Lawrence Block - Hit and Run

Soon, he thought. They’d been scheduled to tee off at 11:15, and how much time was each hole likely to take? Some of the passing foursomes, he noted, took longer than others. Some golfers pulled two or three clubs from their bag before settling on the one they wanted for the shot, then prepared themselves with several practice swings, and finally tossed a handful of grass in the air to give them a read on wind direction and velocity. Others went straight to the ball, stepped up to it, addressed it (“Hello, ball!” ) and gave it a whack.

And, of course, the better golfers were faster, because the slower ones took more strokes. Keller couldn’t really see what they were doing once they got to the green, but it seemed to take some of them forever to get off it.

A certain percentage of them hit slices, with the ball curving around sharply to the golfer’s right, sometimes into the light rough a few yards from Keller, sometimes into the deep rough where he was lurking. Each time he retreated deeper into the woods, remaining there until the golfer found his errant ball or gave up the hunt and played another. Now if Wheeler would have the decency to hit a shot like that, and then trot over to look for his ball…

Soon, Keller thought.

He spotted Wheeler the minute the man reached the seventh tee.

With glasses, Keller had eyes like a hawk, but even an eagle would have had trouble at that distance. And Wheeler wasn’t facing him directly, so it was hard to explain how he was able to recognize the man. Something about his stance, maybe — but since Keller was seeing the man for the first time, how did he know what his stance looked like? Maybe it was pure animal instinct, the predator sensing the presence of his prey.

Once he’d identified the man, he knew he wouldn’t have to worry about spotting him again. Wheeler, conservatively dressed in all three of the shots Dot had printed out, hewed to a different sartorial standard on the golf course. His golf slacks were bright purple, and his shirt was a Day-Glo canary yellow. He wore a tam-style cap, too, the kind with wedge-shaped pieces like slices of pizza, with a little button where they met in the middle of the pie, and the slices were scarlet and lime green.

It was amazing, Keller thought, how a man could dress like a banker the rest of the time and then turn into a peacock on the golf course. But it did make it easy to tell the players apart.

Another man had evidently won the last hole, which gave him the honor of teeing off first. He topped the ball and hit a roller down the middle of the fairway, not a lot of distance but a shot that wouldn’t get him in any trouble. It stopped fifty yards or so short of Keller.

Wheeler was next. To me , Keller urged silently. Hit it over here, Ben. Drop your shoulder, pull up on the ball, and slice the hell out of it.

Keller had been watching golfers today for long enough so that it seemed like forever, and of course he’d seen the pros enough times on TV. And Wheeler’s form, from what he could see of it, was nothing great. A pro could very likely have found ten things wrong with his swing, from his stance all the way to his follow-through, but evidently the ball didn’t know what a bad swing it was, because it took off as if Tiger Woods himself had just swatted it. Straight down the middle of the fairway, and damned if it didn’t reach where Keller was waiting and carry a few yards beyond him.

And then of course the third man, who must have been last on the preceding hole, did what he could to be last on this one as well. He hit just the shot Keller had hoped for from Wheeler, a wicked slice that was bad from the moment it left the tee. The golfer knew it, too, letting the club fall, putting his face in his hands. His buddies consoled him, or teased him — it was impossible for Keller to tell which — and then they all mounted their motorized carts and headed down the fairway for their second shots.

Keller had watched the ball land, and moved back into the woods, making sure he was out of sight when the unfortunate golfer got there. But it took him forever to get there, the idiot, because he looked all over the place and couldn’t find the damn thing.

“Hey, Eddie, you want help there?”

The offer came from Wheeler. Yes , Keller thought. Yes, please, come over here and give him a hand. But Eddie said no, he’d find it in a minute, and then he did, and jogged back to his cart for a club, and came back and managed to find the ball again.

Half a dozen strides, Keller thought, and he’d have him. The driver who’d led off, whose ball hadn’t carried very far, had already taken his second shot. Wheeler was up ahead, planning his own shot, tossing bits of grass in the air. Nobody was looking at Eddie, who was pretty well screened from their view by the trees and bushes. Half a dozen strides and he’d have him, and he wouldn’t need the gun, his hands would do the job, and it would be over.

Because did it really make any difference which of these golfers he killed? Wasn’t one as good as the other?

That’s just your mind talking , he told himself sternly. It’s crazy, and the good news is you don’t need to listen to it.

The eighth hole, another par four, was the reverse of the seventh, with its fairway running along the other side of the wooded stretch. Keller took a shortcut through the woods while the three duffers headed for the green, and he’d found a good spot for himself by the time they turned up on the eighth tee.

This time Wheeler had the honors, and Keller braced himself, willing the man to hit a slice. Once again the woods were on the players’ right, and once again Wheeler failed to cooperate. He missed the fairway, but not by much, his ball rolling until it came to a stop in the light rough on the far side, away from Keller.

The next man up, whose name Keller hadn’t caught, hooked his tee shot, and wound up a little deeper in the left rough than Wheeler. And then Eddie hit a perfect slice into the woods on the right, the ball coming to rest mere steps from Keller’s place of concealment.

It was almost as if the guy wanted Keller to kill him. Almost as if that was what Keller was supposed to do.

Keller backed off, trying not to make any noise. In the movies, someone in his position always wound up stepping on a twig, and all ears perked up at the sound. Keller stepped on a lot of twigs, it was impossible to do otherwise, but no one noticed a thing.

Eddie found his ball with no trouble this time, and had the sense to play a safe shot back onto the fairway. Keller got out the course map and tried to figure out what to do next.

The ninth hole was a par three, and the trick was to get on the green without going in the water hazard. That was no place for Keller to lurk, not without scuba gear. He could see from the map that the tenth hole was similarly devoid of suitable cover, so he made his way directly to number eleven, and got there in time to watch another colorfully dressed group of aging businessmen find various ways to misplay the hole.

He waited, and the next team off the tee was another foursome. What would he do, he wondered, if Wheeler and his pals decided to skip the back nine?

And they might. For all he knew they were in the clubhouse right now, bandying friendly insults back and forth, reliving nine holes of golf you’d think they’d be delighted to forget. Knocking back a couple of rounds of drinks at the bar, chatting with other club members, and networking just enough to keep their club memberships tax deductible.

How long, he wondered, before he could conclude that he’d missed his chance? And if he had, what would he do next?

He reviewed the possible courses of action open to him, and couldn’t find any he liked. He reached a point where he was plotting long-range schemes that would keep him in Oregon for a couple of weeks. Then he glanced over at the tee and he’d never been so happy to see a pair of purple pants and a vivid yellow shirt.