Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“I couldn’t kill a stranger for no reason,” Nicholson said. “And I couldn’t let you kill Fred, either. I mean, the whole thing’s pointless unless I get to kill the son of a bitch myself.”

Hedrick’s second shotwas almost as long as his first, and didn’t stop rolling until it was within a few yards of the green, just to the right of the trap. “Brilliant,” Nicholson told him. “You’re a sure bet to win your honors back this hole. An easy chip and you’re putting for a birdie.”

“If I putt the way I did last hole...”

“Well, why leave anything to chance? Sink the chip for an eagle.”

They walked to Nicholson’s ball. He shaded his eyes, looked at the green. “What do you think? A seven iron?”

“Or an eight. Pin’s way at the back of the green, though.”

“Seven iron,” Nicholson said, and drew it from his bag. He took a practice swing, and his eyes tracked the imaginary ball clear to the rear portion of the green.

“The way to get away with it,” he said, “would be to make it look as though it wasn’t about him.”

“Wasn’t about him? Who are we talking about?”

“Fred,” Nicholson said. “Who else?”

“If a man gets killed,” Hedrick said, “it has to be about him. Doesn’t it?”

“Not if it’s about something else.”

“Like what?”

“Like golf,” Nicholson said. “If he were killed with a golf club, like we said, and if his body was found on a golf course...”

“I’m not sure I see what difference that makes,” Hedrick said, and then his jaw dropped and his eyes widened. “Jesus,” he said, “it was in the papers last week, wasn’t it? A fellow found in the deep rough at Burning Hills. The twelfth hole, wasn’t it?”

“I believe it was the fourteenth.”

“That’s the one with the water hazard, isn’t it? I didn’t pay much attention to the story, but he was killed with a golf club, wasn’t he?”

“Is that what happened?”

“My God,” Hedrick said, “you actually did it. And got away with it, from the sound of it. But why would you tell me about it now?” He frowned, then shook his head and took a step back, grinning. “Jesus, what a setup,” he said admiringly. “You had me going there for a moment, didn’t you?”

“Did I?”

“The poor guy at Burning Hills was a college kid, wasn’t he? A little too young to be your best friend and your wife’s lover, I’d have to say. You set up that whole story to get me going, and I have to give you credit.” He laughed. “ ‘Hit the ball, drag Fred.’ The college boy, I don’t suppose his name was Fred, was it?”

“He was somebody else,” Nicholson said.

“Well, I guess he was, wasn’t he? Hell of a thing, dying at that age. They haven’t found out who killed him or why, have they?”

“No.”

“Hard to make sense of, isn’t it? Why kill a college kid on a golf course?”

Nicholson addressed his ball, breathed in and out, in and out. He swung the seven iron and got just the right amount of loft. The ball floated all the way to the back edge of the green, backed up, and trolled to within inches of the cup.

“Beautiful,” Hedrick said.

“Thanks,” Nicholson said. “And to answer your question, I’d guess the boy was killed to establish a pattern.”

“A pattern? What kind of a pattern?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Nicholson said. “Look, you know something about clubs. Take a look at this.”

He drew the Big Brenda out of his bag. Hedrick’s face showed first puzzlement, then concern. He started to say something, but Nicholson didn’t wait to find out what it was. Instead he seized the club’s silver-colored head in one hand and the shaft in the other and twisted. The club head came off in his hand, revealing the end of the shaft, honed to razor sharpness. “Just look at this,” he said, and lobbed the club head underhand at Hedrick.

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.

She picked himout 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.”