by Otto Penzler
He hadn’t a clue what he was talking about, but he felt supremely confident. Whatever nonsense he spouted, the professional would play along. And Amanda was looking more uncomfortable by the minute. Her little plan had become horribly derailed. And there was all that money coming from his mother. Leonard Wensam could hardly prevent himself chortling with glee.
But he exercised control until, leaving a fuming Amanda in the sitting room, he saw Floyd Carter out to his car. On the driveway, in the summer evening dusk, Leonard guffawed heartily. Everything was working out so wonderfully well for him.
Floyd joined in the laughter but stopped before his host did. “That was all right tonight,” he said, “but a bit risky.”
“Not at all.” Leonard chuckled on. “Amanda doesn’t know the tiniest thing about golf—or anything else, come to that. She may suspect she’s being sent up, but she can’t prove it.”
“Maybe not. And you’re all right with me, I’m on your side. Could be awkward, though, if your alibi was questioned in the company of other, less sympathetic golfers.”
Leonard, seeing the sense of that, stopped laughing. “You have a point.” He looked into the professional’s honest, friendly face. “Have you got some suggestions as to what I should do, Floyd?”
“I think you ought to learn a bit about golf.”
“But I have no interest in the game. I don’t want to take it up.”
“I know that, and I’m not suggesting you should. But if you knew the rudiments, knew enough of the proper jargon, then you could hold a conversation with other golfers without raising any suspicions. Your alibi would more likely be watertight then.”
Leonard nodded slowly. “That would make sense. So how am I going to learn?”
“I’d be very happy to take you round the course, Len, show you what’s what. Half a day and you’ll have picked up the essentials.”
“That’s incredibly generous. Why are you prepared to do this for me?”
Floyd Carter smiled the duplicitous smile that men have used over the centuries to exclude women from their lives. With a roguish slap to Leonard’s shoulder, he said, “We chaps have got to stick together, eh?”
Though his offer had been genuine, the professional was heavily booked with tournaments and lessons, so the first available date was a Thursday morning a couple of weeks after their first meeting.
This was fine by Leonard. He even felt a glow of righteousness when, informing Amanda that he’d be off playing golf, he realized he was telling the truth. Juliette was left a message that he wouldn’t be able to join her until the afternoon of that day. “After lunch,” he said, planning to have something to eat on his own and then exact his sexual satisfaction without even the outlay of sandwiches and wine.
Seven o’clock seemed a rather early start, but Floyd was the one who knew about golf, so Leonard turned up on time.
“Better now,” said the professional, greeting Leonard as he emerged from his Lexus, “before the hordes of incompetents start their rounds. I tell you, it’s like being on a rifle range out there once that lot get going—balls flying in every direction. You see, you only get the quality players here Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Midweek it’s the rubbish—the retired, the learners—and the women.”
The contempt he put into the last word got its predictable knee-jerk chuckle from Leonard, and the golfing virgin moved round to remove his virgin clubs from the car boot.
“You won’t need those, Len. I’ll lend you a set when we actually start playing. But first I just want to take you through a few of the technical terms and get you familiar with the Westmacott course.”
In the pro shop, Floyd Carter outlined the basics. He showed Leonard the different clubs and explained the situations in which each should be used, how the angle of each clubface affected the trajectory of the ball. “Thing to remember is that the numbering starts from the vertical. The nearer the clubface is to a right angle from the ground, the lower its number will be. Got that?”
“I think so,” Leonard replied uncertainly.
“Don’t worry about the detail. The clubs have got numbers on them, anyway. You can’t go far wrong.” The professional then went through a few of the basic golfing terms, so that his pupil could tell the tee from the green and the rough from the fairway. Floyd did a little on the etiquette of the game, and concluded, “Well, I think that’s about it. All you need to know. The next important thing to do is—”
He stopped himself, and a hand shot up to his mouth in alarm. “Ooh, Len, something I should have told you. More than etiquette—it’s a safety measure too. Do you know what ‘Fore?’ means?”
“For? Well, yes, obviously. It means sort of ‘on behalf of.’”
“No. ‘Fore’ with an ‘e.’ You must know what that means in a golfing context.”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“It’s incredibly important. Not knowing the meaning of ‘Fore!’ could cause you the most terrible problems.”
And Floyd Carter told Leonard Wensam what “Fore!” meant.
The older man nodded. “Right, with you. Now, do we start playing a round?”
“Not yet. In fact, you don’t need to play a whole round at all. With a complete novice, that’ll take forever. No, I’ll show you the basics—how you hold the club and so on—when you come back.”
“When I come back? Where am I going?”
“Ah, you’re about to do the most important bit of your induction. You’re going to walk round the entire course.”
“Without any clubs?”
“Too right. Without any clubs. You see, you really must know the geography of all the Westmacott holes. Then you can sound authoritative when other golfers ask questions like, ‘You know that clump of gorse halfway down the fairway on the fourth?’”
“But, Floyd, shouldn’t I also sound authoritative when they ask me what stroke I used to get over that clump of gorse halfway down the fairway on the fourth?”
“No worries about that. The golfer hasn’t been born who cares what stroke anyone else played. They only wanted to tell you what stroke they played themselves. That’s why what you’re doing today is so easy. You need the bare minimum of information to pass as a golfer, because with golfers you don’t have to say much. There’ll always be someone present who wants to tell you about his round.”
The professional reached to the counter for a sketch map. “Now, this shows you the layout of the course. As you see, the fairways zigzag all over the place. What I want you to do is start at the number 1 tee and walk from tee to hole, tee to hole, all the way round until you get to the eighteenth green, then come back and find me.”
“Won’t I get in the way of the golfers?”
“No, you’ll be ahead of most of them. And, since you’re not playing, you’ll go round a lot quicker than they will. Go on, Len, it always works.”
“What always works?”
Floyd Carter grinned mischievously. “My instant half-day induction course. Don’t imagine you’re the only man who uses golf as an alibi. You’d be surprised how many little wives there are out there in blissful ignorance of the fact that their husbands aren’t playing golf.”
On a wave of complicit masculine laughter, Leonard Wensam set off on his walk around Westmacott Golf Club.
It was a bright summer morning, and Leonard felt good. He was making his Thursday alibi absolutely impregnable against Amanda’s suspicions. And he was going to spend the afternoon in the arms of Juliette, telling her to do a variety of particularly enjoyable things to him.
What’s more, all that money from his mother would soon be his. Life was excellent.
As he crisscrossed the course along the fairways, Leonard became vaguely aware of golfers starting their rounds. As Floyd had promised, there was very little competence on display. Balls flew in every direction, there were sounds of turf-sized divots being dug up, constant cries of “Sorry!” and “Fore!”
Leonard felt rather superior. Thanks to Fl
oyd Carter, he knew exactly what “Fore!” meant, and each time he heard it, he obeyed the command.
The fifteenth fairway ran alongside the fourth, where there grew the famous clump of gorse. Leonard Wensam was in the rough of the fifteenth, feeling on top of the world, when he heard the shout of “Fore!” He did exactly as he had been instructed.
Then he was hit on the temple by a flying golf ball, and died.
As a golfer might have put it, Leonard Wensam “went out” in a state of euphoria. Sadly, he “came in” in an ambulance.
The coroner was very regretful about the appalling accident which had taken away “a man in the prime of life, depriving his young wife of a companion, helpmeet and breadwinner.” The coroner recommended greater vigilance by walkers who took advantage of the grounds of the Westmacott Golf Club, and suggested that more strongly worded warning notices should be erected on the course.
But there was a note of contempt—almost of “served him right”—in the way he spoke of Leonard Wensam. The coroner, himself an avid golfer, could not understand people who did not share his obsession. And the deceased had clearly had no interest at all in the game. He had never been seen at the Westmacott Golf Club by any of the members, having only gone up there on the day of his death in the cause of fitness.
“And just walking isn’t going to make anyone fit,” said the coroner. “You need a few good rounds of golf to achieve that.”
The verdict of “accidental death” was a foregone conclusion.
But the coroner made it sound as if such a fate was only just deserts for a man who didn’t play golf.
He also stressed the point that no blame should attach to the unfortunate novice golfer who had shouted “Fore!” and played his shot immediately prior to Wensam’s death. The player had been aiming at the fourth green; he couldn’t even have seen his victim in the middle of the fifteenth fairway. The young man should not let this regrettable incident put him off playing the fine game of golf. He should blank it out from his memory.
But the young man, wracked with guilt, found such oblivion difficult to achieve. He even asked the Westmacott professional what he could do to make amends for the tragic incident that he had caused.
The professional recommended that he should move his right hand a little further down the shaft of the club.
Floyd Carter himself didn’t feel any guilt. The moment he fell in love with Amanda Wensam, when he first saw her on the practice green, he knew that something was going to have to be done. And he was very happy to play his part in the plan she formulated.
He’d used her spare key to remove the red and white leather bag of clubs from the Lexus, so that after his death Leonard no longer had any connection with the game of golf. And Floyd later sold the set, as new, in the pro shop. Which made him a nice little profit.
But nothing like the profit he made when he married Amanda and took his share of everything she had inherited under her late husband’s will. (It was his first marriage; Floyd’s wife in the choir had been one of Amanda’s necessary inventions.)
The will’s provisions left nothing to Juliette, who, knowing how tightfisted Leonard Wensam had always been, was unsurprised. Anyway, she had since met another rich man, who was more prepared to shower his largesse on a sexy red-haired mistress, so Juliette was fine.
Floyd Carter had left the catapult in the middle of the clump of gorse on the fourth fairway as soon as he had used it to propel the fatal missile at Leonard’s head. Amanda, wide-eyed in her confidence in his skills, had expected him to use a golf club to send the ball, but Floyd knew better. Even he couldn’t guarantee to deliver a mortal blow to a potentially moving human target at twenty meters. No professional was that good.
Floyd Carter was good by most standards, but when he saw his and Amanda’s first son pick up a golf club at the age of three, he reckoned they had a potential world number one on their hands.
So, while Amanda produced more wonderful babies, Floyd set out to teach their son everything he knew about the magnificent game of golf.
Everything, with the exception of a piece of misinformation he’d fed Leonard Wensam. He didn’t tell his son that the shouted instruction “Fore!” means “Move immediately to the middle of the fairway!”
SPITTIN IRON
Ken Bruen
ACTION TAKES PLACE IN INTERROGATION ROOM. WE ONLY SEE ONE MAN, SITTING AT A BATTERED TABLE. HE LOOKS SERIOUSLY WORN, BUT WITH ATTITUDE. THE ONLY VOICE WE HEAR IS HIS.
I hate fuckin’ golf, I hate fucking golfers, I hate a whole mess of shit but golf really tops the list. You want to set me off? Light that fuse I got up my ass, all you gotta do is, like, mention… say, a 9-iron, that’ll do it, I’ll have you eat the goddamn thing.
Yada yada.
…like you give a flying rat’s?
But you know what, gimme a cigarette, decent cup of java, I’ll tell you why, ’cos then we’ll have us what’s called Deal City. You want me to sign that confession, then you gotta hear me out.
Sound of Zippo cranking.
Then,
Deep inhale.
To… long inhale of breath.
Man, that’s fine.
Two days they had me in county lockup, not one goddamn smoke. They had a spic in there, one of the homies, with the Crip colors? The pack of Marlboros tucked under his rolled-up sleeve, Jimmy Dean, right?
I ask him for one, real polite and all, go, “Shoot me a smoke, bro.”
Would he fuck?… Hard-ass punk gangsta, looks at me like I’m something he trailed on his Converse, unlaced of course. What’s with that shit?
He goes, blowing me off, “No habla inglés.”
Giving me the smirk, the dead eye. They practice that, yeah, in front of the mirror, in their mama’s mirror, pimpin’ and preening, get that nine-yard down right. But you know, I been in Tijuana, got me some of the lingo and a dose of the clap. I ask him a second time, making the nicotine motion, using some nice spic manners, and he snorts, “No way, José.”
I like to play, long as it’s not golf. You know what I’m saying, you know where I’m going here, buddy?
Sound of brief chuckle.
I put his head in the toilet, ram that sucker in among the turds, the crap, hasn’t been flushed since Reagan was president.
Pause.
He’s thrashing around in there, I get his pants down, let him figger I’m gonna bitch him. I got him so far in the bowl, the Marlboros shook loose, yeah, soaked in piss and stuff, wouldn’t light worth a damn. What are you gonna do? You go with the flow, no pun there, partner. I was thinking, what’s that fancy word? Irony, that it?
No answer.
You don’t say a whole lot I guess you want the confession signed, get your ass on outta here, am I right? Grab yourself a cold one. Tell you what, buddy, have one for me, wash it down with some Maker’s Mark. Dude, I love that stuff. Yo man, you got a little smile burning there, you’re thinking, going to be a time before I get to have me a cold one. Okay, time to fess, yeah? I used to be a caddie. I’m not shitting you. Hauled them clubs for the fat cats, took shit from lard asses like you wouldn’t believe, me and Ellroy, you know the mystery guy? Don’t read, huh? Like, who’s got the time, me neither. The National Enquirer, I like that, get down in the trash, out them fuckers, gives me a rush.
Zippo cranks again, twice.
Getting a little low on gas there, pal. So like, after being a caddie, I swore I’d, like, never have me no connection to golf again and then my main man, Sean, yeah, the dead guy, we celled down in Dade County, had my back and those micks, man, they’re crazy mothers. Little red-haired bastard, couldn’t go out in the sun and it was hot there, bro, in every sense. He had that Irish face, like a ghost, and freckles, a spade made fun of him. The runt, he gets a shiv, tears that nigger from sternum to scrotum in one swipe. SNS we called it. We learned the words from the Discovery Channel. You know my rep, I’ve done some bad shit, but this mick, he was the craziest fuck I ever ran across. He’d gotten a five-y
ear jolt for car theft, said to me,
“I like feckin cars.”
Thing is, he liked to drink, too, that Jameson gig. So he’d load up on that, grab a car, and the cops, they grabbed his ass or as he’d say, me arse. The judge was going fairly easy on him, and the mad fuck, he goes,
“You talking to me?”
He loved De Niro, looked a little like him, too, and the judge, who was a movie buff, rammed five hard on his jacket.
Sean goes,
“Thanks a lot, yah cunt.”
Balls? The guy had cojones big as the British Isles.
Reading, what’s with the Irish and that?
He had a battered copy of some dude called, lemme see, Blake… no, Beckett, and his nose always stuck in there when he was making hooch. The stuff they brew, blind you. He’d quote the guy to me and I heard it so often, I know the guy my own self. How weird is that?
I don’t do buddies. I’m a lone wolf—learned that when I was a caddie, no one to watch your back. You hear this horseshit about the comradery of caddies, the fuckin’ downtrodden hooking up. What a crock. You get a guy, he’s hauling the bag for some suit and the guy slips him a couple of bucks, guess who now owns his ass? But this skinny mick, he got under my radar and he saved my neck one time, so we get to hanging out, walking the yard, him quoting whole chunks of that there Beckett, so I tell him about the golf. The time this CPA tried to get me fired, said I had me an attitude, got my wages docked and a warning.
I got a 9—no, not that nine, a 9-iron—got a real swoosh to it and go over to his house, big ol’ colonial heap on the best side of town. Set about rearranging his decor. Fuck came home early, claimed I tried to kill him, one lousy swing I took, had had me a shot of his sauce, a little sour mash I found in his drinks cabinet, so I caught him on the shoulder, did six months on that rap.
Accountants, they got the juice.
The mick is laughing and I go,
“You think that’s funny?”
He tells me about their national sport, hurling? A cross between baseball and homicide, says,