Double Eagle

by Keith Miles

  It was not how I would have described him. The police arrived in numbers soon afterwards. They moved with the casual efficiency of people who are used to being summoned to a murder scene in the middle of the night. When a ring of lights had been set up, the forensic team got to work at once. They searched, measured, photographed and bagged for removal. After thorough examination by the pathologist, Zuke Everett was wheeled away on a stretcher.

  The steward of the tennis club was hauled out of his bed in Westwood Village and brought over to inspect the damage to his fence and to switch on the car park lights so that the detectives could extend the area of their search. Neighbours were pacified and sent away. The press was kept at arm’s length for the time being. Two uniformed police officers guarded the front door of the house.

  While all this was going on, the four of us sat in the living room and tried to come to terms with the enormity of what had happened. Dominga flitted in and out with liquid refreshment. Helen and Mardie drank endless cups of black coffee, I opted for chilled orange juice and Howie launched a full-scale assault on a bottle of bourbon.

  I’d washed all the blood from my face now but the memory of my encounter with the fence still lingered. The ugly red weals on my forehead had not yet faded and the knuckles on one hand were raw where they had made contact with the wire.

  We were not alone for long.

  In response to telephone calls from Howie, a doctor, a lawyer and a Catholic priest soon rolled up at the house. All were surprisingly young men and none of them seemed discomfited by the late hour. The doctor attended Mardie and prescribed sedatives for her. She was still in distress and hardly able to speak without sobbing. The lawyer stayed deep in conversation with Howie. A dead golfer raised all kinds of legal problems for the manager and his brow became progressively more furrowed as he talked with his visitor.

  The priest was there for Helen’s benefit. He stroked her hand and spoke to her quietly in Spanish. She listened intently and nodded at what was being said but she was still remarkably unruffled.

  I had to draw solace from my orange juice.

  My own grief began to gnaw away at me. Zuke’s friendship had been important to me over the years and it was the reason that I had got to Los Angeles in the first place. I felt loss, outrage, pain. Only hours before, the house had been echoing with his laughter. It now seemed cold and empty without him. I had seen the best of Zuke that night. It had been extinguished forever.

  I was hurt, humbled, alone.

  Eventually, it was time to give our statements to the police. Since I had actually discovered the body, I was the first person to be interviewed by the two detectives leading the investigation.

  Lieutenant Victor Salgado and Sergeant Patch Nelms.

  Salgado was a lean, swarthy, once handsome individual who was failing to keep middle age at bay with hair dye and flashy clothes. There was a slightly seedy air to him and the gold tooth did not help. Nelms was a big, solid black man in a dark blue suit and spotted tie. Watchful and somnolent, he reminded me uncomfortably of my father. He had the same steady, unflattering gaze.

  We were in the dining room. Salgado was at the head of the table in the chair that had earlier been occupied by Zuke, and Nelms sat beside him with his brawny arms folded. Each had a notepad in front of him and there was a small cassette recorder on the table.

  Salgado gave me a brief glimpse of his gold tooth.

  ‘Take a seat,’ he invited with brisk charm.

  ‘Thanks.’ I lowered myself on to the chair indicated.

  ‘It could be a long night.’

  ‘It already has been.’

  ‘You got something there.’ He stifled a belch. ‘Never get a job on Homicide. Ruins your digestion.’

  ‘I’ll remember that.’

  He switched on the recorder and tested me for voice level, adjusting the position of the microphone as he did so. Then he rewound the tape and kept his finger on the start button.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you want to know, Lieutenant?’

  ‘Everything. Nice and slow. Got it?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘And keep it simple. We’re as tired as you are.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘State your name first.’

  I cleared my throat and he pressed the button. My voice was flat and unconvincing. Both of them made random notes and Salgado threw in another belch by way of a sound effect. I told the story exactly as I’d rehearsed it in my mind, leaving out details that I wanted to keep to myself and amending others slightly.

  My performance was conditioned by the fact that they were policemen. I simply couldn’t tell them everything. There was no point in trying to explain why because I didn’t fully understand the reasons myself. They were far too complex and contradictory.

  Law enforcement had weighed on me heavily from the start. My boyhood had none of the fun and freedom that my friends managed to enjoy. Wherever I looked, my father was on point duty, holding up a hand to stop me most of the time and motioning me forward only when he felt like it and always at a speed that he dictated.

  Policed into a show of submission, I was forced to give statements on a daily basis. My father did not use a cassette recorder but he always made mental notes on a pad. Conversation with him was in the nature of an interrogation. I learned to lie, to conceal, to adapt. I felt myself doing it now all over again.

  My story was too neat and over-prepared. The two detectives looked equally unimpressed. Salgado jabbed a finger down on the stop button, then glared across at me.

  ‘What is this, Mr. Saxon?’ he protested.

  ‘I’m trying to tell you what happened.’

  ‘Don’t give me that shit!’

  ‘Everything I’ve said is true.’

  ‘But I want the whole truth,’ he emphasised, ‘and not just the bits of it that suit you. That story of yours has more fucking holes in it than a chorus line—only not nearly as pretty.’

  ‘What do you mean, Lieutenant?’

  ‘Give me the details you missed out.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Tell him, Patch.’

  ‘The baseball cap,’ grunted Nelms. ‘It was yours.’

  ‘How do you know?’ I challenged.

  ‘You wore it for the last three days in the tournament,’ he said, his Bronx vowels coming in sharp contrast to the light Californian drawl of his superior. ‘I watched the highlights on TV. It’s yours.’

  ‘So why didn’t you mention it?’ pressed Salgado.

  ‘Must’ve slipped my mind.’

  ‘Along with a few other things, Mr. Saxon.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I conceded.

  Salgado glared at me for a few moments, then got up and paced around the room to relax the tension. When he came back to the table, he leaned over so that his face was close to mine. He examined the red marks on my forehead.

  ‘Still hurt?’

  ‘Only when I laugh, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to make sure you don’t laugh,’ he rejoined. Dark, fiery eyes explored my own. ‘You don’t like cops, do you?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted.

  ‘We can always tell.’

  ‘It’s nothing personal.’

  ‘Then what have you got against us?’

  ‘My father is a policeman.’

  ‘Your old man is a cop?’ he translated. ‘So what? Mine was a trucker. When I was a kid, he used to kick my ass for the sheer hell of it. I hated the bastard. Doesn’t mean I gotta hate all truckers.’

  ‘This is different,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s my business.’

  ‘What did he do to you?’ he asked with heavy sarcasm. ‘Put the cuffs on you? Knock you around with hi
s night stick? Throw you in the slammer and feed you on bread and water? What in god’s name did the sonofabitch do to you?’

  ‘Much as you’re doing now, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘My father used to browbeat me.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘He treated me as if I was a criminal.’

  Salgado’s eyes flared but he bit back his retort. He sat down again, glanced through his notes, then pointed at the recorder.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, drily. ‘Let’s try again. Only this time, give us the full version. You don’t have to like us, Mr. Saxon, but you do have to help us. We’ll be listening.’

  He pressed the start button and I talked into the microphone again. My account was substantially the same but I conceded a number of details that I had held back before. They were still not satisfied. When it was all over, they exchanged a look.

  ‘Patch has a question for you,’ announced Salgado.

  ‘That baseball cap,’ said Nelms. ‘Yankees. You a fan?’

  ‘Not really, Sergeant.’

  ‘Then why do you wear it?’

  ‘That’s a long story.’

  ‘We got all the time in the world.’

  ‘I have this friend in New York,’ I explained. ‘He’s English but he’s lived in the States for over twenty years now.’

  ‘Well and truly polluted then,’ added Salgado with a grin.

  ‘Ian always used to tease me about my golf. Said it was such a boring game to watch. He reckoned that baseball was much more exciting. First time I came to New York, he took me along to Yankee Stadium. Ian was right. It really was exciting. We certainly got our money’s worth that day. I don’t remember who the visiting team were but it was an absolutely cracking game. There was nothing in it until the final innings. Then the Yankees came good and hit a string of homers. The crowd went delirious and I must admit that even I got a bit carried away. There was pandemonium at the end. Everything was thrown up into the air—hats, scarves, programmes, popcorn, the lot. That Yankee cap dropped right down in my lap. Nobody came to reclaim it. So I kept it. Just my size. If the cap fits, I thought, I’ll wear it. From that day onward, I never played a tournament without it. Like most golfers, I’m very superstitious. That cap brought me luck. At first, anyway.’

  ‘It didn’t bring Zuke Everett much luck,’ observed Salgado. ‘By the way, I should have told you. Patch is from New York.’

  ‘The Bronx,’ confirmed his colleague.

  ‘He thinks the Yankees are crap.’

  ‘I prefer the Mets,’ grunted Nelms.

  There was a long pause. They sat there appraising me with unfriendly eyes set in stone faces. Both of them looked like my father now. It was quite unnerving. Thousands of miles away, he could still get back at me. I was being judged and found wanting. As usual.

  ‘Will that be all?’ I wondered.

  ‘No,’ answered Salgado.

  ‘What else can I tell you, Lieutenant?’

  ‘Plenty.’

  ‘Don’t you believe my statement?’

  ‘Up to a point.’

  ‘Which point?’

  ‘The discovery of the body,’ he said, consulting his pad again. ‘You claim that you almost tripped over it in the dark.’

  ‘I described it exactly as it happened.’

  ‘But you didn’t, Mr. Saxon,’ he corrected. ‘You gave us two versions on tape. Okay, they’re very similar but there were differences. Second time round, for instance, you tell us you saw him lying there and knew instinctively that he was dead.’

  ‘I did, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Could be another explanation for that.’

  ‘Could there?’

  ‘Oh, you found Zuke Everett when you went into those bushes,’ he conceded. ‘No doubt about that. Question is: was he still alive when you got to him?’

  The directness of the accusation rattled me.

  ‘Are you saying that I killed him?’

  ‘It’s a possibility we have to consider,’ he replied, easily.

  ‘But he was my friend!’

  ‘Hey, come on now!’ he returned with a shrug. ‘You’re not that wet behind the ears. Murderers often turn out to be friends, wives, husbands, mistresses, business partners, somebody close. It’s the people we ought to love that we can hate enough to kill.’ He gave me a knowing smile. ‘Look at you and your old man.’

  ‘I did not murder Zuke Everett!’ I asserted.

  ‘Then what are you hiding from us?’ he demanded.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Knock it off, Saxon.’

  ‘Nothing, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Gimme facts, will you? Something I can stick my dick into.’

  ‘I’ve told you all I know.’

  ‘Boy, you must think we’re fucking dumb around here!’ he snarled, slapping the table with his hand. ‘You really expect us to believe that cockamamie story of yours?’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘What’s wrong with it, he asks! What’s fucking wrong with it!’

  ‘It just don’t make sense,’ explained Nelms, seriously. ‘That’s what’s wrong with it. According to you, the deceased was kidding around on the lawn with a golf club. He loses his ball in the bushes and so he goes to find it. Only there just happens to be this killer waiting in there for him with a stiletto.’

  ‘Put like that, it does sound unlikely,’ I admitted.

  ‘It stinks like last week’s chicken shit!’ sneered Salgado. ‘You took that knife into the bushes with you. Guy didn’t know what hit him. You rigged the whole goddam thing. That’s how it reads to me.’

  ‘Lieutenant, I swear that I didn’t kill him!’

  ‘Then who did?’ he challenged.

  ‘A professional,’ I decided, throwing all my guesswork at them by way of defence. ‘Zuke Everett was set up tonight by someone who’s connected with the world of golf. The killer knew that he’d be here. Celebrating his triumph. Off guard. The man could have been waiting out there all evening until he got his chance. He probably couldn’t believe his luck when Zuke actually strolled towards him.’

  ‘Go on,’ encouraged Salgado.

  ‘He had to be a pro because it was done so quickly. Even in the dark, the killer needed only one thrust to find the heart. I didn’t see any other entry wounds.’

  ‘There weren’t any,’ corroborated Nelms.

  ‘That’s more or less all I can tell you about him,’ I said. ‘Except that he’s very strong and quite short.’

  ‘How do you make that out?’ pressed Salgado.

  ‘He had to be strong because he knocked Zuke out with one blow and caught him before he crashed into the bushes. Howie Danzig and I heard nothing. The killer dragged the body about ten yards—you can see the heel marks in the grass—so that he could lay it down in that clearing without any noise. My guess is that he slipped the knife home then. While Zuke was unconscious. I know the man is short because of the size of the hole he cut himself in the fence. I couldn’t get through it without snagging my collar and I was bent right over.’

  The two detectives traded a covert smile and I realised that I had been tricked. They had pressurised me so that I’d volunteer everything I knew or suspected. I felt betrayed by the police. Again.

  ‘That’s pretty good,’ remarked Salgado, writing something on his pad. ‘You think like a cop. Your old man’d be proud of you.’

  ‘Just one thing you missed,’ added Nelms.

  ‘Is there, Sergeant?’

  ‘That baseball cap.’

  ‘You seem obsessed with it,’ I observed.

  ‘Only because it’s so important, Mr. Saxon.’

  ‘Important to us,’ reinforced Salgado, ‘a
nd important to you.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Spell it out for him, Patch.’

  ‘We think the perpetrator could’ve been a hit-man.’

  ‘I just told you that, Sergeant.’

  ‘Guys like that, who handle contracts. Don’t usually know much about golf. They got other games.’

  ‘So?’ I asked.

  ‘So,’ continued Nelms, solemnly, ‘he’s never seen his victim before. Never heard him speak. All he’s got is a name on his stiletto and some mug shots. With me? He gets into the garden. Watches the house. Waits. Four people come out. One of them looks like the guy in the mug shots. Wearing this baseball cap. The hit-man is in the bushes. Sees his victim against the light around the patio. Long garden. With me?’

  I nodded. My mouth was now too dry to form words.

  ‘Like this,’ concluded Nelms. ‘I see you playing in that tournament on TV, I thought you were Zuke Everett at first. Works both ways. The hit man’s watching from a distance. In that light—in that cap—the deceased was Alan Saxon’s double.’

  ‘That’s how we know you didn’t do it,’ explained Salgado, airily. ‘Because you were probably the intended victim.’

  ‘Why me?’ I protested.

  ‘Why Zuke Everett?’ countered Nelms.

  ‘But what reason would anybody have to kill me?’

  ‘This is America,’ rejoined Salgado, wryly. ‘They don’t always need a reason to rub you out over here. They do it for kicks. Get their rocks off.’ He hunched his shoulders. ‘Maybe someone didn’t like your face. Or your baseball cap.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ I argued, grasping at something that would disprove their theory. ‘The killer would have heard Zuke’s voice. He would have known it wasn’t me.’

  ‘Only if he spoke English,’ noted Salgado.

  ‘What do you mean, Lieutenant?’

  ‘Use your eyes,’ he advised. ‘This is not a real city. It’s another United fucking Nations. Throw a stick in LA, you hit some dumb immigrant. My old man was one. So was almost everyone else’s. And they still keep coming. We got bimbos here who can’t even wipe the shit off their ass in English!’ He pursed his lips and studied me for a few moments. ‘Know what I think, Mr. Saxon?’