Fast Greens (24 page)

I pulled the pin from its seat, held it loosely in the center of the cup, and held my breath. It was a good stroke—not quite resembling his mechanical perfection on the putting green at dawn—but a smooth, steady roll, dead on line. If anything, the putt seemed a bit firm as the ball picked up speed moving down the slope. Growing larger as it came toward me, it began to gather momentum with the grain and the hill, refusing to break an inch in either direction.

I pulled the pin well clear and the speeding ball hit dead in the back of the cup, hopped into the air, and continued to roll about three feet past.

I stepped way back, close by the safety of Fromholz, as Beast silently marked his ball and turned his attention to Sandy. It wasn't over yet.

Sandy smiled to himself, even as he spoke to Beast. “Fast green, huh?”

Then, without even giving the putt another read, and certainly without consulting me, Sandy leaned gingerly over his ball and stroked it into the hole for a birdie and the victory. There was no pressure at all. It was almost as if he was winning dimes off his buddies at the practice green. The hollow rattle of the ball landing in the cup hung in the air a long time.

If March had only been there with us, Sandy's win would have been a jubilant and joyful occasion. As it was, no one spoke but Sandy.

“Shit!” he said, looking down at the putter in his hands. “I forgot to take off my glove! I
never
putt with a glove!”

40

March's Cadillac, still shining in the grass by the first tee, could have been a flashy hearse for an eastside funeral. It occurred to me that we the respectful living should load him up and take him back to the Devil's Sanctuary for a West Texas funeral there by his daddy's grave. He'd won that land back, and I felt certain he'd have wanted to make the long journey home.

These thoughts rose briefly above the oppressive pall of my grandfather's death; then I turned again to the explosive situation that surrounded me. There still existed the very real possibility that March might not go to his grave alone. Sandy was the sole living winner and was about to walk away with the cash. That did not, however, discount the chance that Fromholz would try to collect the Vegas debt that Beast still owed to a group of men as close to being a Texas version of the Mafia as anyone would ever get.

By this time I had full confidence in Fromholz's ability to handle the situation and that was precisely the problem. With Beast's history of violent outbursts, he was liable to get himself shot down like a rabid dog, and I was scared shitless that I would either be caught in the middle or just plain have to watch it happen.

Looking back on it now, the interesting part of what took place—all through the match perhaps, but certainly there in the parking lot—was not what happened, but why. On the golf course, I had witnessed the resolution of the past, the unraveling of a thirty-year-old mystery. In the parking lot, the final turn of the cards would reveal the future for more than one of our group.

The game hadn't been over five minutes, and already Roscoe and Beast were bickering as to whose shoulders should bear the burden of blame. Roscoe, of course, insisted that it was all Beast's fault for letting Sandy beat him. Beast alternated suggestions that the game was rigged with periods of brooding silence and a double dose of his usual profanities.

We arrived as a group at the three cars in the parking lot, Sandy's cheap Plymouth, Fromholz's black Chevy truck, and Roscoe's big Lincoln with the suicide doors.

“Okay,” said Fromholz. “Ten grand of this belongs to Sandy.”

Sandy took the cash.

“What about the rest?” Roscoe wanted to know. “What happens to March's wager? He's gone. I say we split it.”

“It belongs to Billy,” said Fromholz.

I could hardly believe it, and neither could Beast.

“No wonder that skinny piss-ant tried to screw me up all day!” complained Beast. “I protest the match!”

“Shut up!” Fromholz told him.

“No!” insisted Beast. “I ain't gonna shut up! That money's mine. I got screwed out of it and I want it.”

I don't know how I could have been stupid enough to stray close to him, but as I peered into the bag of money that was being offered me, Beast reached out with one of his gigantic paws, grabbed me by my hair, and yanked me back toward him.

“The money's mine!” he repeated. In his other hand he brandished the jagged-edged shaft of his broken three-wood.

Fromholz shrugged as if this was either an inconvenience or a waste of time. Then he pulled out his big .357 Magnum and leveled it at the both of us, sighting down the barrel with his good eye.

“Beast,” said Fromholz, “I'm gonna try my best to shoot your ear off. If I miss a little, I want you to know that it was my bad eye that made me do it.”

There was a long and nervous pause as Beast considered his chances, which were slim and none. Then he released my hair, and I jumped away to safety.

“Crummy joke, huh?” Beast said feebly as he tossed down his broken weapon.

I knew I could count on Fromholz. I knew it. But then I noticed that in the distraction Roscoe had eased around to the back of his cart, opened the side pocket of his bag, and pulled out his little blue-steel automatic, which was now pointed at Fromholz.

“Okay, tough guy, Mr. Referee, bill collector, whoever you are: lose the gun.”

What a hit man. Fromholz lets the guy get his gun out, lets him draw a bead on him, and then he does as Roscoe says. He lowers the .357 to his side.

“Now listen,” said Roscoe. “March is dead. And as far as I'm concerned, I won. That's why I'm taking that cash. Blondie can keep his ten grand—he beat Beast—but the rest is mine. Now get out that deed and give it to me.”

“There's a problem with the deed, Doc,” said Fromholz as he passed it over. “March didn't sign it.”

March wins again, I thought.

“
No problema
,” said Roscoe with a laugh. “I been signing March's name for thirty years. Matter of fact, I think I signed his name when we formed the company. I bet I can duplicate my own handwriting one more time. That land's gonna be worth a lot of money when the feds ram the new interstate through there. I don't believe March knew it, but with half of that land we were both wealthy men. Now I'm a real wealthy man.”

“What about me?” Beast demanded. “Don't I get a share?”

“You don't get shit, big man!” answered Roscoe.

“That's right,” said Fromholz. “But Roscoe, neither do you.”

“Whadaya mean?” Roscoe demanded to know. “I got everything: the money, the land.”

“You didn't get Jewel,” I told him.

“Forget that bitch!” he told me right back.

Gun or no gun, there were some things I was not prepared to tolerate. March may have been my grandfather, but Jewel was my life, my family, my friend, my teacher, and my chef; I had no intention of letting Roscoe talk that way. I ran full bore at him, my arms flailing like a windmill. I didn't need Fromholz. The gun meant nothing. Roscoe was an old man. I was young. If I couldn't kill him with my hands, I'd kill him with one of his own golf clubs. Two steps from him I felt a yank on my neck, my feet ran right out from under my body, and I was on the ground flat on my back.

Beast again, I thought. He's got me now.

Leaning my head back for an upside-down view of my attacker, I discovered not Beast but Fromholz. He was holding me by my shirt, now ripped halfway down the back. They were all against me, everyone. I fought to hold back my tears.

“Sorry, kid,” Fromholz told me. “That was a distinctly bad plan you had there. Besides, Roscoe's going to apologize for insulting your grandmother.”

“The hell I am!” said Roscoe, thrusting the gun into Fromholz's face.

“Oh, you're gonna apologize all right, Pops.”

“Why should I?” Roscoe asked.

“'Cause if you don't, I'll kill you.”

Roscoe laughed. “You got balls, Ref, but if there's gonna be any killing done, looks like I'm the one to do it.”

“Go ahead,” Fromholz told him, slowly raising his gun back to level. “Pull the trigger. Kill me! Kill me while you got the chance.”

“You're bluffing!” said Roscoe.

“Pull the trigger, Roscoe. It's empty anyway.”

A panicked look crossed Roscoe's face. As Fromholz leveled the .357, Roscoe squeezed on his trigger and it snapped down loudly on an empty chamber.

My entire body jerked at the loud click. There was a frozen pause all around, then Fromholz shoved the barrel of his big pistol into Roscoe's gut. The older man let out a painful groan.

“Sorry, Doc. I tossed your bullets into the pond at number three. Somebody mighta got hurt.”

“
You
mighta got hurt!” Sandy said to Fromholz. “He just tried to kill you.”

“Nah! He didn't pull the trigger till I told him it was empty. Ol' Roscoe's not a killer. He's just a bad loser.”

“He killed March,” I heard myself say.

“That's crazy talk!” said Roscoe.

Sandy came over and put his arm on my shoulders. “March had a heart attack, Billy. You were there.”

“Roscoe stole his medicine!” I told them. “I put it back in the bag, but Roscoe took it out.”

“Don't listen to him!” Roscoe pleaded. “He's just a kid.”

Sandy went over to Roscoe's bag and began to dig around. After a few moments he pulled out the missing prescription bottle with March's name on it.

“Shit!” said Sandy. “I'll settle this. Give
me
the gun.”

Roscoe began stuttering excuses, which turned to confessions, and finally to a long list of apologies for which it was just too late.

“You got ten seconds,” said Fromholz. “
Noocular
time, to get in that car and disappear forever.”

“Wait for me!” begged Beast, pulling out his wallet and thrusting some bills at Fromholz.

“There's the fifty I won from March, and two hundred more. It's all I got, but take it. Tell Binion I'll pay the rest. I promise! He knows I'm good for it.”

“Five seconds,” said Fromholz.

Beast was still climbing head first in the window when the Lincoln roared off, the heat of the exhaust shimmering off the pavement as Roscoe's car disappeared beyond the hill that March's Cadillac had flown over at dawn.

Sandy and I were in shock. How could Fromholz have let a killer just drive away?

And that's when it happened. The trumpets sounded, the birds sang angelic symphonies, the gates of heaven swung open, and out popped the miracle of familiar speech.

“Morning, gents,” came the voice. “Looks like you all got here early.”

We wheeled around, and just behind us, standing arm in arm with Jewel, was William March: reprobate, poet, dreamer, and friend.

41

I certainly never knew I was a part of anything so grand or so well orchestrated. It was a con worthy of, and who knows, perhaps inspired by Titanic Thompson himself. I was not surprised to find that Fromholz was a part of the scheme, but Jewel's participation was almost more than I could fathom. Sandy, of course, knew even less about it than myself, and demanded to know why March had scared the shit out of us with that dying stunt.

“It was all your fault,” said Fromholz. “After you shit-canned your drive on number nine, March was afraid you'd lose and he'd have to sign the deed for Roscoe.”

“You're not a hit man?” I asked Fromholz.

Fromholz and March both had a good laugh over that one.

“Billy, the only thing I hit,” Fromholz told me, “is golf balls. I'm the assistant pro at the Las Vegas Country Club. You'll have to come visit me sometime.”

“Neat!” I told him. “Can you teach me to shoot craps?”

“Over my dead body,” said Jewel. “One dishonest golf game is bad enough. We won't be visiting any casinos, thank you.”

I glanced at March and he winked at me. I knew then that someday we'd have some fun together in Vegas.

After all these years, I still wonder how March could have known that I would do my part to help carry the day. I suppose he relied upon the fact that Jewel told him when the chips were down I'd do the right thing. I hope I did. There was a time when I thought I'd failed, but that was when I learned that the sky sometimes looks bluest from the bottom of a well.

I suppose the reason I've set all of this down is to testify that occasionally more saints are saved than sinners lost. That there are moments of salvation and redemption and, yes, sweet revenge, moments when despair turns to hope, and darkness dawns to gold, when absolutely all of life comes down to one final roll on a fast green, and the player with the steadiest hands gets to make himself a big fat sandwich with two thick slices of hot homemade bread and not one single iota of shit.

For once, when all of the settling of scores was done, despite the fact that I abandoned my employer to find Sandy's ball in a crucial moment, the caddie walked away well paid. For in his haste, Beast had left behind his square-groove clubs. And even though I learned to spin the ball backwards with them, I never enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed the thrill of handing Beast an eight-iron when he'd asked for a nine.

But I was a little wheel in a big machine. It had been Jewel's idea to bring Roscoe a bottle, Fromholz's four-wood had helped make an eagle, and of course the most important piece of the puzzle was our ace in the hole: Sandy Bates.

“I would have let you in on the con,” March apologized to Sandy. “But I wasn't sure you could play golf and act at the same time.”

“Play he did!” said Fromholz, adding the numbers on his scorecard. “Sandy was five under par for the nine: total of thirty-one.”

“Thirty-one!” said Sandy. “Shoot, that's my lowest nine holes ever. I'd like to finish eighteen.”