At that moment R. J. Decker parked his car behind a row of construction trailers at Lunker Lakes. Dawn was the best time to move, because by then most rent-a-cops were either asleep or shooting the shit around the timeclock, waiting to punch out. Decker spotted only one uniformed guard, a rotund and florid fellow who emerged from one of the trailers just long enough to take a leak, then shut the door.
Decker checked the camera again. It was a Minolta Maxxum, a sturdy thirty-five-millimeter he’d picked up at a West Palm Beach discount house that took credit cards. He was thinking that a Kodak or a Sure-Shot might have worked just as well, but he’d been in such a hurry. He opened the back of the frame and inspected the loading mechanism; he did the same with the motor-drive unit.
Satisfied, Decker capped the lens, closed up the camera, and locked it in the glove compartment of Al Garcia’s car. Then he got the bolt-cutters out of the trunk and snuck up to the supply shed, where he went to work on the padlock.
The blast-off for the Dickie Lockhart Memorial Bass Blasters Classic was set for six-thirty, but the anglers arrived very early to put their boats in the water and test their gear and collect free goodies from tackle reps up and down the dock. The fishermen knew that whoever won this tournament might never have to wet a line again, not just because of the tremendous purse but because of the product endorsements to follow. The bass lure that took first prize in the Lockhart undoubtedly would be the hottest item in freshwater bait shops for a year. There was no logic to this fad, since bass will eat just about anything (including their own young), but the tackle companies did everything in their power to encourage manic buying. Before the opening gun they loaded down the contestants with free plugs, jigs, spinners, and of course rubber worms, displayed in giant plastic vats like so much hellish purple pasta.
The morning was cool and clear; there was talk it might hit eighty by midafternoon. Matronly volunteers from The First Pentecostal Church of Exemptive Redemption handed out Bible tracts and served hot biscuits and coffee, though many contestants were too tense to eat or pray.
At six sharp a burgundy Rolls-Royce Corniche pulled up to the ramp at Lunker Lake Number One. Dennis and Lanie Gault got out. Lanie was dressed in a red timber jacket, skintight Gore-Tex dungarees, and black riding boots. She basked in the stares from the other contestants and dug heartily into a bag of hot croissants.
With an air of supreme confidence, Dennis Gault uncranked his sparkling seventeen-foot Ranger bass boat off the trailer into the water. One by one, he meticulously stowed his fishing rods, then his toolbox, then his immense tacklebox. Hunkering into the cockpit of the boat, he checked the gauges—water temperature, trim tilt, tabs, tachometer, fuel, batteries, oil pressure. He punched a button on his sonic fish-finder and the screen blinked a bright green digital good-morning. The big Johnson outboard turned over on the first try, purring like a tiger cub. While the engine warmed up, Dennis Gault stood at the wheel and casually smoothed the creases of his sky-blue jumpsuit. He squirted Windex on the lenses of his amber Polaroids and wiped them with a dark blue bandanna. Next he slipped on his monogrammed weather vest, and tucked a five-ounce squirt bottle of Happy Gland into the pocket. In accordance with prevailing bass fashion, he spun his cap so that the bill was at his back; that way the wind wouldn’t tear it off his head at fifty miles an hour.
Dennis Gault had expected to hear the usual cracks about the Rolls and what a pompous ass he was, but for once the other bass anglers left him alone. In fact, Gault was so absorbed in his own pretournament ritual that he almost missed the highlight of the morning.
It started as a pinprick on the eastern horizon, but it came faster than the sunrise; a strange pulsing light. The bass fishermen clustered on the dock to watch. They figured one of the big bait companies was pulling a stunt for a new commercial. Some stunt it was, too.