The policeman said, “Big scruffy guy with a bright hat and pony-tail. Witnesses saw him run into this hotel, so we’re suggesting that all guests stay in their rooms for a while.”
“Don’t you worry,” Decker said.
“Just for a while,” the security man added, “until they catch him.”
When Decker shut the door, Catherine sat up in bed and said, “Stars? You saw stars?”
“Don’t you dare move,” Decker said, diving headfirst into the sheets.
Thomas Curl was not a happy man. In the past few weeks he had made more money than he or three previous generations of Curls had ever seen, yet Thomas was not at peace. First of all, his brother Lemus was dead, and for a while Thomas had been stuck with the body. Since he had told everyone, including his daddy, that Lemus had accidentally drowned on a fishing trip to Florida, there was no way he could bring back a body with a bullet hole in the head. People would ask many questions, and answering questions was not Thomas Curl’s strong suit. So, after discovering Lemus’ turtle-eaten corpse on the fish stringer in Morgan Slough, and mulling it over for two days, Thomas decided what the hell and just buried his brother in a dry sandy grave on some pastureland east of the Gilchrist. The whole time he worked with the shovel, he had a feeling that every turkey buzzard in Florida was wheeling in the sky overhead, waiting to make a smorgasbord of Lemus’ remains. Afterward Thomas took off his bass cap and stood by the grave and tried to remember a prayer. The only one he could think of began: “Now I lay me down to sleep… ” Close enough.
Almost every night Thomas Curl reflected sadly on how Lemus had died, how he had let him dash off into the scrub by himself, and how all of a sudden he didn’t hear Lemus’ Ruger anymore. And how Thomas had panicked and leapt into the green pickup and taken off, pretty sure that his brother was already dead—and how he’d returned with a borrowed coon dog and found some heavy tracks and blood, but no body. At that moment he had expected never to see his brother again, and later at the slough was horrified to the point of nausea. On orders Thomas had gone there to check on things, just to make sure the nigger cop hadn’t found Ott Pickney’s body. But there was poor Lemus, strung up in the black water with the other one, and it was then Thomas Curl realized the dangerous magnitude of the opposition. Thomas was not the brightest human being in the world, but he knew a message when he saw one.
So he had buried Lemus, torched Ott Pickney’s body in a phony truck accident, and driven straight back to New Orleans, where, again, things didn’t go as smoothly as he’d hoped. Thomas expressed the view that he shouldn’t be blamed for every little loose end, and was curtly instructed to return to Florida immediately. Not Harney, either, but Miami.
Thomas Curl was not wild about Miami. Back when he was still boxing he had trained one summer at the Fifth Street Gym, out on the beach. He remembered staying in a ratty pink hotel with two other middleweights, and he remembered getting drunk on Saturday nights and, out of sheer boredom, beating the shit out of skinny Cuban refugees who lived in the city parks. Thomas remembered Miami as a hot and unfriendly place, but then again, he was young and homesick and broke. Now he was grown-up, thirty-five pounds heavier, and rolling in new money.
To boost his spirits, Thomas Curl splurged and got a room at the Grand Bay Hotel. The room came with a fruit basket and a sunken bathtub. He was sucking on a nectarine and soaking in the tub when Dennis Gault called back.
Thomas Curl said, “Hey, they got a phone in the goddamn John.”
“Welcome to the city, Jethro.” Gault was in a brusque mood. Dealing with this moron was at least two notches below dealing with Decker. Gault said, “A cop came to see me.”