Джеймс Эллрой - Clandestine

I was at it for over an hour, savoring the mystical union that takes place when you know that you’re a gifted practitioner of something much greater than yourself. I was crunching three-hundred-yard drives with fluid regularity when I gradually became aware of eyes boring into my back. I stopped in mid-swing and turned around to face my intruder. It was Big Sid Weinberg. He was lumbering toward me almost feverishly, right hand extended. Taken aback, I extended mine reflexively, and we exchanged names in a mutual bone-crusher. “Sid Weinberg,” he said.

“Fred Underhill,” I said.

Still grasping my hand, Weinberg eyed me up and down like a choice piece of meat. “You’re a six, but you can’t putt, right?”

“Wrong.”

“Okay, you’re a four, and you can hit the shit out of the ball, but your short game stinks. Right?”

“Wrong.”

Weinberg dropped my hand. “So you’re—”

I interrupted: “I’m a hard scratch, I can drive three hundred yards, I’ve got a demon short game, I can putt better than Ben Hogan and I’m handsome, charming, and intelligent. What do you want, Mr. Weinberg?”

Weinberg looked surprised when I mentioned his name. “So that lunatic was right,” he said.

“You mean my partner?”

“Yeah. He told me you two guys were cops together, then he tells me some lunatic story about a city of stiffs. How the hell did he ever make the force?”

“We’ve got lots of crazy guys, only most of them hold it better.”

“Jesus. He’s reading his stuff to my daughter now. They’re soul mates; she’s as crazy as he is.”

“What do you want, Mr. Weinberg?”

“How much do you make with the cops?”

“Two hundred ninety-two a month.”

Weinberg snorted. “Spinach. Peanuts. Worse than that, popcorn. The ducks in the lake at Echo Park make more moolah than that.”

“I’m not in it for the money.”

“No? But you like money?”

“Yeah, I like it.”

“Good, it ain’t a crime. You wanna walk across the street to Hillcrest and play a class-A kosher course? Scramble? The two of us versus these two ganefs I know? We’ll slaughter ’em. C-note Nassau? What do you say?”

“I say you put up the money, and my partner comes with us to read our greens. He gets twenty percent of our action. What do you say, Mr. Weinberg?”

“I say you musta been Jewish in a previous life.”

“Maybe in this one.”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“I never knew my parents.”

Big Sid raised his head and roared: “Ha-ha-ha! That’s par for the course, kid. I got two daughters and I don’t know them from a hill of beans. You got yourself a deal.”

We shook hands on it, sealing the last carefree alliance of my youth.

Hillcrest was only a block away geographically, but it was light-years away from Rancho in every other respect: lush, manicured fairways, well-tended, strategically placed bunkers and sloping greens that ran like lightning. There were eight of us in the group: Big Sid and I, our opponents, two caddies, and our giggling, moonstruck gallery — Wacky and Big Sid’s gargantuan daughter, Siddell. Those two seemed to be rapidly falling into lust, swaying into each other as they trudged fairway and rough, holding hands surreptitiously when Big Sid had his back to them.

And Sid was right; it was a slaughter. Our opponents — a Hollywood agent and a young doctor — were pitifully mismatched; shanking, hooking, slicing into the trees and blowing their only decent approach shots. Big Sid and I played steadily, conservatively, and sank putts. We were well-aided by Wacky’s superb green reads and the club selections and yardage calls of our short-dog-sucking wino caddy, “Dirt Road” Dave.

“Hey, hey, shit, shit,” Dave would say. “Play a soft seven and knock it down short of the green. It breaks left to right off the mound. Hey, hey, shit, shit.”

Dave fascinated me: he was both sullen and colloquial, dirty and proud, with an air of supreme nonchalance undercut by terrified blue eyes. Somehow, I wanted his knowledge.

The match ended on the fourteenth hole, Big Sid and I closing our opponents out 5–4. Nine hundred dollars changed hands, four hundred and fifty for Big Sid, four hundred and fifty for me. I felt rich and effusive.

Big Sid clapped me on the back. “It’s just the beginning, doll! You stick with Big Sid and the sky’s the limit! Va-va-va-voom!”

“Thanks, Sid. I appreciate it.”

“Va-va-va-voom, kiddo!”

I looked around. Wacky and Siddell had disappeared into the woods. Our opponents were heading back to the clubhouse dejected, their heads down. I told Big Sid I would meet him at the clubhouse, then went looking for Dirt Road Dave. I found him walking across the rough toward the eighteenth hole with Big Sid’s bag as well as mine slung across his bony right shoulder. I tapped him on that shoulder and when he turned around stuck a fifty-dollar bill into his callused, outstretched palm. “Thanks, Dave,” I said. Dirt Road Dave unhitched the bags, put the money into his pocket and stared at me. “Talk to me,” I said.

“About what, sonny boy?”

“About what you’ve seen. About what you know.”

Dirt Road Dave let my bag fall to the grass at my feet, then he spat. “I know you’re a smart-mouth young cop. I know that’s a roscoe and handcuffs under your sweater. I know the kind of things you guys do that you think people don’t know about. I know guys like you die hungry.” His finality was awesome. I picked up my bag and walked to the clubhouse — only to be ambushed by another madman en route.

It was Wacky, materializing out of a grove of trees, scaring the shit out of me. “Jesus!” I exclaimed.

“Sorry, partner,” Wacky whispered, “but I had to catch you out of earshot of Big Sid. I need a favor, a big-o-rooney.”

I sighed: “Name it.”

“The car — for an hour or so. I’ve got a hot date that won’t wait, passion pie in the great by-and-by. I’m eating kosher, partner. You can’t deny me.”

I decided to do it, but with a stipulation: “Not in the car, Wack. Rent a room. You got that?”

“Of course, I’m a cop. Would I break the law?”

“Yes.”

“Ha-ha-ha! One hour, Fred.”

“Yeah.”

Wacky disappeared into the trees, where his high-pitched laughter was joined by Siddell Weinberg’s baritone sighs. I walked to the clubhouse feeling sad, and weighted down by strangers.

I figured that Wacky would be at least two hours late returning my car, and moreover that good taste dictated I remain to drink and shoot the shit with Big Sid. I wanted to take a run to Santa Barbara and look for women, but I needed my car for that.

I showered in the men’s locker room. It was a far cry from the dungeonlike locker room at Wilshire Station. This facility had wall-to-wall deep-pile carpets and oak walls hung with portraits of Hill-crest notables. The locker room talk was about movie deals and business mergers with golf a distant third. Somehow it made me uneasy, so I showered fast, changed clothes, and went looking for Big Sid.

I found him in the dining room, sitting at a table near the large picture window overlooking the eighteenth hole. He was talking with a woman; she had her back to me as I approached the table. Somehow I sensed she was class, so I smoothed my hair and adjusted my pocket handkerchief as I walked toward them.

Big Sid saw me coming. “Freddy, baby!” he boomed. He tapped the woman softly on the shoulder. “Honey, this is my new golf partner, Freddy Underhill. Freddy, this is my daughter Lorna.”

The woman swiveled in her chair to face me. She smiled distractedly. “Mr. Underhill,” she said.