ELEVEN
Teach sat in the Grille Room at the Terra Ceia Country Club sipping his second beer. He had purchased a pitcher. He felt rank and grubby and knew he looked it. He hoped the members who glanced at him as they passed through would conclude that his greasy hair and thirty hours of beard were simply the Saturday-morning rebellion of a successful man who’d already played a relaxing nine. The eleven o’clock beer would just have to puzzle them.
After breakfast, Dean had gone up to her room for the friend phoning that was her Saturday-morning ritual. Teach had gone out to the garage and slipped on the polo shirt he kept in the LeSabre’s trunk for the times when he stopped at the driving range after work. In the club parking lot, he’d put on his golf shoes and a white visor, and walked to the Grille Room to order the beer and wait for attorney Walter Demarest.
Walter teed off at seven o’ clock Saturday mornings, sun or rain, no matter what the condition of the Great Republic or the needs of his well-heeled clients. Teach knew Walter’s patterns, knew he would pass through the Grille Room on his way home. He trusted Walter as much as he trusted anyone on the narrow social shelf that housed Paige’s friends. Walter played good golf, didn’t cheat, and had never said a word to Teach about any of his clients.
When Walter Demarest walked in, Teach was on his third beer and believed he might be looking exactly like a guy who’d played a pleasant early round. Walter went to the bar for his usual Amstel Light. With the bottle in his hand, he turned and surveyed the room. Teach waved. “Walt, join me, why don’t you?”
Walter Demarest glanced around the Grille Room as though he might get a better offer, saw nothing, smiled, and ambled over to Teach’s table. He was tall, round at the middle, and as pale as the belly of a catfish. He had coffee-black hair and the sort of chinless, hook-nosed look that reminded Teach of the British royal family. He had been president of his chapter of Alpha Tau Omega at Florida, and Teach had known him in one way or another for a long time.
Walter looked Teach over, sighting down the brown barrel of the Amstel bottle. “So, Teach old buddy, you get around already? How’d it go out there? I didn’t think you were an early bird.” Walter lowered the bottle from a mouth that was small and too crowded with chalky-looking teeth. Inbreeding, Teach thought, not for the first time.
Teach considered lying about a golf game. Why bother? Walter would question him about his deportment on the evil twelfth hole, a par five that required a drive and a long iron over water to a narrow landing, and he would have to invent golf shots and be questioned with legal precision about the lie of his ball and his choice of clubs. “Actually, Walter, I didn’t play this morning. I’ve been sitting here waiting for you. I need to talk to you about something important.”
Walter put the Amstel bottle on the table and shrugged on the mantle of his profession. Clearly, he did not want to wear it: not here, not now. He examined Teach carefully, noting in his mental ledger Teach’s greasy hair, the clean golf shirt, the haggard, unshaven face. His eyes lingered on the half-empty beer pitcher, then met Teach’s frankly. “Rough night?”
Teach nodded, drained his glass, and poured another. “Rougher than most. In fact, the roughest I’ve had in a long time.” He told the story, starting with the bar and Tyrone Battles and moving on to the crushing coincidence of the cop being the boy’s uncle. Walter winced at that particular detail. Teach finished with his getting out of Malone’s with his ass and a few tatters of his dignity intact, taking his bloody sleeve to the women’s club for Dean’s recital (Walter: “I saw you there. You did look a little, well, rattled, come to think of it. But Dean was wonderful as always.”), and, finally, the waking up to Marlie Turkel, the woman with hot sex in her voice and a Pulitzer Prize in her icy heart.
When Teach finished, Walter whistled low and slow. “Jesus, poor old Teach.”
Teach nodded, sighed, drank. He looked into Walter’s clear, cool, light-green eyes. “Walt, am I well and truly fucked?”
Walter pushed back in his chair, glanced around the still mostly vacant Grille Room, raised his empty bottle, and set it down again. Teach leaned over and poured beer into Walter’s bottle. Walter tasted the Budweiser and made a sour face. “You actually drink this stuff?”
Teach wanted to say that he had drunk a lot worse and liked it better, thank you very much, but he was after Walter’s legal opinion.
“Well,” Walter sighed, “there is of course a lot of terrain between well and truly fucked and just, say, fucked without a kiss, but I would say you are in some trouble.”
“What can the kid do, Walter?”
“Well, assuming there are no criminal charges—I mean assuming the cop, the uncle, decides to leave the matter where it lies—there’s still civil court. And believe me, my friend, anybody can sue anybody for anything in civil court, and the burden of proof is much less severe. It’s not proof beyond a reasonable doubt; it’s proof by the preponderance of the evidence. Lots of difference there, old buddy.”
“What about this guy, Thurman Battles, the kid’s other uncle? What’s he like?”
“Oh my Christ,” muttered Walter Demarest, drinking the Budweiser from his Amstel bottle. “Oh my sweet, suffering Savior, Thurman Battles is a bear. A veritable grizzly.”
Walter had said, Bay-ah, and Teach didn’t like it, but you couldn’t have every good thing with a friend, and Walter was a friend. Walter was, in fact, a lifeline thrown across the wild, heaving seas of this table to the leaky rowboat of Teach’s life. Teach drank the last of his beer and said, “You mean I couldn’t go talk to the guy. He wouldn’t listen to reason?”
Walter Demarest looked at him and slowly shook his head. Teach couldn’t tell if the man was weighing the stupidity of the question or was simply at a loss for words. Finally, Walter said, “Thurman Battles is reasonable as Thurman Battles sees reason. He’s reasonable as it suits him and his client. He’s reasonable when his reasoning is better than yours, and the judge and the jury know it. The rest of the time he’s Vlad the Impaler in an Armani suit.”
Teach had saved the best and the worst for last. The thing he had come here for. “Look, Walter,” he said, trying to get the man’s small, clear, green eyes to meet his, remembering all the times when the two of them had played golf with a pint of Wild Turkey in the cart, “I was wondering if you’d consider representing me if this thing gets out of hand. I mean, if this kid does file a civil action.”
Teach waited. Walter’s eyes brightened. He put down the beer Teach had given him and pushed back in his chair. “Uh, Jim . . .” His voice was measured and a little remote, the voice he used when telling Teach to put the five iron back into the bag and go with the six because, after all, there was a breeze behind them and Teach was hitting to a sloping green. And Teach noticed, vaguely, from the thickening haze of morning beer, that old buddy had gone away. Teach was Jim now. “Uh, Jim, I hate to say this, but you couldn’t afford me. Not for half as long as a thing like this could take if it goes the way Thurman Battles might want to take it.”
Teach felt his anger rise out of the beery mist. What the hell, how did Walter Demarest know what he could afford? And just as quickly as it blossomed, Teach’s anger wilted. Walter had been to Teach’s house, had seen him wearing the Brooks Brothers suits he bought once a year at the Christmas sale at the Old Hyde Park store. Walter had ridden in Teach’s two-year-old LeSabre once when his own Lexus was being serviced. Walter knew what he knew. Maybe this was a kindness.
“Listen, Jim,” Walter said, rising and leaning forward, putting his pale, manicured hands on the table, “call my office on Monday and I’ll give you the name of a young guy I know who’s just getting started. He’s good, and he won’t charge you an arm and a leg, and I’m sure he’ll do as good a job with this thing as I could. Hell,” he added, “maybe better.”
Walter pushed off from the table and crossed to the bar where he signed his check and left his empty bottle. As he headed for the door, Teach called out, “See you out
on the course, old buddy.”
Walter didn’t turn or speak, just raised his left hand, giving Teach the back of it in a jaunty wave.
Teach finished the beer, feeling like a very old buddy. He got up a little unsteadily, carried the pitcher and his glass to the bar, and signed the chit. Trevor, the weekend bartender, retrieved the pen from him, did not look at the tip, and said, “Going to hit some now, Mr. Teach? It’s a gorgeous day out there.”
Teach smiled. “Maybe I will get a bucket.”
In the parking lot, he was stowing his golf shoes in the trunk of the Buick when he saw Bama Boyd walking from the pro shop to her old Alfa Romeo. Jesus. Teach had completely forgotten. He was supposed to play this morning with Bama and two guys from the St. Pete club where Bama was an assistant pro.
Hiding behind the raised trunk, Teach glanced at his watch, tried to remember when they’d agreed to meet. It was eleven twenty now. His memory wouldn’t give up the needed detail. Tall, willowy, grave in the way that all great golfers are, and, yes, masculine, Bama put her golf bag into the trunk of the ancient Alfa and quietly closed it. He watched her look back at the pro shop, her still-beautiful face a little leathery from years on golf courses. She looked like a tall house about to fall down. She opened the car door with a hand Teach knew well, because he had held it, kissed it in their long-ago youth. She got into the car without even removing her golf shoes.
Teach imagined the scene inside the pro shop. Bama and her two friends presenting themselves at the counter. The assistant pro, an arrogant kid named Neally, explaining to them that they could only play as guests with a member. Bama asking, one professional to another, for an exception. After all, Mr. Teach had meant to be here, would probably arrive a little after their tee time. Would probably catch up with them on the third or fourth hole. Bama using that Alabama charm, and maybe a little of the reputation she’d had as a college golfer, to get the kid to bend the rules. But Teach knew the kid wouldn’t bend. He imagined Bama, the all-American, the college girl he had dated ardently and publicly, standing there pissed and belittled in front of two guys from her club. How could he have forgotten this date with her? Christ, who would have remembered anything after Marlie Turkel?
Teach peeked over the lid of the trunk. The two guys were nowhere in sight. Probably already gone after a long drive from St. Pete and an ego-spanking from a twenty-three-year-old assistant pro with a scratch handicap and an attitude. A guy too young, maybe, to remember the golden exploits of Bama Boyd. Teach saw the dark blue smoke blow from Bama’s exhaust pipe, knew he should come out of hiding and hurry down the parking lot, stop her. Apologize. At least invite her in for a beer. But he couldn’t. Not now. Not this morning. This morning too many things had happened and there was more to come. So much to come that he could not summon even common decency. Teach hid, hoping Bama would take the far exit, would not drive past the spot where he crouched over an open trunk.
They hadn’t seen each other for a long time. This morning was to have been a reunion. The excuses and last-minute cancellations had all been Teach’s. There was the long drive across the bay, Bama’s perpetual marginal employment, the way it got difficult for him to answer her questions about his own success, the way the old stories got harder to tell about how Bama had been the Lady Gator long-drive queen, the next Nancy Lopez to his king of Gator football. The world had belonged to them for a while, and for a while it looked as though they would make a life together. And then one night in the backseat of Teach’s car, Bama had confessed her secret. She liked women. She loved them, in fact. And Teach was, she had explained to him, a beard.
A what?
It meant, she had told him, a woman who married a gay man to conceal his nature. “But I’m not a woman,” Teach had said, still holding Bama Boyd in his arms.
“And I’m not a man,” she had replied, “but the arrangement we have . . . is the same.”
Teach moved away from her then. “I wasn’t aware we had . . . an arrangement. I thought we loved each other.”
“We do,” she said, starting to cry. “We do, but I don’t love you . . . that way. I can’t. I can only love women that way. But nobody can know it.”
Teach had thought she could love him that way. She had sure acted like it. In motels across two counties, she had acted like it very well. But acting was acting, and she was right. Nobody could know it. Not in that time and place.
“You have to promise me,” she said. “Nobody can know.”
“Sure, I promise.” And he had meant it. He asked her, “So do we keep on . . . ?”
“Yeah,” she’d said, crying hard now. “We have to keep on . . . for a while. Then,” she was sobbing so hard that he moved back to her and took her in his arms again, “then we have to break up. It’ll be in all the papers. Our breakup. It’ll be big news. And we, I mean, I won’t date anyone after that. I’ll be carrying a torch for you.”
“So I’ll be the reason we break up?”
“Yes. If you don’t mind. Please, Jimmy, I’d like it if you’d be the reason. It would be better for me.”
They both knew this meant that Teach had to find a new girl, and he had to do it publicly, and that in the public eye he would be the lout who had dumped Bama Boyd, ruining a sports-page romance.
“Okay,” Teach had said, “but I’m gonna miss you.” He held her hard in his arms, trying to press into his body the memory of hers forever, and hoping that as she wept and pressed back, holding him hard too, in some strange way she was not acting. And he did miss her. For a long time.
Now Bama backed up, gave the Alfa’s once-furious engine a couple of rumbling revs, and rolled toward Teach. He duckwalked around to the front of the Buick, hid there, his head throbbing with shame, while she rolled past. Teach tried to form in his mind the words of the apology he would phone to Bama. He would tell her about hiding. She would know about that. And he’d tell her it wasn’t her he was hiding from.
TWELVE
Meador Pharmaceuticals operated a manufacturing facility in what had once been an orange grove west of Tampa. The firm produced formulas developed by its small research division, but mostly served as an importer and distributor of offshore drugs. An anti-inflammatory from Mexico, a hypertension pill from Switzerland, and fertility drugs from France and Germany. James Teach managed the sales force, men and women who went out every day to physician’s offices, clinics, and hospitals purveying Meador drugs and the perks that went with them. Teach had started with Meador on the loading dock and had risen to sales, then to sales management, and finally to a vice presidency.
He had known for a long time that he would not be considered for the presidency. Mabry Meador, the company’s founding president and CEO, and his wife, Oona, had produced two daughters. One daughter had married well, the other not so well, but both had married ambition. Mabry Meador was as healthy a sixty-year-old as Teach had ever seen, and when he decided to step down, the top job would go to a son-in-law: Ambition A or Ambition B. Teach figured he’d be swept out in the housecleaning when Ambition ascended to the presidential suite.
As he got out of the LeSabre and stood stretching in the hot, muggy morning, he knew that even his present position was uncertain. Mabry Meador would have read the newspaper. If he had missed the article about Teach, then someone from the company would have called him, in the company’s best interest, of course.
Mabry Meador encouraged such things. He was a Southern Baptist who believed in a heaven of cottony clouds and plucking lyres, and a hell of eternal, unbearable fire. He abhorred shady dealing or sharp practice. The Meador sales force was required to balance expense accounts to the penny and to submit to vigorous questioning by company accountants should any voucher suggest lavish tendencies. Meador insisted that all members of middle- and top-level management attend biannual retreats on the campus of a Baptist summer camp to discuss research and development, sales strategies, and the fraying moral fiber of the nation. Failure to attend the retreats was career suicide.
Teach lifted his briefcase from the front seat of the LeSabre and wondered how to play his entrance. Should he breeze in like this was just another Monday, and there was no reason for him, or anyone else, to worry about the strange but insignificant events of the previous Friday afternoon? Should he enter wearing the small, grim smile that said, What the hell, I’m in a little trouble here, but I’m still the guy you know and respect? Or should he stride in angry? Show them the righteous combativeness of a man unjustly accused? The trouble was that he felt all of these things at once.
As he walked from his car to the door, Teach reviewed in his mind Marlie Turkel’s article. It was a masterpiece of innuendo and insinuation masquerading as objective reporting. The article followed the line of her questioning on the phone. She led her readers from Teach’s narrative of his actions in the men’s room (hotly disputed, of course, by Tyrone Battles), to Teach’s drinking, to the “pattern of violence” in his life (she devoted nearly half the article to the Nate Means incident). Artfully and subtly, she floated the implication that James Teach was a frustrated, substance-abusing white man who had pounded the shit out of Tyrone Battles, star athlete and honor student, because Battles was to Teach, in some twisted way, a reprise of Nate Means, the million-dollar athlete who had come into the NFL just as Teach was leaving it a failure.
Opening the heavy glass front door of Meador, he became aware that his lips were moving in violent debate with Marlie Turkel. Damn it, he thought, pull yourself together. He tried to compose himself for business as usual, but the exertion of his mental argument had left a sheen of sweat on his face.
“Good morning, Mr. Teach.” Celia, the receptionist with bubblegum-pink lipstick and big blond hair.
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