Hedrick reached for it with both hands. And Nicholson lunged at him, wielding the club shaft like a rapier. The sharpened end of the shaft sank into the man’s chest. Hedrick’s mouth opened, forming a perfect circle, but he was dead before he could utter a sound.
“Hit the ball, drag Fred,” Nicholson said, to no one in particular, and took hold of the dead man by his hands and dragged him across the turf to a convenient sand trap. He went back for Hedrick’s clubs and stretched them out alongside the corpse. With a cloth from his golf bag he wiped the shaft and head of the Big Brenda, and anything else he’d touched that might hold a print. He took one of Hedrick’s golf balls and stuck it in the dead man’s mouth, took four of his tees — two white, two yellow — and used them as plugs in the man’s nostrils and ear holes. He’d found this part of the process a little distasteful at Burning Hills, but discovered it was less objectionable now. Evidently a person got used to it.
He retrieved his own clubs — minus the Big Brenda, of course — and went to the green. He left Hedrick’s ball where it lay, thinking it was a shame the man hadn’t had a chance to try chipping for his eagle. But he wouldn’t have made it anyway, and, when all was said and done, what earthly difference did it make?
His own ball lay less than a foot from the cup, close enough to concede under ordinary circumstances, but in this case it was for a birdie, and you couldn’t make a habit of conceding birdie putts to yourself, could you? He drew the flagstick, got his putter, knocked the ball in, retrieved it, replaced the stick. There was still no one in sight, and this way he felt a good deal more sanguine about entering a four for the hole on his scorecard.
No mulligans taken, no birdie putts conceded. If you were going to play the game, you might as well play it right.
He walked briskly to the next tee. One or two more, he thought, over the course of one or two more weeks, and the pattern would be sufficiently established.
Then it would be Fred’s turn.
How Far It Could Go
She picked him out right away, the minute she walked into the restaurant. It was no great trick. There were only two men seated alone, and one was an elderly gentleman who already had a plate of food in front of him.
The other was thirty-five or forty, with a full head of dark hair and a strong jawline. He might have been an actor, she thought. An actor you’d cast as a thug. He was reading a book, though, which didn’t entirely fit the picture.
Maybe it wasn’t him, she thought. Maybe the weather had delayed him.
She checked her coat, then told the headwaiter she was meeting a Mr. Cutler. “Right this way,” he said, and for an instant she fancied that he was going to show her to the elderly gentleman’s table, but of course he led her over to the other man, who closed his book at her approach and got to his feet.
“Billy Cutler,” he said. “And you’re Dorothy Morgan. And you could probably use a drink. What would you like?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “What are you having?”
“Well,” he said, touching his stemmed glass, “night like this, minute I sat down I ordered a martini, straight up and dry as a bone. And I’m about ready for another.”
“Martinis are in, aren’t they?”
“Far as I’m concerned, they were never out.”
“I’ll have one,” she said.
While they waited for the drinks they talked about the weather. “It’s treacherous out there,” he said. “The main roads, the Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State, they get these chain collisions where fifty or a hundred cars slam into each other. Used to be a lawyer’s dream before no-fault came in. I hope you didn’t drive.”
“No, I took the PATH train,” she said, “and then a cab.”
“Much better off.”
“Well, I’ve been to Hoboken before,” she said. “In fact we looked at houses here about a year and a half ago.”
“You bought anything then, you’d be way ahead now,” he said. “Prices are through the roof.”
“We decided to stay in Manhattan.” And then we decided to go our separate ways, she thought but didn’t say. And thank God we didn’t buy a house, or he’d be trying to steal it from me.
“I drove,” he said, “and the fog’s terrible, no question, but I took my time and I didn’t have any trouble. Matter of fact, I couldn’t remember if we said seven or seven-thirty, so I made sure I was here by seven.”
“Then I kept you waiting,” she said. “I wrote down seven-thirty, but—”
“I figured it was probably seven-thirty,” he said. “I also figured I’d rather do the waiting myself than keep you waiting. Anyway—” he tapped the book “—I had a book to read, and I ordered a drink, and what more does a man need? Ah, here’s Joe with our drinks.”
Her martini, straight up and bone dry, was crisp and cold and just what she needed. She took a sip and said as much.
“Well, there’s nothing like a martini,” he said, “and they make a good one here. Matter of fact, it’s a good restaurant altogether. They serve a good steak, a strip sirloin.”
“Also coming back in style,” she said. “Along with the martini.”
He looked at her. He said, “So? You want to be right up with the latest trends? Should I order us a couple of steaks?”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she said. “I really shouldn’t stay that long.”
“Whatever you say.”
“I just thought we’d have a drink and—”
“And handle what we have to handle.”
“That’s right.”
“Sure,” he said. “That’ll be fine.”
Except it was hard to find a way into the topic that had brought her to Hoboken, to this restaurant, to this man’s table. They both knew why she was here, but that didn’t relieve her of the need to broach the subject. Looking for a way in, she went back to the weather, the fog. Even if the weather had been good, she told him, she would have come by train and taxi. Because she didn’t have a car.
He said, “No car? Didn’t Tommy say you had a weekend place up near him? You can’t go back and forth on the bus.”
“It’s his car,” she said.
“His car. Oh, the fella’s.”
“Howard Bellamy’s,” she said. Why not say his name? “His car, his weekend place in the country. His loft on Greene Street, as far as that goes.”
He nodded, his expression thoughtful. “But you’re not still living there,” he said.
“No, of course not. And I don’t have any of my stuff at the house in the country. And I gave back my set of car keys. All my keys, the car and both houses. I kept my old apartment on West Tenth Street all this time. I didn’t even sublet it because I figured I might need it in a hurry. And I was right, wasn’t I?”
“What’s your beef with him exactly, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“My beef,” she said. “I never had one, far as I was concerned. We lived together three years, and the first two weren’t too bad. Trust me, it was never Romeo and Juliet, but it was all right. And then the third year was bad, and it was time to bail out.”
She reached for her drink and found the glass empty. Odd — she didn’t remember finishing it. She looked across the table at him and he was waiting patiently, nothing showing in his dark eyes.
After a moment she said, “He says I owe him ten thousand dollars.”
“Ten large.”
“He says.”
“Do you?”
She shook her head. “But he’s got a piece of paper,” she said. “A note I signed.”