Double Whammy

Jim Tile lived alone in a two-bedroom apartment on Washington Drive, in the black neighborhood of Harney. He had been married for three years until his wife had gone off to Atlanta to become a big-time fashion model. Jim Tile could have gone with her, since he had been offered an excellent job with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, but he had chosen to stay with the highway patrol in Florida. His loyalty had been rewarded with a protracted tour of duty in the most backward-thinking and racist county in the state. To stop a car for speeding in Harney was to automatically invite a disgusting torrent of verbal abuse—the whites hated Jim Tile because he was black, and the blacks hated him for doing a honky's job. Rough words were expected, and occasionally somebody would sneak up and cut the tires on his patrol car late at night, but it seldom went any further. In all the years only one person had been foolhardy enough to try to fight Trooper Jim Tile. The boy's name was Dekle, and he was eighteen, as big and white as a Frigidaire, and just about as intelligent. Dekle had been doing seventy in a school zone and had run down a kitten before Jim Tile caught up and forced him off the road. At the time Jim Tile was new to Harney, and the Dekle boy remarked how he had never seen a chocolate state trooper before. Now you have, said Jim Tile, so turn around and put your hands on the roof of the car. At which point Dekle punched Jim Tile with all his strength and was astounded to see the trooper merely rock back slightly on his heels, when any other human being would have fallen flat on his back, out cold. The fight did not last long, perhaps thirty seconds, and years afterward Dekle's right arm still hung like a corkscrew and he still got around with the aid of a special Lucite cane, which his mother had purchased from a mail-order house in Tampa. Even in a place where there was no shortage of booze or stupidity, no one in Harney had since gotten drunk enough or dumb enough to take a poke at the black trooper. Most folks, including Ozzie Rundell, wouldn't consider giving the man any lip.

They found the apartment on Washington Drive easily; Jim Tile's black-and-tan Ford police cruiser was out front.

Culver parked his mother's truck. He got a pistol from under the front seat and tucked it into the back of his dungarees.

"What's that for?" Ozzie asked worriedly.

"It's a bad neighborhood, Oz."

"I ain't going in there with a gun," Ozzie said in a brittle voice. "I ain't!"

"Fine," Culver said. "You sit out here in the parking lot with all these jigaboos. I'm sure they'll love the prospect of a fat little cracker boy like you."

Ozzie looked around and knew that his brother was right. The streets were full of black faces, including some frightfully muscular teenagers slam-dunking basketballs through a rusty hoop nailed to a telephone pole. Ozzie decided he didn't want to stay in the truck after all. He followed Culver up to Jim Tile's apartment.

The trooper was finishing dinner, and getting ready to go out on the night shift. He came to the door wearing the gray, sharply pressed trousers of his uniform, but no shirt. The Rundell brothers were awestruck by the dimensions of his chest and arms.

After stammering for a second, Culver finally said, "We need to talk about the guy lives up on the lake."

"Our boat got sunk," Ozzie warbled, without explanation.

Jim Tile let them in, motioned toward two chairs at the dinette. The Rundell brothers sat down.

"Skink is his name, right?" Culver said.

"What's the connection," Jim Tile asked mildly, "between the man on the lake and your boat?"

Ozzie started to say something, got lost, and looked to his brother for help. Culver said, "We heard Mr. Skink is the one who sunked it."

Jim Tile said, "Well, Mr. Skink is out of town."

"It happened out of town," Culver said. "At a tournament up in Louisiana."

"Did you go to the police?" Jim Tile asked.

"Not yet," Culver said. He had wanted to, but Thomas Curl had said it was a bad idea. He said the police would be busy with Dickie's murder, and it wouldn't be right to bother them over a bass boat. Besides, the boat hadbeen recovered out of the water, and it was Thomas Curl's opinion that it could be repaired. Ozzie said great, but Culver didn't like the idea. Culver wanted a brand-new boat, and he wanted the man named Skink to buy it for him.

"Well, if you haven't talked to the police in Louisiana, then I suggest you do," Jim Tile said. "Once there's a warrant, one of Sheriff Lockhart's deputies can go out to Lake Jesup and arrest him."