“Water’s nervous,” Skink said, drying his beard. “Slow it down a tad.”
“Like this?” Decker whispered.
“Yeah.”
Decker heard it before he felt it. A jarring concussion, as if somebody had thrown a cinderblock in the water near the boat. Instantly something nearly pulled the rod from his hands. On instinct Decker yanked back. The line screeched off the old reel in short bursts, bending the rod into an inverse U. The fish circled and broke the surface on the starboard side, toward the stern. Its back was banded in greenish black, its shoulders bronze, and its fat belly as pale as ice. The gills rattled like dice when the bass shook its huge mouth.
“Damn!” Decker grunted.
“She’s a big girl,” Skink said, just watching.
The fish went deep, tugged some, sat some, then dug for the roots of the lilies. Awestruck, Decker more or less hung on. Skink knew what would happen, and it did. The fish cleverly wrapped the line in the weeds and broke off with a loud crack. The battle had lasted but three minutes.
“Shit,” Decker said. He turned on the lantern and studied the broken end of the monofilament.
“Ten-pounder,” Skink said. “Easy.” He swung his legs over the plank, braced his boots on the transom, and started to row.
Decker asked, “You got another one of those eels?”
“We’re going in,” Skink said.
“One more shot, captain—I’ll do better next time.”
“You did fine, Miami. You got what you needed, a jolt of the ballbuster fever. Save me from listening to a lot of stupid questions down the road.” Skink picked up the pace with the oars.
Decker said, “I’ve got to admit, it was fun.”
“That’s what they say.”
During the trip back to shore, Decker couldn’t stop thinking about the big bass, the tensile shock of its strength against his own muscles. Maybe there was something mystical to Bobby Clinch’s obsession. The experience, Decker admitted to himself, had been exhilarating and pure; the solitude and darkness of the lake shattered by a brute from the deep. It was nothing like fishing on the drift boats, or dropping shrimp off the bridges in the Keys. This was different. Decker felt like a little kid, all wired up.
“I want to try this again,” he told Skink.
“Maybe someday, after the dirty work is over. You want to hear my theory?”
“Sure.” Decker had been waiting all damn night.
Skink said: “Robert Clinch found out about the cheating. He knew who and he knew how. I think he was after the proof when they caught him on the bog.”
“Who caught him? Dickie Lockhart?”
Skink said, “Dickie wasn’t in the other boat I saw. He’s not that stupid.”
“But he sent somebody to kill Bobby Clinch.”
“I’m not sure of that, Miami. Maybe it was a trap, or maybe Clinch just turned up in the worst place at the worst time.”
“What was Bobby looking for?” Decker asked.
Skink made three swipes of the oars before answering. “A fish,” he said. “A particular fish.”
That was Skink’s theory, or what he intended to share of it. Twice Decker asked Skink what he meant, what particular fish, but Skink never replied. He rowed mechanically. The only sounds on the lake were his husky breaths and the rhythmic squeak of the rusty oarlocks.
Slowly the details of the southern shoreline, including the crooked silhouette of the cabin, came into Decker’s view. The trip was almost over.
Decker asked, “You come out here every night?”
“Only when I’m in the mood for fish dinner,” Skink replied.
“And you always use that big purple worm?”
“Nope,” Skink said, beaching the boat with a final stroke, “what I usually use is a twelve-gauge.”
When R. J. Decker got back to the motel, he found a note from the night manager on the door. The note said Ott Pickney had called, but it didn’t say why.
Decker already had the key in the lock when he heard a car pull in and park. He glanced over his shoulder, half-expecting to see Ott’s perky Toyota flatbed.
What he saw instead was a tangerine Corvette.
Decker had a poor memory for names. Terrific eye for faces, but no name recollection whatsoever.