“Are you an outdoorsman?” Dennis Gault asked.
Decker shrugged. “You mean can I start a campfire? Sure. Can I kill a Cape buffalo barehanded? Probably not.”
Gault poured himself a gin and tonic. “But you can handle yourself, I presume.”
“You presume right.”
“Size doesn't mean a damn thing,” Gault said. “You could still be a wimp.”
Decker sighed. Another macho jerk.
Gault asked, “So what kind of fishing do you know about?”
“Offshore stuff, nothing exotic. Grouper, snapper, dolphin.”
“Pussy fish,” Gault snorted. “For tourists.”
“Oh,” Decker said, “so you must be the new Zane Grey.”
Gault looked up sharply from his gin. “I don't care for your attitude, mister.”
Decker had heard this before. The
mister
was kind of a nice touch, though.
Dennis Gault said, “You look like you want to punch me.”
“That's pretty funny.”
“I don't know about you,” Gault said, stirring his drink. “You look like you're itching to take a swing.”
“What for?” Decker said. “Anytime I want to punch an asshole I can stroll down to Biscayne Boulevard and take my pick.”
He guessed that it would take Gault five or six seconds to come up with some witty reply. Actually it took a little longer.
“I guarantee you never met an asshole like me,” he said.
Decker glanced at his wristwatch and looked very boredâa mannerism he'd been practicing.
Gault made a face. He wore a tight powder-blue pullover and baggy linen trousers. He looked forty, maybe older. He studied Decker through amber aviator glasses. “You don't like me, do you?” he said.
“I don't know you, Mr. Gault.”
“You know I'm rich, and you know I've got a problem. That's enough.”
“I know you kept me suffocating in your neo-modern earth-tone lobby for two hours,” Decker said. “I know your secretary's name is Ruth and I know she doesn't keep any Maalox tablets in her desk because I asked. I know your daddy owns this skyscraper and your granddad owns a sugar mill, and I know your T-shirt looks like hell with those trousers. And that's all I know about you.”
Which was sort of a lie. Decker also knew about the two family banks in Boca Raton, the shopping mall in Daytona Beach, and the seventy-five thousand acres of raw cane west of Lake Okeechobee.
Dennis Gault sat down behind a low Plexiglas desk. The desk looked like it belonged in a museum, maybe as a display case for Mayan pottery. Gault said, “So I'm a sugar daddy, you're right. Want to know what I know about you, Mr. Private Eye, Mr. Felony Past?”
Oh boy, thought R. J. Decker, this is your life. “Tell me your problem or I'm leaving.”
“Tournament fishing,” Gault said. “What do you know about tournament fishing?”
“Not a damn thing.”
Gault stood up and pointed reverently to a fat blackish fish mounted on the wall. “Do you know what that is?”
“An oil drum,” Decker replied, “with eyes.” He knew what it was. You couldn't live in the South and not know what it was.
“A largemouth bass!” Gault exclaimed.
He gazed at the stuffed fish as if it were a sacred icon. It was easy to see how the bass got its name; its maw could have engulfed a soccer ball.
“Fourteen pounds, four ounces,” Gault announced. “Got her on a crankbait at Lake Toho. Do you have any idea what this fish was worth?”
Decker felt helpless. He felt like he was stuck in an elevator with a Jehovah's Witness.
“Seventy-five thousand dollars,” Gault said.
“Christ.”
“Now I got your attention, don't I?” Gault grinned. He patted the flank of the plastic bass as if it were the family dog.
“This fish,” he went on, “won the Southeast Regional Bass Anglers Classic two years ago. First place was seventy-five large and a Ford Thunderbird. I gave the car to some migrants.”
“All that for one fish?” Decker was amazed. Civilization was in serious trouble.
“In 1985,” Gault went on, “I fished seventeen tournaments and made one hundred and seven thousand dollars, Mr. Decker. Don't look so astounded. The prize money comes from sponsorsâboat makers, tackle manufacturers, bait companies, the outboard marine industry. Bass fishing is an immensely profitable business, the fastestgrowing outdoor sport in America. Of course, the tournament circuit is in no way a sport, it's a cutthroat enterprise.”
“But you don't need the money,” Decker said.
“I need the competition.”
The Ted Turner Syndrome, Decker thought.
“So what's the problem?”
“The problem is criminals,” Gault said.
“Could you be more specific?”
“Cheats.”
“People who lie about the size of the fish they catchâ”
Gault laughed acidly. “You can't lie about the size. Dead or alive, the fish are brought back to the dock to be weighed.”
“Then how can anybody cheat?”
“Ha!” Gault said, and told his story.
There had been an incident at a big-money tournament in north Texas. The contest had been sponsored by a famous plastic-worm company that had put up a quarter-million-dollar purse. At the end of the final day Dennis Gault stood on the dock with twenty-seven pounds of largemouth bass, including a nine-pounder. Normally a catch like this would have won a tournament hands down, and Gault was posing proudly with his string of fish when the last boat roared up to the dock. A man named Dickie Lockhart hopped out holding a monster bassâeleven pounds, seven ouncesâwhich of course won first place.
“That fish,” Dennis Gault recalled angrily, “had been dead for two days.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know a stiff when I see one. That fish was cold, Mr. Decker, icebox-type cold. You follow?”
“A ringer?” It was all Decker could do not to laugh.
“I know what you're thinking: Who cares if some dumb shitkicker redneck cheats with a fish? But think about this: Of the last seven big-money tournaments held in the United States, Dickie Lockhart has won five and finished second twice. That's two hundred sixty thousand bucks, which makes him not such a dumb shitkicker after all. It makes him downright respectable. He's got his own rigging TV show, if you can believe that.”
Decker said, “Did you confront him about the ringer?”
“Hell, no. That's a damn serious thing, and I had no solid proof.”
“Nobody else was suspicious?”
“Shit,
everybody
else was suspicious, but no one had the balls to say boo. Over beers, sure, they said they knew it was a stiff. But not to Dickie's face.”
“This Lockhart, he must be a real tough guy,” Decker said, needling.
“Not tough, just powerful. Most bass pros don't want to piss him off. If you want to get asked to the invitationals, you'd better be pals with Dickie. If you want product endorsements, you better kiss Dickie's ass. Same goes if you want your new outboard wholesale. It adds up. Some guys don't like Dickie Lockhart worth a shit, but they sure like to be on TV.”
Decker said, “He's the only one who cheats?”
Gault hooted.
“Then what's the big deal?” Decker asked.
“The big deal”âGault sneeredâ“is that Lockhart cheats in the big ones. The big deal is that he cheats against
me.
It's the difference between a Kiwanis softball game and the fucking World Series, you understand?”
“Absolutely,” Decker said. He had heard enough. “Mr. Gault, I really don't think I can help you.”
“Sit down.”
“Look, this is not my strong suit....”
“What is your strong suit? Divorces? Car repos? Workmen's comp? If you're doing so hot, maybe you wouldn't mind telling me why you're moonlighting at that shyster insurance agency where I tracked you down.”
Decker headed for the door.
“The fee is fifty thousand dollars.”
Decker wheeled and stared. Finally he said, “You don't need a P.I., you need a doctor.”
“The money is yours if you can catch this cocksucker cheating, and prove it.”
“Prove it?”
Gault said, “You were an ace photographer once. Couple big awardsâI know about you, Decker. I know about your crummy temper and your run-in with the law. I also know you'd rather sleep in a tent than a Hilton, and that's fine. They say you're a little crazy, but crazy is exactly what I need.”
“You want pictures?” Decker said. “Of fish.”
“What better proof?” Gault glowed at the idea. “You get me a photograph of Dickie Lockhart cheating, and I'll get you published in every blessed outdoors magazine in the free world. That's a bonus, too, on top of the fee.”
The cover of
Field and Stream,
Decker thought, a dream come true. “I told you,” he said, “I don't know anything about tournament fishing.”
“If it makes you feel any better, you weren't my first choice.”
It didn't make Decker feel any better.
“The first guy I picked knew plenty about fishing,” Dennis Gault said, “a real pro.”
“And?”
“It didn't work out. Now I need a new guy.”
Dennis Gault looked uncomfortable. “Distracted” was the word for it. He set down his drink and reached inside the desk. Out came a fake-lizardskin checkbook. Or maybe it was real.
“Twenty-five up front,” Gault said, reaching for a pen.
R. J. Decker thought of the alternative and shrugged. “Make it thirty,” he said.
2
To Dr. Michael Pembroke fell the task of dissecting the body of Robert Clinch.
The weight of this doleful assignment was almost unbearable because Dr. Pembroke by training was not a coroner, but a clinical pathologist. He addressed warts, cysts, tumors, and polyps with ease and certitude, but corpses terrified him, as did forensics in general.
Most Florida counties employ a full-time medical examiner, or coroner, to handle the flow of human dead. Rural Harney County could not justify such a luxury to its taxpayers, so each year the county commission voted to retain the part-time services of a pathologist to serve as coroner when needed. For the grand sum of five thousand dollars Dr. Michael Pembroke was taking his turn. The job was not unduly time-consuming, as there were only four thousand citizens in the county and they did not die often. Most who did die had the courtesy to do so at the hospital, or under routine circumstances that required neither an autopsy nor an investigation. The few Harney Countians who expired unnaturally could usually be classified as victims of (a) domestic turmoil, (b) automobile accidents, (c) hunting accidents, (d) boating accidents, or (e) lightning. Harney County had more fatal lightning strikes than any other place in Florida, though no one knew why. The local fundamentalist church had a field day with this statistic.
When news of Robert Clinch's death arrived at the laboratory, Dr. Pembroke was staring at a common wart (
verruca vulgaris
) that had come from the thumb of a watermelon farmer. The scaly brown lump was not a pleasant sight, but it was infinitely preferable to the swollen visage of a dead bass fisherman. The doctor tried to stall and pretend he was deeply occupied at the microscope, but the sheriffs deputy waited patiently, leafing through some dermatology pamphlets. Dr. Pembroke finally gave up and got in the back of the squad car for the short ride to the morgue.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Dr. Pembroke asked, leaning forward.
“It's Bobby Clinch,” the deputy said over his shoulder. “Musta flipped his boat in the lake.”
Dr. Pembroke was relieved. Now he had a theory; soon he'd have a cause-of-death. In no time he could return to the wart. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad.
The police car pulled up to a low red-brick building that served as the county morgue. The building had once been leased out as a Burger King restaurant, and had not been refurbished since the county bought it. While the Burger King sign had been removed (and sold to a college fraternity house), the counters, booths, and drive-up window remained exactly as they had been in the days of the Whopper. Dr. Pembroke once wrote a letter to the county commission suggesting that a fast-food joint was hardly the proper site for a morgue, but the commissioners tersely pointed out that it was the only place in Harney with a walk-in freezer.
Peering through the plate-glass window, Dr. Pembroke saw a pudgy man with a ruddy, squashed-looking face. It was Culver Rundell, whose shoulders (the doctor remembered) had been covered with brown junctional moles. These had been expertly biopsied and found to be nonmalignant.
“Hey, doc!” Culver Rundell said as Dr. Pembroke came through the door.
“Hello,” the pathologist said. “How are those moles?” Pathologists seldom have to deal with whole patients so they are notoriously weak at making small talk.
“The moles are coming back,” Culver Rundell reported, “by the hundreds. My wife takes a Flair pen and plays connect-the-dots from my neck to my butthole.”
“Why don't you come by the office and I'll take a look.”
“Naw, doc, you done your best. I'm used to the damn things, and so's Jeannie. We make the best of the situation, if you know what I mean.”
Culver Rundell ran a fish camp on Lake Jesup. He was not much of a fisherman but he loved the live-bait business, worms and wild shiners mainly. He also served as official weighmaster for some of America's most prestigious bass tournaments, and this honor Culver Rundell owed to his lifelong friendship with Dickie Lockhart, champion basser.