The Pariot GAme

by George V. Higgins

  The waiter immediately resumed looking at the gun. “What is that?” he said.

  “My credentials,” Riordan said. “Now can I have the screwdriver?”

  “No,” the waiter said, “that.” He released his right hand from the tray and pointed at the gun.

  “Magnum,” Riordan said. “Now, here is what you tell the guy to do. Take two shots vodka, six ounces juice, large glass, lots of ice, and pour them together, they play ‘Stormy Weather,’ and lightning shoots out of your ass.” Riordan scooped up the airline folders, slapped the credentials on top, stuffed the whole collection into his jacket pocket, buttoned the jacket, ran his right hand down his right leg to the inside of the knee, bent at the knee, shoved against the inside of the knee joint, made the grinding and the clicking sound repeat, and sat down in the chair. He clasped his hands in his lap.

  “Screwdriver,” the waiter said.

  “Screwdriver,” Riordan said. “The way I told you. And if Bishop Doherty comes in the back door, like he never does, tell him Riordan’s on the porch.”

  “Yessir,” the waiter said.

  “Oh,” Riordan said, “and a pack of Luckies. Regular, old-fashioned, good-time Luckies.”

  PAUL DOHERTY in a white Lacoste shirt, light blue cotton trousers and a floppy white hat over Foster Grant sunglasses drove a white golf cart up the eighteenth fairway at Nipmunk. About one hundred and eighty yards from the hole, he stopped the cart and got out. There was a clump of rhododendron bushes behind him, and he swatted flying ants away from his head as he took a three-iron out of the bag in the back of the cart. He looked toward the green and the patio, where Riordan sat, hidden from his view in the shade. He addressed the ball without settling himself into an easy position or wriggling his buttocks. He swung the club through and watched the ball’s flight, using his right hand to provide additional sunshade. The ball landed and rolled to a stop about fifteen yards from the edge of the green. Doherty stuck the club into the bag, climbed into the cart and headed for the green.

  He had a year to go before he turned fifty. His face was drawn under the golfing tan, and he had lost a lot of weight. There were slack folds of skin on his lower jaw. The collar of the golf shirt stood away from his shoulders and neck, exposing his scapula bones. There was a slack roll of flesh at his middle, and his pants were baggy on him. When he reached the ball, he stopped the cart, got out, took a pitching wedge from the bag and used it to slap the ball onto the green. The ball rolled well beyond the flag. He climbed back into the cart, stuck the club back into the bag, and drove around the green to the back. He got out of the cart, picked up the ball, dropped that into the bag with the clubs, got back into the cart and drove around the clubhouse to the right, down the hill toward the pro shop. He did not look at the patio. He parked the cart in the row outside the small white-shingled building that was the pro shop and lifted the bag of clubs out of it. The pro was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame.

  “Good round, Paul?” he said.

  “No,” Doherty said, “lousy round. It’s a good thing a snake didn’t come out of the woods and challenge me. I couldn’t hit anything that was standing still today. I don’t know how the hell I could’ve hit anything that was moving.”

  “They come, they go,” the pro said. “It’s still a nice outing.”

  “I guess so,” Doherty said. “I keep telling myself that, anyway.”

  “You keep telling yourself to keep your head down?” the pro said.

  “Oh,” Doherty said, “sure. That, and lock the elbow. I know all the recipes. I tried to take up skiing about fifteen years ago, and to this very day I remember what the instructor said about bending the knees. I couldn’t ski either.”

  “You’ve had some good rounds,” the pro said.

  “Walter,” Doherty said, “when you’re my age, any round you come back from’s a good round.” The pro began to laugh. “None of your damned hilarity, Walter,” Doherty said. “You’re in your thirties now, and you’re like everybody else in that category. You shoot in the high seventies, the low eighties, and you make an honest dollar telling people how to do something that they’re never going to be able to do because they haven’t got your talent. If Nicklaus came along tomorrow afternoon and told you how to win the Masters, you wouldn’t be able to do it even if he was telling you the God’s honest truth. It’s the same with your customers and it’s the same with me. The bones’re getting older and they weren’t that obedient to begin with. You still think that you’re immortal. You’ll learn, my son, you’ll learn. Some day, somebody like me’ll be sprinkling Holy Water on a long metal box on canvas swings over a hole in the ground, and you will be in that box, headed for the hole. And up in Heaven every poor clumsy bastard like me’ll be standing around yelling: ‘Don’t three-putt the hole, Walter, you dumb son of a bitch. Hole out, Walter, like we did. You gotta gimme there, Walter. You blow this one and the fat guys’ll never play Nassau with you again.’ Ashes and ashes, Walter, no matter how good you are at getting out of the rough. Remember, you heard it here first.”

  “You going to have a sandwich?” Walter said.

  “Sure,” Doherty said. “The choice’s between having a bad cheeseburger here and going back to the rectory and having a bad cheeseburger there, with Mrs. Herlihy hovering around and complaining about her arthritis and then all the parishioners calling up to tell me they’ve got personal problems. Which always means they want me to get them a retroactive annulment, and also make sure it doesn’t get into the paper, when they got four kids, minimum, and they just found out hubby’s chasing ladies in some joint in Boston. Which cheeseburger would you take?”

  “I would eat here,” Walter said.

  “Sure you would,” Doherty said.

  “See?” Walter said. “There’re some things that’re hopeless. Your swing. Nothing you can do about it. Go have your horseburger, Father, and God bless.”

  “Thanks,” Doherty said.

  “No thanks necessary,” Walter said, turning back into the office. “Doesn’t make any difference. You’ve still got a slice and there’s not a damned thing in the world that I can do about it. You’re a lousy golfer. I probably wouldn’t be a very good priest. As long as you enjoy it, do it.”

  “PAUL,” RIORDAN SAID from the shade as Bishop Doherty walked out into the sunlight of the patio, “if you don’t mind me saying so, you looked like hell out there on the course.” Doherty turned from the ladies who were trilling at him to join them, and squinted at Riordan’s table. “Peter,” he said, when his eyes adjusted to the light, “of course I don’t mind. It wouldn’t make any difference if I did mind. What in blazes are you doing here?”

  “I am having a screwdriver,” Riordan said. “At least I assume I am having a screwdriver. I ordered a screwdriver—I am sure of that. I’m not sure I convinced the guard dog in the white jacket that I should really be permitted to have a screwdriver, but when he gets through talking to his superiors, maybe it’ll be all right. Siddown, all right? You look even worse up close in the shade than you did when you were out in the sun playing golf. Have you been sick or something?”

  “You’re enough to frighten small children yourself,” Doherty said, sitting down. “If you don’t mind me saying so, of course.”

  Riordan waved his left hand. “Don’t mind at all,” he said. “I knew that. I’ve been on the redeye special all night from LA, and before that I was having my usual preflight checkout in the bar. God, I hate flying. I hate all kinds of flying. I hated it when I was flying in little planes and jumping out of them into the damned jungle, and I hated it when I was flying in helicopters and jumping out into the damned jungle. And I hate it now when there isn’t even anybody where we land that’s hiding in the bushes hoping to get a clean shot at my ass and all I have to worry about is whether they’re going to let me keep my baggage with me or send it on to Omaha so I don’t get too confident.” Doherty had started laughing. “It’s true, Paul,” Riordan said. “Dammit a
ll, it’s true. There’re just some things that any given human being cannot do and pretend he likes it, and flying is mine. I have to do it. I know I have to do it. But I still hate doing it. Every damned minute that I’m doing it, I hate it.”

  “What for this time?” Doherty said, still laughing. “My Lord, but it’s a tonic to see you.” The waiter brought a very large screwdriver and a pack of Luckies and set them before Riordan. “Ray,” Doherty said to him, “this is my friend, Peter Riordan.” He took the waiter by the right elbow. “Old and dear friend, Peter Riordan. Any time he comes here, the courtesy of the house. I know he doesn’t look like much, but he is a friend of mine. And not only that, he is, as I’m sure you have noticed, big. Doesn’t do to cross him.”

  The waiter was uncomfortable. “Yes, Your Excellency.”

  “Excellency,” Riordan said, having consumed about a third of the drink, “my goodness. We are moving up in the world, aren’t we?”

  “Also,” Doherty said to the waiter, “pay no attention to anything he says except when he orders a drink. He’s very disrespectful and he’s often insulting. I tolerate it because I’m charitable. You needn’t. Okay?”

  “Okay,” the waiter said.

  “You can bring me a vodka tonic,” Doherty said, releasing the waiter.

  “And another one of these little buggers for me,” Riordan said, swallowing another third of the screwdriver. He said, “Ahh.”

  “Wow,” Doherty said. “When did you start doing that?”

  “Nothing to it,” Riordan said. He belched softly. “Got the hang of it from an old buddy of mine in school when I was a freshman and he was instructing me in the sacred mysteries of bourbon.”

  “That must be where I went wrong,” Doherty said. “All my school chums ever taught me were the sacred mysteries of the Sacred Mysteries.”

  “Probably is,” Riordan said. He belched again. “No fun in that at all. Anyway, guy told me the way you avoid hangovers is by not stopping drinking, and I’ve followed his advice faithfully ever since. Especially when I’ve been flying all night, which means I have to get tanked up before I get on the plane and I can’t sleep after I get on the plane, so I keep drinking on the plane and by the time I get on the ground again I feel like I had a dead cat in my mouth all night and somebody’s fixing locomotives in my head. In addition to which, your beloved government makes me fly coach like all the other obstructionist bureaucrats, and I will tell you something, Paul: I am too big for coach. My legs’re too long and there’s too much of the rest of me, too. So by the time I get off, no matter how many times I stood up and walked around while we were in the air, I’ve got stiffness in the legs to go along with the stiffness in the head that I brought on myself because I hate flying.”

  “What were you doing in LA?” Doherty said as the waiter delivered the drinks he had ordered. Riordan finished his first and seized the second gratefully. “Run the tab,” Doherty said to the waiter. “This could take awhile.” The waiter nodded and left.

  Riordan sipped from the second screwdriver. “Marvelous restorative,” he said, setting the glass down. “IRA,” he said.

  “In Los Angeles?” Doherty said. “Did they move Ulster or something?”

  “Oh, hell,” Riordan said, “I don’t know. They’ve been getting very nervous about the thing all over the damned country and as soon as they get jittery they send for me. That kid from Listowel that I grabbed … You know how you can tell you’re getting old?”

  “I certainly do,” Doherty said. “It’s when you finally wake up and you’ve got a hose in your nose that you notice first. Then it’s the tubes in your arms that draw your attention. Also the fact that you don’t seem to be in your own bed, although of course I suspect that’s a familiar discovery for the likes of you.”

  “No comment,” Riordan said, “but you answered my first question anyway. I appreciate the courtesy. Tardy, but appreciated.”

  “Yeah,” Doherty said. He toyed with his glass, making wet rings on the white metal table. “Well, I was sick.” He looked up at Riordan. “When I woke up I couldn’t remember anything. Where I was? Well of course I didn’t know where I was. The last place I’d been where I knew where I was was on the seventeenth at Boca Palm, lying two on the fairway with about a hundred-and-twenty-five yarder to the pin on a par-five hole. I was playing the best round of golf I’ve probably ever played in my life. There was a very good chance that I could birdie the eighteenth and come in with a seventy-nine. I’ve never shot anything under eighty in my whole career. There’ve been a lot of rounds when I would’ve shot myself, perhaps, but this one was different. It was special. The woods clicked and the irons were true and I was putting like Ben Hogan before he got hurt. Astonishing. I wonder if the other systems of the body get wind of something going on before it happens and decide that maybe they’d better all get together and have one last fling before the door slams and it’s all over. Funny. I’ve never played that way before and I almost certainly will never play that way again. If I do, and I catch myself doing it, I’m going to call for the EMT wagon and demand oxygen right off.

  “Anyway,” he said, “not knowing what was going on, the victim always being the last to know, I stood over the ball and got ready to hit the sweetest seven-iron I’d ever hit, and the next thing I knew I was waking up, connected to all that plumbing, no back in my nightshirt which I never wear, and the nurse was beaming at me and telling me I was awake. That I knew. What I wanted to know was why I was awake in some bed I’d never seen before, and where the devil the bed was. They answered all my questions. Especially the one that began with why. ‘Coronary insufficiency,’ they said. ‘You had a heart attack.’ ”

  “My turn to say ‘Wow,’ ” Riordan said.

  “Yeah,” Doherty said. He sipped his drink. “And that was the pleasantest part. They had me on this and they had me on that. I was walking on treadmills with cuffs and things strapped to me. I had tests and tests and then they thought of some other tests that they omitted in the first round of tests, and they gave me those. They kept track of what went in and they kept track of what went out and how it looked. They gave me food that reminded me of the seminary. Which is no way to treat a sick man.”

  Riordan started laughing. He had a raucous laugh which interrupted the conversation that the ladies were having over their lunch and caused them to peer into the shade. He did not pay any attention to them and continued to laugh.

  “It’s true,” Doherty said. “In the seminary they would sit us down too early to eat and somebody would start in praying over the awful chow that looked like it’d been left over from some disaster feeding station and probably caused the disaster in the first place. It was lukewarm when it got to the table. It was cold by the time the fellow doing the praying had finished his speech. Long-winded people, Pete, are attracted to the priesthood.”

  “I knew that,” Riordan said.

  “I’m sure you did,” Doherty said. “Your memory’s probably a little hazy now, but you can probably still remember what used to happen when you went to church and had to sit there and listen to one of us. Well, we got that training in the Sem, sitting over bad food until it was really cold. I wouldn’t let my dog eat that food.”

  “You’ve still got the dog,” Riordan said. “I always liked Bill.”

  “Not that dog,” Doherty said. “Bill got old. Same thing that happened to me, happened to Bill, but he wasn’t as fortunate. Apparently God’s decided to take up hunting birds, and decided He needed my weimaraner. I don’t know why He happened to choose Gangplank Bill. Bill wasn’t a field dog. The only field Bill really knew was this place, and he never really did any hunting-dog sort of work, unless you count the time he spent with me in the woods, looking for a Titleist that’d gone exactly where my slice always sends them. He was good at sniffing and he kept the robins in line on the lawn, but other than that he was pretty much of a rectory type of dog. He wasn’t any good at flushing birds out of cover. God works in mysterious ways,
I guess.”

  “You get another one?” Riordan said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Doherty said. “Another dog, I mean. I thought about getting another weimaraner and I went to see some pups, but that was no good. Things end, Peter. They were nice dogs, very well formed, but none of them was Bill and there isn’t any use pretending about something like that. Bill became an old man’s dog without Bill or the old man really noticing, and then both of us took a good poke in the brisket but Bill didn’t survive his. God was calling my attention to the facts, I suppose. I got an old man’s dog. He even looks something like me, since I got sick and lost weight. English bulldog. Big jowls. Teeth don’t fit right. Face’s a little pushed in. Bowlegged. Big folds of skin on his back and shoulders. One ear flops. He’s a little overweight and he looks at the world with considerable suspicion. Good Catholic, though. He often goes to church with me. Sits down and grunts on the carpet where the brides and grooms form up, which I have often felt like doing myself, especially when the happy families start firing flashcubes in my face. He peed on the font for the Holy Water one night when I went over to lock up, but that’s forgivable, I suppose. I absolved him, anyway. He reads my breviary with me when the weather’s good and I walk in the garden. He’s good company, and he likes his rest.”