Read Online Double Whammy by Carl Hiaasen - Free Book Online Page B

strange?”
    â€œI suppose,” Decker said.
    â€œGod, you need a lesson or two,” Skink muttered. “Guys like Clinch love to catch bass more than they love to screw. That’s the truth, Miami. You put ’em on a good bass lake at dawn and they get hard. So the question is, why wasn’t Bobby Clinch fishing on the Coon Bog last Saturday?”
    Decker had nothing to offer.
    â€œYou want to hear something even stranger?” Skink said. “There was another boat out there too, and not far away. Two guys.”
    Decker said, “And they weren’t fishing either, were they, captain?”
    â€œHa-ha!” Skink cawed. “See there—those rabbit glands went straight to your brain!”
    Decker’s coffee had cooled, but it didn’t matter. He gulped the rest of it.
    Skink had become more animated and intense; the cords in his neck were tight. Decker couldn’t tell if he was angry or ecstatic. Using a pocket knife to pick strings of rabbit meat from his perfect teeth, Skink said: “Well, Miami, aren’t you going to ask me what this means?”
    â€œIt was on my list of questions, yeah.”
    â€œYou’ll hear my theory tonight, on the lake.”
    â€œOn the lake?”
    â€œYour first communion,” Skink said, and scrambled noisily back up into the big pine.
    Â 
    Ott Pickney had left Miami in gentle retreat from big-city journalism. He knew he could have stayed at the Sun for the rest of his life, but felt he had more or less made his point. Having written virtually nothing substantial in at least a decade, he had nonetheless departed the newspaper in a triumphant state of mind. He had survived the conversion to cold type, the advent of unions, the onslaught of the preppy cubs, the rise of the hotshot managers. Ott had watched the stars and starfuckers arrive and, with a minimum of ambition, outlasted most of them. He felt he was living proof that a successful journalist need not be innately cunning or aggressive, even in South Florida.
    In Ott’s own mind, Harney was the same game, just a slower track.
    Which is why he half-resented R. J. Decker’s infernal skepticism about the death of Bobby Clinch. A foolhardy fisherman wrecks his boat and drowns—so what? In Miami it’s one crummy paragraph on page 12-D; no one would look twice. Ott Pickney was peeved at Decker’s coy insinuation that something sinister was brewing right under Ott’s nose. This wasn’t Dade County, he thought, and these weren’t Dade County people. The idea of an organized cheating ring at the fish tournaments struck Ott as merely farfetched, but the suggestion of foul play in Robert Clinch’s death was a gross insult to the community. Ott resolved to show R. J. Decker how wrong he was.
    After the funeral, Ott went back to the newsroom and stewed awhile. The Sentinel ’s deadlines being what they were, he had two days to play with the Clinch piece. As he flipped through his notebook, Ott figured he had enough to bang out fifteen or twenty inches. Barely.
    In an uncharacteristic burst of tenacity, he decided to give Clarisse Clinch another shot.
    He found the house in chaos. A yellow moving van was parked out front; a crew of burly men was emptying the place. Clarisse had set up a command post in the kitchen, and under her scathing direction the movers were working very swiftly.
    â€œSorry to intrude,” Ott said to her, “but I remembered a couple more questions.”
    â€œI got no answers,” Clarisse snapped. “We’re on our way to Valdosta.”
    Ott tried to picture Clarisse in a slinky, wet-looking dress, sliding long-legged into a tangerine sports car. He couldn’t visualize it. This woman was a different species from Lanie Gault.
    â€œI just need a little more about Bobby’s hobby,” Ott said. “A few anecdotes.”
    â€œAnecdotes!” Clarisse said sharply. “You writing a