“Oh Jesus,” Decker said. They’d set up the wreck to cover the murder.
“It burned for two hours, started a mean brushfire,” Kilpatrick said. “By the time it was over there wasn’t much left. The remains are over at the morgue now, but… well, they’re hoping to get enough blood to find out if he’d been drinking. They’re big on DUI stats around here.”
Ott’s body would be scorched to a cinder. No one would ever suspect it had been in the water, just as no one would guess what had really killed him. The cheapest trick in the book, but it would work in Harney. Decker could imagine them already repainting the death’s-head billboard on Route 222: “drive safely. don’t be fatality no. 5.”
He didn’t know what to say now. Conversations about the newly dead made him uncomfortable, but he didn’t want to seem uncaring. “I didn’t think Ott was a big drinker,” he said lamely.
“Me neither,” Kilpatrick said, “but I figured something was wrong when he didn’t show up for the basketball game night before last. He was the team mascot, you know.”
“Davey Dillo.”
“Right.” There was a pause on the end of the line; Kilpatrick pondering how to explain Ott’s armadillo suit. “It’s sort of an unwritten rule here at the newspaper,” the editor said, “that everybody gives to the United Way. Just a few bucks out of each paycheck—you know, the company’s big in civic charity.”
“I understand,” Decker said.
“Well, Ott refused to donate anything, said he didn’t trust ’em. I’d never seen him so adamant.”
“He always watched his pennies,” Decker said. Ott Pickney was one of the cheapest men he’d ever met. While covering the Dade County courthouse he’d once missed the verdict in a sensational murder trial because he couldn’t find a parking spot with a broken meter.
Sandy Kilpatrick went on: “Our publisher has a rigid policy about the United Way. When he heard Ott was holding back, he ordered me to fire him. To save Ott’s job I came up with this compromise.”
“Davey Dillo?”
“The school team needed a mascot.”
“It sure doesn’t sound like Ott,” Decker said.
“He resisted at first, but he got to where he really enjoyed it. I heard him say so. He was dynamite on that skateboard, too, even in that bulky costume. Someone his age—the kids said he should have been a surfer.”
“Sounds like quite a show,” Decker said, trying to imagine it.
“He never missed a game, that’s why I was worried the other night when he didn’t show. Only thing I could figure is that he’d gone out Saturday night and tied one on. Maybe went up to Cocoa Beach, met a girl, and just decided to stay the weekend.”
Ott sacked out with a beach bunny—the story probably was all over Harney by now. “Maybe that’s it,” Decker said. “He was probably on his way home when the accident happened.” This was Ott’s old pal from Miami, lying through his teeth. If Kilpatrick only knew the truth, Decker thought. He said, “Sandy, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe he’s dead.” That part was almost true, and the regret was genuine.
“The service is tomorrow,” Kilpatrick said. “Cremation seemed the best way to go, considering.”
Decker said good-bye and hung up. Then he called a florist shop in Miami and asked them to wire an orchid to Ott Pickney’s funeral. The best orchid they had.
Jim Tile was born in the town of Wilamette, Florida, a corrupt and barren flyspeck untouched by the alien notions of integration, fair housing, and equal rights. Jim Tile was one of the few blacks ever to have escaped his miserable neighborhood without benefit of a bus ride to Raiford or a football scholarship. He attributed his success to good steady parents who made him stay in school, and also to his awesome physical abilities. Most street kids thought punching was the cool way to fight, but Jim Tile preferred to wrestle because it was more personal. For this he took some grief from his pals until the first time the white kids jumped him and tried to push his face in some cowshit. There were three of them, and naturally they waited until Jim Tile was alone. They actually got him down for a moment, but the one who was supposed to lock Jim Tile’s arms didn’t get a good grip and that was that. One of the white kids ended up with a broken collarbone, another with both elbows hyperextended grotesquely, and the third had four broken ribs where Jim Tile had squeezed him in a leg scissors. And they all went to the hospital with cowshit on their noses.