Murder in the Rough

by Otto Penzler

  “I’m being framed, you know, for the Slingblade thing.”

  “If you didn’t do it, how are they gonna prove you did?”

  “Lie. Scam. Talk to people who hate me, starting with my wife. People at the club, like you and Levon. Don’t be so innocent, kid. I’m not buying it.”

  “She thinks you did it?”

  “No, stupid, she thinks I had somebody do it. Plus the Suffolk cops are asking a judge to rip up all the new foundations in my Camden project. I’m ruined. Understand?” Joe grabbed his driver and bent over slowly to tee his ball on 13, a 130-yard par 3. I said nothing of his club selection, even as his ball sailed over the green and came to rest in Satan’s Bum, the deepest bunker on Long Island.

  “Take your mulligan,” I said. Which he did. No member ever played from Satan’s Bum, an unwritten club rule. Then I teed my ball and yanked my 8-iron in there with Joe’s first ball. Of course, the pro gets no sympathy.

  Joe dropped me off at the cavernous bunker’s edge with my sand wedge and putter and drove off to bungle his next shot. Now, I’m not much for the supernatural, but I considered it bad mojo to dump one in Satan’s Bum to close out my season. I narrowed my focus, determined to make a terrific recovery, show this fat-ass chump developer some golf. I climbed the wooden stairs down to the bottom of the pit and dug my cleats into the oddly squishy sand. My lie was decent, the ball sitting up. I laid my blade open, flared my left foot, and gouged mightily, blasting my golf ball high into the gray sky above the rim of the bunker; and also, with that one swing, slapping the bony remains of a human hand against the grassy wall before me, where it stuck a moment, then flopped down to the sand. I noticed the D-Flight championship ring right away. Then I heard Jersey Joe cry through the howling wind, “Great shot, kid. Six feet.”

  I climbed up out of the bunker and flashed thumbs-up. “Thanks. You have no idea.”

  I wanted to strangle my lazy half brother. The way Levon had told it, Slingblade’s death was an accident, all cleaned up. On the day in question Levon had gone to the Krumholt house to resume the private lessons, and when Karen wasn’t home, he took off his clothes, drew the shades in her bedroom, and hopped into bed. Just then Slingblade, who couldn’t keep his word about anything, pried open the back door and started up the stairs. Both men knew Jersey Joe carried that gun and that grudge. They heard each other moving around; they scared each other. Levon said he found a wedge in the closet and used it on the back of Slingblade’s skull as Slingblade crawled into the bedroom with a putter. But then Levon had also said he’d found the perfect place for the body, so who knew? My damn hands were shaking so badly I missed the putt, my first bogey of the round.

  It was raining even harder when we passed the detectives at the point where the eighteenth and fourteenth fairways run side by side, and I noticed they were making great time for hackers. I left Joe at his ball and raced the cart across the wide, puddled fairway.

  “How’s it going?” I yelled to my drenched guests.

  “Great. These suits are awesome.”

  “I’m with Jersey Joe Krumholt,” I said. “Against my wishes.”

  “Yeah, we noticed.”

  “He’s got a gun.”

  “He’s got a permit,” said Sergeant Giordano.

  Detective Marks was beaming. “Forget Krumholt for a minute. He’s our worry, isn’t he? What’s important is, it’s working, the legs thing. I’m four over par and I’ve never broken 100.”

  “It’s working for me, too,” said Giordano. “Best round of my life. I owe you, kid, I’ve never had so much fun.”

  I said, “Then by all means, keep it rolling, boys. Finish strong.” I just love a happy golfer, thinking he owns the answer, wishing everyone he ever knew was there to witness his mastery, mentally lining up victims. I pitied these poor policemen when they played a real golf course again, where the fairways were not so generous, the greens sloped and fast, and the bunkers placed where they could actually be hit. Their hands would tighten, their balls would find woods and rough and sand. The pressure would multiply; they had such high expectations. Then poof! All competence departs, and they are once again hackers, mired in triple digits. Such is the curse of Le Club Fantastique. Golfers remember that for one day at that really exclusive club, they had it going on. “You’re welcome to have a cold one at the clubhouse when you finish,” I said. “Tell Woodward to put it on my tab.”

  Well, they couldn’t thank me enough, of course, and the stuffy upstairs barman would complete the grease job. The detectives huddled under the roof of their cart and opened their wallets. They handed me PBA cards with their home phone numbers scrawled on the backs so we could do this again next summer.

  Jersey Joe, of course, had an attitude when I got back to him. “Take me back in,” he said. “Go play with your friends.”

  “What? I’m gonna ignore them?”

  Joe shrugged, and counted out ten wet hundreds from his pocket for me, which I felt bad for taking. “Drive,” he said, “I’m done with this place.”

  “Whatever.”

  I dropped Joe at the side door to the men’s locker room and went into my office, dried myself with clean towels.

  Then I sat down to write what I knew I had to write.

  Dear Members,

  It has been my distinct pleasure to serve your golfing needs this past season. Many of you showed dramatic improvement. All of you seemed to have fun. Stay in shape and watch the calendar. Opening day is only eight months away.

  Best wishes,

  Levon Greenbriar,

  Director of Golf, Le Club Fantastique

  I punched PRINT and carried the annual report upstairs, and as I looked out the window behind Mrs. Whitney, I saw the cop car in the parking lot. I hoped my having an open, ongoing, bar tab did not affect the release of my paycheck. I hoped I had not just screwed myself.

  Mrs. Whitney handed me two paychecks, mine and Levon’s.

  “No open bar tabs?” I said, willing to pay with Jersey Joe’s wet cash. “I believe I have a couple of police officers encamped at the bar.”

  “No you don’t,” she said. “Those gentlemen came in here to get some records. They’re reading them right now in the library.”

  “Members’ records?”

  “Employees’.”

  I kept smiling and wished her a happy off-season, then took the back stairs two at a time down to the basement maintenance office. I locked the metal door, sat on a paint-spattered stool, and called Levon on his cell phone. I could hear someone splashing in the background, children squealing. Ah, the things we do for golf.

  “I yanked one into Satan’s Bum this morning,” I said.

  “You took a mulligan, I hope?”

  “I wish.”

  I heard Levon light a cigarette. “Anybody see you? Or it?”

  “Nope. And I was playing with Jersey Joe.”

  “Jesus Christ, are you kidding me? Only you would hit one in there on the last day of the year.”

  “Snap-hooked it, okay? The cops were on our ass.”

  “You got our paychecks?”

  “Yup.”

  “Let’s hear my annual report,” he said. “And, Jay, if this sucker’s any good, we still might tee it up one more time at Le Club.” Levon, if that was his winter name, no doubt figured if the cops busted Joe Krumholt for the Slingblade murder, we could squeeze in one more summer before the trial began.

  I was not so confident. I read aloud to Levon slowly, without inflection. Just the facts. Well, two of them.

  “Cool,” Levon said after a moment, as if he were wrestling his conscience or sipping a lime-stuffed cocktail. “Very cool. Hey, Jay, I got us part-time jobs, okay? Teaching on the range, a little time in the pro shop. We start Wednesday, so haul ass.”

  “Where?”

  Levon mentioned some fancy-sounding country club I’d never heard of in a tiny town I’d never heard of. No big whoop. They were all the same to me. Like I said, it’s all about the golf.
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  Halfway through the pro shop I heard my answering machine take a call from Mrs. Whitney. She was sorry to bother me but I was needed back upstairs at once. Well, I don’t have to tell you, I left my magic wands on the back of Jersey Joe’s golf cart and jumped into my half-gassed Neon feeling like a man abandoning a child.

  I skidded to a stop next to the squad car, saw the boys in blue had left it unlocked. I yanked the microphone from the radio and snatched the pair of cell phones from the dash, then got back in the Neon and raced down the hill. I stopped under the razor-wire awning at the security booth only because the barrier was made of heavy metal and my Neon is not. I leaned out my window and shook hands with Em Bessler, told the old man I was sorry I’d been hard on him lately, but that I’d deflected the beer-can complaints of Mr. Jason Kravitz.

  He winked. “I know the pressure you’re under, club full of flaming tyrants like this one.”

  “You got that right.”

  And then we both gazed wistfully up through the driving rain at the clubhouse, just as Detective Marks and Sergeant Giordano ran from the front porch and across the parking lot for their squad car. I noticed that they, too, had abandoned their golf clubs.

  I said, “Oh, hell, Emmett, this cheapskate moron’s been stalking me for golf tips. Can you keep him busy a few minutes? Like five?”

  “Thinks you know The Secret, eh?” Emmett smiled greedily. “You share that little Secret with me, I’ll shine him on. Otherwise, I think a lifelong security man like myself ought to be on the side of law enforcement, don’t you?”

  Not that tough a call, actually, when you think about it. He would take it out and try it. He would suddenly hit golf balls the way he always knew he could, and his life would mean something again. Small price for me to pay. And beggars can’t be choosers. I made him lean close and whispered those three magic words in Emmett’s ear and his eyes lit up with joy.

  “Tell no one,” I said.

  “I’ll take it to my grave.”

  And I believed he would, because most do.

  The steel barrier rose and I raced out of Le Club Fantastique and into the anonymous storm, and, as I careened around a bend on Montauk Highway, I saw in my rearview mirror the homicide squad car skid to a stop at the now repositioned barrier. Detective Marks leaned out the driver’s window, yelling at the booth.

  A moment later the bulletproof window opened, and the fringe of a golden epaulet whipped in the wind. Detective Marks jammed his shield in the face of Emmett Bessler, newly deputized guardian of The Secret; but the barrier did not budge.

  I slid the new Dave Matthews CD into my dashboard and slowed down to the legal limit, lest I draw the attention of the highway patrol, never mind my pocketful of PBA cards.

  I figured I had plenty of time. Em Bessler did dumb-ass better than most.

  GOLF MYSTERIES

  This list is alphabetical by author, listing the title, city, publisher, and date of the first printing. No effort is made to provide authors’ real names in cases where they have used pseudonyms, variant titles, or reprints.

  Adams, Herbert. The Secret of Bogey House. London, Methuen, 1924.

  ———. The Golf House Murder. Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1933.

  ———. The Body in the Bunker. London, Collins, 1935.

  ———. Death Off the Fairway. London, Collins, 1936.

  ———. The Nineteenth Hole Mystery. London, Collins, 1939.

  ———. One to Play. London, Macdonald, 1949.

  ———. Death on the First Tee. London, Macdonald, 1957.

  Allen, Leslie. Murder in the Rough. New York, Five Star, 1946.

  Anderson, W. A. Kill 1 Kill2. New York, Morrow, 1940.

  Ball, Brian. Death of a Low-Handicap Man. London, Barker, 1974.

  Bartlett, James Y. Death Is a Two Stroke Penalty. New York, St. Martin’s, 1991.

  ———. Death from the Ladies’ Tee. New York, St. Martin’s, 1992.

  Bentley, E. C. Trent’s Own Case. London, Constable, 1936.

  Bernhardt, William. Final Round. New York, Ballantine, 2002.

  Borissow, Michael. The Naked Fairway. Cranbrook, Kent, Cranbrook Golf Club, 1984.

  Borthwick, J. S. Murder in the Rough. New York, St. Martin’s, 2002.

  Box, Sidney. Alibi in the Rough. London, Hale, 1977.

  Bream, Freda. The Vicar Investigates. London, Hale, 1983.

  ———. Sealed and Dispatched. London, Hale, 1984.

  Bruff, Nancy. The Country Club. New York, Bartholomew House, 1969.

  Burton, Miles. Tragedy at the Thirteenth Hole. London, Collins, 1933.

  Bush, Christopher. The Case of the Green Felt Hat. London, Cassell, 1939.

  Cake, Patrick. Pro-Am Murders. Aptos, CA, Proteus, 1979.

  Canning, Victor. The Limbo Line. London, Heinemann, 1963.

  Casley, Dennis. Death Under Par. London, Constable, 1997.

  Causey, James O. Killer Take All. New York, Graphic, 1957.

  Chabody, Philip and Florence. The 86 Proof Pro. Jericho, NY, Exposition, 1974.

  Christie, Agatha. Murder on the Links. London, John Lane, 1923.

  ———. Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? London, Collins, 1934.

  ———. Towards Zero. London, Collins, 1944.

  ———. The4:50 from Paddington. London, Collins, 1957.

  Coben, Harlan. Deal Breaker. New York, Dell, 1995.

  ———. Backspin. New York, Dell, 1997.

  Comfort, Barbara. The Cashmere Kid. Woodstock, VT, Foul Play, 1993.

  Cooney, Caroline B. Sand Trap. New York, Avon, 1983.

  Cork, Barry. Dead Ball. London, Collins, 1988.

  ———. Unnatural Hazard. London, Collins, 1989.

  ———. Laid Dead. London, Collins, 1990.

  ———. Winter Rules. London, Collins, 1991.

  ———. Endangered Species. London, Collins, 1992.

  Corrigan, John. Cut Shot. Farmington Hills, MI, Sleeping Bear, 2001.

  Crawford, Ian. Scare the Gentle Citizen. London, Hammond, 1966.

  Cruickshank, Charles. The Tang Murder. London, Hale, 1976.

  Cullen, Bob. A Mulligan for Bobby Jones. New York, HarperCollins, 2001.

  Daly, Conor. Local Knowledge. New York, Kensington, 1995.

  ———. Buried Lies. New York, Kensington, 1996.

  ———. Outside Agency. New York, Kensington, 1997.

  Daly, Elizabeth. Unexpected Night. New York, Farrar & Rinehart, 1940.

  Devine, Dominic. Three Green Bottles. London, Collins, 1972.

  Dexter, Ted, and Makins, Clifford. Deadly Putter. London, Allen & Unwin, 1979.

  Dickson, Carter. My Late Wives. New York, Morrow, 1946.

  Dods, Marcus. The Bunker at the Fifth. Edinburgh, William Hodge, 1925.

  DuBois, William. The Case of the Deadly Diary. Boston, Little, Brown, 1940.

  Duke, Will. Fair Prey. New Jersey, Graphic, 1956.

  Dunnett, Dorothy. Dolly and the Doctor Bird. London, Cassell, 1971.

  Durbridge, Francis. A Game of Murder. London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1975.

  Elkins, Charlotte and Aaron. A Wicked Slice. New York, St. Martin’s, 1989.

  ———. Rotten Lies. New York, Mysterious Press, 1995.

  ———. Nasty Breaks. New York, Mysterious Press, 1997.

  Ellroy, James. Brown’s Requiem. New York, Avon, 1981.

  Engleman, Paul. Murder-in-Law. New York, Mysterious Press, 1987.

  Fairlie, Gerard. Mr. Malcolm Presents. London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1932.

  ———. Shot in the Dark. London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1932.

  ———. Men for Counters. London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1933.

  Ferrars, Elizabeth. The Seven Sleepers. London, Collins, 1970.

  Fleming, Ian. Goldfinger. London, Cape, 1959.

  Fletcher, J. S. The Perilous Crossways. London, Ward, Lock, 1917.

  Flynn, J. M. Terror Tournament. New York, Bouregy, 1959.

  Forse, Harry. A Storm at Pebble Beach. Far
mington Hills, MI, Sleeping Bear, 2000.

  Frome, David. The Murder on the Sixth Hole. London, Methuen, 1931.

  Fuller, Timothy. Reunion with Murder. Boston, Atlantic Little Brown, 1941.

  Furlong, Nicola. Teed Off! Edmonton, Commonwealth Publications, 1996.

  Gibbins, James. Sudden Death. London, Collins, 1983.

  Gray, Jonathan. The Owl. London, Harrap, 1937.

  Gregson, J. M. Murder at the Nineteenth. London, Collins, 1989.

  ———. Dead on Course. London, Collins, 1991.

  ———. Sherlock Holmes and the Frightened Golfer. London, Breese, 1999.

  ———. Death on the Eleventh Hole. London, Severn House, 2002.

  ———. Just Desserts. London, Severn House, 2004.

  Greig, Ian. The King’s Club Murder. London, Ernest Benn, 1930.

  Hallberg, William. The Rub of the Green. New York, Doubleday, 1988.

  Hamer, Malcolm. Sudden Death. London, Headline, 1991.

  ———. A Deadly Lie. London, Headline, 1992.

  ———. Death Trap. London, Headline, 1993.

  ———. Shadows on the Green. London, Headline, 1994.

  ———. Dead on Line. London, Headline, 1996.

  Hamilton, Patrick. Hangover Square. London, Constable, 1941.

  Heller, Jane. The Club. New York, Kensington, 1995.

  Highsmith, Patricia. Mermaids on the Golf Course. London, Heinemann, 1985.

  Hunt, Richard. The Man Trap. London, Constable, 1996.

  Hutchinson, Horace Gordon. The Lost Golfer. London, Murray, 1930.

  Inigo, Martin. Stone Dead. London, Sphere, 1991.

  Innes, Michael. An Awkward Lie. London, Gollancz, 1971.

  Isleib, Roberta. Six Strokes Under. New York, Berkley, 2002.

  ———. A Buried Lie. New York, Berkley, 2003.

  ———. Putt to Death. New York, Berkley, 2004.

  ———. Fairway to Heaven. New York, Berkley, 2005.

  Jamesson, Peter. Unplayable Lie. Farmington Hills, MI, Sleeping Bear, 2002.

  Jardine, Quintin. Skinner’s Round. London, Headline, 1995.