"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 laying."

"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.