Carl Hiaasen – Double Whammy

“You bet,” Garcia said, rising. “Thanks for the coffee. You’ve been most helpful.”

Gault twirled the sash of his robe as he walked the detective to the door. “As you can tell, I had no love for Dickie Lockhart. If anything else had happened to him—a plane crash, prostate cancer, AIDS—you wouldn’t have heard a peep out of me. Hell, I would’ve thrown a party. But murder—not even a cheating motherfucker like Dickie deserved to be murdered in cold blood. That’s why I went to the police.”

“Sort of a civic duty,” Garcia said.

“Exactly.” Before Gault said good-bye, something occurred to him: It would be best to end the interview on a light and friendly note. He said to Garcia, “You’re from Cuba, right?”

“A long time ago.”

“There’s some hellacious fishing down there, south of Havana. Castro himself is a nut for largemouth bass, did you know that?”

“I read something about it.”

Gault said, “For years I’ve been trying to pull some strings and wrangle an invitation, but it’s damn tough in my position. I’m in the sugar business, as you know. The Bearded One doesn’t send us many valentines.”

“Well, you’re the competition,” Garcia said.

“Still, I’m dying to try for a Cuban bass. I’ve heard stories of sixteen-, eighteen-pound hawgs. What’s the name of that famous lake?”

Garcia said, “I forget.”

“Did you do much fishing,” Gault asked, “when you lived there?”

“I was just a small boy,” Garcia said. “My great-uncle did some fishing, though.”

“Is that right?”

“He was a mullet man.”

“Oh.”

“He sold marlin baits to Hemingway.”

“No shit!” Dennis Gault said. Now he was impressed. “I saw a movie about Hemingway once,” he said. “Starred that Patton guy.”

Back at police headquarters, Al Garcia sat down at his desk and slipped a cassette into a portable tape recorder. The date of January 7 had been written in pencil on the label of the cassette. It was one of three used in R. J. Decker’s answering machine. Garcia had picked them up at the trailer after he got the search warrant.

He closed the door to his office, and turned the volume on the tape machine up to number ten on the dial. Then he lit a cigarette and pressed the Play button.

There were a few seconds of scratchy blank tape, followed by the sound of a phone ringing. The fourth ring was interrupted by a metallic click and the sound of R. J. Decker’s voice: “I’m not home now. Please leave a message at the tone.”

The first caller was a woman: “Rage, it’s me. James is on another trip and I’m in the mood for pasta. How about Rita’s at nine?”

In his notebook Garcia wrote: Ex-wife.

The second caller was also a woman: “R.J., it’s Barbara. I’m sorry about canceling the other night. How about a drink later to make up for it?”

Garcia wrote: Some girl.

The third caller was a man: “Mr. Decker, you probably don’t know me but I know of you. I need a private investigator, and you come highly recommended. Call me as soon as possible—I guarantee it’ll be worth your time. The number is 555-3400. The name is Dennis Gault.”

In his notebook Al Garcia wrote: Bad guy.

For several days Decker and Skink stayed inside the hotel room, waiting for things to cool off. Decker had done what he could over the phone, and was eager to get on the road. For his part, Skink had shrunk into a silent and lethargic melancholy, and exhibited no desire to do anything or go anywhere.

Finally, the afternoon Catherine arrived, Skink briefly came to life. He went outside and stood on the beach and started shooting at jetliners on final approach to the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood airport.

Catherine had shown up with a recent stock prospectus from the Outdoor Christian Network, which was listed on the New York exchange as Outdoor ChristNet. Decker was no whiz when it came to stocks, so he had telephoned a reporter friend on the business desk of the Miami Sun. The reporter had done a search on OCN in the newsroom computer and come up with some interesting clips, which Catherine had picked up before she left Miami. From the file it was obvious that OCN’s rapid growth in the Sun Belt cable market had flooded the company with fluid capital, capital which the Reverend Charles Weeb and his advisers were plowing pell-mell into Florida real estate. The prospectus made several tantalizing references to an “exciting new waterfront development targeted for middle-income family home buyers” but neglected to mention the protracted and somewhat shady process by which Lunker Lakes had escaped all zoning regulations known to man. The word “kickback,” for example, appeared nowhere in the stock brochure. The newspaper articles dwelt on this aspect of the controversial project, and indeed it was the only angle that seemed to interest Skink in the slightest. He asked where exactly Lunker Lakes would be located, then took the prospectus and newspaper clippings from Decker’s hands and read them closely.

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