“No,” Skink said, “it’s not. Ask Decker about that one.”
García said, “That means there’s another guy still out on the water.”
“Right,” said Jim Tile. “Dennis Gault.”
Skink looked pleased. “You boys are pretty sharp, even for cops.”
Al García remembered what Skink had taught him about the huge fish. “Just what the hell have you done?” he asked.
“It’s not me, sen̄or. I just arranged things.” Skink flipped open the lid of the Igloo and saw García’s little bass, darting in the clean water. “I’ll be damned, Sergeant, I’m proud of you.”
Jim Tile said, “Sir, there’s something you ought to know.”
“In a minute, Trooper Jim. First let’s get this little scupper to the weigh station.” By himself Skink hoisted the heavy cooler and elbowed his way through the crowd. “You won’t believe this,” he was saying over his shoulder to Tile and García, “but I believe you’re the only boat that caught fish.”
“That’s what we’re trying to tell you,” García said, huffing behind.
Skink climbed the stage and carried the cooler to the scale. He took out the little bass and carefully set him in the basket. Behind them onstage the digital scale lighted up with glowing six-foot numerals: “14 oz.”
“Ha-ha!” Skink cawed. He found the stage mike and boomed into the PA system: “Attention, K-Mart shoppers! We’ve got a winner.”
“Shitfire,” Charlie Weeb muttered. The voice on the PA sounded just like the blind man. First a boatload of buzzards, and now what?
As the queasy preacher followed the OCN camerman to the weigh station, it occurred to him it wasn’t red-haired Rudy, but someone else with the Minicam, someone Weeb didn’t recognize. It made little sense, but in the unremitting chaos of the day it seemed a negligible mystery.
The blind man was not onstage when Charlie Weeb got there, but another nightmare awaited him.
The Tile Brothers.
“Hola,” Jim Tile said to Charlie Weeb. “es muy grande fish, no?”
“Check it out, bro,” Al García said.
Charlie Weeb got a bilious taste in his throat. “It appears that you are indeed the winner,” he said. The Minicam was right in his face—all America was watching. Somehow Weeb composed himself and raised the puny bass for the camera. Two girls in orange bikinis rolled out the immense trophy, and two more carried out a giant cardboard facsimile of the check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
“That’s righteous,” Al García said, causing Jim Tile to wince, “but where be the real thing?”
“Ah,” Weeb said. How could he go on TV and say that, after all this, the check was missing? That he and Deacon Johnson were the only two human beings with the combination to the safe, and now Deacon Johnson was gone?
Sensing trouble, Jim Tile asked, “¿Donde está el cheque?”
“I’m sorry,” Reverend Weeb said, “but I don’t speak Cubish.”
By way of translation, Al García said: “Where’s the fucking bread, por favor?”
Weeb attempted several explanations, none persuasive and none contradicting the fact that he had promised to present the check to the winners on national television on the day of the tournament. The crowd, especially the other bass anglers, became unruly and insistent; as much as they resented the Tile Brothers, they resented even more the idea of any fisherman getting stiffed. Even the sulking Happy Gland contingent joined the fracas.
“I’m sorry,” Weeb said finally, raising his palms, “there’s been a slight problem.”
Al Garcia and Jim Tile looked at one another irritably.
“You do the honors,” Garcia said.
Jim Tile dug a badge and some handcuffs out of his jacket.
Charlie Weeb’s lushly forested eyebrows seemed to wilt. A buzz went through the audience.
“Cut, Rudy, cut!” the director was hollering into R. J. Decker’s ear, but Decker let it roll.
In perfect English, Jim Tile said, “Mr. Weeb, you’re under arrest for fraud—”
“And grand larceny,” Garcia interjected. “And any other damn thing I can think of.”
“And grand larceny,” Jim Tile continued. “You have the right to remain silent—”
Just then a sorrowful cry sheared the dusk. It rose up from the water in a guttural animal pitch that made García flinch and shiver.
Jim Tile bowed his head. He’d tried to tell him.
Decker dropped the Minicam and ran toward the boat ramp.
Skink was on his knees in the shallow water. All around him fish were rising in convulsions, finning belly-up, cutting the glassy surface in jerky zigzag vectors.
Skink scooped up one of the addled bass as it swam by and held it up, dripping, for Decker and the others to see.
“They’re all dying,” he cried.
“Take my boat,” Eddie Spurling offered. “I got six of the damn things.”
“Thank you,” Skink said hoarsely. Decker and Catherine climbed in after him.
“I hope you find her,” Fast Eddie called as the boat pulled away. He would never forget the sight of that magnificent beast in the fish cage; he couldn’t bear the thought of her dying in bad water, but it seemed inevitable.
In the bass boat Skink stood up and opened the throttle. First the straw hat blew off, then the sunglasses. Skink didn’t seem to care. Nor did he seem to notice the gnats and bugs splatting against his cheeks and forehead, and sticking in his beard by the glue of their own blood. In the depthless gray of early night, Skink drove wide open as if he knew the canals by heart, or instinct. The boat accelerated like a rocket; Decker watched the speedometer tickle sixty and he clenched his teeth, praying they wouldn’t hit an alligator or a log. Catherine turned her head and clung to his chest with both arms. Except for the bone-chilling speed, it might have been a lovely moment.
Over the howl of the engine, Skink began to shout.
“Confrontation,” he declared, “is the essence of nature!”
He shook his silvery braid loose and let his hair stream out behind him.
“Confrontation is the rhythm of life,” he went on. “In nature violence is pure and purposeful, one species against another in an act of survival!”
Terrific, Decker thought, Marlin Perkins on PCP. “Watch where you’re going, captain!” he shouted.
“All I did with Dennis Gault,” Skink hollered back, “was to arrange a natural confrontation. No different from a thousand other confrontations that take place every night and every day out here, unseen and uncelebrated. Yet I knew Gault’s instincts as well as I knew the fish. It was only a matter of timing, of matching the natural rhythms. Putting the two species within striking distance. That’s all it was, Miami.”
Skink pounded the steering wheel ferociously with both fists, causing the speeding boat to skitter precipitously off its plane.
“But goddamn,” he groaned. “Goddamn, I didn’t know about the water.”
Decker rose beside him at the console and casually edged his knee against the wheel, just in case. “Of course you didn’t know!” Decker shouted. He ducked, unnecessarily, as they roared beneath an overpass for the new superhighway.
“We’re running through poison,” Skink said, incredulously. “They built a whole fucking resort on poison water.”
“I know, captain.”
“It’s my fault.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You don’t understand!” Skink turned around and said to Catherine: “He doesn’t understand. Do you love this man? Then make him understand. It’s my fault.”
Shielding her face from the cold, Catherine said, “You’re being too hard on yourself. That’s what I think.”
Skink smiled. His classic anchorman teeth were now speckled with dead gnats. “You’re quite a lady,” he said. “I wish you’d dump your doctor and go back—”
Suddenly, in front of them, another boat appeared. Just a flat shadow hanging in t
he darkness, dead across the middle of the canal. Someone in a yellow rain slicker was sitting in the bow of the boat, hunched in the seat.
Skink wasn’t even looking, he was talking to Catherine, who had opened her mouth to scream. Desperately Decker leaned hard left on the steering wheel and drew back on the throttle. Fast Eddie’s boat nearly went airborne as it struck the other craft a glancing mushy blow on the stem. They spun twice before Decker found the kill switch that cut the engine.
Skink, who had been thrown hard against the engine, got to his feet and took a visual survey. “This is the place,” he said.
The other boat had been bumped up against the bank. Decker waited for his heart to stop hammering before he called to the person in the yellow slicker: “You all right?”
“Screw you!”
“Lanie?”
“Always the vixen,” Skink said. He was stripping off the cheap sharkskin suit that Deacon Johnson had given him for the healing.
“Who is that woman?” Catherine asked.
“Gault’s sister,” Decker replied.
“Screw both of you!” Lanie shouted. She was standing in the bow, pointing angrily at them.
“So, where’s Dennis?” Decker asked.
“Change the subject,” Skink advised. He was naked now. He was on his knees, leaning over the side of the boat, unwittingly mooning Decker and Catherine. He slapped the flat of his palm on the water.
“I hope your fish croaks,” Lanie shouted at Skink, “like all the rest.” Her voice broke. “Like Dennis.”
Catherine said, “Have I missed something?”
Skink furiously pulled a dead yearling from the canal and heaved it to shore. He slapped and slapped, but no fish rose off the bottom, no fish came to his hand.
Decker rummaged through Eddie’s boat until he found a spotlight, which plugged into the boat’s cigarette lighter. With Skink still hanging over the side calling and slapping for Queenie, Decker worked the beam along the shoreline. Once he inadvertently flashed it in Lanie’s direction; she cursed and spun around in the pedestal seat to face the other way.
Decker spotted the body floating at the end of the canal, near the flood dike. He lowered the twin trolling motors and steered Eddie’s boat along the yellow path of the spotlight.
Catherine craned to see what it was, but Decker put his hand on her shoulder.
Dapper Dennis Gault was in shreds. He floated facedown, snarled in twenty-pound fishing line.
“The rhythm of confrontation,” Skink said. “In a way, I almost admire the sonofabitch.”
Decker knew there was nothing to be done.
“This is some sport,” Catherine remarked.
Skink and Decker saw the great fish simultaneously. She surfaced on her side, feebly, near Gault’s bloated legs. Her gills had bled from red to pink, and her flanks had blackened. She was dying.
“No, you don’t,” Skink said, and dove in. For a big man he made a small splash, entering the water like a needle.
Catherine stood up to watch with Decker. Their breath came out in soft frosty puffs.
“I got her!” Skink shouted. “But damnation!”
Somehow he had become entangled in Dennis Gault’s body. For several moments the water churned in a macabre one-sided duel, stiff dead limbs thrashing against the living. Catherine was terrified; it looked as if Gault had come back to life. Skink was in great pain, the foul brackish water searing his raw eye socket. All at once he seemed to be slipping under.
R. J. Decker picked up Fast Eddie’s fish gaff and stuck it hard in the meat of Gault’s shoulders. He pulled brutishly at the corpse with all his weight, and Skink kicked away, free. He cradled the sluggish fish in his bare arms. He swam with his head out, on his back, otter-style. He was fighting to catch his breath.
“Thanks, Miami,” he wheezed. “Take care.”
With four kicks he made it to shore, and carried the great fish up the slope. Decker didn’t need the spotlight to track him—a naked white Amazon running splayfooted along the embankment. He was singing, too, though the melody was indistinct.
Decker gunned the engine and beached the bass boat with a jolt. He jumped ashore and reached out his hand for Catherine. Together they jogged toward the flood dike, but Skink was far ahead. Even toting the fish, he seemed to be running twice as fast.
From the canal behind them, Lanie Gault called Skink’s name. Decker heard two shots and reflexively he dragged Catherine to the ground. They looked up to see two small flares explode overhead, drenching the night in vermilion. In a strange way it reminded Decker of the warm safe light of the darkroom. He had no idea why Lanie had fired the flare gun; maybe it was all she had.
They got up and started running again, but by this time Skink had already crested the dike. When they reached the other side, he was gone, vanished into the seam of the universe. As the flares burned out, the red glow drained from the sky and the crystal darkness returned to the marsh.
A washboard ripple lingered on the quiet pool. Frogs peeped, crickets trilled, waterbugs skated through the bulrushes. There was no sign of the great fish, no sign of the man.
“Hear it?” Decker asked.
Catherine brushed the insects away and strained to listen. “I don’t think so, Rage.”
“Something swimming.” The gentlest of motions, receding somewhere out in the Glades. Decker was sure of it.
“Wait,” Catherine said, taking his arm, “now I do.”
ALSO BY CARL HIAASEN
Fiction
Skinny Dip
Basket Case
Sick Puppy
Lucky You
Stormy Weather
Strip Tease
Native Tongue
Skin Tight
Double Whammy
Tourist Season
FOR YOUNG READERS
Flush
Hoot
Nonfiction
Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World
Kick Ass: Selected Columns
(edited by Diane Stevenson)
Paradise Screwed: Selected Columns
(edited by Diane Stevenson)
Carl Hiaasen, Double Whammy
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