“From where?” Catherine asked.
“It’s not important. Twenty-nine thousand units in the Everglades is what’s important. Christian city, my ass. It’s the crime of the damn century. These guys are like cockroaches, you can’t fucking get rid of ’em.”
Decker said, “It’s too late, captain. Dredging started a year ago.”
“Jesus,” Skink said, biting his lip. He put on his sunglasses and bowed his head. He didn’t look up for some time. Decker glanced over at Catherine. She was right: they had to get Skink back to the woods.
From the hallway came sounds of men talking but trying not to be heard. Then a knock on the door to the next room; another knock across the hall.
“Hotel security,” a male voice said.
R. J. Decker motioned Skink toward the bathroom. He nodded and crab-walked across the floor, shutting the door behind him. Quickly Decker peeled off his shirt and drew the shades. “Take off your shoes,” he whispered to Catherine, “and lie down here on the bed.” She figured out the plan immediately. She was down to bra and panties and under the covers before Decker even got a good peek.
A man knocked three times on the door.
“Whoze it?” Decker hollered. “Go ’way.”
“Hotel security, please open up.”
“We’re sleeping!”
Another voice: “Police!”
Decker stomped to the door as noisily as possible. He cracked it just enough to give the men a narrow view of Catherine in the bed.
“What’s the problem?” Decker demanded.
A blue-suited young man with a walkie-talkie stood next to a disinterested uniformed cop. The security man said, “Sir, there was an incident out on the beach. A man with a gun—nobody was hurt.”
“That’s damn good to hear,” Decker said impatiently.
The cop said, “You haven’t seen anyone unusual up on this floor?”
“For the last couple hours I haven’t seen nuthin’,” Decker said, “except stars.” He nodded over his shoulder, toward Catherine. The security man looked a little embarrassed.
The policeman said, “Big scruffy guy with a bright hat and ponytail. Witnesses saw him run into this hotel, so we’re suggesting that all guests stay in their rooms for a while.”
“Don’t you worry,” Decker said.
“Just for a while,” the security man added, “until they catch him.”
When Decker shut the door, Catherine sat up in bed and said, “Stars? You saw stars?”
“Don’t you dare move,” Decker said, diving headfirst into the sheets.
Thomas Curl was not a happy man. In the past few weeks he had made more money than he or three previous generations of Curls had ever seen, yet Thomas was not at peace. First of all, his brother Lemus was dead, and for a while Thomas had been stuck with the body. Since he had told everyone, including his daddy, that Lemus had accidentally drowned on a fishing trip to Florida, there was no way he could bring back a body with a bullet hole in the head. People would ask many questions, and answering questions was not Thomas Curl’s strong suit. So, after discovering Lemus’ turtle-eaten corpse on the fish stringer in Morgan Slough, and mulling it over for two days, Thomas decided what the hell and just buried his brother in a dry sandy grave on some pastureland east of the Gilchrist. The whole time he worked with the shovel, he had a feeling that every turkey buzzard in Florida was wheeling in the sky overhead, waiting to make a smorgasbord of Lemus’ remains. Afterward Thomas took off his bass cap and stood by the grave and tried to remember a prayer. The only one he could think of began: “Now I lay me down to sleep . . . ” Close enough.
Almost every night Thomas Curl reflected sadly on how Lemus had died, how he had let him dash off into the scrub by himself, and how all of a sudden he didn’t hear Lemus’ Ruger anymore. And how Thomas had panicked and leapt into the green pickup and taken off, pretty sure that his brother was already dead—and how he’d returned with a borrowed coon dog and found some heavy tracks and blood, but no body. At that moment he had expected never to see his brother again, and later at the slough was horrified to the point of nausea. On orders Thomas had gone there to check on things, just to make sure the nigger cop hadn’t found Ott Pickney’s body. But there was poor Lemus, strung up in the black water with the other one, and it was then Thomas Curl realized the dangerous magnitude of the opposition. Thomas was not the brightest human being in the world, but he knew a message when he saw one.
So he had buried Lemus, torched Ott Pickney’s body in a phony truck accident, and driven straight back to New Orleans, where, again, things didn’t go as smoothly as he’d hoped. Thomas expressed the view that he shouldn’t be blamed for every little loose end, and was curtly instructed to return to Florida immediately. Not Harney, either, but Miami.
Thomas Curl was not wild about Miami. Back when he was still boxing he had trained one summer at the Fifth Street Gym, out on the beach. He remembered staying in a ratty pink hotel with two other middleweights, and he remembered getting drunk on Saturday nights and, out of sheer boredom, beating the shit out of skinny Cuban refugees who lived in the city parks. Thomas remembered Miami as a hot and unfriendly place, but then again, he was young and homesick and broke. Now he was grown-up, thirty-five pounds heavier, and rolling in new money.
To boost his spirits, Thomas Curl splurged and got a room at the Grand Bay Hotel. The room came with a fruit basket and a sunken bathtub. He was sucking on a nectarine and soaking in the tub when Dennis Gault called back.
Thomas Curl said, “Hey, they got a phone in the goddamn john.”
“Welcome to the city, Jethro.” Gault was in a brusque mood. Dealing with this moron was at least two notches below dealing with Decker. Gault said, “A cop came to see me.”
Thomas Curl spit the nectarine pit into his soapy hand. “Yeah? They caught ’em yet?”
“No,” Gault said, “but the way things are shaping up, maybe it’s best if they don’t.”
“Hell you mean?”
Gault said, “This cop, fucking Cuban, he doesn’t believe a word I say.”
“Who cares, long as New Orleans believes you.”
“Ever heard of extradition?” Gault snapped. “This guy can cause us major problems, son. He can keep Decker away from the Louisiana people a long time. Sit on him for weeks, listen to his story, maybe even buy it.”
“No way,” Curl said.
“We can’t take the chance, Thomas.”
“I done enough for you.”
Gault said, “This one’s not for me, it’s for your brother.”
In the tub Thomas reached over and turned on the hot water. He was careful not to get the telephone wet, in case it might electrocute him.
Gault said, “I need you to find Decker. Before the cops.”
“What about that crazy gorilla?”
“They probably split up by now.”
“I don’t want to fuck with him. Culver said he’s mean as a moccasin.”
Gault said, “Culver’s afraid of a tit in the dark. Besides, from what Elaine says, Skink isn’t the type to stick with Decker. They probably split up, like I said.”
Thomas Curl was not convinced. He remembered the neatly centered bullet hole in his brother’s forehead.
“What’s the pay?”
“Same as before,” Gault said.
“Double if I got to deal with the gorilla.”
“Hell, you ought to do it for free,” Gault said. Greed was truly a despicable vice, he thought. “For Christ’s sake, Thomas, these are the guys who killed Lemus. One or both, it’s up to you. Decker’s the one that worries me most. He’s the one that could hurt us in court. We’re talking hard time, too.”
Thomas Curl did not like the idea of being sent to the state penitentiary even for a day. There was also something powerfully attractive, even romantic, about avenging his brother’s death.
“Where do I start?” he asked.
“Way behind, unfortunately,” Gault said. “Dec
ker’s already running. The trick is to find out where, because he sure as hell won’t be coming your way.”
“Not unless I got somethin’ he wants,” said Thomas Curl.
21
Catherine said: “This won’t work, not with him in the bathroom.” She got out of bed and began to dress.
From behind the bathroom door, a voice grumped: “Pay no attention to me.”
Decker dolefully watched Catherine button her blouse. This is what I get, he thought; exactly what I deserve. He said to her, “This man’s a distraction, you’re right.”
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Catherine said, stepping into a pink slip. “James is furious as it is, and now I’m an hour late.”
“Sorry,” Decker said.
“Here, give me a hand with this zipper.”
“Nice skirt,” Decker said. “It’s silk, isn’t it?”
“I can’t stand these damn zippers on the side.”
Decker peeked at the label. “Jesus, Catherine, a Gucci.”
She frowned. “Stop it, R.J. I know what you’re up to.”
As always.
Decker rolled out of bed and groped around the floor for his jeans. It was dark outside, time to go. Muffled scraping noises emanated from the bathroom. Decker couldn’t imagine what Skink was doing in there.
Catherine brushed out her hair, put on some pale pink lipstick.
“You look positively beatific,” Decker said. “Pure as the driven snow.”
“No thanks to you.” She turned from the mirror and took his hands. “I’d give anything to forget about you, you bastard.”
Decker said, “Could try hypnosis. Or hallucinogens.”
Catherine put her arms around him. “Cut the bullshit, pal, it’s all right to be scared. This is the most trouble you’ve ever been in.”
“I believe so,” Decker said.
Catherine kissed him on the neck. “Watch out for yourself, Rage. And him too.”
“We’ll be fine.” He handed Catherine her Louis Vuitton purse and her one-hundred-percent-cashmere sweater.
Before she walked out the door she said, “I just want you to know, it wouldn’t have been a mercy fuck. It would have been the real thing.”
Decker said, “I got that impression, yeah.”
He couldn’t believe how much he still loved her.
Somehow Skink had wedged himself between the bathroom sink and the toilet, compressed his bulk into a massive, musty cube on the tile floor. At first Decker couldn’t even pinpoint the location of his head; the wheezing seemed to come from under the toilet tank. Decker knelt down and saw Skink’s scaly face staring out from behind the water pipes. He looked like a bearded iguana.
“Why’d you turn on the light?” he asked.
“So I wouldn’t step on your vital organs.”
“Worse things could happen,” Skink said.
Freud would have a picnic, Decker thought. “Look, captain, we’ve got to get going.”
“I’m safe right here,” Skink observed.
“Not really,” Decker said. “You’re hiding under a toilet in a hundred-dollar beachfront hotel room. Someone’s bound to complain.”
“You think?”
Decker nodded patiently. “It’s much safer back in Harney,” he said. “If we leave now, we’ll be back at the lake by midnight.”
“You mean it?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll kill you, Miami, if this is a trap. I’ll fucking cut out your bladder and wring it in your hair.”
“It’s no trap,” Decker said. “Let’s go.”
It took forty-five minutes to disengage Skink from the plumbing. In the process the sink snapped clean off its legs; Decker left it lying on the bed.
In the lobby of the hotel he rented a Ford Escort. He got it out of the underground parking and pulled around back to the hotel’s service entrance, where Skink was waiting by the dumpsters. As Skink got in the car, Decker noticed something white tucked under one arm.
“Whatcha got there?” he said.
“Seagull.” Skink held up the limp bird by its curled orange feet. “Hasn’t been dead more than ten minutes. I scarfed it off the grille of that seafood truck.”
“Lucky us,” Decker said thinly.
“You hungry? We can stop and make a fire once we get out of this traffic.”
“Let’s wait, okay?”
“Sure,” Skink said. “It’ll keep for a couple hours.”
Decker headed west from the beach on the Seventeenth Street Causeway, past Port Everglades and the Ocean World aquarium. It was typical January beach traffic, bumper-to-bumper nitwits as far as the eye could see. Every other car had New York plates.
Skink fit the dead bird into the glove compartment and covered it with a copy of the rental agreement. He seemed in a much better mood already. He put on his sunglasses and flowered shower cap, and turned around to get his fluorescent rainsuit from the back seat. Through the rear window he noticed a dark blue Chrysler sedan following two car-lengths behind. He spotted a plastic bubble on the dashboard; not flashing, but a bubble just the same. The driver’s face was obscured by the tinted windshield, but a red dot bobbed at mouth-level.
“Your buddy Garcia smoke?”
Decker checked the rearview. “Oh, shit,” he said.
Skink struggled into the rainsuit, adjusted his sunglasses, and said, “Well, Miami, what’s it going to be?”
The blue light on the Chrysler’s dashboard was flashing now. Hopelessly Decker scanned the traffic on the causeway; it was jammed all the way to the next traffic signal, and beyond. There was nowhere to go. Al Garcia was up on his bumper and flashing his brights. Decker figured he had a better chance one-on-one, with no Fort Lauderdale cops. He decided to stop before it turned into a convoy.
He pulled into the parking lot of a liquor store. With the big Chrysler Garcίa easily blocked off the little Escort, parked, kept the blue light turning. A bad sign, Decker thought.
He turned to Skink: “I don’t want to see your gun.”
“Relax,” Skink said. “Mr. Browning sleeps with the fishes.”
Al Garcίa approached the car in a bemused and almost casual manner. At the driver’s window he bent down and said, “R.J., you are the king of all fuckups.”
“Sorry I stood you up the other day,” Decker said.
“Everyone but the National Guard is looking for you.”
“Now that you mention it, Al, aren’t you slightly out of your jurisdiction? I believe this is Broward County.”
“And you’re a fleeing felon, asshole, so I can chase you wherever I want. That’s the law.” He spit out his cigarette and ground it into the asphalt with his shoe:
Decker said, “So what’d you do, follow Catherine up from Miami?”
“She’s a slick little driver, she gave it her best.”
Decker said, “I didn’t kill anybody, Al.”
“How about Little Stevie Wonder there?”
Skink blinked lizardlike behind his sunglasses.
“Come on, R.J., let’s all of us go for a ride.” Garcίa was so smooth he didn’t even unholster his gun. Decker was impressed; you had to be. Now if only Skink behaved.
Skink retrieved his dead seagull from the glove box and Decker locked up the rental car. Garcίa was waiting in the Chrysler. “Who wants to ride shotgun?” he asked affably.
Decker said, “I thought you’d want both us ruthless murderers to sit back in the cage.”
“Nah,” Al Garcίa said, unplugging the blue light. He got back into traffic, turned off Seventeenth Street on Federal Highway, then cut back west on Road 84, an impossible truck route. Decker was surprised when he didn’t turn south at the Interstate 95 exchange.
“Where are you going?”
“The Turnpike’s a cleaner shot, isn’t it?” the detective said.
“Not really,” Decker said.
“He means north,” Skink said from the back seat. “To Harney.”
?
??Right,” Al Garcίa said. “On the way, I want you guys to tell me all about bass fishing.”
The news from Lunker Lakes was not good.
“They died,” reported Charlie Weeb’s hydrologist, some pinhead hired fresh out of the University of Florida.
“Died?” said the Reverend Weeb. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
He was talking about the bass—two thousand yearling largemouths imported at enormous cost from a private hatchery in Alabama.
“They croaked,” said the hydrologist. ”What can I say? The water’s very bad, Reverend Weeb. Tannic acid they can tolerate, but the current phosphate levels are lethal. There’s no fresh oxygen, no natural water flow. Whoever dredged your canals—”
“Lakes, goddammit!”
“—they dredged too deep. The fish don’t last more than two days.”
“Jesus Christ Almighty. So what’re we talking about here—stinking dead bass floating all over the place?”
The hydrologist said, “I took the liberty of hiring some local boats to scoop up the kill. With this cool weather it’s not so bad, but if a warm front pushes through, they’d smell it all the way to Key West.”
Weeb slammed down the phone and groaned. The woman lying next to him said, “What is it, Father?”
“I’m not a priest,” Weeb snapped. He didn’t have the energy for a theology lesson; it would have been a waste of time anyway. The girl worked at Louie’s Lap-Dancing Palace in Gretna. She said her whole family watched him every Sunday morning on television.
“I never been with a TV star before,” she said, burrowing into his chest. “You’re a big boy, too.”
Charlie Weeb was only half-listening. He missed Ellen O’Leary; no one else looked quite as fine, topless in the rubber trout waders. No one soothed him the way Ellen did, either, but now she was gone. Took off after Dickie Lockhart’s murder. One more disappointment in a week of bleak disappointments for the Reverend Charles Weeb.
“How much do I owe you?” he asked the lap dancer.
“Nothing, Father.” She sounded confused. “I brought my own money.”
“What for?” Weeb looked down; he couldn’t see her face, just the top of her head and the smooth slope of her naked back.