"Where's the mister?" Decker asked.
"Tampa," Catherine said. "Big convention. Every other weekend is a big convention. What've we got here?" She stood on her toes and studied the prints. "Who's the weight-lifter?"
"Fireman out on ninety-percent disability."
"So what's he doing hulking out at Vie Tanny?"
"That's what the insurance company wants to know," Decker said.
"Pretty dull stuff, Rage." Sometimes she called him Rage instead of R. J. It was a pet name that had something to do with his temper. Decker didn't mind it, coming from Catherine.
"I've got a good one cooking," he said.
"Yeah? Like what?"
She looked great in the warm red light. Catherine was a knockout. Was, is, always will be. An expensive knockout.
"I'm investigating a professional fisherman," Decker said, "for cheating in tournaments. Allegedly."
"Come on, Rage."
"I'm serious."
Catherine folded her arms and gave him a motherly look. "Why don't you ask the paper for your old job back?"
"Because the paper won't pay me a hundred large to go fishing."
Catherine said, "Wow."
She smelled wonderful. She knew Decker liked a certain perfume so she always wore it for himwhat was the name? He couldn't remember. Something fashionably neurotic. Compulsion, that was it. A scent that probably wouldn't appeal to Dr. James, at least Decker hoped not. He wondered if Catherine was still on the same four-ounce bottle he'd bought for her birthday three years ago.
Decker tweezered another black-and-white of the goldbrick fireman out of the fixer and rinsed it down.
"No pictures of fish?" Catherine asked.
"Not yet."
"Somebody is really gonna pay you a hundred thousand?"
"Well, at least fifty. That's if I get what he wants."
She said, "What are you going to do with all that money?"
"Try to buy you back."
Catherine's laugh died in her throat. She looked hurt. "That's not really funny, R.J."
"I guess not."
"You didn't mean it, did you?"
"No, I didn't mean it."
"You've got a nasty streak."
"I was beaten as a child," Decker said.
"Can we get out of here? I'm getting high on your darn chemicals."
Decker took her to a barbecue joint on South Dixie Highway. Catherine ordered half a chicken and iced tea, he had beer and ribs. They talked about a thousand little things, and Decker thought about how much fun it was to be with her, still. It wasn't a sad feeling, just wistful; he knew it would go away. The best feelings always did.
"Have you thought about New York?" Catherine asked.
The free-lance speech. Decker knew it by heart.
"Look at Foley. He had a cover shot on Sports Illustratedlast summer," she said.
Foley was another photographer who'd quit the newspaper and gone free-lance.
"Hale Irwin," Decker said derisively.
"What?"
"That was Foley's big picture. A golfer. A fucking golfer, Catherine. That's not what I want to do, follow a bunch of Izod shirts around a hot golf course all day for one stupid picture."
Catherine said, "It was just an example, Rage. Foley's had plenty of business since he moved to New York. And not just golfers, so don't give me that pissed-off look."
"He's a good shooter."
"But you're better, by a mile." She reached across the table and pinched his arm gently. "Hey, it doesn't have to be heavy-duty. No Salvadors, no murders, no dead girls in Cadillacs. Just stick to the soft stuff, Rage, you've earned it."
Decker guessed it was about time for the all-that-wasted-talent routine.
Catherine came through. "I just hate to see you wasting all your talent," she said. "Snooping around like a thief, taking pictures of ... "
"Guys who cheat insurance companies."
"Yeah."
Decker said, "Maybe you're right."
"Will you think about New York?"
"Take some of these ribs, I can't eat 'em all."
"No, thanks, I'm fall."
"So tell me about the quack."
"Stop it," Catherine said. "James's patients are wild about him. He's very generous with his time."
"And the spine-cracking business is good."
"Good, but it could be better," Catherine said. "James is talking about moving."
Decker grinned. "Let me guess where."
Catherine reddened. "His brother's got a practice on Long Island. It's going gangbusters, James says."
"No shit?"
"Don't look so cocky, R.J. This has nothing to do with you."
"So you wouldn't come see me," Decker said. "I mean, if I were to move to New York and you somehow wound up on Long Island, you wouldn't drop by and chat?"
Catherine wiped her hands on a napkin. "Jesus, I don't know." Her voice was different now, the airy confidence gone. "I don't know what I've done, R.J. Sometimes I wonder. James is special and I realize how lucky I am, but still ... The man irons his socks, did I tell you that?"
Decker nodded. "You called me from your honeymoon to tell me that." From Honolulu she'd called.
"Yeah, well."
"That's okay," Decker said. "I didn't mind." It was better than losing her completely. He would miss her if the sock-ironing chiropractor whisked her away to New York.
"You know the hell of it?" Catherine said. "My back's still killing me."
Decker's telephone was ringing when he returned to the trailer. The man on the other end didn't need to identify himself.
"Hello, Miami."
"Hey, captain." Decker was surprised. Skink would do anything to avoid the phone.
"The Armadillo is dead," said Skink.
Decker figured Skink was talking about his supper.
"You listening?" Skink said.
"The armadillo."
"Yeah, your little pal from the newspaper."
"Ott?"
"Officially he's only missing. Unofficially he's dead. You better get up here. It's time to go to work."
Decker sat down at the kitchen counter. "Start at the beginning," he said. Gruffly Skink summarized the facts of the disappearance, closing with a neutral explanation of Ott Pickney's alter ego, Davey Dillo.
"They say he was very convincing," Skink said, by way of condolence.
Decker had a hell of a hard time imagining Ott in an armadillo costume on a skateboard. He had a harder time imagining Ott dead.
"Maybe they just took him somewhere to put a scare in him," he speculated.
"No way," Skink said. "I'll see you soon. Oh yeahwhen you get to Harney, don't check in at the motel. It's not safe. You'd better stay out here with me."
"I'd rather not," Decker said.
"Aw, it'll be loads of fun," Skink said with a grunt. "We can roast weenies and marshmallows."
Decker drove all night. He shot straight up Interstate 95 and got off at Route 222, just west of Wabasso. Another ninety minutes and he was in Harney County. By the time he got to Skink's place on the lake, it was four-thirty in the morning. Already one or two bass boats were out on the water; Decker could hear the big engines chewing up the darkness.
At the sound of Decker's car Skink clumped onto the porch. He was fully dressedboots, sunglasses, the orange weathersuit. Decker wondered if he slept in uniform.
"That's some driving," Skink said. "Get your gear and come on inside."
Decker carried his duffel into the shack. It was the first time he had ventured beyond the porch, and he wasn't sure what to expect. Pelts, maybe. Wallpaper made from rabbit pelts.
As he pushed past the screen door, Decker was amazed by what he saw: books. Every wall had raw pine shelves to the ceiling, and every shelf was lined with books. The east wall was for classic fiction: Poe, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, Mark Twain, Jack London, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, even Boris Pasternak. The west wall was for political biographies: Churchill, Sandburg's Lincoln, Hitler, Huey Long, Ei-senhower, Joseph McCarthy, John F. Kennedy, even Robert Caro's Lyndon Johnson, though it looked like a book-club edition. The south wall was exclusively for reference books: the Britannica, Current Biography,the Florida Statutes,even the Reader's Guide to Periodic Literature.This was the wall of the shack that leaned so precipitously, and now Decker knew why: it held the heaviest books.