“Lanie?”
“I got back to the room and there she is, half-undressed. She said you’d invited her to fly up—”
“No way.”
“I figured,” Skink said. “That’s why I tied her up, so you could decide for yourself what to do. You cut her loose, I presume.”
“Yeah.”
“And screwed her too?”
Decker frowned.
“Just what I thought,” Skink said. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here.”
“Listen, captain, that cop is a friend of mine.”
“Which one?” With one blackened finger Skink scratched absently at a brambly eyebrow.
“The Cuban detective. Garcia’s his name.”
“So?”
“So he’s a good man,” Decker said. “He’ll try to get us a break.”
“Us?”
“Yeah, with the New Orleans people. Al could make it as painless as possible.”
Skink studied Decker’s face and said, “Hell, I guess I squeezed too tight.”
They went to a Denny’s on Biscayne Boulevard, where Skink fit right in with the clientele. He ordered six raw eggs and a string of pork sausages. Decker’s neck had stiffened up, and he had the worst headache of his life.
“You could have just tapped me on the shoulder,” he complained.
“No time to be polite,” Skink said, without a trace of apology. “I did it for your own good.”
“How’d you get in, anyway?”
“Slim-jimmed the back door. Two minutes later and your bosom buddy Garcia would have had you in bracelets. Eat something, all right? We got a long damn ride.”
Decker had no intention of taking a long damn ride with Skink, and no intention of getting picked up as an accessory to murder. He had decided not to turn Skink in to the police, but the man would have to make his own escape; the partnership was over.
Skink said, “Your neighbors’ll raise hell about the dead dogs.”
“Oh?”
“Couldn’t be helped,” Skink said, slurping a drip of yolk from his mustache. “Self-defense.”
“You killed the pit bulldogs?”
“Not all of them. Just the ones that were chasing me.”
Before Decker could ask, Skink said, “With a knife. No one saw a thing.”
“God.” Decker’s brainpan felt like the bells of Notre Dame. He noticed that his fingers twitched when he tried to butter a biscuit. It dawned on him that he was not a well person, that he needed to go to a doctor.
But before he abandoned Skink he wanted to ask about Dickie Lockhart. He wanted to hear Skink’s version, in case it never came out.
“When you left the motel in Hammond,” Decker began, “where’d you go?”
“Back to the lake. Borrowed a boat and found Dickie’s fish traps.”
“You’re kidding.”
Skink beamed. A brown clot of sausage was stuck between his two front teeth. ‘The boat I took was Ozzie Rundell’s,” he said. “Dumb fucker left the keys in the switch and a map in the console.”
“A depth chart of Lake Maurepas,” Decker guessed, “with the trap sites marked.”
“Marked real clear, too,” Skink said, “in crayon, just for Ozzie.”
It made sense. While Dickie Lockhart was celebrating his victory, the Rundells would sneak out on the lake to clean up the evidence. Dickie was so cheap he probably used the same traps over and over.
“Those fish he won with were Florida bass,” Skink was saying. “Probably trucked in from Lake Jackson or maybe the Rodman. That mudhole Maurepas never saw bass that pretty, you can bet your ass—”
“What’d you do after you found the traps?” Decker cut in.
Skink set down his fork. “I pulled the plug on Ozzie’s boat and swam to shore.”
“Then?”
“Then I stuck out my thumb, and here I am.”
Two cops came in, walking the cowboy walk, and took a booth. Cops ate at Denny’s all the time, but still they made Decker nervous. They kept glancing over at Skink—hard glances—and Decker could tell they were dreaming up an excuse for a hassle and ID check. He laid a ten on the table and headed for the car; Skink shuffled behind, shoving a couple of biscuits into the pockets of his rainsuit. No sooner were they back on the boulevard than Decker spotted another patrol car in the rearview. The patrol car was following closely, and Decker could only assume that Al Garcia had put out the word. When the blue lights came on, Decker dutifully pulled over.