At precisely five-thirty a bearded man in khaki trousers, a flannel shirt, and a string tie strode to the end of the dock and announced through a megaphone: "Bass anglers, prepare for the blast-off!" In unison the fishermen turned their ignitions, and Lake Maurepas boiled and rumbled and swelled. Blue smoke from the big outboards curled skyward and collected in an acrid foreign cloud over the marsh. The boats inched away from the crowded ramp and crept out toward where the pass opened its mouth to the lake. The procession came to a stop at a lighted buoy.
"Now the fun starts," said a young woman standing next to R. J. Decker. She was holding two sleeping babies.
The starter raised a pistol and fired into the air. Instantly a wall of noise rose off Maurepas: the race was on. The bass boats hiccuped and growled and then whined, pushing for more speed. With the throttles hammered down, the sterns dug ferociously and the bows popped up at such alarming angles that Decker was certain some of the boats would flip over in midair. Yet somehow they planed off perfectly, gliding flat and barely creasing the crystal texture of the lake. The song of the big engines was that of a million furious bees; it tore the dawn all to hell.
It was one of the most remarkable moments Decker had ever seen, almost military in its high-tech absurdity: forty boats rocketing the same direction at sixty miles per hour. In darkness.
Most of the spectators applauded heartily.
"Doesn't anyone ever get hurt?" Decker asked the woman with the two babies, who were now yowling.
"Hurt?" she said. "No, sir. At that speed you just flat-out die."
Skink was waiting outside the motel when Decker returned. "You got the cameras?" he asked.
"All ready," Decker said.
They drove back to the Sportsman's Hideout and rented the same johnboat from the night before. This time Decker asked for a paddle. The cashier said brightly to Skink: "Are you finding enough of those eels, Mr. Cousteau?"
"Si,"Skink replied.
"Oui!"Decker whispered.
"Oui!"Skink said. "Many many eels."
"I'm so glad," the cashier said.
Hastily they loaded the boat. Decker's camera gear was packed in waterproof aluminum carriers. Skink took special care to distribute the weight evenly, so the johnboat wouldn't list. After the morning's parade of lightning-fast bass rigs, the puny fifteen-horse outboard seemed slow and anemic to Decker. By the time they got to the secret spot, the sun had been up an hour.
Skink guided the johnboat deep into the bulrushes. The engine stalled when the prop snarled in the thick grass. Skink used his bare hands to pull them out of sight, away from the pass. Soon they seemed walled in by cattails, sawgrass, and hyacinth. Directly overhead was the elevated ramp of Interstate 55; Decker and Skink were hidden in its cool shadow. Wordlessly Skink shed the orange rainsuit and put on a full camouflage hunting outfit, the type deer hunters use. He threw one to R. J. Decker and told him to do the same. The mottled hunting suit was brand-new, still crinkled from the bag.
"Where'd you get this?" Decker asked.
"Borrowed it," Skink said. "Put the tripod up front." By swinging the plastic paddle he cleared a field of view through the bullrushes. He pointed and said, "That's where we pulled the last trap."
Decker set the tripod in the bow, carefully tightening the legs. He attached a Nikon camera body with a six-hundred-millimeter lens; it looked like a snub-nosed bazooka. He had decided on black-and-white film; as evidence it was much more dramatic than a tiny Kodachrome slide. Color was for vacation snapshots, black-and-white was for the grit of reality. With a long lens the print would have that grainy texture that seemed to convey guilt, seemed proof that somebody was getting caught in the act of something.
Decker closed one eye and expertly focused on the strand of mono-filament tied to the concrete piling.
"How long do we wait?" he asked.
Skink grunted. "Long as it takes. They'll be here soon."
"How can you be sure?"
"The fish," Skink said. He meant the two bass he had left in the fish trap, the ones he had marked with the pliers. "The longer you leave 'em, the worse they look. Bang their heads against the wire, get all fucked up. They'd stand out bad at the weigh-in. The trick is to get 'em fresh."
"Makes sense," Decker said.
"Well, these boys aren't stupid."
On this point Decker and Skink disagreed.
After fifteen minutes they heard the sound of another boat. Skink slid to his knees and Decker took his position at the tripod camera. A boat with a glittering green metal-flake hull drifted into the Nikon's frame; the man up front held a fishing rod and used a foot pedal to control a small electric motor. The motor made a purring sound; it was designed to maneuver the boat silently, so as not to frighten the bass. The angler seated in the stern was casting a purple rubber worm and working the lure as a snake, the way Skink had showed Decker that night on Lake Jesup.
Unfortunately, neither of the men in the green boat happened to be Dickie Lockhart searching for his traps; they were just ordinary fishermen. After a while they glided away, still working the shoreline intently, seldom speaking to one another. Decker didn't know if the men were contestants in the big tournament, but thought they probably must be, judging by the grim set to their jawlines.
An hour passed and no other boats went by. Skink leaned back, propping his shoulders against the plastic cowling of the outboard motor. He looked thoroughly relaxed, much happier than he had seemed in the motel room. A blue heron joined them in the shade of the highway. Head cocked, it waded the shallows in slow motion, finally spearing a small bluegill. Skink laughed out loud and clapped his hands appreciatively. "Now, that's fishing!" he exclaimed, but the noise startled the gangly bird, which squawked and flapped away, dropping the bluegill. No bigger than a silver dollar, the wounded fish swam in addled circles, flashing in the brown water. Skink leaned over and snatched it with one sure swipe.
"Please," Decker protested.
Skink shrugged. "Gonna die anyway,"
"I promise, we'll get a big lunch at Middendorf's"
But it was too late. Skink gulped the fish raw.
"Christ." Decker looked away. He hoped like hell they wouldn't see any snakes.
"Protein," Skink said, muffling a burp.
"I'll stick to Raisin Bran."
Stiffly Decker stood up to stretch his legs. He was beginning to think Dickie Lockhart wouldn't show up. What if he'd gotten spooked by finding the other traps empty? What if he'd decided to play it safe and fish honestly? Skink had assured him that no such change of plans was possible, too much was at stake. Not just first-place prize money but crucial points in the national bass standingsand don't forget the prestige. Damn egos, Skink had said, these boys make Reggie Jackson seem humble by comparison.
"Any sign of the Rundell brothers this morning?" Skink asked.
"Not that I saw," Decker said.
"You can bet your ass they'll show up at the weigh-in. We'll have to be careful. You look worried, Miami."
"Just restless."
Skink sat forward. "You been thinking about the dead guy back in Harney, am I right?"
"Dead guys, plural."
"See why Bobby Clinch got killed in the Coon Bog," Skink said. "He was looking for fish cages, same as we were last night. Only Bobby wasn't too careful. The Bog is probably where Dickie hides some big mother hawgs."
Decker said, "It's not just Clinch that bothers me, it's the other two."
Skink propped his chin in his hands. He was doing his best to appear sympathetic. "Look at it like this: the creep I killed probably killed your pal the Armadillo."
"Is that how you look at it?"
"I don'tlook at it," Skink said, "period."
"He shot at us first," Decker said, almost talking to himself.
"Right."
"But we should have gone to the cops."