Double Whammy (24 page)

“Screw it,” Garcia said finally, “let's go get some coffee and try again later.”

 

“He'll be back,” Decker said when he heard the police cars pull away.

Skink had let go of his neck. They were still in the darkroom, where Skink's fluorescent rainsuit shone almost white in the wash of the red bulb. Skink appeared more haggard and rumpled than Decker remembered; twigs and small pieces of leaf hung like confetti in his long gray braid. His hair stuck out in clumps from under the shower cap.

“Where have you been?” Decker asked. His neck was torturing him, like someone had pounded a railroad spike into the crown of his spine.

“The girl,” Skink said. “I should have known.”

“Lanie?”

“I got back to the room and there she is, half-undressed. She said you'd invited her to fly up—”

“No way.”

“I figured,” Skink said. “That's why I tied her up, so you could decide for yourself what to do. You cut her loose, I presume.”

“Yeah.”

“And screwed her too?”

Decker frowned.

“Just what I thought,” Skink said. “We've got to get the hell out of here.”

“Listen, captain, that cop is a friend of mine.”

“Which one?” With one blackened finger Skink scratched absently at a brambly eyebrow.

The Cuban detective. Garcίa's his name.”

“So?”

“So he's a good man,” Decker said. “He'll try to get us a break.”

“Yeah, with the New Orleans people. Al could make it as painless as possible.”

Skink studied Decker's face and said, “Hell, I guess I squeezed too tight.”

 

They went to a Denny's on Biscayne Boulevard, where Skink fit right in with the clientele. He ordered six raw eggs and a string of pork sausages. Decker's neck had stiffened up, and he had the worst headache of his life.

“You could have just tapped me on the shoulder,” he complained.

“No time to be polite,” Skink said, without a trace of apology. “I did it for your own good.”

“How'd you get in, anyway?”

“Slim-jimmed the back door. Two minutes later and your bosom buddy Garcia would have had you in bracelets. Eat something, all right? We got a long damn ride.”

Decker had no intention of taking a long damn ride with Skink, and no intention of getting picked up as an accessory to murder. He had decided not to turn Skink in to the police, but the man would have to make his own escape; the partnership was over.

Skink said, “Your neighbors'll raise hell about the dead dogs.”

“Oh?”

“Couldn't be helped,” Skink said, slurping a drip of yolk from his mustache. “Self-defense.”

“You killed the pit bulldogs?”

“Not
all
of them. Just the ones that were chasing me.”

Before Decker could ask, Skink said, “With a knife. No one saw a thing.”

“God.” Decker's brainpan felt like the bells of Notre Dame. He noticed that his fingers twitched when he tried to butter a biscuit. It dawned on him that he was not a well person, that he needed to go to a doctor.

But before he abandoned Skink he wanted to ask about Dickie Lockhart. He wanted to hear Skink's version, in case it never came out.

“When you left the motel in Hammond,” Decker began, “where'd you go?”

“Back to the lake. Borrowed a boat and found Dickie's fish traps.”

“You're kidding.”

Skink beamed. A brown clot of sausage was stuck between his two front teeth. “The boat I took was Ozzie Rundell's,” he said. “Dumb fucker left the keys in the switch and a map in the console.”

“A depth chart of Lake Maurepas,” Decker guessed, “with the trap sites marked.”

“Marked real clear, too,” Skink said, “in crayon, just for Ozzie.”

It made sense. While Dickie Lockhart was celebrating his victory, the Rundells would sneak out on the lake to clean up the evidence. Dickie was so cheap he probably used the same traps over and over.

“Those fish he won with were Florida bass,” Skink was saying. “Probably trucked in from Lake Jackson or maybe the Rodman. That mudhole Maurepas never saw bass that pretty, you can bet your ass—”

“What'd you do after you found the traps?” Decker cut in.

Skink set down his fork. “I pulled the plug on Ozzie's boat and swam to shore.”

“Then?”

“Then I stuck out my thumb, and here I am.”

Two cops came in, walking the cowboy walk, and took a booth. Cops ate at Denny's all the time, but still they made Decker nervous. They kept glancing over at Skink—hard glances—and Decker could tell they were dreaming up an excuse for a hassle and ID check. He laid a ten on the table and headed for the car; Skink shuffled behind, shoving a couple of biscuits into the pockets of his rainsuit. No sooner were they back on the boulevard than Decker spotted another patrol car in the rearview. The patrol car was following closely, and Decker could only assume that Al Garcia had put out the word. When the blue lights came on, Decker dutifully pulled over.

“Hell,” Skink said.

Decker waited until both cops were out of the car, then he punched the accelerator and took off.

Skink said, “Sometimes I like your style.”

Decker guessed he had a three-minute lead. “I'm going to turn on Thirty-sixth Street,” he said, “and when I hit the brakes, you bail out.”

“Why?” Skink asked calmly.

Decker was pushing the old Plymouth beyond its natural limits of speed and maneuverability. It was one of those nights on the boulevard—every other car was either a Cadillac or a junker, and nobody was going over thirty. Decker was leaving most of his tread on the asphalt, and running every stoplight. The rearview was clear, but he knew it wouldn't take long for the cops to radio for backup.

“You might want to try another road,” Skink suggested.

“You're a big help,” Decker said, watching a bus loom ahead. He took a right on Thirty-fifth Street and braked the car so hard he could smell burnt metal. “Get going,” he said to Skink.

“Are you crazy?”

“Get out!”

“
You
get out,” Skink said. “You're the dumb shit they're after.”

Impatiently Decker jammed the gearshift into park. “Look, all they got me for is agg assault and, after this, a misdemeanor resisting. Meanwhile you're looking at murder-one if they put it all together.”

With a plastic crunch Skink turned in his seat. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about Dickie Lockhart.”

Skink cackled. “You think
I
killed him?”

“It crossed my mind, yeah.”

Skink laughed some more, and punched the dashboard. He thought the whole thing was hilarious. He was hooting and howling and kicking his feet, and all Decker wanted to do was push him out of the car and get going.

“You really don't know what happened, do you?” Skink asked, after settling down.

Decker killed the headlights and shrank down in the driver's seat. He was a nervous wreck, couldn't take his eyes off the mirrors. “What don't I know?” he said to Skink.

“What the goddamn warrant says, you don't even know. Jim Tile got a copy, airmail. He read it to me first thing this morning and you should hear what it says, Miami. Says you murdered Dickie Lockhart.”

“Me?”

“That's what it says.”

Decker heard the first siren and went cold.

Skink said, “You got set up, buddy, set up so good it's almost a thing of beauty. The girl was bait.”

“Go on,” Decker said thickly. He was trying to remember Lanie's story, trying to remember some of the holes.

“Don't even think about turning yourself in,” Skink said. “Garcίa may be your pal but he's no magician. Now please let's get the hell out of here while we still can. I'll tell you the rest as we go.”

They ditched the Plymouth back at the trailer park and took a bus to the airport, where Decker rented a white Thunderbird from Avis. Skink did not approve; he said they needed a four-by-four truck, something on the order of a Bronco, but the Avis people only had cars.

Sticking in the heavy traffic, they drove around Little Havana for two hours while Decker quizzed Skink about what had happened at Lake Maurepas.

“Who whacked Lockhart?” he asked.

“I don't know that,” Skink said. “This is what I do know, mostly from Jim Tile and a few phone calls. While you were banging Gault's sister, somebody clubbed Dickie to death. First thing the next morning, Gault himself flies to New Orleans to offer the cops a sworn statement. He tells them an ex-con photographer named Decker was trying to blackmail Dickie over the bass cheating. Says you approached him with some photographs and wanted a hundred K—he even had a note in your handwriting to that effect.”

“Jesus,” Decker groaned. It was the note he had written the night Gault had fought with him—the note raising his fee to one hundred thousand dollars.

Skink went on: “Gault tells the cops that he told you to fuck off, so then you went to Lockhart. At first Dickie paid you—thirty grand in all, Gault says—”

“Cute,” Decker muttered. Thirty had been his advance on the case.

“—but then Dickie gets tired of paying and says no more. You go to New Orleans to confront him, threaten to expose him at the big tournament. There's an argument, a fight . . . you can script the rest. The cops already have.”

“And my alibi witness is the real killer's sister.”

“Lanie wasted no time giving an affidavit,” Skink said. “A very helpful lady. She says you poked her, drove her back to New Orleans, and dropped her at a hotel. Says you told her you had to go see Dickie on some business.”

“I can pick 'em,” Decker said mordantly.

Skink fidgeted in the car; his expression had grown strained. The press of the traffic, the din of the streets, bothered him. “Almost forgot,” he said. “They got the blackmail photographs too.”

“What photographs?”

“Of Dickie pulling the fish cages,” Skink replied. “Beats me, too. You're the expert, figure it out.”

Decker was astounded. “They got actual pictures?”

“That's what the DA says. Very sharp black-and-whites of Dickie doing the deed.”

“But who took 'em?”

“The DA says you did. They traced an empty box of film to a wholesale shipment of Kodak that went to the photo lab at the newspaper. The newspaper says it was part of the batch you swiped on your way out the door.”

“I see.” Skink was right: it was almost a thing of beauty.

Skink said, “Are you missing any film?”

“I don't know.”

“The junk we shot in Louisiana, where's that?”

“Still in my camera bag,” Decker said, “I guess.”

“You guess.” Skink laughed harshly. “You better damn well find out, Miami. You're not the only wizard with a darkroom.”

Decker felt tired; he wanted to close his eyes, cap the lens. Skink told him they should take U.S. 27 up to Alligator Alley and go west.

“We'd be safer in the city,” Decker said. He didn't feel like driving the entire width of the state; the drumbeat pain on his brainstem was unbearable. The Alley would be crawling with state troopers, too; they had an eye for sporty rental cars. “Where exactly did you want to go?” he asked Skink.

“The Big Cypress is a good place to hide.” Skink gave him a sideways glance.

“Not the swamp-rat routine,” Decker said, “not tonight. Let's stay in town.”

“You got somewhere that's safe?”

“Maybe.”

“No hotels,” Skink hissed.

“No hotels.”

 

Decker parked at the curb and studied the house silently for several moments. It seemed impressively large, even for Miami Shores. There were two cars, a Firebird and a Jaguar sedan, parked in a half-circle gravel driveway. The sabal palms and seagrape trees were bathed by soft orange spotlights mounted discreetly around the Bermuda lawn. A Spanish archway framed the front door, which was made of a coffee-colored wood. There were no iron bars across the front window, but Decker could see a bold red sticker advertising the burglar alarm.

“You gonna sit here and moon all night?” Skink said.

They got out and walked up the driveway, the gravel crunching noisily under their feet. Skink had nothing to say about the big house; he'd seen plenty, and most were owned by wealthy and respectable thieves.

Indelicately Decker asked him to stand back a few steps from the door.

“So they don't die of fright, is that it?” Skink said.

Catherine answered the bell. “Rage,” she said, looking more than a little surprised.

She wore tight cutoff jeans and a sleeveless lavender top, with no brassiere. Decker was ticked off that James the doctor had let her answer the door in the middle of the night—they could have been any variety of nocturnal Dade County creep: killers, kidnappers, witch doctors looking for a sacrificial goat. What kind of a lazy jerk would send his wife to the door alone, with no bra on, at eleven-thirty?

“I would've called,” R. J. Decker said, “but it's kind of an emergency.”

Catherine glanced at Skink and seemed to grasp the seriousness of the situation.

“Come on in, guys,” she said in a friendly den-mother tone. Then she leaned close and whispered to Decker: “James is here.”