Decker’s coffee had cooled, but it didn’t matter. He gulped the rest of it.
Skink had become more animated and intense; the cords in his neck were tight. Decker couldn’t tell if he was angry or ecstatic. Using a pocket knife to pick strings of rabbit meat from his perfect teeth, Skink said: “Well, Miami, aren’t you going to ask me what this means?”
“It was on my list of questions, yeah.”
“You’ll hear my theory tonight, on the lake.”
“On the lake?”
“Your first communion,” Skink said, and scrambled noisily back up into the big pine.
Ott Pickney had left Miami in gentle retreat from big-city journalism. He knew he could have stayed at the Sun for the rest of his life, but felt he had more or less made his point. Having written virtually nothing substantial in at least a decade, he had nonetheless departed the newspaper in a triumphant state of mind. He had survived the conversion to cold type, the advent of unions, the onslaught of the preppy cubs, the rise of the hotshot managers. Ott had watched the stars and starfuckers arrive and, with a minimum of ambition, outlasted most of them. He felt he was living proof that a successful journalist need not be innately cunning or aggressive, even in South Florida.
In Ott’s own mind, Harney was the same game, just a slower track.
Which is why he half-resented R. J. Decker’s infernal skepticism about the death of Bobby Clinch. A foolhardy fisherman wrecks his boat and drowns—so what? In Miami it’s one crummy paragraph on page 12-D; no one would look twice. Ott Pickney was peeved at Decker’s coy insinuation that something sinister was brewing right under Ott’s nose. This wasn’t Dade County, he thought, and these weren’t Dade County people. The idea of an organized cheating ring at the fish tournaments struck Ott as merely farfetched, but the suggestion of foul play in Robert Clinch’s death was a gross insult to the community. Ott resolved to show R. J. Decker how wrong he was.
After the funeral, Ott went back to the newsroom and stewed awhile. The Sentinel’s deadlines being what they were, he had two days to play with the Clinch piece. As he flipped through his notebook, Ott figured he had enough to bang out fifteen or twenty inches. Barely.
In an uncharacteristic burst of tenacity, he decided to give Clarisse Clinch another shot.
He found the house in chaos. A yellow moving van was parked out front; a crew of burly men was emptying the place. Clarisse had set up a command post in the kitchen, and under her scathing direction the movers were working very swiftly.
“Sorry to intrude,” Ott said to her, “but I remembered a couple more questions.”
“I got no answers,” Clarisse snapped. “We’re on our way to Valdosta.”
Ott tried to picture Clarisse in a slinky, wet-looking dress, sliding long-legged into a tangerine sports car. He couldn’t visualize it. This woman was a different species from Lanie Gault.
“I just need a little more about Bobby’s hobby,” Ott said. “A few anecdotes.”
“Anecdotes!” Clarisse said sharply. “You writing a book?”
“Just a feature story,” Ott said. “Bobby’s friends say he was quite a fisherman.”
“You saw the coffin,” Clarisse said. “And you saw his friends.” She clapped her hands twice loudly. “Hey! Watch the ottoman, Pablo, unless you want to buy me a new one!”
The man named Pablo mumbled something obscene.
Clarisse turned back to Ott. “Do you fish?”
He shook his head.
“Thank God there’s at least one of you,” she said.
Her eyes flickered to a bookcase in the living room. Ott noticed that there were no books on the shelves, only trophies. Each of the trophies was crowned with a cheap gold-painted replica of a jumping fish. Bass, Ott assumed. He counted up the trophies and wrote the number “18” in his notebook. One of the movers unfolded a big cardboard box and began wrapping and packing the trophies.
“No!” Clarisse said. “Those go in the dumpster.”
The mover shrugged.
Ott followed the widow to the garage. “This junk in here,” she was saying, “I’ve got to sell.”
Bobby Clinch’s fishing gear. Cane poles, spinning rods, flipping rods, bait-casting rods, popping rods, fly rods. Ott Pickney counted them up and wrote “22” in his notebook. Each of the outfits seemed to be in immaculate condition.