“Don’t disappear,” I told Slim, turning to leave.
“Can’t I get nothin’?” he asked again.
I handed him a double sawbuck and advised, “Eat it, don’t drink it.”
Physician, heal thyself.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The greenskeeper’s shed was a metal barn down a dirt work road, well away from Broken Oak’s elysian fair-ways and beau monde. It looked unoccupied and locked, except for a partially open roll-up door about waist high. I ducked under it, like a limbo stick, pausing just inside to let my eyes adjust to the darkness. The only light came from two small air vents casting dusty shafts onto stacks of fertilizer bags from the roof peaks. The smell reminded me of the Staten Island landfill. Clusters of grass-cutting equipment reminded me that my own lawn was three feet high.
“Anybody here?” I called out across a stack of lime bags.
No answer.
I called out again, softer, for some strange reason.
Again no answer.
I looked behind a Locke mower, worried about Vince Henry leaping out at me like the charge of the Light Brigade, wondering if I should look for a light switch or continue probing the dead-grass gloom. Slipping between two tractors, I headed toward what looked like a shed within the shed. A storage room, tool room, toilet? I twisted the knob and pushed the door slowly open. No more calling out or knocking. I entered a small office, illuminated only by another air vent along an exterior wall, holding only a small, uncluttered desk with a swivel chair. A greenskeeper’s desk should be messy, strewn with seed catalogs, odd tractor parts, broken pencils, grease-smudged receipts from irrigation vendors. A chest-high wooden shelf ringed the room, with tools placed carefully along its length like a museum display. Antique tools. Sturdy, hand-wrought, in excellent condition, made to last several lifetimes. Not like the plastic, disposable jobs in my workshop.
I hefted a hand-carved wooden block plane with a thick slab of steel for the blade and a solid brass adjustment lever. A tool made by and for craftsmen that would last forever. I felt its razor-sharp cutting edge, imagining the burly black greenskeeper shaving down the edge of a door, when someone suddenly behind me said, “They don’t make ’em like that anymore.”
I whirled to face Vince holding an antique scythe like the Grim Reaper, blocking the doorway. I wished the block plane I was holding was a Glock.
“They don’t make scythes that size either,” I said, hoping to draw a laugh, and my gun, before he cut me to shreds.
“Scythes count,” Vince grinned, raising the terrible triangular blade like a devil’s phallus. “I can cut a section of rough quicker and easier with this than with any of my tractors,” he added.
“It looks awfully heavy,” I said, hoping the notion of weight might slow him down.
“Needs to be,” he said, “for cutting tall weeds and saw-grass. Balance is perfect,” he continued, hefting the hideous tool and stepping toward me.
My free hand went for my gun, but he only shoved the scythe at me and said, with a smile, “Try it.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, putting back the block plane, I took the tool.
“Swings easy,” he said, adjusting his black baseball cap with the big white X on the crown.
“Sure does,” I said, hoping my hands weren’t shaking. How well does Vince swing a five iron?
“Made in the late 1700s,” he informed me, like a museum tour guide. “Treat it right, it’s good for a few more centuries. My great-grandfather used one just like it.”
“I don’t suppose he was a greenskeeper?” I said.
“He was a slave on a Georgia plantation who finally bought his freedom,” said Vince, studying my reaction.
Good for him. My great-grandfather slaved his life away on a barren farm back in the old country. He bought the farm, so to speak, during the potato famine.
“You collect all these tools?” I said, indicating the surrounding shelves, keeping my own ignoble ancestry to myself.
“Still use them on occasion,” Vince said, “including the one you’re holding.”
He unzipped his black windbreaker, smiling warily, still suspecting that I had some racial ax to grind. I could see him cutting down mountains of rough, and/or golfers who got in his way, with his great-grandfather’s slave scythe. Like John Henry beating the steam drill, with a touch of Nat Turner, making a Black Power statement more effectively than did the big X on his baseball cap.
“Where were you last night?” I asked, now that I held the weapon.
“When the golf pro was murdered?”
I nodded.
“You think I killed the man?” He looked weary. “Okay, Detective. I was home.”
I set the scythe in a corner, away from Vince. I wanted to keep holding it, but it was getting heavy.
“Where’s your car?” I asked.
“Right by the barn.”
“I didn’t see it when I came in.”
“Just drove up. You didn’t hear me?”
“You’re a lot smarter than that big X on your baseball cap indicates,” I commented. “You said Mr. O’Reilly told you it was your IQ in Roman numerals.”
“He also told me that Black Power is prune juice. But I wouldn’t bother to kill him.”
“Someone saw you here around the time Jones was murdered.”
“Who?”
“You parked your car in the main lot and ran all the way down here for some reason.”
“It was Slim told you, wasn’t it? He’s always here, drunker ’n a skunk. Passed out cold in that caddy shack.”
“You deny that he saw you?”
“I work hard all day, Detective. ’Specially in the summer. I’m too damn tired at night to be haulin’ dead bodies around and dumpin’ ’em into trunks.”
“You’re a powerful man. You must have been a hell of a football player.”
“You’re not as dumb as you look either.” Vince laughed. “But you can’t flatter me into confessing. I was home all night. I got witnesses.”
“My witness also says that Jones was always complaining about the condition of the course and blaming you for it.”
“And Massa O’Reilly didn’t like my baseball cap wit’ dis big-ass X on it. Need a conviction, grab the nearest black man. You cops are all the same.”
“You telling me Slim was hallucinating? You telling me you didn’t run by him?”
“You takin’ the word of a drunk, homeless cracker? I can’t even call him trailer trash.” Vince seemed to be getting bigger and looming larger every minute.
“You don’t have to answer any of my questions.”
“I know,” the greenskeeper scoffed. “I got my rights and a seat on whitey’s bus.”
“You can also get a seat in my car on the way to headquarters.”
“No need, Detective.” The big man removed his cap, wiping some sweat from his brow. “Me and Al Jones butted heads on occasion, but I didn’t kill the dude.”
“Reseeding?” I asked.
“Say what?” He quickly replaced the cap, as though I meant his hair.
“You know. The grass out there.”
“Oh, that. I’m always reseeding. Back nine, mostly. Ain’t been much rain, and the watering system’s not working perfect.”
“It must be easier with the course closed.”
“Tell me about it. No clowns drivin’ their carts onto the greens and all over the ground I got under repair.”
“Clowns like Mr. O’Reilly?”
“But you don’t kill a man for that kind of shit,” Vince scoffed.
“It only takes a fit of rage, a lapse in sanity.”
“So you grab the nearest black man?”
“Show me where you’ve been reseeding before the grass grows back and hides the evidence.”
I made sure he carefully stored the scythe before we left. It was then I noticed dozens of broken golf clubs stacked in a corner behind the door.
“Part of your antique tool collection?”
I stopped to look at them—fives, threes, drivers, and so on. Golf is an expensive game if you don’t take care of your clubs.
“They ain’t old enough.”
“They all broken?”
“The members beat ’em to death and leave ’em out on the course. Rage ain’t exclusive to us black folks.”
“Believe it or not,” I said, “no one understands that better than us cops. But why save the busted clubs?”
The greenskeeper shrugged and said, “I keep them as a reminder to keep my head when I get frustrated. See how some of the heads are missing? When you lose your head, it’s all over.” He smiled at me as if I were close to flying off the handle.
“Any five irons?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t touch them.”
“Why not? My prints are already all over them. Anyway, they didn’t kill nobody,” the greenskeeper insisted. “They been doing nothing but collecting dust in that corner for quite a while.”
“We’ll see,” I said. “Now show me where you’ve been re-seeding.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“Zoysia, zoysia, zoysia,” Vince Henry chanted, leading me like a native guide along fairways wider than the Serengeti.
“What’s zoysia?” I asked, worried it was some voodoo chant or an incantation in Ebonics.
“Good grass,” he said.
“The kind you smoke?”
“That’s ganja.”
“Tell me the truth about zoysia grass.”
“It grows in quick and thick. Good for ground repair. And it’s tough stuff.”
“How long before it takes root and turns into the green stuff?”
“ ’Bout a week, but it’s fragile at first. I always rope off the area under repair, but some idiots still can’t stay off.”
“Like Mr. O’Reilly?” I said.
“Yeah,” said the greenskeeper, immense shoulders tensing, eyes narrowing. I pictured him on the football field, mowing down the competition. Now he’s mowing the zoysia.
We followed a cart path to the fifteenth fairway, way out on the course. I couldn’t see the clubhouse or recognize any landmarks. I was lost.
“Over here,” the greenskeeper said, heading toward a brown section of grass near a rocky little creek that could swallow your ball like Jaws, cordoned off with stakes and twine. The area reminded me of the outlines around the corpse forensics makes at a murder scene.
“When did you put this down?”
“Two days ago.”
“It hasn’t been watered?”
“I told you, the sprinkler system ain’t workin’ right.” Vince looked as if he could strangle the waterworks with his bare hands.
“Don’t water it,” I said. “I want forensics to look at it first.”
“Find any seeds on Jones’s body?” Vince asked.
“I’ll ask the questions,” I reminded him.
This guy’s pretty smart. O’Reilly ridiculing his IQ must have gnawed his innards, like a poisonous mineral, and the golf pro criticizing his care of the course wouldn’t have pleased the big bruiser, either.
“You did more than get high in college,” I said.
“Had to get through,” said Vince, “after my knees blew out.”
“No more football must have bothered you. But now you got a job in the real world.”
“You kiddin’, Detective? Broken Oak, and this part of Long Island for that matter, ain’t the real world.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
I had to play golf. I couldn’t bear hanging around Broken Oak without my clubs any longer. If only I could play there. But just imagine the flak if Randy Randall or a member caught me. Eisenhower Park public links in East Meadow, where you don’t need big bucks and a pedigree, only thirty beans and a Nassau County leisure pass, would have to do. I also needed a break. Why not? It was Sunday, my day off, and Enrique Mendoza, aka Ricky, a fellow cop I had played with for years, had a tee-off time.
Walking off the eighteenth green, I grudgingly told Ricky, who had won almost every hole, “You played pretty well.”
“Thanks, Karl.” Ricky grinned.
“For a wetback,” I added. Ricky and I had come up through the ranks together, until he made sergeant and I made detective. He likes his blue uniform, but he also lives in Bayville.
Ricky laughed and told me, “You wouldn’t talk to Lee Trevino like that.”
“You don’t play like Super Mex,” I reminded him.
“You don’t play out of the water,” Ricky said. “You take a drop and two strokes.”
“I wasn’t in that deep,” I said. “I thought I could make a Royal Navy.” That’s a par after hitting into a water hazard.
“You made a submarine,” said Ricky, “and lost the ball.” “I made that Woodie,” I told him. A par after hitting a tree. I hardly ever hit a tree, but my hook has gotten worse since Carol died. “It kicked off that big sycamore,” I added, “just like I planned it.”
Ricky laughed again and said, “You should call it a Lumberjack, the way it kicked down that limb and most of the bark.”
“Don’t worry. I’m still buyin’,” I said, wondering if I should skip the nineteenth hole. To civilians, the clubhouse bar.
“I’m only worried about the word around headquarters.” Ricky put an arm around my shoulders. “They say you’re goin’ soft.”
“They’re wrong.” I could wring Kowalski’s neck.
“Only if you solve the Broken Oak murders, amigo.”
“Thanks for reminding me.” This has been a bad day and it’s getting worse.
“How long we been playin’ together?”
“Since the game was invented. And this is the first time you ever beat me. Remember?” I was getting a headache.
“Oh, I get it. You’re joining Broken Oak?” He laughed like a hyena.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You know my salary and social position.”
“Don’t I know, amigo. I couldn’t get in if I was Chi Chi Rodriguez.”
“What about Tiger Woods?”
“He could be a caddy, maybe.”
“And you could be a busboy.”
“I hear they wait on you hand and foot over there,” Ricky said longingly. “They even polish your balls for you.”
As we stowed our bags in our cars, I said, “Imagine always finding a parking space, unlike this place that’s always packed, and waltzing up to the first tee, where the starter’s always smiling and you haven’t sold your soul for a half-decent time, where the tees haven’t been hacked to death, the fairways don’t remind you of Death Valley, and the greens are to die for, not moribund.”
“Where the locker room is nicer than my living room?”
“With clean, fluffy towels. As many as you want.”
“I found a clean towel here last week, about the size of a taco shell and twice as hard.”
“That reminds me. Where’s the Desenex I loaned you?”
“I used it up. The microbes in the locker rooms we frequent crawl over you like cucarachas. Madre mia, some are bigger than my fist. Even in the steam rooms, where all living organisms, including us if we stay too long, should be dead as doornails.”
“You love these places.” I put my arm around Ricky’s shoulders. “They’re cheap.”
“Bet there’s no microbes at Broken Oak.”
“But one of their members and the golf pro are dead as doornails.”
We entered the locker room, stripped off our sweaty clothes, and headed for the showers.
“You still pissed about losing?” Ricky asked. “I figure your head wasn’t into it.”
“I’ve been told I don’t use my head for anything.”
“Captain Kowalski?”
“And Gleason.”
“Gleason’s okay. And at least you’re still in shape,” Ricky said, as we stepped into the showers and turned them on.
“I’m not so sure anymore,” I said.
“I could lose a few pounds since taking the desk
job,” Ricky added. “Golf’s not doing it for me. I need more exercise.”
“You need to cut back on the quesadillas.”
“That reminds me, amigo. Want to come for dinner?”
I shook my head, feeling too much pressure from the goings-on at Broken Oak to enjoy myself at dinner or on the golf course.
“If you don’t mind my saying,” Ricky said, “you’ve changed since Carol died. You used to love to come over.”
“Nothing endures but change,” I said, recalling an aphorism Carol often used. Ricky looked quizzical, and I added, “Heraclitus said that, not me.”
“Oh, yeah. Jimmy Heraclitus. Owns the Glen Cove Diner.”
“He was an ancient Greek philosopher, you oy-ay.”
“Sounds pretty smart,” Ricky said, like I’m not. “Too bad he can’t help you catch your killer.”
“Killers, maybe,” I said. “I’ve got more suspects than wet-backs crossing the Rio Grande. But I can’t find the murder weapon. I can’t even find the spot where the golf pro got whacked. Forensics found a certain type of grass seed on him. I had them combing over all the spots where they’d recently seeded, but they also got nothing. The same seeds are everywhere. Zoysia.”
“Zoysia? Don’t tell me. He’s an old Polack philosopher.” I smiled halfheartedly and continued, “I checked my suspects’ lawns to see if they were recently reseeded. Dr. Fitch uses sod. Wouldn’t you know? He doesn’t have the patience to let grass grow, and his temper’s hotter than a tamale from hell.”
“What about O’Reilly?”
“No new seeds. There won’t be any for a while. His property is in receivership. But Vince Henry, the Broken Oak greenskeeper, has seeds galore. He also had a motive for both murders and more than enough strength to whack a big guy like Al Jones and toss him into his trunk.”
“I feel for you, amigo,” said Ricky, shutting off his shower. “If you add that club manager to the mix, plus his fat cousin, you got a real rogues gallery.”
“All I’ve got is a pair of golf shoes that match a heel print at the scene of the first murder,” I said, shivering slightly. I’m pretty sure it was from the cold shower, not fear of falling flat on my face at Broken Oak, or missing Carol. “They’re a common brand,” I added. “There are hundreds of pairs in every golf outlet across the country, and they don’t fit any of my suspects.”
Deadly Divots Page 14
