Charlie Weeb didn't own an actual church, but he had something even better: a TV station.
For two million dollars he had purchased a small UHF operation whose programming consisted entirely of game shows, Atlanta Braves baseball, and
The Best of Hee-Haw.
Nothing changed for four months, until one Sunday morning a man with straw-blond hair and messianic eyebrows stood behind a cardboard pulpit and introduced himself as the Most Holy Reverend Charles Weeb. From now on, he said, WEEB-TV would be the voice of Jesus Christ.
Then, live on the air, Charlie Weeb healed a crippled cat.
Hundreds of viewers saw it. The calico kitten limped to the stage andâafter a tremulous Reverend Weeb prayed for its soul and passed a hand over its furry headâthe animal scampered away, cured.
The following Sunday Charlie Weeb performed the same miracle on a gimpy beagle. The Sunday after that, a shoat. Two weeks later, a baby llama, on loan from a traveling circus.
Weeb saved the master coup for Christmas Sunday, the start of a ratings-sweep week. Before his biggest TV audience ever, he healed a lamb.
It was a magnificent performance, full of biblical symbolism. Few viewers who saw the nappy dull-eyed critter rise off the floor were not deeply moved. No one in Charlie Weeb's flock seemed to mind that the miracle took about an hour longer than expected; they figured that, it being a busy Christmas, God was running a little late. In fact, the reason for the delay in the much-promoted lamb healing was that Charlie Weeb's assistant had injected way too much lidocaine into the animal's hind legs before the show, so it took an extra long time for the effect of the drug to wear off.
The Reverend Weeb nearly preached himself hoarse over that lamb, and after the Christmas miracle he swore off healings forever. By then it didn't matter; his reputation had been made. Soon stations all over the South were airing Weeb's show,
Jesus in Your
Living Room
, and weekly mail donations were topping in the six figures. In TV evangelism Charlie Weeb finally had hooked into a popular trend before it tapped out.
This time he decided to take a chance. This time he funneled the profits into expansion instead of Bahamian bank accounts. With Weeb's preacher hour as its blockbuster leadoff, the Outdoor Christian Network was inaugurated with sixty-four stations as prepaid subscribers. The OCN format was simple: religion, hunting, fishing, farm-stock reports, and country-music-awards shows. Even as Charlie Weeb branched the OCN empire into real estate, investment banking, and other endeavors, he could scarcely believe the rousing success of his TV formula; it confirmed everything he had always said about the state of the human race.
Initially Weeb had refused to believe that grown men would sit for hours watching fishing programs on cable TV. In person the act of fishing was boring enough; watching someone else do it seemed like a form of self-torture. Yet Weeb's market researchers convinced him otherwiseâReal Men tuned in to TV fishing, and the demographics were rock-solid for beer, tobacco, and automotive advertising, not to mention the marine industry.
Weeb scanned the projections and immediately ordered up a one-hour bass-fishing program. He personally auditioned three well-known anglers. The first, Ben Geer, was rejected because of his weight (three hundred and ninety pounds) and his uncontrollable habit of coughing gobs of sputum into the microphone. The second angler, Art Pinkler, was witty, knowledgeable, and ruggedly handsome, but burdened with a squeaky New England accent that spelled death on the Q meter. The budget was too lean for speech lessons or overdubbing, so Pinkler was out; Charlie Weeb needed a genuine redneck.
Which left Dickie Lockhart.
Weeb thought the first episode of
Fish Fever
was the worst piece of television he had ever seen. Dickie was incoherent, the camera work palsied, and the tape editors obviously stoned. Still Dickie had hauled in three huge largemouth bass, and the advertisers had loved every dirt-cheap minute. Baffled, Weeb stuck with the show. In three years,
Fish Fever
became a top earner for the Outdoor Christian Network, though in recent months it had lost ground in several important markets to Ed Spurling's rival bass show. Spurling's program was briskly edited and slickly packaged, which appealed to Charlie Weeb, as did anything that made wads of money and was not an outright embarrassment. Sensing that Dickie Lockhart's days as the Baron of Bass might be numbered, the Reverend Weeb had quietly approached Fast Eddie Spurling to see if he could be bought. The two men were still haggling over salaries by the time the Cajun Invitational fishing tournament came along, when Dickie found the preacher with two nearly naked women.
Lockhart's demand for a lucrative new contract was an extortion that Reverend Weeb could not afford to ignore; competition had grown cutthroat among TV evangelicalsâthe slightest moral stain and you'd be off the air.
As he had vowed, Dickie Lockhart won the New Orleans tournament easily. Charlie Weeb didn't bother to show up at the victory party. He scheduled a press conference for the next morning to announce Dickie Lockhart's new cable deal, and phoned the TV writer of the
Times-Picayune
to let him know. Then he called a couple of hookers.
At five-thirty in the morning, a city policeman knocked on the double door to Charlie Weeb's hotel suite. The cop recognized one of the hookers but didn't mention it. “I've got bad news, Reverend,” the policeman said. “Dickie Lockhart's been murdered.”
“Jesus help us,” Charlie Weeb said.
The cop nodded. “Somebody beat him over the head real good. Stole his truck, his boat, all his fishing gear. The cash he won in the tournament, too.”
“This is terrible,” said Reverend Weeb. “A robbery.”
“We'll know more tomorrow, when the lab techs are done,” the cop said on his way out. “Try to get some rest.”
“Thank you,” said Charlie Weeb.
He was wide-awake now. He paid off the hookers and sat down to write his Sunday sermon.
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R. J. Decker was not exactly flabbergasted to wake up in the motel room and find that Skink had not returned. Decker had every reason to suspect that it was he who had murdered Dickie Lockhartâfirst of all, because Skink had talked so nonchalantly about doing it; second, the perverse details of the crime seemed to carry his stamp.
Decker showered in a daze and shaved brutally, as if pain would drive the fog from his brain. The case had turned not only more murderous but also more insane. The newspapers would go nuts with this stuff; it was probably even a national story. It was a story from which Decker fervently wished to escape.
After checking out of the motel, he packed his gear into the rental car and drove toward Pass Manchac. It was nine in the morningâsurely somebody had discovered the gruesome scene by now.
As he drove across the water Decker's heart pounded; he could see blue lights flashing near the boat ramp. He pulled in at the Sportsman's Hideout, got out of the car, and wedged into the crowd that encircled the huge bass aquarium. There were five police cruisers, two ambulances, and a fire truck, all for one dead body. It had been three whole hours since Dickie's remains had been fished from the tank, strapped to a stretcher, and covered with a green woolen blanket; no one seemed in a hurry to make the trip to the morgue.
The crowd was mostly men, some of whom Decker recognized even without their caps as contestants from the bass tournament. Two local detectives with pads and pencils were working the spectators, hoping to luck into a witness. A pretty young woman leaned against one of the squad cars. She was sobbing as she talked to a uniformed cop, who was filling out a pink report. Decker heard the girl say her name was Ellen. Ellen O'Leary. She had a New Orleans accent.
Decker wondered what she knew, what she might have seen.
In the back of his mind Decker harbored a fear that Skink might show up at the dock to admire his own handiwork, but there was no sign of him. Decker slipped into a phone booth and called Dennis Gault at home in Miami. He sounded half-asleep.
“What do you want?”
What do you want
? All charm, this guy.
“Your pal Dickie's landed his last lunker,” Decker said.
“What do you mean?”
“He's dead.”
“Shit,” Gault said. “What happened?”
“I'll tell you about it later.”
“Don't leave New Orleans,” Gault said. “Stay put.”
“No way.” Just what I need is that asshole jetting up for brunch at Brennan's, Decker thought. He's probably icing a Dom Perignon already.
In an oddly stiff tone Gault asked, “Do you have those pictures?” As if it made a difference now.
Decker didn't answer. Through the pane in the phone booth he was watching Thomas Curl and the Rundell brothers in the parking lot of the marina. One of the local detectives was interviewing the three men together; when Ozzie talked, his head bobbed up and down like a dashboard puppy. The cop was scribbling energetically in his notebook.
“What number you at?” Dennis Gault asked over the phone.
“Seventy,” Decker replied. “As in miles per hour.”
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The tire blew on Interstate 10, outside of Kenner. The spare was one of those tiny toy tires now standard equipment on new cars. To get to the spare Decker had to empty the trunk of his duffel and camera gear, which he stacked neatly by the side of the highway. He had gotten the rental halfway jacked when he heard another car pull up behind him in the emergency lane; by the emphysemic sounds of the engine, Decker knew it wasn't a cop.
Not even close. It was a brown 1974 Cordoba, its vinyl roof puckered like a sun blister. Two-for-four on the hubcaps. Three men got out of the rusty old tank; judging by their undershirts and tattoos, Decker assumed they were not from the Triple-A. He pried the crowbar out of the jack handle and held it behind him.
“Gentlemen,” he said.
“Whatsamatter here?” said the largest of the trio.
“Flat tire,” Decker said. “I'm fine.”
“year?”
“Yeah. Thanks anyway.”
The men didn't exactly take the hint. Two of them ambled over to where Decker had laid the camera bag, tripod, and galvanized lens cases. One of the jerks poked at the cameras with the toe of his boot.
“Whatsis?” he said.
“Beer money,” said the other.
Decker couldn't believe it. Broad daylight, cars and trucks and Winnebagos cruising by on the interstateâand these pussbuckets were going to roll him anyway. Damned Nikons, he thought; sometimes they seemed to be the root of all his troubles.
“I'm a professional photographer,” Decker said. “Want me to take your picture?”
The two thinnest men looked expectantly toward the bigger one. Decker knew the idea appealed to them, although their leader needed a little convincing. “A nice eight-by-ten,” Decker said affably, “just for fun.” He knew what the big guy was thinking: Well, why notâwe're going to steal the damn things anyway.
“Stand in front of the car and I'll get a shot of all three of you together. Go ahead, now.”
Decker walked over to the camera bag and inconspicuously set the crowbar inside. He picked up a bare F-3 camera body, didn't even bother to screw on a lens. These morons wouldn't know the difference. Shrugging, murmuring, slicking their hair with brown bony hands, the highwaymen struck a pricelessly idiotic pose in front of the dented Cordoba. As he pressed the shutter, Decker almost wished there were film in the camera.
“That's just great, guys,” he said. “Now let's try one from the side.”
The big man scowled.
“Just a joke,” Decker said. The two thin guys didn't get it anyway.
“Enougha this shit,” the leader of the trio said. “We want your goddamn car.”
“What for?”
“To go to Florida.”
Of course, Decker thought, Florida. He should have known. Every pillhead fugitive felon in America winds up in Florida eventually. The Human Sludge Factorâit all drips to the South.
“One more picture,” Decker suggested. He had to hurry; he didn't want to get mugged, but he didn't want to miss his plane, either.
“No!” the big man said.
“One more picture and you can have the car, the cameras, everything.”
Decker kept one eye on the interstate, thinking: Don't they have a highway patrol in Louisiana?
“You guys got some cigarettes? That would be a good shot, have a cigarette hanging from your mouth.”
One of the thin guys lighted a Camel and wedged it into his lips at a very cool angle. “Oh yeah,” Decker said. “That's what I mean. Let me get the wide-angle lens.”
He went back to the camera bag and fished out a regular fifty-millimeter, which he attached to the Nikon. He picked up the crowbar and slipped it down the front of his jeans. The black iron felt cold against his left leg.
When he turned around, Decker saw that all three men now sported cigarettes. “The girls down in Florida are gonna love this picture,” he said.
One of the thin guys grinned. “Good pussy in Florida, right?”
“The best,” Decker said. He moved up close, clicking away. The men stunk like stale beer and tobacco. Through the lens Decker saw rawboned ageless faces; they could have been twenty years old, or forty-five. Classic cons. They seemed mesmerized by the camera, or at least by Decker's hyperactive choreography. The leader of the trio plainly was getting antsy; he couldn't wait to kick Decker's ass, maybe even kill him, and get moving.
“Almost done,” Decker said finally. “Move a little closer together . . . that's good . . . now look to my right and blow some smoke . . . great! . . . keep looking out at the water . . . that-is-perfect!”