Read The Myron Bolitar Series 7-Book Bundle Online
Authors: Harlan Coben
The Myron Bolitar Series 7-Book Bundle (84 page)
Chapter 42
He and Jessica sat on the couch in her loft. He told her everything. Jess hugged her knees and rocked back and forth. Her eyes looked pained.
“She was my friend,” Jessica said.
“I know.”
“I wonder.”
“What?”
“What would I have done in the same situation? To protect you.”
“You wouldn’t have killed.”
“No,” she said. “I guess not.”
Myron watched her. She looked on the verge of tears. He said, “I think I learned something about us in all this.”
She waited for him to elaborate.
“Win and Esperanza didn’t want me to play again. But you never tried to stop me. I was afraid that maybe you didn’t understand me as well as they do. But that wasn’t the case at all. You saw what they couldn’t.”
Jessica studied his face with a penetrating gaze. She let go of her knees and slid her feet to the floor. “We’ve never really talked about this before,” she said.
He nodded.
“The truth is, you never mourned the end of your career,” Jessica went on. “You never showed weakness. You stuffed it all in some internal suitcase and moved on. You tackled everything else in your life with a smothering desperation. You didn’t wait. You seized whatever was left and pressed it against you, afraid your whole world was as fragile as that knee. You rushed off to law school. You ran off and helped Win. You frantically clung to whatever you could.” She stopped.
“Including you,” he finished.
“Yes. Including me. Not just because you loved me. Because you were afraid of losing more than you already had.”
“I did love you,” he said. “I still do.”
“I know. I’m not trying to put this all on you. I was an idiot. It was mostly my fault. I admit that. But your love back then bordered on the desperate. You channeled your grief into a grasping need. I was afraid of suffocating. I don’t want to sound like an amateur shrink, but you needed to mourn. You needed to put it behind you, not suppress it. But you wouldn’t face it.”
“You thought my playing again would make me face it,” he said.
“Yes.”
“It’s not like this was a cure-all.”
“I know,” she said. “But I think it helped you let go a little.”
“And that’s why you think now is a good time for me to move in.”
Jessica swallowed hard. “If you want,” she said. “If you feel ready.”
He looked up in the air and said, “I’ll need more closet space.”
“Done,” she whispered. “Whatever you want.”
She snuggled into him. He put his arms around her, pulled her close, and felt very much at home.
It was a sweltering morning in Tucson, Arizona. A big man opened his front door.
“Are you Burt Wesson?”
The big man nodded. “Can I help you with something?”
Win smiled. “Yes,” he said. “I think you can.”
For Larry and Craig,
the coolest brothers a guy could ever have.
If you don’t believe me, just ask them.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank the following for their help: Anne Armstrong-Coben, M.D.; James Bradbeer, Jr., of Lilly Pulitzer; David Gold, M.D.; Maggie Griffin; Jacob Hoye; Lindsay Koehler; David Pepe of Pro Agents, Inc.; Peter Roisman of Advantage International; and, of course, Dave Bolt. Any errors—factual or otherwise—are totally their fault. The author is not to blame.
Back Spin
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1997 by Harlan Coben
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
D
ELACORTE
P
RESS
is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1997.
eISBN: 978-0-307-56716-1
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1
Myron Bolitar used a cardboard periscope to look over the suffocating throngs of ridiculously clad spectators. He tried to recall the last time he’d actually used a toy periscope, and an image of sending in proof-of-purchase seals from a box of Cap’n Crunch cereal flickered in front of him like headache-inducing sunspots.
Through the mirrored reflection, Myron watched a man dressed in knickers—knickers, for crying out loud—stand over a tiny white sphere. The ridiculously clad spectators mumbled excitedly. Myron stifled a yawn. The knickered man crouched. The ridiculously clad spectators jostled and then settled into an eerie silence. Sheer stillness followed, as if even the trees and shrubs and well-coiffed blades of grass were holding their collective breath.
Then the knickered man whacked the white sphere with a stick.
The crowd began to murmur in the indistinguishable syllables of backstage banter. As the ball ascended, so did the volume of the murmurs. Words could be made out. Then phrases. “Lovely golf stroke.” “Super golf shot.” “Beautiful golf shot.” “Truly fine
golf stroke.” They always said
golf
stroke, like someone might mistake it for a
swim
stroke, or—as Myron was currently contemplating in this blazing heat—a sunstroke.
“Mr. Bolitar?”
Myron took the periscope away from his eyes. He was tempted to yell “Up periscope,” but feared some at stately, snooty Merion Golf Club would view the act as immature. Especially during the U.S. Open. He looked down at a ruddy-faced man of about seventy.
“Your pants,” Myron said.
“Pardon me?”
“You’re afraid of getting hit by a golf cart, right?”
They were orange and yellow in a hue slightly more luminous than a bursting supernova. To be fair, the man’s clothing hardly stood out. Most in the crowd seemed to have woken up wondering what apparel they possessed that would clash with, say, the free world. Orange and green tints found exclusively in several of your tackiest neon signs adorned many. Yellow and some strange shades of purple were also quite big—usually together—like a color scheme rejected by a Midwest high school cheerleading squad. It was as if being surrounded by all this God-given natural beauty made one want to do all in his power to offset it. Or maybe there was something else at work here. Maybe the ugly clothes had a more functional origin. Maybe in the old days, when animals roamed free, golfers dressed this way to ward off dangerous wildlife.
Good theory.
“I need to speak with you,” the elderly man whispered. “It’s urgent.”
The rounded, jovial cheeks belied his pleading eyes. He suddenly gripped Myron’s forearm. “Please,” he added.
“What’s this about?” Myron asked.
The man made a movement with his neck, like his collar was on too tight. “You’re a sports agent, right?”
“Yes.”
“You’re here to find clients?”
Myron narrowed his eyes. “How do you know I’m not here to witness the enthralling spectacle of grown men taking a walk?”
The old man did not smile, but then again, golfers were not known for their sense of humor. He craned his neck again and moved closer. His whisper was hoarse. “Do you know the name Jack Coldren?” he asked.
“Sure,” Myron said.
If the old man had asked the same question yesterday, Myron wouldn’t have had a clue. He didn’t follow golf that closely (or at all), and Jack Coldren had been little more than a journeyman over the past twenty years or so. But Coldren had been the surprise leader after the U.S. Open’s first day, and now, with just a few holes remaining in the second round, Coldren was up by a commanding eight strokes. “What about him?”
“And Linda Coldren?” the man asked. “Do you know who she is?”
This one was easier. Linda Coldren was Jack’s wife and far and away the top female golfer of the past decade. “Yeah, I know who she is,” Myron said.
The man leaned in closer and did the neck thing again. Seriously annoying—not to mention contagious. Myron found himself fighting off the desire to mimic the movement. “They’re in deep trouble,” the old man whispered. “If you help them, you’ll have two new clients.”
“What sort of trouble?”
The old man looked around. “Please,” he said. “There are too many people. Come with me.”
Myron shrugged. No reason not to go. The old man was the only lead he’d unearthed since his friend and business associate Windsor Horne Lockwood III—Win, for short—had dragged his sorry butt down here. Being that the U.S. Open was at Merion—home course of the Lockwood family for something like a billion years—Win had felt it would be a great opportunity for Myron to land a few choice clients. Myron wasn’t quite so sure. As near as he could tell, the major component separating him from the hordes of other locust-like agents swarming the green meadows
of Merion Golf Club was his naked aversion for golf. Probably not a key selling point to the faithful.