by Carl Hiaasen
For some reason the neighbors’ dogs never bothered Catherine. Decker was printing film when she dropped by. As soon as he let her in the door, she wrinkled her nose. “Yuk! Hypo.” She knew the smell of the fixer.
“I’ll be done in a second,” he said, and slipped back into the darkroom. He wondered what was up. He wondered where James was. James was the chiropractor she had married less than two weeks after the divorce.
The day Catherine had married Dr. James was also the day Decker had clobbered the burglar. Catherine had always felt guilty, as if she’d lighted the fuse. She’d written him two or three times a month when he was at Apalachee; once she’d even mailed a Polaroid of herself in a black bra and panties. Somehow it got by the prison censor. “For old times,” she’d printed on the back of the snapshot, as a joke. Decker was sure Dr. James had no idea. Years after the marriage Catherine still called or stopped by, but only at night and never on weekends. Decker always felt good for a little while afterward.
He washed a couple of eight-by-tens and hung the prints from a clothesline strung across the darkroom. He could have turned on the overheads without harm to the photographs, but he preferred to work in the red glow of the safelight. Catherine tapped twice and came in, shutting the door quickly. She knew the routine.
“Where’s the mister?” Decker asked.
“Tampa,” Catherine said. “Big convention. Every other weekend is a big convention. What’ve we got here?” She stood on her toes and studied the prints. “Who’s the weight-lifter?”
“Fireman out on ninety-percent disability.”
“So what’s he doing hulking out at Vic Tanny?”
“That’s what the insurance company wants to know,” Decker said.
“Pretty dull stuff, Rage.” Sometimes she called him Rage instead of R. J. It was a pet name that had something to do with his temper. Decker didn’t mind it, coming from Catherine.
“I’ve got a good one cooking,” he said.
“Yeah? Like what?”
She looked great in the warm red light. Catherine was a knockout. Was, is, always will be. An expensive knockout.
“I’m investigating a professional fisherman,” Decker said, “for cheating in tournaments. Allegedly.”
“Come on, Rage.”
“I’m serious.”
Catherine folded her arms and gave him a motherly look. “Why don’t you ask the paper for your old job back?”
“Because the paper won’t pay me a hundred large to go fishing.”
Catherine said, “Wow.”
She smelled wonderful. She knew Decker liked a certain perfume so she always wore it for him—what was the name? He couldn’t remember. Something fashionably neurotic. Compulsion, that was it. A scent that probably wouldn’t appeal to Dr. James, at least Decker hoped not. He wondered if Catherine was still on the same four-ounce bottle he’d bought for her birthday three years ago.
Decker tweezered another black-and-white of the goldbrick fireman out of the fixer and rinsed it down.
“No pictures of fish?” Catherine asked.
“Not yet.”
“Somebody is really gonna pay you a hundred thousand?”
“Well, at least fifty. That’s if I get what he wants.”
She said, “What are you going to do with all that money?”
“Try to buy you back.”
Catherine’s laugh died in her throat. She looked hurt. “That’s not really funny, R.J.”
“I guess not.”
“You didn’t mean it, did you?”
“No, I didn’t mean it.”
“You’ve got a nasty streak.”
“I was beaten as a child,” Decker said.
“Can we get out of here? I’m getting high on your darn chemicals.”
Decker took her to a barbecue joint on South Dixie Highway. Catherine ordered half a chicken and iced tea, he had beer and ribs. They talked about a thousand little things, and Decker thought about how much fun it was to be with her, still. It wasn’t a sad feeling, just wistful; he knew it would go away. The best feelings always did.
“Have you thought about New York?” Catherine asked.
The free-lance speech. Decker knew it by heart.
“Look at Foley. He had a cover shot on Sports Illustrated last summer,” she said.
Foley was another photographer who’d quit the newspaper and gone free-lance.
“Hale Irwin,” Decker said derisively.
“What?”
“That was Foley’s big picture. A golfer. A fucking golfer, Catherine. That’s not what I want to do, follow a bunch of Izod shirts around a hot golf course all day for one stupid picture.”
Catherine said, “It was just an example, Rage. Foley’s had plenty of business since he moved to New York. And not just golfers, so don’t give me that pissed-off look.”
“He’s a good shooter.”
“But you’re better, by a mile.” She reached across the table and pinched his arm gently. “Hey, it doesn’t have to be heavy-duty. No Salvadors, no murders, no dead girls in Cadillacs. Just stick to the soft stuff, Rage, you’ve earned it.”
Decker guessed it was about time for the all-that-wasted-talent routine.
Catherine came through. “I just hate to see you wasting all your talent,” she said. “Snooping around like a thief, taking pictures of . . .”
“Guys who cheat insurance companies.”
“Yeah.”
Decker said, “Maybe you’re right.”
“Will you think about New York?”
“Take some of these ribs, I can’t eat ’em all.”
“No, thanks, I’m full.”
“So tell me about the quack.”
“Stop it,” Catherine said. “James’s patients are wild about him. He’s very generous with his time.”
“And the spine-cracking business is good.”
“Good, but it could be better,” Catherine said. “James is talking about moving.”
Decker grinned. “Let me guess where.”
Catherine reddened. “His brother’s got a practice on Long Island. It’s going gangbusters, James says.”
“No shit?”
“Don’t look so cocky, R.J. This has nothing to do with you.”
“So you wouldn’t come see me,” Decker said. “I mean, if I were to move to New York and you somehow wound up on Long Island, you wouldn’t drop by and chat?”
Catherine wiped her hands on a napkin. “Jesus, I don’t know.” Her voice was different now, the airy confidence gone. “I don’t know what I’ve done, R.J. Sometimes I wonder. James is special and I realize how lucky I am, but still . . . The man irons his socks, did I tell you that?”
Decker nodded. “You called me from your honeymoon to tell me that.” From Honolulu she’d called.
“Yeah, well.”
“That’s okay,” Decker said. “I didn’t mind.” It was better than losing her completely. He would miss her if the sock-ironing chiropractor whisked her away to New York.
“You know the hell of it?” Catherine said. “My back’s still killing me.”
Decker’s telephone was ringing when he returned to the trailer. The man on the other end didn’t need to identify himself.
“Hello, Miami.”
“Hey, captain.” Decker was surprised. Skink would do anything to avoid the phone.
“The Armadillo is dead,” said Skink.
Decker figured Skink was talking about his supper.
“You listening?” Skink said.
“The armadillo.”
“Yeah, your little pal from the newspaper.”
“out?”
“Officially he’s only missing. Unofficially he’s dead. You better get up here. It’s time to go to work.”
Decker sat down at the kitchen counter. “Start at the beginning,” he said. Gruffly Skink summarized the facts of the disappearance, closing with a neutral explanation of Ott Pickney’s alter ego, Davey Dillo.
“They say h
e was very convincing,” Skink said, by way of condolence.
Decker had a hell of a hard time imagining Ott in an armadillo costume on a skateboard. He had a harder time imagining Ott dead.
“Maybe they just took him somewhere to put a scare in him,” he speculated
“No way,” Skink said. “I’ll see you soon. Oh yeah—when you get to Harney, don’t check in at the motel. It’s not safe. You’d better stay out here with me.”
“I’d rather not,” Decker said.
“Aw, it’ll be loads of fun,” Skink said with a grunt. “We can roast weenies and marshmallows.”
Decker drove all night. He shot straight up Interstate 95 and got off at Route 222, just west of Wabasso. Another ninety minutes and he was in Harney County. By the time he got to Skink’s place on the lake, it was four-thirty in the morning. Already one or two bass boats were out on the water; Decker could hear the big engines chewing up the darkness.
At the sound of Decker’s car Skink clumped onto the porch. He was fully dressed—boots, sunglasses, the orange weathersuit. Decker wondered if he slept in uniform.
“That’s some driving,” Skink said. “Get your gear and come on inside.”
Decker carried his duffel into the shack. It was the first time he had ventured beyond the porch, and he wasn’t sure what to expect. Pelts, maybe. Wallpaper made from rabbit pelts.
As he pushed past the screen door, Decker was amazed by what he saw: books. Every wall had raw pine shelves to the ceiling, and every shelf was lined with books. The east wall was for classic fiction: Poe, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, Mark Twain, Jack London, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, even Boris Pasternak. The west wall was for political biographies: Churchill, Sandburg’s Lincoln, Hitler, Huey Long, Eisenhower, Joseph McCarthy, John F. Kennedy, even Robert Caro’s Lyndon Johnson, though it looked like a book-club edition. The south wall was exclusively for reference books: the Britannica, Current Biography, the Florida Statutes, even the Reader’s Guide to Periodic Literature. This was the wall of the shack that leaned so precipitously, and now Decker knew why: it held the heaviest books.
The shelves of the north wall were divided into two sections. The top was philosophy and the humanities. The bottom half was for children’s books. The Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, Dr. Seuss. Charlotte’s Web and the Brothers Grimm.
“What’re you staring at?” Skink demanded.
“These are great books,” Decker said.
“No shit.”
In the middle of the floor there was a bare mattress and army blanket, but no pillow. The Remington was propped in a corner. The Coleman lantern hung from a slat in the ceiling; it offered only a fuzzy white light that would flare or dim as the mantle burned down. Decker thought Skink must do his reading in the daytime, or else he’d go blind.
Another car pulled up outside the shack. Decker glanced at Skink. He looked as if he were expecting somebody. He pushed open the screen door and a cop walked in; a state trooper. Stiff cowboy-style hat, pressed gray uniform (long sleeves of course). On one shoulder was a patch shaped like a Florida orange. The cop was almost as big as Skink. He was younger, though—a wedge of muscle from the waist up.
Decker noticed that this state trooper was different from most. Most were big, young, lean, and white. This trooper was black. Decker could not imagine a more miserable place than Harney County to be a black cop.
“This is Jim Tile,” Skink said. ”Jim, this is the guy I told you about.”
“Miami,” Tile said, and shook Decker’s hand. Skink dragged a rocker and a folding chair in from the porch. Tile took off his hat and sat down in the rocker, Decker took the chair and Skink sat on the bare pine floor.
Decker said, “What happened to Ott?”
“He’s dead,” Skink said.
“But what the hell happened?”
Skink sighed and motioned to Jim Tile. “Yesterday morning,” the trooper said, in a voice so deep it seemed to shake the lantern, “I was on road patrol about dawn. Out on the Gilchrist Highway where it crosses Morgan Slough.”
“Some of the guys fish the slough when the water’s up,” Skink cut in. “You need a johnboat, and no outboard. Ten minutes from the highway and you’re into heavy bass cover.”
Jim Tile said, “So I see a pair of headlights back in the scrub. I can tell it’s a truck. I pull off and park. Ten minutes go by and the truck hasn’t moved, though the lights are still on. If it’s two kids screwing they wouldn’t be leaving the headlights on, so I go to check it out.”
“You’re alone?” Decker asked.
Tile laughed. “Nearest backup is in frigging Orlando. Yeah, I’m alone, you could say that. So I take my pumpgun and my Kevlar light and start slipping toward the truck through the scrub, moving close as I can to the big cypresses so whoever’s back there won’t see me. All of a sudden I hear a door slam and the truck comes tearing out of the bush. I go down in a crouch and jack a round into the shotgun, but they never slow down, just hit the highway and take off.”
“Three guys,” Skink said.
“In a dark green pickup,” Tile said. “I’m pretty sure it was a Ford, but it wasn’t local. I didn’t catch the tag.”
“Did the men see you?” Decker asked.
“The one on the passenger side, no doubt about it.”
“Did you recognize him?”
“Let him finish, Miami,” Skink said.
“So I go down to where the truck was parked,” Tile said, “right on the edge of the slough. I mean, from the tire tracks you could see they’d backed right up to the water. I figure they’re poaching gators or maybe jacklighting a deer that came down to drink. Makes sense, except the ground is completely dry and clean. No blood, no skin, no shells, no nothing.”
“Except this,” Skink said. He reached into his rainsuit and took out a notebook. He handed it to R. J. Decker. It was a news reporter’s notebook, the standard pocket-size spiral. On the front, written in blue ink, were the words: “PICKNEY/CLINCH OBIT.” Decker could tell from the thinness of the notebook that some of the pages had been torn out. Those that remained were blank.
“It was under some palmetto,” Jim Tile said, “maybe thirty feet from where the truck was parked.”
“You didn’t find anything else?” Decker asked.
“No, sir.”
“Did you report this?”
“Report what?” Tile said. “A truck parked in the bushes? Show me the law against that.”
“But you found this notebook and it belongs to a missing person.”
Skink shook his head. “The basketball team says he’s missing but nobody’s filed a report yet. The sheriff may or may not get around to it.”
“What are you saying?” Decker asked.
“The sheriffs name is Earley Lockhart,” Skink said, “as in Dickie. As in uncle. And, for what it’s worth, he has a twelve-pound bass hanging behind his desk. Jim, tell Mr. Decker about your outstanding relationship with the Harney County sheriffs department.”
“No relationship,” Jim Tile said. “Far as they’re concerned, I don’t exist. Wrong color. Wrong uniform.”
Skink said, “Jim and I go way back. We depend on each other, especially when there’s trouble. That’s why Jim brought me the Armadillo’s notebook.”
“But how do you know he’s dead?” Decker said.
Skink stood up and turned off the Coleman. Out on the porch he picked up one of his spinning rods. “You wanna drive?” he said to Jim Tile.
“Sure,” said the trooper, “give Mr. Decker a ride in a real po-leece car.”
“I’ve had the privilege,” Decker said.
“Who was the guy in the truck, the one who recognized you?” Decker asked.
He was sitting in the back of the patrol car, behind the steel grate. Jim Tile was at the wheel; he glanced over at Skink, a crinkled orange mass on the passenger’s side, and Skink nodded that it was all right.
“Man named Ozzie Rundell,” Jim Tile said.
“Halfwit,” Skink gru
mbled.
“Has he got a brother?” R. J. Decker had heard of Culver Rundell. Ott had mentioned him at Bobby Clinch’s funeral. He’d said he was surprised not to see Culver at the service.
“Yeah, Culver,” Jim Tile said. “He runs a bait shop on Lake Jesup.”
Decker thought it was probably the same one he’d stopped at a few days earlier. Culver could have been the man behind the counter.
“He’s smarter than Ozzie,” Skink remarked, “but mildew is smarter than Ozzie.”
They were on a two-lane blacktop, no center line, no road signs. Decker didn’t recognize the highway. Jim Tile was driving fast, one hand on the wheel. Through the grate Decker could see the speedometer prick ninety. He was glad there was no fog.
“How’d you meet the captain?” he asked Jim Tile.
“Used to work for him,” the trooper said.
“In Tallahassee,” Skink added. “Long time ago.”
“What kind of work?” Decker asked.
“Scut work,” Skink said.
Decker was too tired to pursue it. He stretched out in the back seat and started to doze. He kept thinking about Ott Pickney and wondering what he was about to see. Skink and Jim Tile were silent up front. After about fifteen minutes Decker felt the patrol car brake and pull off the pavement. Now it bounced along with the sound of sticks and leaves scratching at the undercarriage.
Decker opened his eyes and sat up. They were at Morgan Slough.
Jim Tile got out first and checked around. The cool darkness was ebbing from the swamp; another half-hour and it would be dawn. Skink took his fishing rod from the car and went to the edge of the water, which was the burned color of black tea. The slough was a tangle of lilies and hydrilla, dead branches and live cypress knees. In the tall boughs hung tangled tresses of Spanish moss. The place looked prehistoric.
Jim Tile stood with his hands on his hips. Skink started to cast, reel in, cast again.
