Double Whammy (31 page)

The blue light on the Chrysler's dashboard was flashing now. Hopelessly Decker scanned the traffic on the causeway; it was jammed all the way to the next traffic signal, and beyond. There was nowhere to go. Al Garcia was up on his bumper and flashing his brights. Decker figured he had a better chance one-on-one, with no Fort Lauderdale cops. He decided to stop before it turned into a convoy.

He pulled into the parking lot of a liquor store. With the big Chrysler Garcίa easily blocked off the little Escort, parked, kept the blue light turning. A bad sign, Decker thought.

He turned to Skink: “I don't want to see your gun.”

“Relax,” Skink said. “Mr. Browning sleeps with the fishes.”

Al Garcίa approached the car in a bemused and almost casual manner. At the driver's window he bent down and said, “R.J., you are the king of all fuckups.”

“Sorry I stood you up the other day,” Decker said.

“Everyone but the National Guard is looking for you.”

“Now that you mention it, Al, aren't you slightly out of your jurisdiction? I believe this is Broward County.”

“And you're a fleeing felon, asshole, so I can chase you wherever I want. That's the law.” He spit out his cigarette and ground it into the asphalt with his shoe:

Decker said, “So what'd you do, follow Catherine up from Miami?”

“She's a slick little driver, she gave it her best.”

Decker said, “I didn't kill anybody, Al.”

“How about Little Stevie Wonder there?”

Skink blinked lizardlike behind his sunglasses.

“Come on, R.J., let's all of us go for a ride.” Garcίa was so smooth he didn't even unholster his gun. Decker was impressed; you had to be. Now if only Skink behaved.

Skink retrieved his dead seagull from the glove box and Decker locked up the rental car. Garcίa was waiting in the Chrysler. “Who wants to ride shotgun?” he asked affably.

Decker said, “I thought you'd want both us ruthless murderers to sit back in the cage.”

“Nah,” Al Garcίa said, unplugging the blue light. He got back into traffic, turned off Seventeenth Street on Federal Highway, then cut back west on Road 84, an impossible truck route. Decker was surprised when he didn't turn south at the Interstate 95 exchange.

“Where are you going?”

“The Turnpike's a cleaner shot, isn't it?” the detective said.

“Not really,” Decker said.

“He means north,” Skink said from the back seat. “To Harney.”

“Right,” Al Garcίa said. “On the way, I want you guys to tell me all about bass fishing.”

 

The news from Lunker Lakes was not good.

“They died,” reported Charlie Weeb's hydrologist, some pinhead hired fresh out of the University of Florida.

“Died?” said the Reverend Weeb. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

He was talking about the bass—two thousand yearling largemouths imported at enormous cost from a private hatchery in Alabama.

“They croaked,” said the hydrologist. ”What can I say? The water's very bad, Reverend Weeb. Tannic acid they can tolerate, but the current phosphate levels are lethal. There's no fresh oxygen, no natural water flow. Whoever dredged your canals—”

“
Lakes,
goddammit!”

“—they dredged too deep. The fish don't last more than two days.”

“Jesus Christ Almighty. So what're we talking about here—stinking dead bass floating all over the place?”

The hydrologist said, “I took the liberty of hiring some local boats to scoop up the kill. With this cool weather it's not so bad, but if a warm front pushes through, they'd smell it all the way to Key West.”

Weeb slammed down the phone and groaned. The woman lying next to him said, “What is it, Father?”

“I'm not a priest,” Weeb snapped. He didn't have the energy for a theology lesson; it would have been a waste of time anyway. The girl worked at Louie's Lap-Dancing Palace in Gretna. She said her whole family watched him every Sunday morning on television.

“I never been with a TV star before,” she said, burrowing into his chest. “You're a big boy, too.”

Charlie Weeb was only half-listening. He missed Ellen O'Leary; no one else looked quite as fine, topless in the rubber trout waders. No one soothed him the way Ellen did, either, but now she was gone. Took off after Dickie Lockhart's murder. One more disappointment in a week of bleak disappointments for the Reverend Charles Weeb.

“How much do I owe you?” he asked the lap dancer.

“Nothing, Father.” She sounded confused. “I brought my own money.”

“What for?” Weeb looked down; he couldn't see her face, just the top of her head and the smooth slope of her naked back.

“I got a favor to ask,” the lap dancer said, whispering into his chest hair. “And I wanna pay for it.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“I want you to heal my poppa.” She looked up shyly. “He's got the gout, my poppa does.”

“No, child—”

“Some days he can't barely get himself out of bed.”

Weeb shifted restlessly, glanced at his wristwatch.

“I'll give you two hundred dollars,” the girl declared.

“You're serious?”

“Just one little prayer, please.”

“Two hundred bucks?”

“And a hum job, if you want it, Father.”

Charlie Weeb stared at her, thinking: It's true what they say about the power of television.

“Come, child,” he said softly, “let's pray.”

 

Later, when he was alone, the Reverend Charles Weeb thought about the girl and what she'd wanted. Maybe it was the answer he'd been looking for. It had worked before, in the early years; perhaps it would work again.

Charlie Weeb drank a Scotch and tried to sleep, but he couldn't. In recent nights he had been kept awake by the chilling realization that Lunker Lakes, his dream city, was in deep trouble. The first blow had come from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, whose auditors had swept into the offices of First Standard Eurobank of Ohio and discovered that the whole damn thing was on the verge of insolvency. The problem was bad loans, huge ones, which First Standard Eurobank apparently handed out as freely as desk calendars. The Outdoor Christian Network, doing business as Lunker Lakes Ltd., had been the beneficiary of just such unbridled generosity—twenty-four million dollars for site planning and construction. On paper there was nothing unusual about the loan or the terms of repayment (eleven percent over ten years), but in reality not much money ever got repaid. About six thousand dollars, to be exact. Wanton disorganization ruled First Standard Eurobank's collections department—as patient and amiable a bunch of Christian soldiers as Charlie Weeb had ever met. He kept missing the bimonthly payments and they kept saying don't worry and Charlie Weeb
didn't
worry, because this was a fucking bank, for God's sake, and banks don't go under anymore. Then the FDIC swooped in and discovered that First Standard Eurobank had been just as patient and flexible with all its commercial customers, to the extent that virtually nobody except farmers were being made to repay their loans on time. Suddenly the president of the bank and three top assistants all moved to Barbados, leaving Uncle Sam to sort out the mess. Pretty soon the bad news trickled out: First Standard Eurobank was calling in its bad loans. All over the country big-time land developers headed for the tall grass. Charlie Weeb himself had been dodging some twit from
The Wall Street Journal
for five days.

What aggravated Weeb was that he had intended all along to pay back the money, but at a pace commensurate with advance sales at Lunker Lakes. Unfortunately, sales were going very slowly. Charlie Weeb couldn't figure it out. He fired his marketing people, fired his advertising people, fired his sales people—yet nothing improved. It was maddening. The lakefront models were simply beautiful. Three bedrooms, sunken bath and sauna, cathedral ceilings, solar heating, microwave kitchens—“Christian town-home living at its finest!” Charlie Weeb was fanatical about using the term “town home,” which was a fancy way of saying two-story condo. The problem with using the word “condo” was, as every idiot in Florida knew, you couldn't charge a hundred and fifty thousand for a “condo” fourteen miles away from the ocean. For this reason any Lunker Lakes salesman who spoke the word was immediately terminated. Condos carried a hideous connotation, Charlie Weeb had lectured—this wasn't a cheesy high-rise full of nasty old farts, this was a
wholesome family community.
With fucking bike paths!

And still the dumb shits couldn't sell it. A hundred-sixty units in the first four months. A hundred-sixty! Weeb was beside himself. Phase One of the project called for eight thousand units. Without Phase One there would be no Phase Two, and without Phase Two you could scrap the build-out projections of twenty-nine thousand. While you're at it, scrap the loans, the equity, even the zoning permits. The longer the project lagged, the greater the chances that all the county commissioners who had so graciously accepted Charlie Weeb's bribes would die or be voted out of office, and a whole new set would have to be paid off. One white knight could gum up the works.

The Reverend Charles Weeb had even deeper concerns. He had been so confident of Lunker Lakes that he had broken a cardinal rule and sunk three million dollars of his own personal, Bahamian-sheltered money into the project. The thought of losing it made him sick as a dog. Lying in bed, juggling the ghastly numbers in his head, Weeb also realized that the Outdoor Christian Network itself was probably not strong enough to survive if Lunker Lakes were to go under.

So he had to do something to raise money, lots of it. And fast. This was the urgency behind scheduling the new Dickie Lockhart Memorial Bass Blasters Classic on such short notice. Lunker Lakes was starving for publicity, and the TV coverage of the tournament was bound to boost sales—provided they could paint some of the buildings and get a few palm trees planted in time.

Trucking in two thousand young bass had been, Weeb thought, dastardly clever. For authenticity he had also planned to salt the lakes with a dozen big Florida hawgs a few days before the tournament. And, of course, he fully intended for Eddie Spurting to win the whole shebang with the fattest stringer of monster bass conceivable. Charlie Weeb had yet to discuss the importance of this matter with Eddie, but he was sure Eddie would understand. Certain details had to be arranged. Nothing could be left to chance—not on live cable television.

Charlie Weeb was feeling downright optimistic until he learned about the fish kill. He never imagined that all the bass would die, but he really didn't care to hear some elaborate scientific explanation. He knew this: Under no circumstances would the fishing tournament be canceled. If necessary he would simply purchase another truckload of bass, and somehow slip them into the lake the day of the tournament. Maybe the pinhead hydrologist could work a few miracles, buy him a few extra hours. It could be done, Charlie Weeb was sure.

As a long-term sales gimmick, the big bass tournament held much promise. However, the short-term fiscal crisis demanded immediate attention.

To this end the lap dancer from Louie's had given Charlie Weeb new spiritual inspiration.

He sat up in bed and reached for the phone.

“Deacon Johnson, please.”

A sleepy voice came on the line.

Weeb said, “Izzy, wake up. It's me.”

“It's three in the morning, man.”

“Tough shit. Are you listening?”

“Yeah,” said Deacon Johnson.

“Izzy, I want to do a healing on Sunday's show.”

Deacon Johnson coughed up something in his throat.

“You sure?” he said.

“Positive. Unless you got any other brilliant ideas to solve the cash-flow problem.”

Deacon Johnson said, “Healings are tricky, Charles.”

“Hell, you don't have to tell me! That's why I quit doing 'em. But these are desperate times, Izzy. I figure we tape a couple fifteen-second promos tomorrow, start pushing the thing hard. Goose the ratings by the weekend—I bet we'll do a million-two.”

“A million-two?” Deacon Johnson said. “For a sheep?”

“Screw the sheep. I'm talking about a real person.”

Deacon Johnson didn't respond right away. The Reverend Weeb said, “Well?”

“We've never done a human being before, Charles.”

“We've never dropped twenty-four mill before, Izzy. Look, I want you to set it up the same as we did with the animals. Find me a good one.”

Deacon Johnson was not enthusiastic, but he knew better than to balk.

“Get me a little kid if you can,” Charlie Weeb was saying, “or a teenager. No geezers and no housewives.”

“I'll try,” said Deacon Johnson. The logistics of the feat would be formidable.

“Blond, if possible,” Weeb went on. Every heartbreaking detail spelled more money—he knew this from his experience promoting the tragic tale of June-Lee and Melissa, the two mythical Weeb sisters sold into Chinese slavery. “No redheads,” Weeb instructed Deacon Johnson. “You get me a little blond kid to heal, Izzy, and I swear we'll do a million-two.”

Deacon Johnson said, “I guess you wouldn't consider a practice run. Say, with a goat.”

An hour out of Fort Lauderdale, Skink started to pluck the dead seagull in the back seat. Every so often he threw a handful of gray-white feathers out the window. Garcίa adjusted the rearview and watched, disbelieving. After R. J. Decker explained the custom, Garcίa decided to pull off the Turnpike for a dinner break. They dropped Skink near the Delray Beach overpass to let him roast the bird in private. Garcίa offered some matches, but as he got out of the car Skink mumbled, “Don't need any.”