The next time the dog jumped, Thomas Curl recoiled and tried to shield his face with his right arm, which is where the animal sank its yellow fangs. At first Thomas Curl felt no pain, only an unbelievable pressure. He stared at the dog and couldn’t believe it. Eyes wide, its pale muzzle splotched with Curl’s blood, the frenzied animal twisted and turned as it dangled from the arm; it was trying to tear the flesh from Thomas Curl’s bone.
Curl swallowed his scream. With his left hand he feverishly groped for the long screwdriver, still wedged in the doorjamb. He found it, grunted as he yanked it free, and poised it firmly in his good fist.
With all his strength Thomas Curl lifted his right arm as high as his head, so that the pit bull hung before him at eye level, squirming and frothing. With one jagged downward thrust Thomas Curl disemboweled the animal. Its wild eyes went instantly dull and the legs stopped kicking, but still the powerful jaws held fast to Curl’s thick arm. Moments passed and Curl stood rigid, waiting for the animal’s muscles to slacken in death. Yet even as its guts dripped on the cold doorstep, steaming the night air, the dog’s jaws would not let go.
Thomas Curl braced against waves of nausea. The screwdriver slipped from his good hand and pinged off the concrete stoop.
At a nearby trailer the porch light came on, and an elderly man in a long undershirt poked his head out. Thomas Curl quickly turned his back so that the neighbor would not see the dead dog on his arm. By the fresh light Curl noticed that in his panic he had succeeded in breaking the doorjamb. With his good hand he turned the knob, and lurched inside R. J. Decker’s trailer.
Curl lay faceup on a sofa, the big dog across his chest. He stayed there for what seemed like an hour, until he could no longer tolerate the weight of the animal and the raw odor of its blood. In the darkness he could only imagine what his right arm looked like; he felt the first stinging tickle of a vile infection, and the burning throb of torn muscles. He realized that before long the dog’s body would stiffen, and it would become virtually impossible to pry its jaws. Angrily Thomas Curl balled his left fist and tested his strength. Still supine, he aimed a fierce upper cut at the pit bull’s head. The punch made little noise and had no effect, but Thomas Curl did not stop. He shut his eyes and imagined himself on the bag at the Fifth Street Gym, and punched left-breathe-left in a steady tempo. For the heavy bag drill his ex-manager used to play “Midnight Rambler” on the PA, so Curl ran the tune through his skull while he pounded on the pit bull. With each impact a ferocious bolt shot from his mangled arm into the vortex of his neck. The pain was miserable, but his alone; like any punching bag, the dog felt nothing. Its grip was immovable and, Thomas Curl began to fear, supernatural.
He dragged himself off the sofa, flipped on the kitchen lights, and began to tear Decker’s trailer apart, looking for a tool. A wooden broom handle proved impotent against the demonic mandibles; a hammer satisfying to the grip, but messy and ineffectual. Finally, hanging from a pegboard in a utility closet, Thomas Curl found what he was looking for: a small hacksaw. He struggled into the narrow bathroom and knelt down. With his deadening right arm he slung the dog carcass into the shower stall, and gazed numbly at the livid mess. Thomas Curl didn’t know whether he was just exhausted or going crazy, but he found it difficult to distinguish which flesh was his and which belonged to the animal. From the knotted muscle of his shoulder to the pinkish tail of the dog corpse seemed a single evil mass. Thomas Curl’s left hand searched the tile until his fingers found the steel teeth of the hacksaw. He took a breath, and did what he had to.
Catherine was alone in bed when the doorbell rang.
James the doctor was gone again, this time to Montreal for a big trade show. He and several other chiropractors had agreed to endorse a new back-pain product called the Miracle VibraCouch, and the Canadian trade show was to be the scene of its unveiling. Saying good-bye at the car, James had promised to bring back videotapes of all the excitement, and Catherine had said that’ll be wonderful and pecked him on the cheek. James had asked her which model VibraCouch would go best in the Florida room, the tartan or the dusty rose, and Catherine had said neither, I don’t want an electric couch in my house, thank-you. James was pouting as he drove away.
When the bell rang, Catherine slipped into a short chiffon robe and padded barefoot to the door. The house was bright, and the clock in the alcove said nine-thirty. She’d overslept again.
Through a window she saw the gray Plymouth Volaré parked in the driveway. Catherine smiled—here we go again. She checked herself in the mirror and said what the hell, it’s hopeless this early in the morning. When she opened the door she said, “Great timing as usual, Rage.”
But the man turned around and it wasn’t R.J. It was a heavyset stranger wearing R. J.’s brown leather coat. Catherine had bought the coat for him at a western shop near Denver. The stranger wore it on his shoulders like a cape. Maybe it wasn’t R. J.’s coat after all, Catherine thought anxiously; maybe it was one just like it.
“’Scuze me,” said the man, “you Mrs. Decker?”
“Stuckameyer,” Catherine said. “I used to be Mrs. Decker.”
The man had thin sandy hair, a flat crooked nose, and tiny dull eyes. He handed Catherine a crisp brown office envelope containing a sheaf of legal papers. Catherine scanned them and looked up quizzically.
“So?” she said. “These are my old divorce papers.”
“But that is you? Catherine Decker.”
“Where’d you get this stuff?” she said irritably.
“I found it,” the man said, “at Mr. Decker.”
Catherine studied him closely. She saw that he was also wearing one of R.J.’s knit shirts. She tried to slam the door but the man blocked it with a black round-toed boot.
“Don’t be a dumb cunt,” he said.
Catherine was turning to run when she saw the pistol. The man pointed it with his right hand extended from under the leather coat. Something round and mottled and awful was attached to the stranger’s arm. It looked like a football with ears.
“Oh Jesus,” Catherine cried.
“Don’t mind him,” the man said, “he don’t bite.”
He pushed his way into the house and shut the door. He shifted the pistol to his other hand, and tucked the dog-headed arm back under the coat.
“Decker’s in some deep shit,” said the stranger.
“Well, I don’t know where he is.” Catherine pulled her robe tight in the front.
Thomas Curl said, “You know why I’m here?”
“No, but I know who you are,” Catherine said. “You’re one of the Fish People, aren’t you?”
24
Jim Tile’s patrol car passed Garcia on Route 222 and led them into town, which was as dark as a mortuary. The trooper took them directly to the house of an old black doctor, who packed and dressed Skink’s seeping eye wound. Silently Decker and Garcίa watched the old man dance a penlight in front of Skink’s haggard face and peer into the other eye for quite a long time. “He needs a neurologist right away,” the doctor said finally. “Gainesville’s your best bet.”
Skink himself said nothing. When they got back to the cabin, he curled up on a mattress and went to sleep. Jim Tile got the campfire going. Al Garcίa selected an oak stump of suitable width and sat down close to the flames. “Now what?” he said. “We tell ghost stories?”
R. J. Decker said, “This is where he lives.”
“Unbelievable,” the detective muttered.
Jim Tile went to the car and came back with two black-and-white photographs, eight-by-tens. “From our friends in the bayou,” he said, handing the pictures to R. J. Decker.
“Christ,” Decker mumbled. They were the caught-in-the-act shots of the bass cheaters in the reeds at Lake Maurepas—except that Dickie Lockhart’s head had been supered onto one of the other men’s bodies. Decker recognized the mug of Dickie from the bunch he’d shot at the Cajun Classic weigh-in. Looking at the doctored photographs made him feel angry and, in a way
, violated.
“Somebody swiped my film and had some fun in the darkroom,” he said to Jim Tile. “I’ve seen better phonies.”
“Sure fooled New Orleans homicide.”
“It’s still bush,” Decker snapped. “I can find a half-dozen expert witnesses to say these are tricked.”
Al Garcίa took the prints from Decker and studied them. “Nifty,” he said. “That’s how they do it, huh?”
“In cages, yeah.”
“And how long will those fish stay alive?”
Decker shrugged. “Couple days, I guess.”
Jim Tile said, “There’s some other things you ought to know.” He told them about his conversation with Ozzie Rundell, and Ozzie’s version of Ott Pickney’s murder.
“He also says Lockhart didn’t kill Robert Clinch.”
“You believe that?” Decker asked.
Jim Tile nodded.
Garcίa said, “Had to be Gault.”
“That’s my guess too,” the trooper agreed, “but I’m not sure why he’d do it.”
R. J. Decker thought about it. Why would Dennis Gault order the murder of a man he had recruited to work for him? Lanie might know; she might even be part of the reason.
Jim Tile said, “There’s a guy named Thomas Curl, a real shitkicker. He and his brother killed your friend Ott. My bet is they did Bobby Clinch too.”
“The Louisiana boys,” Decker said.
Jim Tile said, “It just so happens that Lemus Curl is missing. Family says he fell into Lake Okeechobee.”
Garcίa looked curiously at Decker, who tried not to react.
“But the other Curl,” Jim Tile went on, “Thomas Curl, is in Miami.”
“Fuck me,” said Al Garcίa.
Decker said, “Let me guess: Curl is looking for me.”
“Most likely,” Jim Tile said. “By phone I tracked him to some ritzy hotel in the Grove, but then he took off.”
“What’s the connection to Gault?”
“He paid for Curl’s room,” Jim Tile said.
He took a piece of paper from his left breast pocket, unfolded it carefully and handed it to Decker. “Meanwhile,” Jim Tile said, “Mr. Gault is going fishing.”
It was a promotional flier for the Dickie Lockhart Memorial Bass Blasters Classic. In the firelight Garcίa read it aloud over Decker’s shoulder: “The richest tournament in history. Entry fee is only three thousand dollars, but hurry—the field will be limited to fifty boats.”
Decker couldn’t believe it, the ballsiness of these guys. “Three thousand bucks,” he said.
“It is amazing,” Jim Tile remarked. Long ago he had given up trying to understand the cracker mentality. He wondered if the Cuban cop would have the same difficulty.
Garcίa said, “Dennis Gault I can figure out. He’s a greedy little egomaniac who wants trophies for his penthouse. But what’s the rest of the shit with this tournament?”
Decker explained the Outdoor Christian Network and its vast stake in the Lunker Lakes development. “They’re going to use the TV fish hype to sell townhouses. Everybody does it these days. Mazda has golf, Lipton has tennis, OCN has bass. The demographics match up nicely.”
Al Garcia looked extremely amused. “You’re telling me,” he said, “that grown men will sit down for hours in front of a television set and watch other men go fishing.”
“Millions,” Decker said, “every weekend.”
“I don’t ever want to hear you talk about crazy Cubans,” Garcia said, “never again.”
A flicker of a smile crossed Jim Tile’s face, and then he grew serious. “Gault is the big problem,” he said. “He’s the one who can put Decker in prison.”
“He’d rather have him dead,” Garcίa noted.
Decker knew the detective was right. By now Dennis Gault surely understood that a trial could be disastrous; the evidence against Decker was entirely circumstantial, and Gault couldn’t risk taking the witness stand himself. There were neater ways to close a murder case, and one was to make the prime suspect vanish. That, Decker thought, would be Thomas Curl’s department.
Garcίa said to Decker, “We need to get to Gault before Curl gets to you.”
“That’s brilliant, Al.”
“Any ideas, smartass?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. My idea is that you plant your lazy Cuban butt right here for a day or so, and keep an eye on our sick friend.” Decker turned to Jim Tile. “I need a favor from you.”
“Starting tonight,” the trooper said, “I’m on vacation.”
“Good,” Decker said. “You feel like taking a drive to the beach?”
Jim Tile chuckled. “My Coppertone’s already packed.”
Crescent Beach is a few miles south of St. Augustine. The broad expanse of sand is sugary white, but packed so hard you could drive a truck to the water’s edge without fear of getting stuck. For a long time Crescent Beach and adjacent communities existed in a rare and splendid quiet. To the south, Daytona got all the publicity and the crowds to go with it; to the north, the beach at Jacksonville was still clean enough to keep the city folks home on weekends. As the condo market boomed in the seventies, though, developers scouted and scoured all of the state’s oceanfront possibilities, and spied lovely Crescent Beach as a promoter’s wet dream—the perfect escape. See Florida as it used to be! Enjoy the solitude of long romantic walks, the Atlantic nipping at your toes! Lie down among the dunes! The dunes became a crucial selling point for North Florida’s long-ignored beaches, because the people in South Florida didn’t know what a dune was—the developers had flattened them all back in the fifties. True, by Northern standards Florida dunes weren’t much to write home about—stubbled little hillocks, really—but the condo salesmen made the most of them and customers thought they were quaint. Once the building boom took hold south of Jacksonville and the beachfront became clogged with exclusive resorts and high-rises and golf communities, the state was forced to start buying up the remaining dunes, making parks, and nailing boardwalks every which- way to keep the dunes from getting leveled. Mysteriously, tourists would drive for miles and pay admission just to see a three-foot crest of sand with a few strands of sea oats—a genuine touch of wilderness among the cabanas.
Lanie Gault had not chosen Crescent Beach for its dunes. She hadn’t chosen it at all; a lover had bought the condo and given it to her for Valentine’s Day in 1982. He was a wonderful and basically harmless man, had his own insurance company, and Lanie didn’t mind that he was married. He wasn’t the sort of guy you wanted to have around all the time anyway. Every other weekend was just fine. It lasted for about two years until his wife found out—somebody called her up with the juicy details. The insurance man couldn’t figure out who would do such a thing, but Lanie knew. It was her brother. Dennis never admitted to making the phone call, but Lanie had no doubt he was the one. Dennis couldn’t stand the insurance man (nothing new) and for months had been telling her to clear the deed and dump the guy, he’s bad news. He isn’t bad news, Lanie had argued, thinking: He’s just slightly boring. When the wife found out, Lanie was angry with her brother but also a little relieved. A few days later the insurance man came to the condo and told her he was moving back to St. Louis and kissed her good-bye. Lanie cried and said she understood and asked if he wanted her to give the condo back. The insurance man said heavens no, it’s all yours, just don’t tell anyone where you got it. A week later Lanie put in brand-new wine carpeting and decided maybe her heart wasn’t truly broken after all.
Lanie’s condominium was on the east wing of the ninth floor, and featured a scallop-shaped balcony with an ocean view. One of the things she liked about the building was the security—not only a gatehouse at the entrance, but an armed guard in the lobby and a closed-circuit TV bank. Nobody got upstairs without clearance, and the security people had strict instructions to phone ahead, no matter what. Given such procedures, Lanie was understandably alarmed to be awakened by someone knocking on the door. She squirmed across t
he king-size bed and snatched the phone off the nightstand and called the desk. The guard said, “It’s the police, Miss Gault, we had to let them up.”
When she opened the door, she saw the problem. Jim Tile was wearing his state trooper’s uniform.
“Can I help you?” Lanie asked.
“Not me,” Jim Tile said, “my friend.”
R. J. Decker peeked around the corner of the doorway. “Remember me? We exchanged bodily fluids not long ago.”
Lanie looked stunned to see him. “Hi,” she said tentatively.
The two men walked in; Jim Tile courteously removing his Stetson, Decker closing the door behind them. “I can see you’re wondering how to play this scene,” he said to Lanie, “because you don’t know how much I know.”
“What do you mean?”
Decker opened the living-room curtains without remarking on the view. “Lovey-dovey is one way to go. You know the bit: Where you been? I missed you. Why haven’t you called? But that’s only good if I don’t know that you went to the New Orleans cops. And if I don’t know you helped your brother set me up.”
Lanie sat down and fiddled with her hair. Jim Tile went to the kitchen and fixed three glasses of orange juice.
“Another way to go,” Decker continued, “is the Terrified Witness routine. Murder suspect barges into your apartment, scares the shit out of you. Please don’t hurt me. I’ll do anything you want, just don’t hurt me. That’s if you’re trying to sell me the idea that you really believe I killed Dickie Lockhart. Which is horseshit.”
Lanie smiled weakly. “Any other choices?”
“Try the truth,” said Decker, “just as an experiment.”
“You got a tape player?” Jim Tile asked.
Lanie said, “On the balcony, with the beach stuff.” She shook her head no when Jim Tile offered a glass of juice.