Purgatory Gardens

by Peter Lefcourt

  To their credit, Walt and Biff did not blink when Sammy pulled up to the tee box with Didier beside him in the cart.

  “I think you know my caddie,” Sammy said.

  “Yes, we’ve met,” Walt said crisply. “Why don’t you tee off, Sammy? I’d use a three-wood on this hole if I were you. Narrow fairway.”

  Sammy took his three-wood out, walked over to the box, teed his Titleist Pro V1—a five-dollar extravagance—took three warm-up swings, then addressed the ball, wriggling hips, before topping it and watching it roll about seventy yards to the right of the fairway and into some serious rough.

  “Take a mulligan,” Biff said.

  “No, thank you.”

  Then father and son both hit long, straight drives, and walked back to their carts.

  “I’m going to ride with Walt,” Sammy said.

  Father and son exchanged a barely perceptible look before Biff got into the cart beside Didier. Sammy took the wheel of the other cart. He was only about twenty yards down the cart path when Walt said, “This better be good.”

  “It is.”

  “Okay. It’s your dime, Sammy. I’m listening.”

  “Let me cut to the chase here.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Putting aside the fact that you took a contract on me from the guy who you were supposed to take care of for me—which, besides being bad business ethics, is fucking slimy—I suggest we reach some sort of accommodation.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “You cancel both contracts and we all walk away.”

  “They’re binding contracts.”

  “Let’s cut the shit, Walt.”

  “With the completion money paid, we might consider it.”

  “You’re not going to get any more money from me. Or from him.”

  “That so?”

  “Yup.”

  “I’ve got your signatures on enforceable contracts.”

  “Good. Take me to court. Five years from now, if we’re both still alive, I’ll testify to the terms of the deal we made. We’ll see what a jury says about your patio deck business.”

  “I want you to think about this very carefully, Sammy. Because once I get out of this cart and walk away, you and I won’t see each other again.”

  “My pleasure, believe me.”

  “I know where you and your caddie live.”

  “So?”

  “You want to spend the rest of your life afraid to order a pizza?”

  “I’ll take that chance.”

  “Because we’re very good at what we do.”

  “Could have fooled me. You fucked up twice already.”

  Walt looked hurt by Sammy’s attack on his professional competence.

  “Okay. We’re done here,” the man said petulantly.

  “Not quite. Listen, you may know where I live, but I know who you are and what you do. All I have to do is go to the DOJ and sing. I happen to have friends there.”

  “If you’re alive to talk to them.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve written it all out, chapter and verse, on how you do business—the patio decks, the Pizza Hut, the Vons parking lot, the whole thing—and left a copy with the United States Marshals Service with explicit instructions to open it if and when something happens to me. Or to Mr. Onyekachukwu.”

  Walt laughed. But it was a flimsy laugh, with cracks around the edges. Sammy read the tell. The guy was holding a pair of deuces.

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “I don’t give a shit whether you do or not.”

  The cart was on the path beside Sammy’s ball, buried in the rough. He couldn’t get it out of there with a blowtorch. As he sat there next to Walt, Sammy could feel the man’s ambivalence. He had revealed his ace, and Sammy was still in the pot. Not only calling, but raising. The bluff had worked.

  And as he realized this, he had an epiphany. They didn’t have to kill Walt and Biff after all. The man had bought the story. Enough, at least, so he wasn’t going to risk coming after them. What was the point of killing two men if there was no money in it, and the possibility of a grand jury indictment to boot?

  Sammy had gone almost seventy years without actually murdering someone, so why start now? He didn’t need a mortal sin on his plate. You never knew. Maybe that shit about heaven and hell was true. Maybe the priests knew what the fuck they were talking about after all.

  “Tell you what,” Sammy said. “You talk it over with Biff. But before you even do that, call the Palms Springs PD bomb squad and tell them to come out and unwire your ignition.”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  “Go ahead. Make my day.”

  Sammy put the cart in reverse and backed up until he was alongside the other cart. “Let’s go, Didier. We’re out of here.”

  Didier got out of Biff’s cart and into Sammy’s. As they drove toward the parking lot, Sammy said, “Don’t ask any questions. I’ll explain everything to you later.”

  Sammy put the clubs in the Porsche and pulled out of the lot. Sitting at a light a mile away, they heard the explosion. Five minutes after that, as they approached Paradise Gardens, they passed fire trucks speeding down 111 in the opposite direction, sirens blaring.

  At six o’clock that evening, Sammy, Didier, and Marcy were at the Olive Garden taking advantage of the early bird New Year’s Eve dinner. For $12.99, they got a glass of champagne, a salad, a pasta dish, dessert (choice of ice cream or tiramisu), and a half-bottle of Chianti. The place was mobbed.

  “So, how was golf today, guys?” Marcy asked.

  “It was most satisfactory, Marcee.”

  “I’m so glad you two are getting along.”

  Neither of them contradicted her.

  Marcy recited her New Year’s resolutions.

  “This year, I am going to eat less red meat, exercise more, learn to dance the salsa, and read Anna Karenina. And, of course, be kinder to my fellow man and woman.”

  “That sounds like fun,” Sammy quipped.

  “What about you?”

  “Stay alive,” he responded without hesitation.

  “Is that all?”

  “That’s enough.”

  When she turned to Didier and asked him about his resolutions, he shrugged his Afro-Gallic shrug and said, “Who knows what the future holds? La vie est un longue fleuve tranquil.”

  “Speak English, for chrissakes,” Sammy barked.

  “It would not hurt you, Samee, to expand your horizons.”

  “My horizons are expanded far enough, thank you very much.”

  “Guys . . .” she said. But there was a touch of softness on the edge of her rebuke. They were bickering, she was convinced, like old friends, and not like the enemies they had been before her intervention. They were pals. And they were both still sniffing her bottom.

  As far as she was concerned, it remained a difficult choice between them. Her jury was still out. Maybe it would stay out for a while. Why not? What was the hurry? There were advantages to enjoying the attentions of two men at the same time. For centuries, men had been doing it with their wives and mistresses. What was good for the goose . . .

  She’d have two lovers. Both ardently devoted to her. What’s not to like?

  They finished the evening at Marcy’s, watching the Times Square ball drop on tape delay. They sang “Auld Lang Syne.” Off-key. Everyone kissed one another, more or less. Klaus looked on from his cushion, farting contentedly.

  It wasn’t until the two men left, together as usual, that Marcy turned on the late local news. There was Tracy Tohito, standing beside the yellow crime scene tape earlier that day. She was wearing a knit suit that accentuated her tight little Asian body. How do you compete with that? They were born that way. They didn’t have to exercise. They could eat anything they wanted.

  “I am here in the parking lot of the Tahquitz Creek Golf Course, where at approximately seven forty this morning, a bomb went off in the van of a local exterminating and patio deck company. Fortu
nately, the owners of the van, Walt and Biff Keller, were not inside the vehicle. They had used a remote device to start the engine, which apparently exploded on ignition. This is the second vehicle explosion within the past month, and police are once again being tight-lipped about their investigation . . .”

  They cut to Tracy Tohito talking to Detective Sergeant Jorge Melendez, as he sat in his car trying to eat a Subway sandwich, a napkin covering his Kmart trousers.

  “Do you think there’s any link between this car bombing and the one at Vons?” she asked, sticking the microphone into the car.

  “We’re very early in the investigation, Tracy.”

  “Is it possibly the work of the Taliban again?”

  “We are not ruling out anything at this point in time.”

  “Have the Kellers made a comment?”

  “No comment.”

  They cut back to the reporter at the crime scene for the wrap-up. “Very little is clear about what appears to be an attempted murder. The two men who escaped death when their van blew up have remained unavailable for comment. All we know is that they are father and son and own Acme Exterminating and Patio Decks, a local business. The good news this New Year’s Eve is that no one was hurt, except a squirrel that had wandered too close to the car when the blast went off. Animal rights activists are looking into the possibility of a negligence suit. This is Tracy Tohito, Eyewitness News, at the Tahquitz Creek Golf Course. Have a very Happy New Year.”

  She flashed her bleached-white smile and dissolved into a commercial. Marcy hit the remote and sat on her couch, letting it all wash over her. Son of a bitch. They weren’t in Kansas anymore. This was really getting interesting. This was classic film noir. This was Double Indemnity with a modern twist.

  And Marcy wasn’t Ann-Margaret in Grumpy Old Men; she was Jeanne Moreau in Jules and Jim. The three of them were in an old car, heading over a bridge that ended midway over the river. Nobody would ever know what happened. Fade Out. Roll credits.

  Tomorrow she’d pitch the story again to Charlie Berns. With the new ending. The three of them at the Olive Garden on New Year’s Eve. The subdued gaiety. The dialogue, rich with subtext. The old year fading away. The new one on the horizon. Que sera?

  They’d get Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman to play Sammy and Didier. Ed Harris and Sam Rockwell to play the father-and-son hit men, Kathy Bates for Evelyn Duboff—or maybe even Meryl. Why not? She could do the accent. But she’d have to read. The only casting locked in was Marcy Gray as the beautiful woman who had driven two men to explore the darkness within them. She’d kill.

  The movie star climbed into bed with Klaus. Nuzzling up to the dachshund, she lifted up his floppy ear and cooed, “Schlaf, mein lieber Hund.”

  Then she turned her good side to the camera, allowed the light to bathe her eyes—distant, mysterious, damaged—and whispered, “I think this is going to be a very good year.”