Double Whammy

"Dickie," Weeb said, "somebody's pulling your leg. I never met Spurling in my life. I don't blame you for being upset, buddy, but I swear you've got nothing to worry about. Look, of all the pro bass anglers in the world, who did I ask to do the promotion footage for Lunker Lakes? Who? You, Dickie, 'cause you're the best. All of us at OCN feel the same way: you're our number-one man."

Lockhart lowered the fishing rod. His eyes were muddy, his arms like lead. If he didn't pass out soon he'd need another bourbon.

Soothingly the Reverend Charles Weeb said, "Don't worry, son, none of what you heard is true."

"Sure glad to hear it," Dickie said, "because there's no telling what would happen if I found out otherwise. No telling. Remember the guy from the zoning board down in Lauderdale, the one you told me to take fishing that time? Man, he had some wild stories about that Lunker Lagoon."

"Lunker Lakes," Weeb said tersely.

"He says he got himself a brand-new swimming pool, thanks to you. With a sauna in the shallow end!"

"I wouldn't know."

Dickie broke into a daffy grin. "And I'm trying to imagine what your faithful flock might do if they found out their shepherd was double-boffing a couple of sweet young girls from the church. I'm wondering about that, Reverend Weeb."

"I get the point."

"Do you really?" Dickie Lockhart wielded the fly rod swordlike and, with an artful flick, popped the knot on Charlie Weeb's bath towel, which dropped to his ankles.

"Aw, what a cute little thing," Dickie said with a wink. "Cute as a junebug."

Weeb flushed. He couldn't believe that the tables had turned so fast, that he had so carelessly misjudged this nasty little cracker bastard. "What do you want?" he asked Dickie Lockhart.

"A new contract. Five years, no cancellation. Plus ten percent of first-run syndication rights. Don't look so sad, Reverend Weeb. I'll make it easy for you: you don't have to announce it until after I win the tournament this week. I'll show up at the press conference with the trophy, put on a good show."

"All right," Weeb said, cupping his hands over his privates, "what else?"

"I want the budget doubled to two thousand per show."

"Fifteen hundred tops."

"Fine," Dickie said, "I'm not a greedy man."

"Anything more?" asked Reverend Weeb.

"Yeah, go get Ellen and tell her I'm giving her a ride home."

Lake Maurepas, where the Cajun Invitational Bass Classic was to be held, was a bladder-shaped miniature of the immense Lake Pontchartrain. Located off Interstate 55 northwest of New Orleans, the marshy and bass-rich Maurepas was connected to its muddy mother at Pass Manchac, a few miles south of the town of Hammond. It was there that R. J. Decker and Skink took a room at a Quality Court motel. At the Sportsman's Hideout Marina they rented a small aluminum johnboat with a fifteen-horsepower outboard, and told the lady at the cash register they'd be going out at dusk. The lady looked suspicious until Skink introduced himself as the famous explorer Philippe Cousteau, and explained he was working on a documentary about the famous Louisiana eel spawn, which only took place in the dead of night. Yes, the lady at the cash register nodded, I've heard of it. Then she asked for Philippe's autograph and Skink earnestly replied (in a marvelous French accent) that for such a beautiful woman, a mere autograph would never do. Instead he promised to name a new species of mollusk in her honor.

It had taken the better part of the morning to get Skink arraigned and bailed out of jail, and by now it was the middle of the day; not hot, but piercingly bright, the way it gets in January in the Deep South. Skink said there was no point in going out on the water now because the bass would be in thick cover. He curled up on the floor of the motel room and went to sleep while Decker read the New Orleans Times-Picayune.On the back page of the local section was a small item about a local man who had disappeared on a fishing trip to Florida and was presumed drowned somewhere in the murky vastness of Lake Okeechobee. The young man's name was Lemus Curl, and except for the absence of a blackened bullet hole in his forehead, the picture in the paper matched the face of the man whom Skink had shot dead near Morgan Slough; the man who had tried to murder them with the rifle. Obviously it was Lemus Curl's brother whom Jim Tile had stopped for speeding shortly afterward. Interestingly, the same Thomas Curl was quoted in the newspaper as saying that his brother had slipped off the dike and tumbled into the water on the west side of the big lake. The article reported that Lemus Curl had been tussling with a hawg bass at the time of the tragic accident. Decker thought this last detail, though untrue, lent a fine ironic touch to the story.

Skink snored away and Decker felt alone. He felt like calling Catherine. He found a pay phone outside the lobby of the Quality Court. She answered on the fifth ring, and sounded like she'd been sleeping.

"Did I wake you?"