Miller was talking in a loud voice into the phone. Something about a walnut dining table and an unpaid bill.
Ott Pickney slipped out the front way, then walked around to the back of the shop where Miller couldn’t see him. Against one wall stood two long green dumpsters filled with fresh-cut lumber remnants. They were the sweetest-smelling dumpsters Ott had ever come across. He stood on his tiptoes and looked inside. In the first he saw a pile of wooden chips, blocks, odd triangles and rectangles, a broken sawhorse, a hogshead, empty cans of resin and varnish; Mr. Larkin’s predictable junk.
At the second dumpster Ott found a similar jumble of pulp, plywood, and two-by-fours, but also something else: molded chunks of blue-sparkled fiberglass. It was the remains of Bobby Clinch’s Ranger bass boat, sawed to pieces in the customizing of the fisherman’s coffin.
Ott boosted himself, using an empty gallon can of Formsby’s turned upside down. He stuffed the notebook into the back pocket of his trousers and stretched over the rim of the dumpster so his arms could reach the wreckage. As he sifted through the fiberglass scraps, Ott realized it was impossible to tell how these jigsawed pieces had ever comprised a nineteen-foot boat.
The one fragment he recognized was the console. Ott found it in the bottom of the dumpster.
Every expensive bass boat has a console, a recessed cockpit designed to give anglers the same sensation as if they were racing the Daytona 500 instead of merely demolishing the quietude of a lake.
To Ott Pickney, the cockpit of Bobby Clinch’s fishing boat more closely resembled the pilot’s deck of a 747. Among the concave dials were a compass, a sonic depth recorder, a digital tachometer, an LED gauge showing water temperature at five different depths, power-tilt adjusters, trim tabs, a marine radio and an AM-FM stereo, with a tape deck. All these electronics obviously were ruined from being submerged in the lake, but Ott was fascinated anyway. He hoisted the console out of the dumpster to take a closer look.
He set the heavy piece on his lap and imagined himself at the controls of a two-hundred-horsepower speedboat. He pretended to hunker behind the Plexiglas windshield and aim the boat along a winding creek. The only trouble was, the steering wheel wouldn’t budge in his hands.
Ott turned the console over, thinking the shaft had gotten snarled in all the loose wiring. But that wasn’t the problem; the problem was a short length of black nylon rope. The rope had been wrapped tightly around the base of the steering column beneath the console, where it wouldn’t be seen. Ott plucked fruitlessly at the coils; the rope had been tied on with authority. The steering was completely jammed.
Which meant, of course, that the direction of Bobby Clinch’s boat had been fixed. It meant that Clinch himself needn’t have been at the wheel at the instant of the crash. It meant that the fisherman probably was already dying or injured when the ghost-driven bass boat flipped over and tunneled bow-first into the chilly water.
Ott Pickney did not grasp this scenario as swiftly as he might have. It was dawning on him slowly, but he became so engrossed in the contemplation that he lost track of his surroundings. He heard footsteps and looked up, expecting to see Miller, the carpenter’s black apprentice. Instead there were three other men, dressed in the standard local garb—caps, jeans, flannel shirts. One of the visitors carried a short piece of lumber, a second carried a loop of heavy wire; the other just stood dull-eyed, fists at his side. Ott started to say something but his greeting died beneath the grinding whine of a carpenter’s table saw; Miller back at work inside the shed. The three men stepped closer. Only one was a local, but he recognized Ott Pickney and knew that the reporter could identify him. Unfortunately for Ott, none of the men wished to see their names in the paper.
7
Dennis Gault was holding a stack of VCR cassettes when he answered the door. He was wearing salmon shorts and a loose mesh top that looked like it would have made an excellent mullet seine. Gault led R. J. Decker to the living room, which was filled with low flat-looking furniture. The predominant hue was cranberry.
Gault put a cassette in the video recorder and told Decker to sit down. “Want a drink?” Gault asked. He smelled like he was on his tenth Smirnoff.
Decker took a cold beer.
A fishing show came on the television screen. Gault used the remote control to fast-forward the tape. Two guys in a bass boat, Decker could tell; casting and reeling, casting and reeling, occasionally hauling in a small fish. Fast-forward was the only way to endure this, Decker decided.
A commercial came on and Gault abruptly hit the freeze button. “Theeeeere’s Dickie!” he sang derisively.
On the screen Dickie Lockhart stood by the side of a lake, squinting into the sun. He was wearing a crisply pressed basser’s jumpsuit, desert tan; his cap was off and his hair was blow-dried to perfection. He was holding up a sixteen-ounce bottle of Happy Gland Fish Scent, and grinning.
“Does that stuff really work?” Decker asked. A bit off the point, but he was curious.
“Hard to say,” Gault replied. “Stinks like a sack of dead cats, that’s for sure.”
He speeded the tape forward until he found the segment he’d been searching for. He froze the picture as the angler in the bow of the boat hoisted a fat black bass to show the camera.
“There! Look now, pay attention!” Gault said. Excitedly he shuffled on bare knees across the floor to the television screen, one of those custom five-foot monsters that eats up the whole wall. “There, Decker, look. This fish is a ringer!”
“How can you tell?”
“See here, the eyes are flat. Not cloudy yet, but flat as tile. And the color’s washed out of the flanks. No vertical stripes, not a one. Muck is the color of this fish.”
“It doesn’t look too healthy,” Decker agreed.
“Healthy? Man, this fish is DOA. Check the dorsal. The guy is fanning the fins for the camera. Why? ’Cause they’d fold up otherwise. This fish is de-fucking-ceased.”
“But they just showed the fisherman reeling it in,” Decker said.
“Wrong. Now watch.” Gault backed up the tape and replayed the fight. The rod was bent, the water around the boat boiled and splashed—but the angles and the editing of the video made it impossible to see the actual size of the bass. Until the fisherman lifted it for the camera.
“That rookie caught a fish,” Gault said, “but not this fish.” He hit a button and rewound the tape. “Want to watch another one?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Decker said.
“You see how easy it is to cheat.”
“For a TV show, sure.”
“It’s even easier in a tournament,” Gault said, “especially when your partner’s in on it. And the weighmaster too. Not to mention the goddamn sponsors.” He went to the kitchen and came back with a beer for Decker and a fresh vodka-tonic for himself.
“Tell me about what happened in Harney,” he said.
“Met a guy named Skink,” Decker said.
Gault whistled and arched his eyebrows. “A real fruitbar. I fished with him once on the St. John’s.”
“He’s going to help me catch Lockhart.”
“Not on my nickel!” Gault protested.
“I need him.”
“He’s a maniac.”
“I don’t think so.”
“He eats dead animals off the road!”
“Waste not, want not,” Decker said. “He’s the only one up there I’d trust. Without him I quit the case.”
Gault folded his hands. Decker drank his beer.
“All right,” Gault said, “but be careful. That guy’s got Texas Tower written all over him, and neither of us wants to be there if he ever reaches the top.”
What Gault meant was: If there’s trouble, don’t drag my name into it.
“What else did you do?” he asked Decker.
“Went to a funeral.”
Gault licked his lower lip nervously.
“Robert Clinch,” Decker said, “late of your hire. Nice of you to tell m
e.”
Gault toyed with the stack of fishing videotapes, pretending to organize them. Without looking up, he asked, “Do they know what exactly happened?”
“The coroner says it was accidental.”
Gault smiled thinly. “We know that’s horseshit, don’t we? The only question in my mind is: How’d they do it?”
Decker said, “My question is: Who?”
“Who? Dickie Lockhart, that’s who!” Gault said. “Don’t be stupid, man. Dickie knew I was closing in and he knew Bobby was working for me. What do you mean—who?”
“You’re probably right,” Decker said, “but I’d like to be sure.”
“Haven’t you been listening? Christ, don’t tell me I’ve hired a complete moron.”
“I met your sister,” Decker said. He liked to save the best for last.
“Elaine?” Gault said. He looked most uncomfortable, just as Decker had expected. It was worth the wait.
“We had a nice chat,” Decker said. He wanted Gault to be the one who finished the conversation. He didn’t want to be the one to take it any further, but he had to. He needed to find out if Gault knew everything.
“You didn’t tell me a couple important things. You didn’t tell me about Clinch and you didn’t tell me you had a sister up in Harney.” Decker’s voice had the slightest sting of irritation.
“She gets around, my sister.” Gault drained his glass. His face was getting red.
Stubborn bastard, Decker thought, have it your way.
“You knew she was having an affair with Bobby Clinch,” he said evenly.
“Says who?” Gault snapped. The red became deeper.
“Lanie.”
“Lanie?”
“That’s what they call her.”
“Oh, is it now?”
“Personally, I don’t care if she’s screwing the entire American Legion post,” Decker said, “but I need to know what you know.”
“You better shut your mouth, ace!” Gault’s face was actually purple now.
Decker thought: We really hit a nerve here. But from the murderous looks he was getting, he figured now wasn’t the time to pursue it. He got up and headed for the door but Gault grabbed his arm and snarled, “Wait just a minute.” Decker shook free and—rather gently, he thought—guided Gault backward until his butt hit the sofa.
“Good-bye now,” Decker said.
But Gault had lost it. He lunged and got Decker by the throat. Gagging, Decker felt manicured fingernails digging into the meat of his neck. He stared up the length of Gault’s brown arms and saw every vein and tendon swollen. The man’s cheeks were flushed but his lips twitched like bloodless worms.
The two men toppled across the low sofa with Gault on top, amber eyeglasses askew. He was spitting and hollering about what a shiteating punk Decker was, while Decker was trying to squirm free from the neckhold before he passed out. His vision bloomed kaleidoscopic and his skull roared. The blood in his head was trying to go south but Dennis Gault wouldn’t let it.
A cardinal rule of being a successful private investigator is: Don’t slug your own clients. But sometimes exceptions had to be made. Decker made one. He released his fruitless grip on Gault’s wrists and, in a clumsy but effective pincer motion, hammered him in the ribs with both fists. As the wind exploded from Gault’s lungs, Decker bucked him over and jumped on top.
Dennis Gault had figured R. J. Decker to be strong, but he was unprepared for the force now planted on his sternum. As his own foolish rage subsided, he fearfully began to wonder if Decker was just getting warmed up.
Gault felt but never saw the two sharp punches that flattened his nose, shattered his designer frames, and closed one eye. Later, when he awoke and dragged himself to the bathroom, he would marvel in the mirror that only two punches could have done so much damage. He found a pail of ice cubes waiting on the nightstand, next to a bottle of aspirin.
And a handwritten note from R. J. Decker: “The fee is now one hundred, asshole.”
Harney was such a small county that it was difficult to mount a serious high-school athletic program. There was, after all, only one high school. The enrollment fluctuated from about one hundred and seventy-five to two hundred and ten, so the pool of sports talent was relatively limited. In those rare and precious years when Harney High fielded a winning team, the star athletes were encouraged to flunk a year or two in order to delay graduation and prolong the school’s victory streak. A few idealistic teachers spoke out against this unorthodox display of school spirit, but the truth was that many of the top jocks were D students anyway and had fully intended to spend six or seven years in high school.
Football was the sport that Harney loved most; unfonunately, the football team of Harney High had never compiled a winning record. One season, in desperation, they even scheduled three games against the wimpiest parochial schools in Duval County. Harney lost every game. The coach was fired, and moved out of town.
Consequently the Harney High athletic department decided to concentrate on another sport, basketball. The first order of business was to build a gymnasium with a basketball court and some portable bleachers. The second move was to send a cautious delegation of coaches and teachers into the black neighborhood to recruit some good basketball players. A few old crackers in Harney huffed and swore about having to watch a bunch of skinny spooks tear up and down the court, and about how it wasn’t fair to the good Christian white kids, but then it was pointed out that the good Christian white kids were mostly slow and fat and couldn’t make a lay-up from a trampoline.
Once the basketball program was established, the team performed better than anyone had expected. The first year it made it to the regionals, the next to the state playoffs in the Class Four-A division. True, the star center of the Harney team was twenty-seven years old, but he looked much younger. No one raised a peep. As the team kept winning, basketball eventually captured Harney Country’s heart.
The Harney High basketball team was called the Armadillos. It was not the first choice of names. Originally the school had wanted its team to be the Rattlers, but a Class AA team in Orlando already claimed that nickname. Second choice was the Bobcats, except that a Bible college in Leesburg had dibs on that one. It went on like this for several months—the Tigers, the Hawks, the Panthers; all taken, the good names—until finally it came down to either the Owls or the Armadillos. The school board voted to name the team the Owls since it had six fewer letters and the uniforms would be much less expensive, but the student body rebelled and gathered hundreds of signatures on a typed petition declaring that the Harney Owls was “a pussy name and nobody’ll ever go to any of the damn games.” Without comment the school board reversed its vote.
Once the Harney Armadillos started kicking ass on the basketball court, the local alumnae decided that the school needed an actual mascot, something on the order of the famous San Diego Chicken, only cheaper. Ideas were submitted in a local contest sponsored by the Sentinel, and a winner was chosen from sixteen entries. Working on commission, one of the matrons from the Sewing Club stitched together an incredible costume out of old automobile seat covers and floormats.
It was a six-foot armadillo, complete with glossy armored haunches, a long anteater nose (salvaged from a Hoover canister vacuum), and a scaly tail.
The mascot was to be known as Davey Dillo, and he would perform at each of the home games. By custom he would appear before the opening tipoff, breakdancing to a tape of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” Then at halftime Davey Dillo would stage a series of clumsy stunts on a skateboard, to whatever music the band had learned that week.
Davey Dillo’s was not a polished act, but the youngsters (at least those under four) thought it was the funniest thing ever to hit the Harney gymnasium. The grown-ups thought the man inside the armadillo costume had a lot of guts.
On the evening of January 12 the Harney Armadillos were all set to play the Valencia Cropdusters in a battle for first place in the midstate Four-A division. In
side the gymnasium sat two hundred fans, more than the coaches and cheerleaders had ever seen; so many fans that, when the national anthem was sung, it actually sounded on key.
The last words—“home of the brave!”—were Davey Dillo’s regular cue to prance onto the basketball court and wave a single sequined glove on one of his armadillo paws. Then he would start the dance.
But on this night the popular mascot did not appear.
After a few awkward moments somebody cut off the Michael Jackson tape and put on Ricky Scaggs, while the coaches ordered the players to search the gym. In all two years of his existence, Davey Dillo had never missed a sporting event at Harney High (even the track and field), so nobody knew what to think. Soon the crowd, even the Valencia High fans, began to chant, “We want the Dillo! We want the Dillo!”
But Davey Dillo was not in the locker room suiting up. He wasn’t oiling the wheels on his skateboard. He wasn’t mending the pink-washcloth tongue of his armadillo costume.
Davey Dillo—rather, the man who created and portrayed Davey Dillo—was missing.
His identity was the worst-kept secret in Harney County. It was Ott Pickney, of course.
8
R. J. Decker lived in a trailer court about a mile off the Palmetto Expressway. The trailer was forty feet long and ten feet wide, and made of the finest sheet aluminum. Inside the walls were covered with cheap paneling that had warped in the tropical humidity; the threadbare carpet was the color of liver. For amenities the trailer featured a badly wired kitchenette, a drip of a shower, and a decrepit air conditioner that leaked gray fluid all over the place. Decker had converted the master closet to a darkroom, and it was all the space he needed; it was a busy week if he used it more than once or twice.
He didn’t want to live in a trailer park, hated the very idea, but it was all he could afford after the divorce. Not that his wife had cleaned him out, she hadn’t; she had merely taken what was hers, which amounted to practically everything of value in the marriage. Except for the cameras. In aggregate, R. J. Decker’s camera equipment was worth twice as much as the trailer where he lived. He took no special steps to protect or conceal the cameras because virtually all his trailer-park neighbors owned free-running pit bulldogs, canine psychopaths that no burglar dared to challenge.