Skink replied. “Beats me, too. You’re the expert, figure it out.”