Double Whammy

  “The one your brother was driving week before last,” Jim Tile said, “out on the Gilchrist. About dawn, one morning.”

  “When?” Ozzie hiccuped. “Wasn’t me. Our truck is red.”

  “You and two other guys,” Jim Tile said, “and the truck was green. Out-of-state tags.”

  Finally Culver was picking up on the train of conversation. He tried to help Ozzie as best he could, even though he felt like strangling him.

  “I remember that day,” Culver improvised, watching his brother’s eyes grow big. “You and some boys went fishing up at the slough. I remember ’cause you took a couple Shakespeare plug rods out of the shop, along with some Johnson spoons and purple skirts.”

  Ozzie’s lips were like chalk. His bottom jaw went up and down until finally he said, “Oh, yeah.”

  Culver said, “I remember ’cause you didn’t want to try live shiners, even though I told you to. You said there was too much heavy cover, so you’d prefer dragging those damn weedless spoons.”

  Jim Tile was buttoning his shirt. “So, Ozzie,” he said, “you guys catch anything?”

  “Sure,” Ozzie said, glancing at the door, as if he were about to run.

  “What’d you catch?”

  “Our truck is red,” Ozzie Rundell said, licking his lips. His shoulders twitched and his eyes rolled up and fixed on the ceiling. His cheeks puffed out, like he was trying to fart.

  “Pardon me?” Jim Tile said, bending over to tie his shoes.

  “That’s Momma’s pickup outside,” Ozzie said in a very high voice. He was gone, unglued, lost in a pathetic blubbering panic. Culver shook his head disgustedly.

  “I asked what you caught,” Jim Tile said, “out at Morgan Slough.”

  Ozzie smiled and smacked his lips. “One time Dickie gave me a tacklebox,” he said.

  “All right, that’s enough,” Culver broke in.

  “Ozzie?” said Jim Tile.

  “The day in the truck?”

  “The green truck, yes.”

  “I was driving, that’s all. I didn’t drown nobody.”

  “Of course not,” Jim Tile said.

  “That’s it,” said Culver Rundell. “Shut the fuck up, Oz.”

  Culver had the gun out. He was holding it with two hands, pointing it at Jim Tile’s heart. Jim Tile glanced down once, but seemed to pay no more attention to the gun than if it were just Culver’s fly unzipped.

  “Let’s go,” Culver said in a husky whisper.

  But Jim Tile merely walked into the bedroom, stood at the dresser, and adjusted his trooper’s Stetson.

  “Now!” Culver shouted. Ozzie stared at the handgun and covered his ears.

  Jim Tile reached for a bottle of cologne.

  Culver exploded. “Nigger, I’m talking to you!”

  Only then did Jim Tile turn to give Ozzie Rundell’s brother his complete and undivided attention.

  19

  The boat was an eighteen-foot Aquasport with a two-hundred-horse Evinrude outboard; smooth trim, dry ride, very fast. Skink liked it quite a bit. He liked it so much he decided not to ditch it at Haulover docks after all, but to drive it up the Intracoastal Waterway all the way to Pier 66, in Fort Lauderdale. The morning was biting cold, and R. J. Decker would have preferred to travel by car, but there was no point to raising the issue. Skink was having a ball, his silvery ponytail strung out behind him like a rope in the breeze. At the Dania Beach bridge he cut the throttle down to idle speed and the Aquasport coasted into a slow crawl.

  “What’s up?” Decker asked.

  Skink said, “Manatee zone.”

  In the wintertime giant manatees migrate with their young to congregate sluggishly in the warm sheltered waters of the Intracoastal. During manatee season boaters are required by law to go slow, but each year dozens of the gentle mammals are run down and sliced to ribbons by reckless tourists and teenagers. The fine for such a crime costs the offending boater no more than a new pair of Top-Siders, and is not much of a deterrent. During the last days of his governorship, Clinton Tyree had lobbied for a somewhat tougher law. His version would have required anyone who killed a manatee to immediately forfeit his boat (no matter how luxurious) and pay a ten-thousand-dollar fine or go to jail for forty-five days. The Tyree amendment would have also required the manatee killer to personally bury the dead animal himself, at a public ceremony.

  Not surprisingly, the governor’s proposal was quietly rejected.

  R. J. Decker knew none of this, so he was somewhat perplexed when Skink took a hawklike interest in another boat, speeding south down the waterway in the predawn twilight. It was a gaily colored ski boat full of young men and women returning from a night of serious dockside partying. Skink waved furiously and shouted for them to slow down, watch out for the sea cows, but the kids just stared back with radish-colored eyes—except for the driver, who made the awful mistake of flipping Skink the magic digit. Later the girls from the ski boat would tell the marine patrol that their boyfriends had gravely underestimated the size and temperament of the old hippie, just as they had underestimated the speed of the Aquasport. Were it not for the other stranger dragging the old hippie off them, the girls said, their boyfriends might have been seriously killed. (At this point the girls were doing all the talking because the young men were still being X-rayed at Broward General Hospital for broken bones. The doctors marveled that they had been able to swim so far in such a traumatized condition.)

  To convince Skink to quit pummeling the speeders, Decker had had to agree to let him sink their ski boat, which he did by shooting three holes in the hull. Then he scrupulously idled the Aquasport all the way to the Port Everglades inlet, and from there it was full throttle again to Pier 66. By now Decker was cold and wet and eternally grateful to be off the water. They caught a cab to the Harbor Beach Marriott, got a room, and fell asleep—Decker splayed on the king-size bed, Skink in a ball on the floor. At noon they woke up and started working the phones.

  Jim Tile got off the road at nine in the morning. When he got back to the apartment, he fixed himself four poached eggs, three hunks of Canadian bacon, and a tumbler of fresh-squeezed orange juice. Then he took off his trousers, went to the bathroom, and changed the dressing on the bullet wound in his right thigh. Afterward he put on a gray sweatsuit, fixed himself some hot tea, and sat down with the newspaper. He did all this without saying a word to the Rundell brothers, who were still bound and gagged on the floor. In truth Culver didn’t feel slighted (he had passed out from pain many hours before), but Ozzie was dying to talk. Ozzie was scared out of his mind.

  “Thur?” he said.

  Jim Tile lowered the newspaper, reached down, and yanked the towel from Ozzie’s mouth.

  “Sir, is my brother dead? Thank you. For taking the towel, I mean, thanks.”

  Jim Tile said, “Your brother’s not dead.”

  “What’s wrong with him? His face don’t look right.”

  “His jaw’s broken,” Jim Tile said. “And all his fingers too.” It had happened when Jim Tile had wrenched the pistol away, after Culver had shot him and ruined a perfectly good uniform.

  “He needs a doctor, bad,” Ozzie said plaintively.

  “Yes, he does.” Jim Tile hadn’t meant to break Culver’s jaw in so many places, and he was annoyed at himself for punching the man too hard. Culver wouldn’t be doing any chatting for a long time, so now the information would have to come from Ozzie, one of the most witless and jumble-headed crackers that Jim Tile had ever met.

  Culver moaned and strained against the ropes. Ozzie said, “Oh Jesus, he’s hurt bad.”

  “Yes, he is,” Jim Tile said. “You can take him to the doctor after we have our talk.”

  “Promise?”

  “You’ve got my word.”

  “Is Culver going to jail?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Attempted murder of a police officer, that’s a life term here in Florida. Agg assault, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, and so on. I just don’t k
now.”

  Ozzie said, “What about me?”

  “Oh, same goes for you. You’re his partner, right?”

  Ozzie’s eyes got wet. “Momma ’spects the truck back long time ago.”

  “She’ll be worried,” Jim Tile said.

  “Can we go soon?”

  Jim Tile folded up the newspaper and leaned forward. “First you answer some questions.”

  “Okay, but go slow.”

  “Did Dickie Lockhart get you boys to kill Bobby Clinch?”

  “No, Jesus! Honest we didn’t.” Ozzie’s nose was running. “I liked Bobby, so’d Culver—”

  “Then who killed him?” Jim Tile asked.

  “I don’t know.” Ozzie sniffed loudly, trying to get the snot off his upper lip. “I got no idea,” he said.

  Jim Tile believed him. He said, “Tell me about Mr. Pickney.”

  “Who? Help me out.”

  “The guy who played Davey Dillo at the high school.”

  “Oh, the reporter,” Ozzie said. “Sir, I didn’t drown nobody.”

  “Who did?”

  Culver made a gurgling sound, opened his eyes—showing the whites—and shut them slowly again. Ozzie cried and said, “We gotta get the truck back to Momma.”

  Then tell me about Morgan Slough.” Jim Tile held a teacup to Ozzie Rundell’s lips. He took a loud sip, swallowed twice, and began to talk. Jim Tile sat back and listened, saving his questions for the end. He figured the least interruption would confuse Ozzie beyond redemption.

  “Okay, a few days after Bobby Clinch died, Tom and Lemus came by the bait shop for coffee. They were saying how somebody was trying to make it look like Dickie done it, except it was an accident—Doc Pembroke even said so. But Tom and Lemus, they said how somebody went to the newspaper with a made-up story that Dickie kilt Bobby, and now this detective from Miami was goin’ around asking about Bobby and what happened at the Coon Bog. Culver ast who would try to set Dickie Lockhart up like that, but Tom said there were about a million guys jealous of Dickie would do it in a flash. He said they’d try to make it look like Bobby caught Dickie cheating in some tournament.

  “So Culver hears all this and gets worried because, right before the Curl boys come by, this reporter fella had been in asting about Bobby’s boat and the funeral and such—see, they sawed up his Ranger into a coffin. Mr. Pinky, he seemed real interested so Culver told him Larkin’s place had done the carpenter work. The man said thanks and went off.

  “Jeez, when Tom and Lemus hear all this they say we’ve got to get over to Larkin’s right away. Culver was busy with some customers so he told me to ride along in the truck, which I did. On the way over Tom and Lemus said if we don’t do something fast, the newspaper’s gonna do a big write-up about how Dickie murdered Bobby Clinch, which we all knew was a lie, but still it would ruin Dickie and make him lose the TV show. They said we better stop this guy and I said yeah, but that was before I knew what they meant. What they meant by stopping him. Sir, can I have some more tea?”

  Jim Tile held the cup for Ozzie.

  “The green truck, that was Tom and Lemus’s,” Ozzie said.

  “Oh,” said Jim Tile.

  “Anyway, we get to Larkin’s and there’s the guy out back by the dumpster. Ott Pinky. I recognized him right off, and Lemus says: Is that the guy? And I say yeah, it is.” Ozzie paused. “I got in the back of the truck, the green truck.”

  Jim Tile said, “And Mr. Pickney rode up front? Between the Curl boys.”

  “Yes, sir. There’s a deer camp on the Sumter property. Maybe sixteen miles out. We took him there for the rest of the day. See, I thought mainly they was just gonna ast him questions.”

  Jim Tile said, “What did you see, Ozzie?”

  “Mainly I stayed in the truck.”

  “Then what did you hear?”

  Ozzie looked down. “Jesus, I don’t know. Mainly some yelling. . . .” The words tumbled slowly, trailed off. Jim Tile imagined Ozzie’s fevered brain cells exploding like popcorn.

  The trooper said, “What did Ott tell them?”

  “We made a fire, drank some beer, fell asleep. About three hours before dawn we headed for the slough.”

  “Was Mr. Pickney still alive?”

  “He didn’t tell them hardly nothing, according to Tom and Lemus.” Ozzie was untracked again, answering Jim Tile’s questions in no particular sequence.

  Jim Tile said, “You were the driver, that’s all?”

  “He was still alive when we got there. Banged up but still alive. See, I thought they was gonna let him go. I thought they was through with him. Tom and Lemus, they said to stay in the truck and I did. But it got cold and I couldn’t figure what was takin’ so long. Finally I got out to whizz and that’s when I heard the splash.”

  Jim Tile said, “You didn’t see anything?”

  “It was a damn big splash.” Ozzie sneezed, and more gunk came out of his nose. He said, “Truth is, I didn’t really want to look.”

  Jim Tile untied Ozzie’s wrists and ankles and helped him to his feet. Together they carried Culver out to the pickup and laid him on the flatbed. Ozzie put the tailgate back up. Jim Tile got an extra pillow and a blanket from his apartment.

  “Think you’d best get him over to the hospital in Melbourne,” Jim Tile said. “Nobody here in town can fix that jawbone.”

  Ozzie nodded glumly. “I gotta go by the house and fetch Momma.” He got in the truck and started the ignition.

  Jim Tile leaned in the driver’s window and said, “Ozzie, you understand what happens if I have to arrest you.”

  “Culver goes to jail,” Ozzie said wanly.

  “For the rest of his natural life. When he gets to feeling better, please remind him, would you?”

  “I will,” said Ozzie. “Sir, I swear I don’t think he meant to shoot you.”

  “Of course he did,” said Jim Tile, “but I’m inclined to let the whole thing slide, long as you boys stay out of my way for a while.”

  Ozzie was so relieved that he nearly peed his pants. He didn’t even mind that the black man had called them boys. Basically Ozzie was happy to still be alive. The trooper could have killed them both and gotten away with it, yet here he was, being a true Christian and letting them go.

  “Just one favor,’ Jim Tile said, resting a coal-black arm on the door of the truck.

  “Sure,” Ozzie said.

  “Where can I find Thomas Curl?”

  Richard Clarence Lockhart was buried on January 25 at the Our Lady of Tropicana cemetery outside Harney. It was a relatively small turnout, considering Dickie’s fame and stature in the county, but the low attendance could be explained easily enough. By unfortunate coincidence, the day of the funeral was also opening day of the Okeechobee Bass Blasters Classic, so almost all Dickie’s friends and colleagues were out fishing. Dickie would certainly forgive them, the preacher had chuckled, especially since the tournament required a nonrefundable entry fee of two thousand dollars per boat.

  Dickie Lockhart was buried in a handsome walnut coffin, not a bass boat. The hearse bearing the coffin was escorted to Our Lady of Tropicana by three police cars, including a trooper’s cruiser driven, none too happily, by Jim Tile. Dickie Lockhart’s casket was closed during the eulogy, since the mortician ultimately had been frustrated in his cosmetic efforts to remove the Double Whammy spinnerbait from Dickie’s lip; in the clammy New Orleans morgue the lure’s hook had dulled, while Dickie’s skin had only toughened. Rather than further mutilate the facial features of the deceased, the mortician had simply advised Dickie’s sisters to keep the coffin closed and remember him as he was.

  Ozzie Rundell was extremely grateful. He couldn’t have borne another glimpse of his murdered idol.

  Culver Rundell did not attend the funeral, since he was hospitalized with thirty-nine linear feet of stainless-steel wire in his jaws. On Culver’s behalf, the bait shop had ordered a special floral arrangement topped by a ceramic jumping fish. Unfortunately the ceramic fish was a
striped marlin, not a largemouth bass, but no one at the funeral was rude enough to mention it.

  The Reverend Charles Weeb also did not attend the funeral, but on behalf of the Outdoor Christian Network he sent a six-foot gladiola wreath with a white ribbon that said: “Tight Lines, Old Friend.” This was the hit of the graveside service, but the best was yet to come. The next morning, at the closing of the regular Sunday broadcast of Jesus in Your Living Room, Charlie Weeb offered a special benediction for the soul of his dear, dear friend Dickie Lockhart, the greatest bass fisherman in the history of America. Then Dickie’s face appeared on the big screen behind the pulpit, and the assembled flock lip-synched to a Johnny Cash recording of “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” At the end of the song everybody was weeping, even Charlie Weeb, the man who had so often privately referred to Dickie Lockhart as a shiftless pellet-brained cocksucker.

  Twenty-five minutes after the church show was over and the audience was paid, the Reverend Charles Weeb strolled into a skybox in the Superdome, which had been rented for the big press conference. If Charlie Weeb was disappointed in the sparse turnout of media, he didn’t show it. He wore his wide-bodied smile and a cream-colored suit with a plum kerchief in the breast pocket. At his side stood a rangy tanned man with curly brown hair and a friendly, toothy smile. Right away the man reminded some of the photographers of Bruce Dern, the actor, but it wasn’t. It was Eddie Spurling, the fisherman.

  “Gentlemen,” said Charlie Weeb, still in character, “am I a happy man today! Yes indeed, I am. It is my pleasure to announce that, beginning this week, Eddie Spurling will be the new host of Fish Fever.”

  There were only two print reporters in the room, but Weeb politely waited for them to jot the big news in their spiral notebooks.

  Weeb continued: “As you know, for some time Eddie’s been the host of his own popular bass show on a competing network. We are most pleased to have stolen him away, since it means—as of yesterday—an additional seventy-four independent cable stations switching to the Outdoor Christian Network for the upcoming fishing season.” Charlie Weeb allowed himself a brief dramatic pause. “And let me say that although all of us will miss Dickie Lockhart and his special brand of outdoor entertainment, I’m certain that his fans will find Eddie Spurling just as exciting, just as informative, and just as much fun to fish with every week. All of us here in the OCN family couldn’t be more pleased!”