The Lillian Byrd Crime Series

by Elizabeth Sims

“Yeah.”

  “I’ve got some homework to do.”

  “Yeah. Did politics come up?”

  “No, thank God.”

  “Thank God.”

  Truby was the only person I knew, besides Mrs. McVittie and my own self, who never could stand Bill Clinton. All the rest of my friends went on worshiping him through every betrayal, every self-pitying whine.

  Our waitress came back, and I ordered a hamburger, Truby a grilled cheese. She licked her lips and seemed about to say something more to Oh Miss, but changed her mind.

  “She’s kind of cute,” I prompted, after she left.

  “Not my kind of CUPCAKE.”

  “Oh, well.” I waited.

  “Okay, here’s the thing,” Truby said, “We talked about sex and even made out on the couch both nights, and I was really ready, you know—Jesus Christ, the feel of a woman’s arms, a woman’s body...” She stopped, searching for words, finally giving up, saying simply, “Wow.”

  “I know.”

  “But every time it seemed like the next step should happen, like when we were at my place and I said, ‘It would be the most wonderful thing if you could stay all night,’ she sat up and started talking about her ex. Somebody named Beryl, who liked to have the TV on during sex but who could make her come like Vesuvius. Plus she talked a lot about a special cleansing diet she was about to go on, and a retreat she did last year that had a fire walk. She did a fire walk, and she did a survival course the year before, and she went on and on about it, and she, like, made a parallel between all that crap and sex. Dental dams and dildos, which I’m not terribly interested in. ‘The challenge of sex,’ she said.”

  “‘The challenge of sex.’”

  “She got very philosophical, and I’m sitting there trying to relate, you know, go with the flow and hope we get somewhere, but it just didn’t happen.”

  “Trube, is this a challenge you want to pursue?”

  “I’m not sure. What do you think?”

  “Dump this one and go to a party tonight. That chick from work did give you party tickets, didn’t she?”

  “The whole package.”

  A couple of the big hotels hosted enormous parties—dance parties, comedy parties, pool parties. Everybody went.

  “Go then and renew your search.” Our food came, and we dug in.

  “Are you coming?”

  “Well,” I said, then told her the story so far. “So, Starmate, you’ll have the room here to yourself for at least tonight.”

  “Just tonight?”

  “I’m only thinking about eighteen hours ahead right now,” I said.

  Truby smiled. “Probably a good idea. Do you love her?”

  “Too early to say. Yes, to tell you the truth and goddamn it. She says she needs me. And I want to protect her. I don’t know what’s going on in the outback of her life, but something is, and if I want to keep on being her lucky charm, and I do, then I might have to find out what it is.”

  12

  When we caught up with Genie she was on the thirteenth fairway waiting to hit her approach shot. Her practice round partners were Lona Chatwin and one other pro I didn’t recognize. They and their caddies were all standing with their hands on their hips, watching the group on the green.

  The course was gorgeous; the grounds crew, I judged, must have put in piles of overtime. The trees and shrubs were perfectly shaped, and the fairways stretched green and lush away toward the mountains to the west, that ridge of peaks that prevents the ocean from sending any nasty old storm clouds over. A dusting of snow clung to the rocks way up high. The sky was so clear blue it would’ve shattered if you threw something at it. Yet hovering just beyond those peaks, pressing against them, was a swirl of gray clouds just aching to get over here and throw down some rain. They wouldn’t, though.

  Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage, Indian Wells—these desert towns lie on a finger of an arid basin that stretches north into the Mojave Desert, America’s most serious hot place. In Death Valley, on the other side of the Mojave, the faucet taps in peoples’ houses are reversed: The water coming out of the pipes in the ground is so hot you can almost cook with it, and you make cool water indoors by storing it in your hot water heater tank with no heat on. I was amazed when I learned this. To the east lie the Little San Bernardino Mountains and Joshua Tree National Park, an otherworldly place of tortured rock and gnarled trees and throat-tightening vistas.

  The desert stopped wherever the ground was watered, and began again past the reach of the sprinklers. You could smell the difference as well as see it: Green grass smells like bread next to the mineral smell of hot dirt. When I was little I had a book, The Living Desert, with pictures of a fearsome fight to the death between a tarantula and a wasp. I read that book over and over, building a permanent belief in the desert’s uncaring treachery. Anything can prick you to death in the desert: cacti, tarantulas, wasps.

  The soft turf of the golf course cushioned my feet benevolently. A raft of coots and mallards clucked from the pond between the thirteenth and fourteenth holes. I caught Genie’s eye; she gave me a tight smile, then, catching herself being tense, blew out a long breath and rolled her shoulders. I gave her a wink.

  The group on the thirteenth green was taking its time putting out. This being a practice round, things always go slowly as players hit two or three balls, sometimes, and chip and putt to different places around the greens, testing the contours and speed.

  But somebody was taking a real hell of a long time up there, and as I walked closer I saw that it was Coco Nash. Her chocolate-brown skin shone in the clear sun. She was calmly putting a handful of balls from the back of the green to the far right side, where the flagstick might be on Saturday or Sunday, trying to gauge a break exactly, oblivious to the fact that her playing partners had finished and headed for the fourteenth tee.

  A silver-headed female fan wearing a Dove Soap visor à la Nancy Lopez said with quiet excitement, “This has been going on all day. I wonder when Genie Maychild’s gonna blow.”

  I looked back at Genie, who was talking and gesticulating to a course marshal. The marshal shook his head and shrugged lamely. She stalked away from him, cupped her hands to her mouth, and yelled, “Hey, Your Holiness! Move it already!”

  Coco Nash looked up in surprise. Then she deliberately lined up another putt, stroked it, lined up one more, stroked it, then walked off, as her caddie scurried around picking up her balls.

  The Dove lady spoke again. “She’s gotten inside Genie’s head now. Better watch out.”

  The instant the caddie’s hind sneaker left the surface of the green, Genie fired a shot in. The ball climbed to an impossible height, then dropped softly onto the center of the green.

  “Genie’s no head case,” I said proudly.

  After the round, Truby and I watched Genie walk past Coco, who had stopped to sign autographs and chat with a gaggle of fans. I couldn’t see Genie’s face, but Coco gave her a look that would’ve stripped varnish. Genie stopped and stood still for a second, then went on into the clubhouse.

  _____

  That night, Genie and I had Chinese dinners delivered and ate on the patio. I kind of missed Hesper. The evening was coming on cool, as it always does in the desert. The mountains flattened out black against the gleaming Western sky. I looked for Venus but didn’t find it. A sparrow paused on a bush, cheeped once, then vanished. It was some species of desert sparrow I didn’t know.

  “How do you feel about the course setup?” I asked.

  “Good. It’s good. The greens are like linoleum. Just the way I like it.”

  “I almost needed a machete to find my way to the lemonade stand.”

  She laughed and leaned over to give me a garlicky kiss. “Oh,” she said, “the rough’s not that bad. You know, we get a better setup than the men. The current fashion for the men is to grow the rough so high they can only hack their way back to the fairway with a wedge. No chance to make a good recovery shot. Here, the rough’s thick but
not so long, so we can use a longer club. It’s better golf. It rewards guts.”

  “You playing in the pro-am tomorrow?” I asked her.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You want me to find out when Coco’s teeing off so you can get ahead of her?”

  “Princess Coco,” Genie said. “I just wish she’d grow up.”

  “Looks like she just wishes you’d drop dead.”

  “Nothing would give her greater pleasure, I’m sure.”

  After a minute I said, “You think she deliberately tried to annoy you out there?”

  “No doubt. What’s up her butt? When she was a rookie she used to act respectful to me. Now she thinks she’s queen of the world. I’m not afraid of her.”

  I knew then that she was. Suddenly I began to hate Coco Nash. How dare she? Genie was the number-one player in the world, having paid her dues all over the place. Coco hadn’t proved she was anything but a one-season wonder.

  We talked of other things. While washing my hands in the clubhouse women’s room, I’d picked up a juicy bit of gossip about one of the older European stars, who was here this year. I overheard a woman with a bayou drawl say this star’s name, then go on to her friend, “She was, too! I was there last night and I saw it. She was higher than a Georgia pine, sister—she kept trying to get the waiter to take his pants off! Her caddie finally came and practically carried her out!”

  I repeated this to Genie, but she seemed uninterested. I asked her about a story I’d heard—well, a story everybody’s heard—you know, the one about that same golfer who supposedly went semi-nuts five or six years ago in the off season and tried to hold up a gas station in Mexico for drug money. “Do you know if that’s true?” I said, “Because, jeez—”

  Genie gave me a sharp look. “I don’t care what people did a long time ago.”

  For a few minutes I was ashamed of my prurient streak. But much earlier in my life I’d made peace with it, along with my morbid streak. They were there in me, and I had to pay them some attention sometimes—feed them, you know, or I’d get depressed. Once in a while I’d run over to the newsstand and pick up an armful of tabloids—The National Enquirer, Weekly World News, Star—plus that sluttiest of the slicks, Vanity Fair. After an hour or so leafing through them I’d feel all right again.

  After dinner we spent some time playing with Todd and listening to a Shirley Bassey retrospective on National Public Radio. We danced together in the Mediterranean living room, our steps light on the cool tile floor. The room smelled pleasantly of leather furniture and green plants. The radio station shifted over to a set of the Chieftains, and I couldn’t resist getting out my mandolin and playing along with a few songs. One was “Hardiman the Fiddler,” a slip jig Genie liked a lot. I was glad she liked music. I can’t live without it.

  Some athletes, I know, eschew sex before competition on the theory of conservation of energy. Others need sex to ease the tension and worry. Lucky for me, Genie was one of the latter. I settled Todd down with “Wildwood Flower,” his favorite song, and Genie and I retired.

  We enjoyed each other in a quiet way—almost, I’m tempted to say, in a meditative way. We’d already learned some things about each other, and now we took the time to explore those things in greater depth.

  For instance, there was a small glade of fine golden hair in the hollow of Genie’s back. This glade cried out for exploration; it invited me to enjoy it, to breathe it in and memorize it. I wanted to write a guidebook to it. I wanted to build a shrine around it. That glade of silky hair, the perfection of it, made me very happy.

  Moving along, caressing her, I noticed some whitish lines on her belly and thighs and wondered how they’d gotten there. They seemed like scars, yet they weren’t raised, as scars usually are. She guided me away from those areas and into the tulgy wood between her legs, where I chortled in my joy. Did she burble as she came, you ask? Don’t get so smart.

  I was joyful afterward, too, but restless. I didn’t know why. I got up quietly, put on Genie’s kimono, and went out to the patio. The air tasted good. A half moon was coming up, and by its pale shine I saw sprinklers shooting water in big glittering arcs over a distant fairway. The yellow gallery ropes sliced back and forth against the dark green grass. Faintly but distinctly the sprinkler sounds came to my ears: chik-chik-chik-chik-fwoosssh. I listened for owls and nighthawks.

  I thought about how much I like golf: the challenge of it, the beauty of it. The feeling of striking the ball cleanly and seeing it fly. The look of an open fairway stretching out from the tee, so green and inviting.

  I play at the cheapest municipal courses at the cheapest times of day, and I’ve endured being paired with drunk guys in undershirts, so being this close to a championship course felt magnificent. This was a place where drunk guys in undershirts weren’t welcome, and I felt grateful.

  I like golfers who don’t talk much. I like old people with crummy clubs who walk fast. I like teenagers who take it seriously and who bet each other Cokes and tacos on making tough shots. I like off-duty cops and firemen because five-foot birdie putts don’t faze them; they face death every day. I like golfers who know how to tend a pin. Who replace divots. Who at least have read the USGA rules.

  I heard something nearer. A ground squirrel? Falling palm fronds? I listened, my eyes open wide, as if that would help. Nothing except the sprinklers.

  I moved silently to the edge of the patio and saw something moving on the fairway quite near to where I was.

  It was a person moving stealthily along the border of a shadow cast by a large tree. I stood perfectly still.

  My pulse quickening, I watched him walk slowly along, now veering into the rough, closer still. He wore a cap pulled low; his figure was dark and slouched.

  Onward he walked, nearer and nearer. I heard his breathing. Sweat squirted from my palms. Abruptly he dropped to his knees and bent low, hands brushing the ground. Then he stood up and stepped quickly toward me.

  I heard myself say “Hey!” in a low, sharp voice.

  Instantly the figure sprang back, stumbling.

  “Hey!” I repeated, “What are you doing?”

  Before I’d finished the sentence, he took off running. I found myself striding after him, jumping the potted plants at the patio’s edge and running, too.

  He led me on a straight vector across two fairways, the both of us hurdling the gallery ropes, then he cut to the right and swerved toward some houses. My toes got good traction on the grass. My quarry was gaining distance on me, but not much: He was a fast runner, but I realized my legs were longer than his.

  He disappeared into the mist of the sprinklers. I charged on, slipping only a little on the wet grass, hoping to pick him up again on the other side. As I emerged from the spray I saw no one, then I heard a clunk and a grunt that sounded like someone tripping on something. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him, picking himself up and darting into the deep shadows between two houses.

  More slowly, I followed, feeling suddenly vulnerable. I made for the street, the wet kimono slapping my legs, and saw a light go on outside of a garage: one of those motion-sensor lights. My prowler sped through the pool of yellow light and kept going down the street. My lungs burned. Are you a quitter? I mustered another burst of speed. Houses flashed by; not another soul was out.

  It wasn’t enough. I lost sight of him and at last in the distance I heard a car door bang, an engine catch, and a brief scree of tires. I was alone on the dark street.

  13

  I decided not to tell Genie about this one. When I came out of the shower that morning, she wasn’t in the bedroom, and I had a feeling. I padded out to the living room and heard her voice, low and hard, coming from the den. The door was shut. I crept up and sealed my ear to it. It smelled of a very good grade of wood polish.

  “Yes, I can,” she was saying. “You don’t know what I can do to you.” Pause. “Listen to me. You’re not going to ruin this tournament for me, and you’re not going to ruin my life.”
Pause. “You don’t understand. You are nobody. You think you’re the most important person in the world, but you’re completely insignificant.” Pause. “To me, to everybody.” Pause. “Leave me alone. I’m telling you.”

  I scurried back to the bedroom.

  After breakfast I drove Genie to the clubhouse for the first day of the pro-am, intending to follow along. She’d come back to the bedroom, pretending very well not to be upset.

  The day was as clear as yesterday. You could still smell a little of the morning dew that hadn’t burned all the way off. The birds were chirping away, a whole host of passerines up in the trees, the males displaying their plumage and singing their springtime song: I need sex, I need sex, I need sex right now.

  Genie made her way over to the practice range where Peaches and Dewey O’Connor were waiting, and I wandered around. I watched Laurie Bradmoor chipping balls with surgical precision, and I watched Ying Lam Pan tee off on number 1 with her wide, powerful swing. It was amazing to me how few spectators there were. I’d volunteered at the Men’s Open one year at Oakland Hills, and it was so mobbed, even on the practice days, that you really had to scheme and strategize to get a good view anywhere. But here the players were fairly accessible: Nobody was getting mobbed; fans were able to speak to their favorite players, albeit briefly.

  You have to be respectful of the players while they’re working. You wouldn’t barge into an operating room and say, “Hiya, Doc, what’s shakin’? When’s lunch? How do you make those seams so even, anyhow?” No, you wouldn’t. But people do just that to golfers sometimes. I guess that’s showbiz, which of course is the essence of professional sports.

  I thought about Genie’s troubles. She was going to have to tell me something sooner or later, but I had a feeling it was going to be later. I was no detective, but I knew that the top ones on TV and in books always start at the most obvious and take it from there.

  Somebody, or somebodies, were harassing Genie, and she either wanted to deny it, or hide it, or both.