Carl Hiaasen – Double Whammy

They ran the 800 number for five full minutes on the TV screen following Darla’s performance. That evening, when Charlie Weeb got the final figures from the phone bank, he called Deacon Johnson at home.

“Guess the totals, Izzy.”

“I really don’t know. A million?”

Weeb cackled and said, “Guess again, sucker.”

Deacon Johnson was too tired to guess. “I don’t know, Charles,” he said.

“How does a million-four sound?” the Reverend Weeb exulted.

The deacon was amazed. “Holy shit,” he said.

“Exactly,” said Charlie Weeb. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Thomas Curl had been thoroughly enjoying himself at the Grand Bay Hotel and was annoyed that he had to depart so suddenly. One morning, while eating eggs Benedict in the sunken bathtub, he had received a strange and unsettling phone call. Thomas Curl could tell by the scratchy connection that it was long distance, and he could tell by the voice that it wasn’t either Dennis Gault or his Uncle Shawn, the only two men who knew where to find him. The voice sounded to Thomas Curl like it might belong to a nigger, but Curl couldn’t be sure. Whoever it was had called him by name, so Curl had hung up the phone immediately and decided to check out of the hotel. He was worried that the black-sounding voice might turn out to be Decker’s crazy gorilla friend Skink, who would think nothing of breaking into a fancy suite and drowning somebody in a sunken tub.

Thomas Curl took a more modest room at the Airport Marriott and shrewdly registered under the name “Juan Gomez,” which he figured was the Miami equivalent of John Smith. The fact that Thomas Curl looked about as Hispanic as Gale Yarborough didn’t stop him, and his Juan Gomez signature drew scarcely a raised eyebrow from a desk clerk named Rosario.

That evening, after a room-service steak, Thomas Curl went to work. R. J. Decker’s address was in the phone book, and now it was only a matter of finding a decent map of Bade County.

The Palmetto Expressway, Thomas Curl decided, was worse than anything in New Orleans, worse even than Interstate 4 in Orlando. Thomas Curl had always considered himself a fast and sharp-witted driver, but the Palmetto shattered his confidence. It was as if he’d stalled out in the center lane, with bleating semis and muffler-dragging low-riders and cherry Porsches speeding past on both sides. Thomas Curl had heard the wild tales about Miami drivers, and now he could go back home and say it was all true. They were moving so damn fast you couldn’t even flip them the finger.

He was delighted when he found his exit and got on a street with actual traffic lights. The trailer park was at the dark end of a deadend street. Thomas Curl poked the car around slowly until he found the mailbox to R. J. Decker’s mobile home. The lights were off and the trailer looked empty, as Thomas Curl knew it would be. An older grey sedan, a Dodge or Plymouth, sat in the gravel drive; the rear tires looked low on air, as if the car hadn’t been driven recently. Curl parked behind it and cut off his headlights. He took a sixteen-inch flathead screwdriver from under the front seat. He was not the world’s greatest burglar but he knew the fundamentals, including the fact that trailers usually were a cinch.

Another cardinal rule of burglary was: Leave your gun in the car unless you want another nickel tacked onto your prison sentence. Thomas Curl began to have second thoughts about this rule after he had gotten the screwdriver stuck in Decker’s back door, and after a neighbor’s sixty-five-pound pit bulldog came trotting over to investigate the racket. As the dog bared its teeth and emitted a tremulous rumble, Thomas Curl could not help thinking how nice it would have been to be holding either the shotgun or the pistol, both locked in the trunk of his car.

The pit bull got a running start before it leapt, so it landed on Thomas Curl with maximum impact. He crashed against the aluminum wall and lost his wind, but somehow kept his balance. The dog crouched at his feet and snarled hotly. The animal seemed genuinely surprised that it had failed to knock its victim down, but Thomas Curl was a muscular and stocky fellow with a low center of gravity.

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