The Secrets of Harry Bright

CHAPTER 14

Otto Stringer was directed by the doorman to the pro shop where he introduced himself and got a starting time for a game he knew might not be played. Sidney Blackpool headed straight for the bar, looking for a telephone so he could run the license number to get a name and address that he hoped would belong to a Thunderbird member. Of course, they both believed that the blonde had to be the former Mrs. Harry Bright.

The clubhouse was not as stylish as the one at Tamarisk. It was done in rugged flagstone and featured lots of Indian art, the staple of desert designers, along with a mix of Chinese artifacts. It had the comfortable look of a clubhouse that had been there awhile, to which the pictures in the lobby attested.

There were photos of Bob Hope who is at least an honorary member of nearly every club in the desert, along with those of the other man who shares that distinction, former president Gerald Ford. Sidney Blackpool recognized one of Thunderbird’s first members, the late Hoagy Carmichael, and Bing Crosby.

He found a pay phone and ran the license number through his office at Hollywood detectives. It was registered to Herbert T. Decker with a Rancho Mirage address, which Sidney Blackpool figured to be a street right here at Thunderbird Country Club.

He walked into the luncheon room looking for the blonde. A fiftyish waitress said, “Help you, sir?”

“No, thanks,” he said. “I’m a first-time guest. Just moseying.”

“Have a look around,” she said, as friendly as they’d been at Tamarisk. She was clearing the luncheon tables.

“Have you seen Mrs. Decker?” he asked. “I believe that’s her name. A very attractive blond lady.”

“Yes, that’d be Mrs. Decker. No, I haven’t seen her today, sir. Have you checked the Copper Room? There was a private party in there today.”

Sidney Blackpool strolled back into the foyer and through the main dining room, which wasn’t in use during the day. He noticed some people in a mirrored room off to the left. He got closer and saw where it got its name. All of the service was copper, or appeared to be: platters, plates, goblets, knives, forks. Then he saw her.

She was talking to a dowager in a wool crepe jacket studded with rhinestones, worn over ballooning tuxedo trouser pants. The older woman was overdressed for this time of day but would be ready for action six hours later. The blonde was obviously apologizing for missing whatever had been going on there. She shook hands with several people, kissing the cheek of one woman and two men before she left. Instead of going back toward the foyer, she turned and walked out onto the patio beside the pool. It was a contemporary U-shaped pool with a small bandstand behind it. Sidney Blackpool could imagine parties and luaus on this patio. He might attend parties in places like this as an executive for Watson Industries.

He stood behind the blonde, who hadn’t seen him, and said, “Must taste like a mouthful of pennies in there.”

She turned and he said, “All that copper.”

She smiled politely and he liked that a lot. She had great teeth, but then, money could also buy plenty of porcelain.

She looked as though she was about to leave so he bit the bullet and said, “Ma’am, just a second, please. I think I know you. Really, I’m sure I know you. Have you ever lived in San Diego?”

That stopped her. She looked troubled by it, but she said, “A long time ago.”

“My gosh, I do know you,” Sidney Blackpool said. “I used to be with San Diego P.D.”

He had it right. Her expression changed from a hint of anxiety to resignation. Up close he believed her to be about forty, give or take a few years for cosmetic surgery, which he couldn’t really detect. She was a cool elegant Alfred Hitchcock blonde all right.

“You must’ve worked with Harry,” she said. “Harry Bright.”

“Of course!” Sidney Blackpool said. “You’re Mrs. Bright! I met you at a party, let’s see, where was Harry working then? God, must’ve been ten years ago.”

“Southern substation,” she said. “Must’ve been twelve years ago, at least. We’ve been divorced that long.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs.…”

“Decker,” she said. “Patricia Decker.”

And then, because he trusted absolutely no one even remotely connected with Coy Brickman or Harry Bright, he said, “My name’s Sam Benton. Can I buy you a drink? It’s great to see someone from the old days. Pardon me, the recent past. You’re not old enough to’ve been around in the old days.”

“I really should be running along, Mister Benton.”

“Listen, lemme level with you,” he said. “I only left police work a year ago. I’m director of security for an aviation plant in the San Fernando Valley and I’m here for a golf outing with my boss. And … well, I’m a little intimidated. This is pretty tall cotton for a guy that used to work the streets around Southern substation. How about one drink? Gosh, you look the same except you’re even more …”

“Sure, sure,” she said. “You still sound like a policeman. Okay, the bar’s this way.”

“I already found it,” he said. “I wasn’t a cop twenty-one years for nothing.”

“Twenty-one years,” she said. “You don’t look that old.”

“We are really gonna get along,” he grinned.

Sidney Blackpool spotted Otto outside the foyer looking for him and he said, “Mrs. Decker, could you order me a Johnnie Walker Black Label, please? I just have to tell a friend where I am.”

He caught Otto as he was about to head back to the pro shop.

“Otto!” he said. “I’ve met her. She is Harry Bright’s ex-wife! I told her my name’s Sam Benton in case it comes up. I don’t want her telling Coy Brickman she met the Hollywood dicks on the Watson case.”

“Whaddaya want me to do?”

“Play golf.”

“What?”

“Play a round. Tell the pro that your partner got detained. If this washes out I’ll grab a cart and meet you out on the course. Or maybe at the turn.”

“Play without you?”

“You’ve played without me before.”

“Not in a place like this! What if I get another stress attack like over at Tamarisk? What if they put me in a foursome with an ex-president and Betty Grable, for chrissake?”

“She’s dead.”

“Well, who’s the one that was married to Phil Harris? I see he’s a member here.”

“Alice Faye.”

“Yeah, what if they put me with Alice Faye?”

“Go play golf, Otto,” Sidney Blackpool said.

When he returned to the bar she was well along with her martini. It looked like vodka. That was very good for Sidney Blackpool. She liked to drink. The problem would be in controlling his own bad habit while encouraging hers.

“Sorry,” he said, placing a twenty-dollar bill on the bar.

“Put your money away,” she said. “I sign for the drinks around here.”

“But I invited you.”

“To the bad old days,” she said.

“To our alma mater,” he said, clicking glasses. “Southern substation.”

“I should tell you, I haven’t seen Harry in years.”

“What’s he doing now?”

“He lives here in the Coachella Valley. He was with another police force here. Mineral Springs.”

“was?”

“He had a stroke last spring. And then a heart attack. He’s … they tell me he’s very bad. It was a long time ago when we parted.”

“Well, what’re you doing now besides playing golf?” He touched her left hand, which was several shades lighter than the other suntanned hand. Her hands said she was in her forties, even if her face didn’t.

“Still a cop, I see,” she smiled. “We play quite a bit of golf.”

“And how do you shoot?”

“Awful.”

“I’ll bet. Not with that athlete’s body.”

He was delighted to see that she was down to one more sip, and that it was a double vodka martini. The mere smell of gin nauseated him, and straight vodka drinkers were the biggest lushes of all. To keep her going, he told himself, as he drained his Johnnie Walker. Not because I’ve got a drinking problem. Oh no.

“Please let me buy us another one,” he said.

“I’ve told you your money doesn’t work here,” she said, nodding to the barman. They were the only two at the small bar.

The luncheon room was nearly cleared by now, and there were just a few people passing the foyer. The barman poured her a double. Sidney Blackpool imagined that country-club bartenders had to know their members.

“Whadda you do when you’re not playing golf?” he asked.

“Nothing much. A little tennis, but my legs aren’t what they used to be.”

“Well,” he said in obvious disagreement.

She didn’t mind. She knew what kind of legs she had. “Sometimes we play Oklahoma gin-from the stage play not the state. What I like is when we have fourteen ladies and play two against one. It’s a rotating game we call ‘kill your sister.’ You can lose a thousand a day.” Then she gave a lopsided grin and said, “Came a long way from Southern substation, haven’t I?”

He liked that sardonic, weary, lopsided smile. It looked very familiar.

“What’s your husband do?”

“Oil leases. He spends a lot of time in Texas and Oklahoma. Sometimes in the Middle East. We summer in Lake Tahoe or Maui.” Then she realized how that one sounded to a guy just out of police work, and she grinned in apology. “What can I say?”

“Thanks, I guess,” said Sidney Blackpool. “You’re a lucky girl. All you can say is thanks.”

“Sure, thanks,” she said.

And then he thought about it. He thought about her son, Harry Bright’s son. He said, “Do you have children?”

“No. No children.”

He despised himself for an instant, but he said, “That’s funny. I could’ve sworn Harry had …”

“Our son was killed. Long after we were divorced.” She really took a hit at the vodka, but smiled wearily. “It’s okay. Not all San Diego policemen knew about our boy. He was on PSA Flight 182. He was nineteen years old in his first year at Cal.”

“I’m truly sorry, Mrs. Decker. Really I …”

“Lots of other people’s children died that day too.” Then she drained the glass and said, “Well, I think I should be …”

“I’m feeling real bad for prying. I’d do almost anything if you’d have just one more,” he said. “Please … Patricia.”

“They call me Trish,” she said, and then she looked sadly at her glass and at the bartender.

The bartender poured them both doubles this time, knowing a heavy hitter when he saw one.

“This is a drinking man’s club,” she said. “This and Eldorado.”

“We played Tamarisk the other day,” he said.

“That’s not a drinking club. This is a drinking club and a gambling club.” Then she looked at him with her sad eyes and there were a lot of things he didn’t want to ask this woman. But there was something he did want to ask. Even if it never helped to solve the murder of Jack Watson.

“Trish, would you have dinner with me tonight? I’m lonely here in the desert.”

She didn’t waste time with the third martini. “How long’ll you be here?” she asked.

“Till the end of the week.”

“Are you married?”

“No.”

“I believe you. You don’t look married.”

“Please. How about it?”

“And what should I tell Herb?” she asked, looking at her wavering reflection in the martini. “My husband.”

“You … you could invite him along,” he said. “I’d be happy to have both of you.”

She laughed at that one, and looked up from her drink. “Would you now, Sam?” she asked huskily. “From one old cop to another, would you really like him to come along?”

“If it’s the only way I could see you,” he said earnestly, and his thigh was brushing hers. It had been a long time since Sidney Blackpool had courted any woman except for an occasional cop groupie whose name he wouldn’t remember three days later. And who would just as easily forget his.

“I don’t run around to desert restaurants when my husband’s out of town. Doesn’t look appropriate. But I hate dining alone. How would you like to be my guest tonight? Right here at the club. Say about seven?” She glanced at her Cartier Panthère wristwatch.

“I’ll be here,” he said.

“Sorry, but you’ll have to wear a jacket and tie.”

“I’ll manage,” he said.

“Now I’ve got to take my afternoon nap,” Trish Decker said, standing a bit unsteadily. “That’s something else I do as regularly as golf and cards.”

Otto was in the men’s locker room watching a dozen men at two rows of felt-covered tables playing something they called Bel-Air gin. He was fascinated, until he found out that the stakes had gotten as high as fifteen cents a point. Otto did some fast computing and realized from the figures written beside one player that the man had lost at least twelve hundred dollars that afternoon.

There was a poker game going in another room to the right of the gin room and the small bar was getting lots of afternoon action. And this, Otto realized, was just an ordinary weekday before the season was in full swing. Otto decided he wasn’t quite ready for this even with his pocket full of President McKinleys. He walked outside where his bag was propped beside a golf cart. He took his putter and bought a dozen golf balls from the pro shop before heading toward the practice green.

By the time Sidney Blackpool found him, he was having a fine time with a woman he’d met on the practice green. She was at least twenty-five years older than Otto, and even rounder. She wore a golf skirt and blouse in Easter egg colors, and a yellow floppy hat. Her hair was a ginger shade, but it was definitely time to get to the beauty shop for a retouch. She wore oversized hexagon eyeglasses with persimmon rims.

They were in a putting contest, tapping twenty footers at three designated cups. Sidney Blackpool could see they had some sort of bet going.

“Okay, Fiona,” Otto was saying when Sidney Blackpool found them. “This is my chance to get even. Don’t stand too close to me or my little heart will make bunny bumps and I’ll miss!”

“Oh, Otto,” said the fat old dame, “you are a caution!”

Sidney Blackpool saw that Otto’s bag was now loaded on an electric golf cart by the putting green. The cart was canary yellow, as was the owner’s golf bag. There was a radio in the cart, an electric fan pointed toward the driver, and a small television set. There was an ice chest behind the driver’s seat, which the detective figured didn’t contain soda pop. There were two yellow cups on the putting green containing a brown concoction. Otto hadn’t been letting the desert heat parch him.

“Otto, could I see you a minute?” Sidney Blackpool called.

“Hold that putt, Fiona,” Otto said, waggling his finger. “This is my business partner, Sidney Blackpool. Sidney, meet Fiona Grout.”

“Charmed, I’m sure,” the old dame said to Sidney Blackpool, who smiled and nodded.

“I see you’re having a few giggles,” Sidney Blackpool said.

Otto’s eyes were already glassy and he blew 80-proof Jamaican rum in his partner’s face when he whispered, “Sidney, I got one! She’s a widow. Lives in Thunderbird Heights, for chrissake. Knows Lucille Ball! Don’t take me away from this.”

“Otto, I missed it!” Fiona tittered. “You have a chance at me!”

“Gimme a break, Sidney,” Otto pleaded. “I’m on a roll!”

“I got a great idea,” Sidney Blackpool said. “I’m going back to the hotel and call Palm Springs P.D. See if Terry Kinsale’s registered again for a hotel job. I’ll call Harlan Penrod too and see if he found out anything. I gotta be back here tonight for a date with Harry Bright’s ex.”

“Yeah? You’re amazing,” said Otto, looking anxiously over his shoulder at Fiona who had waddled over to the cart for another mai tai. “You mean I can stay here and play around? I mean … play a round?”

“Sure. Can you get back to the hotel when you’re finished?”

“I’ll cab it back,” he said. “Unless old Fiona wants to gimme a lift. She’s got a new Jaguar she’s just dying to show me!”

“My, you are the one, Otto,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“See you later, Sidney,” said Otto. “If I’m a little late don’t wait up.”

Then he turned and hurried back to Fiona who said, “Otto. It’s time for you to have another drinky poo!”

“Well, I never!” Otto cried. “I guess I did drink mine all gone!”

The last thing Sidney Blackpool heard him say was to a putt that was rolling fifteen feet by the cup, thereby losing for him whatever were the stakes. “Come home, punkin!” Otto called to the errant golf ball. “Daddy forgives you!”

“Oh, Otto, you are a caution!” Fiona giggled, whacking him so hard on the shoulder that he spilled mai tai down his sweater.

When Sidney Blackpool got back to the hotel there was a message at the front desk from Harlan Penrod. He went straight to a pay phone in the lobby and dialed the number but got a recorded message saying, “Hellooo. This is the Watson residence. Your call will be returned as soon as possible.”

He went into the dining room and had a salad, then returned to the room where he lay on the bed and resisted the temptation to call room service for a drink. It was only three o’clock, much too early. He called Palm Springs P.D. and spoke to the detective lieutenant, getting a negative on Terry Kinsale.

When the lieutenant asked him what it was about, Sidney Blackpool lied and said, “Doing a favor for the Watsons. This Kinsale kid left something at their house.”

He was getting drowsy when the phone rang. When he answered, Harlan Penrod said, “It’s me!”

“Yeah, Harlan, what’s up?”

“You’ll never guess. I found Terry!”

“You did?” His feet hit the floor and he was sitting. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know where he is at the moment, but I know where he’ll be tonight. At Poppa’s Place. It’s a gay bar on the highway in Cathedral City.”

“How do ya know?”

“Well, I found two bars where he hangs around and I told a fib. All in the line of duty, of course. Told the bartenders that a friend of Terry’s was leaving Palm Springs for good and wanted Terry to have his Rolex as a memento. I said somebody’d meet Terry at six o’clock at Poppa’s Place.”

“Won’t that sound a little unbelievable? An unnamed friend?”

“I learned that Terry has lots of friends, and believe me, he wouldn’t know the names of half of them. He’ll go for it, the little slut.”

“You do very good work, Harlan,” Sidney Blackpool said. “I’m proud a you. If it turns out Terry’s our boy, I’m gonna recommend that Mister Watson give the reward money to you.”

There was silence on the line for a moment, and then Harlan Penrod said, “I didn’t do this for a reward.”

“I know you didn’t, but …”

“The Watsons’ve been very good to me. I have a job here for as long as I want, and at my age that’s a lucky break.”

“I know, but …”

“I wouldn’t want a reward for something like this,” Harlan Penrod said. “I’m doing this for Mister and Mrs. Watson. And for Jack.”

“Okay, Harlan,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Anyway, I’ll let you know what happens.”

The detective hung up and, three o’clock or not, called room service and ordered a double. Then he ran a hot bath and hoped that a soak and a Scotch would help him unwind. He decided to leave a message at the Thunderbird pro shop telling Otto to meet him in front of the clubhouse at 5:30 sharp. They’d stake out Poppa’s Place and if they got their man they’d make an evening of it. In case the kid didn’t take the bait, Sidney Blackpool was already going to be dressed in jacket and tie and would proceed to the dinner date with Trish Decker.

He realized that the singer on the radio sounded like Ted Lewis.

“I can’t save a dollar, I ain’t got a cent.

“But she wouldn’t holler, she’d live in a tent.

“I got a woman that’s crazy for me, she’s funny that way.”

Harry Bright. Poor dumb son of a bitch. He wondered where Trish Bright had met Herbert Decker. He’d bet it was while she was still a dutiful cop’s wife. He knew all about cop wives and greener pastures. In fact, Trish Decker reminded him of his ex-wife, Lorie. The coloring, the refined profile, the lopsided sardonic smile. And the sad eyes.

Trish Decker had sad eyes all right, but she’d never live in a tent, not that girl. He vaguely realized that he was starting to feel sorry for a suspect in a murder case. He was about to examine that bit of silliness when there was a knock at the door and a voice said, “Room service.”

The Johnnie Walker Black and a hot bath made him forget just about everything for two hours. He dozed without dreaming and was startled to see that the sun was already behind the mountain when he awoke.

Otto Stringer was starting to see two tees, two balls and two Fionas and that was a whole lot of flesh. They were nearly on the back nine. It was so late in the afternoon that nobody pushed them. They’d already let five foursomes and another twosome play through and they’d stopped keeping score when each of them figured to top 160. Which Otto said he couldn’t face, but which Fiona said was her average round.

After a quart and a half of mai tais, Fiona’s blouse was sticky with brown rum and fruit juice. The more she drank, the harder she’d whack Otto’s right shoulder when he said something funny. And by now everything was funny.

It was clear to Otto that this incipient romance might go somewhere and he decided that when he finally got the fat old doll in bed, he was going to show her his freaking shoulder, which was turning purple from all the slugging, and explain that he couldn’t go around feeling like he’d spent fifteen rounds trying to slip punches with Marvelous Marvin Hagler. But he’d cross that bridge when he came to it, as now he crossed the actual bridge over the fairway to the ninth tee where Lucille Ball lived. He sniffed the grapefruit and tangerine trees and Fiona promised to introduce him to Lucy and to Ginger Rogers.

“Lots a bucks around here,” Fiona said, as he pumped her for information that would permit him to estimate her wealth. “A house in Thunderbird Cove sold in only four months for one million bucks profit. The owner of the San Diego Padres lives there.”

“That’s a tidy sum.” Otto Stringer was exceedingly blasé.

“Not excessive considering the property,” Fiona said, belching wetly.

“I wouldn’t say so, no,” Otto agreed, hoping he didn’t run over a Mexican gardener. He’d almost hit two already. If they gave sobriety tests for golf-cart driving, he’d be in the slam before Fiona could think it was a caution.

“Fiona,” Otto said, as she was putting on number eight, a pretty three par protected by a lake with a tiny island containing three palms surrounded by red azaleas. “Is your house rather … sumptuous? Or do you prefer a more simple arrangement?”

“I got a big one, Otto,” Fiona said, doing better than she had on the seventh green where she six-putted. One of the earpieces on her glasses was now hanging loose and she was squinting at him through only one lens. “Look at my blouse!” she cried. “I seen tablecloths at an Irish wake cleaner’n this!”

The second batch of her homemade mai tais was stronger than the first. Otto hit a ball off the toe toward a home near the thirteenth green, causing a nice young fellow in shorts and a golf shirt to jump up from his patio chair and rush toward Otto as the detective staggered out of the cart to chase the shot. The young man kicked the ball out onto the fairway saying, “There you go, sir.”

“Thanks,” Otto said, and shanked it the other way with his three wood.

“You get a free drop,” Fiona belched. “Anytime you get near that house you get a free drop.”

“Why?”

“Can’t go too close. That kid’s a Secret Service agent.”

“Is that where he lives?”

“Yup,” Fiona said, looking like she might fall asleep before they got back.

“I can’t believe it!” Otto cried, and he stopped the cart on the fairway to watch some people come out the back door of the unimpressive fairway home.

“Fiona!” Otto whispered, and now he was whacking her on the arm, jarring her out of a stupor. “It’s him! No, it ain’t! Yes, it is!”

“Does he look like Herman Munster?” Fiona Grout mumbled, her glasses once again askew on her face.

“Yeah. He just tripped over the garden hose. It’s him!”

Otto was not so drunk that he could forget a thousand past mistakes he’d made in this condition. He didn’t want to risk losing his chance with Fiona. He was just sober enough to know that in this lifetime he was never going to have another shot at the sweepstakes.

Otto was plotting his strategy as well as he could, and trying to keep from smacking his fairway shot into ball-grabbing palm trees when, near number fifteen, Fiona said, “We got bass in these little lakes, Otto. You like to fish?”

“Oh, yes, Fiona,” Otto said ardently. “I’m quite a fisherman.”

“I got the bait for those suckers on my wall,” she said. “I bought a Peruvian tapestry from one of our bigtime desert interior decorators, and you know what? It was full of moths!”

“I had a tapestry like that once,” Otto said. He remembered buying it for thirteen bucks in Tijuana. It was black velvet with a naked redhead in a sombrero painted across it. “I never had no luck with tapestries.”

“Well, my moths turned to worms before I knew they were there. Now I got maggots!”

“Ugh!” Otto belched. “You should not have maggots on a tapestry, Fiona.”

“If my husband was alive he’d deal with that little pansy decorator,” she said. “He’d have two black eyes.”

“Mauve or puce,” Otto said. “Not black. It ain’t becoming.”

Then it occurred to him. He had it: an opening. “You need a husband, Fiona.” Otto fondled his driver preparatory to destroying the tee on number fifteen.

“I know, Otto,” she sighed, opening the ice chest to demolish the last of the mai tais. “It gets lonely.”

“Yes!” He sighed even deeper. “We shouldn’t be alone at this time a life!”

“Otto!” she said. “You shouldn’t talk like that. You’re just a kid.”

Otto Stringer had an inspiration. Though he’d never been a smoker in his life, he took two from her pack, put both of them in his mouth just like Paul Henreid did for Bette Davis in his mother’s favorite movie. Then he lit both and took one from his lips, gently inserting it in hers. He said, “I’m not young anymore, Fiona. I’m middle-aged outside but I’m elderly inside. I’m bald and I’m so fat I could breast-feed six Ethiopians. Yet I believe the right woman could light my old embers!”

“Otto, you lit the filter end,” she said. “Boy, do these things stink when you light the wrong end.”

“Here, smoke mine, Fiona,” Otto said, quickly jerking the smelly one from her droopy lips and sticking the other one in. “Anyways, Fiona, we shouldn’t be alone, us two.”

“You’re up, Otto,” Fiona said, adjusting the radio volume. “We don’t finish pretty soon, we’ll need coal-miner hats.”

Otto stalled for time by improvising with Duke Ellington. “ ‘It don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing! Doo-ah doo-ah doo-ah doo-ah …’ ” Otto sang it as he staggered around the tee, trying to pull it all together for the 513-yard five par.

Fiona said, “I almost forgot, Otto. Behind you across the water is where Billie Dove lives.”

“Who’s Billie Dove?”

“Oh, Otto!” Fiona cried. “See, you are just a kid. She was a great actress of the silent screen. She starred with Douglas Fairbanks!”

“I’m old, Fiona!” he cried. “Please don’t talk to me like I still gotta sweat out chicken pox!”

He sensed he was losing her. All week he’d felt like his arteries were about to atrophy and now all of a sudden he felt like a snot-nose kid! And thinking of anything but his golf shot, he took a half swing and belted it right on the screws, 230 yards on the fly with a slight draw that took it twenty yards farther.

“I told you you’re young, Otto,” Fiona said. “You think an old guy can hit a ball like that?”

“Aw shit!” Otto Stringer said, having smacked the greatest golf shot of his life. “Aw shit, Fiona!”

When they finally played number eighteen, with the sun well behind Mount San Jacinto and the fairway in shadows, they lost five balls between them before reaching the green. A record for a day in which they lost twenty-six balls.

Otto gazed with melancholy at the rows of lacy, cone-shaped trees. He’d even started to love the shingled date palms, and all the other ball-grabbing bastards he’d faced that day, now that he realized this might be it. He had minutes to turn a lifetime of shit into sunshine. The thought of years still to come on the streets of Hollywood made him want to weep.

He turned up the radio when at last he parked beside the green. Fiona lurched unsteadily toward her ninth shot, which was twenty yards left. Otto began to sing along with a George Gershwin classic coming from the radio. He composed his own lyrics as he went, looking wistfully at Fiona who whacked a chip shot over everything, saying, “Aw screw it!” as her ball hit the concrete and took off in the general direction of Malibu, causing her to say, “Good-bye and godspeed, you lil sumbitch.”

“The way you wear your haaaat!” Otto sang it from the heart, and Fiona adjusted her lid, which was now resting across her nose from the force of that monster swing.

Then he sang, “The way you wreck that teeeeeeee!” And that was true enough. The eighteenth tee, after Fiona was through with all her mulligans, looked like it was nuked.

“Oh, Otto!” Fiona cried. “I don’t think I ever enjoyed a round of golf more. You gonna putt Out?”

Otto stopped singing and said, “I can’t, Fiona. That out a bounds approach shot did it. I ain’t got no balls left.”

“I don’t know about that, Otto.” She winked and his heart leaped! He still had a chance!

“You little dickens!” he said. “Hey, let’s have a drink in the bar! You can’t go home yet.”

“Okay, one for the fairway,” she said. “I just live across the golf course.”

“I’d love to see your home!” Otto said. “I ain’t scared to deal with a wall full a worms. You need a man around the house, is what you need.”

It was nearly dark when they got back to the pro shop where Otto was handed the phone message from Sidney Blackpool. He decided that in the event he could keep this romance aflame it would probably be on a golf course. He had a vague plan of playing again tomorrow so he said to the pro, “Gimme another dozen balls, will ya? I don’t care what brand. Make them orange. Easier to spot in the water.”

He was the same pro who’d sold Otto a dozen before starting this round. The pro put the balls on the counter, saying, “Would you like these to go, or would you like to lose them here?”

On their way to the bar, Otto said, “I don’t think that guy was so funny, Fiona.”

“They just don’t understand how hurtful this game can be to people like us,” Fiona said soothingly. “Forget it, Otto.”

There was some barroom music coming from the oldies radio station. Carmen Miranda was singing, “Chica chica chic! Chica chica chic!” and Fiona Grout paused in the foyer and did as frisky a samba as could be expected from someone so fat, old, and drunk.

“You and me’re ages apart, Otto,” she said sadly.

“I know that singer!” Otto cried. “Lemme think. She’s the one with all the fruit salad! Apples and bananas and coconuts used to sprout outta her skull! I know all that old stuff, Fiona!”

They both ordered mai tais and were eyed by a dubious barman who would never have served this pair of de-tox candidates in a public bar outside the club.

Fiona was sucking noisily on her drink even before Otto got his. There were three men sitting farther down the bar telling jokes that were interfering with Otto’s game plan. He couldn’t understand why the three men sounded so irritating, but they did. In fact, they were making him so mad that he’d forgotten three brilliantly conceived double entendres that he was going to use on Fiona to get her hot.

All he could think of to say was, “Fiona, let’s have a date tonight, just you’n me.”

“A date? Otto, I can’t possibly!”

“Let’s play golf tomorrow then,” he said in desperation.

“Tomorrow?” She put her mai tai down on the bar, but forgot to take the straw out of her mouth as she said, “I’m playing with another couple tomorrow. And with my fiancé.”

“Your fiancé!” They couldn’t have heard him in Mineral Springs, but only because of a windstorm.

“Yes, Otto, I’m engaged. I’m getting married in December and we’re honeymooning in the Bahamas at his son’s home. I’ll meet his grandchildren for Christmas.”

“Fiona!” Otto couldn’t believe it.

“Otherwise I’d be glad to date you tonight, Otto. You’re lotsa fun! I’d like you to play golf with my fiancé and me. His name’s Wilbur. You’d like him.”

Otto Stringer could only stare at his mai tai while Fiona resumed her slurping, blissfully unaware that a ship passing in the night had just gotten torpedoed, leaving nothing but an oil slick.

The jokesters were still at it. One of them was Otto’s age and the other two were in their fifties. They’d just told a Jew joke about the difference between a Jewish princess and Jell-O is that Jell-O moves when you eat it. Then they told the one about crossing a Mexican and a Mormon and getting a garage full of stolen groceries, and were into the second spook joke about the black sky divers in Texas being called skeet.

And that reminded one of them that something funny had recently occurred.

“Wait’ll you hear this,” he said. “We had an African gentleman try to apply for membership in the club. Because he was quite well known he actually thought he could make it.”

“Who was it,” Otto said boozily. “Gary Player?”

“What?” the jokester said, looking toward Otto.

“They mean a colored applicant,” Fiona whispered to Otto.

“Oh, is that what they mean?” Otto said, looking about as surly as Beavertail Bigelow always looked.

“You mean somebody that uses a chicken bone for a teething ring? One a those, Fiona?”

“Sorry if we offended you,” the man said. “I thought we were among friends here.”

“Offend me?” Otto said belligerently. “I ain’t a kike or a beaner or a nigger. I sure ain’t a member.” Then he was feeling so unaccountably mad that he lied and said, “Tell you what I am though. I’m a Democrat. And I think Ronald Reagan’s so old he thought Alzheimer was a secretary of state. And during the Mondale debate he almost reminisced about old Jane Wyman movies. And he’ll balance the budget when Jesse Jackson goes squirrel shooting with the National Rifle Association and Jane Fonda joins the Daughters of the American Revolution.”

The three jokesters mumbled something to each other, finished their drinks and were preparing to leave, when Fiona turned to Otto and said, “What’s wrong with you? Why’d you say that?”

“I don’t know, Fiona,” he said truthfully. “It was the worst thing I could think of to say around here. I ain’t even a Democrat! I think I was trying to pick a fight!”

“Rum makes people crazy,” Fiona said, slurping on the empty glass with the straw. “You better go home, Otto. It was nice meeting you though. I had fun.”

“I am acting crazy!” he said. “I tell those same jokes all the time but they sound so different in a place like this!”

“Lots a people here earned their own money,” Fiona informed him. “People got a right to play golf with who they want.”

“They got a right, but their right ain’t right,” Otto said.

“You’re drunk, Otto. You don’t make sense.”

“Maybe I oughtta go home,” he said. “You got that right,” she said, sounding like a cop. “Well, I sure enjoyed my day,” Otto said, kissing the old doll on the cheek. “You are a caution, Fiona.”

Sidney Blackpool was already waiting in front of the clubhouse by the time Otto emerged, trudging dejectedly to the bag drop.

“You look like Arnold Palmer when he took the eleven in the L.A. Open,” Sidney Blackpool said. “What happened besides you getting blitzed? Jesus, what’ve you been drinking? Your sweater’s a brown argyle. It was solid yellow when you started the day.”

“You ever try to drive a golf cart and drink two quarts a mai tais with somebody that throws more jabs than Larry Holmes?”

“Why so glum? You sick from the booze?”

“I dunno, Sidney. Back in Hollywood I’m too old. Here I’m too young. There I’m a Republican. Here I’m a Democrat. There I dream a all the things you can buy with money. Here we find out some guys in our squad room couldn’t buy in if they did have money.”

“You okay?”

“Soon as you get that job with Watson maybe you’n me can play sometime on his corporate membership. But you ain’t gonna get certain members of our Griffith Park Saturday morning boys’ club on the course.”

“How bombed are you?” Sidney Blackpool asked. “What happened in there?”

“And they’re all cops. So they are my kind!”

“I guess you’ll tell me what’s wrong in your own good time.”

“All I can say is, I wanna go home to Hollywood where life don’t make no sense at all, but at least you expect it.”