Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“Not much acting required, is there? All I had to do was play golf and have the sort of cursory conversation one has on a golf course.”

“And inside?”

“In the clubhouse, you mean?”

“Inside yourself.”

“Inside myself,” Nicholson said calmly, “I was filled with murderous rage.”

“I can imagine. You must have wanted to kill them both.”

“Certainly not. Why would I want to kill my wife?”

“But—”

“The woman’s been an ideal wife since the day I married her. An ornament in public, a social asset, an impeccable homemaker, a splendid cook. More to the point, she’s an excellent companion, and, in intimate moments, a spirited partner. I’d have to be out of my mind to want any harm to come to her.”

“But she deceived you,” Hedrick pointed out. “She slept with your best friend.”

“I’m not sure that’s the right word for it,” Nicholson said thoughtfully. “From the look of things, sleep didn’t play much of a role in the relationship. But yes, she deceived me, and with my closest friend. And, quite possibly, with others I don’t know about.”

“And you can accept that?”

“I can certainly forgive it. She’s a woman, for heaven’s sake. Remember your Bible? Eve ate the apple. It cost us all our tenancy in Paradise, but does it make you want to kill the poor woman? Certainly not.”

“But—”

“She was a woman. She was tempted, she was powerless to resist. Not her fault. But as for the one who tempted her...”

“The serpent.”

“The snake,” said Nicholson, with feeling, “in the grass. The damned snake. He’s the one you want to crush under your heel.”

Nicholson held the honors, having won the previous hole. He took an unusually vicious practice swing.

“My best friend,” he said. “Fred.”

“His name can’t really be Fred.”

“It’s as good a name as any. And we might as well call him something. He’s the one who betrayed me. He’s the one I want to kill.”

He settled himself, addressed the ball. His swing was picture-perfect, and the ball sailed off down the fairway.

“And I’ll do it, too,” he said, and stooped to pick up his tee.

Hedrick sliced hisown drive into the woods, and Nicholson could see the notion of a mulligan cross the man’s mind. But Hedrick walked manfully after his ball, and Nicholson kept him company and helped him find it. The man tried to recover with a daring shot between two trees, but the ball caromed off one of them and he wound up worse than where he’d started. He played safe on the third shot and got out onto the fairway, but it still took him five strokes before he reached the green of the par-four hole.

“You and... Fred,” he said along the way. “Is this where the two of you play?”

“We’re both members at Ellicott Creek,” Nicholson said. “That’s where we generally play. I’ve been a member here myself for a little over a year now as well, that’s one of the perks my firm extends when you make junior partner, and I’ve had Fred here a couple of times as my guest. But I doubt you’d know him.”

“I was wondering,” Hedrick admitted. They reached the green, and Hedrick, who was away, knelt down to read the green. He got up, stood over the ball. He said, “What you said before. That you intend to kill him. You were just saying that, weren’t you?”

The question was delivered in a tone that suggested it might or might not be rhetorical. One could answer it or not, and Nicholson chose not to.

Hedrick four-putted for a quintuple bogey.

“That big silverclub in your bag,” Hedrick said. “Except of course it’s not silver. Titanium or something like that, isn’t it?”

“Some space-age alloy.”

“If they can put a man on the moon,” Hedrick said, “I suppose they ought to be able to add a few yards to a man’s tee shot. That’s the Big Brenda, isn’t it? But you haven’t been using it.”

“Just at the driving range.”

“And did it perform the way it says in the ads? Evidently not, or you’d be using it on the course.”

“I don’t like it,” Nicholson said. “There’s something wrong with the way it’s balanced.”

“I ought to try it on the hole coming up. Par five, 585 yards. A little extra distance wouldn’t hurt.”

“I think the club’s defective,” Nicholson said. “Something wrong with the shaft. I’m planning on taking it back, letting them look at it.”

Hedrick chuckled. “Relax,” he said. “I don’t really want to borrow your Big Brenda. I know better than to try a new club in the middle of a round.”

Hedrick, using hisown driver, hit the ball long and straight. It outran Nicholson’s drive by a good thirty yards. They walked down the fairway together, in silence at first. Then Nicholson said, “Over and over I’ve thought about killing him.”

“Your best friend. Except it turns out he’s no friend at all, so I don’t know what to call him.”

“I thought we had settled on Fred.”

“Seems silly, calling him that. But no sillier than talking of killing him.”

“People kill people all the time,” Nicholson said.

“Yes, but—”

“You read the papers, listen to the news, it’s just one murder after another.”

“That’s true, but—”

“A golf club,” Nicholson said.

“How’s that?”

“Be the best way to do it, don’t you think? After all the golf we played together over the years? Bash his treacherous brains out with a golf club, then wrap the shaft around his neck.”

“Can you bend a shaft like that?” Hedrick wondered. “Of course, once you’d bashed his head in, the question’s largely academic, isn’t it?”

They fell silent again when they reached Nicholson’s ball. He sent it on its way with his two wood.

“Good shot.”

“Good old brassie,” he said. “A little left, though. I was afraid of that fairway trap, and I played it a little too safe.”

“Better safe than sorry.”

“So they say. I bought Big Brenda with the idea that I might use her on Fred.”

“Her?”

“Well, it, of course, but since the club has a woman’s name...”

“That alone makes it a good murder weapon,” Hedrick said. “Thing lists for close to five hundred dollars, doesn’t it?”

“Five forty-nine, but I got it for a third off.”

“Pretty good discount.”

“It’s still a lot to pay for a club you’re only going to swing once. But I couldn’t use one of my own clubs, could I?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Although,” he said, “when you come right down to it, what difference would it make? No matter what I used or how I did it, the police would come straight at me.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Because they’d look for someone with a motive to kill Fred,” Nicholson said, “and they’d root around in his life and find out who he was sleeping with. And where would that lead?”

“I see what you mean.”

“And I’m sure I’d break down the minute they started questioning me. I’m not much good at keeping things to myself.” He clapped Hedrick on the shoulder. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said.

“You know what I’m thinking?”

“That we ought to trade murders. Like the Hitchcock film, where two fellows meet on a train, and they switch victims. You kill Fred while I’m out getting an ironclad alibi, and in return I kill your wife.”

“I’m not married,” Hedrick said.

“Your boss, then, or the person who stands between you and a huge inheritance. Look, it doesn’t matter, because we’re not going to do it.”

“I should say not,” Hedrick said.