They found the apartment on Washington Drive easily; Jim Tile’s black-and-tan Ford police cruiser was out front.
Culver parked his mother’s truck. He got a pistol from under the front seat and tucked it into the back of his dungarees.
“What’s that for?” Ozzie asked worriedly.
“It’s a bad neighborhood, Oz.”
“I ain’t going in there with a gun,” Ozzie said in a brittle voice. “I ain’t!”
“Fine,” Culver said. “You sit out here in the parking lot with all these jigaboos. I’m sure they’ll love the prospect of a fat little cracker boy like you.”
Ozzie looked around and knew that his brother was right. The streets were full of black faces, including some frightfully muscular teenagers slam-dunking basketballs through a rusty hoop nailed to a telephone pole. Ozzie decided he didn’t want to stay in the truck after all. He followed Culver up to Jim Tile’s apartment.
The trooper was finishing dinner, and getting ready to go out on the night shift. He came to the door wearing the gray, sharply pressed trousers of his uniform, but no shirt. The Rundell brothers were awestruck by the dimensions of his chest and arms.
After stammering for a second, Culver finally said, “We need to talk about the guy lives up on the lake.”
“Our boat got sunk,” Ozzie warbled, without explanation.
Jim Tile let them in, motioned toward two chairs at the dinette. The Rundell brothers sat down.
“Skink is his name, right?” Culver said.
“What’s the connection,” Jim Tile asked mildly, “between the man on the lake and your boat?”
Ozzie started to say something, got lost, and looked to his brother for help. Culver said, “We heard Mr. Skink is the one who sunked it.”
Jim Tile said, “Well, Mr. Skink is out of town.”
“It happened out of town,” Culver said. “At a tournament up in Louisiana.”
“Did you go to the police?” Jim Tile asked.
“Not yet,” Culver said. He had wanted to, but Thomas Curl had said it was a bad idea. He said the police would be busy with Dickie’s murder, and it wouldn’t be right to bother them over a bass boat. Besides, the boat had been recovered out of the water, and it was Thomas Curl’s opinion that it could be repaired. Ozzie said great, but Culver didn’t like the idea. Culver wanted a brand-new boat, and he wanted the man named Skink to buy it for him.
“Well, if you haven’t talked to the police in Louisiana, then I suggest you do,” Jim Tile said. “Once there’s a warrant, one of Sheriff Lockhart’s deputies can go out to Lake Jesup and arrest him.”
Culver Rundell doubted if Sheriff Barley Lockhart was much interested in a boat theft, not with his famous nephew turning up murdered in Louisiana. Barley had caught a flight to New Orleans two days after the killing, and had not yet returned. Before leaving, the sheriff dramatically informed the Harney Sentinel that his presence had been requested to assist in the homicide investigation, but in reality the Louisiana authorities merely wanted somebody to accompany Dickie’s autopsied body back to Florida.
“It’s a jurisdictional problem,” Trooper Jim Tile said to the Rundell brothers. “I really can’t help.”
“You can take us to see Mr. Skink,” Culver said.
“Why? You know where he lives—drive out there yourself.”
To Ozzie’s ear, Jim Tile’s response sounded as close to a definite no as you could get. But Culver wasn’t giving up.
“No way,” Culver said. “I heard he’s got a big gun, shoots at people just for the fun of it. He doesn’t know me or my brother, and he might just open fire if we was to drive up unannounced. You, he knows. Even if he’s crazy as they say, he won’t shoot a damn police car.”
The low, even tone of Jim Tile’s voice did not change. “I told you, he’s out of town.”
“Well, let’s go see.”
“No,” said Jim Tile, rising. “I have to go to work.”
“Momma’s truck,” Ozzie blurted. “Maybe we oughta go, Culver.”
Annoyed, Culver glanced at his brother. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m worried about Momma’s truck out there. Maybe we should go—”