Double Whammy

No sooner had the tiny fish landed—still wriggling, this one—than the monster-beastie slurped it down. The noise was obscene.

"She likes you," Skink said. "Do it again."

Garcia tossed another baitfish and watched it disappear. "You learn this shit from Marlin Perkins?" he said.

Skink ignored him. "Give me the bucket," he said. He fed the big fish the rest of the dying shiners, save one. Skink held it between his thumb and forefinger, tickling the water. He used the fish as a silvery wand, tracing figure-eights by the side of the rowboat. From its unseen lair deep in the pond, the big fish rose slowly until its black dorsal punctured the velvet surface. As the fish hung motionless, Garcia for the first time could see its true size, and appreciate the awesome capacity of its underslung jaw. The bass glided slowly toward Skink's teasing shiner; frenzy had been replaced by a delicate deliberation. Skink's fingers released the baitfish, which disappeared instantly into the white maw—yet the fish did not swim away, nor did Skink withdraw his hand. Amazingly, he took the bass by its lower lip, hoisted it from the pond, and laid it carefully across his lap. "There now, momma," Skink said. Dripping in the boat, the fish flared its gills and snapped at air, but did not struggle. It was, Garcia thought, a magnificent gaping brute—nearly thirty pounds of iridescent muscle.

"Sergeant," Skink said, "say hi to Queenie."

Garcia did not wish to seem rude, but he didn't feel like talking to a fish.

"Come on," Skink prodded.

"Hey, Queenie," said the detective, without conviction. He was very glad his lieutenant couldn't see him.

Skink kept a thumb curled in the bass's lower lip, and slipped the other hand under its bloated pale belly. He lifted the bass and propped it long-wise on his shoulder, like a barrel. Skink's face was side-by-side with that of the monster bass, and Al Garcia found himself staring at (from left to right) the eyes of a fish, a man, and a stuffed owl.

As if cuddling a puppy, Skink pressed his cheek against Queenie's scaly gillplates. "Meet the new boss," he whispered to the fish, "same as the old boss."

Al Garcia didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

The Reverend Charles Weeb arrived at Lunker Lakes just in time to see the second batch of fish die. The hydrologist was crestfallen but said there was nothing to be done. Under a gray sky Weeb stood on the bank next to the young scientist and counted the fish as they bobbed to the surface of the bad water. At number seventy-five, Weeb turned and stalked back to the model town-home that was serving as tournament headquarters.

"Cancel tomorrow's press tour," he snapped at Deacon Johnson, who obediently lunged for his Rolodex.

To the hydrologist Weeb said: "So how long did this bunch live?"

"Eighteen hours, sir."

"Shit. And the trip down from Alabama was ... ?"

"About two days," the hydrologist said.

"Shit." Lunker Lakes had now claimed four thousand young bass, and Charlie Weeb was deeply worried. For now he was thinking in the short-term.

"I can get another two thousand," he said to the hydrologist.

"I wouldn't recommend it," the man said. "The water's still substandard."

"Substandard?What you're really saying is these fish stand a better chance in a sewer, is that right?"

"I wouldn't go quite that far," the hydrologist said.

"Okay, pencil-neck, let's hear the bad news." Weeb shut the door to his private office and motioned the young man to a Chippendale chair.

"You like this unit? We've got your atrium doors, your breakfast bay, your cathedral ceiling—did I mention solar heat? See, I've got to sell twenty-nine thousand of these babies and right now they're moving real fucking slow. It's gonna get slower if I got a dead-fish problem, you understand?" Charlie Weeb inhaled two Chiclets. "I'm selling a newFlorida here, son. The last of the frontier. My buyers are simple folks who'd rather go fishing than get fried to raisins on the beach. Lunker Lakes is their kind of place, an outdoor community, see? Walk out the back door with your fishing pole and reel in a whopper. That's the way I dreamed it, but right now ... well."

"We're talking cesspool," the hydrologist said bluntly. "I did some more tests, very sophisticated chemical scans. You've got toxins in this water that make the East River seem like Walden Pond. The worst concentration is in the bottom muck—we're talking Guinness-record PCBs."

"How?" Charlie Weeb yowled. "How can it be poisoned if it's pre-dredged!"

The hydrologist said, "I was puzzled too, until I checked down at the courthouse. This used to be a landfill, Reverend Weeb, right where the lakes are."

"A dump?"

"One of the biggest—and worst," the hydrologist reported grimly. "Four hundred acres of sludge, rubbers, dioxins, you name it. EPA never did find out."

Charlie Weeb said, "Lord God!"—an exclamation he almost never used off the air.