Макс Коллинз: Hush Money

One of the two men approaching the golf tee was being studied in the crosshairs of an assassin’s sniperscope. The two men were riding in a red and mostly white golf cart that was putt-putting across the brown grass toward the first tee of the back nine. One of them would soon fold in half as a .460 Magnum blew his intestines and much of his spine and a good deal of blood out of the back of him. But that would not happen immediately. The man in the assassin’s crosshairs had almost five minutes to live.

The driver was a tall man, well over six feet and in obvious good shape, a man with smooth, seemingly unused and handsome features that gave him the look of a twenty-five-year-old when he was in fact forty. His hair was brown and wavy, no gray, his chin deep-dimpled, cheeks too, eyes the color of Paul Newman’s. The passenger was of medium height and build, with a sagging middle that helped to make him look every one of his fifty-four years. His face was spade-shaped, deeply lined, and his brown hair was thinning on top, getting white at the temples. Wire frame glasses nestled on the bridge of a slightly bulbous nose and magnified his colorless gray eyes.

Their cart ascended the slope of the mound from which they’d begin their second nine. They got out of the cart.

They were men as strikingly different in appearance as in background. The smaller man, the one in the more conservative attire — gray golf sweater, light blue Banlon shirt, gray slacks — was Carl H. Reed, former minority leader of the Iowa state legislature, recently retired from that position, recently appointed state highway commissioner. The big man, in the bright red sweater with dyed leather trim, deep blue Banlon shirt and white slacks, the tanned blue-eyed man who had the bearing of a professional athlete, was Joseph P. DiPreta, youngest of the three DiPreta brothers and perhaps foremost amateur golfer in the state, one of the best amateur golfers in the nation.

Excluding the sniper, who lay some distance away in the rough, the two men had the course to themselves on this cool and overcast autumn afternoon. It was late enough in the month — October — for even the most diehard of golf addicts to have hung up their shoes and stowed away their clubs for the season; but Joey DiPreta was more dedicated to the game than most and often played well into November, weather permitting. Today, however, Joey had other reasons for going out on the course: business reasons. Getting in a round or two of golf was a decidedly secondary concern; far more important to get Carl Reed out here on the course this afternoon, alone.

Carl Reed was delighted, almost honored, to have been invited to share an afternoon of golf with Des Moines’ most colorful and celebrated amateur athlete. Carl was a sports nut who took an interest in everything from the World Series and the Super Bowl to log-rolling contests and pro wrestling. He admired and came close to envying guys who pursued athletics as a way of life, and he could especially identify with a Joey DiPreta, since golf, of all sports, meant most to Carl. Golf was the game that let him come down out of the bleachers and onto the playing field, a game that got his mind off the pressures of politics and business. Not that golf was merely a pastime for Carl, an escape valve he could turn when psychological steam built up inside him. No. He was, in his way, as dedicated to the game as was Joey DiPreta.

Carl was aware, of course, of the DiPreta family’s less than wholesome reputation. Their present-day interests, which included a construction company and a Midwestern chain of discount stores, among many others, were not so much in question as were the origins of the DiPreta wealth, which, according to rumor, dated back to the days of bootlegging and worse. As a kid he’d heard stories of the DiPretas and protection rackets and loan-sharking. During the war the name DiPreta always seemed to come up when the black market was being discussed. Some said they had never totally severed their ties with organized crime, and just last year there had been accusations of stock swindle leveled at Vincent DiPreta, Joey’s eldest brother. Nevertheless, Carl had lived in the Des Moines area all his life, holding for over twenty years positions of financial and political responsibility and, yes, power; and in all that time he’d seen no hard evidence to substantiate allegations relative to the DiPretas being a Mafia-style crime family. Nothing at all to turn ugly rumor into ugly fact.

Still, Carl was sensitive to its being a somewhat risky proposition for him to have contact with even a possible mob associate. He’d fought long and hard to build and then maintain a good name in a field that had become more and more tainted in recent years. It was with considerable sadness that he’d come to hear his own college-age children using the word “politician” as if it were spelled with four letters.

Joey could sense the other man’s uneasiness, had sensed it immediately on meeting Carl at the clubhouse. For that reason he’d cooled it on the first nine, not even hinting at the real purpose of the afternoon, just breaking the ice with the guy, whose nervousness, Joey soon decided, must have come from rubbing shoulders with a local super-star. Joey took advantage of Carl’s admiration, using it as an excuse to get overly chummy, to try to become an instant close friend of Carl’s. It seemed to be working.

Funny thing is , Joey thought, watching the skinny but potbellied Carl select a wood, that awkward looking son of a bitch shoots a pretty fair game . The afternoon had been damn near an even match, and Joey was maybe going to get beaten. And he surely wasn’t doing that on purpose. He wanted to win the clown over, but he wasn’t about to throw the match for it — some things were just against Joey’s principles.

Carl shoved a wooden tee into the hard ground, and Joey said, “Whoa! Hey, hold on a second. How about we catch our breath a minute, Carl? Got some beer in a little cooler in back of the cart. What do you say?”

Carl hadn’t wanted to admit being winded, but he sure was, and a beer sounded good. He’s been playing hard, and though he knew he was outclassed, he’d somehow been managing to hold his own; he hoped Joey hadn’t been just going easy on him. He told Joey a beer was fine with him and Joey went and got the beer and they sat in the cart for a while and drank and talked. Joey complimented Carl on holing out on the last green, said that was really some show of putting, and Carl said thanks, his luck was running good today.

“Luck, my ass,” Joey said. “That was a hell of a round you just shot, my friend.”

“I guess you must’ve inspired me,” Carl said with a grin.

Joey, who was grinning too, his teeth as white as fresh white paint. “Don’t you politicians ever let up laying on the bullshit?”