Safer

by Sean Doolittle

  This is unbelievable. “But you’re telling me that…”

  “What I’m telling you is that I hadn’t had a drink in two years,” Bennett says. “Two years and twenty- seven days, to be accurate. But I keep a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black in my office at home. A gift from a client that I’ve never opened.

  Sentimental reasons.” He looks at me. “The truth, Paul, is that in spite of my anger at being openly threatened—at this threat against my son, a mile from my home—I’d already decided to drop your case before I cracked the seal on that bottle. The truth is that I hadn’t planned to come to court this morning at all.”

  Now he looks at Sara.

  “And my point,” he tells her, “is that from this moment forward, you don’t have to worry about how crazy anything you tell me about Roger Mallory will sound.”

  For the first time since the police showed up on our door step last night, Sara looks genuinely frightened. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen this look before. Not even the night a stranger came into our house and attacked her in our bed. Not quite like this.

  “My God,” she says.

  I can’t think of a thing to add.

  Bennett says, “Tell me how you came to find your credit card statement in Mallory’s house.”

  I feel numb.

  “Paul?”

  “That’s not what started this,” I tell him. I want to beg Sara’s forgiveness before I say another word.

  “What happened?”

  My turn.

  12.

  INSTEAD OF “HELLO,” Charlie Bernard said, “Let me see if I heard this correctly.”

  “Hey, Charlie.” I held the phone with my shoulder while I tied my shoes. “Heard what correctly?”

  “When I phoned last evening, I was told that you were unavailable.”

  “Sorry I missed you, buddy. Sara said you called.”

  “Specifically, that you were—again, I’m confirming—out on patrol?”

  It sounded funny even to me. But what could I say?

  “I wonder,” he said. “What in holy hell does that mean?”

  “I joined the neighborhood watch. Didn’t Sara tell you?”

  “The neighborhood watch.”

  “I’ve got a vest and everything.”

  “Surely you must be shitting me.”

  “A vest and a walkie- talkie. And a hell of a nice flashlight.” Before our break- in, I’d have been right alongside Charlie mocking the idea of patrolling a suburban cul- de- sac with a picture of a badge printed on my chest.

  Even after our break- in, it still felt vaguely absurd. But after our new neighbors had rallied to make us feel welcome, it had seemed awkward to not join the neighborhood association. And after joining, I could either join the volunteer patrol or commit to being the only jerk in the circle who couldn’t be bothered to serve like all the other husbands. After moving halfway across the country, I’d found that I didn’t have enough energy left over to be a worthwhile jerk.

  “One day,” I told Charlie, “I hope to make shift leader.”

  Silence. Then: “This is Dr. Charles Bernard. I’m calling for my friend Paul. Callaway. Has he been at this number recently?”

  I laughed. “Okay. I admit it. I go for a walk and smoke a cigar a couple nights a week.”

  “With your walkie- talkie close at hand, I presume.”

  “It’s not so bad. We check in on the older folks, run the teenagers out of the park after ten. If it’s midnight and somebody left their garage door open, we ring the doorbell, let them know.”

  “Paul Callaway,” Charlie said. “Is he there?”

  “Hang on, I’ll see.” I took the phone away from my ear, then put it back. “He says to call back when your wife’s been assaulted.”

  “I keep no wife.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “It was that woman you married who ruined me.”

  “She can be pitiless,” I agreed. “You probably shouldn’t have slept with her grad assistant.”

  “I had no choice in that instance. My hands were tied.”

  “Some things can’t be helped.”

  “Handcuffed, to be accurate.” His voice grew wistful before returning to the point. “Speaking of which, tell me, do you get to carry special neighborhood watch handcuffs?”

  “I don’t know, I’m still in training.”

  “How about a firearm? Surely you’ll need to shoot someone eventually.”

  “I think we’re just supposed to hit them with the flashlight and call the authorities,” I told him. “We’re only volunteers.”

  “You joke now,” Charlie said. “What happens when you go up against some scumbag all hopped up on Frappuccinos, refusing to cut his grass? What’s a fancy flashlight going to do for you then?”

  “They tell me every situation is different, Charlie.”

  There came a long sigh from the other end of the line. “And every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.”

  Quotations. With Charlie, always the first sign of a conversation in decline. “Who said that?”

  “Jane Austen.”

  “I thought you hated Austen.”

  “Which only emphasizes my point.”

  I checked myself in Sara’s mirror and felt completely ridiculous. Khaki shorts, a polo shirt, a pair of beat- up sneakers. I’d had to go out and buy the shorts and the shirt. My legs hadn’t seen sunlight since the Dixson English department softball team disbanded six years ago. “Well, this has been compelling,” I said. “But I’ve got a tee time in half an hour.”

  “Did you just say that you have a tee time?”

  “At the club.” I couldn’t help myself. “Couple guys from my patrol unit are members. I’m playing as a guest.”

  Another pause.

  “Sweet Christ,” Charlie finally said. “You’ve drunk the fucking Kool- Aid, haven’t you?”

  “Call you back,” I said, and hung up grinning.

  For the past three weekends in a row, Roger Mallory had attempted to convince me that I should come play golf with him, Barry Firth, and Pete Seward. The three of them held memberships at Deer Creek Country Club, a ten- minute drive from Sycamore Court, where they played eighteen holes together every Saturday. Apparently, Ben Holland, Michael Sprague’s partner, had been their fourth up until he’d taken the contract job in Seattle.

  So far, each weekend, I’d declined the invitation. While recent events had left me more or less thankful that I’d never gotten rid of my clubs, I’d given up the actual game of golf— my parents’ and their parents’ game—as futile in my twenties. The last time I’d played, my own mother, a beautician by trade, had cleaned out my wallet in a friendly two- dollar Nassau round in which she’d fronted me, because it was my birthday, sixteen strokes per side. Hole after dispiriting hole, my father had convinced me to press the bet. They’d laughed together afterward.

  When I told Roger this story, he laughed and said, “Hell, don’t worry about that. Barry needs a little competition.”

  Partly as a joke on me, partly because she liked our new neighbors and wanted me to try harder to be sociable, Sara had been encouraging Roger while my back was turned. He’s been dying to play again. He just won’t admit it. A ridiculous lie.

  Partly out of nostalgia, partly in hopes that my performance on the golf course would end the invitations once and for all, I’d finally relented. And so I met Roger in his driveway that morning, a few minutes before noon.

  “There he is,” Roger said, scratching Wes between the ears. Wes, Roger’s ailing German shepherd, swatted Roger’s leg feebly with his tail. As I reached the driveway, the old pastured watchdog limped over to take the cold ballpark frank he couldn’t smell, and could no longer see, but knew I’d bring.

  “Good boy,” I said, letting the dog lick my fingers. “Don’t tell Roger.”

  Roger took one look at my cracked leather bag of clubs, most of them handed down to me by my grandfather, and said, “You two wait here.” />
  Already I felt like a dope. The only clubs I owned that didn’t belong in a museum were a duct- taped 5-wood I’d found near a water hazard fifteen years ago and the junior- model sand wedge that had been confiscated by the Clark Falls Police Department in July.

  “Tell me the truth,” I said to the dog. “How dumb do I look?”

  Before Wes could weigh in, Roger returned carrying a big, black- and- gold bag that looked like it belonged to a PGA Tour pro. “Here. Had these specially made for you.”

  I looked closer and understood the joke: they were Callaway brand clubs, a full set of them, probably worth more than my first car. The irons gleamed in the sunlight; the woods all had matching head covers with the Callaway logo stitched in white thread. My ancient persimmon driver had a gym sock with holes in it.

  “Roger, I can’t use your golf clubs.”

  “These? Hell, I gave up on these two seasons ago.”

  “I wouldn’t even know what to do with all of them.”

  “I’ve got three other sets in the garage,” he said. “Want to come pick out a different one?”

  “No,” I said. “No, that’s not…I’m sure these work fine. Thank you.”

  “Here.” He handed me two Partagas cigars, both sealed in screw- top tubes. “You’ll need these.”

  Across the circle, Pete Seward’s garage door opened; Pete emerged around the back end of his SUV with his golf bag on his shoulder. As if choreographed, the same thing happened at Barry Firth’s place. Barry saw us and waved.

  Roger waved back and took Wes into the house. In a moment he returned, twirling the keys to his own SUV, a GMC Yukon that could have carried my Honda hybrid on its luggage rack. “What do you say we go hit the hell out of some golf balls?”

  “I hope you’ve got plenty.”

  “Come on,” he said. “You can ride with me.”

  • • •

  We’d play a team scramble, it was decided on the practice green. This meant dividing into opposing twosomes and keeping a “best ball” score, meaning that the members of each team would choose the best shot between them and play the next shot from that spot. The losing team bought steaks at the clubhouse grill after the round.

  Pete Seward had suggested the idea—in honor, he’d said, of my long hiatus from using a golf club for anything beyond home security. I knew that he’d done so more out of consideration of my last known handicap, the maximum recommended under USGA rules, but I appreciated the gesture anyway.

  “Perfect,” Roger said.

  “I’ll take Roger,” said Barry Firth.

  Pete grinned and gave me a nod. “It’s a lock.”

  On the first tee box, with new- guy honors, I looked down the lush green fairway of a short par four. Dogleg left, trees on both sides, sand traps at two hundred yards.

  “Fore, please,” Roger said. “Paul Callaway now driving.”

  “This won’t be pretty.” I pulled the cover from the number one wood. Compared with mine, the driver Roger had loaned me looked like a Volkswagen Beetle on the end of a stick.

  “Just tee it high,” Roger said. “Nothing to it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Here goes nothing.”

  I used the ball to push the tee into the turf. When I straightened, the setup looked like a dimpled white lollipop growing out of the ground at a crooked angle.

  Roger grinned. “Maybe not that high.” He stooped to correct the situation, then backed off and nodded. “That’s better. Let her rip.”

  “Sprinkle some whoop- ass on it,” Barry said.

  Pete: “Nice and smooth.”

  I arranged my grip on the club, hunched my shoulders, and addressed the ball. “Somebody watch where this goes.”

  Barry: “There is no ball.”

  “Jesus,” Roger said. “Would you two let the man swing?”

  Nice and smooth, I thought. I remembered my father’s advice: just give it seventy percent. After a few tense moments, I took a breath, drew the club back nice and slow, thought of the bunkers way down there in the fairway, and gave it all I had.

  The follow- through spun me off balance. Something pulled in the middle of my back. The vibration at impact rattled up the club and into my hands, numbing my fingers.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw that I’d driven the tee straight into the ground like a nail. The ball dribbled five or six feet to the right and rolled to a stop. Everybody stood around for a moment.

  Eventually, Pete pointed at the ball and said, “There it is.”

  I nodded. “I’m guessing we won’t be using that one.”

  “Hell,” Roger said. “With Pete you never know.”

  Barry laughed.

  Pete grinned, stepped up, and pounded a towering drive over the trees, cutting the dogleg and rolling his ball into the rough on the far side of the fairway, fifty yards from the green.

  “Medium rare,” he told Barry. “That’s how I like my rib eye.”

  “Guess you’d better learn how to putt, then.”

  Roger chuckled and teed up, hanging a smooth little draw along the curve of the fairway, landing his ball softly in the middle of the short grass. Barry took half a dozen practice swings and pulled a screaming hook into the first fairway bunker.

  “Damn,” he said. “I gotta get this thing regripped.”

  Pete nodded. “That’s probably it.”

  “Drive for show, jocko.” Barry stooped to pull his unbroken tee from the ground. “Putt for dough.”

  As Pete and Barry headed for the gleaming, gas- powered, GPS- equipped carts parked on the path, Roger tossed me my duffed ball, a clean new Titleist, which he’d supplied in the first place. “Glad you could make it, Doc. This’ll be fun.”

  Apparently, I already had a nickname. Doc? After thinking about it, I realized that I’d been named after my academic credentials. It hadn’t occurred to me before then that this was how my neighbors saw me. “Famous last words,” I told Roger.

  He chuckled and clapped me on the shoulder. Off we went.

  Growing up, golf with my parents had always occurred on the trampled public courses of Morristown, New Jersey, generally with a pocket full of scuffed secondhand balls from the rusted bucket my father kept in the garage.

  In his retirement, with his investments and his pension from Honeywell, I imagine that he could have afforded to treat himself and my mother to at least a partial membership at one of the plush private clubs in the area. But he’d never done so. You find the same assholes everywhere, he once told me. Why pay more? In his view, you could learn everything you needed to know about a person by the way they played a friendly round of golf.

  By the time we’d finished the first nine holes at Deer Creek CC, where the range balls were in better shape than the ones in my father’s rusty bucket back in Jersey, I’d learned the following things about my new neighbors in Clark Falls:

  Pete Seward was the big hitter. He boomed the ball off the tee, sending it on a slow climb into the sun, and we’d find it either three hundred yards down the fairway or we’d never see it again. His short game was streaky, but he seemed secure with his skill level. He didn’t brag or bemoan. If he had a temper, so far I hadn’t seen it flare.

  Barry Firth liked to talk. After nearly every shot, no matter how promising or poor, he’d send verbal instruction after his ball like commands to a spaniel: Sit down. Turn over. Run. Bite. After a good shot, I couldn’t help noticing the way he subtly checked for Roger’s approval. After a bad shot, he took a moment to repeat his swing in slow motion, eventually nodding to indicate that he’d identified the flaw.

  Roger Mallory, who had ten years on all of us, was easily the most reliable ball striker in the group. Neither as spectacular as Pete nor as erratic as Barry, he played a quiet, conservative game from tee to pin, hitting fairways and greens, avoiding trouble, and shaping the flight of the ball to produce the safest result.

  “Dang, Rodge,” Barry said on the ninth green, after Roger lipped out a two- foot putt for par. I
’d just rolled in a shocking, improbable twenty- footer to card a team birdie for Pete and me. “Haven’t seen you miss one of those all year.”

  Roger shook his head and smiled. “Yanked it.” His tap- in for bogey took us into the turn all tied up.

  On the way to the tenth tee, from my spot in the passenger seat of the cart, I turned to Pete and said, “He did that on purpose, didn’t he?”

  “Who did what?”

  “Roger,” I said. “That putt. In nine holes he made four or five same as that one like he was falling off a log.”

  Pete manned the wheel and smiled a little.

  I had my answer. “Why do you think he’d do that?”

  “I’d only be guessing.”

  “Let’s say you’re guessing, then.”

  “I’d guess that Roger is working to promote a sense of solidarity amongst the troops.”

  “Ah.”

  “Or maybe he just yanked it.” Pete goosed the cart up the hill, clubs clattering behind us. “Don’t worry, we’ll keep his ass honest on the back side.”

  13.

  “I DON’T KNOW,” Michael Sprague told me, the next night, while out on patrol. “Losing on purpose doesn’t sound like Roger.”

  “Pete said he was trying to foster group unity.”

  “Actually, that does sound like Roger. He’s big into the unity.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Can’t have a community without the unity.”

  “God, that’s terrible. I’m stealing it.”

  We strolled through the playground at Washington Elementary, a ten- minute walk down the hill from our circle.

  I’d grown to look forward to drawing Michael as a shift partner; the Ponca Heights Neighborhood Patrol, whose ranks had swelled in recent weeks, operated on the buddy system, and so far I’d mostly been paired with Roger, or sometimes Pete.

  Roger maintained the rotation amongst the volunteers—about twenty men and about ten women—so that nobody had to go out more than once or twice per week. Michael and Sara had become fast friends, and though he visited our house often, I hadn’t really gotten to know him until our first spin around the neighborhood together, two weeks earlier.