Big Money (Austin Carr Mystery) (14 page)

THIRTY-EIGHT

My monster tee-shot splits the eighteenth fairway. Two-sixty-five, maybe two hundred seventy yards. Not long enough for the rankest of professional golf tours, but sufficiently distant and pretty to impress the members of any local men’s club. Present company included.

“Do t
hey serve drinks on that flight?” Bluefish asks.

M
y child has been kidnapped. Worrying about Beth—I imagine her alone, sick with fear—this father can barely consider outside stimulus, let alone enjoy golf or the thematic white verbena and azalea of the Branch Oaks Country Club. Yet as any good golfer will tell you, not
thinking
about our physical actions is exactly how we golf legends earn the attention. We turn loose our muscle memory. Shut off the mind’s calculations and let our bodies, training and instincts take control.

I bend over to pick up my tee. “Only beer and wine on that flight.
There’s not enough time to mix cocktails.”

“Ha,
ha.” Bluefish’s laugh possesses a certain bullfrog quality. Kind of a wet croak.

Such good buddies, Bluefish and I. Playing friendly golf. Joking on the back nine. Enjoying the outdoors together. Trust me, I don’t forget one second this scaly bastard
must have had my little girl kidnapped. At least two or three times a hole, I imagine myself spinning suddenly and burying the business end of my steel alloy golf club deep inside one of Bluefish’s eye cavities.

But so far I’ve suppressed my murderous impulses. I mean, the results of such conduct would hardly improve Beth’s situation, and
in fact might include some kind of gruesome death for both of us. But every once and a while, just for a split second, I get the irrational notion that
Bluefish wearing a putter in his face would somehow be worth any consequence.

Actually, that’s insane, not irrational. I might need to improve my grip.

I wave to my cart partner that I want to stroll down the fairway this hole. He can have the freaking cart to himself. The less time I spend next to Bluefish, the less chance there is I’ll attack and spoil my chance to get Beth back safely.

Bluefish drives our electric ge
ezer-mobile on ahead to help Al look for his ball, maybe watch to make sure Al doesn’t cheat. I’ll walk with Jerry, who, like me, put his drive in the fairway. See, Bluefish and I each have best-ball partners for this big money match. A two thousand dollar Nassau with unlimited presses, plus five hundred buck birdies, sandies and one putts. The winners could go home with enough loot for a beachfront condo in St. Moritz.

Bluefish’s partner
, Jerry, is Creeper’s pal from that Brooklyn spaghetti bar, the solid shouldered gentleman with a diamond earring. He can’t hit drives consistently or hit his irons, but Mr. Diamond Earlobe can sure the hell putt. Sank a thirty-foot twister on the seventeenth to once again put the Bluefish-Carr Cup Championship into a tie.

Al, my partner, is a nervous grandfather and admitted degenerate gambler. Big stomach, big ass, no hair. A decent golfer, and won a few holes early. But not much help lately. His soft brown eyes grow shifti
er, his golf swing jerkier every hole since we had a beer at the halfway house. He sweats a lot lately, too. It’s as if there is something more than money at stake for bald, round Al.

I asked Bluefish
at the last hole why my partner’s so nervous. But like every time I bring up the subject of my daughter, Bluefish says we’ll talk about that stuff later, over a Cuban cigar and brandy in the clubhouse.

“You didn’t know Bluefish was such a good golfer, did you?” Jerry
asks.

The close-cropped
grass under my feet succumbs to my weight like the carpet in a Ritz-Carlton lobby. “You’re the one giving your team a chance to win, not Bluefish. All day long.”

“You’re not too shabby yourself,” Jerry says. “What are you? Like one or two over?”

I shake my head. “More like six. I’ll be lucky to break eighty.”

“Bull...shit,” Jerry says.

On this, the final hole, with water and trees down the right, my partner Al’s tee shot soared into the lakeside forest like a migrating bird. So now, when I see Al roll from the electric cart to go find his errant ball-bird, Bluefish right behind him, I give up my stroll in the fairway to help my partner search.

Al discovers his ball tucked against the base of a tree trunk, the ball glued to the bark by a serious clump of twelve-inch crabgrass. This is what you call your basic bad lie, probably unplayable, and thus Bluefish’s dream, the reason he came along to observe. With bookie-man watching, Al will not be tempted to use the old foot-wedge. He’ll have to take the penalty.

Me and Bluefish staring at him, Al calls the lie unplayable, picks up his ball, takes a drop, then selects a four-wood from his bag and lines up directly toward the green. He’s planning to hit his next shot straight through the trees. Maybe Al thinks he can steer it like a Cruise missile.

“Geez, Al. Can you even see the green?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I’m lying two with the penalty. If I don’t get this on, I’m out of the hole.”

Tiger Woods couldn’t put his
ball on the green.

Me shaking my head, Al whacks his third shot straight into the trunk of another pine. Like an angry bumble bee, the ball whizzes dead right, ricocheting into a long pond of black murky water.

Nice shot, partner.

Bluefish saying, “Looks like the match is riding on you, Carr.”

Funny, I don’t feel any extra weight. Not with Beth still missing.

Al drops his four-wood onto the pine needles like it’s a cigarette butt. Something he’s finished with forever. He waddles closer to me. His lips are white. “Don’t let him win,” he says. “Please. Don’t let Bluefish win.”

THIRTY-NINE

I line up a putt I think might win the match.

In case my hunch is right, I should be taking my time, measuring the task from all angles, pretend I’m a big-time pro at The Masters. But it’s impossible to concentrate on anything but my kidnapped daughter, and I thank God this is the last hole. Soon as I finish, I’ll hear how I can earn Beth’s release over cigars and brandy. The quicker I win or lose, the quicker I find a way to get Beth back.

Not that I’d mind walking out of here with an extra
twenty grand. I could buy Susan that living room furniture she always wanted. Ha.

I’m crouched fifty feet behind the hole, staring at a slick thirty-foot downhiller, maybe four or five feet of right-to-left break. Jerry shanked his second shot into the water, hit his fourth into a bunker, then picked up to join Al on the sidelines. Bluefish already tapped in for his par after a nifty sand shot. Lucky bastard.

Everything’s up to me. I have to sink this birdie putt to win the match, two-putt for a tie.

Al, who hasn’t left our electric cart since his ball drowned...well, Al acts like his life depends on me knocking this in.
His dry lips, the way Al paled back there in the woods, the problem’s got to be something approaching life or death. His eyes are the size of egg yolks.

My nerves fail
. I know the putt’s too hard soon as I stroke it, the damn Top Flight shooting off my club head like a bottle rocket.

Oops.

My barking-puppy putt takes about half of the intended four-foot break and races past the hole at three-quarter speed. Sixteen feet beyond the target, my ball drops onto a new plateau, picks up more speed on the downslope, then dives off a cliff.

Behind me, Al gasps.

When my Top-Flight finally completes its gruesome charge, my ball lies fifteen feet off the front edge of the green. I have fifty, fifty-five feet back to the hole for par. Gee, nice putt, Carr. What a full-boat screw-up. You’ve guaranteed yourself a three-putt, loss of the match and a financial hickey the cost of a new Buick.

I turn to shrug at my partner, signal Al that I’m sorry for the lapse. But Al’s not in our cart anymore.
There he is. Running toward the forest that borders the country club. Sprinting faster than an old, fat man should.

Crows burst from the top
of a two-story, budding locust tree. A gust of wind rakes my face as if jet engines powered their wings.

Jerry runs to the trees in pursuit, waving a pistol with one hand, pushing buttons on a cell phone with the other. I imagine he’s calling for help.

“Let’s go see what’s happening, shall we?” Bluefish says.

“I don’t think
—”

Bluefish points a gun at
me.

The hiking is muddy, but much easier than the pine barrens. And Al didn’t make it far. When Bluefish and I find them,
Jerry has his semi-automatic pointed at my golfing partner, the two of them inside a garage-size clearing half a football field from our electric golf carts. Al has collapsed against a tree trunk, his ass and legs on the ground. His hands cover his face, a reddish nose playing peek-a-boo.

He reminds me of Pinocchio
, and a wave of pity hits me. My heart bounces when he issues repeated sobs.

Bluefish pushes me tow
ard the center of the clearing where I can get a better view of Jerry holding the gun to Al’s head. Oh, please...

Soon as Jerry sees me
watching him, he pulls the trigger on Al. Blood, skin, hair, bone, and brain matter gush from Al’s head. An explosion of gore. The sound crashes my ears like a freight train.

Al’s body melts onto last year’s leaves
and pine needles.

FORTY

Bluefish and I smoke Punch
Habanas
inside a steel walled dungeon. On the outside, this place looked like a flat-roofed tack room, recently whitewashed, with two windows facing the big estate’s house and near the stables. But inside, there are no windows, the floor and walls are polished metal and the single entrance door clicks and locks like a Federal Reserve bank vault.

Feels like a rabbit trap, a private kill zone needing regular
hose downs.

“When th
e door is shut and the alarm’s set, electronic devices can’t send, receive or record signals in here,” Bluefish says. “Like the Vegas joke says, what happens here, stays here.”

Wonder if Franny’s people are really shut out? If so, true privacy facilitates new possibilities for me. “Jerry checked me before we played golf,” I say. “Including my fillings. I’m not wearing any wires.”

“Of course you’re not,” he says. “But I figure in the course of a private and friendly discussion, when I could admit to say, extortion, kidnapping or even intended murder, why take chances?”

I nod. “Good point.”

“I figure the F.B.I. or that state-cop Dahler-Chapman could have some kind of miniaturized shit Jerry couldn’t find, something my so-called experts never heard about.”

“Not true,” I say, “but I understand the thinking
.”

“Not that I’m calling
you a liar.”

“Of course.”

“Anyways. In here, I feel free to discuss whatever.”

“I
f they did put some kind of miniaturized wire-thing like that on me, wouldn’t they already have heard you and Jerry kill Al?”

Bluefish removes the cigar from his mouth. “You mean that gunshot
you heard? Or you barfing?”

I blink. Is that all Franny’s implant picked up? Maybe also Bluefish saying,
Let’s go see?
Shit.

“My pal Jerry
might have killed a rabbit,” Bluefish says. “And if they dig up what’s buried in that clearing near the eighteenth hole, a shot dead rabbit is exactly what they’ll find. Our former friend Al ran off the eighteenth green instead of paying off his bet. Cheap bastard. We may never see him again.”

I try not to look disappointed, but this means Captain Franny still has nothing she can use against Bluefish. Nothing but me
and what I know about Mama Bones being at that Brooklyn restaurant. “Why did you kill Al? Not just to frighten
me
, I hope.”

Bluefish sucks the mid-size Punch. “Like your former co-worker Ragsdale, Fat Al is a degenerate gambler. Ran up his debts but couldn’t pay off. He had it coming. Plus, I wanted to remind you that violence is part of
my
world, not yours.”

He leans back and blows a fine stream of Cuban cigar smoke straight up. Like a volcano. “So
you lost the golf match. I assume you’re playing for
my
team now?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know what I’m asking. Nothing’s changed.”

“Oh, plenty’s changed. You kidnapped my daughter.”

He twists the cigar in his mouth, savoring the smooth wet tobacco. He makes it dirty, like a sex show in Tijuana. “Exactly. Now you
have
to do business with me.”

Goddamned bastard. I swear I could beat him to death with a nine-iron. “Beth is all right?”

“She’s fine. Now tell me what you’re going to say to the state grand jury about Mama Bones? What did you
already
tell Dahler-Chapman about me?”

I stare into Joseph
Pepperman’s ebony gaze, a look that recalls the glass eyes in that trophy fish over the bookie’s bed. Shiny black marbles. Sightless and dead. Not the kind of man you really want to do business with.

But I think I must.
For Beth. And Franny not hearing makes my betrayal a whole lot easier.

“Let Beth go, I’ll say whatever you want in front of the grand jury. I give you my word.”

I’m driven back to the golf course and my Camry by Bluefish’s attorney, Jano Johanson, a cosmopolitan Viking with long red hair, a full red beard. He just asked me where I’ll be later “in case your daughter is located quickly.”

I should lay this redhead
lawyer out cold, get his three thousand dollar suit dirty with parking lot dust. Officer of the court, my ass. Bluefish’s Norseman raider is more like it. But getting Beth back safely can be my only consideration, and rocking the Norseman’s longboat is not a particularly aces idea now that I’ve made a deal with his boss.

“I’m headed back to protective custody,” I say.

“Are you a suspect or a material witness?” Jano says.

“I don’t know.”

He laughs. “Pal, I suggest you get yourself some legal representation.”