Double Whammy Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  DOUBLE WHAMMY

  WILL CAST A SPELL ON YOU!

  “A DAY-GLO VERSION OF REALITY THAT IS INSANELY FUNNY—AND SCARY.”

  —Boston Herald

  “FOLLOW THE ADVENTURES OF A NEWS-PHOTOGRAPHER-TURNED-PRIVATE-EYE AS HE SEEKS TRUTH, JUSTICE, AND AN AFFAIR WITH HIS EX-WIFE.”

  —New York Times

  “A REAL SWAMP STEW OF COLORFUL CHARACTERS.... The plot is very quickly paced, filled with twists and turns and just enough deception and revelations, along with a devilish wit, to keep the reader riveted to the page. The Elmore Leonard school of writing is in good hands with Carl Hiaasen.”

  —Chattanooga News-Free Press

  “CARL HIAASEN’S VIVID IMAGINATION SERVES UP A SEVEN-COURSE MEAL IN DOUBLE WHAMMY. It’s a spread where every course is thick, rare, red meat....You’ll have a good time.”

  —Houston Post

  “A STEWPOT FULL OF THE STRANGE, THE WACKY, THE INTERESTING, AND THE BIZARRE...zany, diverting, marvelously grotesque.”

  —Newsday

  “A SAVAGELY FUNNY CRIME ADVENTURE...BRISTLES ALL OVER WITH SWIFTIAN WIT....For all its loony-tunes characters and their mondo-bizarro adventures, there’s something about this mordant, comic fantasy that says it’s just too crazy not to be true.”

  —Miami Herald

  “A FINE, FUN READ.”

  —Atlanta Journal

  “WITH ITS BYZANTINE PLOT AND WONDERFUL, WEIRD DENIZENS, this is one of the most delightfully inventive and entertaining novels of the year.”

  —Kirkas Reviews

  “CARL HIAASEN IS AN UNCOMMONLY GOOD AUTHOR....HE HAS A LOT OF FUN ALONG THE WAY, AND SO DOES THE READER....You don’t have to be a fishing buff to like DOUBLE WHAMMY.”

  —Grand Rapids Press

  “A FIRST-RATE COMPOSITE OF CRISP DIALOGUE, TIGHT PLOTTING, AND LIKABLE CHARACTERS.”

  —South Bend Tribune

  “WRY AND RICH... holds the reader just firm enough to keep him from falling off the dock with laughter.”

  —Anniston Star (AL)

  “IF YOU LIKE BIZARRE HUMOR MIXED WITH YOUR MYSTERIES, YOU’LL BE LURED INTO THIS BOOK.... A keeper.”

  —San Antonio Express News

  “HIAASEN POWERS HIS STORY WITH THE SUCCESSFULLY COMIC ATTITUDE that so many other detective writers ‘attempt.’”

  —St. Petersburg Times

  “SPEEDS ALONG, RIVETING THE READER’S ATTENTION UNTIL THE LAST WORD...an entertaining, funto-read story, just right for a long rainy night. Get comfortable and enjoy!”

  —Newport News Daily Press

  “HIAASEN IS WHAT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU COULD CROSS JOHN D. MACDONALD WITH TOM ROBBINS...a fast-paced mystery....Hiaasen’s inventiveness, deft skewerings, and clean style strike with all the force of hawg bass on amphetamines.”

  —Orlando Sentinel

  “FANS OF MURDER SUSPENSE WOULD BE FOOLISH TO OVERLOOK DOUBLE WHAMMY. It’s got everything going for it and is compulsive reading... superbly inventive...not to be missed.”

  —Santa Cruz Sentinel

  “AS FUNNY AS HIAASEN IS, HE HAS THE UNCOMFORTABLE RING OF TRUTH ABOUT EVERYTHING HE WRITES... a truly splendid writer.”

  —Ocala Star-Banner

  ALSO BY CARL HIAASEN

  Fiction

  Skinny Dip

  Basket Case

  Sick Puppy

  Lucky You

  Stormy Weather

  Strip Tease

  Native Tongue

  Skin Tight

  Double Whammy

  Tourist Season

  FOR YOUNG READERS

  Flush

  Hoot

  Nonfiction

  Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World

  Kick Ass: Selected Columns

  (edited by Diane Stevenson)

  Paradise Screwed: Selected Columns

  (edited by Diane Stevenson)

  This is a work of fiction. None of

  the characters are based on real people.

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons

  Publishers Since 1838

  200 Madison Avenue

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © 1987 by Carl Hiaasen

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof,

  may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hiaasen, Carl.

  Double whammy.

  I. Title.

  PS3558.1217D’.54 87-13145

  eISBN : 978-1-101-43664-6

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  IN MEMORY OF CLYDE INGALLS

  1

  On the morning of January 6, two hours before dawn, a man named Robert Clinch rolled out of bed and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He put on three pairs of socks, a blue flannel shirt, olive dungarees, a Timex waterproof watch, and a burgundy cap with a patch stitched to the crown. The patch said: “Mann’s Jelly Worms.”

  Clinch padded to the kitchen and fixed himself a pot of coffee, four eggs scrambled (with ketchup), a quarter-pound of Jimmy Dean sausage, and two slices of whole-wheat toast with grape jam. As he ate, he listened to the radio for a weather report. The temperature outside was forty-one degrees, humidity thirty-five percent, wind blowing from the northeast at seven miles per hour. According to the weatherman, thick fog lay on the highway between Harney and Lake Jesup. Robert Clinch loved to drive in the fog because it gave him a chance to use the amber fog lights on his new Blazer truck. The fog lights had been a $455 option, and his wife, Clarisse, now asleep in the bedroom, was always bitching about what a waste of money they were. Clinch decided that later, when he got home from the lake, he would tell Clarisse how the fog lights had saved his life on Route 222; how a wall-eyed truck driver with a rig full of Valencia oranges had crossed the center line and swerved back just in time because he’d seen the Blazer’s fancy fog lights. Robert Clinch was not sure if Clarisse would bite on the story; in fact, he wasn’t sure if she’d be all too thrilled that the truck hadn’t plowed into him, vanquishing in one fiery millisecond the expensive Blazer, the sleek bass boat, and Robert Clinch himself. Clarisse did not think much of her husband’s hobby.

  Robert Clinch put on a pair of soft-soled Gore-Tex boots and slipped into a vivid red ski vest that was covered with emblems from various fishing tournaments. He went out to the garage where the boat was kept and gazed at it proudly, running his hand along the shiny gunwale. It was a Ranger 390V, nineteen and one-half feet long. Dual livewells, custom upholstery and carpeting (royal blue), and twin tanks that held enough fuel to run all the way to Okeechobee and back. The engine on the boat was a two-hundred-horsepower Mercury, one of the most powerful outboards ever manufactured. A friend had once clocked Bobby Clinch’s boat at sixty-two miles
per hour. There was no earthly reason to go so fast, except that it was fun as hell to show off.

  Robert Clinch loved his boat more than anything else in the world. Loved it more than his wife. More than his kids. More than his girlfriend. More than his double-mortgaged home. Even more than the very largemouth bass he was pursuing. Riding on the lake at dawn, Robert Clinch often felt that he loved his boat more than he loved life itself.

  On this special morning he decided, for appearance’ sake, to bring along a fishing rod. From a rack on the wall he picked a cheap spinning outfit—why risk the good stuff? As he tried to thread the eight-pound monofilament through the guides of the rod, Clinch noticed that his hands were quivering. He wondered if it was the coffee, his nerves, or both. Finally he got the rod rigged and tied a plastic minnow lure to the end of the line. He found his portable Q-Beam spotlight, tested it, and stored it under a bow hatch inside the boat. Then he hitched the trailer to the back of the Blazer.

  Clinch started the truck and let it warm. The air in the cab was frosty and he could see his breath. He turned up the heater full blast. He thought about one more cup of coffee but decided against it; he didn’t want to spend all morning with a bursting bladder, and it was too damn cold to unzip and hang his pecker over the side of the boat.

  He also thought about bringing a gun, but that seemed silly. Nobody took a gun to the lake.

  Robert Clinch was about to pull out of the driveway when he got an idea, something that might make his homecoming more bearable. He slipped back into the house and wrote a note to Clarisse. He put it on the dinette, next to the toaster: “Honey, I’ll be home by noon. Maybe we can go to Sears and look for that shower curtain you wanted. Love, Bobby.”

  Robert Clinch never returned.

  By midafternoon his wife was so angry that she drove to Sears and purchased not only a shower curtain but some electric hair curlers and a pink throw rug too. By suppertime she was livid, and tossed her husband’s portion of Kentucky fried chicken over the fence to the Labrador retriever next door. At midnight she phoned her mother in Valdosta to announce that she was packing up the kids and leaving the bum for good.

  The next morning, as Clarisse rifled her husband’s bureau for clues and loose cash, the county sheriff phoned. He had some lousy news.

  From the air a cropduster had spotted a purplish slick on a remote corner of Lake Jesup known as Coon Bog. On a second pass the cropduster had spotted the sparkled hull of a bass boat, upside down and half-submerged about fifty yards from shore. Something big and red was floating nearby.

  Clarisse Clinch asked the sheriff if the big red thing in the water happened to have blond hair, and the sheriff said not anymore, since a flock of mallard ducks had been pecking at it all night. Clarisse asked if any identification had been found on the body, and the sheriff said no, Bobby’s wallet must have shaken out in the accident and fallen into the water. Mrs. Clinch told the sheriff thank you, hung up, and immediately dialed the Visa Card headquarters in Miami to report the loss.

  “What do you know about fishing?”

  “A little,” said R. J. Decker. The interview was still at the stage where Decker was supposed to look steady and taciturn, the stage where the prospective client was sizing him up. Decker knew he was pretty good in the sizing-up department. He had the physique of a linebacker: five-eleven, one hundred ninety pounds, chest like a drum, arms like cable. He had curly dark hair and sharp brown eyes that gave nothing away. He often looked amused but seldom smiled around strangers. At times he could be a very good listener, or pretend to be. Decker was neither diffident nor particularly patient; he was merely on constant alert for jerks. Time was too short to waste on them. Unless it was absolutely necessary, like now.

  “Are you an outdoorsman?” Dennis Gault asked.

  Decker shrugged. “You mean can I start a campfire? Sure. Can I kill a Cape buffalo barehanded? Probably not.”

  Gault poured himself a gin and tonic. “But you can handle yourself, I presume.”

  “You presume right.”

  “Size doesn’t mean a damn thing,” Gault said. “You could still be a wimp.”

  Decker sighed. Another macho jerk.

  Gault asked, “So what kind of fishing do you know about?”

  “Offshore stuff, nothing exotic. Grouper, snapper, dolphin.”

  “Pussy fish,” Gault snorted. “For tourists.”

  “Oh,” Decker said, “so you must be the new Zane Grey.”

  Gault looked up sharply from his gin. “I don’t care for your attitude, mister.”

  Decker had heard this before. The mister was kind of a nice touch, though.

  Dennis Gault said, “You look like you want to punch me.”

  “That’s pretty funny.”

  “I don’t know about you,” Gault said, stirring his drink. “You look like you’re itching to take a swing.”

  “What for?” Decker said. “Anytime I want to punch an asshole I can stroll down to Biscayne Boulevard and take my pick.”

  He guessed that it would take Gault five or six seconds to come up with some witty reply. Actually it took a little longer.

  “I guarantee you never met an asshole like me,” he said.

  Decker glanced at his wristwatch and looked very bored—a mannerism he’d been practicing.

  Gault made a face. He wore a tight powder-blue pullover and baggy linen trousers. He looked forty, maybe older. He studied Decker through amber aviator glasses. “You don’t like me, do you?” he said.

  “I don’t know you, Mr. Gault.”

  “You know I’m rich, and you know I’ve got a problem. That’s enough.”

  “I know you kept me suffocating in your neo-modern earth-tone lobby for two hours,” Decker said. “I know your secretary’s name is Ruth and I know she doesn’t keep any Maalox tablets in her desk because I asked. I know your daddy owns this skyscraper and your granddad owns a sugar mill, and I know your T-shirt looks like hell with those trousers. And that’s all I know about you.”

  Which was sort of a lie. Decker also knew about the two family banks in Boca Raton, the shopping mall in Daytona Beach, and the seventy-five thousand acres of raw cane west of Lake Okeechobee.

  Dennis Gault sat down behind a low Plexiglas desk. The desk looked like it belonged in a museum, maybe as a display case for Mayan pottery. Gault said, “So I’m a sugar daddy, you’re right. Want to know what I know about you, Mr. Private Eye, Mr. Felony Past?”

  Oh boy, thought R. J. Decker, this is your life. “Tell me your problem or I’m leaving.”

  “Tournament fishing,” Gault said. “What do you know about tournament fishing?”

  “Not a damn thing.”

  Gault stood up and pointed reverently to a fat blackish fish mounted on the wall. “Do you know what that is?”

  “An oil drum,” Decker replied, “with eyes.” He knew what it was. You couldn’t live in the South and not know what it was.

  “A largemouth bass!” Gault exclaimed.

  He gazed at the stuffed fish as if it were a sacred icon. It was easy to see how the bass got its name; its maw could have engulfed a soccer ball.

  “Fourteen pounds, four ounces,” Gault announced. “Got her on a crankbait at Lake Toho. Do you have any idea what this fish was worth?”

  Decker felt helpless. He felt like he was stuck in an elevator with a Jehovah’s Witness.

  “Seventy-five thousand dollars,” Gault said.

  “Christ.”

  “Now I got your attention, don’t I?” Gault grinned. He patted the flank of the plastic bass as if it were the family dog.

  “This fish,” he went on, “won the Southeast Regional Bass Anglers Classic two years ago. First place was seventy-five large and a Ford Thunderbird. I gave the car to some migrants.”

  “All that for one fish?” Decker was amazed. Civilization was in serious trouble.

  “In 1985,” Gault went on, “I fished seventeen tournaments and made one hundred and seven thousand dollars
, Mr. Decker. Don’t look so astounded. The prize money comes from sponsors—boat makers, tackle manufacturers, bait companies, the outboard marine industry. Bass fishing is an immensely profitable business, the fastestgrowing outdoor sport in America. Of course, the tournament circuit is in no way a sport, it’s a cutthroat enterprise.”

  “But you don’t need the money,” Decker said.

  “I need the competition.”

  The Ted Turner Syndrome, Decker thought.

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is criminals,” Gault said.

  “Could you be more specific?”

  “Cheats.”

  “People who lie about the size of the fish they catch—”

  Gault laughed acidly. “You can’t lie about the size. Dead or alive, the fish are brought back to the dock to be weighed.”

  “Then how can anybody cheat?”

  “Ha!” Gault said, and told his story.

  There had been an incident at a big-money tournament in north Texas. The contest had been sponsored by a famous plastic-worm company that had put up a quarter-million-dollar purse. At the end of the final day Dennis Gault stood on the dock with twenty-seven pounds of largemouth bass, including a nine-pounder. Normally a catch like this would have won a tournament hands down, and Gault was posing proudly with his string of fish when the last boat roared up to the dock. A man named Dickie Lockhart hopped out holding a monster bass—eleven pounds, seven ounces—which of course won first place.