Deadly Divots

by Gene Breaznell

  “One more question?” The uniform held up an index finger, as if asking for a mulligan.

  “Shoot.”

  “If a ball lands in the outline of the victim’s body,” he grinned impudently again, “does the player get a free drop?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The quiet, mostly middle-class town called Bayville lies adjacent to the Sound on Long Island’s North Shore. Bayville is not very far from Broken Oak, distance-wise. Money-wise, it’s a million miles away. I owned a modest house near a small Laundromat and a big seafood restaurant called Steve’s Pier, within spitting distance of the Sound. Even closer to the little graveyard where my wife is buried. I try to visit her every day.

  Passing the public beach along Bayville Avenue, the town’s modest main drag, I admired the lights along the Connecticut coastline across the Sound twinkling like stars. They seemed close enough to touch. On a clear day, you can see the spire of the Second Congregational Church in Greenwich, merely twenty minutes away by fast boat unless there’s a chop. About an hour by car, unless the LIE’s a parking lot and the Throgs Neck Bridge is in the throes of a coronary thrombosis.

  I have not been to Connecticut since my wife died. We often went there together, especially in the fall, when it’s too cold to hit the links, to admire the foliage and look for antique shops. I can’t bring myself to go antiquing again. I can still bring myself to the links, however. In fact, I can’t do without them.

  When I got to my house, my tenants’ car was not in the driveway. They must be stuffing their faces at the souvlaki place on Bayville Avenue or sipping suds at a local bar called Sand City. They’re a young couple and they like to go out. I like them living with me, upstairs in the rental apartment I built after Carol died. When I sealed off the second story, including our bedroom, and moved downstairs to the guest room. I even added an outside stairway for them. I also stored all of Carol’s belongings in the basement. I should have given everything to the Salvation Army, but I could not bear to part with anything. I seldom go into the basement anymore.

  I always thought that I would die first, and not from disease or natural causes. Some wacko with a mail order assault weapon would go postal on me. Or the mob would vaporize me with a car bomb. I had nightmares about my fellow cops presenting my scant remains to my wife in a small container. When I told her about them she laughed, and said, “Kanopka in a canopic jar.”

  I parked, went into the house, and began making dinner. Canned tuna, raw carrots, and coleslaw from the deli. When I want something hot, I microwave a baking potato, though my Irish mom would not approve.

  As I stirred some mayonnaise into my tuna, I thought about O’Reilly lying dead on that supersensational tenth hole at Broken Oak. Murder and mayo bother me. Like murder and mayhem? Like the good Dr. Fitch, ferocious Fitch as Slim the scrofulous caddy dubbed him. Fitch had a motive, though he claims not to care about the twenty grand O’Reilly owed him. He also had an opportunity during the cocktail party.

  I munched a carrot, considering that the killer must have good night vision. There was no moon the previous night and, unless the ME proves otherwise, the killer needed only one stroke. An ace to golfers. A cranial hole in one to the coroner, crushing O’Reilly’s skull, exposing his gray matter. Do I really want this tuna anymore?

  Aces also remind me of Al Jones, who must have a good swing, who’s also younger than Dr. Fitch and must have better night vision. But what’s his motive, other than O’Reilly cheating at golf and being a cheapskate?

  I opened a beer to go with my meal and studied my notes at the kitchen table. I usually watch Jeopardy, as I did with Carol most evenings. She knew the answers while I mostly showed my lack of higher education. She admitted to having the advantage of a Ph.D. I admitted that she was just plain smarter. She never teased me, though she once said if I ever made captain I’d be one big fricative. At first I thought she meant I’d be a prick. I thought a fricative was some sort of perversion. The way she laughed at me, I told her I’d coldcock any man who called me that. I was pissed until she explained it was a speech sound that Captain Karl Kanopka fit perfectly. What did I know? If she’d called me an alliterative fricative, I’d have thought it was a pervert who couldn’t read. I brought her flowers the next day. She was so smart and so beautiful. I never understood why she married me. Now my eyes teared as I read my murder notes. Or was it the onions I chopped for my tuna?

  I opened another beer to go with my notes on Randy Randall, Vince Henry, and Slim. Randall could have murdered O’Reilly to keep his Aunt Winifred’s historic estate from being carved up and condoed. Vince could have rung his chimes for racist remarks or driving a cart onto a green. Slim could have whacked him for being a lousy tipper. This case could need a case of beer.

  One six-pack later, though Carol would have scolded me, I concluded that anyone could have murdered O’Reilly. He was obviously an outcast, Carol would have called him a pariah, who nobody liked. Whom nobody liked? Carol knew but would never correct me. All I know is that O’Reilly, like me, was all alone in life. I wish I could get inside his head, prior to the deadly divot, of course. He drank too much; I’ve been doing the same thing since losing Carol. Though alcohol has not ameliorated my grief, as Carol would have put it, neither has it helped me solve any murders or justify God’s ways to man.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I heard the sound of footsteps in my sleep. Heavy footsteps on loose floorboards. Creak, creak, creak. . .

  I tried waking up but was too thick with sleep, drugged, it seemed, from tiredness and too many beers. I tried harder, clawing my way toward consciousness, but the murkiness in my brain melded with the murkiness in my bedroom. I had fallen into a black river and could not find the surface. With a terrible headache. Was I having a stroke? Why was I waving my arms in the darkness? Was O’Reilly’s killer coming after me, wielding his five iron? What an irony. I always liked that club, comfortably between my nine and two irons, consistently good for 150 yards. Why can’t the killer whack me with the two? I never know where that’s going.

  The creaking continued, followed by moans, as if someone had been struck and lay bleeding. But it wasn’t me. I keyed on the moaning and finally forced myself awake, flat on my back in bed, staring feebly at the black ceiling. Finally realizing that the creaks and moans were coming from the young couple upstairs making love. According to my alarm clock, it was midnight.

  Their moans carried out their open bedroom window on the sweet summer night breeze, sifting seductively down through mine, along with their creaking bedsprings and a cadence that beat the band. Both in the throes of enviably long orgasms, beyond anything I can remember accomplishing in that same room, on the antique sleigh bed that my wife termed our “love sled,” which is now somewhere in the basement.

  Ah, youth. Now I only have a headache.

  The moaning suddenly stopped. All was quiet. They must both be asleep, leaving me, like an unrequited lover, staring at the black ceiling, wondering how I’ll get back to sleep. Another six-pack? No way.

  I got up, took two aspirin, and went back to bed. I still couldn’t sleep. I reached for one of my favorite golf books but held back. Once I start reading A Good Walk Spoiled, by John Feinstein, I can’t stop. It puts me on the PGA Tour, more like a fly on the wall than a great player, of course.

  I remembered Dame Winifred Randall’s little mystery. The one my wife had recommended, trying to get me off golf books, though she liked Bagger Vance. That could do the trick. With its stuffy settings, predictable plots, antiquated prose, I’d soon be sawing logs and sending pleasurable snores to the young couple upstairs. I could not remember the title but recalled tucking it into a storage box in the basement.

  In the basement, I miraculously found the right box. The book was wedged at the bottom. I dug it out, trying not to cry when I saw Carol’s summer dresses carefully pressed and folded.

  The cover and first fifty pages were missing. Who needs them anyway? The first fifty pages of a manu
script Carol had sent to agents and editors meant nothing except a few form rejections. There was mostly no response, though she included SASEs. Her response to the rejections was stoic. I would have bitched and moaned.

  There was something appealing about the wretched little paperback, something about its frail, yellowed pages. Some of it had crept into my subconscious, like the moans of pleasure from upstairs. After a painfully ponderous opening, Dame Winifred’s prissy little tec, on vacation, finally discovers a body out on a moor. He was always on vacation, which would not endear him to hardworking homicide cops.

  What was his name? I wracked my brain. It sounded like cool, though he was totally uncool. Cool is Harrison Ford, Eddie Murphy. But his name was French, spelled almost like cool. Coul-something. Of course. Couloir, Peter H. I was pleased with myself to remember, as if I’d remembered some witness or suspect.

  I brought the book upstairs to my bedroom and lay with it on my bed. A poor substitute for a highly orgasmic young wife, or even an old blow-up doll. At least it would put me to sleep. A few more loose pages fell out. When I nod off, I thought, and the book hits the floor, the binding will surely break.

  I’ll start in the middle, like most of my murder cases, when the body is discovered, between the killing and catching the killer. In medias res, Carol used to say. I think that’s right. She was always using arcane terms and slipping them into her writing. No wonder she couldn’t get published.

  Though the book looked and smelled like the Dead Sea Scrolls, something other than its use as a substitute sleeping pill suddenly appealed to me. Carol had touched and turned every page, several times over. I was finally sharing the book with her, wishing I had finished it way back when, not disdained Dame Winifred’s work in general and not ridiculed her prissy little sleuth. What a putz I had been.

  I began reading in the middle of a sentence at the top of page 51.

  . . . Couloir carefully rolled the body over, noticing a bullet wound in the back . . .

  That’s pretty silly. You just don’t do that. In fact, you never did, even back in the 1920s, when this was written. You waited for the ME, the coroner, a doctor, or whatever they called a forensic pathologist back then.

  I read on, recalling my wife trying to explain, “It’s the overall story that counts. Not cop minutiae and the gospel according to Kanopka.”

  More pages were missing throughout the book. The plot got even choppier. But I could not help noticing a strong similarity between the murdered guy on the moor, a brash American named Marty Phelps, and O’Reilly at Broken Oak. Nobody liked either of the deceased, as page 56 explained.

  . . . the Earl of Cranbrook told him that he had been hunting out on the moor that morning when he and his gamekeeper discovered the corpse. But they failed to report it until noon because, according to the Earl, “There was no point in ruining a good grouse hunt.” He was aloof, arrogant and unaware, or uncaring, that he had obstructed the investigation. Such incredible callousness, thought Couloir, invokes suspicion . . .

  Any detective knows that. But this earl of Whatchamacallit’s not wanting to louse up a good grouse hunt over a mere murder on his property was just like Dr. Fitch being more concerned about missing his regular golf game than about O’Reilly. They fit each other to a T. Hey, good golf pun.

  Beyond a few more missing pages, I learned of the earl’s passion for shooting and his weapons collection.

  . . . The Earl carefully withdrew the shotgun from its green velvet nest in the burled walnut display case. He passed the weapon to Couloir, wiping a slight smudge on the hand-carved stock with a sleeve of his silk waistcoat. He looked, for all the world, like a loving mother attending to her infant. “It’s a Smithers 18 gauge, wonderful craftsmanship, his finest example . . . Like it, M. Couloir?” The detective nodded, though he knew little about guns . . .

  I shook my head in disgust. A cop knowing nothing about guns is no cop in my book. Lucky I always fell asleep before this page in the past, or I would have tossed the little tome into the trash.

  “. . . I know only that a shotgun was not the murder weapon,” Couloir stated. “By virtue of the neat entry wound.” He handed it back to the Earl, and drifted toward the display of his pistol collection . . .

  Maybe he does know something about guns, I reconsidered. Maybe he was only playing dumb so the earl would let down his guard. I’ve done that, though never to an earl. This book’s getting better. It could really get good if Couloir has the balls to use the good old wham-bam on this suspect, which was allowable in those days. I’m not sure about knocking around the nobility, however.

  “. . . See any to your liking?” asked the Earl.

  “That one,” Couloir answered, pointing at the only vacant space.

  “Ah, but that one was stolen some time ago. A Webley-Vickers, .44 caliber. Not rare in the least, but I cherished it as a souvenir from my service in the Crimea. And I know what you’re thinking, Detective.”

  “Please tell me.”

  Smiling, the Earl summoned his butler into the study. He ordered some brandy before explaining, “You believe that my missing Webley-Vickers may have been the murder weapon.”

  “Précisement . . .”

  There’s that word again. Damn Frenchies complicate everything, including our wars with Iraq. After we saved their bacon, paté de foie gras if you prefer, back in the Big One. Well, maybe they’re not so bad. Though they don’t have any great golfers, my wife and I had a great time in Paris.

  I read on, hoping Dame Winifred was not so trite as to make the butler do it.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It was tough getting up the next morning after staying awake too late reading the little mystery. I also forgot to set my alarm. The young couple scurrying down the outside stairs woke me.

  I stumbled out of bed and staggered into the bathroom. Usually I was up and off to work much earlier, even after Carol and I had stayed up late moaning and squeaking the bedsprings. Maybe that’s why she married me. Now I’ll never know. It seems so long ago, when we were young. Before two incomes and scurrying to work were more important than staying up late making love. Now I’m beat from merely reading late.

  I parked in a handicap space at the Nassau County Medical Center in East Meadow. Half of the handicap tags are undeserved anyway, or used by friends and relatives. Some of the so-called handicapped I’ve seen leaping out of their cars in the blue spaces could win the Olympic high hurdles. There were also no other spaces, and I do have a handicap. In golf, anyway.

  The medical center was packed with everyone dying to get in, like most of Long Island, since Levittown supplanted the potato farms. If I lived in East Meadow, I mused, I’d be dying to get out. When I buy the farm, plant me next to Carol in the little cemetery behind our house in Bayville. Then we’ll spend plenty of time together, so she can’t complain about playing second fiddle to homicide or being a golf widow.

  I knew the way to the ME’s office, having been there too many times before. An assistant greeted me, saying, “Long time no see, Detective.”

  “Not long enough,” I told her.

  She smiled and said, “He wants you in the lab.”

  “Of course,” I said, pausing. Autopsies bother me, though back in high school I was a part-time operating room attendant. I slabbed ’em, the surgeon stabbed ’em. I saw hundreds of operations and even helped by holding limbs and repositioning the patient. Mom wanted me to be a doctor, but my old man knew better. “You’re a born cop,” he told me. “Just make sure the perp needs the doctor, not you.”

  The ME failed to notice me when I entered the lab. He was hunched over an autopsy table, literally up to his elbows in O’Reilly’s chest cavity. I stood by quietly.

  Holding up O’Reilly’s liver like a trophy, the ME said triumphantly, “Slightly cirrhotic, eh?”

  “But the booze didn’t kill him,” I countered, hoping my own heavy drinking of late was not turning my liver into a loofah. I also hoped the ME would not try some pun
about O’Reilly being a high liver.

  “It would have, eventually,” he pronounced, slipping the organ into a stainless steel container.

  “It was the head wound, right?”

  “No doubt,” the ME said. “But I have to look everywhere.”

  “Of course.”

  “You should know that,” he added. “Weren’t you in medicine?”

  “If you call medicine mopping floors in the OR at Brooklyn General.”

  “I remember,” he said. “Back in high school?”

  Why had I told him? I never liked this guy.

  “You didn’t want to be a doctor?” he said.

  “It was pretty glamorous,” I said, recalling the blood, guts, and sutures in my mop bucket.

  “Much like forensics,” said the ME, diving again into the chest cavity.

  “Almost finished?” I asked. More than twenty-four hours had passed since the murder. The killer’s trail, if there was one, was getting colder than the stainless steel autopsy table.

  “Canoe’s not completely bailed,” the ME grinned.

  I never liked that expression, though the insides of eviscerated human chest cavities do resemble wood-ribbed canoes. It renders our essence too precarious and hollow.

  “Can I get some coffee?” I asked, as the smell began to get to me.

  “Stick around,” the ME said, stabbing at something in the chest cavity, wanting me to stay and appreciate his work, or puke my guts out. I stayed. Not for either of his reasons. I knew that here in his laboratory, unlike on the links out at Broken Oak, he was more likely to offer an opinion. I also knew that opinions are often more important than medical facts.

  “After you’ve autopsied a woman,” the ME said, patting what was left of the chest with a bloody glove, “live tits never look better.”

  “Let’s stick with O’Reilly,” I told him, though I tend to agree with him. “What else can you tell me?”

  “Look at this—” He indicated the head wound.