Chapter 13 - A Million Dollars to Stay Poor
The anonymous package changed Eli more than the beating had.
For two days, he barely spoke.
He sharpened hooks, reorganized tackle, respaled line, and checked knots until Ryan finally grabbed a spool from his hands.
“You’ve tied the same leader five times.”
“Then it ought to hold.”
“You’re scared.”
Eli looked at him.
“Yes.”
Ryan had expected denial.
The answer made him sit down.
Eli continued, “Whoever sent that lure either has Mason’s belongings or wants me to think they do.”
“Could be Doyle.”
“Could be someone helping us.”
“That’s a strange way to help.”
“Fear gets attention.”
Ryan handed the spool back.
The Masters began in six days.
To prepare, Eli needed more than techniques. He needed a boat setup he could operate efficiently. Ryan’s tournament rig had digital mapping, side imaging, down imaging, forward-facing sonar, shallow-water anchors, and enough menu options to confuse a pilot.
Eli spent a full day learning buttons.
“This is why I liked sticks,” he muttered.
Ryan laughed. “You can’t accidentally factory-reset a maple branch.”
They organized rods by function rather than lure brand: bottom contact, moving bait, finesse, topwater, heavy cover, suspended fish.
Eli insisted on fewer rods on deck.
“Clutter makes decisions slower.”
“Pros carry twenty.”
“Pros also step on them.”
For shallow grass, they rigged a bladed jig, swim jig, frog, and Texas rig. For rock, crankbaits, football jig, and Carolina rig. For suspended fish, jerkbaits, jighead minnows, hover rig, drop shot, and small swimbaits. A big glide bait stayed available for drawing trophy fish from cover, though Eli warned Ryan that a follower was information even when it did not bite.
“Big bait can show you fish,” he said. “Don’t judge every cast only by whether it ends in a hookset.”
On the third practice day, Eli caught nothing for four hours.
Ryan grew nervous.
“Change areas?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m learning what not to do.”
“That sounds like losing with philosophy.”
Eli grinned. “You’re getting smarter.”
At noon, he abandoned deep fish and ran to a shallow flat where wind pushed into submerged grass.
He tied on a lipless crankbait, cast long, let it sink into the vegetation, then ripped it free sharply.
The sudden burst triggered a strike.
“Reaction,” Ryan said.
“Exactly. When bass bury in grass, sometimes you don’t feed them. You annoy them.”
He caught four in twenty minutes.
Then a black helicopter crossed low over the lake.
Ryan looked up.
“Kane?”
“Probably rich enough to be annoying from the sky.”
That evening, Victor invited Eli to dinner.
Eli refused.
Victor came anyway.
He rented the private room at Harrison Steakhouse and sent a waiter to Marnie’s with a message: ONE CONVERSATION. PUBLIC PLACE. NO DOYLE.
Ryan wanted to go.
Victor’s note specified Eli alone.
“Absolutely not,” Ryan said.
Eli put on the clean jacket Marnie had bought him.
“If I can’t survive steak, I shouldn’t fish the Masters.”
Victor waited beside a window overlooking the river.
Two plates were already served.
“You still like ribeye medium rare?” Victor asked.
Eli remained standing. “You remember that?”
“I remember everything useful.”
“Then remember I said no.”
Victor gestured to the chair.
“Sit. Hate me after dessert.”
Eli sat but did not eat.
Victor poured water.
“You think this is about a tournament scandal.”
“It started there.”
“No. It started with money. Everything important eventually does.”
“Not everything.”
Victor smiled. “That belief is why you’re poor.”
He slid a new contract across the table.
Ten million dollars this time.
Eli stared at the number.
“Inflation?”
“Reality.”
“What do you want?”
“You compete. You finish wherever you finish. After the Masters, you announce that your memories of 2001 are unreliable and that recent attention caused people around you to exaggerate.”
“And Mason?”
Victor’s expression did not change.
“A terrible accident.”
“You had him followed.”
Victor paused.
That was the first crack Eli had seen.
“Who told you?”
Eli leaned back.
“Feel the weight before you set the hook.”
Victor’s eyes narrowed.
Eli smiled.
“You just gave me weight.”
Victor stood.
The controlled businessman vanished for one second.
“You think you’re clever because fish have small brains and you’ve spent your life outsmarting them.”
Eli stood too.
“No. I think you’re scared because you doubled the price.”
Victor stepped close.
“Take the money.”
“No.”
“Your wife died in debt.”
Eli froze.
Victor continued softly, cruelly. “Your son died thinking his father was a disgrace. You slept under bridges while men you used to beat became millionaires. Pride has already eaten your life. Don’t let it eat what’s left.”
Eli’s hand tightened into a fist.
For one dangerous second, he wanted to hit Victor.
Then he remembered the river.
Current positions everything.
Victor wanted anger.
Eli unclenched his hand.
“You’re right about one thing.”
Victor waited.
“I stayed poor too long.”
He picked up the contract.
Victor smiled.
Eli tore it down the middle.
“So I’m going to win your million.”
He dropped the pieces onto Victor’s steak.
When Eli returned to Marnie’s, Ryan was waiting.
“How’d it go?”
Eli handed him Victor’s expensive fountain pen.
Ryan stared. “Did you steal this?”
“He left it near my hand.”
“That is stealing.”
“No. It’s structure fishing.”
Ryan laughed for the first time in two days.
Then Tyler rushed from the back room holding his laptop.
“Stop laughing.”
“What?”
“I enhanced the MiniDV audio.”
Eli’s smile vanished.
Tyler turned the speakers up.
Behind the noise of the fish truck, another voice could now be heard speaking to Victor.
A woman’s voice.
Ryan recognized it.
So did Eli.
Marnie Miller.
Ryan also made Eli try a BFS setup—bait finesse system gear designed to cast very light lures with a baitcasting reel. Eli hated it for fifteen minutes, then used it to send a tiny crankbait beneath a dock cable with startling accuracy.
“That’s cheating,” he said.
Ryan laughed. “Technology isn’t the enemy, remember?”
“I can change my mind when technology embarrasses me.”
They compared the BFS outfit with spinning tackle. The baitcaster offered direct spool control and precise low casts in skilled hands; spinning gear remained easier for many ultra-light applications and handled light line beautifully. Eli refused to declare a winner.
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“Tools solve different problems,” he said. “Any fisherman who needs one tool to be morally superior is probably selling it.”
That sentence made Ryan laugh until he remembered Victor Kane had built an empire doing almost exactly that.
