Hardboiled Crime Four-Pack

by Jack Bunker

  “Hey,” Wanda said, still laughing, “it’s no big deal.”

  Mack turned, grabbed a hand towel, and walked out of the bathroom. He stripped off his boxers and pulled on a pair of shorts, commando style. He threw on one of his new Tommy Bahama shirts, snatched a Dos Equis from the minibar, and just before he slammed the casita door behind him, scratched out a note on the desk.

  “Gone to bar.”

  Mack hadn’t told Buddy whether he was supposed to meet J.T. in the parking lot or inside. Buddy didn’t see J.T.’s Benz in the lot, so he went inside and walked around. A couple minutes past seven, he saw J.T. by the paint section. When their eyes met, J.T. threw his head in the direction of the garden center.

  Buddy walked over to the garden center first. J.T. sidled up next to him like he was looking at Weedwhackers and passed him an envelope.

  “There’s twenty-five hundred in there,” J.T. said, looking up and fingering the monofilament line poking through the bottom of the Weedwhacker. “Give two grand to Wanda. The other five hundred’s for you.”

  “For me? For what?”

  “I need somebody to count on. So far everybody’s falling apart. Mack fucked up the other night at Van Slaters. He should never have gone out with you after.”

  “I told that fool.”

  “Yeah, well, seeing as how you’re the only one with any fucking sense, I need you to make sure he doesn’t fuck up and stretch this thing out for another few days while I’m picking up the tab, you get me?”

  An orange forklift beeped as it backed up and turned around. A couple of pigeons fluttered overhead among the rafters.

  “I think so.” Should he be pitching J.T. as a prospective investor? Got that big Benz out in the parking lot. Then again, if he’s so rich, why’s he running around faking accidents at grocery stores?

  “When he starts talking about how much golf he’s going to play and how he’s going to enjoy his honeymoon, you need to bring his ass back to reality, know what I mean?”

  Buddy stuffed the envelope in his back pocket and hitched up his jeans. “Yeah, man, I hear you.” Mack was about to fuck up J.T.’s deal and Buddy’s business plan with his foolishness. Not to mention, who wants to go into business with somebody you already know is crooked?

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Wanda stepped into the bar wearing backless high heels and a saffron-colored dress with thin straps that crisscrossed. Mack sat at the bar with his back to her, drinking tequila on the rocks with a little salt on the rim.

  She walked up behind him, put her hand on his shoulder, and smiled. “There’s the happy groom.”

  Mack licked the salt from his glass. “Hey.”

  “You call Buddy?”

  “He’ll be there.”

  Wanda picked up a menu on the bar and opened it. “You okay?”

  Mack motioned to the bartender for another tequila. “I’ll live, I reckon.”

  When he finally woke up the following morning, Mack didn’t remember how he’d gotten back to the room. His head was killing him. He scraped the crust off his tongue with his teeth as he rolled over and looked around for Wanda. The bathroom door was ajar, but the light was off.

  He made it to his feet and into the bathroom. After brushing his teeth and showering, he saw a piece of paper on the minibar with long, feminine handwriting. “Gone to spa – W.” His phone showed a missed call from Buddy and a text: ON MY WAY. Mack did the math and realized Buddy should be arriving any minute. Out of clean underwear, he threw on a pair of shorts and one of his new shirts and grabbed a bottle of water out of the minibar.

  Mack called the pro shop. The assistant pro, a kid who sounded maybe twenty-two, said a tee time was no problem. With no tourists around and the heat already at 117, the local geezers would be off napping during midday. Mack and Buddy would have the whole course to themselves.

  When his stomach began rumbling, Mack headed down the breezeway to the restaurant for some brunch. He saw Buddy’s two-tone, blue-gray Monte Carlo pull into the parking lot far from the valet. Mack could see him reaching for his phone as he stepped out of the car. Mack just whistled and Buddy nodded and started walking through the heat waves rising from the soft black asphalt.

  “Yo,” said Mack, “let’s get us some breakfast before we get out.”

  “Breakfast? Man, it’s after ten o’clock. You just getting up?”

  “Hey, honeymoon’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

  “So you hit it, huh?”

  Mack slugged the last of the water in his bottle. “Not exactly.”

  “Say what? Goddamn, you staying in a hotel with that fine Amazon and you ain’t hit it? What, you still afraid of her?”

  “Shit. I never said I was afraid of her. She’s just too goddamn big for me’s all.”

  “I don’t know. I’d be nuttin’ round the clock I was married to that.”

  “Yeah, well, we kinda got thrown off track in Vegas. I was up for almost two days straight. Fucked with my system.”

  “I talked to that fool J.T. He said you better get your system un-fucked.”

  The air inside the restaurant was more than fifty degrees cooler than the temperature outside. Mack was starting to feel, if not good, better than he had a minute ago. “Fuck J.T. You know my shoulder’s still hurting from them shopping carts.”

  “I ain’t giving you no strokes, if that’s what you’re angling for.”

  Mack laughed and clapped Buddy on the back. “Fuck it. Let’s get fortified and we can work out the strokes on the first tee.”

  Mack had two bloody marys with his omelet, sausage, and biscuits. Buddy had a screwdriver and some bacon and hash browns. Mack got another bloody mary to go in a white Styrofoam cup before they walked toward the pro shop.

  Mack charged both rounds of golf to the room, as well as his rented clubs, a dozen Pro-V-1 balls, and a pair of Nike golf shoes and socks for himself and Buddy.

  “Need a couple of hats too,” Mack said, and grabbed one off a table. “Pick you one out, man.”

  “You sure?”

  “Hell, yeah, it’s all good.” Mack looked at the assistant pro behind the counter. “I’m on my honeymoon.”

  “You two look very happy,” the guy said.

  “Not with this motherfucker,” said Mack. “My wife’s up in the spa. This is my homeboy from Moreno Valley. We’re just gonna squeeze a round in while the ol’ ball and chain gets her mud on.”

  “All right.” The pro pointed out the window to the course. “You got the whole course to yourselves. We’ve got a little work going on at fourteen and fifteen, so everything inside the paint is ground under repair and you get a free drop.” He handed Mack a scorecard from the counter. “Hit ’em straight.”

  While Mack went back to the grill for a cooler of beer and ice, Buddy strapped his own mongrel set of clubs on the back of the cart next to the shiny, purebred rented irons of El Fuente Dorado.

  True to his word, Buddy gave Mack no strokes, although Buddy did allow him a mulligan on the first tee after Mack duck-hooked his first drive. Mack then hit his approach fat and shrieked in pain when the club struck more ground than ball. Buddy laughed into his hat as Mack grabbed his shoulder and slung his rented eight-iron at the cart.

  “Well, this is gonna be a shit round, I can tell,” said Mack, reaching into the cooler for a beer. “It’s like there’s a fuckin’ Chinese throwing star in my shoulder.”

  “Maybe you can get your wife to give you a mass-sage later on,” said Buddy.

  “Sheeiiiit. I tell you what. She’s a big ’un, but she’s got some body on her.”

  “I heard that.”

  “She was standing in the shower,” said Mack, pushing his hat back on his head as he drove the cart behind the green. “All soapy and shit. Got that big bush. Old school, you know what I’m saying?”

  Buddy nodded and pulled his putter from the bag. He started walking to his ball, shading his eyes as he tried to read what little break there might be.

  “An
yway,” Mack continued, “I’m standing there watching her take a shower and just blew it right there in my drawers.” Mack felt his pleated twill shorts shifting again as he lined up his own putt.

  “Goddamn, man. You need to hit that. If you ain’t up to it, I’ll hit it.”

  “Oh, I’m up to it. I just hadn’t slept in two or three days. Between that and the whiskey and the blue balls…shit, I’m lucky we didn’t both drown in a goddamn tsunami of jizz.”

  “You a sick motherfucker, you know that?”

  After the second hole, Mack pulled another beer from the cooler and gave it a little shake, then pointed it at Buddy as he opened the can. “Oops!” Mack laughed as Buddy tried to dodge the spray and almost fell out of the moving cart.

  Buddy shook his head and wiped the side of his face. “Asshole.”

  Considering rented clubs, an alien course, and the midday summer desert heat simmering his three-day drunk, Mack was having a good round. He was only a couple strokes behind Buddy, and that he blamed on his shoulder that felt like it had broken glass inside.

  “Shit, you ought to come back out tomorrow. We can play thirty-six at this pace.”

  “Man, you need to be getting back to the job. J.T. said you done strung this shit out too long as it is.”

  “I told you. I’m on my honeymoon.”

  “Don’t sound like you getting too much honey to me.”

  Every two holes, Mack pulled another beer from the cooler. Every time, he gave it a quick shake, then opened it with one hand, spritzing Buddy as the cart blazed down the fairway.

  As they left the green at thirteen, Mack cracked open another.

  “Oops!” he said, laughing.

  “Bitch!”

  “Man, I hope she brings back one of those little Asian hotties,” said Mack, still laughing at Buddy wiping the beer spray from his face. “How fuckin’ sweet would that be?”

  Mack closed his eyes and thought about Wanda, smelling like coconut oil, making out with a ninety-three-pound Thai masseuse on the bed in the casita. Tumescence had now stiffened into a nail-pounding erection. He’d never gotten a boner before on a golf course, but he knew he needed to take care of it.

  Just a little way down off the fourteenth fairway on the right was a portable toilet, a temporary convenience for the guys reshaping the course to keep them from trucking back and forth to the clubhouse and mucking up the resort’s facility, or worse yet, whipping it out to take a leak unobstructed by any trees or discretionary shrubbery.

  “Yo, man, hold up,” said Mack, “I need to go get rid of some of this beer.”

  Buddy, sipping his own beer and wiping the sticky foam from the side of his face, just nodded. He watched Mack scamper down the hill to the portable toilet below. Goddamn, white people run funny. Then Buddy noticed the tractor just behind the elevated tee box.

  Watching Mack enter the toilet and pull the door closed, Buddy then glanced up at the tractor again. He swiveled his head as he checked out the area. Twelve-thirty and not a soul on the course. He slipped out of the cart and hustled up to the tractor. The absent landscaping crew had left the key in it. Buddy lined up the wheels so that the back left tire would just nick the toilet and knock it over. Motherfucker wants to spray beer on somebody, let him get wet for a change. Without starting the engine, Buddy popped the tractor into neutral. It started rolling slowly at first, then began picking up speed.

  Mack had decided his strategy of saving his seed for a double header had been a mistake. That’s why he blew his load like a thirteen-year-old watching Wanda in the shower. No, what he needed, he figured, was to rub one out; that way he’d be able to go all night once Buddy was on his way back over the mountains.

  It stunk inside the portable toilet, but not enough to derail Mack’s erection. He’d stroked himself five times or so when he felt the ground rumbling. A fucking earthquake? The rumbling grew more intense. Mack looked around. He had one hand on his joint and the other on the door handle.

  When the tractor clipped the corner of the toilet, the force slammed Mack against the fiberglass walls. The little hut upended, dumping its contents all over Mack, who screamed like a bobcat in a croker sack. The toilet shattered completely when it bounced on the ground, shards of green fiberglass spread out in a thousand jagged pieces, surrounding Mack, who lay among them on the grass, moaning in a soggy heap.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Buddy jogged up to the scene. Oops, motherfucker.

  Mack wailed and writhed all over the mess, his navy shorts around his ankles. The smell caused Buddy to pull his shirt up over his nose.

  “Goddamngoddamngoddamn…” Mack moaned.

  “You awright?” Buddy couldn’t suppress a smile under his shirt.

  “Ooooh, fuuuuck,” Mack rolled over onto his back, his dick in his right hand.

  Buddy guessed it was his dick. He’d never seen anything but a knee or an elbow bent at that angle. It looked like some kind of pink fishhook.

  “Jesus. That yo’ dick? What was you doin’ in there, man?”

  Mack moaned. He opened his eyes and looked down at his crotch. He yelled so loud Buddy was sure they must’ve heard it in the clubhouse.

  “Ohmigod! What the fuck?”

  Buddy’s face popped up from beneath his shirt. “That shit looks bad, man.”

  Mack whimpered.

  “Stinks too.” Buddy put his face beneath his shirt again. “Goddamn.”

  Mack let go of his dick, but it kept the same safety pin shape.

  “What you want to do, man? Call an ambulance or try to ride back on the cart?”

  Mack rolled over on his side and onto one knee. “Uuugghhh.” His shorts were soaked with the toilet’s contents. He gradually stood up and gingerly pulled them up and over his crotch, holding them closed in his hands without zipping up.

  “Just get me out of here and back to the hotel.”

  Buddy raced back to the pro shop, every bump sending Mack howling in pain. Buddy locked up the brakes and skidded to a halt next to the pro shop. Mack was doubled over and trying to stagger away from the cart. The teenaged kid who cleaned the clubs came running up.

  “Is he having a heart attack or something?” the kid said.

  “Yo, man, he needs a doctor,” said Buddy, and the kid took off sprinting into the pro shop. Seconds later, the assistant pro who’d booked them onto the course came running out.

  “Do you want an ambulance?” the pro said as he ran up to Mack. When he got three feet away, like Buddy, he buried his face in his shirt. “What happened? Does he have some kind of IBS situation or something?”

  “What’s IBS?” asked Buddy.

  “Irritable bowel syndrome.”

  “You mean, like, people shit all over themselves?”

  “Something like that.”

  Mack groaned and tried to stand up.

  “That’s a common thing?” Buddy cocked his head and looked at the guy. “I thought that was just something little kids and old people did, man. Seriously?”

  “No joke,” said the assistant pro.

  “Fuuuuck,” groaned Mack.

  “Naw, man. You know that tractor you got up on fourteen? Motherfucker just rolled down the hill, man, and hit my boy while he was inside takin’ a piss.”

  “Jesus,” said the assistant pro and the kid in unison.

  “Did the tractor run over him?” the assistant pro asked.

  “I don’t know, maybe.”

  “Fuuuuckk,” Mack moaned again. His shorts dropped down to his socks stained brown and blue-green from the toilet’s chemicals.

  “Oh, shit!” said the kid, pointing to Mack’s crotch. “Look!”

  Mack’s penis was still bent at a sixty-degree angle, the head shiny, purple, and swollen.

  “Looks like a tennis ball,” said the kid.

  “More like one of those Portuguese rolls you get in the bakery,” said the assistant pro, craning his neck to get a better look.

  “Those the soft ones or the cr
usty hard ones?” asked Buddy.

  “I think they can be either,” said the kid.

  “You’re probably right,” said the assistant pro, “but I was thinking of the crusty kind. You ever have those with just some olive oil? Maybe a little black pepper? Fucking awesome.”

  Mack moaned again. His eyes were wet. “Call,” he said, huffing, “Wanda.”

  Alerted in the spa to an undetermined emergency, Wanda came jogging out to the clubhouse parking lot. When she got close, her hand went up to her mouth.

  “Ohmigod! What happened?”

  “Sounds like there was an accident with a tractor out on the course,” said the assistant pro.

  “I can’t believe this! We’re on our honeymoon!”

  “Those fucking landscaping guys,” the assistant pro said, “excuse my French.”

  “We’ve got to get you to the hospital, baby.”

  Mack looked around and realized Wanda was talking to him.

  “You want me to call an ambulance?” said the assistant pro.

  Mack shook his head. “No ambulance.” He started to gag from the smell. “You got a shower in there, right?”

  “Yeah,” said the pro.

  “Get me a clean shirt and a pair of shorts. Thirty-two,” said Mack. “I gotta hose this shit off’n me, before I puke. Then I’ll go to the hospital.”

  “Yes, sir, right this way,” said the kid. Buddy guided Mack toward the locker room as the assistant pro slipped into the shop and gathered up clean togs and carried them to the shower.

  While Mack showered, Buddy pulled five hundreds from J.T.’s envelope before handing the envelope to Wanda.

  “Here’s the cash J.T. sent. Said give you two grand and keep five hundred. We cool?”

  “Yeah.” Wanda shook her head. “I’ll talk to J.T. when I know what’s going on.” She gave him a halfhearted wave and turned back toward the clubhouse.

  Buddy stuffed the five bills into his front pocket. It was a start. More than enough to cover the filing fees for his company, but still short of what he’d need to prosecute a patent. Shit, from what he’d read on the Internet, he’d probably need multiple patents. He wished he knew what Mack was bringing in from the scam. Of course, now that he was really fucked up, that had to be worth more than a fake back injury.