Decker said, “So what’d you do, follow Catherine up from Miami?”
“She’s a slick little driver, she gave it her best.”
Decker said, “I didn’t kill anybody, Al.”
“How about Little Stevie Wonder there?”
Skink blinked lizardlike behind his sunglasses.
“Come on, R.J., let’s all of us go for a ride.” Garcia was so smooth he didn’t even unholster his gun. Decker was impressed; you had to be. Now if only Skink behaved.
Skink retrieved his dead seagull from the glove box and Decker locked up the rental car. Garcia was waiting in the Chrysler. “Who wants to ride shotgun?” he asked affably.
Decker said, “I thought you’d want both us ruthless murderers to sit back in the cage.”
“Nah,” Al Garcia said, unplugging the blue light. He got back into traffic, turned off Seventeenth Street on Federal Highway, then cut back west on Road 84, an impossible truck route. Decker was surprised when he didn’t turn south at the Interstate 95 exchange.
“Where are you going?”
“The Turnpike’s a cleaner shot, isn’t it?” the detective said.
“Not really,” Decker said.
“He means north,” Skink said from the back seat. “To Harney.”
“Right,” Al Garcia said. “On the way, I want you guys to tell me all about bass fishing.”
The news from Lunker Lakes was not good.
“They died,” reported Charlie Weeb’s hydrologist, some pinhead hired fresh out of the University of Florida.
“Died?” said the Reverend Weeb. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
He was talking about the bass—two thousand yearling large-mouths imported at enormous cost from a private hatchery in Alabama.
“They croaked,” said the hydrologist. “What can I say? The water’s very bad, Reverend Weeb. Tannic acid they can tolerate, but the current phosphate levels are lethal. There’s no fresh oxygen, no natural water flow. Whoever dredged your canals—”
“Lakes, goddammit!”
“—they dredged too deep. The fish don’t last more than two days.”
“Jesus Christ Almighty. So what’re we talking about here—stinking dead bass floating all over the place?”
The hydrologist said, “I took the liberty of hiring some local boats to scoop up the kill. With this cool weather it’s not so bad, but if a warm front pushes through, they’d smell it all the way to Key West.”
Weeb slammed down the phone and groaned. The woman lying next to him said, “What is it, Father?”
“I’m not a priest,” Weeb snapped. He didn’t have the energy for a theology lesson; it would have been a waste of time anyway. The girl worked at Louie’s Lap-Dancing Palace in Gretna. She said her whole family watched him every Sunday morning on television.
“I never been with a TV star before,” she said, burrowing into his chest. “You’re a big boy, too.”
Charlie Weeb was only half-listening. He missed Ellen O’Leary; no one else looked quite as fine, topless in the rubber trout waders. No one soothed him the way Ellen did, either, but now she was gone. Took off after Dickie Lockhart’s murder. One more disappointment in a week of bleak disappointments for the Reverend Charles Weeb.
“How much do I owe you?” he asked the lap dancer.
“Nothing, Father.” She sounded confused. “I brought my own money.”
“What for?” Weeb looked down; he couldn’t see her face, just the top of her head and the smooth slope of her naked back.
“I got a favor to ask,” the lap dancer said, whispering into his chest hair. “And I wanna pay for it.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“I want you to heal my poppa.” She looked up shyly. “He’s got the gout, my poppa does.”
“No, child—”
“Some days he can’t barely get himself out of bed.”
Weeb shifted restlessly, glanced at his wristwatch.
“I’ll give you two hundred dollars,” the girl declared.
“You’re serious?”
“Just one little prayer, please.”
“Two hundred bucks?”
“And a hum job, if you want it, Father.”
Charlie Weeb stared at her, thinking: It’s true what they say about the power of television.
“Come, child,” he said softly, “let’s pray.”
Later, when he was alone, the Reverend Charles Weeb thought about the girl and what she’d wanted. Maybe it was the answer he’d been looking for. It had worked before, in the early years; perhaps it would work again.