“Looks like no one else is out tonight,” he said to Skink.
“Ha, they’re everywhere,” Skink said. He rowed with his back to Decker. Decker wished he’d take off the damn shower cap, but couldn’t figure a way to broach the subject.
“How do you know which way to go?” he asked.
“There’s a trailer park due northwest. Lights shine through the trees,” Skink said. “They leave ’em on all night, too. Old folks who live there, they’re scared if the lights go off. Wild noises tend to get loud in the darkness—you ever noticed that, Miami? Pay attention now: the boat is the face of a clock, and you’re sittin’ at midnight. The trailer park lights are ten o’clock—”
“I see.”
“Good. Now look around about two-thirty, see there? More lights. That’s a Zippy Mart on Route 222.” Skink described all this without once turning around. “Which way we headed from camp, Miami?”
“Looks like due north.”
“Good,” Skink said. “Got myself a fuckin’ Eagle Scout in the boat.”
Decker didn’t know what this giant fruitcake was up to, but a boat ride sure beat hell out of an all-night divorce surveillance.
Skink stopped rowing after twenty minutes. He set the lantern on the seat plank and picked up one of the fishing rods. From the prow Decker watched him fiddling with the line, and heard him curse under his breath.
Finally Skink pivoted on the seat and handed Decker the spinning rod. Tied to the end of the line was a long purple rubber lure. Decker figured it was supposed to be an eel, a snake, or a worm with thyroid. Skink’s knot was hardly the tightest that Decker had ever seen.
“Let’s see you cast,” Skink said.
Decker held the rod in his right hand. He took it back over his shoulder and made a motion like he was throwing a baseball. The rubber lure landed with a slap four feet from the boat.
“That sucks,” Skink said. “Try opening the bail.”
He showed Decker how to open the face of the reel, and how to control the line with the tip of his forefinger. He demonstrated how the wrist, not the arm, supplied the power for the cast. After a half-dozen tries, Decker was winging the purple eel sixty-five feet.
“All right,” Skink said. He turned off the Coleman lantern.
The boat drifted at the mouth of a small cove, where the water lay as flat as a smoky mirror. Even on a starless night the lake gave off its own gray light. Decker could make out an apron of pines along the shore; around the boat were thick-stemmed lily pads, cypress nubs, patches of tall reeds.
“Go to it,” said Skink.
“Where?” Decker said. “Won’t I get snagged on all these lilies?”
“That’s a weedless hook on the end of your line. Cast just like you were doing before, then think like a nightcrawler. Make it dance like a goddamn worm that knows it’s about to get eaten.”
Decker made a good cast. The lure plopped into the pads. As he retrieved it, he waggled the rod in a lame attempt to make the plastic bait slither.
“Jesus Christ, it’s not a fucking breadstick, it’s a snake.” Skink snatched the outfit from Decker’s hands and made a tremendous cast. The lure made a distant plop as it landed close to the shoreline. “Now watch the tip of the rod,” Skink instructed. “Watch my wrists.”
The snake-eel-worm skipped across the lily pads and wriggled across the plane of the water. Decker had to admit it looked alive.
When the lure was five feet from the boat, it seemed to explode. Or something exploded beneath it. Skink yanked back, hard, but the eel flew out of the water and thwacked into his shower cap.
Decker’s chest pounded in a spot right under his throat. Only bubbles and foam floated in the water where the thing had been.
“What the hell was that?” he stammered.
“Hawg,” Skink said. “Good one, too.” He unhooked the fake eel from his cap and handed the fishing rod back to Decker. “You try. Quick now, while he’s still hot in the belly.”
Decker made a cast in the same direction. His fingers trembled as he jigged the rubber creature across the surface of the cove.