The Case Against William (17 page)

Rusty
barked his approval then raced ahead to the ball.

A
lot of your exclusive country clubs don't allow members to play barefooted or
dogs to serve as caddies. But being that Frank was the founding member of this
particular club, he could play without shoes and with a canine caddie. He
picked up his can of beer and the carry bag that contained seven clubs—he had
found that the regulation fourteen clubs were not necessary on the beach
course; he did carry a sand wedge—and slung the strap over his shoulder. Even
at fifty-five, he enjoyed walking a golf course. The sand was wet and cool
under his bare feet. The beach course was not the River Oaks Country Club, but
there were no monthly dues. And he could just walk on.

He
paced off two hundred and forty-seven yards. All carry. You didn't get a lot
of roll on these fairways. Rusty stood guard next to the ball so a hungry
seagull did not mistake it for food. Frank couldn't afford to lose another
Pro-V-One. He was down to his final dozen. The last remnant of his River Oaks
life.

"What's
the yardage?"

Rusty
barked.

"One
sixty?"

Frank
dropped the bag then grabbed a handful of sand. He tossed the sand into the air
and gauged the sea breeze.

"Pin's
on the right side of the green. I'm going to have to hold the ball in the wind
with a cut. What do you think, seven-iron?"

Rusty
barked.

"Six-iron?
You really think so?"

Another
bark.

"Okay,
you're the caddie."

Frank
took a swallow of the beer then pulled the six-iron and set up for a cut. He
swung the club. The ball bored through the wind and held its line to the
green. It hit the sand and stuck. Stiff.

"Greens
are holding today."

Rusty
barked.

"Yeah,
you made a good call on the six."

A
caddie who demanded credit. They walked to the green. The sand was wet and
smooth; the ball would run true. But you had to putt around shells and dead
fish. They were not considered loose impediments but instead part of the
course. Local rule. Rusty dug a little hole fifteen feet away.

"I
believe I was closer than that."

Rusty
held his ground.

"Fine.
A stickler for the rules of golf."

Frank
yanked the putter from the bag. He lined up the putt and put a smooth stroke
on the ball. He skirted a deceased jellyfish, but the ball broke left just
before the hole. Rusty barked.

"Hey,
how many times did Nicklaus have to putt around a jellyfish at the
Masters?"

They
walked to the tee box on the second hole, a par three. Frank tried to play
nine holes every day. Never know, there was still the senior tour. Plan C.
Thoughts of which he entertained until he duck-hooked a drive on the ninth hole
into the Gulf of Mexico—against the wind. Rusty ran into the surf and dove for
the ball, but to no avail. Damn, a Pro-V-One. The sea was a lateral hazard,
so Frank suffered only a one-stroke penalty. But he got his four-iron approach
shot up in the wind; it sailed into a dune right of the green. Sand shot. He
pulled the sand wedge and pitched on; he two-putted. Double-damn-bogey. His
caddie knew to keep his snout shut.

"Let's
go up to the clubhouse. Time for a drink."

The
sun sat low in the sky and transformed the wispy clouds hanging at the horizon
into an orange-and-yellow masterpiece of nature. The sunsets always gave Frank
hope; he had survived another day. They collected sand dollars on the walk
back.

"We're
in the chips now."

Frank
tossed two sand dollars into the pile in the center of the card table.

"Whoa,
we got us a big spender tonight," Dwayne said.

Frank
was holding only a pair of fours, but Dwayne was always a sucker for a bluff.

"Practiced
a little law today," Frank said. "Hence, the Jim Beam."

He
had ridden the bike—he had no car, just a big-wheeled Schwinn with a basket up
front, and there was no law in Texas against biking while drunk—to the store in
town and bought four T-bone steaks and a fifth of whiskey for their Saturday
night card game. Chuck had grilled the steaks on the Weber, and now they
played cards and drank bourbon on the back porch of the bungalow. They each
wore reading glasses; the curse of middle age. Dwayne smoked a cigar, Chuck a
cigarette, and Chico a joint. Being a drunk himself, Frank tried not to judge,
so long as Chico stayed downwind. A single sixty-watt light bulb dangled from
above and illuminated the table sufficiently to make out the cards. Willie
Nelson's "Phases and Stages" drifted out the open windows.

"I
liked him better when he was young," Chuck said.

"He's
eighty," Dwayne said. "You weren't alive when Willie was
young."

Dwayne
Gentry was fifty-six and an ex-homicide cop from Houston. Born and raised in
the Fifth Ward, he was big and black and educated by the U.S. Army. Twenty-two
years on the job, he had taken early retirement; in fact, he had been kicked
off the force for being drunk on duty. Frank had known him from the old days;
he was a good cop. He got the bad guys. He did the job the right way. But he
had fallen hard for the wrong woman. A married white woman. And he had fallen
alone; when he hit the ground, he didn't get up. Instead, he started
drinking. He was already a bona fide drunk by the time Frank picked up the
bottle, but Frank was a fast learner. Dwayne had stumbled into Rockport a year
ago.

"Your
son, that was a hell of a pass," Dwayne said. "Last second win over
Oklahoma, that's got to feel good."

"Man,
I'd love to get a tape, break the game down," Chuck said.

Chuck
Miller studied game film as if he were still coaching. He was white,
forty-nine, and stocky. He had grown up in Uvalde and won a football
scholarship to SMU, back before the NCAA had given the school the death
penalty in the eighties when it came to light that boosters (including the
governor of Texas) had paid players. Chuck had played strong safety and was
known for leading with his head; consequently, he had inflicted and suffered
numerous concussions. He had been a good player, but not good enough to be
paid by the boosters or the pros. After graduating with a degree in football,
he hired on at a Houston high school to coach football. He promptly fell head
over heels for the nineteen-year-old senior drum majorette. Her mother
discovered their affair and reported him to the principal. He was promptly
arrested for having an "improper relationship between an educator and a
student." It was consensual sex with a female above the age of legal
consent; she was an adult under the law and dated men older than Chuck. But
those facts were not defenses to the offense. She was a student; he was an
educator (although his lawyer had argued that a football coach could not be
considered an educator under any known definition of the word). Which made
their affair a second-degree felony under Texas law. For him, not her. He was
a twenty-three-year-old coach just out of college and working his first job.
It would be his last. The judge gave Chuck probation; the school district gave
him a termination notice. Twenty-six years later, he still harbored dreams of
getting back in the game. But it was hard enough to get hired in Texas after
coaching a losing season, much less after screwing the drum majorette. He
would never get back in the game. Chuck had found his way to Rockport five
years before Frank fell face down in the sand.

"I'd've
given my left nut to be as good as your boy," Chuck said.

"Hell,
you could've given the right one too, much as you're using them," Dwayne
said.

Chuck
grasped the football he always carried as if to throw a pass. He carried the
ball like old women carried poodles; he thought it kept him in the game.

"You
know how rich your boy's gonna be in a few months? And playing quarterback for
the Cowboys, man, he's gonna have to beat those Dallas girls off with a stick.
Wonder if the team still bans the players from dating the cheerleaders? Always
seemed like a harsh rule to me."

"That
kind of wondering about cheerleaders is what put you on this beach."

"She
was a majorette."

"She
was a student."

Chuck
shrugged. "Girls are my weakness."

"When's
the last time you were with a girl?"

"In
what sense?"

"The
Biblical sense."

"Does
phone sex count?"

"Those
call-ins you pay for?"

"Yeah."

"No.
In-person sex."

"Oh.
Well, that really limits the sample size. Let's see, that would've been eleven
years ago. No … twelve. I think."

"Girls
ain't your weakness, Chuck. Delusional thinking, that's your weakness."

"Least
my delusions aren't married."

"My
wife's married," Chico said. "But not to me."

Chico
Duran was fifty-two and an ex-con. He started his career in crime knocking
over ATMs and then quickly graduated to bank robbery. The electronic variety.
He never stuck a gun to a bank teller's head; just a few mouse clicks, and he
transferred $50,000 to the Cayman Islands. Thirteen times. Chico maintained
that he was simply striking a blow for working class Americans. "The
government loans the big banks trillions at zero percent interest rate, then
they turn around and charge thirty percent on our credit card debt. What is
that but highway robbery? But I go to jail?" He did. Five years in a
federal penitentiary. He remained indignant over his conviction to that day.
He had called Rockport home the longest.

"Frank,"
Chico said, "how much money you make lawyering other lawyers?"

"Fifty
bucks per session."

"On
a monthly basis."

"Good
month, five hundred."

"Five
hundred? Man, I can get you a thousand, and you don't have to meet with
lawyers."

Like
a doctor saying you didn't need a digital rectal exam this visit.

"Tax-free
money, Frank. Everyone's riding that government gravy train. You ought to
jump on before all the gravy's gone."

Chico
had found a less detectable crime than bank robbery: Medicaid fraud.
Specifically, obtaining disability payments through false pretenses. He had
forged the necessary documents, and eight weeks later received his first
disability check. That was four years ago.

"Two
months, I'll have you on the payroll. Lifetime benefit."

Frank
had always declined Chico's offer. He still held out hope of getting sober and
his law license reinstated. A federal Medicaid fraud charge wouldn't further
the cause.

"And
the beauty of it is," Chico said, "so many folks are doing it, you
get lost in the pile. Almost no chance of getting caught."

"Almost."

"Ain't
no guarantees in life, Frank."

An
ex-cop, an ex-coach, an ex-con, and an ex-lawyer. All the exes of life.
Castaways adrift in a harsh, unforgiving world. Each a loser in his own
right. Everyone gets the opportunity to screw up his life, some more than
others. Each of them had taken full advantage of his opportunities. Each
dreamed of recapturing his old life, but then, dreamers and losers were next of
kin.

"Panama,"
Dwayne said.

Chuck
and Chico groaned. Dwayne was always researching foreign locations to live
where his police pension would go farther than in the U.S. Chuck and Chico
said nothing; they knew not to encourage him. But Frank enjoyed Dwayne's
calculations. Sometimes he sounded almost rationale.

"Panama?"
Frank said.

"Yep.
They use the U.S. dollar as their currency, but it's worth a lot more. You can
live like a king down there. Everything's cheap. Housing, food,
whiskey"—he held up his stogie—"cigars, cost you nothing down there.
It's like going back to the fifties."

"You
want to live in Panama?"

"I
want to live someplace I can afford to live. Hell, I came down here figuring
it would be cheaper than Houston, but all the Houston people are moving here,
driving up the price of whiskey."

"If
you want cheap," Chuck said, "why don't you move to Cambodia, eat
fish and rice?"

"No
cable TV."

Chuck
grunted. "No ESPN, that would be a deal-breaker."

"But
if you put your money in a bank in Panama," Frank said, "it might not
be there tomorrow. There's no deposit insurance, and those governments down
there, they're like Greece—one day you wake up and the government decides to
take ten percent of everyone's bank account."

Dwayne
shook his head. "You don't take your money down there, Frank. You leave
it here. I'm not gonna offshore my money—I'm gonna offshore myself."

"Offshore
yourself?"

"Yeah.
See, rich guys like Romney, they stay here but send their money offshore. Poor
folks like us, we leave our money here and send ourselves offshore."

It
almost sounded rationale. Dwayne tossed his cards on the table.

"I'm
busted."

He
stood and pulled out his small Mag flashlight as if pulling his weapon on a
suspect. Beyond the light from the bungalow, the beach lay dark.

"I'm
gonna have to dig up some more chips."

He
took a step toward the sea just as a phone rang. Frank and Chuck did not react
because neither had a cell phone. Dwayne and Chico checked theirs.

"Not
mine."

"Or
mine."

Another
ring.

"It's
from inside," Dwayne said. "I didn't know your landline worked,
Frank."

"News
to me. I thought they had pulled the plug for nonpayment."

Another
ring. Frank was content to let it ring, but Dwayne was already up. He stepped
inside and found the phone; he answered.

"Tucker
estate."

He
said nothing for a moment.

"
Jail?
Your one call?"

He
returned to the porch with an odd expression on his face.