“What about the fellow in jail? You think he may be innocent.”
“That’s the story Mulloy should be pursuing. And I think she will.”
“You liked her, didn’t you?”
“Yes. And I hope I prevented her from doing something foolish.”
Scarne looked at his watch.
“I have to get this report over to the Times. Huber has set up another meeting. What’s Noah been doing? How is he holding up?”
Evelyn laughed.
“Juliette has him jumping through hoops for the wedding. It’s been fun to watch.”
“Poor bastard.”
***
Scarne flew Aer Lingus out of JFK at 6 PM Thursday night, arriving at Shannon Airport at 6 AM the next morning. Noah Sealth’s wedding wasn’t until Saturday afternoon, but there was a rehearsal party scheduled for Friday night.
It was almost a two-hour drive from Shannon to Killarney. Scarne had arranged to be picked up by a car service that specialized in golf vacations, which would take him to the three courses he wanted to play in southern Ireland after the wedding. The service would also provide him with top-of-the line golf clubs, as he had no desire to bring his own clubs in what he hoped would be a very relaxing mini-vacation. When he inquired about caddies — walking courses in Ireland was something of a rite of passage — he was happy to find out that his Killarney-based driver moonlighted as a “looper,” as caddies were called.
When Scarne exited customs, he quickly spotted the ruddy-looking man holding up a sign with his name on it.
“Corrick Mahoney, Mr. Scarne. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
They shook hands.
“How about we go straight to first names, Corrick. I’m Jake.”
“Jake it is. Let me help you with your luggage. The car is right over there.”
Mahoney put Scarne’s bags in the back of a small dark-blue Volkswagen Tiguan SUV. On its side was the name Killarney Transportation.
“Want to sit up front with me, Jake?”
Scarne had slept on the flight, but knew he was probably in for a rough night.
“Mind if I cat nap on the ride to the hotel, Corrick? We can talk later. And I can catch up on the scenery when we go to the golf courses.”
“Not at all. If you are going to a wedding in Killarney, you are bound to fall in with some bad actors. You’ll need your rest.”
“Besides, I’ll miss all the traffic circles. Still throws me when cars enter them on the left.”
Mahoney laughed.
“Well, it would be a short vacation if we entered a roundabout on the right.”
Scarne got in the back seat and promptly fell asleep.
***
“Wake up, Jake, we’re here.”
Scarne jolted upright, still a bit groggy. The SUV was pulling into the circular driveway of the Killarney Park Hotel, where most of the wedding guests had booked rooms and where both the rehearsal party and reception were to be held over the next two days. Mahoney, carrying Scarne’s luggage, followed him into the hotel.
An attractive young woman at the reception desk smiled as they walked up.
“Hello, Corrick,” she said. “Nice to see you again.”
“Always a pleasure, Moira. This is Mr. Scarne.
“Oh, yes. We’ve been expecting you Mr. Scarne. A few of the guests for the wedding have already checked in.”
“I’ll leave you then,” Mahoney said. “I’ll be out front at 9 AM Sunday. I’ll have your clubs. All you’ll need are golf shoes. Dress warmly. You can always peel off layers. Weather is supposed to be good, but this is Ireland. You never know.”
“What about rain gear?”
“I have some extra if you need it. And you can pick up rain gloves at the course if it looks dicey. Enjoy the festivities.”
With that, Mahoney left and Scarne finished checking in.
His room was on the third floor and after tipping the porter, Scarne went over to a brightly ribboned bag on a table. His name was stapled on a card which also offered “Best Wishes from Juliette and Noah”. The bag contained the usual assortment of small gifts commonly given wedding guests: chocolates, cookies, potato chips and the like. There was also a bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey, which Scarne suspected wasn’t in every gift bag.
He lifted it out and smiled.
“Thanks, Noah,” he said.
Sealth had asked Scarne to be his best man, which both surprised and pleased him.
“We’ve certainly come a long way since our first encounter,” Scarne told him the night Sealth made the request. They were sitting at the bar in Pulse, a trendy restaurant on the third floor of Rockefeller Center. “At which time you called me a dickwad.”
“First impression,” Sealth said. “I seem to recall you were going to punch me until the FBI guys intervened.”
“You mean, saved your life.”
Sealth, a bear of a man who had been one of Seattle’s toughest homicide cops, laughed. He still had at least 30 pounds on Scarne, despite an effort to trim his waistline prior to the wedding.
The bartender came over.
“Another round, fellas?”
“Do you know what they say about martinis?” Scarne said.
All three men said in unison: “They are like a woman’s breasts. One is not enough and three are too many.”
“I guess I’ve told you that before,” Scarne said to the bartender.
“Only a dozen times, Jake.”
He took their glasses away and started mixing more martinis.
“Place is trendy, but they make a good drink,” Sealth said. “So, you’ll stand up for me?”
“Till I drop, Noah. I’m honored.”
“Juliette will be pleased, very pleased.”
Their drinks came.
“To Juliette,” Scarne said.
They clinked glasses.
“But I’m still not forgiving you for that jelly donut,” Sealth said. “Bastard.”
Scarne laughed, recalling that first meeting, in Scarne’s conference room during the Ballantrae affair. Scarne knew Sealth coveted the last donut in a box sitting between them. Out of spite, he wolfed it down before Sealth could make his move.
“You damn near swallowed it whole,” Sealth said. “I was hoping you chocked on it.”
“I was so hung over I almost threw up on the FBI guys,” Scarne said.
Now, smiling at the memory, Scarne poured himself a healthy drink of Jameson and sipped it while he unpacked. The wedding rehearsal was scheduled for 6 P.M. in the Franciscan Church friary a few blocks from the hotel. When he’d checked in, Moira at the front desk told him it was only a five-minute walk from the hotel “unless you stop for a pint.”
***
Scarne skipped grabbing a pint on the way to the friary, but not many after. The rehearsal party back at the hotel was reasonably subdued, but then some of the younger guests insisted on walking the main street of Killarney, which seemed to consist of bars surrounded by bars, across the street from more bars. The wedding-party group was an eclectic mix of Irish and French and as the American best man, Scarne felt obligated to show the flag. Everyone in town, it seemed, knew Juliette’s family and wanted to buy anyone associated with the wedding a pint of Guinness or a shot of Jameson Irish whiskey, often at the same time. With three nationalities trying to outdo themselves in the libation department, it was a sorry band of revelers who made it back to the hotel at 2 A.M.
Scarne politely declined a not-too-subtle offer of bedtime companionship from an inebriated bridesmaid, who blithely moved on to another target, an Irish boy more her age. He later saw the lad entering her room just down the hall from his.
Scarne had nothing against marriage, but was not a big fan of weddings, which he often found interminable. But he had to admit that Noah and Juliette’s was a wonderful affair, from the church service through the reception. For one thing. it was a small, intimate wedding. In addition to Scarne, only Evelyn, along with her current bo
yfriend, an affable investment banker named Fred, and Sam Glaswen, Noah’s former partner in Seattle, had made the trip from the States.
Recently divorced, and glad of it, Glaswen, a wiry man with thinning blond hair and a beaked nose, hit it off with Scarne.
“I’ve heard some things about you,” he said at one point when they both were at the bar getting drinks for their table.
“Likewise,” Scarne replied.
“Want to swap lies?”
“You bet.”
The two men spent an enjoyable hour back at their table talking about past cases. Glaswen was now the senior detective in the Seattle Homicide Department.
“Boyko still the top dog in the Ukrainian mob in your town?”
“Yes,” Glaswen replied
“Give him my regards.”
Glaswen laughed.
“Yeah. I’ll do that. I know the story.”
“I have to ask you,” Scarne said at one point, “did that hagfish really come out of Maria Brutti’s ….?”
They were interrupted by the bride and groom. Both men stood and told Juliette how beautiful she looked, and asked her what she was doing marrying the world’s ugliest man.
“It’s time for the best man’s toast, Jake,” Juliette said, laughing.
As Scarne walked away, Glaswen whispered, “I’d leave out the hagfish.”
CHAPTER 1 6– BRASSIE
Sunday morning dawned cold but sunny. Scarne dressed warmly — slacks, golf shirt and a light sweater — and went down to breakfast, carrying a small bag that contained his golf shoes, a windbreaker and some extra clothes in case he got soaked. From what he’d heard about playing in Irish wind and rain, he suspected that any rain gear short of an astronaut’s space suit would be inadequate.
Noah and Juliette were in the lobby, just leaving for their honeymoon on Italy’s Amalfi coast.
“You just missed Evelyn and Fred,” Juliette said. “They’re off to Ross to see her parents before heading back to New York.”
Scarne looked at Noah.
“What? Are you contagious? Don’t tell me Evelyn is planning to get hitched.”
“Don’t know,” Noah said. “Maybe she just wants to see her folks. How long are you staying?”
“I’m flying back Thursday, if I survive Irish golf.”
A limousine pulled up. Juliette gave Scarne a big hug and a kiss and Noah clapped him on the back. Scarne walked them out and watched them drive away.
“Mornin’, Jake.”
Scarne turned to see his driver, Corrick Mahoney, standing next to his SUV drinking coffee out of a paper cup. He was wearing shorts.
“Good lord, man, you will freeze to death,” Scarne said.
“It’s almost 60 degrees,” Mahoney said, “and they say it may get to 70. To us, that’s like equatorial Africa. Besides, one gets pretty warm humping a bag and climbing hills. Not that you will hit your ball there, of course.”
“Well, at least come on inside and have a proper breakfast,” Scarne said.
“Oh, no, thanks. My wife fixed me something and gave me a thermos. I’m fine. I like to stand out here and chat with the other drivers. Take your time. Your clubs are in the car. Nice set. Look like brand-new Cobras. Didn’t know you were a lefty, though.”
“Jesus.”
“Only kidding, Jake. Go have your breakfast.”
Scarne handed him his travel bag.
“Wouldn’t mind if you copped one of those sweet rolls from the buffet, though.”
Scarne laughed.
The dining room, just off the lobby, had a decent crowd, but he recognized only a few of the older guests from the wedding reception and they exchanged smiles. He knew many of the younger revelers had probably again closed the pubs in Killarney Sunday night after the reception. Friday night’s pub crawling had been enough for Scarne. He was looking forward to having a relatively clear head for his three days of golf and was glad he’d quit drinking at a sensible time. But that didn’t prevent him from feeling a tinge of regret that all men have when they realize they are at an age where sensible makes sense. As if in rebellion to that fact, he told the waitress he wanted a double order of bacon with his eggs.
“And a Bloody Mary!”
“Yes, sir,” the girl said, looking at him strangely.
A half hour later he was sitting in the front of the SUV listening to Mahoney describe the sights on their way to Ballybunion, the first of the three classic Irish courses he would play. The man was a font of local, historic and ecological lore.
“It’s a pity you won’t have more time to explore the countryside, Jake. We’ve got megalithic tombs and monuments that predate the pyramids.”
“It certainly is beautiful.”
“Well, God had to do something to make up for the climate. The glaciers carved out the valleys and filled them with lakes. All that water created magnificent woodlands. Movement of the tectonic plates and volcanic activity gave us mountains and seashore cliffs.” Mahoney laughed. “But I bet He never expected us lunatics to build golf courses on such terrain.”
***
If he had to do it over again, “the Old Course” at Ballybunion would not have been the first challenge a sleep-deprived Scarne would have chosen for his introduction to Irish golf. Dubbed “the best in the world” by none other than the legendary Tom Watson, it meandered through massive grass-and-heather-cropped dunes along the Atlantic an hour and a half from Killarney. The first tee abutted a graveyard which, Scarne soon realized, should have served as a warning of what was to come.
After three consecutive double bogies, a frustrated Scarne, who had to hack sideways from 100-foot-high heather-encrusted mounds in the rough just to get back to fairways, could only mutter that “at least the view is spectacular.”
Which it was. The day was clear and crisp, with only a mild breeze. The green of the fairway and blue of the ocean were so pure they almost hurt the eyes.
Scarne wasn’t alone in his misery. He had been paired up with a taciturn Frenchman named Claude Something, who sprayed his shots even further afield, and whose golfing vocabulary seemed to consist of four phrases: “merde!”, “fils de pute!”, “votre mère est une prostituée!” and “manger mon robinet!” The Frenchman’s caddie, who retrieved some golf balls from places that would have given a mountain goat pause, looked exhausted.
Finally, Mahoney, as good a caddie as he was a raconteur, steadied Scarne.
“Put the bloody driver away, Jake. You’ve warmed me up enough, climbing these hills. This course calls for a brassie.”
“What the hell is a brassie? Some sort of poison? Or is it another French cussword?”
Mahoney laughed.
“No, it’s what you Yanks would call a 2-wood, although I haven’t seen one in years. So, just use your 3-wood off the tee, or maybe even a long iron. You’re too good a golfer to get discouraged by a few bad holes. You are putting beautifully, but that won’t count for much unless you get on the green.”
It worked. By the end of the day, Scarne had shot a respectable 86, which he knew, would have translated into a sub-80 round on just about any American golf course. He felt he’d earned the pints of Guinness he and Mahoney quaffed in Ballybunion’s bar after the round. He even bought a drink for the Frenchman, whose good humor was restored, although he said he’d rather go to Devil’s Island than play Ballybunion again.
The “well done” bestowed by Mahoney as they relived Scarne’s round on the way back to Killarney was icing on the cake.
“Imagine what you will do with a good night’s sleep, Jake.”
Which was what Scarne got after a fine dinner of roast lamb at Gaby’s, the French restaurant owned by Juliette’s parents. They treated him like royalty and didn’t want to accept his credit card until he vowed never to return unless they did. But they insisted on buying his bottle of Château Teyssier Grand Cru Bordeaux. Claiming an early start the next day, he was barely able to escape their offer of cognac.
Back in his
room, Scarne turned on the television. Most of the sports shows on local channels were devoted to soccer and rugby, but he did manage to catch a report on the NFL draft that was about to take place in Chicago’s Allstate Arena, the much-ballyhooed NFL event having outgrown the Radio City Music Hall in New York. He did not recognize the two talking heads on the show, a black man and a white man whose thick necks marked them as ex-jocks. They were sitting at a desk in front of a screen that flashed pictures of various athletes as they were mentioned.
“This year’s quarterback and wide receiver crop is loaded, Hal,” the black announcer intoned.
“I agree, Jamal. It’s funny. These things seem to run in cycles. Next year it will be different. Linemen and running backs may dominate.”
“And it’s pretty much a given what the top picks this year will be, Hal. I figure Marcus Weatherly and Ford Landon will go first round, one and two, and your guess is as good as mine who gets grabbed first.”
Photos of Weatherly and Landon appeared on the screen behind the announcers. There were individual shots of the two stars, as well as pictures of the two of them horsing around on a football field or a locker room.
“I can’t call that one, either,” the white ex-jock agreed. “I still can’t believe they played their senior year. Man, they left millions, tens of millions on the table by not coming out early. I mean I know they promised themselves a national title, but come on! We’re talking some serious dough here!”
“Hey, they are the Touchdown Twins, right? Sometimes it ain’t all about the money. They listen to their own drummer. Been like that since, what, Pop Warner or something. Got to admire them, even though they missed out on the national title. Too many close games and Collier lost at least one they should have won. But they sure made up for it with that thrashing of Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl. That didn’t hurt their chances in the draft, that’s for damn sure. And I hear that they will insist on winding up on the same NFL team! Can you imagine the horse trading of draft picks that will be going on around the league if that’s true?”
PEDESTAL (JAKE SCARNE THRILLERS Book 5) Page 15