Carl Hiassen - Double Whammy

"Looks like a dog," Skink said, puzzled.

"It's Lucas," Catherine sighed. "Rage, I want to go home."

As soon as Eddie Spurling tied off the boats, Charlie Weeb barged forward and said, "Why'd you tow those fuckers in?"

"Because they ast me to."

"So where's the fish?"

"No fish," Eddie Spurling reported. "I got skunked."

Weeb sucked on his upper lip. He had to be careful what he said. There was a decent-sized crowd now; the other contestants had hung around just to see how the famous TV fisherman had fared.

"What do you mean, no fish—how is that possible?" Weeb spoke in a low strained voice. He used his eyes to grill Eddie about the ringers—where the fuck were they!

"Damn rascals just weren't bitin'."

"You're in big trouble, Eddie."

"Naw, I don't think so."

The sports reporter from OCN poked his microphone into Spurling's face and asked the star of Fish Fever what had happened.

"Just one of those days," Fast Eddie mused, "when you feel like a spit-valve on the trombone of life."

Al Garcia and Jim Tile climbed out of the skiff with the Igloo cooler. Skink was waiting for them.

"We didn't get Queenie," Garcia said.

"I know."

Garcia looked at Jim Tile, then at Skink.

Skink said, "Bet you boys had some engine trouble."

"I don't believe this," Garcia said. He realized what had happened, but he didn't know why.

"What's going on, jungle man?"

"Change of plans," Skink said. "Late-breaking brainstorm."

Jim Tile was thinking about it. "The Starcraft isn't one of the tournament boats."

"No," Skink said, "it's not. Ask Decker about that one."

Garcia said, That means there's another guy still out on the water."

"Right," said Jim Tile. "Dennis Gault."

Skink looked pleased. "You boys are pretty sharp, even for cops."

Al Garcia remembered what Skink had taught him about the huge fish. "Just what the hell have you done?" he asked.

"It's not me, senor. I just arranged things." Skink flipped open the lid of the Igloo and saw Garcia's little bass, darting in the clean water. "I'll be damned, Sergeant, I'm proud of you."

Jim Tile said, "Sir, there's something you ought to know."

"In a minute, Trooper Jim. First let's get this little scupper to the weigh station." By himself Skink hoisted the heavy cooler and elbowed his way through the crowd. "You won't believe this," he was saying over his shoulder to Tile and Garcia, "but I believe you're the only boat that caught fish."

"That's what we're trying to tell you," Garcia said, huffing behind.

Skink climbed the stage and carried the cooler to the scale. He took out the little bass and carefully set him in the basket. Behind them onstage the digital scale lighted up with glowing six-foot numerals: "14 oz."

"Ha-ha!" Skink cawed. He found the stage mike and boomed into the PA system: "Attention, K-Mart shoppers! We've got a winner."

"Shitfire," Charlie Weeb muttered. The voice on the PA sounded just like the blind man. First a boatload of buzzards, and now what?

As the queasy preacher followed the OCN camerman to the weigh station, it occurred to him it wasn't red-haired Rudy, but someone else with the Minicam, someone Weeb didn't recognize. It made little sense, but in the unremitting chaos of the day it seemed a negligible mystery.

The blind man was not onstage when Charlie Weeb got there, but another nightmare awaited him.

The Tile Brothers.

"Hola," Jim Tile said to Charlie Weeb. " muy grande fish, no?"

"Check it out, bro," Al Garcia said.

Charlie Weeb got a bilious taste in his throat. "It appears that you are indeed the winner," he said. The Minicam was right in his face—all America was watching. Somehow Weeb composed himself and raised the puny bass for the camera. Two girls in orange bikinis rolled out the immense trophy, and two more carried out a giant cardboard facsimile of the check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

"That's righteous," Al Garcia said, causing Jim Tile to wince, "but where be the real thing?"

"Ah," Weeb said. How could he go on TV and say that, after all this, the check was missing? That he and Deacon Johnson were the only two human beings with the combination to the safe, and now Deacon Johnson was gone?

Sensing trouble, Jim Tile asked, "Donde esta el cheque?"

"I'm sorry," Reverend Weeb said, "but I don't speak Cubish."

By way of translation, Al Garcia said: "Where's the fucking bread, por favor?"

Weeb attempted several explanations, none persuasive and none contradicting the fact that he had promised to present the check to the winners on national television on the day of the tournament. The crowd, especially the other bass anglers, became unruly and insistent; as much as they resented the Tile Brothers, they resented even more the idea of any fisherman getting stiffed. Even the sulking Happy Gland contingent joined the fracas.

"I'm sorry," Weeb said finally, raising his palms, "there's been a slight problem."

Al Garcia and Jim Tile looked at one another irritably.

"You do the honors," Garcia said.

Jim Tile dug a badge and some handcuffs out of his jacket.

Charlie Weeb's lushly forested eyebrows seemed to wilt. A buzz went through the audience.

"Cut, Rudy, cut!" the director was hollering into R. J. Decker's ear, but Decker let it roll.

In perfect English, Jim Tile said, "Mr. Weeb, you're under arrest for fraud—"

"And grand larceny," Garcia interjected. "And any other damn thing I can think of."

"And grand larceny," Jim Tile continued. "You have the right to remain silent—"

Just then a sorrowful cry sheared the dusk. It rose up from the water in a guttural animal pitch that made Garcia flinch and shiver.

Jim Tile bowed his head. He'd tried to tell him.

Decker dropped the Minicam and ran toward the boat ramp.

Skink was on his knees in the shallow water. All around him fish were rising in convulsions, finning belly-up, cutting the glassy surface in jerky zigzag vectors.

Skink scooped up one of the addled bass as it swam by and held it up, dripping, for Decker and the others to see.

"They're all dying," he cried.

"Take my boat," Eddie Spurling offered. "I got six of the damn things."

"Thank you," Skink said hoarsely. Decker and Catherine climbed in after him.

"I hope you find her," Fast Eddie called as the boat pulled away. He would never forget the sight of that magnificent beast in the fish cage; he couldn't bear the thought of her dying in bad water, but it seemed inevitable.

In the bass boat Skink stood up and opened the throttle. First the straw hat blew off, then the sunglasses. Skink didn't seem to care. Nor did he seem to notice the gnats and bugs splatting against his cheeks and forehead, and sticking in his beard by the glue of their own blood. In the depthless gray of early night, Skink drove wide open as if he knew the canals by heart, or instinct. The boat accelerated like a rocket; Decker watched the speedometer tickle sixty and he clenched his teeth, praying they wouldn't hit an alligator or a log. Catherine turned her head and clung to his chest with both arms. Except for the bone-chilling speed, it might have been a lovely moment.

Over the howl of the engine, Skink began to shout.

"Confrontation," he declared, "is the essence of nature!"

He shook his silvery braid loose and let his hair stream out behind him.

"Confrontation is the rhythm of life," he went on. "In nature violence is pure and purposeful, one species against another in an act of survival!"

Terrific, Decker thought, Marlin Perkins on PCP. "Watch where you're going, captain!" he shouted.

"All I did with Dennis Gault," Skink hollered back, "was to arrange a natural confrontation. No different from a thousand other confrontations that take place every night and every day out here, unseen and uncelebrated. Yet I knew Gault's instincts as well as I knew the fish. It was only a matter of timing, of matching the natural rhythms. Putting the two species within striking distance. That's all it was, Miami."