“The truck’ll be fine,” Culver said.
“I don’t know,” Jim Tile said, parting the Venetian blinds. “It’s a pretty rough neighborhood.”
Ozzie looked stricken.
“Oh, settle down,” Culver said angrily. Then, to Jim Tile: “You, why won’t you help us? I lost a twenty-thousand-dollar rig because of that bastard!”
Jim Tile was still looking out the window. “So that’s your mother’s pickup?”
“Ours is in the impound, up New Orleans,” Ozzie said.
“The red one,” Jim Tile said.
“Yeah,” Culver grunted, secretly impressed that the trooper would remember the color.
Then Jim Tile said to Ozzie: “What about the green one?”
The color washed out of Ozzie’s cheeks. His eyelids fluttered, as if he were about to faint.
“What green one?” Culver said, slow to put it together.
“The one your brother was driving week before last,” Jim Tile said, “out on the Gilchrist. About dawn, one morning.”
“When?” Ozzie hiccuped. “Wasn’t me. Our truck is red.”
“You and two other guys,” Jim Tile said, “and the truck was green. Out-of-state tags.”
Finally Culver was picking up on the train of conversation. He tried to help Ozzie as best he could, even though he felt like strangling him.
“I remember that day,” Culver improvised, watching his brother’s eyes grow big. “You and some boys went fishing up at the slough. I remember ’cause you took a couple Shakespeare plug rods out of the shop, along with some Johnson spoons and purple skirts.”
Ozzie’s lips were like chalk. His bottom jaw went up and down until finally he said, “Oh, yeah.”
Culver said, “I remember ’cause you didn’t want to try live shiners, even though I told you to. You said there was too much heavy cover, so you’d prefer dragging those damn weedless spoons.”
Jim Tile was buttoning his shirt. “So, Ozzie,” he said, “You guys catch anything?”
“Sure,” Ozzie said, glancing at the door, as if he were about to run.
“What’d you catch?”
“Our truck is red,” Ozzie Rundell said, licking his lips. His shoulders twitched and his eyes rolled up and fixed on the ceiling. His cheeks puffed out, like he was trying to fart.
“Pardon me?” Jim Tile said, bending over to tie his shoes.
“That’s Momma’s pickup outside,” Ozzie said in a very high voice. He was gone, unglued, lost in a pathetic blubbering panic. Culver shook his head disgustedly.
“I asked what you caught,” Jim Tile said, “out at Morgan Slough.”
Ozzie smiled and smacked his lips. “One time Dickie gave me a tacklebox,” he said.
“All right, that’s enough,” Culver broke in.
“Ozzie?” said Jim Tile.
“The day in the truck?”
“The green truck, yes.”
“I was driving, that’s all. I didn’t drown nobody.”
“Of course not,” Jim Tile said.
“That’s it,” said Culver Rundell. “Shut the fuck up, Oz.”
Culver had the gun out. He was holding it with two hands, pointing it at Jim Tile’s heart. Jim Tile glanced down once, but seemed to pay no more attention to the gun than if it were just Culver’s fly unzipped.
“Let’s go,” Culver said in a husky whisper.
But Jim Tile merely walked into the bedroom, stood at the dresser, and adjusted his trooper’s Stetson.
“Now!” Culver shouted. Ozzie stared at the handgun and covered his ears.
Jim Tile reached for a bottle of cologne.
Culver exploded. “Nigger, I’m talking to you!”
Only then did Jim Tile turn to give Ozzie Rundell’s brother his complete and undivided attention.
The boat was an eighteen-foot Aquasport with a two-hundred-horse Evinrude outboard; smooth trim, dry ride, very fast. Skink liked it quite a bit. He liked it so much he decided not to ditch it at Haulover docks after all, but to drive it up the Intracoastal Waterway all the way to Pier 66, in Fort Lauderdale. The morning was biting cold, and R. J. Decker would have preferred to travel by car, but there was no point to raising the issue. Skink was having a ball, his silvery ponytail strung out behind him like a rope in the breeze. At the Dania Beach bridge he cut the throttle down to idle speed and the Aquasport coasted into a slow crawl.
“What’s up?” Decker asked.
Skink said, “Manatee zone.”