Deep Rough

by A. J. Stewart

  I wanted to ask what happened if he didn’t hit it clean, but that didn’t feel helpful so I held onto it.

  “All right,” I said. “Hit the damn thing.”

  I jogged forward and told the gallery to stay alert. It was pointless. It would take half an hour to get them all to move back out of harm’s way, and if the ball went into them it was going to be like a rifle shot. You can’t prepare for a rifle shot.

  Heath took his stance and dug his feet into the heavy Bermuda grass and aimed left. I heard the gallery stir like an unsettled herd of cattle. The ball was back in Heath’s stance nearer his rear foot. He took a moment and I think he held his breath. I certainly did. Then he swung the long, luxurious swing.

  Grass flew and the sonorous tink echoed off the club. We all shot our heads left and watched the ball sail high and wide over the gallery as if it wanted to leave the course. Then it seemed to change its mind midway, and it veered right. The ball banked further right and back over the seventeenth fairway and descended. It hit the fairway and loped forward, still spinning to the right.

  If I could have held my breath while already holding my breath I would have done it. The ball pitched forward and rolled toward the edge of the sand trap. That wouldn’t be a disaster but it would most likely mean second place. The ball missed the lip of the sand trap by what I would learn later on the television was about two inches, and it ran on across the green, following its fade to the right, until it came to a stop.

  Six feet from the hole.

  I heard some roars playing baseball. Even in the minors crowds got rowdy. And I sat in the bullpen for some major league games where the atmosphere was electric. But the sound on the golf course at that moment was something else. The demure opera clapping was pushed to the wayside by a wave of cheers that I felt in my chest. It was as if the course itself were applauding being beaten.

  I picked up Heath’s bag and it felt as light as a pillow. Heath passed me his driver and strode up the fairway, waving gently from the hip in that casual way that golfers do. Lapping up the applause but not losing his cool, knowing he still had a putt to make and another hole to play.

  Matt the Kiwi took his third shot from in front of the sand trap and landed his ball four yards from the hole, but it stopped and spun backward another couple yards. Heath walked up onto the green and marked his ball and threw it to me to clean. The gallery was no longer a gallery. It was a crowd, and it didn’t want to stop cheering what they knew was a miracle shot.

  Matt took his time and hit his putt but missed, and then tapped in for his par five. Then Heath replaced his ball, took a long look at the putt from behind and then stepped up and tapped it firmly into the hole, as if the entire thing were a fait accompli. He had taken three shots to get in the hole, two under par, or an eagle as it was known in golf parlance. He had turned a one-shot deficit into a one-shot lead in one hole. A hole where he was a quarter inch from being out-of-bounds. Such was life.

  Usually in the sport the known result was a bore. A game four in the World Series with the leading team up three-nil never held the drama of a game seven with the two ball clubs tied at three-all. But somehow golf was different. Golf fans loved drama as much as anybody. There were a plethora of examples of two guys dueling it out down the final hole, or even in a sudden-death play-off. My father used to go on about Watson and Nicklaus at Turnberry in ’77, and Larry Mize’s chip-in to win the ’87 Masters.

  But there was, strangely, something poetic about the player who walked down the eighteenth fairway knowing he had won. The gallery cheered and the commentators crowed and the player in question waved and offered his thanks to the golfing gods and tried to hold it together. Not that Heath McAllen had won the tournament. Any slip-up could let Matt the Kiwi back in via a playoff. A horror hole could lose it.

  But that didn’t happen. His tee shot was up the middle and long, and his fairway shot landed in the heart of the green, twenty feet from the hole. Matt was in a similar position with equally good shots, but on this day that wasn’t enough. He took his two putts to finish with a par, and stood back as Heath took the same two putts to make the same par and win the tournament by one shot.

  In the roar of the crowd I offered Heath a handshake and took a bearhug, like I was part of the celebration. But I wasn’t. I felt good, no doubt. But mostly I felt good that I hadn’t messed up the kid’s chances. The work was all his own. Even though he hadn’t walked a single hole with Heath that week, his regular caddy, Alfie, was owed more credit for the result than I was. Alfie had told me what to do and when, because he knew his charge and he knew him well.

  I watched from the edge of the green as Heath accepted the winner’s trophy, an ugly crystal thing that would make roses look bad, and a giant check that seemed unnecessarily large given the number written on it. There were interviews and more interviews. Heath spoke with the local broadcasters, and with Japanese and Australian television, and then with a guy in a trilby hat from BBC Glasgow.

  I went back to the locker room and accepted the congratulations of the other caddies, both given and accepted without enthusiasm. Then I cleaned Heath’s clubs. I considered slipping in a hundred to replace the broken fairway wood, but I figured he probably got his clubs free from the manufacturer as part of an endorsement deal.

  Matt the Kiwi was the second-to-last guy to leave the locker room. His caddy for the weekend had cleaned his clubs, but Matt picked them up himself and hoisted them onto his back in a harness that reminded me of an old-school backpack. He wandered by me and gave me a smile.

  “You caddy here regularly?” he asked. Obviously he didn’t catch much of the coverage during the tournament.

  “Not much,” I said. “It was more a favor.”

  He nodded. “Well, if you want to do me a favor next year, I’ll be swinging through about the same time.”

  “Give me a call.”

  “I’ll do that. Just ask for the Miami Jones, right?” He readjusted the weight across his shoulders. “Have a good one, mate,” he said, and he walked out, looking for the next tournament, leaving me in the quiet of the locker room. After all the hubbub during the week, it suddenly felt dark and lonely, and I with it.

  Telling the Kiwi to give me a call felt like a throwaway line, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it wasn’t. He seemed like a nice young man. Carrying his own clubs was a bit cheap for a guy who just won three quarters of a million bucks for coming second, but each to his own. I liked him. And what he had done with the almost out-of-bounds ball was damned classy. He was the one who had noticed the ball was technically in play. Without him Heath would have picked the ball up and run back to the tee to hit again, and that would have cost him any chance at a win. Matt knew that. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut. But he didn’t. He spoke up, knowing that it might cost him a win. It did cost him a win. But he didn’t seem put out by it. And he hadn’t sought or been given any credit for what he did. It hadn’t been seen on the golf coverage. Jim Nantz had interviewed him as runner-up but never asked about it. I knew, Heath knew and the rules guy knew. Maybe some gallery patrons with bionic hearing knew. In a world where good deeds seemed to require applause, Matt just did the right thing because it was the right thing, and I liked him a lot for it.

  Heath came in for a shower a good two hours after me. He looked happy but exhausted, and I wondered how anyone did this week in, week out. Baseball was famous for being a long campaign, not a single battle, and it was true also of golf. He thanked me and asked where he should send the check for my share of the winnings.

  “I told you, that belongs to Alfie. He just needs to replace my damned car.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  “I am. What will you do now? Is there a celebration dinner?”

  “There is. Every sponsor has a party, so I can do the rounds.”

  I nodded. He deserved it. He was a good kid who worked hard. We could all learn a lesson. Me as much as anyone.

  “What
about you?” he asked. “What are you up to? There’s a few media guys who would love to know the story behind your midround disappearance.” He grinned.

  “Club repair, right?” I winked. “Nah, I’m off to Longboard’s. I need a change of scene.”

  He nodded and I did likewise and we shook hands. I moved to leave him to his shower.

  “Miami,” he said.

  I turned to him.

  “I didn’t half mind that fish dip. You wouldn’t have room for an extra at Longboard’s?”

  I smiled. “You’re driving.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  I made it home tired but refreshed. An hour at Longboard Kelly’s was therapy that couldn’t be beat. Real people who lived real lives always did that to me. A poet would call them salt of the earth, but what the hell do poets know? They haven’t worked a day in their life. Don’t get me wrong, a poet laureate is a fine thing for a nation to have, but those guys are hardly Dr. Seuss. Mick and Muriel and the usual crowd helped me emerge from the insular bubble I had lived in all week. Pro golf is fun, but it ain’t real life. The good news is, it seemed like most of those guys knew that. They were tapped in to the fact that they were living the dream. Flying your own jet around the world, hitting a little white ball for a million bucks wasn’t any kind of reality, but it was some kind of a life. Even for the guys down at the bottom of the money list, the ones who struggled and got sent back to Q school to qualify for the tour again, they knew it was a dream. Forget win—they were trying to make the weekend cut so they got paid. They lived in cheap hotels and drove their cars from event to event. And they were living the dream. It beat the hell out of digging ditches.

  Danielle didn’t make it to Longboard’s. She texted to say she was finishing up at the corporate hospitality tents, where all the expense account drinkers were getting booted off course to fill up the local hotel bars and become the problem of the Lake Worth Police Department. Then she was getting a ride home. After a couple of beers with Heath I decided I also wanted to be at home. The new millionaire bought a round of drinks for the bar, which wasn’t necessary but was much appreciated by all. He looked tired. I wasn’t sure how he was going to pick himself up for the following week. But he didn’t want to leave. I knew the look. I’d been the same, once upon a time, BD. Before Danielle. I hated when Mick turned the lights off and closed the bar, although there were plenty of times he and Ron and I stayed at the bar in the dark after the crowd had gone. Now Longboard’s was a refuge, not a home. I had a home. And as I looked at Heath, struggling to stay awake but not wanting to return to a celebrity-designed bland hotel room, I realized that my home wasn’t in Singer Island. It wasn’t in New Haven, Connecticut, or Modesto, California, or any other place I had lived. My home was where Danielle was. My home was Danielle. I enjoyed my house in Singer Island. I really enjoyed the view. But I loved the view when I watched it with her sitting beside me.

  “Where’s your next tournament?” I asked Heath.

  “The Players.”

  “TPC Sawgrass? Not too far. Will you drive?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll take the jet tomorrow morning.”

  That was the ticket. Those morning commutes in Jacksonville could be murder.

  “When will you get home next?”

  He smiled, but he looked older doing it. “The Open is at Troon this year. July.”

  I nodded. Almost three more months. An hour feels like a long time when you’re melancholy. Three months seemed unbearable. But he was a young man, energy to burn, dreams to chase. I hoped he enjoyed the ride. There was plenty of time for other things later. If he was able to get off the carousel long enough to find those things. The life could be addicting. Golfers could play on tour and compete well into their forties, and then there was a senior tour for the over-fifties. A lot of guys stayed on the ride, all the way to the end. Searching for something that they didn’t realize they would never find on a golf course. Some of them got the message. Some of them found balance. Many didn’t.

  I walked Heath out to his courtesy SUV and his driver opened the door. Heath got in and put the window down.

  “It’s been an adventure,” he said.

  “Life should be. What’s the point otherwise?”

  He smiled the smile. It was young and genuine and sold a lot of golf merchandise—I was sure of that.

  “Maybe I’ll see you next year,” he said.

  “I’ll be here.”

  “Or I might get a place down here.”

  “I know some property going cheap.”

  He nodded and I watched him as the SUV pulled away, and the last I saw was him flopping back into his seat. He didn’t bother putting the window up. Ron would approve.

  Muriel was coming off shift and offered to give me a ride home despite living in the opposite direction. I tried begging off but she wasn’t having it. She drove down the long street that runs from the A1A toward the Intracoastal. Her headlights lit up my dark house, and the thing in the street in front of it. She stopped in the middle of the road and we both leaned forward to look at the vehicle parked across my driveway.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “It’s a Cadillac,” she said.

  “That’s no Cadillac. It’s an SUV.”

  “It’s a crossover. A big car or a small SUV, take your pick. But it’s a Cadillac, I guarantee you.”

  The thing looked like a giant sleeping panther.

  “Why is it parked across my drive?”

  “Why does it have a red bow on top?”

  Many questions. We both got out. Muriel left the headlights on and we wandered over to the SUV. The badge said it was called a Cadillac all right, but it looked like a soccer mom had gotten drunk and abandoned her vehicle in my street. Muriel wandered around the front and then stopped by the huge red bow that sat on top of the roof, like the SUV was some kind of gift.

  “There’s a card,” she said, pulling an envelope from the bow and handing it to me.

  I opened it and read it.

  “Sorry about your other car. Ron says this is right up your alley. Cheers, Alfie.”

  “Alfie?” asked Muriel.

  “He trashed my Boxster.”

  “And replaced it with a Caddy?”

  “This is no Caddy. This is Ron.”

  Muriel laughed and kissed me on the cheek and told me to be good, and she got in her car and drove away, leaving me in the dark, staring at a soccer mom’s car. It was locked, so I tried the mail box and found the key. Inside the car smelled new, and it was cleaner than Lex the chef’s kitchen. It had a few miles on the clock so it wasn’t brand-new, but that didn’t bother me. It was the SUV bit that bothered. I liked to think I was a convertible kind of guy.

  I was standing in the dark, looking at the thing when I got lit up by headlights again. They stopped before me and a door opened and Danielle appeared from the light. The car was a patrol car, and the young female deputy who I had seen at the golf course earlier in the week waved as she drove away. Danielle stopped beside me.

  “Nice car,” she said.

  “It’s a Cadillac,” I said.

  She said nothing. She just smiled.

  We left the SUV where it was and went inside. We grabbed a bottle of wine and went out to the patio. I sat back on my lounger overlooking the twinkling lights of Riviera Beach. The Intracoastal was quiet and sleepy, a Sunday night after another spectacular Florida spring day. The town was snuggling down for slumber, Monday only hours away. I sipped my drink and looked at Danielle. She was looking at me.

  “What?”

  “You did good,” she said.

  “You too. How’s your friend Nixon?”

  “Back in Miami. He had nothing more to do.”

  “There’s a fair mess to clean up.”

  “Most of it’s either federal or county, in the end. Marcard says they have all sorts of evidence against Barry now, on the property scam. He was propping up his mini-empire by selling bridges to nowhere.”
>
  “A Florida specialty.”

  “But here’s something I don’t get. Ernesto Cabala was in caddy’s coveralls and had Nathaniel Donaldson’s business card on him,” she said. “Do you think Donaldson was involved?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. And I do think Donaldson was involved. But not to the point where it can be proven. The groom from the wedding—Nicholas Coligio—remember he told us how Donaldson bought Bonita Mar to spite Coligio senior? Well, Sally told me there was history. A big deal that Donaldson put together in Rhode Island. Sal says Donaldson did all kinds of unsavory things to make it happen. You can imagine, right? But when the time came, Dom Coligio swooped in and made the deal without Donaldson. Screwed him over. I figure maybe Donaldson learned something there. He got Barry to do all the dirty work because Barry was desperate. Like the power substation deal. I think Donaldson pulled the strings, but Barry was the puppet. And it wouldn’t surprise me if Donaldson planned to screw Barry just the way Coligio had done to him. As for the coveralls and Donaldson’s business card? I think Ernesto nabbed a set of the coveralls. They were delivered the Friday before the wedding, that’s what Natalie said. I think he used them to go incognito around the club. And I suspect he either got the card from Barry, or maybe he tried to shake down Donaldson too.”

  “You think Donaldson was involved in the murder?”

  “No idea. I suspect not. I think Barry was freestyling by then. Either way, I don’t think there’s any evidence that will stand up in a barroom, let alone a courtroom. We were lucky to find what we did.”

  She nodded. “It was Martin Costas who turned the FBI onto the whole thing. How did you figure that out?”

  “Nixon told me, in not so many words. His FBI contact was all talk about Guam, and then she went really silent. We thought she might be protecting Nixon from something, but then I realized that she had been told to keep away from it.”

  I sipped my drink. “It was confirmed when Marcard turned up. I suspected he was protecting an asset, not an investigation. And when Jackie Treloar told me he had seen Barry taking the bleach bottles away, I knew Barry was the bad guy and Martin was helping the FBI. Martin was totally up for a sting. He’s more game than he looks. And he’s also more ethical.”