Double Whammy

"You hungry? We can stop and make a fire once we get out of this traffic."

"Let's wait, okay?"

"Sure," Skink said. "It'll keep for a couple hours."

Decker headed west from the beach on the Seventeenth Street Causeway, past Port Everglades and the Ocean World aquarium. It was typical January beach traffic, bumper-to-bumper nitwits as far as the eye could see. Every other car had New York plates.

Skink fit the dead bird into the glove compartment and covered it with a copy of the rental agreement. He seemed in a much better mood already. He put on his sunglasses and flowered shower cap, and turned around to get his fluorescent rainsuit from the back seat. Through the rear window he noticed a dark blue Chrysler sedan following two car-lengths behind. He spotted a plastic bubble on the dashboard; not flashing, but a bubble just the same. The driver's face was obscured by the tinted windshield, but a red dot bobbed at mouth-level.

"Your buddy Garcia smoke?"

Decker checked the rearview. "Oh, shit," he said.

Skink struggled into the rainsuit, adjusted his sunglasses, and said, "Well, Miami, what's it going to be?"

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 Garcia easily blocked offthe 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 Garcia 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." Garcia 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. Garcia 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 Garcia 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 Garcia 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 large-mouths 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."